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۞ Part Two ۞

Room 7, Janus Thickey Ward, St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

The flush of the toilet echoes in the tiled space, and the tap whines as Draco washes his hands, unsteady on his feet. His last dose of potions have half worn off, and he is caught somewhere between lucidity and that drifting, weird numbness, small spasms starting to flicker in his muscles. He turns the water off with a clumsy effort, and then stares at his reflection in the mirror. The bright white light of the globes floating in the small bathroom off his room make him look already dead, Draco thinks with disgust.

His hands – thin, bony and dotted with multicoloured bruises from flailing convulsions – grip tightly onto the edge of the porcelain basin for balance as he leans in toward the mirror. Draco examines himself with glassy eyes set in dark hollows, his pupils contracted to pinpricks from the potions he takes, the white bloodshot. Bruises smatter his exposed skin, from fresh to nearly faded, disappearing under the hospital issue tee-shirt and trousers. His skin itself is ashen and waxy, the bones beneath showing through too clearly.

He edges closer towards skeletal with each passing day, Draco thinks dully.

His hospital garb hangs off him, gaping and bagging, the material a dirty white, thin and stained from years of use. Draco's hair falls forward and into his eyes as he stares at himself, and it is straggling and brittle and long enough that he could nearly tie it back if he wished. His jaw is roughened by patchy stubble that the Healers don't bother to shave regularly. He looks into the mirror and sees an upright corpse. An Inferi in waiting.

Draco remembers how he used to be and his throat bobs as he gulps. His head bows jerkily, his eyes slide closed. And then his right hand stutters free of its grip on the basin edge in a spasm, and a muffled, animal sound of despair and pain claws past his lips. He steps back and stumbles as his right leg goes out from under him, twisting to fall back against the wall, standing there and wrenching in wounded gasps of air for a moment. His hands try to make fists, and anger slices across his face when they won't cooperate. His chin trembles and his eyes shine wet. He hates this. He wishes his darling Aunt Bella had finished the damn job.

Draco lurches toward the door using the wall as a prop, fumbling with the handle before stumbling through, eyes shutting as a wave of pain threatens to drown him. The pain comes more often when he moves around. Spasms shoot up and down his right leg and his fingers flutter aimlessly at his sides, the muscles and tendons twitching and ratcheting tight as bowstrings. They whine and hum with the pain. He wants to escape, but there's nowhere he can go to get away from his own body, and this stark, pale room is a prison.

He feels like crying.

"M-Malfoy?" His head jerks up in alarm as a female voice crumples the silence with quiet awkwardness. Granger – the mudblood, he tells himself numbly – stands by the window in jeans and a red blouse with the sleeves turned back to her elbows, the splash of vivid colour too bright for this stark, lifeless room. Her dark eyes are worried, and her hands are knotting nervously together in front of her. She stares at him as he stands there across the small room from her, exposed; broken and pain-twisted, listing slightly on the spot as his leg trembles under his weight. Shame heats Draco's face and he ducks his head, rubs the back of one hand beneath each eye in case the wetness in them has overflowed.

"G-g-get out," is all he says in a low voice, lifting his face enough to see Granger's through the uneven veil of his fringe. She fidgets there before the window, her whole presence apologetic as she turns to look away from Draco. Her gaze goes out the window – through the bars to the world outside, which is smeared in afternoon light that falls from cloudless blue above the buildings. She is pallid in the warm light and there are dark shadows from lack of sleep that rival his own beneath her eyes. The French braid twisting back her dark hair is messy, and her red shirt is buttoned up wrong.

Recognition sparks in Draco's blurred mind as he watches Hermione, twisting her hands together and staring out at the afternoon with squinting eyes that shine too wetly to be accounted for by only the sunlight.

"I'm sorry to just intrude on your room unannounced, Malfoy," she says quietly instead of damn well leaving. He clutches at the wall for balance and breathes through his resentment and fury, silently willing her to go. "The Healer said I couldn't wait outside in the corridor, so…"

"Get out," he says again without hesitation, because he shouldn't care that Hermione Granger is losing sleep, or want to know why. He limps painfully across the room toward her as he speaks. It takes only ten steps but feels like struggling through quicksand, and he can feel her watching him with sad dark eyes. Draco hates her for seeing this, and shame keeps his eyes locked to the floor.

He braces himself on the window sill with an elbow, opposite Granger and only a few feet away, refusing to sit in the chair just behind him. His hand curls around one of the window bars; hot from the sun. She smells of cinnamon. It is a welcome variation to the bitter medicinal scent that everything in St Mungo's seems to exude. He breathes in the scent of the spice deeply, his face set into hard, cold lines; his expression telling her to leave as his voice does the same. "I wasn't aa-aasking, Granger."

She lifts her head so that she can meet his eyes, and she wears her emotions on her face and he can't stand it.

"Malfoy… Please." It is strange to gaze down at Granger and be reminded that he is so much taller than her, when he feels so insubstantial, so small and crumpled. Her hand comes up to pluck at a small locket at her throat, rubbing it between finger and thumb unconsciously as she persists. "Just give me a –"

"G-g-get the ff-fuck out." Draco snarls it, but his voice is curiously flat and dulled to his own ears, and it stutters when a tangle of pain laces up his arm and knots in his shoulder. Granger purses her lips and sighs as if he is being the frustrating one here, and it rankles at him in an absurdly ordinary way that he almost welcomes.

"Malfoy… I just – I thought you might not be told – I thought that you'd like to know the results of your parents' trials," she says fast and apologetic, before he can tell her to get out again. The words rush at Draco, crash over him, ringing in his ears. The breath caves out of him and he clings tighter to the window bar, swaying against the window and staring down at Granger with eyes he knows are wide and frightened.

He doesn't have to ask, which is good because he is afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he tries to speak. Granger's expression is too-gentle and her voice too-quiet, nearly lost beneath the wet thundering of his pulse in his ears and the sporadic sharp flashes of pain that are happening more often now.

"– Wizengamot convened to pass judgment this morning…vote was unanimous…father was found guilty on multiple charges, including –" He stares at Granger's mouth moving as she rattles off his father's crimes; her lips are full and unpainted and she wets the dulled pink of them now and then with a flick of her tongue. "– sentenced him to twelve years, eight without parole."

This time when Draco's legs go weak it is not the spell damage, but emotion. Granger jumps forward and reaches out to help him, and he bats her hand away roughly as he stumbles back into the chair just behind him. His breath comes rough and ragged and he is not sure if he is relieved because it could have been so much longer, or devastated because eight to twelve years is still a very long time to be in Azkaban. Too long.

In Azkaban, any length of time is too long.

"Malfoy?" Granger hovers worriedly as his fingers curl over the ends of the chair arms, his head bows slightly, his eyes slip closed, and the light shines a tarnished orange through the lids. "Are you all right? Do you need me to get a Healer? Malfoy?"

Draco doesn't answer her, just breathes shallow and slow because he doesn't think he can speak without crying yet. Because the exact length of time doesn't matter, really; going back to Azkaban will be the death of Lucius Malfoy, one way or the other. His breath hitches. He doesn't want his father to die.

Then Granger's fingers press warm and firm over his where they grip the chair arm white-knuckled and twitching. Her fingers lay neatly along the cracks between his, the pressure of them all but stilling the tiny spasms, and she says his name again – full of a worry that is so kind it hurts. So kind that Draco never wants her to speak his name like that again. He pulls his hand clumsily from beneath the comfort of hers and tucks it on his lap.

"Don't," he says in a small voice that doesn't sound like his at all. Granger draws in a sharp breath it the sound of it and steps back fast, sitting down huddled on the edge of the chair on the other side of the window. She leans forward and hugs herself, and the afternoon light lancing into the room cuts across the side of her face. She waits for him to speak with her eyes on her trainers and her dark brows scrunched down in concern, and he hates her for so many reasons. Mostly for being the reason he is here in St Mungo's, for being the bearer of bad news, and for making him ask the next question.

"My m-mother?" Draco asks as soon as the sharp hurt in his chest has receded to the point that he can speak without his chin trembling and his eyes watering over.

"Oh – oh, god Malfoy, I'm sorry. I didn't – I forgot –"

"Granger." Desperation is raw and rough in his voice as he grinds her name out.

"She's fine," Granger says first before bothering with the details, and Draco's muddled hate toward her is overwhelmed by a wave of sudden gratitude. He presses his fist against his mouth to hide the traitorous trembling of his chin as emotion sweeps up fierce and hard, slamming inside his chest in concert with his heartbeat. "There was a great deal of debate about what her sentence should be, and the vote was…a close one. But Harry's testimony on record saying he thought she should be treated with leniency carried a great deal of weight with the Wizengamot."

"P-Potter…defended mm-my mother?"

"Yes. She saved his life, Malfoy. Perhaps only because of her fear for you, but…" Granger shrugs, and goes on. "In the end she was sentenced to two years house arrest. Her wand will have a trace placed on it that will alert the Aurors assigned to monitor her if she attempts to perform any harmful spells in the next five years, and she will be provided with Ministry housing for a year."

Draco tries to take her quick rattling of information in and thinks he fails, a frown carving between his brows, his trembling fingers coming up to massage his temples. He meets Granger's eyes and asks what he thinks he knows the answer to. "M-ministry housing?"

He sees the exact second that Granger's face transforms with fresh pity. "The Ministry seized the manor directly after the – the Battle of Hogwarts, Malfoy. They want to use the manor to house war orphans. They swept it for Dark artefacts, and are holding an auction to dispose of the majority of the contents in an upcoming auction."

It is a shock, despite that he should have expected it. Draco thinks of his room, of all his private, personal possessions, and it hurts. "But…th-that's my home," he says in that small, hopeless way, his voice breaking and cracking pathetically, and Granger buries her face in her hands with a little sound that resembles a dry sob.

"What?" he demands angrily, his chest winding tight and his eyes stinging hot with tears he doesn't want to fall. His home. His home and all his things packed up and sold to all and sundry, or tossed in the rubbish. He knows he shouldn't have expected anything else – that the Malfoys don't deserve anything else, but it's his home.

"W-what, Granger?" His hands make trembling, useless fists as he stares at her through the straggles of hair that fall over his eyes.

"I didn't think…" she says muffled and brutally honest into her hands. "I didn't think seeing you like this would be so hard." She sniffs wetly and looks up at him, the truth stark on her face and spilling from her lips in a flood without thought. "You're Malfoy. We have always hated each other, since we were children. I don't even know why you saved me. And I still don't like you at all, because…" She trails off and her face is miserable, and Draco waits silent and stony for her to say it. "But I – I didn't think it would be so hard to see you…"

She won't say it. So he says it for her.

"Broken?" Anger sparks a light inside him, and he gusts to fury in a moment, his voice slashing at her, jagged and accusing. "B-broken? Is that w-what you mm-m-mean, Granger? So fucking – hard, for you t-to see me b-broken, and damaged, and –"

"Sad!" She nearly yells it to cut across his ranting, and the fury burning in him is doused instantly. He snaps his mouth shut and stares at her dumbly. "Sad," Granger says again, wiping beneath each of her dark eyes with a finger that comes away with the sheen of wetness. "I didn't think it would be so awful to see you…sad. I – I'm sorry, Malfoy. I'm so very sorry."

He doesn't know what to say to that. At all.

Granger licks her lips and says, leaning forward so that her gaze drills into his: "I'm sorry that you can't see your mother. I'm sorry that your home is being sold. And while I am more grateful than I can say for what you did, I'm so very sorry that you were hurt for saving my life, Malfoy." And there is an utter truth, a total earnestness to what she says and how she looks at Draco, which makes him want to splinter into a million tiny pieces under the weight of her kindness.

Draco looks away as his leg spasms and his foot shuffles on the floor, the effect of his last dose of potions steadily wearing off. He bites his lip, every part of him telling him to lash out at her, to spurn her kindness. He hates her – he can't accept… His eyes fix on his right hand as it begins to twitch more vigorously than it has been, because he can't meet Granger's gaze. "Wh-what about my father? Are you s-sorry he's going to go m-mad or die in Azkaban?"

"No," she tells him softly. "I'm not. Because he won't. Eight years is…not a long time in the wizarding world, Malfoy."

"I-i-i-it i-i-is ifff –" It takes too long for Draco to get the words out, his mind sharp and clear but his body not cooperating. Frustration boils up in him. "D-d-dem-mentors," he gets out shortly and with great effort in the end, and thank fuck Granger is not stupid, and understands.

And she smiles a little, just the tiniest upward curve to her lips.

"There aren't any, Malfoy. They've all just…gone. There hasn't been a single Dementor sighting since the war's end. And there certainly aren't any at Azkaban. It's just a prison now, not a torture chamber anymore."

And that is when hope seeds in Draco's chest, because eight years in a cell Lucius Malfoy can survive, and his mother will manage her restrictions because she is stronger and more capable than she appears. He smiles faintly at Granger; because he can't keep it in, because even if he hates her this is the first time since he saved her that he has felt hope. And she is why he feels it, feels this sense that maybe things can get better, that this is not all there is, and he wants to thank her.

He smiles at her through the agony that lances down both legs and up into his spine, and through the familiar, constant hatefulness, and the spasms that make his hands claw. He smiles, buoyed by the dizzying sensation of having hope again, and Granger smiles back. For a moment Draco feels a sweep of pale happiness.

"Th-thank you," he says quietly, reluctant and stiff as the pain licks greedily up his spine; his thanks is not something he ever thought he'd sincerely give to Hermione Granger, and it is not easy for him to give it. And then through gritted teeth as he can bear the growing pain no longer: "P-please, can you c-call…Healer. I n-need – it hurts."

Granger stays sitting with him until the Healer arrives, her red blouse a vivid blur through the tears of pain that stream from his eyes, her eyes just dark smears in an ashen face. Draco wants her to go because the vulnerability is nearly worse than the pain, but she won't – she is worried, she says – and he can't make her.

"I hh-hate you," Draco says, his body a cage of hurt he is trapped within and she there to witness his mewling. "W-why are you even h-here?" he asks in a sob as his short-clipped nails dig deep, bloody crescents into his palms. "Do y-you enjoy seeing me like th-this?" he demands bitter and mindless with the pain, slumped in his chair as the agony sparks through his nerves like wildfire. "Do y-you think – I deserve it?"

"It's all right, Malfoy, " Granger tells him, strained beneath a fragile veneer of calm, not responding to his bitter goading as he wants her to. "The Healer will be here soon. It won't be long." She stands and hovers helplessly in front Draco, and he stares glassily up at her through his fringe. "I have to stay," she says with a tremble to her voice as she wrings her hands together, standing over him full of useless sympathy. "To make sure you're okay. In – in case you go into convulsions. You shouldn't be alone."

Draco has lost the ability to tell her that he is always alone when she is not here, convulsions or no – and he would not say it anyway. Granger might take it as an invitation to visit and he does not want to invite her. The scent of cinnamon envelops him, Granger's hand squeezing warm and smooth over his for the briefest of moments as she says in a fierce, urgent voice: "I don't enjoy this, Malfoy, not at all. And – and you don't deserve it either."

And then the door to his room swings open, and there is the purple potion tipped down his throat and the taste of aniseed on his tongue, and for a while, the world goes away.


12 Grimmauld Place, Islington, London

"That sounds dreadful, Hermione. Are you all right?" Luna asks softly as Hermione finishes relaying the events at St Mungo's yesterday afternoon in a halting, uncertain voice.

"I'm…fine, thank you Luna. It's him that –" Hermione breaks off, unsure of what to say. She sits in the kitchen of Grimmauld at ten past ten in the morning with Luna and Neville, all three nursing scalding cups of tea, a lone sunbeam streaking in one of the few windows. A plate of Neville's Gran's shortbread biscuits sits on the table between them all, half of them gone already. Hermione is so thankful for her friends' company, for their attempts at light chatter and their willingness to talk of serious, difficult subjects.

It is term time of course, but Luna's father opted to not return her to Hogwarts immediately – not so soon after the terror and separation that the father and daughter had endured. Hermione doesn't think Luna would have been willing to go away and leave her father just yet, not even if he'd been happy for her to go. Hermione doesn't blame the younger witch for not going back, not when she herself hasn't returned to complete her seventh year. Schooling no longer seems as important as it had.

Death has a way of putting things into perspective.

"I feel so bad for him. I never thought – I mean, it's Malfoy. He was the most horrid, bigoted, evil little prat at school, and during the war he hardly acquitted himself with his actions. Not until he saved me." Hermione remembers it, the images etched into her mind in blood and pain. She had been dueling Malfoy, when Bellatrix Lestrange had flung a Dark curse at her from across the room. Malfoy had seen it and inexplicably just…stepped out into the path of the curse with a protego that had failed him.

"One – admittedly very good – action weighed up against so many nasty, evil ones… He's – he's not a good person. Not a friend. He was the enemy. I feel like I shouldn't care so much about seeing him like that. I – I feel like there's something wrong with me." Harry would think there was, Hermione thinks to herself. Harry off in Nepal, runaway from the fallout. She helped him shoulder all his burdens, as much and as best as she could – always when Harry needed her, she was there. But when Hermione needs him to help her with her pain and grief he is gone, halfway around the world.

If Ron was here, then… But Ron is not here, they are not a trio anymore, and with him gone, Hermione and Harry have fallen apart. They have gone down different paths in their grief.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Hermione. It's admirable that you care. Honestly." Neville says, and she looks up across the table at him, searching for reassurance in his face. She sees honesty in his eyes, comfort in the curve to his mouth, and shortbread crumbs in his stubble, and she smiles at him. She accepts Neville's truth because she wants it to be okay for her to care, and she loves him for being who he is; she thinks sometimes he is more admirable than anyone.

"You've got…" she indicates, and Neville laughs at himself as he scrubs his palms over his cheeks and jaw, and Luna sips at her tea and watches him over the cup with that sweet, otherworldly smile.


Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, North Side, Diagon Alley, London

It is Hermione's turn to play the comforter today, although she is hardly in any state to do so. She feels that she is a bough bent to breaking under the weight of all her grief, and the grief of those around her. She feels like she cannot stand it any longer, but she must.

Her arms wrap tightly around Ginny, her hand soothing up and down the younger witch's back in slow, firm strokes as Hermione tries to gently shush her crying. Ginny's shoulders shake jaggedly and her sobs are wet and nasal, her face buries in the crook of Hermione's neck and wets her collar. Hermione is crying too, but quietly, the tears running down her face like rain. The plain robes Ginny is having taken in will be damp with saltwater by the time they are done, but Madam Malkin says not a word, just conjures a box of tissues and withdraws discreetly.

The seamstress must be used to it by now, used to the people coming apart to sudden shattered pieces in her fitting room. The windows of her shop are taken up with mannequins draped in tasteful funereal garb; the funerals have been taking place in a steady stream since a week after the war ended. Diagon Alley was vibrant with the trappings of joyous festivity for several days after the Battle of Hogwarts as people celebrated Voldemort's death. And then the reality of the toll it had taken in lives had sunk in, and the decorations had – for good or for ill – been replaced with the signs of mourning as wizarding Britain grieved.

It is morbid, Hermione thinks to herself as she draws Ginny tighter to herself, rocking them both gently. It is morbid and depressing, and entirely fitting.

"It's not fair," Ginny chokes on a rushing inhale, before her breath judders back out. She feels so thin, her spine a row of knobs under her funeral robes; the reason that they are here, because all Ginny's clothes hang off the girl now. Grief has robbed Ginny of her appetite, and Molly Weasley worries but there isn't anything she can do. "It's not fair. I hate him. I hate him for doing it. How could he?"

"I don't know," Hermione says numbly through her tears, feeling leaden and slow, a coldness seeping throughout her that makes everything seem distant. Dean Thomas killed himself three days ago, and nobody knows why.

"How could he just throw his life away like that, when I would give anything to have R-Ron and Fred back?" Ginny sobs, furious and hurting, and Hermione can't say anything to that because her throat is stoppered by a sharp lump of emotion that will not be dislodged. She shrugs helplessly instead, and buries her face in the fall of Ginny's long red hair, crying for Ron and Fred, for Ginny, for Dean, for Malfoy, for herself, and for everyone else who died or survived, or hurts so badly that sometimes they would rather die than live.


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