It was soft and chaste, a brief press of his lips to hers. More reserved and hesitant than anything she had ever seen from him before.
If a kiss could be a statement, a possessive claim, a grand proclamation of love for all to bear witness to: his was a tentative question, awaiting her.
Draco pulled back first but his gaze lingered on her lips, and then met her eyes. His expression was undecipherable. A light flush had overtaken his face and crept across his cheeks.
Hermione knew it wasn't a fever. She could see her own reflection in the fathomless depth of his molten silver eyes, and knew that her face matched his, blood flushed under her skin.
If circumstances were different, if he hadn't been so exhausted and drained and isolated. If she hadn't been equally lonely, hadn't showed tenderness, hadn't been a kindred spirit that he saw himself in.
Hermione's gaze wandered and took him in, in his entirety. Pale, exhausted face. Ghostly purple bruises below his eyes. Jaw tensed in pain and anxiety.
Her gaze strayed down to his body. Mottled bruising across his abdomen. Lithe, veined arms befitting his athletic build.
And a dark abomination staining his forearm, a grotesque and obscene splash of black against his alabaster skin. The snake was poised threateningly over Draco's radial artery and curled around it, as if daring him to disobey. It seemed to radiate evil on its own, malignant and terrible.
Hermione stared at it. Something must have shown in her face, because when their gazes met again, the expression behind his eyes was shuttered.
She had answered his question for him, without ever having to say a word.
He looked away.
Hermione tried to avoid looking at the Dark Mark and instead let her eyes wander down to his hand. The fingers on both hands twitched slightly with the aftershocks of the Cruciatus. She pulled his left hand into her lap first, gently massaging the palm and furling and unfurling the fingers. She carefully weaved her eyes around the Dark Mark, but it leered up at her anyway.
Calluses splattered across his palm, rough and abrasive under her fingers. She gently kneaded his hand, tapping at the fingers with her wand. He curled his fingers around hers and squeezed gently once, before letting go. She let his left arm drop to splay across and rest on his abdomen before she moved to the right arm.
Performing the same movements with his right hand, Hermione paused when she noticed the feel of rough calluses on this palm too. Pulling Draco's arm closer to her and turning the palm up, she inspected it carefully and turned his hand this way and that.
"You're ambidextrous?" she asked, curiously. She had remembered him as being left handed at Hogwarts, from the way the ink had always been smeared on his parchment. It brought her some satisfaction as a child to see her sworn enemy with messily completed homework while hers was pristine.
He tensed slightly under her, and then nodded.
"Why?"
She had turned to stare at him, fascinated by the change. Draco seemed to be thinking a bit before he answered.
"I hated seeing the Dark Mark," he said. Something guilty and regretful crossed his face for the briefest of moments, before it vanished again under a cool exterior.
He reminded her of the sea. The way that waves could become a storm, leaving destruction in its wake, crashing against cliffs and pulling apart cities.
But then there were moments like this, gentle warm waves lapping at the shore, spilling onto sand with inviting whispers.
So much lurked beneath the surface, buried a thousand fathoms deep. Occasionally something genuine and sincere broke the surface before sinking away again.
Hermione kept weathering the storm anyway. She wondered when she would be capsized and pulled under.
It was early morning by the time she finished healing Draco.
Truthfully, she had finished hours ago. Repairing his rib, sealing the puncture in his lung, and Vanishing the fluid pooling within had been enough - she could've roused him then and had him bring her to Malfoy Manor.
But something about the quiet moments in the dark, so few and far in between, made her pause. She wanted to stretch them out as much as possible. If she concentrated and willed it, maybe she would never have to leave the moment. She could exist fully in it.
She counted these moments and kept careful track of them, because she knew they were numbered. One day, she would have her last tender, fleeting, stolen moment with Draco and there would be no more.
So she let herself sit on the sofa, massaging his hands in silence. He kept her company; she could pretend he hasn't her patient or a spy for the Insurgency, and she wasn't his handler. He was just someone.
Eventually, his breathing slowed and evened out, his head lolled onto her, and he fell into an exhausted sleep. She paused in her massage, suddenly uncertain. Slowly, she put his hand down and let it rest in her lap, and entwined her fingers with his.
She could pretend, for a little while longer, and let her head drop onto his.
When Draco finally roused a few hours later, and night had conquered day and chased the moon away, he rose blearily and began to collect his discarded body armour. Hermione unfolded her stiff body from the sofa, packed her rucksack in silence, and followed him out of the cottage. Neither spoke.
He offered his arm out to her and she stepped in to grasp it. The cliffside cottage, cheerful and whitewashed in the pink tones of sunrise, vanished. Hermione felt almost mournful.
They appeared in the mute halls of Malfoy Manor, shining and silent and still. Draco led the way again, winding through the elegant maze, deeper and deeper into the mausoleum.
They appeared some time later at the familiar double doors of Narcissa's bedroom, where she lay in repose. He opened the door and stepped back to allow Hermione in, and followed behind her shortly.
She made her way over to Narcissa's bedside, dropping her rucksack to the side as she went. Surging forward to stand next to the Malfoy matriarch, she stared down inquisitively.
Narcissa looked well. A swish of Hermione's wand brought up the familiar diagnostic charm. Her vitals were good: organs churned away somewhat weakly, at half or three quarters capacity, but that could be rectified. A tap and twirl of Hermione's wand brought the diagnostic into focus over Narcissa's head and illuminated parts of her brain as the lights shimmered a halo around her.
The dark cores that had initially worried her during their first few sessions were no longer a concern - they had remained stable through the months. Curiously, certain regions of Narcissa's brain were lit up with more intensity than before.
A very quiet shuffling noise broke the silence of the room and startled Hermione. She whipped her head around to see where it had come from, but Draco had been still as a statue, standing a few feet behind her. His eyebrow quirked up coolly as he met her gaze, as if to ask what the fuck are you doing?
The shuffling drew Hermione's attention again so she turned back to Narcissa.
It was Narcissa. Her hand was twitching where it lay above the linen sheets.
Hermione stared in muted surprise before looking back up at the brilliantly lit diagnostic charm. Understanding bloomed within her.
She turned back to meet Draco's gaze and extended a hand, beckoning to him. He shot her a look of mild suspicion, before striding over to stand next to her. Hermione gestured at the diagnostic with her wand and waved it to magically expand the reading output.
"I think she's dreaming right now," Hermione said. A touch of wonder and awe coloured her tone; it really was miraculous. Narcissa had been at death's doorstep when she had first laid eyes upon her, but the woman before her now looked healthy (albeit a touch thin and tired).
Draco stared curiously at the diagnostics, as the golden lights glittered merrily in his eyes.
"Can you tell what she's dreaming about?" he asked quietly. There was a touch of longing in his face, Hermione realized.
"No."
Yes, whispered an unhelpful voice in her brain. You can tell, because you did. You eavesdropped on her dreams once. Shut it, Hermione snapped back.
Draco seemed satisfied by this answer and stepped back with a nod. He Conjured the usual dark velvet sofa to begin preparing for their routine. He had abandoned the body armour into Mippet's waiting arms once he Apparated into the entry hall, so he wore only his long sleeved black shirt. With one smooth motion, he sat down and pulled his shirt off.
Hermione flushed and did not meet his eye, as she began her own usual preparations: Conjuring the goblin wrought silver knife and bowl, her surgical tool tray, assorted potions and supplies. Staring down at her supplies and remembering belatedly the desperate struggle when she healed the runic cuts last time, she Conjured a set of bandages.
Just in case his body betrayed him again.
She worked away quietly, deep in thought. Narcissa's health was improving. There would be a time when Draco's aid to them ran out: either through his choice by ending the partnership, or his body's choice, by ending him.
The Insurgency still relied desperately on his aid — the intelligence he provided was instrumental in their progress. Without it and without him, they would be slowly overwhelmed. He had made himself critical to their cause and held their success in his caged hands like a tiny fluttering bird.
He could close the trap around them and crush them at any time.
But an undercurrent of tension and dread ran through her, because try as she might, she couldn't ignore the facts: Secrets of the Darkest Art was missing from his library. He had been working on something, a secretive project, of the darkest nature.
Hermione needed to find some way to procure the book out from under Draco's keen eye without alerting him. Once she had it in hand, the Insurgency would be able to start solving the complex problem of horcruxes. It would be the beginning of the end for Voldemort.
She paused in her grotesque carving to chance a glance up at Draco.
Even after a few hours of rest (the longest sleep he'd had in a while, she suspected) he looked exhausted. His youthful face had taken on the weary look she had seen so often in Insurgency members - a permanent sort of exhaustion from trudging onward and forward, no matter the cost. He stared pensively away from Hermione, towards Narcissa's bed where she lay. He looked to be deep in thought.
"It's rude to stare, Granger. Did no one ever teach you manners?" Draco asked loftily, turning to catch her eye. He had noticed the distinct pause in the brutally painful procedure.
Hermione flushed slightly and bent down to return to her work.
Despite the hissing and sullen attitudes and venomous arguments, somewhere along the way, something had bloomed between them. She tried not to dwell too much on it and did her best to avoid giving it a name, assigning a label.
If she pretended it didn't exist, then it couldn't be stolen from her. If she never validated it and spoke about it, it could remain hidden safely away.
Hermione knew she was brave (she was a Gryffindor, after all), but she didn't know if it was courage or cowardice that drove her to act this way. She suspected Draco was just as unwilling to admit that anything had changed between them.
Admitting it would disturb the tentative peace they'd found within each others' company. Admitting it would mean those moments belonged to something bigger and larger, something that they could never pursue during the backdrop of war.
So they carried on as they did, hurtling towards an unknown tomorrow, trying to exist desperately in the moment and cling to today.
Hermione did end up using the bandages. She had sat for a long time with her teeth gritted, frustratedly hissing at the cuts to heal. They gave a half hearted attempt and cooperated in the loosest sense of the word. Bits of ragged flesh twitched slightly at one another before giving up and falling limp.
In the end, she had only managed to seal about half of them. The rest kept splitting themselves open no matter how hard she tried or how many times she tried. Draco watched quietly and was silent as she worked, only observing her with a grave expression.
She doused the cuts in Essence of Dittany and began wrapping his chest as he sat upright. Neither spoke - what could be said, that hadn't already been? The only sound in the room was their breathing in pattern, and the occasional merry splish-splash of the imbued blood leaping in the bowl next to them.
The blood cast its own ethereal light, bathing them both in a blood red glow. It pulsated and undulated, casting unnatural shadows across their faces.
When Hermione had secured the bandages and tipped a pain relief potion down Draco's throat ("I'm not an invalid, Granger, I can do that myself - thank you very much"), she rose and carefully carried the bowl over to Narcissa's side.
She stared into the glittering, glistening depths. No matter how many times she harvested this ill-gotten elixir of life … it still entranced her. The mystical thrum of power emanating from the bowl felt delicious. She was neither a Malfoy or a Black, but the imbued blood spoke sinfully even to her.
With a slight grimace of regret (or maybe even envy, she admitted in the secure fortress of her mind), Hermione sliced carefully into Narcissa's arm and began the infusion.
A puff of pained breath and the shuffle of clothing behind her told her that Draco had dressed himself. He walked over carefully to join her, taking his spot next to her. Both of them watched over Narcissa as the transformation took hold.
When the bowl was painfully empty and had lost the lustre of forbidden arcane magic, and the stream of blood dried into a trickle and then a single drop on Narcissa's forearm, Hermione cast the diagnostic charm again.
"Her organs are at a good 80% function or so," she hummed happily. Hermione flicked her wand to distort and re-arrange the diagnostic charm, lights winking merrily in and out of existence. A shower of multicoloured sparks enveloped Narcissa's head and winked up at them.
Hermione observed the lights carefully and tapped gently at Narcissa's temple, then the crown of her head, then pointed the wand to trace a lazy circle and illuminate the brain.
"You can see here," Hermione pointed. "She's in the deep stages of a magically induced sleep now - not a coma anymore, like before anyhow. It looks like with one more Healing that I can lift the sleep and let her wake up."
She finished on the gentle note and turned to face Draco entirely, looking up at him. He was still as a statue as he stared down at Narcissa, hardly daring to breathe.
She could see from her low vantage point that his jaw was clenched. A vein seemed to strain in his neck.
One beat of silence passed between them, and then another and another. He looked uncertain, towering over her - there was something akin to hope on his face, but trepidation lay there too. Something fragile. Something tender.
Something bruised.
Hermione stilled. She hadn't planned for this reaction from Draco - he was usually so carefully reserved when it came to Narcissa, and shielded his feelings from her. He had been cold and guarded for so long, and had resigned himself to the inevitability of Narcissa's decline - he didn't dare believe in a moment like this.
He had never allowed himself the sinful privilege of hope.
Slowly, almost as if it happened of its own accord, her left hand reached out to thread her fingers through his.
Draco started, staring down at her with a thunderstruck expression.
Hermione gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and there was no hesitation this time when he squeezed back.