now.
Hermione doesn't trust him.
One day of detoxing and healing turns into two, then three. After that, she feels better, but only a little. Moving around is still tough, and Hermione never gets used to feeling stiff and sore and futile. She's making little progress in the times when she's awake and functioning; her ribs scream whenever she moves and she's exhausted all the time but her body gets better. It grows stronger.
Surprisingly, Tom is a rather good cook. Even with the limitations that their situation puts upon them, he manages to get something decent out of it. It's part of his charm, she supposes.
"It's not poisoned," he says every day when he gives her a bowl of potatoes, carrots or anything else that he found in the ruins of Hogwarts' kitchen. Every day she takes it. On the third, she says, "Thanks."
He's as surprised as she is. They don't talk about much else.
As soon as she can walk she tries to explore the surroundings. Half of Hogwarts lies in ruins and the other half looks haunted and gloomy, even in sunlight. Not even the ghosts are around anymore. Everything is lost and abandoned and empty. Just like she feels.
On the fourth day, she makes it down to the Great Lake before her force and energy leave her. She lies down on the damp grass and closes her eyes to drown out the world. The pain ebbs away but her body is still weak. She has no will to surrender to her body's weakness. She lays there for an hour, dozing, before he finds her. They still don't talk. But she doesn't refuse his hand when he helps her up and returns to their makeshift camp. He puts her down on the dirty mattress that she slept on the last few days, and takes his place on the other side of the fire that he made. Sometimes she catches him staring over the flickering orange light of the flames. His grey eyes hold more darkness than any black she had ever seen before. They are alluring.
She still has her wand. When she awoke after the Calming Draught it had been placed carefully alongside her head. It is not broken, not scared, and it works just as well as before. He has not tried to take it. In fact, he has not tried anything else other than to check her pulse and temperature every couple hours. And nurse her back to health with flasks he found in the infirmary and something that reeks half dead, half sweet, that he cooked himself on a small fire and a pot that looked like it had seen better days. She lets him. She doesn't have much of a choice, after all.
Tom is a parasitic necessity in her healing process. And she knows it.
But she doesn't trust him. She's not that stupid.