Nightmares

Ship: Dramione

Song: Something Just Like This; The Chainsmokers & Coldplay

Words: 534

Rating: T
Warnings: implied PTSD

Draco Malfoy jolted awake after a shrill scream rang out around him. His heart hammered loudly in his chest as his eyes opened wide and quickly surveyed his surroundings like only a person who's lived in constant fear for their life could.

He tried to slow his breathing as he reassured himself of his place in a large bed — a bed he shared with Hermione Granger, who was currently glistening from the moonlight bathing her sweaty skin.

She was beautiful even in the throes of a terrifying nightmare. Draco maneuvered around the bed, avoiding her thrashing limbs and trying to block out the sounds of her horror.

He wasted no time in assuming the safest position for them both before attempting to wake her. Finally, after he'd straddled her hips, slid his knees behind hers, interlocked their ankles and grabbed her wrists, securing them above her head, Draco spoke loud and gentle.

"Hermione."

She stirred beneath him, whimpering.

"Hermione wake up."

"Wha —"

For a minute she froze beneath him, her eyes popping open and bouncing around frantically. Her breathing was erratic, and her body began to shake.

"It's okay, Hermione. I've got you. I've always got you."

"Draco," her voice came out broken and sad, and tears forged a quick path down her cheeks as she stared up at him. The moon was his backlight, and he looked like an angel come to rescue her.

She melted beneath him, and as her breathing calmed, he gently untangled their bodies and fell to the bed beside her. Once he'd relieved her of his weight, he faced her. With a small smile, she turned so her back was to him, and he wrapped his broad arms around here like a cage, pulling her flush against him.

Hermione felt safe here. His skin against her own was like balm to her quaking nerves, and from the comfort of his arms she was able to shed her nightmare like dry skin.

Her hands reached out and grasped the arm he had draped atop her stomach. She brought it closer to her face, her palm sliding down the column of his bicep and into the inky black depths of his Dark Mark.

She felt his sharp intake of breath against her ear as her fingertips brushed over the marred skin. He still looked at the tattoo as a symbol of his weakness and cowardice. She looked upon it tenderly, with empathy filling her heart until it felt like it could implode from the weight of his pain.

"I wish I was a better man for you," he confessed under the cover of darkness, when he didn't have to look into her warm brown eyes filled with love and acceptance.

Hermione only smiled and placed that smile against the mark that once stood for ridding the world of her kind. She kissed his skin, and though his stomach churned, he felt warmth rolling across the hills and valleys of his body, from the mark outward.

It almost felt like magic as the heat wrapped itself around his nerves and calmed them. And it was a kind of magic — love, and it said more than words ever could.