Chapter 25
Draco didn't return and it was getting light outside. As soon as the adrenalin settled, Hermione could barely keep her eyes open. Her feet were hurting, not to mention the burn on her leg. But even that pain was not taking priority over her exhaustion.
The bed was unmade, he had obviously been sleeping when he got the call that Hogwarts was under siege. The white sheets looked beyond inviting. She was only going to close her eyes for a minute.
She took off her shoes and climbed in. The smell of him completely enveloped her. In this place where they had done such intimate things. She couldn't think about it, she just had to surrender to sleep.
Consciousness returned in steps. Hearing his breathing was one of the steps. She sat up abruptly when she realised she was in his bed. He didn't wake. He was sleeping with in his pants with his shirt off. There was blood on his abdomen but no injuries. He had dirt on his face and hands. For someone so immaculately groomed, it was strange to see him dirty.
He didn't have blood on him when he left the previous night. She wondered what'd happened.
It was getting dark outside; she'd slept through most of the day. She needed to get back to the castle, she realised. She stepped out of bed, which woke him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat for a minute seemingly disorientated from sleep.
"How long have you been back?" She asked.
"A few hours." His voice was barely a croak.
"I have to go." She said.
"Have you seen to your wound?"
"Not yet."
He got up. "Come." He said and walked to the bathroom and she followed after a moment of hesitation. He pulled out a small chest from a set of drawers in the bathroom and put it on the floor. He indicated for her to sit of the side of the bath and she did.
He cut the jeans off her lower leg. They were ruined anyway by the burn, but it felt weird to be fussed over. He proceeded to clean the wound.
"What happened after you left?" She finally said.
"We went after the rest." He said. "Greyback is dead and we went after the rest."
She felt a sense of relief to know that Greyback was dead. She didn't like the idea that she was glad that someone had been killed but it was the case.
"And the wounded have been tended." He continued.
"How many did we lose?"
"Six."
"Harry?"
"He's fine."
"Who?"
Draco named the students who died, two fourth years, the Slytherin girl who had been fighting at the drawbridge, a hufflepuff sixth year, a gryffindor fifth year and Michael Corner. Hermione absorbed the news.
Draco was smearing a lotion on her wound. It stung, but she didn't say anything.
"You should eat." He said.
"I need to get back."
"They're all asleep." He said. "There is nothing you can do. So eat and let people sleep."
She should go, but on one hand, she didn't want to see the scars of war on the castle and its inhabitants. She let him call the elf for food. It didn't take long before the smell of eggs and bacon filled the room and made her stomach churn with hunger. He was dressed in a new crisp white shirt as he sat down at the table.
"So its over?" She said hopefully.
"Yes. The werewolf incursion is over." Draco said. "We got most of them. A couple of the magical ones escaped, and some of the muggle ones. We'll track them down. The muggle ones will probably go to ground in the muggle world. I think they got the message loud and clear last night."
Hermione tried to think through the implications of what that meant beyond the intense relief that they would not be under threat anymore. She couldn't really remember a time when she had not been under threat in some form or another.
"Thank you." She said. "Thank you for coming last night."
He didn't say anything. They finished eating in silence.
"I need to go." She said, resigned that she had to return and face the unpleasantness.
He nodded and stood. "I need to check on the wounded."
She followed him to the fireplace. He insisted on going first and she gritted her teeth, a little miffed that he assumed she couldn't take care of herself if something was happening on the other side. She followed him into the hospital wing because she had to see for herself. The wing was full and she felt a lump in the throat as she walked in.
He knew exactly where who he wanted to see. Someone with a bandage on his head. She couldn't tell who it was. Draco did a few things with his wand, then moved onto another bed. It was eerie silent in the hospital wing.
"If you want to be useful, we really need those things washed." He said. "We are running out of clean linen and bandages. I need to replace some of the bandages and I haven't got much spare."
She nodded and went to deal with the massive pile of dirty and bloody cloth in one of the corners. She levitated the whole pile and left for the laundry room down in the bowls of the castle. She passed the odd person on the way, but no one was talking or engaging in any way. The eerie silence seemed to cover the entire castle. It felt like a dream.
She cleaned the linen and the bandages as fast as she could. The pile stunk of smoke and blood. It took a couple of hours to clean and dry it all. It took a little longer than it should as she made extra effort to make sure there was no contamination as this stuff would be in contact with wounds.
There were more people around as she levitated the pile back to the hospital wing. Draco was still there. He looked exhausted, but worked continuously. She respected his ability to pull through when things got tight. Someone else was there helping him. She turned to leave.
"Come by later tonight and I will redress your wound." He said as she was leaving. "Don't make me drag you because I will."
She turned to stare at him but he wasn't backing down. It was apparent that he had no intention of losing this staring contest. Finally she turned and left, but now had a mental image stuck in her head of him dragging her back to his place. An image she reacted to emotionally, but she couldn't quite work out the surge of jumbled emotions.
She found Harry walking around the outside of the castle looking at the damage.
"Mione." He said with relief when he saw her. "Malfoy said you were injured."
"Just a graze." She said. "What's the damage?"
"We lost some people." Harry said with sadness. "Greyback is dead. Some of the other werewolves too. We have some of the others looked in the tower."
"What are we going to do with them?"
Harry kicked a brick. "I don't know. Some want to kill them."
"We can't just kill them, Harry."
"What are we supposed to do, waste our energy and resources running a prison? Ask them nicely not to do it again?"
"Surely they can be rehabilitated." She said.
"You always look for the ideal outcome, Mione and I love that about you, but I'm not sure we have the resources for something like that."
"We need to give them the option." She said. "Lupin is a werewolf, he isn't unreasonable, maybe a bit creepy lately, but being a werewolf isn't a hopeless affliction."
"Maybe we should use them to work the fields for us." Harry said.
"We don't use slave labour, Harry. That is not what we are about."
Harry rubbed his nose. She could see how tired he was by how slow his eyes were moving.
"Go get some sleep, Harry. Your brain is only going to get more sluggish and we need you be at your best right now. We'll talk about it later. They are locked up tightly, sleep is top priority right now. I'll hold the fort for a few hours." She said. He nodded.
She wished she could do the same for Malfoy, but she couldn't do his job. He'd only had a few hours sleep, which was better than nothing she guessed, but he was more useful here and exhausted than sleeping.
She stayed outside the castle for hours, just watching for anything out of the ordinary so she could raise the alarm if needed. The activity in the castle started to settle down again as it got closer to midnight.
Ron surfaced and took over guard duty with a couple of others. She'd only been up for six hours, but she was tired again. She thought about going to bed, but she thought she should go back to Malfoy Manor to check on Draco. He probably would come get her if she didn't let him tend to her wound. He was probably asleep, should be asleep, but he was a stubborn prick.
He was in the shower as she got there. She was amazed he was still awake. She sat down on one of the chairs and relaxed her aching muscles. The ache in her leg intensified as she let her body relax. She listened as she could hear him showering through the door. Tried really hard to ignore the mental image of him naked with water running down him.
She cursed her stupid mind for being stupid and weak. How the hell did she get herself into this situation?
He came out wearing black pyjama pants, carrying the medicine box. He placed it down by her leg. His exhaustion was visible on him.
"I can to it myself." She said. "I think I can manage to smear a lotion and wrap a bandage."
"Fine." He said and crawled into bed. "The blue one."
She smeared it on. It smelled of herbs. She could hear by his breathing that he was asleep before she was done. She put the lotion back into the small chest when she was done and shut the lid as quietly as she could. She was unbelievably tired and wanted nothing more than to crawl into the bed too, but she had no reason to. No reason to be in his bed. It would be awkward in the morning if she was there when he woke up. She wondered for a second if she could just stay for a while and leave before he woke, but knew out of principle, the universe would never agree with such a plan.
She watched the breathing figure in the bed for a minute before she quietly left.