22. Aftermath: I'm Still Awake
It's hard letting go
I'm finally at peace but it feels wrong
Slow I'm getting up
My hands and feet are weaker than before
And you are folded on the bed where I rest my head
There's nothing I can see, darkness becomes me
But I'm already there, I'm already there
Wherever there is you, I will be there too
[Silhouettes, Of Monsters and Men]
Two days passed by.
The first things Hermione was aware of, were the fiery, gnawing pain that suffused her entire body, and the gumminess of her eyes when she tried to open them. She choked a breath at the pain, and the movement made more of it radiate hot through her. Fuck. It hurt. So bad.
Hermione lifted her hand dazedly, trying to touch her face; besides the pain the limb felt strangely heavy and clumsy to move, and she nearly clocked herself in the face as she tried to knuckle at her eyes. She was alive - she could assume that much. As to everything else...the last thing she remembered was Draco telling her that he hadn't betrayed them, pleading with her to believe him. What...
"Draco?" It came out in a crackling whisper as she rubbed at her eyes, as if she hadn't spoken in years. A flare of fear suffused Hermione suddenly; what if she hadn't? What if she'd been comatose for a decade? How would she know? She forced her eyes open to a dimly lit white room; she was in a hospital bed, one magical lamp glowing faintly on the right wall, a white door directly opposite the bed half shut. St Mungo's, she thought through the pain, and the fog that blanketed her brain. It was St Mungo's.
Had they won?
Hermione turned her head further, wincing, gaze sliding to her left...and there he was. Her heart jolted in her chest, a lurch that was hard enough to shock her. He was slumped down in lone chair by the wall of the small room, head lolling - asleep, one leg splinted roughly, sticking out in front of him. He looked like he'd been dragged backwards through hell - his exposed skin was mostly clean, but his clothes were what he'd been wearing during the battle, and didn't even look like they've been scourgified.
"Dr-Draco?" she choked out on a half-sob, the pain welling up hotter and hotter, fierce and violent. She was barely able to think through it - barely able to stay conscious. It felt like she was struggling just to keep her head above the flames licking at her body. Merlin, she needed pain potion. "Draco!"
His head snapped up as she cried his name out, strangled and choked with pain. Bellatrix had cursed her, she remembered vaguely. That was why she hurt so much. Bellatrix had... He hovered over her for a second, face filling her vision, ashen and filled with terror and joy at once. "Hermione!" And then he was gone, and she was left mouthing helplessly at the ceiling, hands going to her chest and clutching weakly as the pain intensified.
"Healer! We need a Healer in here now!" She looked toward Draco's panic-filled voice with glazed eyes as Draco yanked the door wide open, yelling through the doorway. "Now!"
"Dr-Draco..." She wheezed it out, and he spun toward her, haggard and unshaven, limping awkwardly across the floor, mouth twisting as he put weight on his broken leg.
"Hermione." He nearly fell as he reached the bed, clutching at it to steady himself and leaning over her, so close, so real. She lifted a trembling hand from her chest, and he clasped it in his human hand, tight and warm, holding it pressed against his ribs so that she could feel his heart beat against the back of her hand. "Hermione, it's all right. The Healers are coming. You're going to be okay. You're -"
"The war?" she whispered hoarsely, forcing out the words. Her vision swam and blurred, but she kept her eyes fixed on his grey ones - wide and bruised beneath, and scared. The sound of footsteps approaching reached her ears - thudding down the corridor toward her room. Draco seemed to stifle a sob, squeezing her hand very tightly as he lent against the bed and smoothed his silver hand gently over her forehead.
"We won. Voldemort is dead. It's over, Hermione," he said very softly, beneath the noise of people bursting into the room.
"And...the...the baby? The - the curse - is - is the baby okay?" she got out raggedly, words slurring, and Draco looked away from her, eyes casting downwards. Fear roiled sick in her belly.
"The curse? The Healers are neutralising the curse, but it was touch and go for a while there. You nearly died, Hermione. You need -" And then there were hands on her, and people were pulling Draco away from her as she reached out for him, eyes wide with terror. The sound of diagnostic charms being cast, and Healers hovering over her, touching her and shining lumos' in her eyes, and grabbing her wrist to take her pulse as she kept reaching for Draco with a wavering hand.
"Th-the baby... Draco..." She could just barely see him between the two Healers on her left side - someone with a shock of red hair stopping him from falling as he stumbled back and stared at her helplessly. Ron, she thought, with a vague impression of the horror face as he steadied Draco. "Please. The baby." She tried to slide her hand down to her abdomen, but a Healer took her hand - a kind, strained witch's face coming into view.
"It's all right, Miss Granger. Hermione. You're going to be all right. But you need to rest now. Your body has been through a lot, and you have a lot more healing ahead of you." A vial was put to her lips, and she pressed them together in protest. Why was no one answering her? "It's pain potion and the potion to counteract the effects of the Curse. You need to drink it, Hermione. Swallow, Hermione."
Obediently - helplessly - she swallowed down the foul-tasting mixture, coughing weakly. "Someone. Please. I - need to know... the..." Her vision swirled and shrank, and everything went very quiet, and very, very far away. The baby... And then there was no pain. Only a blackness that swallowed her up, and she knew nothing more.
"You can't put off your own care any longer, Malfoy. Hurting yourself isn't helping her."
Draco shot Weasley a look - half dry sarcasm, half deep, seething rage. "I realise that, Weasley. I'm not a fucking idiot. But I don't care. I'm not - not until she's okay."
"She'd hate that," Weasley said from his slouch against the wall, his eyes not on Draco, but on Hermione's sleeping form. Draco's gaze slides to her as well - fragile as glass in the bed, skin ashen with a grey undertone, lips pale and chapped, dark hollows under her eyes, and at her cheeks, her skin like parchment stretched too tight over her bones. "She'd be the first to tell you not to be an idiot. She'll be furious to know you've neglected yourself to sit here and stare at her."
"Then she'll have to hurry up and get well enough to yell at me for it," Draco said, wishing devoutly that she would be, soon. It had been four days now, that he'd been keeping vigil by her bedside. There was a bathroom attached to the room, and Order members, his mother, and Pansy, had been bringing him food...and trying to convince him to sleep, wash, or at the least, let the Healers see to him. He refused, every time. In the end, only Pansy and Weasley were brave enough to keep at him about being seen to.
He couldn't bring himself to be nasty to them.
It wasn't about not leaving Hermione's side. There was a shower in the small bathroom Hermione's room shared with the one beside her, and it would be easy enough to have the Healers bring in another bed for him to sleep on. But that wasn't the point. The point was that while she lay there, clawing her way back from the verge of death, Draco couldn't take care of himself. It wouldn't be right, to be clean, and well-rested, and healed, while she lay there in the potion-induced sleep, hollow and frail and devastated by the curse his Aunt had cast. He couldn't. If she was suffering, so would he.
"You realise you're an idiot, mate," Weasley said, and Draco nodded, not pulling his gaze away from Hermione.
"Yeah." He didn't deny it. It was stupid, pointless, unhelpful symbolism, and he was an idiot.
"Well, I can't fault you for it," Weasley said at last, and Draco didn't miss the casual warmth in the other man's voice. The redhead sauntered closer to the bed, with a bit of a lurch in his step from the still-healing burns to one leg. He stopped at the other side of Hermione's bed, and gently, with one finger, stroked a lock of hair back off Hermione's forehead. A small part of Draco wanted to knock Weasley's hand away. Mine. The rest of him though...the rest of him was glad for Weasley, as the man pulled up a chair and sat down, so that the pair of them bracketed Hermione. He took her limp hand in his, so easily, as if it were nothing. Draco watched jealously. He had been feeling afraid to touch her, lest her hurt her.
"She's going to be okay, you know."
Draco looked away from Weasley's honest, unblinking gaze. "Yeah, I know." His voice is scratchy and rough with emotion, and he cleared his throat, scrubbing his silver right hand through his hair to hide his face as his cheeks went hot.
"Really, though."
"What about when she wakes up? Is she going to be okay then? When she finds out...? And Potter, unconscious. Lupin, in a coma too. Shacklebolt dead, y-your brother, and Merlin knows how many other friends of hers, her parents lost track of in Australia and no clue if they survived... Is she still going to be okay then?" Draco pressed his lips hard together when he finished, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward and rested his chin against his clasped hands, as if he could physically hold back his emotion. He blinked hard, denying himself the right to fucking cry. Not in front of Weasley.
Weasley raised a brow. "It's Hermione. Yes, she's going to be okay. I would have thought you'd know by now that she can handle anything, and come out kicking on the other side."
"She tries, Weasley, but it hurts her." Draco stared at Hermione's hand, greyish-tinged against Weasley's white, freckled one. "You've seen how it affects her, I know you have. And then there's what you haven't seen. When it was just her and me. She - she was barely holding it together, at the end there."
"I know." Weasley's voice was too soft and too kind. "But the thing about Hermione is...she always manages to hold it together. No matter what the war has thrown at her, in the end she has always managed to keep it together, even if it's just by a Merlindamned thread. She'll come back from this, just like we all are. It's not been easy for any of us, Malfoy. My brother is d-dead, and my best friend and sister's fiancé is in a coma, my other best friend is in an induced coma, and half my other friends are bloody well dead, and it's fucking hard, and yet here I am. Still going." Weasley half-grinned, a terribly, terribly sad expression. And then he sighed and tried again, and it's happier this time, and Draco didn't know how the other man did it.
"Because everyone I love who survived is safe now, and we can start...rebuilding or whatever, and Cho made me pancakes with maple syrup this morning, and fuck...it's life." Weasley gazed past Draco, smile playing around his mouth and eyes actually wet with tears that Draco pretended not to notice as Weasley blinked them away. "It's life, Malfoy, and it's still going for us, and we have to fucking live it."
Silence fell after that - the only sounds their breaths out of sync with Hermione's slow, shallow ones, and noises down the corridor from other rooms. St Mungo's was full to capacity. Finally Draco reached out, and took Hermione's other hand in his, hissing a little as pain sparked up in his still-splinted leg. Her hand was clammy and cool, but he could feel the life in it, surging through her.
"You're -" his voice broke and he tried again, awkwardly trying to convey his gratitude with a dry nonchalance "- you're surprising good at pep talks, Weasley."
The other man huffed a laugh. "Thanks, Malfoy." And then he stood, and rounded the bed with a limp, clapping a hand on Draco's shoulder and squeezing briefly. "Not that it's hard to be cheerier than you, you miserable bastard." Draco snorted, and Weasley grinned, and then thumped him on the shoulder again before backing up a couple of steps. "I'm going to go check on Harry and some of the others. Want me to bring you a cuppa tea when I come back?"
"Only if there's firewhiskey in it," Draco retorted, only half-joking, and Weasley smirked.
"I'll see what I can do, Malfoy."
Hermione woke. This time, the pain was a low, dull ache that suffused her entire body still, but did not consume her. She blinked, feeling dizzy as light flooded her vision, squeezing her hand as tightly as she could around whatever held it. Vertigo made her feel like she was spinning, and she wanted to throw up only there was nothing in her stomach. She moaned pitifully, trying to gasp in air, panic starting to grab her.
"Hermione." It was Draco's voice, cutting through the vertigo, but not magically dispelling it. The grip on her hand pressed firmer for a moment, and then relaxed again. "Hermione? Are you all right? How badly does it hurt? Do you need?"
Another voice came through the dizziness as she whimpered; Pansy Parkinson's voice. "I'll go tell the Healer's she's awake, Draco. I'm sure she's just...disorientated."
"Hurry," he snapped as Hermione focused her eyes finally, blurry vision honing in on grey eyes set in a pale, exhausted face, his fringe lank and greasy, flopping forward over his face. She had never seen anything more beautiful.
"Draco..." she got out, before the vertigo hit her in another wave, and she squeezed her eyes shut, and his hand harder again.
"Is it pain?"
"Nnh-mm," she hummed the negative through her slammed together lips, and shook her head very slightly, and regretted it almost immediately as it made the dizziness flare up even further. "Dizzy," she managed a few seconds later, and Draco made a worried, helpless sound.
"Just hang on. The Healers will be here soon. You're going to be okay. It's probably - probably just a side effect of the potions they've been giving you," he told her, and Hermione nodded a scarce inch, humming in assent and wishing the room would stop spinning. It wasn't as bad as the pain, but it was just as debilitating in its own way, and she couldn't think straight while her head felt like her body was twirling in all directions. The sound of someone entering the room was a relief.
"Mister Malfoy, Miss Granger. " The voice was male, and kind, and Hermione cracked an eye open to the sight of a young man in Healer's robes standing beside Draco. "I hear you're awake." Hermione mmphed an assent, annoyance crinkling her brow. "But then I can already see that," the man tacked on apologetically. "I'm Healer Tam, and I'm just going to examine you - but can you tell me what's wrong?"
"She's dizzy," Draco said, as Healer Tam muttered a string of spells, and then spoke a lumos charm, gently lifting Hermione's eyelids to shine the light in her eyes, apologising as he did. He was brisk and efficient without behaving like she wasn't a person, and Hermione was aware enough to appreciate that.
"I'm not surprised. That's quite a common side effect." He moved away, out of Hermione's line of sight, and she let her eyes slide shut again.
"He's just getting you a potion, Hermione," Draco said, his silver hand sliding cool and smooth over her forehead, a soothing, grounding caress. Hermione knew what he meant from vague memories of St Mungo's. Each room had a small auto-disapparition point built into the wall, with a length of parchment and a self-inking quill. The Healers wrote prescriptions for potions and disapparated them down to the stock rooms, and the brewers in the hospital's stock rooms sent the requested potions up. It was very efficient. Hermione tried very hard not to feel like she was going to throw up. There was a long pause, and then a small pop, and then Healer Tam's footsteps approaching, before the cold, smooth glass of a vial lip was put to her mouth.
"Drink up, please, Hermione. This should lessen the vertigo within a few minutes." She swallowed obediently, coughing and spluttering at little at the taste. "Sorry. It isn't very nice, but it'll soothe what ails you. And now another, that doesn't taste quite so bad."
"'s - 's not a sleeping potion, is it?" she slurred, turning her face away. "I - I'm not going back to sleep. I need - I need to know...things."
"No, it's not a sleeping potion, Hermione. You've slept long enough, now. It's just a pain potion." Hermione allowed Healer Tam to place it to her lips, and parted them just enough to get a taste of the potion on the tip of her tongue - it tasted like the aniseed of a pain potion, although she knew sleeping potions could be relatively flavourless, and disguised in combination with pain potions.
"Drink it, Hermione. It's just a pain potion. I swear," Draco said, voice all filled up to overflowing with worry, and she trusted him enough to swallow the contents of the vial without further protest.
"Now please, just lie back and let the potions take effect while I do some more through diagnostic charms, Hermione," Healer Tam said with a firm gentleness, and then began to cast more spells, the tingling sensation of magic settling into her skin, and soaking down deep into her chest, where the pain radiated from. Draco kept soothing his hand over her forehead, his other hand - his human hand - all tangled up in hers still, and she clung on tightly, like he was a lifeline.
Finally, the potions took effect enough for her to open her eyes, blinking as the dim lighting struck her sensitive vision relatively brightly, making them water. She looked around - Draco at her left, and Healer Tam at her right with her wrist in his hand, his wand pressed to her pulse and his eyes on her face. He smiled reassuringly at her. "Everything checks out well, Hermione. Feeling better?"
"Yes, thank you," she got out in a croak, and Draco shifted with a grimace, reaching behind him to his right, and producing a glass of water, with a straw.
"Small sips," he said, putting the straw between her lips, and she obeyed, the water like heaven in her parched, cottony mouth. Healer Tam put Hermione's hand back on her chest, stepping back and watching her with a gentle sympathy that made her feel sick all over again.
"Your recovery is going very well, Hermione. The curse inflicted on you very nearly killed you. It was touch and go for a while there, but it seems like you're well out of danger now."
"The...the baby?" her voice shook, her hand pulling from Draco's as she slid both of them down weakly to press against her abdomen, to the faint bulge of her belly, and a sob caught and choked in her throat as she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could shut out the truth, hands sliding over the bump.
"We...everything seems stable right now, Hermione, but we don't know whether they will remain so, or how the curse will affect the fetus," Healer Tam said, tone sympathetic and words carefully neutral, and Hermione's tears were hot as they slid over her skin, relief and fear mingling together at once. We don't know - the words rang in her head, ominous and terrifying.
"You -" Hermione could barely speak, her voice strangled tight and chin trembling, tears sliding down across her temples into her hair. "You don't know?"
"Like I said, Hermione, everything looks all right as of now, but that could change. We don't know how the curse could affect your body in the days to come, or the fetus itself."
"Th-thank you. For - for the chance." It seemed like the right thing to say, even right now she couldn't feel anything other than joy and terror warring, her hands laid over her belly protective and greedy, as if she could make everything okay just with her touch.
"We're hopeful given what we've observed, but at this point it's hard to tell what -"
"I understand. Thank you." Hermione smeared at her tears with the back of her wrist, opening her eyes to Healer Tam's worried features. "I - I think I'd like you to leave now." He nodded.
"Of course. Someone will be in to check on you in an hour's time." He turned his attention to Draco, and so did Hermione - he sat in the chai, plain black tee shirt on but clothes the same filthy battle garb otherwise, his eyes swollen and red around as he wiped at his cheeks, muttering something under his breath. "Please call for a Healer should you require anything, Mister Malfoy. Actually -" Healer Tam hurried over to the bed, and fumbled beneath it, before pulling out a token of some sort, and placing it on the blankets atop Hermione's chest. "Hold this and think of calling a Healer in your mind, and the Healer's station will be alerted."
"Thanks," Draco said for Hermione, in a voice that rasped and shook a little, and Healer Tam smiled tightly, and hurried out, shutting the door quietly behind him. Hermione stared at the closed white door for a long, unblinking minute, overwhelmed with shock to the point of numbness, unable even to feel the joy she knows she should, because at least now they had a chance. She turned her head on the pillow to face Draco again. He shuffled his chair with a wince so that he was pressed up against the bed, and his face was carved deep in lines of worry and empathy as he took her hand in his two, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
"Everything is going to be all right," he murmured, words hot against her knuckles. "I love you so fucking much, and I'm so glad you're all right, and everything is going to be okay."
"But - but - what if it isn't? What if I l-l-lose the baby?" she wobbled out then, as his comforting words instead clawed beneath her skin and into the meat of her, tearing everything wide open, and it was a relief. She could feel herself break apart, falling into helpless, shaking sobs as the horror and fear flooded out. "He - he said - they don't know... What if...what if the curse, the Dark magic - what if...?"
And then Draco was leaning over her, arms tangling around her hot and strong, lifting her up so that she was cradled against him where he sat now on the edge of the bed, her face pressed to his chest and his arms hard around her back, one hand sliding up to pet through her hair as he made shushing sounds. Draco stank of sweat and blood and smoke, but it was him and he was real and close and comfort, and her hands clutched to his shoulders and neck, clinging to him as she shook through the storm. He kept her anchored. He kept her safe, murmuring comfort in her ear, telling her over and over that she was strong, and their baby was strong, and everything was going to be all right, until her tears finally ran dry.
"Water?" he offered then prosaically, although he sounded scratchy and clogged up with emotion himself, and Hermione nodded against his chest.
"Please," she whispered, and he carefully disentangled himself from her, and eased her down against the pillows, arranging them so that she reclined half-sitting, able to drink without spilling it all down herself. Her hands were weak and shaky, and he kept a grip on the glass as she put the straw to her lips and sipped, little mouthfuls, the liquid feeling odd in her empty stomach. She must have been being sustained through magical means, she thought, as the water soaked into her mouth and trickled unbelievably refreshing down her throat.
When she was finished, Draco pulled a flannel from the bedside drawers, wetting and heating it with a silent charm, and then leant forward, painstakingly and tenderly wiping Hermione's face, washing away every trace of tears on her skin. She was left feeling cleansed and fresh but fragile, like a seed pod rocking back and forth in a breeze - any minute about to be whipped away into the air as the breeze picked up.
"I..I thought..." Hermione began and then stopped and sighed, soft out her nose, wiping a trembling hand over her face. Draco was watching her with worried eyes when she opened hers again, and she tried to force her mouth into a semblance of a half-smile, mostly failing. She tried to speak again after a moment, when Draco just sat silent, waiting, trying to explain that she'd known, sort of...ish. Hermione wasn't stupid. She had always known that fighting while pregnant was a risk - but it had been one she had been willing to take. "I thought that - I didn't expect to... I know I should be happy - after the curse hit I was sure it wouldn't..." She looked down at her hands, resting gentle and territorial on her small bump. "...survive. So I know I should be happy, but..."
"But it doesn't make it any easier," Draco said softly. One of his hands lightly fell to rest on her two, his thumb swiping back and forth over her knuckles, and he looked wrecked and exhausted and filthy. "I know. But the Healer said - they've all said - that everything looks fine. They're probably just...being cautious."
Hermione nodded and shrugged, and her lips trembled. "I -I know. I hope so. I just really wanted..." She feels stupid admitting it. "I just really wanted to know I didn't have to be afraid anymore."
"Hermione - there are always risks. Even without the curse," he said then, quickly, cupping her cheek. "There would still be dangers, even if you hadn't fought." Hermione nodded because he was right, and she knew that intellectually, but it didn't feel the same.
She chewed on her lip hard for a moment, forcing herself to think as logically as was possible, and then: "I wouldn't change it. I knew that fighting meant there was a risk that I might m-miscarry. But I chose. I made my decision, knowing that could happen. I just couldn't - couldn't let you fight alone. So knowing that...that everything is probably, maybe, going to be fine? That's a win - isn't it."
Draco's face worked with emotion for a moment, and then he nodded, leaning forward, elbows on his thighs, pressing his forehead against his clasped together hands, almost like he was saying a Muggle prayer. His voice, when he finally found it, was strangled and muffled. "Yeah. Yeah, it's a fucking win, Hermione."
"The baby will be fine, and so will I," she said at last, as if she could just decide such a thing, and when Draco lifted his head, there was a small smile on his lips, his face all filled with fragile hope despite the wetness in his eyes.
"Yeah. You will," he whispered like he couldn't trust his voice, and his chin trembled for a moment. "Both of you." And then Hermione held out her hands to him, and Draco sat on the edge of the bed and slid his arms beneath her back, around her, his forehead sinking to press against the side of her throat, and it was his turn to weep while she held him. His heart beat too fast, and his breath was ragged against her skin, his tears dripping hot, and Hermione clung to him.
"I love you," he gasped desperately, the sobs he tried to stifle shaking him violently. "Merlin, I was so afraid...so afraid you were going to..."
"But I didn't. I'm alive, Draco." She pressed a kiss to his lank, smoke-saturated hair, and tightened her hold on him, listening to his heart beat with a gratitude that she couldn't contain, that swelled out of her like joy and disbelief and more than she could have ever expected. "I'm alive, and I love you, and everything is going to be okay."
"Ron!" Hermione grinned at him, stretching out her arms toward him, and he tore across the room and enveloped her in a rib-creaking hug, grinning broadly himself.
"Merlin, Hermione, I'm so glad you're awake." He shuffled back from the bed, and in a move that made Hermione raise her eyebrow slightly, clapped Draco on the shoulder, before pulling him in for a half-hug, all manly backslaps and arm clasps. "She's awake!" he said to Draco redundantly, and a smile - the first proper one Hermione had seen on Draco since she'd woken several hours ago - spread across his face.
"Obviously, Weasley," he said with dry inflections, sitting back down at Hermione's beside with a wince of pain, leg sticking awkwardly out in front of him. Hermione grimaced, wondering why the hell he hadn't gotten it seen to, but before she could ask, Ron interrupted her train of thought.
"I'm - I'm -" Ron swore under his breath as he flailed for words and came up with nothing, and then tried again, hopefully. "The baby's going to be fine, 'Mione. If it's anything like you, it's a survivor. I -"
"Thanks, Ron," she interrupted before he could figure out how to finish, looking awkward as he shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at his feet. It terrified her to think about it no matter how much she had tried to tell herself it was going to be okay, so she was trying not to think about it for now. From the way Draco had wanted to have Ron there before he updated her on what had happened in the battle, and the aftermath, Hermione figured there was going to be more than enough stress for her to deal with over the weeks to come, without stressing about that as well. Everything would either be fine, or it wouldn't, and either way, there were other things to think about right now.
"And I'm...sorry about your dad," she added, blinking back tears as the grief swelled up at the memory of Arthur, dead.
Ron's mouth pressed into a flat line, and he nodded, features drawn and hard suddenly. "Yeah. We...were all sorry about that. Mum..." And then he stopped himself, and forced a bright smile. "But mum has us, and we - we'll get through it."
"'Course you will," Hermione agreed, reaching out for his hand, and he gave it to her, letting her squeeze it tightly in a pathetic attempt at comfort. "And how's Cho, and the rest of the family?"
"Good," he nodded, relaxing a little. "She's really fantastic, and everyone else is...well, managing. They're okay though, 'cept Ginny's finding it extra rough right now." They chatted for a few moments about Ginny and Harry - still in the mysterious comatose he'd fallen into upon Voldemort's death, the Healers baffled, but hopeful he was merely suffering magical backlash from their link and would awake soon - before Hermione levered her aching body more upright in bed, and fixed both men with a gimlet stare.
"Now somebody, tell me what's been happening while I was out." Ron and Draco exchanged nervous looks, clearly neither of them eager to be the bearer of bad news, and Hermione made a harsh sound in the back of her throat. "I think I know about most of the people who were killed before the - the final confrontation. And Draco told me that Harry's still - still hasn't woken... And I know that Voldemort's body was salted and burnt. But that's all I know, and I'm sure a lot more has to have happened, and I would like to know." Her voice snapped sharply at the end, and Ron winced.
"She's your fiancée, mate," he said, shuffling back a pace, and Draco glared daggers at him. A smile crept around the edges of Hermione's face. She liked that they were friends.
"Well, um...Kingsley Shacklebolt, Professor Flitwick, Susan Bones, and a handful of other wizards and witches that you wouldn't know, died in the courtyard battle, and um..." Hermione could feel her face fall as the shock hit her. Kingsley? Susan? Professor Flitwick? No.
"I - I'll get you a list of the deceased, later, 'Mione, so you can look over it when you feel ready" Ron offered quietly, and Draco flicked him a relieved look as Hermione nodded gratefully. That would be easier, she thought.
"That'd be...good. Thanks, Ron." And then she turned her attention back to Draco. "What else?"
"Remus Lupin -" Hermione's hand flew up from her belly to press against her mouth. "Oh god, no..."
"He's alive and physically uninjured," Draco rushed to add. "But like Potter, he's been in a coma since the battle, after he was struck by a curse that the Healers have never encountered before. He's stable, but he just...won't wake up." It was better than him being dead, Hermione supposed, but oh Merlin, poor Tonks - and little Teddy... What if Remus never woke up? What if Harry...
"What else?" she asked, feeling numb as she steeled herself to hear more bad news.
"Snape is alive," Draco offered instead, smiling faintly. "Merlin knows how you saved him, but - well, it prevented the venom from killing him, and allowed the Healers to save his life."
"Oh...oh, I'm glad," Hermione said softly, smiling with more relief than she'd expected to feel. "I thought - I tried so hard to save him, but he'd lost so much blood."
"Well, he's alive - and he's just down the hall in fact, with Malfoy's mother fussing over him every minute, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't hate as much as he wants everyone else to think," Ron chimed in, smirking and waggling his eyebrows, and Draco wrinkled his nose with disgust.
"I can't imagine my mother babying Snape, of all people."
"Well she is," Ron said, still smirking as he slouched himself down at the foot of Hermione's bed, reclining across it and idly pinching Hermione's toes through the blanket. "Really intensely too. It's disturbing."
"What about - what about Lucius?" She nearly said 'your father' but bit the words back just in time. Lucius didn't deserve the acknowledgement of their blood relationship, and Draco didn't deserve to have it rubbed in his face. Draco's expression hardened.
"He's also alive. Unfortunately. He's secured in the old high-security wing of St Mungo's they used to use for the insane. All Voldemort's badly injured allies have been secured there for treatment, until they're well enough to transfer to Azkaban, to be held in remand until trials can be organised." He looked away at that, a flicker of worry crossing his face like cloud-shadows over the earth, and Hermione knew he was thinking about his own chances of standing trial. She shoved the thought firmly out of her mind as soon as it crossed it, refusing to acknowledge it.
"They don't know if he'll ever be well enough for Azkaban - although I don't see why fucking not," he added under his breath, before adding in a louder voice: "He's blind in both eyes; unfixable, according to the Healers, and the likes of him won't get a magical eye."
"The Healers said he blamed you, 'Mione," Ron interjected from his sprawl at the bottom of her bed. "What the hell happened, when you went to get Snape?" And so she explained simply and straightforward, the story prompting wide-eyed shock from both men, and no little awe.
"You actually accioed snake venom?" Draco asked for the third time, and Hermione smiled ruefully and shrugged.
"Like I said, I thought it was worth a try. It was just desperation, really. Nothing...clever."
"Merlin's fucking balls, not clever? 'Mione, you really are brilliant." Ron shook his head in disbelief as he left off twiddling her toes, giving her foot a good firm pat through the blanket. "Bloody brilliant. I would never have thought to try that."
Exhausted by Ron's visit, Hermione fell asleep before he'd even left, to the sound of him and Draco talking softly. She was woken by Draco's soft kiss to her forehead and whisper in her ear that it was dinner time, and she had soup to eat.
"The baby needs it," he chided, when she complained. And then, and then with a huff of annoyed amusement as she flailed sleepily: "Wake up or I'll pour the damned soup on your head," and she started giggling, warm and glowing.
She dipped fingers of toast in the bowl of tomato soup but let him handle the spoon, because her hand kept shaking and spilling it over the thin hospital blankets. He smiled as he spoon-fed her, and she insisted he have some of it too because from the look of him, somehow she didn't think he'd been taking care of himself.
"So," she started after dinner, rested and pain-free, her stomach stuffed with soup and toast, as content as she could be right now considering...everything, her hands cradling the small, hard bulge of her abdomen protectively. "Why hasn't anyone seen to your leg yet? It's been what, a week?"
"Six days, yeah."
"And you're still in your battle gear, your injuries clearly untreated, and it doesn't smell like you've had a shower since the battle either - scourgifies or no, the scent lingers, Draco," she added as he looked about to protest, and he grimaced and looked away, nodding.
"I know. But I didn't want to. Not while you were still..." He trailed off, staring at his hands, a contrast in porcelain and silver, the human one still marked with cuts and a slowly healing burn that went right up his arm. "It didn't seem right."
Hermione couldn't help the sharpness in her tone when she spoke again, like cut glass. "So you were what, punishing yourself?" He shook his head, still staring at his hands, quiet and vulnerable in a very uncharacteristic way. Fragile. "Suffering with me, then?" He shrugged. "Merlin, Draco, that's just fucking stupid. Why would you think I'd want you suffering?" She didn't mean to be so sharp, but it made her angry at...everything, to think that while she had been healing, Draco had been sitting there stubbornly untreated, like some kind of damned noble, pointless idiotic...stupidly sweet gesture of solidarity.
"I'm calling a Healer," she said firmly. "And you're going to get thoroughly checked out and treated." She paused and squeezed her eyes shut, hand clasping around the token Healer Tam had left for her, and called for a Healer in her mind, hoping she was doing it right.
"And then," she went on. "Then, if I'm allowed up and not restricted to bedrest, you're going to help me have a shower -" because after a week of nothing but scourgifies Hermione didn't exactly feel sparklingly clean either "- and give yourself a good wash too, in the process."
Draco grinned at her then, lopsided and surprisingly happy as he leaned back in his chair, splinted leg awkwardly stuck out in front of him.
"What?" she asked, suddenly feeling shy, and his grin only grew.
"You. Trying to fucking boss me about. Just like always," he said, leaning forward as if on a whim and pressing a kiss to her belly before smirking up at her again, and for a moment it was just the two of them in the dimly lit room, and they were both alive and whole, and he was smiling at her, and everything felt like happiness. Despite everything they had gone through, and everything they had lost, despite the pain, and the scars, and the broken pieces and empty spaces, despite the funerals they would go to, and the nightmares they would never stop having...
They had survived.
The Just World Fallacy will be concluded next chapter, in the epilogue.