Shades of Grey

Disclaimer: Everything except for the storyline is mine. The characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

Warning: THIS IS NOT BETA'D… If you'd be willing to help me, and yes, I AM asking for help, it would be appreciated.

As innocent children the world to us seems to be divided definitely, everything was black and white- bad and good, that was all there was. Colorblind we walked the roads of life, never looking at things deeper than required: never questioning only characterizing things "black", "white", "good", "bad", "death-eater" and "innocent". There never seemed to be anything else. Even through my unconventional adolescence, and my innocence being stolen at an early age this division seemed defined. There was nothing in the middle and the two never mixed.

It was during the second war, while I played the neutral healer when he was brought to me injured and unconscious. He was a prisoner of war for the side I supported, but he was also my charge. It wasn't the first time I'd dealt with him: we had gone to school together and he had been my prime tormentor. Harry had come by a few weeks after and told me that I didn't have to take his case, but I insisted. I had been pegged as England's best healer and it was a complicated assignment. It was my duty, my pledge to take his case without bias. It was my stand in the war, neutral as it might be, it was my stance, for better or for worse.

It hadn't been easy at all treating him. Every time I looked at his face our painful history would flash before my eyes. I wished him dead, but my humanitarian/healer side always felt guilty for it. Killing was never my strong suit which is why I opted to become a Healer as opposed to an Auror. It'd been fours weeks, and he still hadn't woken up. I'd spent most of my time monitoring him, patching him up and cleaning him up with the utmost care. I'd stay at the hospital most of the time, so I'd spend a lot of time with him, sitting with him, talking to him, asking him questions I knew he'd never answer if I asked him while he were conscious. I'd spill my deepest secrets to him, my confusions, my fears, my feelings, my soul, I'd pour my everything into these one-sided conversations. The days I missed these conversations I'd be an almost bitter, resentfully bitter person.

Sometime during the third month of his stay at the hospital, he gained consciousness. I was there to witness it. Unfortunately for me, the first word out of him was an insult. An insult which was mine by default, "Mudblood." He'd said as his grey eyes penetrated through me, as he yelled himself hoarse, asking for me to be taken as far away from him as possible. I'd lost my confidante. It hurt. Our relationship, however one-sided, was forbidden; I was betraying my blood and my childhood friendships, by trusting him blindly, all the while knowing I'd be hurt if he ever woke up. But the pain was a lot more painful than I had ever imagined. His stormy grey eyes, fueling a storm within my being, one of passionate anger that he'd always brought out in me.

He was unbearably rude, and never allowed any of the other healers to touch him. When he had an accident a week after he woke up I refused to go to him. He refused to let anyone touch him at all. After a while, when he'd created a ruckus and had every healer around him I walked up to him determinedly and gave him a loathsome glare. I could feel his eyes burn a hole through me as I put my hand out towards him.
"I could just ask them to leave you out here, if you don't let me help you, I dislike you enough to let you rot out here, but I know you better than that, afraid of a challenge, Malfoy?" I said slowly enunciating every word looking him dead in the eye.
He held onto my arm trying to get up as the other healers rushed to help him up into his wheelchair. Once in his room, he grabbed my arm.
"Don't ever insult me like that again, Mudblood, you will do exactly as you are told and you will fix me up now" he whispered menacingly, "you have no idea what I'm capable of."
"I'm not afraid of you, Malfoy, and I know very well what you're capable of, and do not tell me what I will or will not do, because over here, you are to do exactly as I tell youYou're in my territory, Malfoy. I will not have you terrorize my staff." I stated calmly as I fixed him up inflicting as much pain as I could to state my point.

Over the course of the months that followed his attitude got worse and better in spurts. He was unpredictable, and often in a foul mood. He'd glare at everyone, and wouldn't let anyone other than me clean and bandage his wounds, or give him is hour of physiotherapy. Two days before he was to be discharged to be sent to prison, Harry came down to visit me, and check up on Malfoy's physical progress. That day he told me about the nature of Malfoy's sentence and the intensity of evidence and proof against him. The stories he told me affected me in a weird way. While I was with Harry, another healer had tried to get Malfoy to go through his final monitored-physiotherapy session, which resulted in him screaming the place down for me. With a single warning Harry let me get to my work. When I got there Malfoy was in the foulest mood I'd seen him in since his accident.
"Don't ever not come when I call you!" he yelled at me.
"I'll do as I please, Malfoy, you are not the only person I tend to, and you are definitely not all that important, not here" I said forcefully.
"Oh is that so, Granger? Forgotten all those nights of confessions have you? You're going to stay with me all day tomorrow, I miss your 'talks'" he smirked as I waved him off and walked away.

When I was packing up to leave the next day, I walked past his room. He'd been pacing the floor and upon seeing me walk past, he ran out and grabbed me and pulled me into his room. He pushed me against the wall, "Where've you been" he screamed. "I've been waiting for you all day!" he continued. His eyes were ablaze with emotions that he tried so hard to conceal within the hardness of his stares. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I know I'm going to be given the death sentence. But I need to…" I'd never seen him so lost and confused, I'd never seen him like this in all his years as my tormentor and as a death-eater. At that moment he was a stranger whom I'd only glimpsed at in the last few months I'd spent with him, in the moments when he accomplished something or failed at something. The unfamiliarity seemed so strangely familiar. His body was pressed against mine to make sure I didn't run away. He buried his face in the crook of my neck as my eyes fluttered close and whispered so softly that I barely heard him over the sound of my heart was hammering against my ribs. "I love you, You've kept me alive."

I stiffened against him as his lips ghosted those words against my skin. "Hermione" he whispered, making me jump at the unfamiliarity of hearing my name through his cursed lips, his voice laden with emotions that he never showed. The butterfly kisses that ghosted over my neck sent my mind on a one way trip to the moon. As I opened my eyes, I found myself drowning in the grey depths of his eyes as he conveyed to me things I'd always been to afraid to feel or convey. The soft moonlight from the full moon shone around him, making him seem angelic. His vulnerability reflected the same vulnerability I had witnessed when he returned in the Seventh year after Dumbledore had died because of him. It was the only other time I'd seen him as helpless as this.

Draco held me hard against himself as the tide of his tears overwhelmed him and he broke down. He told me things that night that made me feel hollow and empty. He answered my unanswered questions, the ones I'd asked him all those months ago while he slept in deep sleep as I watched over him to make sure he lived. He kissed away the tears I didn't realize I was crying, and comforted me. I held him close to me, my hands playing with his hair as I calmed him down. When he kissed me that night I knew he'd given himself to me a long time ago. I allowed myself this one discretion. I reciprocated his declarations because the truth of the matter was that over the course of the time, I'd begun to fall in love with the Draco Malfoy a long time ago, when there was only black and white and nothing else. That night I realized there was so much more to life. My naïve and distorted views of the world made me just as prejudiced as the death-eaters. How there wasn't just black and white, but so much more. There were countless shades of grey, just like his eyes, which almost turned black when he was angry and almost white when he'd accomplished something. Never reaching the extreme there would always be something in the middle. We fell asleep in each others arms on the ground where we'd dragged down to.

I never met him after that night. When I'd awoken the next day, I was in a hospital cot, a letter in my hand. He'd been taken away before I woke up. He always made everything seem real, even back when he was the cause of my misery. But in the end, it didn't matter, because even though life was more diverse, he was Draco Malfoy – an infamous death eater, muggle-hater and murderer. The reasons why he did what he did didn't matter anymore than that. And I was Hermione Granger, a famous healer, the best-friend of Harry Potter, and a 'mudblood'. Nothing else mattered. It was war and there are only two sides in war. We were never meant to be. He was put to death a week after he was discharged, but I never forgot him. His moon-grey eyes still haunt me in the night. The full moon reminds me of his angelic face, and his helplessness. Sometimes I can feel his arms around me, comforting me as I cry myself to sleep and sometimes I can feel his lips against my skin, or against my lips. I can still feel his eyes piercing through my very soul, and his declarations of love reverberating through the silence in my mind. And most of all I remember him, not in white and black, but in shades of grey.

Fin