A/N: Ok, so I am terribly, terribly new at this! Please be gentle and constructive with me, dear readers! I have never done this before, and I am not sure if I like what I've written or not yet.

OH. I do not own any of this. J.K. Rowling, demi-god that she is, owns all of the characters and original story rights.

Blinking sleep-filled eyes, Hermione squinted into the dark room in confusion. She felt a scratchy blanket fall off her shoulders as she sat up, and winced as she felt her back crack in protest. Feeling a pang in her right arm, she blearily took in the bandages wrapped tight around it and felt panic rise in her throat.

"Whh.."

It was almost physical, the pain she felt every morning, when she woke up and for a few, brief moments, didn't remember what her life was like now. She gasped as each memory hit her, like small but powerful fists to her gut. It wasn't over. The war wasn't over, and she wasn't at home with her parents or at Hogwarts in her soft bed. She had been injured. She was in a safehouse somewhere in France, sleeping on a lumpy mattress placed on a hard, warped, wooden floor in a musty room.

Bending at the waist, she brought her hands up to her face in fists, pressing them tightly against her eyes as if this could keep the images from invading her brain. She was lost. They were all lost.

"What do you want me to do?"

She heard the growl of Pansy's voice from inside the small kitchenette. Pausing by the door, she took a few deep breaths before entering.

"I can't go back there. You can't make me!"

Pansy's entire body was stiff with emotion, her blonde hair grimy and her mouth set in grim line. She didn't even glance at Hermione as she quietly made her way over to the pantry. Her glare was directed at a thin framed man sitting at the slanted kitchen table.

"Yeah, Pans, that's the difference, isn't it?" Blaise retorted, his voice low and threatening, the anger in his eyes a match for Pansy's.

"You don't HAVE to go. They won't make you."

Finding the packet of instant oatmeal, Hermione quietly took out a chipped ceramic bowl and filled it with water, absent-mindedly tapping it with her wand. Pouring the packet into the now steaming water, she grabbed a spoon and stirred, anxious to escape this room and the tension that seemed to fill it to the ceiling. The fight was a repetitive one, and it wasn't any of her business.

As she moved towards the door again, she watched as Pansy began to wilt, her shoulders no longer squared and the fight leaving her eyes.

"I didn't come here for this."

Hermione heard her say as the door clicked shut behind her. Padding up the stairs, she could still make out Pansy's muffled and dejected voice.

"I didn't come to their side so I could die by a Death Eater's wand. If I wanted that, I would have just stayed."

Hermione peeled back the sticky bandages, ignoring the small sounds of disapproval Lavender Brown was making as she surveyed the damage. She was chiding her for not cleaning the wound enough, but already, she felt herself tuning out Lavender's high-pitched voice.

Hermione had become an expert at tuning things out. At first, after Voldemort's death, she had truly believed that things were going to be different. That for the first time in her young life, she wasn't going to feel the constant hum of danger at the back of her neck. She was going to be safe. She remembered the feel of Ron's hand clasped in hers as they looked over the bodies of their friends, classmates, family members, and enemies, and the relief that had swept over her in a guilty swoosh. They had survived. She had Ron and she had Harry and she was alive. They wouldn't have to worry anymore. They could have their normal lives back.

But nothing had been the same. Over the next two weeks, what was left of Voldemort's army had collected themselves and began to attack muggle London. Harry was a shell of who he used to be, broken and scarred from the deaths he believed to be his fault. The Ministry had spirited him away somewhere, using his image and his words as propaganda for the new fight, and she hadn't seen him in almost a year.

Ron had tried, really tried, to make their relationship work. The Ministry had offered much the same as they had to Harry to the two of them, and Ron had gladly accepted. They had an enormous row that night. She had wanted to fight. She had needed to fight. She couldn't imagine hiding now, when they were needed the most. In the end, she had gone with Ron and the Ministry, more for his sake than for hers. She spent their nights together holding him while he sobbed over the dead, telling him that she loved him and that it would be ok. Over the next few months, though, she couldn't help but feel anger at his cowardice slowly creep into her heart, until one day, Ron woke up and turned over in the bed they had been sharing to find her side empty, her things packed and gone.

She had thought that fighting would have stilled the itch she felt somewhere in her chest, the one that told her that she needed to do something, to help. Instead, she had felt the itch become a hole that widened with each person she had killed, each body of a friend she had recovered, each time she had to retreat. Her sanity had been stretched taut, and she hadn't been able to sleep, the faces of the dead flashing across her vision each time she closed her eyes.

Hermione honestly didn't know what was worse. When she had felt like that, a black hole whirling where her heart was supposed to be, or how she felt now. Able to tune out the death, tune out the people around her, and instead of a hole or an itch, a heavy, leaden feeling of nothingness.

"...you'd think being muggleborn, that you would know how important it is to change the dressings on your own." Lavender intoned, her wand siphoning the infection out of the mottled and broken skin on Hermione's arm.

Hermione blinked rapidly, slowly coming back to reality, as Lavender turned away from her for a second. Glancing down at the wound on her arm, she felt her stomach lurch, and she quickly looked away.

"You need to spread a dollop of this potion on it twice a day to keep it clean and keep the pain down." Lavender scolded, placing a bottle with a thick, light pink salve in it next to her on the bed.

"I won't be here next time to do this." Lavender said, busying herself with packing up the rest of her healer's bag.

"The Order said they would find another healer to come, but I don't know who they will be or how good they are, so please Hermione. Use that potion, ok?" She said, pausing at the door frame to glance back at her with a worried look.

Clearing her throat awkwardly, Hermione opened her mouth as if to agree verbally, but closed it quickly and just nodded. With a motherly sigh, Lavender had turned away and bustled through the door, leaving her to curl up on her bed and let everything fade to black for awhile.

Anger flooded her as she heard the loud laughter floating up from downstairs again. Her arm was buzzing with pain, even after she had smoothed the bubblegum pink balm all over it, and all she wanted to do was sleep so she couldn't feel it anymore. Closing her eyes and huffing out an annoyed breath, she tried again to empty her mind. Snapping her eyes open when she heard another loud peal of laughter, she felt the anger in her veins fizz over, and she ripped the blanket off her form.

Bursting into the kitchen prepared to read Pansy and Blaise the riot act, she was stopped dead in her tracks when she saw who was leaning against the tiny stove in the kitchenette, his lanky body shaking with laughter at something Blaise had just said.

Three heads turned towards her, but only one pair of silver-gray eyes locked on to her own. She instinctively held her injured arm close to her as confusion racked her brain. She had heard the rumors that he had defected and come to their side, but she had dismissed them with a judgemental wave of her hand. She would never have believed it if he hadn't been standing right in front of her.

"Granger." He drawled, a smirk grazing across his lips.

"Malfoy." She spat, hugging her arms around herself and dropping her gaze from his.

A silence blanketed the four witches and wizards for a few brief seconds as Pansy anxiously glanced between the two of them. Hermione felt a small flutter of something in her chest, and she shook her matted curls as if the movement itself could clear the confusion from her brain.

Malfoy looked different. It wasn't just the normal difference that comes with age; she would have expected him to be taller and have more muscles. It was his face. He wasn't scowling, and even his trademark smirk seemed to have lost some of its venom in the past year. Realizing that she was staring at him, she dropped her gaze to the floor, taking a step back towards the door as she raised her wand.

"If you're going to be having a party down here, you should maybe think about putting a silencing spell on the room." She hissed. "Some of us are trying to sleep."

Backing out of the room, she raised her wand and whispered "muffliato" before turning her back on the door and starting to make her way back to her room.

"It's one in the afternoon."

She stopped, and cocked her head in confusion before turning back to find Malfoy standing outside the door to the kitchen, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

"Congratulations, Malfoy, you can tell time." She croaked, wincing at the dryness in her un-used throat. This was the most she had spoken in almost a week. About to turn around again, she felt panic rise in her throat as she felt a strong hand wrap around her upper arm.

"Get off me!" She snarled, fighting down the terror that had risen in her stomach at being touched by someone.

"No." Malfoy snarled back, keeping his firm grip.

"Why are you sleeping at one in the afternoon?" He questioned, his face looming close to hers. Distantly, Hermione noted that he looked much more like his old self at this moment.

"I don't have to answer to you, Malfoy." She sighed, unable to keep the anger strong in her voice as she felt her normal wave of numbness crash back over her.

"You do have to answer to me." He snapped, his grip on her arm tightening as he balled his other hand into a fist.

"I'm Lavender's replacement, and because you've got her and everyone else at The Order worried about you, I have to stay here in this disgusting house until you're better. So you definitely have to answer to me."

Hermione felt something close to laughter bubble up inside her, and shook her head to dissipate it.

"You're here to heal me? Godric." She said, unable to keep a small smile from tugging at her lips. Lifting her fingers to her mouth in surprise at the unfamiliar feeling, she quickly frowned and tugged her arm out of Malfoy's suddenly loosened grip. He had a strange look on his face as he glared at her, and she turned around without another word. Before she reached the top of the stairs, she heard him speak again, calling up to her.

"What a surprise." She swore she could hear the sneer in his voice.

"A Gryffindor acting like a bloody fucking martyr. How melodramatic of you. I had thought you would be stronger than that. My mistake."

She heard the last of his words dully through the wooden door to her room. As she curled up on the mattress, she lifted her hand to her face, surprised to feel the wetness that was tracking down her cheeks.

"You have ten minutes, Granger, until I come in and get you myself."

Hermione grimaced into the thin pillow she was holding over her head. For the first time since she had left Ron, she hadn't been able to sleep. Malfoy's words from the afternoon before had bounced around in her addled brain for the rest of the day and all through the night. She hadn't been able to tune it out. She hated him for it, and she wasn't getting up. He could work on her arm later, when she'd gotten some sleep. Groping for her wand, she lazily cast a silencing spell on her door before turning over and closing her eyes again. She was nearly to blessed sleep when she felt the blanket being pulled violently away from her.

Malfoy stood over her bed, glowering down at her. Before she could scramble out of bed or find her wand, Malfoy waved his own and she felt her legs and arms snap together at her sides, and she started to yell.

"If you hadn't put a silencing spell on the door, you might have heard me coming." Malfoy said over her angry cries of protest, looking down at her rigid body like he was bored senseless.

"And that was the worst Alohomora I have broken through in a long time. Either you agree to get up and come downstairs so I can heal you and get far away from this bloody shit hole, or I keep that leg-lock spell on you and levitate you downstairs and do it anyways. Your choice, Granger."

Not wanting to see the look of satisfaction she knew her surrender would give him, she lowered her eyes and nodded, the anger that was welling up inside her making her press her lips into a thin line.

With a wave of his wand, she felt the muscles in her legs and arms relax. She noted with mild surprise that Malfoy must have mastered the art of silent magic, because she hadn't heard him put on or take off the leg-lock spell. Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, she absentmindedly ran a hand through her crazy hair, pushing it off her face.

Malfoy had left the room as soon as he had released her, and Hermione grumbled to herself as she pulled on a grungy pair of sweatpants that had been lying on the floor. Grabbing her wand, she made her way downstairs and into the doorway of the small sitting room next to the kitchenette. Malfoy was already inside, rummaging around in a healer's bag with his back turned to her. She took a moment to take in her childhood tormentor all grown up. He was wearing muggle jeans and a rugby shirt, both a little threadbare. His trainers were muddy and worn down, and his scruff on his chin was visible every time he turned his head slightly. Even so, he still held himself with the same air of haughtiness he always had.

"Get your ass in here Granger. I don't have all day." He said, not even turning around.

Rolling her eyes, she walked in, plopping down on the dusty yellow couch that was the only other piece of furniture besides the table that Malfoy was working on in the entire room.

"I thought you were stuck here. So technically, you do have all day." She quipped, picking at the pilling faded fabric half-heartedly.

Acting as if he hadn't heard her, he turned around and stalked up to the couch, plopping down next to her with his wand outstretched. The sat awkwardly for a moment, both seemingly unable to look the other in the eye. Wordlessly, she unwound the bandage from`her arm and held it out to him. When he didn't immediately begin to work on It, she looked up at him.

"If you don't have all day, I'd suggest you get to it." She said through clenched teeth.

The strange look Malfoy was giving her was annoying, and the buzzing in her arm seemed all the worse with bandage off.

"You know, when I was told I was coming here and who I would be healing, I tried to refuse. I thought that you would immediately question my loyalty to The Order, that you would yell at me, or at the very least, throw a punch at me again."

Malfoy said, finally grabbing her arm and pointing his wand at the wound. Hermione bristled a little at his words. He was never going to let her forget about the time that she had punched him in their third year. She watched as he siphoned out the infection as Lavender Brown had, gritting her teeth at the slight burning sensation and ignoring his words. When he was done, he smoothed a different potion from the one Lavender had been giving her, and it immediately started to fizz, which was an unpleasant sensation.

"I'll be applying this twice a day until it draws out all of the curse." He said, wrapping up the wound with surprisingly gentle hands.

Getting up from the couch, he fixed her with his quicksilver eyes.

"I didn't think that anything could be more annoying than your know-it-all goody two shoes attitude at Hogwarts. But this, Granger? This is far worse. Get your head out of your ass. We've all lost people. You're being selfish."

White hot anger seemed to explode in her chest, and she jumped off the couch, whirling around to face him.

"You. Know. NOTHING about what I've lost Malfoy." She yelled, her fists clenching at her sides.

"If you've come here just to taunt the filthy little mudblood, then you might as well pack up and leave." She spat, feeling her face flush and her eyes prick with angry tears. Malfoy calmly ran a hand through his floppy silver hair, and smirked at her.

"That's a little better." He said quietly. As he walked through the door frame, he shouted back at her.

"Take a shower today, Granger. I may not think your blood is dirty anymore, but your hair is another story."

For the second time since he had shown up, Hermione felt the ghost of a smile on her lips.

A/N: OK! So that's it! My first ever chapter in my first ever fanfic. Please review. I won't know what to do unless you tell me where to improve!