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His arms burned. He couldn't feel his legs, but if he could, he would have sworn they were dead pythons- they would have been floppy, heavy deadweights. But Draco Malfoy was smiling despite this.

He was out of the woods.

He had dragged himself and Hermione, with the help of mud, all the way from the smoldering tree out to where he could clearly see the sun setting behind the trees, as if the trees were sharpened spear-points, slicing through the sun, making it bleed red across the horizon.

He glanced over at Hermione. She was still out cold, but the cold mud seemed to have helped a tiny bit with the burns. Mud clung to her hair, turning it to sticks, face, and clothes. Somewhere along the way her cheek had hit a root jutting out of the ground, and so she had a black eye as though someone had thrown a plum at her, effectively giving her a bump and leaving some of the plum's color on her skin. She was practically unrecognizable.

Now for the next problem-helping Hermione.

Boy was he glad he had his wand back.

Hermione had been drifting in a thick sea of honey, or was it mud? She didn't know. What she did know was that she had no idea where Draco was.

Suddenly, she was brought to an abrupt halt.

It felt like she had rammed into concrete. She was no longer gliding in a sea-she was now a beached whale.

Then, the beach was lifted away-or, rather, she was. She felt like she was floating.

Draco smiled at how perfect the timing had been. Sunset-that meant that everyone would be asleep in their houses in a neighborhood like this one. He looked over at the one familiar house-Hermione's house. So long ago he had watched her through the windows into her room, waiting for the opportune moment to end her life.

His smile was now gone, replaced with a look that suggested he had just swallowed something bitter-he always frowned on that particular memory.

He returned his mind to the task at hand. With everyone asleep, there would be no one to see them if he tried some magic.

He muttered a few words softly, like breath of wind, and Hermione rose from the ground. She hung in the air for a few seconds, like a tear on the night's cheek.

Then, she opened her eyes.

Draco was caught off-guard, and froze up like a statue.

She stared right at Draco at first bewildered, then smiling. Eventually, she motioned to the ground beneath her. Draco jumped a bit, and then carefully set her down, as though she was a china doll.

She looked around her. "Where are we?"

"We're out of the woods, near your house. Hermione, you're hurt. You need help."

"I don't feel that bad."

"Hermione, look at yourself."

Hermione looked down, and heaved a barely-audible gasp. She had not seen her two burns and cut before now-to say she was shocked was an understatement.

"Oh."

"Yes. Hermione, rather like you, I am no Madame Promfrey. I don't know how to help you. So I'm taking you to a hospital.

"Draco that is an incredibly stupid idea."

"And might I inquire as to why it is so stupid?"

"First of all, if you go to a wizard hospital, people will recognize you, and see your Dark Mark. Secondly, if you go to a Muggle hospital, you would have to show them ID; they would ask you questions-there would be no end to the things that could go wrong in that scenario."

"So what do you propose we do? You can't ignore that cut-you've stained that shirt to the point of no return. It will be a nasty shade of red forever." He was right-she looked like she had rolled in rose petals.

"I propose that we go home, run some cold water over these cuts, put some ice and bandages on them, and then go to bed."

Draco opened his mouth to ask a question, but was cut off. "You are my friend from school over for a sleep-over."

Draco expression quickly went from protest to confusion.

"Well, you are my friend, aren't you? And I did meet you at school, didn't I? And you will be sleeping in my room with me, so you are over for a sleepover."

"What is a sleepover?"

Hermione sighed, and muttered "What kind of kid doesn't know what a sleepover is?" then replied "A sleepover is when you are invited over to a friend's house from the afternoon to the following morning. This time arrangement, of course, leads to you having to sleep over at the friend's house. Make sense?"

Some of the confusion left Draco's face, but not all. Still, he nodded.

Hermione sat up with only a little wobble. Draco was beyond surprised to see Hermione sitting up already, not looking very hurt.

"Hermione, you might not want to be sitting up. You hurt your legs, and you're bleeding."
Hermione laughed again. "Draco, how closely did you actually those burns and that cut?"

"Not very closely." He admitted. In truth, he had only glanced at it several times. He had been much more preoccupied with getting Hermione and himself to safety.

"Draco, I'm hardly bleeding any more. Those burns are not as bad as they look-see?" She brought her hand to her right leg, and touched the ash-colored burn. Her fingertips came away stained as though with nighttime blackness. "The smoke, ash, and dust are what makes it look that bad-it makes the little burn look much worse. And that mud you used helped too-almost like running it under cold water."

Draco sputtered a little. "But, but you passed out!"

"That was from smoke inhalation, not from any actual injury."

Draco was at a loss for words. Hermione smiled.

"Draco, I'm not perfect, but I'm fine. Maybe a week of bandages, but that is pretty much it."

"So you don't need any help?"

"No, not really. But thank you for the sentiment. Come on. Let's go in side-I'll get you something cold to drink. We might have some lemonade in the fridge."

Hermione stood up, and then paused. For a moment she had forgotten the slight problem with his legs. Frowning, she pulled out her wand. A few words uttered, and he was hovering a few inches off the ground, his feet barely brushing the dew-laden tips of grass that lined the pavement.

Draco smiled, and shook his head. He didn't know this particular spell, but he was sure that it was unnecessarily complicated and would have taken most people a few months to master. So of course Hermione knew it.

Hermione walked forward, her wand tip swaying so slightly that you would swear it was just a result of not being able to see clearly now that night had officially fallen. Draco drifted forward at the same pace as Hermione, though he wasn't trying to. Apparently her twitching wand was not the result of absent-minded fiddling with her wand, but intentional.

Hermione led him to the front door of her house, and opened the door, letting him in.

Sure enough, there was lemonade in the fridge, and Hermione got Draco a glass and poured him some before heading over to the sink and snatching a dishrag. She opened a compartment under the fridge, which Draco would soon learn was called a freezer, and removed some ice. She sat down right there on the kitchen floor and began icing her legs. After icing both legs thoroughly, she ran cold water over her cut, wincing slightly.

Draco stood in the kitchen with her the whole time, talking with Hermione. Well, most of the time. After about five minutes, she directed him to a cupboard with spell books in it, telling him to bring her the one with blue flowers in the spine. Apparently it was full of medical spells. It took some exploring, a little time, and he tripped over a laundry bin once, but he eventually found the cupboard, mostly with the help of Hermione's wand. He felt like a puppet with Hermione pulling the strings. He wasn't that upset of playing the part of the puppet-he was just happy that it was Hermione at the strings, not the Dark Lord, not his mother, not his father.

He brought her back the book, and she immediately flipped to the table of contents. Her finger slid down the page like a drop of rainwater down a window as the scanned the different sections, looking for one in particular. Her finger halted over one particular section. Draco craned his neck to read what it was. In bolt print, it read Spells for Burns, Cuts, and Other Skin Injuries.

Hermione flipped through much of the book, finally stopping on page 537. Her eyes scanned over a block of print, then she took her wand and began treating her burns.

Before Draco's eyes the blackness on Hermione's leg contracted like a flower's petals, until there was nothing left but the faintest of scars. Then she turned her attention to her cut. Her wand waved as the book directed, and her cut shrunk like her burns, closing up like a sown seam, until, like her burns, only a scar stood in testimony to her injuries.

Draco was riveted as he watched Hermione heal herself. She had said she was no Madam Promfrey-this was most likely the book she had used to heal him somewhat after the bear mauling. His attention was so focused on Hermione, that he didn't notice what was happening to him at first.

Hermione's wand, waving over herself, was no loner buoying him an inch above the tile floor. So, he had began to s a sink as slowly as a piece of waterlogged bark slowly sinks under the waves on the surface.

Hermione looked up at him, smirking.

"Draco, are you sure about your conviction that you won't walk ever again?"

Draco started a bit at the suddenness in the change in their silence, but recovered quickly. "Yes."

"Well, you have just proved yourself wrong."

Perplexed, Draco looked down at his legs. His feet were on the floor. He had unconsciously shifted most of his weight to his right leg, which was much less damaged than his left.

He was standing.

And then he was falling.

Crooshanks had crept into the kitchen, and rather like the neighbor's cat out in the woods that had caused Hermione to mess up her jump, neither one of them had seen the cat until it was too late. It had come up and nuzzled Draco, which had over-balanced him.

Draco swatted the cat away from him as he tried to get up. It took him a few tries, but he eventually got it.

"See? You'll walk again-you just need some time to exercise your left leg."

Draco smiled, then promptly half-sat, half-fell next to Hermione and hugged her.

"Thank you." He whispered.

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