Author's Note: The scenes in this chapter are told entirely in Hermione's POV chronologically, and all events take place before those in chapter 1. This picks up just after The Night Shift.

After the third and fourth time she'd provided healing services for Draco Malfoy, all within a single month, Hermione wondered if he was on missions nearby, making Inverness a convenient safe house. She wasn't privy to details. It was safer for her if she didn't know, in case her location was compromised or if she were ever found by Snatchers. Percy had told her to limit her foraging to days when there was someone else at the safe house, and to keep her patronus with her when she did.

It was always something minor that Malfoy needed fixed — burns and cuts and bruises. Simple things. The kinds of injuries she could teach him to heal on himself. For some reason she didn't. When he was there, she had someone to talk to. Someone to argue with about stupid things like Shakespeare's blood status and whether a corner shop sandwich was better than one from a proper restaurant. Not that she'd been to one in years.

Today they were discussing runic theory, something she'd only ever discussed with her professors in the past. As he waxed poetic about keying a rune to one person's magic, she wondered when he'd changed from a somewhat pointy teenager to a handsome wizard who curled his tongue around the zeds in rune names with ease. He was rarely in his own clothes and almost always coming out of the glamours used to make him to look like someone else when—

"Are you even listening to me?" He said, the corner of his mouth tilting.

"Of course I was," she said, voice a little higher than usual.

"Think you'd lose some points for daydreaming—"

"And I think you need to lay back so I can do my job."

He rolled his eyes and pressed into the thin pillow. The line of stitches was even across his forearm. The Dark Mark was still on the other side.

There were a few weeks where all she did was catch up on her research. Working on a potion to treat scarring and foraging when she was able. Percy brought her a birthday card, signed by the entire Weasley family, Fleur, and Harry. It was over a month late but she stained the yellow parchment with tears and smudged the ink on Arthur's signature when she hung it on her wall. When she thought of how hard it must have been to get everyone to sign it she hurt too much and had to recite runic alphabets until she fell asleep.

A skirmish in Edinburgh brought a half dozen patients to her hospital ward, and Adrian helped her treat the more seriously wounded before returning to the safe house there to help evacuate it. They were always having to leave the safe houses they held in the larger cities. She'd seen at least five in London, before being permanently assigned to Inverness. It was near enough to apparate without being too close to any Death Eater locations. The last she'd heard from Harry, they were confident they'd get to Voldemort and the snake before the end of the year.

Now she wasn't so sure. The plan had been to weaken him further. To try to convince his followers to turn. Or to engage them in duels until they yielded or otherwise. But she had a steady stream of patients, regardless of the injuries they sustained. Some were talkers, and couldn't help but regale her with their bravery, even though she wasn't supposed to know details beyond curses cast. She'd spent nearly an hour with Cormac, nodding as he puffed himself up and claimed to have taken down three Death Eaters without a scratch. He had splinched himself in his escape and needed his left shin mended and a blood replenishing potion. When he'd finally taken a pause she poured a Dreamless Sleep down his throat and went to the supply cupboard to catch her breath.

The vinewood of her wand vibrated in her cardigan pocket. She'd modified an alert charm so that when a new patient crossed the threshold she would know. One buzz per magical signature. Typically she would feel two buzzes, signifying someone dropping off an injured partner. But today it buzzed once, and she grabbed a new vial of pain potion on her way back to the floor to prepare.

The curtain closest to the cupboard shimmered a soft goldenrod. Occupied. Cormac was settled just inside the door and Remus was taking a rest across from him. Worn out from the last full moon.

"Hello," she began, pulling the canvas aside, "I'm Healer Granger—Malfoy?"

"Think you can help me with this?" He said, waving a hand over his prone form. There were bruises on his face and scrapes over his knuckles, which shook with tremors. His jaw was straining to stay clenched, to stay quiet. A diagnostic showed the beginnings of nerve damage.

"Who?" She asked, swiftly performing counter curses against the lingering flickers of the cruciatus.

His eyes dipped to her forearm and he grimaced. Giving it away.

"Tilt your head back," she said, and tipped some pain potion past his lips. When they closed he nodded, a huff of breath hitting her hands.

"She says it's good practice," he said, settling a little further onto the thin cot. "Helps you mean it more when you use it if you've felt what it does."

Hermione didn't know if that was true. If she would ever find out.

"Well," she swallowed, mentally going over everything she could do to help stop the shaking in his hands. "If we know the point of contact I can stop it from causing permanent damage to your nerves. Do you remember where the spell hit?"

Malfoy squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would help him remember. His pinkie finger, the one that wore the signet of his name, pulsed against his thigh. One of her hands covered it, moving over the delicate bones in his hands and fingers the way she'd been taught in her trainings. A massage, of sorts, but one that sent little healing waves of her magic across the skin.

With a light tug he pulled his hand from hers and touched just beneath his sternum. The last bit of flesh before bone provided protection. It was a spot they all learned to aim for in combat training. Especially with offensive spells, like stunners.

Hermione isolated the spot and reversed as much of the curse as she could. Between that and the pain potion, his tremors subsided.

"Tell me something else," she whispered, checking her diagnostics to ensure that things were stabilizing. "If you can speak, I need you to—"

"You've got…a patch of freckles on the side of your face," he said, as if it would be news to her.

"What does that matter?"

"It doesn't, I just never noticed before. Your hair was always in the way." He reached up and pulled the end of her braid where it dusted across his chest. So quickly she almost missed it.

"When did you last eat?" She asked, knowing that this level of delirium likely stemmed from low blood sugar followed by healing magic and pain potions.

"Hmm," he bit his lip, sucking on one corner before pressing it out of his mouth with his tongue. Smoothing over it. "Think I may have had dinner with my mother last night. But only three courses instead of the usual five."

"Nothing today then?" She flicked her wand and a bottle of pumpkin juice soared over the curtain. It was supposed to be her midnight pick-me-up, along with some butter biscuits. Instead she opened it and let Malfoy sip at the sweet beverage.

"Dolohov told me that each bottle has an entire patch of pumpkins in it. But I don't think that's true."

"Why were you talking to him?" She stiffened a little at the name but kept her focus. Of course he knew them all. "Try not to move, please."

Hermione smeared thick lines of bruise paste beneath grey eyes and onto the high cheekbones that framed them. Soothing the marked skin.

"Because he was there. Can't say I talk to many people our age," Malfoy said, holding his face perfectly still like she'd asked.

She screwed the lid back on the jar and wrote a quick note to ask Percy to send more. "Why's that?"

"Well," he held up a finger, "Blaise fucked off to his family vineyards, I'm regularly lying to former classmates I was close to, and your lot don't trust me. Not fully."

There were little cuts on his knuckles that she healed, noticing a slight tremor in his hands. Even after her work on his nerves. "Don't you get lonely?"

For a moment she wondered if he'd heard her or if she'd only said it in her mind. But then he quickly spoke, capturing her gaze. "Sometimes. Do you?"

"Sometimes," she agreed. "It's not like anyone stops in just to see me. They're always hurt. I don't get to see my friends outside of these walls, so when I do get to see them it's rarely under pleasant circumstances."

"I think you might be the closest thing I have to a friend, Granger."

"Why's that?" She asked.

"You actually talk to me."

If a week went by without a visit from Malfoy she worried. And she didn't want to admit that she worried. Not even to herself.

Percy brought her a case of supplies on a cold night in October, when her ward was empty and her only company was The Healer's Guide to Potions. She felt confident about her current theoretical brew for a scarring potion and the last time she saw him she'd asked if he could get her honeywater so that she could begin experimenting.

"Mum sent along some biscuits," he said, expanding the small box into a large crate and sifting through its contents. "Cinnamon still your favorite? They're here somewhere."

She nodded, and began sorting through the vials and rolls of gauze and sealed ingredients that must have come from the potions stores at Hogwarts. She recognized Professor Snape's handwriting on the labels. Honeywater.

"There's a jumper in there, too. She somehow finds time to knit." Percy mumbled to himself for a minute.

"How is everyone? Any news?"

He shook his head. The horn-rimmed glasses pushed up his slim nose. "Harry and Ron are forming a new combat group with some other younger members. Ginny and Hestia are leading the flyers now, scouting under disillusionment. Kingsley and Remus have larger plans to snuff him out."

Hermione swallowed. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"We might need you in Manchester for a night or two. Lavender's been assisting but Remus thinks being around the wounded isn't good for her."

"The girl has PTSD and lives with lycanthropy. Being around war isn't good for her." Or any of them, she thought. Funny, that she still considered Lavender a girl when they were both in their early twenties.

"I need to get back to London," Percy said, then placed a hand on her shoulder. "If you still have no patients tomorrow evening, would you mind checking in on her? We can send someone else here to cover you."

"Of course," she said. And with a nod, he left. Leaving her alone once more.

"It's just a scratch—"

"It's a gaping wound, Malfoy, and whoever patched it did a horrible job. It's going to scar something awful," she wove stitches across his chest, trying not to focus on the fact that he was wearing the wrong face. The glamoured nose was hooked and his eyes were brown. The hair had started to lighten, at least. She would have known him anywhere.

"What's one more scar? At least it wasn't my face," he mused. "The elder Weasley has a sort of roguish quality now but I can't say I would wear it that well. And then there's Potter. Entire life defined by a scar? No thanks."

Hermione finished her stitches and pulled his shirt closed, using a simple spell to do up the buttons. She looked up at him and furrowed her brow. Tilting her head from side to side until the glamour faded and he looked like himself again.

"Granger, what is it you're doing?" He asked softly. Eyes trailing over her own face.

"Sorry, just trying to decide which part of your face would be most improved by a scar."

He chuckled darkly and wet his lips. "Careful there. Sound as if you want to be the one to do the carving."

"What are you doing here?" She asked, shouldering around him to start setting up a new tray.

Malfoy scoffed, a sound she hadn't heard from him in a while. "I require the services of a healer, obviously. Why else would I be here?"

Hermione laid out clean strips of gauze and placed them under a stasis charm to keep them sanitized. "You're currently mobile, verbal, and—" she cast a diagnostic "—appear to be more than healthy so whatever it is you think is wrong with you, take it somewhere else. I'm about to get five priority patients transferred here and you're in my way."

"I have to say, your bedside manner has taken quite a dive."

"Oh, fuck off," she huffed the words, unsure if he'd heard them and not ashamed that he did. She was in no mood for his snark.

"What the bloody hell is your problem? Did I not adequately thank you last time? Should I have sent a fruit basket?"

"No, your pureblood manners remain untarnished but your actions, Malfoy, those I thought had changed."

"Granger," he sighed, "you're going to have to just be direct. I cannot read your mind when there's that much hair in the way."

"Don't," she said, and pressed the tip of her wand to his chest, just for a moment, before she turned to straighten the sheets on all of the medical beds. "Don't joke with me. Don't fl—Just go. I know what happened in Dover."

"Then you should know that I was there as a Death Eater, not with the Order. I have a part to play or people get hurt or worse. You know my role."

One of the beds would need to be enlarged. She went to push him out of her path but he snatched her wrist. The place where they connected felt like a spark. Like running a thumb over the wheel of a lighter and feeling the heat of the flame as it catches.

"You know what I think? I think you're looking for a fight. How long's it been, huh? Almost four years since Hogwarts and what better way to get that aggression out than to accuse me of something absolutely asinine."

She ignored the first part. It wouldn't change anything if she told him he was right. "Kingsley just left."

"And what does he have to do with our conversation?"

"So you didn't stun Neville? That was a lie? Everyone else is lying to me now?"

"I never said I didn't do it, Granger, but you act as if I had a choice! It was either stun him and hope that someone else got him out or sit there and watch him tortured, pretending to find it as funny as my aunt. Tell me, what would you have done in my stead?"

It burned to know he was right. It burned to hold his gaze, the grey of his eyes settling her instead of startling her. It burned where he still held her wrist, and she jerked it out of his grasp. "Fine. I have to prepare, excuse me."

"Fine, what?"

"Are you serious?"

Malfoy crowded her, and she could see the soot on his black clothes. The mud caked to the bottom of his dragon leather boots. Blood, dried beneath his ragged fingernails. And always the stain of exhaustion on his face. Like he'd come straight here. All the way from Dover. "I want to hear you say that you'd have done the same. That you know I'm just as loyal to this bloody cause as you are considering every single day I have to lie to my own mother."

"We all make sacrifices. That's what war is," she snapped, the stillness in the air disrupted by her outburst. With a deep breath in she spoke softer, but no less firm. "I don't have time to argue with you."

"But you had plenty of time to get angry with me and push me away. Thought we were friends or something."

"God—Don't you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?"

"Go on then, little lion, shut me up! I'm sure you've been just dying to hex me all—"

She shocked them both by kissing him hard, with one hand wrapped around the back of his throat. Soft hairs under her fingers. It lasted less than a second before she shoved him away. "I'm—That was—I'm sorry," she breathed, her lungs constricting from the anger and embarrassment. He glared and moved before she could.

"Don't be," he replied, and kissed her harder still, her face cradled in his hands and her body stepped backwards until she hit the wall behind them. Rattling the tray of gauze to the left and the cot to the right.

They pushed and pulled at each other's lips and bodies. Leaving new bruises and marks. Until Hermione gripped his wrists and removed his hands from where they'd begun to tug at her braid, angling her head. With a final movement she slipped beneath his arms and back to her ward. Counting the beds and checking on the spelled curtains until she heard him leave in a hurry. Steps rumbling down the stairs. A sound like an engine backfiring on the pavement signaled his escape.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, wondering what that spark had started.