I'm going to be doing the 'Five Word' Challenge throughout this entire story, five words per chapter!

The words for this chapter = 'regret', 'apology', 'splotchy', 'dreams', & 'humiliation'

Three Little Things

By silver-nightstorm

Summary: She ran over him with her car. Now she's stuck caring for him, unless she wants to explain their situation to the Muggle authorities. She knew he would never let her live that down. Hermione/Draco. WIP.

XX

Chapter 2: A Flowerpot, an Old Car, and the Next-Door Neighbor.

He woke up to the smell of eggs and bacon, jarred out of his twisted dreams by the pungent odor. He hadn't smelled food that good for Merlin knows how long, and just the thought of something that palatable made his stomach growl angrily. He was halfway to the door before he had the presence of mind to panic.

Where the hell had the road gone?

Suddenly feeling as if he was going to be sick, the man collapsed to the floor. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how he got there. Sure, he was getting more and more forgetful these days, but… how did he misplace a road? Roads didn't just… get up a leave. He was a bloody idiot.

The man slid backwards so he was resting against the side of the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him. He rubbed his chin and grimaced at the bristly hairs that scratched his callused fingers. Pulling his legs close to his body, he let his head fall and groaned.

"Draco Malfoy… What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?"

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Draco gasped in shock. He jumped to his feet and ran up to a mirror in the corner of the room, pulling his flannel shirt up to see his skin. It was just as he suspected. The bruises that had covered his body minutes? hours? days? ago were all gone. He gently prodded the bottom left side of his ribcage, expecting the sharp pain that had been assaulting him ever since…

The pain never came.

The small consolation that came with his healed injuries didn't make Draco happy. If anything, it made him even more confused, miserable, and desperate. There was only one way that those injuries could have healed so flawlessly – magic.

And if he was in a magical household, he was worse than dead.

XX

The first thing Hermione had done when she woke up was check to make sure the man was still locked up in her guest room. The door jammed for a few moments, making her regret leaving her wand on the kitchen counter, but after a few heavy pushes, it jumped open and Hermione tumbled into the room. She heaved a giant sigh of relief at finding the man still present and then proceeded to heal him to the best of her ability – after retrieving her wand.

She had made quite a bit of progress when her hand started to shake, and deciding that it was better to take a break than to possibly break another one of his ribs with clumsy wand-work, she walked outside onto her little patio to water her plants (first bamboo, then hydrangeas). Carefully, she dragged the earthenware that her plants lived in to the center of the patio, lining them up carefully as she poured a specific quantity of water into each. The next-door neighbor, a single mother of two, pulled up in a rickety old car, and they two had a nice early morning chat before Hermione returned to watering flowers (petunias, this time). In the middle of drowning the jasmines, she heard the sound of something suspiciously mirror-like shattering.

The watering can fell from her hands as she rushed inside.

XX

Damn. Shit. Bloody freaking hell.

Draco could hear small feet pounding down the hallway towards his room. He had roughly twelve seconds before the door was unceremoniously slammed open and his savior could see the mess he had accidentally made of the mirror.

The door slammed open. Apparently the savior was a faster runner than Draco originally though. He kept his back away from the door, trying to hold off the inevitable. He knew the moment he turned around, it would only be a matter of time before he was recognized. Muggles had that saying, 'better sooner than later', or something along those lines. Draco disagreed. Later was very nice. Later was brilliant. He would delay his fate for as long as possible.

Or, at least, he would have if he hadn't caught a glimpse of eerily familiar bushy brown hair reflected on a shard of mirror by his hand. He spun around quickly, as if burned.

XX

"I expect an apology from you for breaking my mirror," began Hermione as she threw the door open (having sneakily unlocking it with a whispered alohomora milliseconds ago), only to be abruptly silenced by the panicked look on the man's face. "Relax," she said, trying to twist her facial features into an expression that could be construed as 'calm and comforting'. "I won't hurt you, or bite. You were in pretty bad shape last night."

The man didn't reply to Hermione, merely staring at her with haunted gray eyes. Although his face was obscured by his raggedy beard and splotchy with all sorts of dirt and Merlin-know-what, his high cheekbones and aristocratic nose rang a distant warning bell in Hermione's head.

Before she could recall where she had seen his face, or even think on the matter, she found herself unceremoniously shoved into the doorframe as he sprinted out the door and down the hallway.

He darted down the stairs and proceeded to throw the front door open before Hermione came to her senses and raced after him. She ran to the front door just in time to see him trip over a flowerpot of lilies.

XX

Draco cursed again, in his head this time. The flowerpot had shattered when he tripped over it, and he lay on the floor on crushed lilies, dirt, shards of flowerpot, and his fleeing dignity. Draco was thankful Granger hadn't recognized him yet; he wasn't sure he could deal with the humiliation. But he pulled himself up, looking her right in the eyes.

She looked up at him and he cursed as he saw the beginnings of understanding in her face. "Is it…" her voice trailed off, her chocolate eyes wide. She shook her head sternly, stubbornly, her curls tossing back and forth. "It can't be him. It can't be."

She stood up and abruptly walked away. "Other people have eyes like that. Other people have facial features like that. It. Is. Not. Him."

Draco groaned. Of all the bloody witches and wizards in the world to find him, it had to be the damned know-it-all Gryffindor Princess.

XX

Chapter 2~! I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave something, cookies or reviews are acceptable.