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This one's a bit different. Let me know what you think!

Prompt: Shy Kiss

Sixth Year: Healed by the Half-Blood Prince

Word Count: 383

Warnings: none

His body looked battered and bruised laying on the stark, white hospital bed. It seemed that the once proud Slytherin Prince had fallen so deep over the last year that no one save Zabini and Parkinson had bothered to stop by and check on him. His face was tense with dejection.

"Did you come to mock me?" Draco drawled in a hoarse whisper.

"Harry was a jerk. I came to right a wrong."

He scoffed. "I fail to see how reading a book, no matter what spells or potions are in it, will change the fact that your friend," he spit the word out, "almost killed me!"

"I cannot apologize for Harry; he has to do that himself. And, no, book-learning won't help you now, but maybe this can."

She stopped toward the bed, hesitated for a moment, then bent over his supine form, stopping a couple of inches from his face. She examined him. Under alabaster skin his formerly soft features had grown angular with maturity and bitterness. Pomfrey had washed and combed his hair but it hung lackluster off his head, and his chin was sporting a five o'clock shadow. Looking into his eyes, which had always sparked with arrogance and brutality, she saw they were now a dull grey, like rain clouds before a storm. Instead of cold contempt, they watched on in confusion and trepidation.

Continuing to let their breaths mingle, his getting quicker with each passing moment, she slowly lowered her rosy lips until they just barely made contact. Wonderful. They were soft and velvety like the lilies her mother kept on the dining room table. She inhaled and, for once, there was none of that awful cologne to spoil the effect, just the crisp, lemony scent of sterilization and a fainter musky smell that she assumed was the real him. Closing her eyes, she let touch take over, tingling as she lingered there.

Finally, the moment was gone and she straightened back up.

Draco lay shaking with suppressed lust, fear, regret and perturbation, anger creeping back into those grey orbs. "How dare you touch me. I don't need your help!" he croaked.

She humphed and rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't dream of it, Ferret."

With her sense of justice appeased, she quickly left. Charms was in fifteen minutes.