A/N: I am SO happy you guys like it! My heart is all aflutter from these reviews. Thank you, BonnieCharlie, BlackEyedBella, mchs-angel08, Mrs. Laurel Lupin, kckrystal, Chandellina, bizbeth, slytherindragon2145, pretty-in-pink898, i-LuV-cHaRmEd18, luna, SalemWitch, and lil-miz-greenday-911. (and anyone else who reviews after I post this.) Sadly, I start school tomorrow so this will probably be my last update for a while. But since you guys seem to like this story (which makes me so happy!) I'm going to spend all my free time (which may not be much) writing it. I worked really hard to get this chapter out before I have to start school so you guys could have it. (I was at this ALL DAY, literally.) Hope you like it!

Disclaimer: Oh, you know.

Draco Malfoy almost couldn't believe he was allowing himself to be helped by the mudblood know-it-all Hermione Granger. Almost. Because her arm gripped tightly around his waist was quite a huge reminder. They were halfway down the dark hallway outside the bedroom he had woken up in and Draco was having a hard time just moving his feet. He acknowledged to himself that there was no way he'd be moving at all if it weren't for Granger. Of course, he'd never admit that to her.

He was trying his hardest not to touch her at all, but found that to be quite an impossibility in this situation. So he gripped a hand tightly onto her upper arm, none too gently, trying to support as much of his own weight as possible by propping a hand against the wall as he walked. He just felt so weak.

"Malfoy," grunted Hermione. "Could you at least…try to help me out here?"

Draco's eyes flashed angrily. "I'm…not exactly fit for…walking around!"

Granger was quite small, he noticed. She was obviously having a difficult time.

Not nearly as difficult as mine, thought Draco, trying desperately to ignore the pain that flashed all over his torso. His legs felt like they were on fire. Every step was painful. Suddenly, the spot where he'd been stabbed flared up in an intense burst of pain that knocked the air from his lungs. He gasped. His knees buckled. He slid down against the wall, dragging Granger down with him. She gasped too, but only out of surprise.

"Are you alright?" she asked, leaning in close to see his face, which was flushed and sweaty. His eyes were screwed tightly closed in pain. His breathing was shallow. "Malfoy, say something! Are you okay?" she asked with more urgency.

"You did a…really…fucked up job…on my injuries…" he said through gritted teeth. "Finally found something…you're not good at…" He would have smirked at her, but he really didn't think he had the energy for it. Plus he was pretty pissed off that she had healed him incorrectly. He wasn't in a smirking kind of mood.

"What?" she said indignantly. "I did everything right! It's not my fault if you don't…heal well…you weak, pure-blooded prat."

"Weak?" he said, his eyes popping open. "Weak! You try…getting stabbed…in the—"

"Okay, Malfoy, this conversation could take all day," she cut him off cruelly. "You're speaking rather slowly. Get up. Come on," she said, trying to urge his body off the ground.

He shot her daggers with his eyes, but tried to get up anyway. He really needed a bathroom, and fast. And he wanted this little excursion to end as soon as possible.

Granger pretty much yanked him off the ground by his arm, which did very little to help his current painful state.

"We're almost there," she said. "It's the next door."

They made their slow, painful way the few remaining feet and Hermione opened the door for him.

"Do you need me to help you?" she asked him, though she looked as though she hoped he wouldn't hear her.

He turned his face towards hers to give her his most withering glare. "Are you fucking kidding me, Granger?"

She sighed and stepped away from him. "Whatever," she murmured.

He went inside by himself, gripping the door frame for support. Then he turned to glare at her once more before grabbing the doorknob and slamming the door shut. With a great release of breath, he sank down with his back to the door, thinking this was the strangest, most horrible situation he could possibly be in.

Why in Merlin's name did I offer to help him in the bathroom? thought Hermione out in the hallway. That was the most disgusting, embarrassing thing she could have possibly said. But it's not as if she wanted to help him. God, no. She just thought he looked so weak.

She massaged the spot where Malfoy had been gripping her arm. She could have sworn he was actually trying to hurt her. His hands obviously still had strength, that much was certain.

She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She was dead tired. She had only gotten a couple hours of sleep before Malfoy had woken up. Curse the stupid prat.

Why was she doing this to herself? What did she owe Malfoy?

NOTHING, she thought bitterly. Except maybe a slap in the face.

So why was she helping him? Concerning herself with his welfare? She thought this over for a while and came to the conclusion that she felt sorry for him. She knew he would hate that. He apparently couldn't stand to be pitied.

But she did pity him. All of his nastiness and personality flaws aside, he was just a boy trapped up in a horrible life. His parents were dead. He was shunned by the Death Eaters. (Or rather, he shunned the Death Eaters and had hell to pay for it.) His body was currently useless and extremely painful. He was trapped in the house of his arch rival with no way of defending himself.

Yes, Hermione felt sorry for him. That's why she was helping him. But he was still Draco Malfoy, nastiness and personality flaws not aside, and that's why she would never be nice about helping him. She knew he didn't want her help anyway.

SO WHY WAS SHE HELPING HIM?

She sighed. This must be what it feels like when your child brings home a stray dog and you end up having to take care of it. Harry being the child and Malfoy being the stray dog.

What was Harry thinking? thought Hermione. This whole situation was insane.

She could faintly hear Malfoy coughing in the bathroom. She leaned closer to the door. Yes, it sounded like he was coughing his lungs up.

"Are you okay?" she asked through the door.

She heard a sharp intake of breath. "Could you just…" he started coughing again, "leave me…the fuck alone…" coughing again, "for TWO SECONDS!"

She sighed and leaned against the wall again. She would have to have a look at his injuries again later. That should be a fun ordeal, getting him to take his clothes off. Maybe she could do it while he was sleeping.

"Ahem," said a voice from the end of the hallway. It was Harry. "Taking a break?" he asked, walking over to where Hermione stood.

She gestured towards the bathroom with her thumb. Harry stared at the bathroom door. Then his face broke into a grin.

"He's in there?" he asked, obviously on the verge of laughter.

"Yes, Harry, and you should be gone when he comes out," she said, crossing her arms over her stomach, trying not to grin.

"You actually got him in the bathroom?" he asked, this time his voice bubbling into laughter.

Hermione tried not to laugh, but couldn't restrain herself. "Yes, Harry, stop laughing. It wasn't easy."

But he didn't stop laughing. And neither did she. The full impact of how strange and bizarre this situation was hit them both at the same time. She heldher indexfingerup toher mouth as she continued laughing silently, trying to get Harry to stop. But she hadn't seen him laugh like this in such a long time. And to think, this brought it on. Apparently he found it hilarious that Hermione had helped Malfoy get to the bathroom.

"Oh…I wish I could have seen it…" he said, roaring with laughter.

"Harry…" she said, trying to breath through her laughter, "stop!"

His eyes were tearing up. He tried to laugh silently, but he kept snorting.

"Harry," said Hermione, trying so hard to stop laughing. "Just go away. Please. Go laugh in another room."

He nodded, unable to speak, and walked, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, back down the hallway where he descended the stairs.

Hermione tried to compose herself. But the sight of Harry laughing like that warmed her heart. She just wanted to sit and laugh with him for a very long time. He had been so sullen since Dumbledore passed.

But she knew Malfoy could probably hear them laughing through the door and she didn't want to upset his already foul mood by making him think he was the butt of a joke. Which he was, really. She had to fight to keep the laughter from bubbling up again.

The door opened beside her. Malfoy stepped out and steadied himself against the doorframe. He looked much more normal to Hermione, his robes straightened and his hair slicked back from his face with water. He didn't look quite as pale as he had a few minutes ago.

"Something funny out here?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at Hermione.

Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh, she told herself inwardly.

"No, Malfoy, nothing you would find amusing," she said, not laughing. (Amazingly.)

They stared at each other for a few tense moments.

"Shall we?" asked Hermione grimly, holding out her arm.

"Back to my cell?" sneered Draco, taking her arm rather reluctantly as they started down the hallway again.

"We're trying to help you, Malfoy, we're not holding you captive," she said.

Right, he thought.

He kept sneering. "Oh, so you'd let me leave right now if I wanted to?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Granger sighed. "No, we wouldn't, because you're too weak and you'd be killed by Death Eaters the second you left the protection of this house."

"What protection?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, they obviously haven't detected you here yet, haven't you noticed? And they'll never be able to, even with that stupid Dark Mark of yours, because the enchantments on this house were designed by Dumbledore himself."

Draco was silent for a second and then he brought up his wrist to look at it. "Bloody…" he started, but didn't finish. He stopped walking. The Dark Mark was almost completely faded. It was just an indistinct grayish splotch on his wrist.

"What?" asked Granger, trying to look at his wrist. She gasped. "Oh."

"Fucking Snape," spat Draco. "That's why he said that bloody spell. He took away my fucking Dark Mark, that's why I'm so weak. Fuck!"

"Why is that…I mean, why would you—"

Draco dropped his wrist and turned his attention to Granger. "Don't try to understand these things, mudblood," he said.

Her features screwed up in anger. "Stop calling me that! And why would Snape take away your Dark Mark?"

They had made it to the door. "I told you, don't try to understand these things," said Draco.

Granger opened the door and helped him into the room.

"Fine," she said, letting go of his waist rather suddenly so he tumbled onto the bed. "I'll get it out of you later. But onto other matters. Why were you coughing like that?"

He looked up at her angrily, trying to sit up. "How should I know?" he said. "You bloody healed me, you tell me why I was coughing."

She sighed. "I'm going to have to look at your injuries again. Maybe something went wrong with one of the charms," she said.

Draco didn't move. What does she want me to do, bloody take my clothes off? he thought, glaring up at her. He certainly wasn't going to make this any easier for her. In fact, he thought it would be quite amusing to hear goody-two-shoes Granger asking him to take off his robes.

"You're saying you could have screwed it up?" he asked.

Granger clenched her jaw for a second, obviously struggling with the admission that she may have done something wrong. "Well, I won't know until I see the wounds," she said through her teeth.

"Right," he said, not moving.

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him pointedly. She cleared her throat.

"Malfoy," she said.

"Yes, Granger," he said.

She narrowed her eyes, realizing he was messing with her.

"Do it," she said.

"Do what?" he asked in a completely serious voice.

"TAKE OFF YOUR BLOODY CLOTHES!" she yelled. Her face turned three shades of red. Draco smirked, satisfied.

"Since you asked so nicely," he said.

Draco Malfoy was infuriating. Hermione could feel her cheeks on fire as she told him to take off his clothes. It wouldn't have been so embarrassing if he hadn't been waiting for her to say it. She knew he was probably cackling evilly inside his head, the bastard. His sense of cruelty obviously hadn't been weakened, though she saw his arms definitely were as he tried unbuttoning the front of his robes.

Wanting to get back at him, she said with a little tilt of her head, "Nothing I haven't seen before, of course."

His eyes narrowed and shot to hers. "I don't even want to know, Granger," he said with disgust in his voice.

"Good, because I really wouldn't like to talk about it. Now can you please unbutton faster, we haven't got all day," she said.

He glared at her as he unfastened the last three buttons. He wasn't wearing a shirt underneath, just the black pants he had been wearing when Harry brought him back. Malfoy seemed to look at the robes for the first time.

"Whose are these?" he asked, looking at the plain black robes. "And where's my shirt?"

"Your robes and shirt were soaked with blood," she said. "You lost quite a bit of it actually. Anyway, yours clothes need to be washed. As do mine, come to think of it. You got your precious pure blood all over me. Now let me see your side."

Malfoy slid the robes off over his arms. Hermione gasped. The stab wound, which had just been an inch-long red mark after she healed it, was now black and surrounded by purplish bruising.

"Malfoy, what—" she didn't even know what to ask. She'd never seen anything like this.

She dropped to her knees beside the bed and reached her hand up to his side. She stopped before touching the wound. "Do you mind?" she asked, looking up at Malfoy.

"No, please, poke my painful wound," he said sarcastically. But she detected a hint of worry in his voice. How could he not be worried with this…thing on his side? She touched it tentatively with one finger. The muscles under his skin jumped at her touch.

"Does that hurt?" she asked.

"Not really," he said, though he was gritting his teeth.

She touched it again, applying a bit of pressure.

"Fuck!" he yelled, grabbing her wrist away. "Yes it bloody hurts, stop poking it!"

He let her wrist go. She stood up, her brow furrowed. "I've never seen anything like this," she said, more to herself than him. "I need to go consult some textbooks."

Granger and her bloody textbooks, thought Draco. She had run off in a hurry, apparently to Potter's library. She must be having a field day. A fun new discovery to look up in one of her stupid books. Draco laid down on the bed, slapping a hand to his forehead. He couldn't deny to himself, he was a bit nervous about this injury. And he was especially nervous about Granger treating him. She obviously didn't know what the hell she was doing. For instance, YOU DON'T POKE PEOPLE'S STAB WOUNDS! If she had just healed him right the first time, he wouldn't be in this mess right now.

And Snape. The bastard. He had taken away Draco's Dark Mark to shame him and weaken him. What Granger didn't understand was how much pain goes into receiving a Dark Mark and how much pain it inflicts while you have it. It becomes part of you. And if some stupid fuck decides to take it away, it's like cutting off one of your arms or legs. That's why Draco was so weak. That's why his injuries weren't healing properly. He was missing part of himself. Sure, he would regain that part eventually. His body would regenerate the energy he had lost. But it would take a long bloody time.

About twenty minutes after she left, Granger burst back into the room with a flurry of textbooks and papers and bits of parchment. She walked directly to her bed in the corner, dropped everything on top, and plopped down next to the stack of medical literature. Without even sparing Draco a glance, she opened a rather large, tattered, brown book and began leafing through its pages feverishly.

"Calm down, Granger," said Malfoy. "This—" he pointed to the purplish bruise, "—uh, thing isn't going anywhere."

"Shut it, Malfoy, I'm concentrating," she said snappishly. Then she glanced up at him. "And put the robes back on, you're going to catch a cold on top of everything else I have to heal."

Draco looked down and realized he was indeed still half-naked. He quickly grabbed the black robes and put them back on, shooting Granger a glare that she didn't see, for she had an enormous book jammed halfway up her nose.

Draco had the sudden vision of Granger mating with a book and having lots of half-book, half-wizard babies. He snorted with laughter. She glanced up.

"What?" she asked, noting the amused expression on his face.

He snorted again, but tried to turn it into a cough. "Nothing," he said. "Just…a tickle in my throat. Get back to your book." He sniggered.

She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before lowering her head back down to read. After a few minutes, she sighed in frustration and slammed the book closed, grabbing a different one from the pile.

Draco closed his eyes and tried to block out the sounds of Granger flipping pages and sighing and generally being very noisy. He had very nearly fallen asleep, several minutes later, when she shrieked and jumped up from the bed, holding a large black book open in front of her face.

"This is it! I think I found it!" she said excitedly.

"Oh good, does it say I'm going to die?" asked Draco morbidly.

"No, I don't think you are," she said, still reading from the book as she stood in front of Draco's bed. The book was titled, "Weapons of the Dark Arts."

"Did you happen to get a look at the dagger Snape stabbed you with?" asked Granger.

"No…" said Draco. "Why?"

"Because I think it was this kind," she said, turning the book around so he could see. He saw a picture of a small, black-bladed dagger. "Does that look like the one he used?"

"How should I bloody know, I wasn't examining it! I was a bit distracted by the fact that it was stuck into my side."

"Right," she said distractedly, absorbing herself once again into the book. "You see, it inflicts a curse upon the flesh it stabs that actually reverses the magical effects of any healing charms cast on the injury. That's…amazing. I've never heard of anything like it," she said in a captivated tone, as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. She laughed dryly. "It's funny, the whole time I thought I was healing you but I was actually making it worse."

Draco's eyes blazed. "Yes, that's fucking hilarious, how are you going to fix it!" he yelled.

"Hmm…" she said, as if she hadn't even noticed his rude tone or sarcasm, running her finger down the page. "I'll need to make this potion. It doesn't look too difficult. Well…actually, it looks extremely difficult, but no matter!"

She's actually excited about this, thought Draco, perplexed. She's like a little kid on Christmas morning. What the hell is wrong with her!

"I'll get started on the potion, you stay here, and I'll be back to check on you in a little while," she said, practically skipping through the doorway.

He could only shake his head at the closed door. Hermione Granger was, without a doubt, the weirdest girl he knew. What kind of lunatic gets excited about brewing potions to heal disgusting, cursed stab-wounds?

Merlin, was Hermione excited. She had never concocted this type of potion before. After hours of slaving over a hot kettle, barely managing to scrounge up all the strange ingredients (thank goodness this house used to belong to dark wizards), she was finally on her way upstairs with the finished product which she had poured neatly into a silver goblet.

She was hoping beyond hope that she had done everything correctly. She had read the instructions about twenty times before she even began, and triple-checked every single step before carrying it out.

She went into the bedroom and found that Malfoy had fallen asleep. Aww, how peaceful he looked. She kicked him in the leg.

"Wake up, Malfoy!" she said loudly. "Potion time."

He looked up at her groggily. Then he recoiled, noticing the smell wafting down from the silver goblet as white fog drifted over it's sides and onto the bed.

"What the bloody hell is that…stench?" he said, pushing himself into a sitting position against the wall, his features twisted up in disgust.

"It's the potion, Malfoy, and I don't care how bad it smells, you're going to drink every last drop of it because I just spent the past three hours—"

"Okay! Alright," he said. "Calm down. Give it here."

She handed him the goblet and he lifted it to his lips, pausing to say, "I swear on my mother's grave, Granger, if this kills me, I am going to come back as a ghost and haunt you until your dying day."

"How sweet," she said. "Drink."

They shared one final glare before he threw back his head and downed the potion. He coughed and sputtered once it was all down, grabbing at his throat and gasping for air.

"THAT—BLOODY—BURNS!" he shouted.

Hermione didn't even react. She just watched him patiently, knowing from the text that this was the proper reaction. It was quite amusing, really. She had to try very hard not to smirk. When he had calmed down some, she asked, "Taste good?"

He glared at her with all the rage he had in his body. His face was as red as a tomato, his eyes no more than slits. Hermione pressed her lips together very firmly, trying not to smile.

"Well, try to get some rest, see you later," she said, dodging out the door before she burst into laughter.

A/N: Now, my loyal band of reviewers who I love so dearly, REVIEW!