Hermione Jean Granger surely hadn't meant to be picked as Nott senior's main healer. Really. Weather if fate had played a very cruel joke on her or headhealer Winston had tried to get back at her for questioning him about the patient during an emergency, Hermione was sour. Neither of those options did something in favor of improving her mood and after their weekly healer meeting to talk about their shifts and respective patients, she had went home and sulked a few hours before coming back for her second night shift that week on Tuesday.

In the meantime, Nott Senior had been transferred from the emergency ward to a private patient's room, a sudden turn of events which had of course nothing to do with the Nott's wealth and a certain (ex-) slytherin.

It wasn't until two days after Nott senior had been brought in that Hermione saw Theodore Nott again though. She had accepted that she would be the one caring for the old man and convinced herself that he was just another patient. As the muggle-born witch walked into the patient's room 15c on the ward for prisoners from Azkaban (an installation she frequently congratulated herself for), she hadn't expected Nott to sit on a chair next to his father's bed. If she had known, she wouldn't have chosen her usual greetings for patients, unconscious or not. She didn't even know why she was doing it but she greeted every patient the same way; Hermione approached them, greeted them and babbled about their current state before she explained what she was about to do.

"Good evening, Mr. Nott senior," she chattered away, staring at his file in her hands, "I'm glad to have found out that you are suffering from age and exhaustion and have not come down with something else. The infection of your lungs has calmed down a bit. We might be able to wake you up sooner than we hoped for. But for now, I'm going to see if you-"

The witch stopped mid-sentence as she raised her eyes from the file and looked into the face of a Theodore Nott who looked so incredibly surprised, stunned and confused that his face was a grimace of thousands of emotions. "I… I meant, I would be, uhm, checking your father's uh… The lungs of your father, well, need a check-up." She settled for falling silent after spouting all that nonsense and felt her face heat up in an embarrassingly fast speed. Nott continued to stare. "Okay," he plainly said and leaned back in his chair.

Unfortunately, Theodore Nott didn't leave as she removed the patient's dress partly for better access and didn't leave as she performed a few spells on checking the old man's current state. It was, in fact, unbelievable how Theodore Nott managed to quite say something without actually saying anything at all. His aura seemed to be pushing against her, a constant reminder that yes, he was watching her and that yes, he didn't trust her mudblood hands to do something right. After a while of working silently, she straightened herself and hesitantly sent what looked probably like a very thin smile at her former schoolmate. "The infection died down enough for me to set up a light potion to encourage a fast recovery. It takes a few hours to brew so I'll return early afternoon."

Nott licked his lips once and nodded. "Okay." He didn't sound as if he looked forward to that.

During her time in the lab, Hermione had a lot of time to think. Usually, trainees at St. Mungos were subordinates of experienced healers and did minor things at the lab like potion ingredients preparation or cleaning used cauldrons. They mainly focused on changing bandages and diagnosing diseases and curses under supervision though. Of course, Hermione was an exception. As war heroine and 'the brightest witch of her age' she was used to people making exceptions for her and while it greatly bothered her most of the time, it delighted her in this case. She had training sessions with the headhealer, did independent research and potion brewing at the lab and had two or three main patients she was expected to care for by herself. Except for night shifts in the emergency ward where she had to tend to whoever needed it, she sticked to those patients and reported their state once a week to the headhealer. At the moment, she only had Nott senior and that was really tiresome because she couldn't get away from him except for potion brewing.

While crushing a few pieces of sugared bowtruckle bark, her thoughts returned to the evenly tiresome son of her patient and she gave the bark an angry look while it suffered under her pestle. She had noticed it today, just before leaving the patient's room. All he ever said was 'okay'. And if the stupid, rude little word hadn't left his mouth, his only other answer was silence.

Of course, Hermione wasn't nearly as narrow-minded as to think that only the light side had suffered during the war but it did rattle her that an ex-death eater had been so thoroughly damaged that he would stick to the speech pattern of a baby. Maybe she could get him to say something else. Not for the goodness of her heart, she had to admit, but because she hated it when people were focusing in their self-pity instead of doing something about it.

Hermione pushed the smoothly crushed bark into the bubbling potion to her left and stirred seven times, anti-clockwise. "It's not because I like to know everything," she told her cauldron and the almost finished potion quivered, almost in disagreement. "It's not because I'm a swotty know-it-all." She stood in front of her very own improved version of a pain-relief and immune strengthening potion and bit her lip and breathed in, trying to convince herself that her words were true after all.

A heavy summer storm was raging outside and Hermione slipped quickly into 15c. The dim light swallowed almost all details and she waved her wand swiftly, lighting up a candle on the bedside table. Immediately, a warm, orange glow settled on everything and the thunder outside didn't manage to make her quite as uncomfortable as before.

"I came with the potion," she told Theodore Nott and his green eyes fell on a point near her forehead as he shrugged. So he didn't like to make eye-contact. "Okay," he said his voice barely a hoarse whisper and the witch had to blink twice before she was able to continue her work. Had he cried? Her fingers carefully opened the stud of the vial and she carefully waved her wand in a complicated pattern so that the potion would slowly disappear from the vial and slowly infuse itself into the patient's body.

How could a silent man with eyes like a forest make her feeling so uncomfortable and insulted without a single word?

"Now I'll be checking his wounds," Hermione announced and Theodore Nott said "Okay" and she snapped. "Merlin, do you say something else besides 'okay'? Did no one ever tell you that it's rude to not say 'thank you' or 'please'?" It was as if she had crossed an invisible line without realizing and when Nott sprang to his feet in one swift motion, she felt their magic clashing mid-air. And there was rage in it.

"Trust Potter's little know-it-all to stick her nose into someone else's business," he barked and his body was so tense, she thought it might snap any second. "Well, excuse me for being affronted by your poor attitude," she retorted in a hiss. "It may be new to you, almighty Granger, but not every one of us lives his life in the golden light, showered with affections, so please; let me talk the way I want." Her breath left her in a large huff. "'The golden light'? Who is not minding his own business now, Nott?" she asked and wanted to jump over the bed to throttle him something, anything. "For your information, my life is not as golden as you think it is but please—continue to think so." Theodore Nott's face was so red that he looked like he had been set on fire. "But I'm happy to hear that you do know more than one word, Nott, but maybe you could go back to saying just 'okay'? Your rudeness makes me sick." Suddenly his hand lashed out and smashed a vase with flowers he must have brought against a wall.

"It makes you sick? You make me sick. You make me sick by walking around the hospital as if you own it, you make me sick by prancing around and touching everything with your filthy hands and smiling and being nice and I hate that you and your unworthy mudbl-"

The slap came unexpected for him and she actually hadn't seen it coming as well.

Now they stood there, both wizard and witch heaving in helpless anger and rage and their magic sparkled and crackled around them until the door opened and the last person on earth Hermione wanted to see right now came strolling in. Draco Malfoy stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Hermione Granger, almost crying, and Theodore Nott, red and with a bleeding bottom lip because her ring had cut it open. "This has to be a joke," Malfoy sneered and for once in her life, Hermione agreed with him.

I like cliffhangers. And Draco. And Drama.

xoxo