Draco's head was swimming.

In addition to the pain there, which was breaking and receding like waves on the sea-shore, he was badly disoriented- he knew he was in a dark place that he did not want to be in- of that much he was certain- but the details as to how he had gotten there, and who his companion was, had become hazy and confused in his mind. He frowned, trying to work it out. It seemed there had been a broomstick flight and… a confrontation of some sort. Someone had been firing curses at them, someone he knew… his aunt? Why would his own aunt want to kill him? Never liked that woman much, never trusted her… and there'd been a girl with him… behind him on the broom, holding him so tightly he'd barely been able to breathe… sorta pretty in a bushy-haired, untamed way… but he'd been angry with her, very angry- he remembered that much clearly. He remembered a vague sense that he had never liked this girl very much, but he couldn't remember exactly why. Maybe he should try to make nice. She was sorta pretty after all. Not classically beautiful, like the parade of girls he had dated, casually, after Hogwarts, or like his slim blonde mother… it had been a long time since he'd seen his mother. Why was that?

He missed his mother.

Draco! DRACO!

The voice echoed through his head- someone was calling his name urgently, repeatedly. Was it his mother? Most people called him Malfoy these days. There was not, currently, a woman in his life who called him Draco; there had not been- not regularly, anyway- since shortly after he'd graduated Hogwarts and dropped Pansy Parkinson like yesterday's news. He'd caught her being unfaithful with Zacharius Smith, of all people- a bloody Hufflepuff, for Merlin's sake. There could be no forgiving that. He'd been just about to propose, too- ring picked out, and everything. Had Pansy ever been distraught at learning that her life of luxury as a Malfoy bride had just been yanked out from under her. Screamed and wailed until one would have thought he'd been the one who'd cheated- railed at him that he was breaking her heart…

Speaking of which- he frowned again, more deeply this time- hadn't there been something, some sort of- of arrow or something- sticking out from the middle of his chest? He was almost sure when he really focused his concentration on trying to remember it… Merlin, that had hurt. Slowly, he dragged a hand up and pressed it to his chest, seeking the foreign object that he remembered embedded there. He found nothing, and allowed himself a small sigh of relief. His fingers came away slightly wet and sticky, though… strange, that.

DRACO!

There it was again. His name. Whoever was calling it sounded practically on the verge of tears- as if, were she to call it again, it would come out as a sob. He'd better see what the matter was. With an immense effort, he brought his eyes into focus, blinked hard, and found himself face-to-face with-

The girl. The one he'd been so angry at, the one who'd been on the broomstick with him. Harriet. No. Helen? No. Her- Herm- Hermione. That was it, Hermione. He tried to speak the name, but was unable to produce a sound. Oh, yeah. There was a reason for that, but damned if he could remember what it was.

She was speaking quietly, throwing frequent glances over her shoulder as she did so, but he could make out the words if he really tried.

"-have to get up," she was saying, "Draco, you have to get up, now!"

Get up? Wasn't he up? He pondered this for a moment. No, he supposed, he wasn't up after all. He seemed to be sitting down. Well, sitting down agreed with him just at present, thank you very much. Sitting down was just fine. Except-

"Draco, please," the girl- no, Hermione- whispered, her voice cracking on the 'please', and so he decided to humor her, because she was so pretty, in a dirt-smudged, tired sort of way, and she looked so scared. Using the wall as a support, he dragged himself to his feet.

Immediately, it seemed as if the floor, like a rogue broomstick, was utterly determined to pitch him off. The corridor tilted at a crazy angle, the floor seeming to lurch right out from under him. In the next instant, he'd collapsed against Hermione; she was all that was holding him upright. "Put your arm around me," she said straight into his ear, "and then we have to go, Draco, we have to move."

Draco. He liked it when she called him that. Though it took every last ounce of his concentration and strength, he managed to put one foot in front of the other, and to keep doing it. They stumbled down the corridor, and now even Draco could make out the voices behind them, getting louder, getting closer. He got a very strong sense from Hermione that the voices were bad. Seeing the faces that those voices were attached to would be worse still. They were trying to escape the voices; now he understood.

Amazingly, it was Draco rather than Hermione who spotted the tiny alcove off the passageway- she would have passed it right by in her haste. Stopping abruptly, he jerked her to a halt and pointed at the opening in the wall, dimly illuminated by her wand, little more than a crack in the rock reaching no higher than his knee. They could get through it, though, if they went one at a time on their stomachs. (This was, of course, exactly the scenario he had sought to avoid back on the rock ledge in the cavern- only now there really were no other alternatives. The passage they were in appeared to run more or less straight, at a gradual downward angle, indefinitely; if they passed up this hiding place, another might not present itself. If they wanted to avoid their pursuers, this was their best and only chance.)

He shoved her ahead of him, watched her hit the ground on all fours and then wriggle her way into the hole in the wall. He noticed something as she did so- that her right shoulder was drenched in blood, the fabric of her shirt ripped there, the material around it soaked to halfway down her arm, and across her shoulder blade to the middle of her back. Unlike him, though, she didn't even have the benefit of bandages on her wound.

Her wound.

His girl- his Hermione- whose voice, when she spoke his name made even this cold, dark place feel bright (and he knew there were reasons, and pressing reasons at that, why he shouldn't be thinking this way about this particular girl, but he just couldn't put his finger on them at the moment)- had been wounded. By them; the people who were chasing them now.

A wave of bright, hot rage crashed over him- he felt angrier in that instant than he'd thought himself capable of getting. He literally saw red for a heartbeat or two and was actually in the process of turning to face the oncoming voices- he had a sudden urge to take them all on together, no matter how many there were, and make them pay and pay and pay some more- when he heard her voice again, calling him.

"Draco? Draco, why aren't you coming? Oh God, oh Merlin, please!"

And then he was crawling after her, because he just couldn't seem to deny that voice.

Following the light of Hermione's wand, he pushed through into a tiny space that would seem to make the perfect hideout- or, should they be discovered here, the perfect deathtrap. Hermione was taking steps to prevent that, however; as Draco glanced around, foggily taking in the details of his surroundings- an area about the size of a small bedroom, ceiling just high enough to allow Hermione to stand upright, but not him- she was erecting wards on their newfound sanctuary, head bowed over her wand in concentration, flying through the incantations. She quickly soundproofed the room, rendered the crack they had just crawled through invisible to people out in the corridor, and gave it a slightly repellent quality as well; a ward that would cause a faint, subconscious sense of unease in anyone outside who intended them harm, encouraging unwelcome passersby to hurry on their way.

She finished not a moment too soon, then threw herself down on her stomach and peered back through the crack in the rock wall. "I can see a light coming," she told Draco, whispering even now that the soundproofing spell was in place. "I can see- oh, here they come! There are three pairs of feet, and- and one of them's holding your broomstick, Draco! So they'll know we've come this way… but that's alright, they won't find us now. They'll just keep going down; they can go straight down to hell, for all I care!"

Draco cracked a tired smile despite himself, from where he had settled against a wall on the far side of the room. This Hermione, he had a strong feeling she was normally quite a rigidly upright person, not usually given to cursing- even cursing as mild as that- and so he found the sound of it faintly amusing.

His amusement was short-lived, however. It vanished in the next instant as Hermione turned toward him and pushed herself to her knees, then abruptly gasped and crumpled sideways, collapsing to the ground. She was already pushing herself back into a sitting position by the time he reached her, saying "it's all right, it was just… a little head rush, that's all," but he would have none of it. Grasping her firmly by the upper arms as she had done to him not long ago, he sought her eyes and sent her a quelling look, then turned her gently so she was sitting with her back to him, reached into his boot for the small dagger he kept there- he knew he'd find it there without quite knowing how he knew- and carefully sliced down the length of her shirt, from collar to hem. Hermione gasped again as he peeled the two pieces of fabric away from her back- the one on her right sticking to her with blood, reluctant to let go- until they hung at her sides, the shirt now held onto her body by the sleeves only.

"Malfoy!" she exclaimed, forgetting, in her indignation, that she had recently progressed to a first-name basis with him, with excellent results- "what in God's name are you- aaaoooww!"

For he had just run a fingertip lightly over long slash wound that marred her shoulder. It was angry-looking, fiercely red with puffy edges, blazing hot to the touch; well on its way to becoming infected. He wanted to shake her, to yell at her, to demand why she had taken care of him while neglecting herself. Damn foolish girl; apparently quite good at spells and incantations, but sadly lacking in self-preservation skills and common sense.

"Owww," she whimpered again, as Draco prodded gently at the wound, "Draco, don't. It just grazed me, it's not deep-"

But Draco ignored her. Deep wasn't the issue here. Infection was the issue. Besides which, focusing on Hermione gave him a sense of purpose, and as long as he was able to hold onto that purpose, the drowsy haze which had invaded his mind seemed to clear a bit. It was still there, lingering on the periphery of his awareness, but much more manageable when he had something to concentrate on. Something like healing Hermione. He rummaged in the same pocket from which he'd pulled his miniaturized broomstick, and brought out a First Aid kit the size of a matchbox. He held it out to Hermione (so long as he didn't have his voice, he was useless when it came to magic) who restored it to its normal size with a word. Her voice was strained and when she handed it back to him he saw that her face was as well; taut and white with pain. He had that sudden urge to go after the Death Eaters and kill them with his bare hands again. Instead, he opened the kit, located a tube of healing salve, squeezed it onto the hateful red gash in her otherwise perfect skin, and began rubbing it gently in.

Hermione buried her face in her hands, clenching them in her unruly hair, (which was all the more wild with everything that had happened), and breathing in sharp, shallow little gasps through her teeth. It seemed the ointment stung more than a little. Draco hated that he was hurting her, though he had the distinct impression that he would have loved to have seen her in this kind of pain at any time during his school years. He found this profoundly disturbing, but didn't dwell on it- it all seemed very far-off, hazy and unimportant, anyway, those long-ago days of the past. Here and now, he focused on his hands running over her skin- (he really hated the orange freckles on those hands, though he had a strange, calm assurance that they were a temporary thing, and so he tried to put it out of his mind)- on smoothing a large, square, magically self-adhesive bandage pad over the wound once he'd done all he could with the salve.

Then, heeding a sudden, strong impulse that surprised even him with its intensity, he did one more thing, an astonishing thing; bent his head and planted a kiss on the exposed skin of her other shoulder, the uninjured one.

Hermione made a sudden, strangled little sound as if someone had knocked all the wind out of her, and scrambled around to face him, eyes wide, lips parted in surprise, arms now folded over her chest, all that was keeping her newly backless shirt from falling off her body. For a long time the two of them stared at each other, breathing hard, completely at a loss for what to say or do next. Finally Hermione scooted backward on her bottom until she was sitting against the wall opposite Draco, her legs pulled up until her knees were beneath her chin. She accio'd her wand from where it lay on the floor between them, bathing the tiny "room" with light, then swallowed hard and muttered, "I suppose I'd better send up a distress signal from right here. It doesn't look as if we're getting out of this on our own." Though she addressed Draco, she kept her eyes cast down on her wand as she spoke. Draco looked on as she spoke the incantation that would turn her wand into an emergency beacon to the Army of the Phoenix, his vision sliding out of focus again. The 'second wind' he'd miraculously gotten was fading fast. It was with sleepy fascination that he watched her carefully place the wand back down on the floor; now it stood perfectly upright on its own, a steadily pulsating beam of golden light shooting from its tip and straight up through the low rock ceiling of their sanctuary.

"I hope it can penetrate all the way through to the surface," Hermione was saying fretfully, "we've no way of knowing, really…" Her voice sounded far-off and echo-y to Draco's ears, and soon enough she trailed off entirely. He watched her a while longer, as she continued to refuse to look at him, but without eye contact or the sound of her voice speaking to him, he found that the darkness was encroaching again, creeping toward him from the corners of the room, and he began to succumb, sliding sideways and down the wall as his eyes slipped inexorably closed.

00000

He was being shaken. Hard. And it was terribly annoying.

He tried to throw up his hands, but it felt as though he were moving them through water. He cracked his eyes open and was just able to make out a blur of thick, dark, messy hair, surrounding a pale, fretful face. The girl's lips were moving, but he couldn't make out the sound of her voice. There was a faint but persistent rushing as of wind in his ears- that was the only sound he could hear any more. His entire body was lethargic; completely uncooperative. What was happening to him?

She was trying to pull him back up into a sitting position, gesturing emphatically at a wand in the middle of the room, which was shooting light right up through the ceiling; talking, talking. But he couldn't hear a word. She broke off abruptly, ran a hand through her tangled hair, frowned at him. All Draco could think of was that he was very thirsty. Moving slowly, carefully, precisely, he curled one hand as if around an invisible cup and raised it to his lips, a pantomime of drinking.

Why the hell couldn't he speak, again? And what was with these bedamned orange freckles all over his arms? He wished he could remember, but his mind was foggier than ever, and getting more so all the time.

The girl took his meaning, though. She began to rummage through first her pockets, then his own. In doing so, her hands brushed scintillatingly close to… well, to a part of him that began to stir into life, despite the wretched condition he was in. He gritted his teeth and focused all of his will on subduing it- but even so, he could definitely appreciate that he liked having her hands roaming his body in a way that was undeniably intimate, if a little on the brisk side. Liked it quite a bit, actually.

Then she pulled something out- a miniaturized waterskin that fit easily in the palm of her hand. Taking up his wand (Draco suffered a moment's indignation- he was every bit as particular about who touched his wand as he was about who touched- well, his wand- but it passed when he remembered two things; first, her wand was occupied with what was apparently a very important task, given all her recent gesticulations and attempts to explain- and second, he'd just got through thinking how he didn't mind if she handled either of his wands- the one that wasn't attached to him or the one that… er, was.)

Then she was using his wand to return the waterskin to its normal size, unscrewing the lid and holding it to his lips. Draco, in his awkward half-sitting, half-reclining position, sputtered and choked at first, but then managed to swallow some of the sweet, cool water. He thought in that moment that nothing had ever tasted so good.

When he indicated that he'd had enough, the girl put down the skin, then bent close over him and began saying the same thing over and over again, her face only inches away from his, her hair falling down around them both. He still couldn't hear her, but she spoke slowly enough, and repeated herself enough times, that he managed to read her lips- five words, it seemed- you have to stay awake; you have to stay awake. This was followed by a moment of thoughtful lip-chewing on her part, and then another four words; I have an idea.

00000

Hermione realized at this point that there was no way Draco was going to manage to stay awake without something to focus his attention on. She would have sat right there and talked to him- she'd no idea what she would have said to while away the time until they were hopefully rescued, but she would have talked herself hoarse if she'd thought it would have done an iota of good. Draco Malfoy was not going to die on her watch, and not for her sake, damn it all.

She did not think it would do any good, however. He didn't appear to be hearing her anymore. She had no idea whether this was a result of the head injury or perhaps some sort of magical toxin released into his body by that weapon of Bellatrix's- she'd been trying very hard not to think about the possibility of it's having been poisoned, but to no avail. Her mind kept returning and returning, maddeningly, to that appalling possibility. Please don't let him be poisoned. Please don't let him die. It's my fault if he's poisoned. It's my fault if he dies.

Then, abruptly, from the midst of this completely useless and extremely stressful cycle of thought, an idea occurred to her; a good idea- a useful idea. The idea was this; if she'd been going to pass the time talking to Malfoy, she would probably have ended up telling him no more and no less than her entire life story- it would likely be hours before they were rescued and this was doubtless what she would have resorted to in order to fill up all that empty time. But now she couldn't do that; he couldn't hear her. But- she could show him, couldn't she? Of course, she could show him in a pensieve. Everything, from the time she was old enough to remember. Hopefully it would be interesting enough to keep him awake, and maybe- just maybe- give the arrogant bastard (for he was still an arrogant bastard, for all that he was fighting alongside them now) some valuable insight into Muggle life in general, and hers in particular. It would be a hell of an ice-breaker, that was for sure, and she couldn't help feeling that… well, that she would actually quite like for the ice between them to melt a little bit. Or maybe… it would be more accurate to say… she'd like it to melt a little bit more. The thawing process seemed perhaps to have already begun, after all- a little, involuntary shiver ran the length of her spine at the thought of that gentle and completely shocking kiss he'd planted on the bare skin of her back. What in Merlin's name had possessed him to do that?

What in Merlin's name had possessed her to like it so much? To wish, in the deepest, secret part of her, that it had only been the first of many?

Anyway… inappropriate kisses and even more inappropriate responses aside, the pensieve idea was a good one. She mouthed as slowly and clearly as she could to Draco, I have an idea.

00000

Draco watched wide-eyed as Hermione created the pensieve. He had heard of them, of course; had seen them occasionally as well, sitting on various people's various shelves. But he'd never been inside one- and it seemed clear as Hermione drew thought after silvery thought from her head and into the bowl, that she intended to take him inside this one. The idea of it riveted him. He still felt drowsier than he ever remembered having felt in his life, but he was fighting the feeling now, with everything he was worth. He was going to get some insight into what made this bushy-haired, anxious-eyed, impossibly pretty girl tick; and he couldn't wait.

He didn't have to, for long.

A moment later Hermione was gripping him by the shoulder with one hand- using the other to gesture first at him, then herself, then the bowl she had created, with her thoughts like silver mist swirling gently about inside it. Apparently she planned on going in with him. Well, all the better. He nodded his head to indicate that he understood what she was proposing, and agreed.

She placed the bowl between them, then took one of his hands in her own, lacing their fingers together. Glancing up at him, she mouthed, don't let go.

He hadn't been planning on it.

Then she was leaning forward over the bowl, and he was doing the same, until their foreheads bumped together- drew apart- bumped together again- and then stayed that way, pressed gently up against each other, their hair mingling, brown and red- (red? Why red?)- and then the bowl was rushing up at them, and then they were inside.