hey guys! so this is something i've been working on for a while now instead of studying for my exams hihihihihihi but whatever, it's chill. i'm still not sure how long it's gonna be but i have the first like nine chapters figured out so i'm on a good track. WARNING: there are some topics in here that may be sensitive to some of you and if i offend anyone please let me know, but please also keep in mind that what is said by the characters does not always reflect my own opinions and thoughts :)

DISCLAIMER: all characters and settings and whatnot belong to J.K. Rowling. merely borrowing.

also, this fic is dedicated to Hiba. you're literally the greatest beta anyone could wish for and i couldn't have written this without your suggestions and fangirling moments that made me think like, "okay yeah so this is fine". lmao love you to bits 3

'Your Boy Who Lived is touched in the head, did you know that?'

She shut her eyes and heaved a frustrated sigh. She could recognize that voice anywhere. That slimy, frosty, fuck-all voice. It almost made her physically sick hearing him talk here, in these circumstances.

'Harry,' she said through gritted teeth, turning to him, 'is not touched in the head.' She had her arms crossed over her chest with a face that quietly dared him to contradict her. He always accepts the challenge.

'That's not what I'm seeing.' He lifted a finger lazily and pointed at Harry.

Harry had sat up in his bed and was playing with his fingers. He counted them, one by one, and chuckled delightedly when he got to ten. Then he started over, bending over so that his face was hidden and his voice was reduced to a mutter. He seemed unaware that two people were watching him, one sadly, one disgustedly, and nodded absently when his mouth slacked and let a bubble of saliva dribble out. He was lost in his own little world, a world where his fingers were not ten unless he counted them, where other people were invisible, where a war had not just destroyed his other world.

She regarded her best friend sadly. She reached over and, with a tissue, wiped away the saliva from Harry's chin. He glanced up at her once, smile crookedly, then go back to counting his fingers. She could only smile back.

'Not touched in the head, eh?' said Malfoy. 'Right. And I'm a Thestral.'

'Leave him alone,' she snapped. She narrowed her eyes at him. 'Go bother someone else.'

'No,' he said, settling down in the chair meant for visitors. 'You see, Granger, as you may already be aware, there is no one in this whole bloody hospital who even remotely tolerates me. In fact, as I was looking for the coffee shop, I heard at least six people mumbling something about hexing me if I went for the last Pumpkin Pasty. Potter here, however,' he jutted his chin at the black-haired boy, 'is too fucked in the head to remember who I am. So as there is no immediate threat of being blasted in the balls, I think I shall stay here, thank you very much.'

She blinked at him. 'You have a huge manor all to yourself. Why don't you just go home?' She felt something warm against her hand, and looked down to see Harry interlacing their fingers. He clutched her hand tightly, lay his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. She felt her heart sink a little.

'Ever heard of restlessness, Granger?' Malfoy drawled. 'And it's a bit hard to call that place a home after having housed the Dark Lord there for, let me see, seven months, wouldn't you agree?' His eyes fell on Harry, now fast asleep, still holding her hand. 'Besides,' he added smugly, 'the Healers said he likes me.'

'Only because he doesn't remember who you are,' she bit back.

'He saved my life,' Malfoy said shortly.

She could not find anything else to say after that. Carefully so as not to wake him, she slid her hand out of Harry's. She lingered a little and gently stroked his cheek, then moved away from the bed. She beckoned Malfoy to follow her. 'Come outside.' He rolled his eyes but complied.

Once outside, she glared at him so viciously, he was sure she was burning a hole in his forehead. Finally, the glare slid off her face as she sighed exasperatedly. 'I can't make you leave, can I?'

He started, shocked at her calmer disposition, then smirked. 'Nope.'

'Fine.' She seemed to contemplate something, biting her lip, then she took a step forward and poked him hard in the chest with her wand. 'But if I see you trying to hurt Harry,' she said lowly, 'I swear to God, Malfoy, I will make your balls shrivel and fall off and then make you eat them.'

'Jesus, Granger,' he muttered, pushing her wand away, 'I have morals.'

Her eyes widened and she let out a hysterical laugh. 'Morals? That's a joke, right?'

'Well, I wouldn't hurt a mentally handicapped, that's just cowardice.'

'Whatever,' she spat, flinching at his obvious choice of words.

A small group of people with a Healer walked past them right then, the Healer casting Silencing Charms on the rooms. Hermione turned her head to see them pass and smiled politely. Malfoy did not do the same, but she noticed out of the corner of her eye how he had tensed slightly and was eyeing the door to Harry's wistfully. Before she could think, she heard the group muttering to each other.

'The Malfoy boy,' said one wizard grumpily.

'What's he doing here?' said another, throwing the blond man a dark look.

'Hiding from justice, clearly,' replied one witch. 'Decided to hide behind those he hurt to avoid Azkaban.' She hummed coldly. 'That's a new low, even for him.' She said the last words louder than the rest, and Hermione noticed how the witch's hand was itching towards her pocket where, presumably, her wand was stashed.

Hermione's mouth had opened a little in shock, and her brows were brought down in a scowl. Of course, she expected nothing less from these people, but nevertheless, it surprised her. Harry had saved Malfoy. Granted, it resulted in Harry being… ill, but him saving the blond twat surely meant something. It meant Harry believed in redemption, perhaps. Second chances. Couldn't they respect their precious Chosen One's principles? Fucking hypocrites, the lot of them.

'May I go back inside now, Granger?' Malfoy said now, shifting uncomfortably. The group had disappeared around the corner along with the Healer, who had not spared either of them a glance as she cast the Silencing Charms.

Hermione nodded solemnly and he retreated into the room without hesitating.

It was nearly midnight, three hours later, when she entered Harry's room to find Harry fast asleep, curled up like a child in his bed, and Malfoy sprawled in the visitor's chair, snoring softly. She did not know whether to smile or cry.

/

Hermione was on the ground. Her wand lay by her feet but she could not get up. Her leg was torn at the shins and knee and she was sure her ankle was broken. She watched the blood pool out of her leg and gather around it to form a large puddle and she felt sick. As she bit her tongue to keep from screaming in pain, she wondered whether wandless magic would heal her leg or at least allow her to get up and grab her wand. She tried moving but the pain shot straight up from her ankle and reached her throat with a sudden force and drew blood in her mouth as she dug her teeth further into her tongue and could only groan. Away from her the battle was still raging on. Spells shot all around her but for some reason they weren't touching her. Red and green and yellow sparks exploded above her head, blinding her, but the heat and the spell effects stayed away from her, so that the only sensation she felt was one shooting up from her bleeding leg and twisted ankle.

Then suddenly she was standing. Her wand was still on the ground. She tried picking it up but her arm was heavy and tired and her hand refused to close around the wand. Her fingers felt rusty and broken and as much as she tried they would not cooperate with her. Her entire body was, she noticed, stiff. What the hell was happening to her?

'Hermione!' Her name was screamed with such desperation she felt herself flinch violently at it. She tried to turn around to find whoever had called her, but the same heaviness she felt in her arms had spread throughout her entire body so that it refused to turn around. She was, in other words, paralyzed and she began to panic. 'HERMIONE!'

'What?' she screamed back. 'Who are you?'

'Hermione!'

'Harry?' she cried. The spells had stopped all of a sudden. There was no one else around her. It had gone completely quiet. All she could hear was her own desperate shouting for answers. 'Ron?' She started sobbing. 'Harry? Ron?'

'HERMIONE, HELP ME!'

'Harry, where are you?' She willed her feet to move but they dragged along the dusty ground as heavy as anchors. She struggled with her arms, shaking them, hoping to get the blood moving into them. They, too, remained stuck against her frozen body. Her heartbeat was threatening to engulf her in its loud thuds as she looked around at the empty battlefield. There was no moon, no stars, no smoke. Just a dark courtyard. Even her wand had disappeared. The blood still pooling at her feet, she wondered if this was how she was going to die. 'Harry! Ron! Harry!'

'HERMIONE LOOK OUT!'

With a sudden rush of adrenaline she forced her head to turn to the left but the force knocked her back to the ground. Her chin bashed against the ground, rattling her head and sending pain shooting up to her brain. She grimaced at the headache and groaned. Her hands and chest landed in her blood. She felt the slick liquid stick to her. She didn't care. Harry was being hurt somewhere and she couldn't help him. 'HARRY! HARRY WHERE ARE YOU?'

And then he was there. Harry was being held in the air by an unknown force and he was screaming. He writhed and shook and foamed as his arms bent to the his back and his legs bent up and left and right at awful angles. His glasses had disappeared and his eyes had rolled back to reveal the whites. His mouth gaped horribly with blood dripping down his chin.

She watched in horror as Harry was being tortured by an unknown assailant. The silence had been shattered by a combination of his strangled screams and her loud sobbing. 'HARRY!' She tried pushing herself up to no avail. The heaviness was pushing her to the ground like a paperweight. 'Stop! Please stop!'

That was when she spotted Draco Malfoy. He stood a few meters away from them and was simply watching the scene of Harry's torture with a twisted expression of guilt and horror. 'Malfoy,' she sobbed, her eyes screwed shut so as to avoid looking at Harry's twisted body, 'Draco, please.' She did not notice he, too, did not have a wand. She needed someone to help Harry. She could not have Harry die on her. She could not watch him die. She would not. 'MALFOY!'

'Ever heard of restlessness, Granger?' he said quietly, coming closer. Wait, where had she heard him say that before? But before she could answer, momentarily thrown off from his voice, she felt herself being sucked into the ground, like a vacuum, until the air was cut off from her throat. The heaviness like sand in her body pulled her down down down and everything went dark.

/

Hermione shot up in bed with a yell. Her cheeks were wet with sweat and tears and she could taste blood in her mouth; she had bit her tongue and lips in her sleep again. Nightmares were not a rare occurrence for her. For someone who fought in a war and had seen innumerable counts of horrors, it was hard not to have flashbacks of those days. And the nightmare of Harry being crucio'd was the one she experienced the most out of all the horrible dreams she had. Of course she had to go through it again every night; she'd been there and she'd been unable to help him. It was guilt, she was smart enough to know that. Guilt that kept her up, that formed her dreams, that made every day heavier and heaver. Guilt had, after all, a funny way of worming its way into one's life and dragging them down until the only way back up was to swallow it like a pill.

She thought back to the night of Harry's descent into irreversible madness. It wasn't hard to do; the nightmares were very accurate in detail. The pain in her body and the animal-like sounds being torn from her best friend, his shaking body, his foaming mouth, it twisted her chest and made bile rise in her throat. But there was something different about the dream tonight. Never before had she seen Malfoy in it. It had always been only her and Harry, fighting for each other in the darkness of her scarred mind. Tonight, though, she'd encountered Malfoy, and she didn't know what to think of it. She remembered his expression of horror from that night, the shock of Harry's sacrifice, the fear of war and desertion, all combined on his dirty face. She remembered his confusion as to why Harry had pushed him away, the realization dawning on him when he'd seen her on the ground, and the unforeseeable anger that enveloped him as he watched Harry Potter be tortured to insanity by Dolohov.

She shuddered. Her sheets and pyjamas were soaked through. Deciding not to think about the nightmare or Harry anymore, she set about changing her sheets and night clothes and once finished she accio'd a glass of Dreamless Sleep potion from the kitchen, drank it, and climbed back into bed. And as she drifted into a dreamless sleep she wondered just how much guilt resided within Draco Malfoy, and if it dragged him down, too, to the point where he needed only to close his eyes to revisit the battlefield and the sounds of a never ending war.

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