A/N:

You guys are just so sweet! Thanks for all of the positive feedback. I'm going to really try to update this story pretty frequently. At the moment, I'm so obsessed with it that I don't think that will be too hard.

I'm having a little trouble with figuring out timelines. If you catch a timeline hole, let me know so that I can fix it. I'm trying to keep up with a lot of little details in this story, so I'm sure I could easily look over something.

I also don't have a beta reader. I know that I could just reach out to those in the beta reader section on this website, but I don't really know what the process is like. If anyone has any advice, please feel free to comment or message me.

I am trying very hard to stay true to basic character traits while creating my own storyline. Hermione isn't a helpless little flower, but she is vulnerable, as we all are, and I am doing my best to write her this way.

Again, please review. I love constructive criticism, and I am so pleased to see people following the story.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of love.

Dia

Malfoy sat at the kitchen table, his large hands wrapped around a now lukewarm mug. Not knowing how else to broach the subject, he decided blunt and to the point was best.

"What happened to her?" He asked Blaise quietly, watching as a range of emotions shifted over the fellow Slytherin's face. Sighing, Blaise dropped into the chair across the table from him, resting his chin on his clasped hands.

"What hasn't?" He replied simply.

He couldn't stand it when she was quiet.

It made him want to shake her.

Ever since his arrival, he had lived for the small sparring matches of wit and words they would inevitably find themselves in whenever they were in each other's presence for any amount of time. He'd quickly learned that she had good days and bad days, and that he could generally tell which kind of day it would be by how long it took her to get up in the morning.

Her bad days were much more often than her good, but Blaise and Pansy seemed to think she was doing better for some reason. While they weren't the only ones that stayed in the safe house, they were the only ones other than Hermione that spent most of their nights there at this time.

There were several other defectors from Voldemort's army under The Order's protection, but they split them up between different safe houses so as to prevent a massacre if a location was found. This particular house saw a lot of Order members with long-term injuries. He could tell from the way both Pansy and Blaise glanced at Hermione with worry or pity when she actually showed her face that they had somehow come to care for the girl in a way they didn't seem to for the other injured that game and went through their door.

He had quickly realized that he was sent here, not just to heal Hermione, but to play babysitter, as Blaise was increasingly missing for two to three days at a time at The Orders request. He was even able to drag Pansy along on a few of them, the fear she felt always rolling off her like thick, dense smoke before they apparated with a crack. Today was one of the days when both of them were gone, and the silence seemed to fill every corner of the small house as he performed his daily cleaning of Granger's wound. Looking up into her blank face, he cursed inside his head.

He seriously hated it when she was quiet.

He knew from experience that the potion he was carefully spreading on her arm was quite painful when applied to an open wound. She didn't even wince. It was driving him insane. Unable to take the dead air between them any longer, he cleared his throat.

"I see that you've been taking my advice."

He grunted out, having noticed her clean and relatively tangle-free hair. He mentally patted himself on the back for not shouting or screaming at her just to fill the empty house with some kind of noise.

Temporarily roused from her stupor, Hermione frowned at him and tugged on a curl.

"Why are you here?" She blurted out bluntly.

Having not expected her to say anything back, Malfoy was caught off guard momentarily. Trying to think of how to respond to this, he quietly wrapped up her arm, somewhat lost in thought. She continued to stare at him with those wide, dark eyes once he was done, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs as she waited for an answer.

He knew that he didn't have to answer her, and that if anyone else had asked him, he would have been angry at the intrusive question. But honestly, he was just happy that she was speaking at all. Trying to think of exactly how to phrase it, he shrugged his shoulders and followed her example. If she asked blunt questions, she would get blunt answers.

"He killed my mother."

Her eyes widened slightly as she searched his face, watching as pain etched it's way across its surface. She didn't have to ask who he was. It was then, when he saw something close to pity in her eyes, that he felt the anger finally come. This broken woman didn't get to feel sorry for him. He was up in a second, fiddling with the potions next to his bag to keep the anger from bursting through his skin.

"Contrary to what your lot thinks, she really loved me." He left the following comment of "and I her" where it belonged, in the back of his head.

He knew that the venom in his voice was probably off putting, so when he turned around, he was expecting her to have already slunk off to her room, and not to be standing right in front of him, those damned wide eyes unblinking.

Before he could ask her what she was doing, he watched in surprise as Hermione reached a hand up to gently touch his cheek. Seeming to realize what she was doing, a look somewhere between confusion and embarrassment crossed her face, and she dropped her hand as if his skin had burned her. Malfoy stood, frozen still from his surprise, as she quietly exited the room.

She hesitated just before crossing the door frame, and looked back at his statuesque figure, unmoving and tense.

"I don't have "a lot" anymore, Malfoy."

He heard her say. Then, she was gone, leaving him to the insufferable silence again.

"Don't you DARE tell me how to feel, Malfoy!"

She screamed at him, one of her tiny fists raised in front of her as she glared at him.

He closed his eyes, trying not to smile. It had been two days since they had had one of their screaming matches, and he'd almost forgotten what her voice sounded like when it was all high-pitched and breathy like it was now. He pushed down the small bubble of guilt that was rising in his stomach, telling himself that these confrontations were good for her, that they made her actually seem alive.

"I'm not telling you how to feel! I am just telling you that if you want to heal, you're going to have to stop this bullshit!"

Malfoy roared back, happily feeding Hermione's flame.

"WHAT BULLSHIT?" She screamed, her hair almost seeming to get wilder as her emotions did.

"THE GOD DAMN PITY PARTY THAT YOU'RE THROWING FOR YOURSELF." He yelled, unconciously spraying spittle into the air with the force of his words.

"FOR GODRIC'S SAKE, GRANGER I AM SO SICK OF YOU MOPING AROUND HERE LIKE A PUPPY THAT'S BEEN KICKED TOO MANY TIMES."

He continued, anger and exhaustion coloring his features. Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say, because she came barrelling at him, battering her small fists against his chest as angry tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

"I AM NOT MOPING!" She screamed, her voice deafening in the tiny kitchenette.

He struggled to catch her flailing hands in his own, surprised at how much each of the blows hurt, and held them firmly. He found himself concentrating on her pink lips, the bottom one in particular. She had chewed and worried it till it was chapped and bleeding and he had the strangest urge to swipe his thumb across it.

She was violently shaking now, her voice little more than a whisper as she repeated those words over and over again, her hands desperately trying to pull from his strong grasp.

"Iamnotmoping. Iamnotmoping. Iamnotmoping."

Reluctantly, he let the guilt he felt for causing her outburst to guide his body, and he pulled her head forward and into his shoulder, effectively muffling the sounds until her voice was all but gone.

She lingered just outside the door of the sitting room, watching as Malfoy worked as quickly as possible on the bodies that lay scattered throughout the room. She felt her stomach heave as her eye rested on a boy, no older than 15, missing two fingers on his right hand. Turning to go, she stopped short when she heard Malfoy yelling her name.

"Get over here, Granger! I need you to hold this man's leg straight while I set the bone." He said, wiping a bloody hand across his forehead. When she hesitated, his face contorted with anger.

"NOW GRANGER!" He shouted, the stress evident in his voice, and she felt her body move quickly to his side. Kneeling beside the man, she thanked Godric that he had seemingly passed out from the pain as she gripped his leg tightly. Malfoy waved his wand over the point of the break, and she tried not to gag when she heard the bone click back into place. Not wasting a second, Malfoy turned to her, shoving a bowl into her hands.

"I need you to go to the kitchen and fill this with water, then use your wand to get it boiling." He said, sweat running down his forehead as he turned to help another patient.

Numbly, she stumbled to the kitchen, doing as she was told. It took a few deep breaths and more than one try to get the water to boil, and she carried it carefully back to the sitting room, placing it next to Malfoy on the floor as he worked on a woman with burn marks covering the left side of her face.

"How are you at healing spells?" He asked her, trying to keep the panic out of his eyes.

Malfoy silently watched Granger from the door frame, her back turned to him as she busily cooked something on the only working burner on the house's tiny stove. Viewing her much like a hiker would a baby deer, he didn't want to move or say anything for fear of sending her running.

"Shut up and sit down, Malfoy." She said, turning around.

She still didn't seem able to meet his eyes directly, but she was up before noon, so he wasn't going to complain, or even point out that he hadn't said anything. He hadn't expected to see her for days after she had witnessed the carnage the he had forced her to help heal after Blaise and Pansy had port-keyed a group of The Order's injured into their safe house. Afraid that if he took his eyes off her, the spell would be broken and she'd be in her room curled up in a ball again, he just stared at her warily for a few minutes. Hermione broke the silence.

"Do you want a nest egg?" She asked, turning back to whatever it was she was cooking in a small frying pan.

Frowning, Malfoy finally allowed himself to move, draping himself gracefully over one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

"What's a nest egg?" He asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he wiped crumbs and dirt off the rough surface in front of him. The whole place needed a good scourgify.

Whirling around in surprise, Hermione regarded him with a shocked expression.

"You've never had a nest egg?" She asked.

With a flash of annoyance, he snorted.

"Don't act all surprised, Granger." He said, half smirking. "If I recall correctly, half of our entire relationship consisted of you knowing things that I didn't, and me hating you for it."

He watched as a matching smirk flitted across her features. Pulling back from the stove, she swung the frying pan around so he could see the piece of bread with an egg being fried in the center of it.

"You cut a hole in the bread, and then crack the egg directly into it." She said, turning back to the stove. She waved her wand and he watched with interest as the nest egg flipped over in the pan.

My mum used to make them for me when she knew I was going to have a tough day ahead of me..."

When she stopped short, Malfoy looked up. She just stood there for a few moments in silence, before he saw with dismay that her body had completely tensed up, and her hand had stopped moving the frying pan. For a few, brief seconds, he thought that she might shake it off, continue cooking as if nothing happened, but he almost yelled in frustration when she simply dropped her hands and padded quietly out of the kitchen, leaving the bread and egg smoking slightly in the pan.

"What happened to her parents?"

Pansy gave him a sideways look as she floated a dish to him to dry.

"Why do you care, Draco?" She asked, leaning her slight back against the kitchen counter as she watched him charm the plate dry and place it back in a cabinet.

"The Order told me I couldn't leave until she was better."

He stated simply, running a large hand through his ruffled hair and trying to avoid Pansy's scrutinizing stare.

"What does what happened to her parents have to do with that?" Pansy questioned again. "And what did you do to get them to exile you here?"

Growling in frustration, Malfoy threw his hands in the air. Purposefully ignoring her other question, he focused on the first one.

"She's been here trying to heal that curse ridden wound for two months Pans." He said, trying to get her to understand.

"That wound should have been healed in six days, tops. Something else is going on here. She doesn't WANT it to heal. If I'm ever going to get out of here and back to being a field medic, than I've got to figure out what it is that is going on with her."

Pansy regarded him with cool eyes, and he could see the hesitation in her face.

"It's not my story to tell, Draco. " She replied, shrugging her shoulders helplessly.

"Well she's not telling it!" He said through clenched teeth, trying hard to keep his voice calm.

Something shifted in Pansy's face, and he turned around slowly, only to find Granger standing in the doorway. Meeting his eyes for the first time in days, he saw defiance and anger shining in her glare.

"They don't remember me." She said, her voice dangerously quiet and one hand fisted around her wand.

Not sure how to react, Pansy and Malfoy just stood in place, waiting for her to elaborate. Instead, she gave Malfoy a look close to the ones she used to throw at him after he had called her mudblood and held out her bandaged arm.

"It hurts."

She stated simply, moving out of the doorway. He followed her into the sitting room, trying valiantly to stuff the frustration he felt towards her deep down inside of him. Producing his wand from his back pocket before sitting beside her, he peeled away the bandage. He was pleasantly surprised to see that for the first time in the weeks since he'd gotten here, it looked a little better.

The curse she had been hit with was a nasty one. It was designed to rot whatever skin it had touched, and if it had hit her in the chest, she would have been dead within the hour. It was a slow, agonizing way to die. Someone must have worked quickly to stop the spread of the infection considering it had been contained to just her forearm.

"It was your father. The one who hit me with the curse."

Snapping his head up, he expected to see anger or fury in her face, anything other than that damned emotionless mask she wore most of the time, but her features were smooth and her voice steady. he waited for her to give him more details, but she simply stared at him blankly until he grew uncomfortable. Once he had wrapped the bandage around her arm, she got up and left him there on the couch, asking himself the same question Pansy had asked him earlier that day.

Why did he care?

"You could have told me that it was my father who had caused the injury!" Malfoy snapped as he paced in front of the crumbling fireplace in the sitting room.

The flaming image of Arthur Weasley's head had the good sense to look uncomfortable and sheepish.

"We didn't think it pertinent to the situation-"

"Not pertinent?" Malfoy hissed, unable to keep his anger tamped down any longer.

"I'm sent here to this disgusting house with instructions to heal my half-dead childhood enemy, who obviously is going through some kind of psychological trauma, and you think it's not pertinent to tell me that my father was the one who almost killed her?"

He heard the ghost of a sigh sizzle through the flames, and had to clench his fists to keep from hitting something. Anything.

"She's been through a lot-"

"Well I bloody well know that!" Malfoy sputtered, bringing his scowling face as close to the fire as he could.

"The problem is, no one will tell me what she has been through, and it's making it pretty fucking hard to do anything about It!"

Arthur seemed to pause, as if thinking over what Malfoy had just said.

"She doesn't have anyone, Malfoy." He said finally, unable to keep the defeat from leaking into his voice.

"Tonks is gone. Lupin is gone. Ron and her split, and she won't talk to myself or Molly. Harry is worse off than she is. She obliviated her parents and sent them somewhere no one knows of in order to keep them safe, with no guarantee that she will be able to reverse the magic someday."

Malfoy shook his head, almost unable to take it all in. As the pieces clicked together, he felt horror rise like bile in his throat. She had obliviated her parents. That was why she had told him that they didn't remember her. Blinking rapidly at the fire, he listened as Arthur continued.

"She was doing alright with everything at the beginning, but a month or two in, something changed. She was always a tough fighter, but this was different. In the past year and a half, she has been in and out of that safe house to recover from various injuries countless times. It was like something inside her had snapped. She had no regard for her safety anymore."

Arthur swallowed, his voice sticking in his throat with emotion.

"We started to notice that she was being reckless, but this last time, she took it too far. She made a stupid choice, and if Seamus hadn't been there to knock her out of the way of that curse, it would have hit her right in the chest and she would be dead right now. He barely managed to keep the infection from spreading. You have to understand, Malfoy, that even if we heal her, we can't just put her back out to fight when she has no regard for her own safety anymore."

"Have you told her that?" Malfoy asked, knowing the answer before it was given. If Granger had known they were planning on keeping her from fighting, that would explain her unwillingness to heal.

"We did, and she went ballistic. Told us that we couldn't keep her from fighting once she was better. Blaise and Pansy were there trying to calm her down, but she just wouldn't listen. Then all of the sudden, she just went catatonic."

Malfoy could almost see the worry behind Arthur's eyes, even through the fire.

"I don't care what you do or how you do it, Malfoy. Just keep her alive. Harry is barely hanging on by a thread, and we need him. If we lose her, we lose him."

Malfoy rolled his eyes, sneering at Arthur's image.

"Typical. Priority number one is to keep Potter alive, and screw anyone else unless they are important to him. I'll keep her alive, Weasley. But when she's healed, you had better get me out of this bloody hell hole. This is more than enough of a penance"

Malfoy hissed, quickly cutting off the connection with a brief jerk of his wand.

He wasn't sure why he was so angry at the aging red-head, but he was afraid that if they had kept talking, he would have said something to ruin their already hesitant relationship. He had withstood days of questioning with veritaserum before he'd been offered safety from The Order, but just because they trusted him didn't mean that they liked him.

His mind wandered back to the last time he had seen Granger before this. She had stood up to Voldemort with the rest of Hogwarts when he had brought a presumed dead Harry Potter forward, defiance practically radiating off her small frame. He could still see her chin thrust in the air, her hair wild around her face, as she jeered at the Dark Lord with the rest of the crowd, not even a sliver of fear in her brown eyes.

That was the Granger they all needed. It wasn't going to be easy to find her.

A/N:

WELL there you are!

Thanks again for all of the wonderful feedback!

LOVEloveLOVElove