Of course she was awake. The Minister had swept into the room and Draco had caught a glimpse of one bare foot about to make contact with the worn floorboards before Shacklebolt spoke,
"Now, now, Ms. Granger, it will not do to have you up and about just yet. You lost a good deal of blood, and I need to be debriefed. You might as well rest while you tell me...Ah, actually, let's kill three birds with one stone. Mr. Malfoy arrived with Mr. Potter and myself and saw you healed, and he is outside. I'm sure he'd like to come in and give you the Blood-Replenishing potion I pulled from your stores, give you a look over, et cetera. Shall I ask him in?"
She must have given her assent, as the Minister stuck his head out the door and gestured for him to enter. Draco found his feet momentarily stuck to the floor, but overcame in it favor of an overriding, impersonal professionalism. He'd taken his fair share of lumps when entering a patient's room in St. Mungos, and the best way to overcome it was to get in, get the work done, and get out. When he raised his eyes from the floor, however, she was giving him a speculative look that he remembered from sixth year, and it made him flinch ever-so-slightly. She noticed, and the Minister seemed happy enough to ignore having seen it, even if it was clear that he had.
Draco handed her the potion, and began slowly murmuring through the list of diagnostic spells, checking to see how she had recovered thus far. Not much, but enough to sit up and speak, he supposed. She really should get a few more hours of sleep. She must have realized he wasn't going to talk to her for the time being, so she drank the potion and began speaking to Shacklebolt, notably, on a first name basis,
"Kingsley, we tried to stop it, but we failed. It's coming. The best the Ministry can do now, is legislate around it, set boundaries so that all hell doesn't break loose. It's too old, too powerful. There's no stopping it, only moderating it's severity."
"I see, Ms. Granger, any suggestions?"
"The Sorting Hat, and why are you calling me that? You've been calling me Hermione since I was fifteen..."
"Hmm, that could be disastrous or brilliant. And I was attempting to spare Mr. Malfoy's sense of propriety." He looked up at both of them abruptly at having been addressed, even if indirectly. Granger responded immediately,
"It's the only thing in Britain vaguely close to old enough to wrangle the forces involved, as the Avebury cauldron is defunct, and it has to be an item tied to the land and people, we can't borrow anything—also I have the distinct feeling that Malfoy doesn't have any expectations of propriety from me." Draco's face contorted, barely holding back a snarl and a sharp comment at her insinuation that he was still the same bigoted, snobby, prig from their school days, but she saw and laughed before she finally turned the full force of her eyes on him and responded,
"That's not what I meant, Malfoy, I was referring to our truce from eighth year, and from seven years prior of having observed my behavior. While manners are important to me, I have a habit of being more familiar in my address of others than wizards might like." He swallowed the vitriol poised on his tongue in favor of a blander response, but a polite one,
"Granger, your politesse has never been faulty, only different. It's my understanding that it's uncommon in the Muggle world to still use honorifics unless it's a formal occasion. So it likely sounds like we're all walking around in an Edwardian romance to you, but your addressing the Minister by his first name does sound quite odd to me."
She laughed again,
"It's not my fault you're all so formal!" She paused, "What's your diagnosis, then, Mr. Malfoy?" He clapped his mouth shut at her sarcastic but polite response, then spoke while pretending to doff a cap in her direction,
"You need more sleep, Ms. Granger." It felt odd to joke with her, disquieting even, but not enough to stop him. She leaned away from both men to grab her wand and he immediately interjected,
"I wouldn't attempt that for now, you're exhausted, your wounds were from overextending your magic." His tone was perhaps more clipped than was necessary, but he wanted her to take him seriously.
"I was just going to change the warding on my workroom to admit you," she replied, duly chastised. The Minister was smirking when he spoke up,
"I'll take care of it, Hermione."
It was at that moment that a opalescent blue stag burst through the wall, and Draco may or may not have jumped a few inches at the sight of the six foot beast's abrupt appearance. It dipped its head and antlers at Shacklebolt, then addressed Hermione,
"Hermione if you're awake, you should still be sleeping. Kingsley, I have news, please return immediately." Hermione frowned,
"That's not good, or he just would have said."
Kingsley nodded to Hermione, pulled two fingers at Draco to follow, and headed for the stairs. Draco couldn't help worrying that now the Minister's first name was in his head...hopefully he wouldn't slip with such an informal address out loud. Once they were back in the vestibule, the man turned,
"I have to go back, but you should stay here and look after her for the time being, I'll be back tomorrow for tea." He promptly Apparated away, not only did the warding not apply to him, but he hadn't given Draco any opportunity to protest the idea of being left alone with Hermione Granger. Whom he had been an ass to for the vast majority of his schooling, whom he'd seen tortured, whom he'd once tried to stop from killing Voldemort. Ugh, this was going to be a very long two days.
He decided to head back upstairs for the time being, and made short work of knocking on her door. He entered after a noise of assent, and finally took a look around. The walls were two shades of lavender making a brocade pattern against the same white-washed trim, which was more feminine than he was anticipating of her. There were additional bookshelves filling the two corners nearest the hall, an evergreen wing-back chair in the corner to his right, a window seat facing the front garden, and two doors opposite the bed, presumably to a closet and an en suite lavatory. She was watching him assess the room from her nest of cream sheets and pillows, a toffee colored quilt across the top, and an umber fur blanket folded across the foot of the bed. There was some kind of design in white paint on the floorboards bordering the room, several swirls and cross hatches branching off a center line, but he didn't recognize it. She was waiting for him to say something, he realized.
"You have a lovely home, Granger."
"Thank you, Malfoy...Did Kingsley change the wards for you?"
"I haven't checked yet, but he said he'd be back for tea tomorrow. I wanted to ask if you need a Dreamless Sleep before I head down."
"No thank you," she hesitated and chewed her full lower lip as if contemplating saying something further, but her creased brow suggested she'd decided against it.
"I'll just doze. Could you make me a chamomile tea, please? With honey and lemon?" He nodded. It was hardly as if she could make her own. It was clear that they were holding to their previous truce through formality, but he'd rather not stir the pot and be stuck in her house if they were fighting. He'd take it. She reached to her bedside table and switched on some kind of wireless radio, and a quiet classical tune warbled out of it. He knew a polite dismissal when he saw one, and turned to leave. She spoke abruptly,
"You can stay and read if you like. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll start rattling off chores just to give you something to occupy your time, and it would feel rude to do that, you're a guest, even if a required one." He found himself chuckling,
"The moment I do chores for you, Granger, will be a cold day in hell. But I will go get your tea, and then I will read. No need to have you shouting across the house should you need something." His jibe lacked malice and she clearly noticed as she also chuckled.
"Thank you for your quick wand work. I have the feeling some other members of my department weren't so lucky as to have an Auror medic on hand." He started slightly,
"I didn't realize Potter kept you informed of my doings."
"Well, not Harry certainly. He doesn't seem to think those sorts of details might be important until the last minute. No. You were mentioned in Ginny's last Howler. Congratulations on the position." This he laughed at outright. He was still grinning when he spoke again, and she appeared to be calculating the facial expression,
"Why did Ginevra Potter send you a Howler?!" She chuckled along,
"Something about 'there's no project so important that I can't visit every once in a while' and that she'd spent more time gossiping with you lately, so I was clearly being a terrible friend for not coming to see her." This stopped his laughter,
"Whatever is was that you were working on was clearly not so unimportant that you could ignore it for a bloody social call, or else you wouldn't have been bleeding out on your front patio." He knew his tone was hard, he found himself annoyed that Ginny was being selfish and callous, but Granger just laughed,
"That's Ginny though, unafraid to put something indelicately in order to prove a point. She didn't upset me in the least, or I would have returned to London." He found himself giving an undignified snort, while he had come to like Ginny a great deal, her lack of tact was sometimes off-putting. Rather than spitting invective at his patient about her friend, he pulled a sour face for a moment and muttered,
"I'll go get your tea."
...
He'd used humor. Shocking. She'd remembered them coming to a quiet accord during their eighth year at Hogwarts, but she'd never really joked with him. The closest they'd gotten in the past was that their verbal lances hadn't been tipped with spite and malice that year. Instead, the few times they had exchanged harsh words, the conversations had seemed forcibly polite, cold, and hollow. She'd postulated that they'd both been learning how to talk to one another without hurling hexes, and formality was easier for him and not offensive to her. It was the foundation of the de facto truce between her and Draco Malfoy eighth year.
Hermione hadn't seen him since graduation, but she'd been privy to the fact that he was due to serve his parole at St. Mungos since she'd spoken at his trial before returning to school. She may or may not have hinted to Kingsley that Malfoy should serve there, instead of with the Auror Department, as hunting his father's compatriots would have put him at risk. St. Mungos was not in direct conflict with whatever Death Eaters will still roaming free, and his contrition all year had convinced her she'd made the correct suggestion. She'd been in for a debriefing when Kingsley had gotten an owl when St. Mungos had dismissed Malfoy—as if he'd been somewhat eagerly waiting for that to happen—and she'd watched him send a lunch invitation off to Malfoy Manor.
To suddenly be confronted with his biting wit and the transformative effect of a grin on his usually bland patrician face was disquieting. He'd developed crows' feet that crinkled up next to his eyes when he smiled or laughed, and while it was odd to see, she could admit to herself that they were appealing on his face. His eyes were still guarded and the color of summer thunderclouds bursting with torrential rain. His shoulders were slightly broader than in her memory, and sloped slightly down and inwards as if he were secretly about to hug himself. She decided it looked downtrodden, and she quietly missed the abrupt and rigid posture of his school days, and would prefer to never see his shoulders pulled up around his ears in anxious self-defense like in sixth year. His hair had gotten much longer than she'd ever seen it, but it somehow enviably managed to sweep across his forehead and frame his face before cascading over his shoulders and a third the way down his back. She wondered if this was some subconscious way he remembered Lucius since the man had passed a year or so earlier...maybe two years?
She'd known that he and Ginny had become acquainted since he'd been partnered with Harry, and that the firebrand witch was beginning to become offended that the pureblooded wizard still declining dinner invitations. Hermione had rightly ignored that letter, she'd been on the crux of her work for Kingsley, and she wasn't going to shirk it for social duty or for Ginny's temper.. Now her mentor and friend, despite being much older and the Minister of Magic, had left Malfoy in her house, where even Harry hadn't been since she made Kingsley the Secret Keeper. She decided to follow the former Healer Malfoy's instructions to avoid using magic, and get more rest, side-stepping mentioning to him that she couldn't have Dreamless Sleep anymore, as she'd become mildly immune to it, and therefore more likely to abuse it. Another day, perhaps, if it became medically pertinent for him to know.