Hermione wasn't sure if she'd ever felt quite so hopelessly frantic.
Bellatrix – injured, disarmed, and bound – was cursing behind her, but Hermione hardly noticed. All she could process was that Blaise was no longer conscious, and a quick check revealed a horrifyingly weak pulse.
Blood was pouring out of his wounds, and Hermione desperately tried to mend them with a few healing spells, but the cuts were too deep for the spells to do any good. Sobbing at her ineptitude, she quickly magicked bandages onto every gash, but the bandages soaked through within moments. Why hadn't she learned more healing spells?
"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Hermione sobbed, checking Blaise's pulse. It was barely perceptible. There wasn't time to run for help, and she wouldn't have wanted to leave him alone here anyway let alone with a madwoman screeching on the floor next to him. Hermione's mouth quivered as she mopped her eyes, trying to keep it together so she could get help the only way she could think.
"Expecto patronum!" she cried, forcing herself to speak clearly in between sobs. "I need Dumbledore!" she yelled at her otter, and the image of it swimming out of her view was obstructed by her tears, which were streaming faster with every passing minute.
She leaned back down, sobs wracking through her body when she couldn't make out his pulse anymore. "Blaise," Hermione whispered, grasping his face with her hands. "Please wake up, please..."
She knew it was no use, but she couldn't stop quietly begging Blaise to regain consciousness.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, her tears splashing onto Blaise's face. "So, so sorry."
She sat there crying over him, Bellatrix still shouting every expletive in the English language at he, knowing somehow that this was her fault. If she'd never confronted him when he followed her that night to Dumbledore's office, or if she'd been more convincing when she'd tried to get him to go to his room tonight, or if – if-
Finally, Hermione heard the sounds of approaching footsteps, Dumbledore striding into the room with Harry and Ron close behind.
Dumbledore wordlessly knelt down and nudged Hermione out of the way. Harry and Ron were at her side helping to her feet in an instant, and she leaned on them for support, holding her breath as the Headmaster went to work.
When Blaise woke up, he felt the pain before he even opened his eyes. "Shit," he groaned.
"Language, young man." Blaise opened his eyes to see Madame Pomfrey giving him a reproachful look.
"Yeah, sure," Blaise muttered, closing his eyes again. He wasn't all that surprised to find himself in the infirmary.
"It's time for your potions, so you might as well open your eyes and attempt to stay awake for at least a few minutes. Unless you want angry, red scars for the rest of your life."
"I'll take it in a minute," Blaise said petulantly. "Just leave it on the table."
He heard the sounds of her setting the potion down and huffing away, and Blaise sighed in relief. His whole body ached, and the places where Bellatrix had sliced him open were throbbing unpleasantly. The last thing he needed while in so much pain was for that annoying woman to hover over him.
"They should help the pain as well, you know," a different voice spoke from next to head.
Blaise opened his eyes and turned his head a little to the right to see Hermione sitting in the chair next to his bed, her eyes gaze solemn and full of concern.
"What happened?" Blaise asked, realizing she must have been the person who'd saved him.
"You've been asleep for three days," she responded softly. "Your injuries were so severe that Pomfrey refused to use magic to wake you so you wouldn't have to feel the pain."
"I can feel it now just fine," Blaise muttered.
"She said if she'd woken you too soon the pain would still have been so severe that the potions wouldn't help."
"Fantastic. She couldn't have kept me knocked out a bit longer?" Blaise grumbled. "Anyway, what happened with Bellatrix?"
"I shot her," Hermione said quietly, her eyes widening a little, as if surprised at her own action. "In the foot."
Blaise chuckled, which hurt. "I find myself wishing you hadn't practiced to much and hit something more vital."
Hermione offered a very brief smile before continuing. "Then I took her wand and tied her up. She went with the rest of the Death Eaters, who were locked in one of the dungeon rooms until they were transported to Azkaban. I expect they'll be better off there. Voldemort won't be able to punish them for blundering up their plan so terribly."
"McGonagall? She's alright, then?"
"She's fine. Dumbledore made her stay in his office, turns out, and he locked it from the outside so that she couldn't get out. She still won't speak to him."
If Blaise thought it wouldn't hurt, he might have laughed.
"Dumbledore made Snape stay there as well. So that he wouldn't have to compromise his position as a spy, of course."
"So the plan was a complete failure?"
"To put it lightly. We didn't have any losses, just some injuries. Most of them were minor, thankfully."
Blaise raised his eyebrows at her.
"You're actually the only one who suffered major injuries," Hermione admitted. "Ginny had a concussion and a few other students had some broken bones, but that's about it."
"And you're okay?"
"I'm fine. You should worry about yourself," she said her eyes lingering on the gash on his face. "She tortured you."
It wasn't a question. "Yeah," Blaise sighed. "I might want to have a word with Snape about thinking modifying the memory of an insane psychopath wasn't a necessity."
Hermione looked down at her hands. "I thought that must be why she took you."
"She knew, and she knew you were involved somehow. Naturally, she wasn't very pleased when I denied everything. Or maybe she was," he snorted. "It gave her an excuse to trash me, at any rate."
"She did an effective job of it," Hermione said sadly. "Dumbledore got there soon enough to prevent your heart from stopping, though. A few more minutes and the blood loss would have – would have-" she broke off, her voice thick and her eyes shining with tears.
"But I didn't," Blaise offered quickly. "I'm fine."
"I know," Hermione said, taking a moment to regain her composure before she spoke again. "Or, I should say, I know you will be soon. Madame Pomfrey says you should be able to walk again in a few weeks if you take all your medicine." She paused, probably noticing the look of alarm on Blaise's face. "You'll be here most of the time until then, I'm afraid. But at least you get a wheelchair so you can take yourself to the loo instead of having a catheter," she said, pointing to the wheelchair positioned at the foot of his bed. "Well, you'll need help getting in and out of the chair, so you'll still have to put up with some invasions of your privacy."
Blaise closed his eyes for a moment. Hermione had saved his life, and the Death Eater's fan had been an utter failure. Relief flooded through him, though it quickly disappeared as a throb of pain went through his torso.
"Take your potion, it will help," Hermione offered quietly.
Blaise listened to the order this time, reaching for the potion. His arm, however, felt so heavy that he'd only been able to lift a few inches before he gave up.
"I'll get it," Hermione said. She reached for the potion, gently cupping on side of his face as she tipped it into his mouth.
The effect was immediate; as soon as it was down his throat, all he felt was a slight soreness.
"Better?"
"Loads. I don't know what Pomfrey meant by that 'weeks' thing. I feel fine now," Blaise said stubbornly, sitting up with the intention of swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His legs, however, seemed to only want to move a fraction of inch, and he'd barely been able to lift his head off the pillow, and even just that had taken all of his effort. "Can you help me sit up?"
Hermione gently helped him struggle into a sitting position, an action which caused a brief throb of pain. "This is going to be really annoying," Blaise muttered.
"I'm sorry," Hermione said, looking down at her hands after she'd withdrawn them. She'd sat next to him on his bed, and her expression was one of abject misery.
"It's not your fault," Blaise said bitterly, images of Bellatrix flashing through his head. He sincerely hoped that bullet had blown off at least a few toes.
"I could have gotten there faster," Hermione said shakily, and Blaise was torn to see tears in her eyes as he looked up at her. "I was so out of breath, and then I wasn't sure what to do, and I was scared, and I dithered for too long thinking about it-"
"Don't do that," Blaise said, cutting her off. "I'm going to be fine in a few weeks, you said so yourself.
"I can't help it!" Hermione responded tearfully. "I thought you'd died after I found you, and if I'd gotten there a even a few minutes later, you probably would have!"
"But you didn't get there later," Blaise pointed out. "Don't torture yourself like that."
Hermione's head dropped into her hands. "I thought you were dead, and it would have been my fault," she said, her voice muffled by her hands and her tears.
"Stop." Blaise wanted to draw her hands away from her face, but he knew he didn't have the strength. "Please, stop."
Hermione looked up at him, tears running down her face.
"You saved my life, Hermione. Can't you just be grateful that you succeeded?" Blaise had meant it to sound like a joke, but it came out as more tired than anything.
Hermione reached out then, tracing the gash on his face with a finger. It wasn't painful – the potion had taken care of that – but Blaise felt his pride object to her seeing with such ugly scars on his face.
"Madame Pomfrey says most of the scarring will go away if you take your potions," Hermione said, her hand lingering on his cheek. She'd stopped crying, to Blaise's relief, thought she still looked as if she were harboring a great deal of unearned guilt. "You'll still have them though. They'll just be lighter and they won't be raised."
Blaise had figured he'd be stuck with some scars. To go along with the mental ones.
"I should also probably tell you that everyone knows that we had some kind of relationship going on. As it turns out, no one bought your excuse for punching Malfoy as a defense of Pansy Parkinson's feelings."
Blaise had wondered if people would buy that sorry excuse. "Pity."
"And then there was the thing with me saving you, and then me coming up here to check on you. Those didn't help with the gossip."
"I guess I've ruined your reputation by being such a damsel," Blaise said lightly, masking the pain (emotional, this time) that would inevitably come when she told him they'd have to tell everyone they were delusional or whatever.
"Probably," Hermione responded, wiping the last of the tears from her face. "I'm not sure if the gossip included anything about you working against the Death Eaters."
"Figures," Blaise said irritably.
"Last I heard, everyone thinks I'm mad for having a torrid love affair with a Death Eater sympathizer and rushing to your aid."
"Wouldn't the fact that I was being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange tip them off to the fact that I'm not actually a Death Eater sympathizer?"
"You would think," Hermione said with a grin. "And yet."
It was cruel of her to grin like that when she was about to add insult to injury by telling him she'd set them straight that there was no such affair. She had no right to do something so pretty at such a time.
"I wonder how they'll react when they find you were working against the Death Eaters," Hermione pondered, still grinning. "Actually, they'll still keep thinking I'm mad."
"Still?"
"They might find you a little less exciting, seeing as it would reduce their view of you as a 'bad boy' quite a lot. Torrid love affairs aren't as exciting without a 'bad boy,' you know."
Blaise blinked. Why was she going on about this?
"Not that that will help with Harry and Ron. They'll still think you're no good, at least at first."
"At first?" Blaise said in confusion.
Hermione leaned over, and almost in slow-motion, laid a gentle kiss on his lips. Blaise was momentarily stunned, for he had been convinced she'd lay down the "there is no us!" declaration again. As it dawned on him that she wasn't going to, he kissed her back with a little more urgency (not every part of his body was injured, for Merlin's sake!). Entirely too soon, she drew back from him, and Blaise wished he had enough strength to raise a hand to prevent her from pulling away.
"I quite like you, Blaise Zabini," she murmured, lacing one of her hands with his.
"I'm confused," he responded dumbly, though he strained to curl his fingers around hers.
"I ought to apologize for being so cold to you for the past few weeks. I'll try to make it up to you, I promise."
"I thought you said I was a distraction. The war's not over..."
Hermione smiled at him, though Blaise thought it looked a little strained. "I guess I realized that distractions aren't always such a bad thing."
Blaise frowned, wondering if it was a trick of his eyes. Something more immediate was frustrating him a little more, though.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, her smile faltering.
"It's just that," Blaise sighed. "Well, I kind of wanted to kiss you again, but it's too hard to move."
Hermione ran her fingers over the scar on his cheek again. "Poor you."
"I think I'll need some help."
With a laugh, she leaned forward and kissed him again, and Blaise was perfectly satisfied to accept the idea that he seemed to always need her help.
A/N: Oh, how it pains me to end it so fluffily.
Except it doesn't pain me, because the epilogue will qualify the fluff a bit. Yes, there will be an epilogue. A few loose ends to tie up and whatnot. And there was no way I could finish this without including some time with Blaise being crankily pushed about in a wheelchair.