A/N: Hi everyone – sorry this chapter is coming a little later than my usual two-part updates but honestly I had some reworking to do after it was brought to my intention I left out the "best part" of the previous chapter. Intimacy scenes aren't my strong suit but since y'all put up with my paragraphs on eye contact the LEAST I can do is try to fill in some of the smutty details!

That being said – nsfw content ahead. :)

Thanks for reading! xx

It was days before Hermione woke up.

To her, it was darkness, nothingness, a murky deep that reminded her of how she hung between living and dead, awake and asleep, in the bottom of the lake in the Triwizard Tournament.

She couldn't swim to the surface, though occasionally she caught a glimpse of the light above her. So she knew, somehow, she was beneath water.

The voices that occasionally called out to her were muffled. But they were simply too far away to find. She found that she had no voice, just a fire in her throat, when she tried to call out to them.

She knew, somehow, if she could break the surface of the waters there would be a house. She couldn't remember the place, or the name, but she knew that she lived there. Once, she saw a wisp of a black haired boy and a tall blonde. They were yelling. They were upset. They were just ghosts in the water that pulled her back out to the deep sea.

More darkness. More murky waters.

She knew she had a name, if only she could remember which way was up. Until finally, the ocean spit her back up and she crashed to shore.

She stood up, covered in sand and seaweed that she picked off her shoulders and stared up at Shell Cottage. It had been battered to ruins and Hermione cried as she coughed up salt water and rage, seeing the door swing open in the wind.

Someone had destroyed it, she thought, as she woke in a panic. She didn't scream, just clenched at the side of the bed she was in. There were sounds all around her and too much light.

"Hermione!" the black haired boy gasped, jumping forward from his chair to the edge of her bed. At his touch, she recoiled, shoving her body from the side of the bed. She knew him. She knew she knew him. "You're awake! Let me get the –"

"No!" she croaked, but her voice was mangled from the sea. "Please, no," she said again, this time clearer. She couldn't have been underwater, she thought, glancing around. She was in a hospital. St. Mungos, said a small tray beside her. She brought her hands to her head, as a headache bloomed violently.

"Right, sure, whatever you need," the boy said warily, as his hand inched closer to a button on the railing.

"Potter," she growled, a warning, as she pinned his hand to the railing.

But he wasn't scared of her, his face broke open to a grin. "Oh you have no idea how glad I am to be threatened by you." He laughed at her and she blinked at him. Harry Potter. He was Harry Potter. And she was…in St. Mungos?

She loosened her grip on his fingers and he took her hand. Her brain was barrelling forward in trying to make sense of her surroundings through the pain that seared behind her eyes. "Someone attacked me? What happened?"

Harry tightened his grip on her hand. "Yeah," he sighed. "It appeared to be part of a coordinated attack."

"Details," she demanded, through a wince.

Harry hesitated and Hermione braved the light-filled room long enough to level him with a glare. He gulped, "Well the attack was made against you, obviously, and –er–me, and –er– Ron, as well. Hermione, this can wait, you're in pain."

Hermione pressed her lips together. "I need to know."

Harry sighed, "Right, well, I am, obviously, okay. I was at work early in the Ministry so they never made it close. Ron's –er– celebrity seemed to really help him out. He was also out, on a late night, at some duelling club when they found him and someone took the attacker out before he got any spell off. They're all in custody, obviously, but not talking yet. We'll figure it out though, the Aurors, we think they're after information."

Fear gripped at Hermione's sides as the waves started to rise up again. Shell Cottage had been ruined. "Who is? What did they want?"

"We don't know yet. The targets, us three, suggest it's something related to the war, or to Voldemort, but it's too soon to tell. The Healers here said you were suffering from a psychic curse, that maybe someone got into your mind."

Harry and Ron had been safe, she realized, it was just her that was the weak link. She shut her eyes to the blinding light again and felt her tether to the room come undone. She was a boat, washing away from the docks and back out to sea. "How long?" she called out.

There was pressure on her hand again. "A week, Hermione. You've been out a week."

She laughed, but it died quickly as her emotions circled the same drain of the water that would lead her back into the abyss. It was too bright and her head hurt so bad. Now her hand hurt too, from the boy clenching at her so tightly. But he wasn't really a boy, she thought as she left all the pain behind and gave into the sea, he was so clearly a man.

"Dammit Hermione," he was pleading. "Please stay. Stay!"

But she was too tired, couldn't the man see that? And someone needed to fix up the old house again. If only she could remember where it was.

Eventually, Hermione realized she was no longer floating. She had once more washed up on the shores where Shell Cottage stood. Or rather, where bits of it stood. Ransacked walls and a leaky roof, but she knew its name, like she knew the pieces of memories that littered the beach and floated by on the winds.

More than once, as she kicked rubble to the side and the sky above her changed colors, like fireworks exploding behind the clouds, she felt the cool touch of a finger on her cheek. But every time she turned her head, it was just the wind and the ocean staring back at her, a stormy grey as far as she could see.

Hermione began her work in the foyer. She rooted through the cabinets for a hammer and nails and began to fix the front door and the flooring. She felt ridiculous, what did she know about fixing a house? She needed help, probably, but there was no one around.

Caught in a floorboard she found a smile belonging to a man, a rather handsome one, as he told her about constructing a fence. She wondered if she had ever had a fence, if she had ever done any carpentry, or if there were more tattered memories of the man around that could help her as she labored away.

A splinter in the wood kept the front door from shutting completely and as she pried the piece of wood loose, her nails chipped and her finger bled and she remembered that she was a witch. Somewhere in this mess she had a wand.

The revelation brought her down to the shoreline, where the impossibility of reconstructing the house battled the call of the ocean. The water lapped at her ankles, it was warm and inviting, and she knew all her problems would disappear out there.

As she waded out to her thighs the wind wrapped her in its arms and carried her back to shore. We'll figure something out, it whispered, encouragingly. Hermione sighed, this was at least slightly less annoying than when it pleaded with her to wake up again. Clearly she was awake.

She wasn't sure how the wind could put a house back together again, but she went back to work anyway. Even without a wand, she made the foyer presentable until the door clicked shut and stayed there. Inside from the swirling winds, she moved to the kitchen.

Recipes and textbooks (which made her laugh, since who in their right mind keeps textbooks in a kitchen?) were soaked and ruined on the shelves. She poked her head out of the front door and saw the sun started to peek through the clouds, so she set them outside to dry and sighed.

It would have to do.

She found rope in the basement among the boxes and boxes of waterlogged junk. She hoped she'd find her wand before the mold started to settle, since the boxes were all too heavy to lift. Feeling discouraged, but desperate to keep moving, she took the rope and climbed the stairs, unaware of the significance of the ache in her chest as she turned her back. Unaware that beneath all the junk there remained a storm cellar that she once had protected with all her love.

She strung the rope from a window to a tree in the yard, and nearly tripped over a grave as she went. She crashed to her knees and remembered Dobby, and with him, Fred, Lupin, Tonks, and many others. Hermione wept for an hour or an eternity, she couldn't tell as the sun never moved in the sky, before she could bring herself to finish tying the rope to the tree.

Fred would have been proud of her ingenious, she thought, as she hung the soaked laundry outside. She found Molly and Ginny in the blankets, soaked in the living room. She wrung them out and felt laughter and love.

Exhausted, she sat on the edge of the hill, listening to the waves. Hermione leaned back to rest for a moment and found a sharp pain at the back of her head. The source of the discomfort was a stick, but it wasn't a stick, she realized with glee. It was her wand.

It was much easier to repair the cottage with the help of magic, Hermione soon realized as the sun grew brighter in the sky. She didn't know housekeeping spells (and she checked all her spellbooks once she'd dried them) but she could mend and weave the foundation. She dried the walls and siphoned the memories out of the wind.

Only then, did it occur to her that she didn't actually live in Shell Cottage.

The wind whistled through her ears again, asking her to wake up, and she stared into the sun and thought of Harry curled up in the chair. Perhaps the wind wasn't crazy for asking her to wake up, but she felt rather confused about the exact manner of how.

"Soon," she told Harry, though of course he couldn't hear her. "I need to tidy up first."

Hermione patched and painted the salt-soaked cottage until night fell, and she had the incredibly unnerving feeling that she'd never seen her Shell Cottage at night before. Yet, the moon shone in the sky and Hermione wasn't tired.

She worked through the night, reorganizing all of her books into a grand library, and creating a fire to warm the living room where all the memories of her friends resided. She charmed the walls so that when she closed one eye the room looked like the Gryffindor Common room and if she cocked her head, it looked like Hog's Head.

Daphne, Blaise, and Dennis took their place around the fireplace and Hermione knew she needed to wake up soon. She sat, collapsed, on the couch trying to replay the calendar of how she'd managed to get trapped in her head, when the memory rose up from the floorboards.

Draco.

She'd forgotten all about Draco. But how was that even possible? She thought, racing around the house. Surely she'd stashed him somewhere around here? But the box of her memories was gone. No, she remembered, it was hidden. Why had she –?

The date.

They went on a date. And then she was attacked.

Hermione raced down the steps to the basement and with a slice of her wand moved all the boxes that covered the trap door. The storm cellar was stale with air but the sand she'd swept in to obscure her deepest secrets was dry. The room was untouched.

She swept the sand back in and retraced her steps as quickly as she could, realizing now the answer she'd been looking for. Her secrets were safe. But that didn't mean Draco was. Everything else would have to wait, she told herself, as she opened her eyes.

"Harry?"

He was still in the same chair by her bedside, in what to her looked like the same disheveled clothes, though his chin had grown out to a scratchy stubble. He was asleep, glasses askew, with his cheek resting in his palm, until she spoke.

"Mhm? What's that?" grunted Harry, righting himself and his glasses, before he remembered where he was. "Hermione!" he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes and moving towards the edge of her bed.

"Is Draco okay?" she asked, feeling the creakiness of her own voice. How long had it been since she used it?

At her words, Harry blinked at her, "You remember what happened?"

"Yes," she huffed. "I was attacked. You and Ron managed, but where is Draco?"

Harry was nodding, "Right, right. He's okay. He's home, I imagine." He glanced down at his watch and then back at her. "Blimey, I was getting worried about you. The Healers thought you might be trapped in your mind."

Hermione grimaced, "Not quite trapped, at least I don't think."

"You woke up a few times and it was like you were still asleep but your eyes were open." Harry said with a yarn. "It was so strange. Then your eyes would roll back in your head and you'd pass out all over again."

"How long has it been?" she asked, terrified of his answer. "How many days?"

A flicker passed across Harry's face. He didn't want to tell her, but he did. "Weeks, Hermione. It's been weeks."

"And you've been here the whole time?" Hermione asked, feeling the swell of tears in her eyes as she clutched for his hand. "Tell me everything, please, before the Healers come."

So, Harry did. He told her how the Healers worked tirelessly with a cursebreaker they'd brought in when their traditional treatments weren't working. Her vitals would stabilize for an hour and then the slicing hex she'd been hit with would open up again.

"What was it?"

Harry shrugged. "It was a wicked hex. The injury fractured itself and staggered through a delayed hit, so every time they thought they'd got it all, more would pop up. It was awful really, to watch as new slices would start appearing."

He shuddered and shook his head.

"Harry, I don't know how to say this, but Shell Cottage, the one in my head…"

Harry nodded. "The man who tried to attack Ron hit someone with Legilimens as well. We're not certain what they're after, did you have any sense?"

Hermione thought of the damage on Shell Cottage. "I can't be certain. They knocked nearly everything loose."

"The Healer suspected that they hit you with it a few times over, before you…were found. After they'd already attacked you. Hermione, it's not your fault if…"

But Hermione was already shaking her head no. "They didn't find it all."

Harry's eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean? How do you know?"

She shrugged. "Narcissa taught me some additional storage skills. All of our secrets are safe."

Relief washed over Harry's face. "Merlin Hermione, you brilliant witch. It's wrong to say that it's a good thing they attacked you instead of Ron or I, but…" he trailed off and squeezed her hand tighter.

"So it was the Devourers then?" she asked. That was good, she thought, well, not good, but it was unlikely they'd be after Draco. She glanced around the room again and felt a slight flush rise in her cheeks as the image of him leering in her doorway sprung free. Where had that been hiding in Shell Cottage, she wondered before trying to focus on Harry again.

"...inactive the whole trial. No fights, no operations, no recruitments. We thought they might be standing down, or else distancing themselves from the Malfoys…"

A kiss goodbye on the front steps of Hog's Head, the flick of a lighter as he watched her go, his hair…Merlin his hair, so disheveled, what was he thinking going out like that?

Harry coughed and Hermione's attention reluctantly returned to him. "Er – are you up for a few questions or is it too soon?"

Hermione nodded and glanced at the file on her tray table. It was marked with from the Auror Office.

When she raised an eyebrow, Harry shrugged, but his lips quirked into a smile. "It's my case. Jennings let me stay on it even though I'm technically your detail."

It was a funny thing, to be so proud of Harry, who looked so bashful in this moment. "My detail?"

"Round the clock rotation," Harry said with a grin. "Decreed by Shacklebolt himself, as well as Jennings. You're rather important, you know."

Hermione felt the heat on her cheeks return. "That's…ridiculous. But fine, ask away."

"That morning, did you see anything?"

Hermione closed her eyes and thought back to that morning's run, after she'd left behind an incredibly disheveled Draco she was running on air. "I went out for my normal run," she started, "Right at the corner and past the stands, towards the Shrieking Shack –" she stuttered, remembering the trickle of sweat that broke away from the pool at the nape of her neck and trailed down her spine until it hit fabric, but the ghost of Draco's fingers, trailing her spine in the soft morning light made her shiver. The way his fingers traced her hips as he kissed her softly behind the ear, whispering a Good morning as he stiffened behind her.

"And then?" Harry asked, completely oblivious to the flush on Hermione's cheeks. He might've thought it was just good to see her with color again, she thought, pressing her cold hands to her cheeks. Merlin, she thought, glancing around the room again to find it was still absent of Draco.

"Right," she said, sniffing, "I-I don't remember exactly how far I went. I was so distracted. I wasn't even thinking of my route."

"Distracted?"

She had been planning to throw herself back into Draco's arms upon her return, to knock the cigarette from his fingers and steal the smoke from his lips. But to Harry, she said, "Yes."

"Right, okay," said Harry, jotting something on his notepad. "But no one ever followed you on your runs before?"

That was an easier question, Hermione thought. "No, never that I noticed." Then it occurred to her, "I hadn't been running since before the trial though. I think just one between my testimony and the sentencing."

Harry grinned at her, "So we can't completely rule out a stalker or an irritated news-follower." He glanced down at his notepad and flipped a few pages. "Draco said you don't have a standard route? That you just make it up and turn back when you like?"

Hermione blinked at him but she could only see Draco, moments after he hooked his arm around her and she craned her neck back to see him.

"I want to run this morning," she'd whispered.

His eyebrows had arched up and his lips curved into a smile as he snaked the arm that wasn't tracing circles on her hip beneath her head. "Can't I convince you to stay a while longer?"

He pressed his lips to hers as his arm curled up around her head. His touch was warm and he wouldn't have to try hard to convince her, she thought, twisting her body and into his until they were flush. She'd almost forgotten they fell asleep together, naked, beneath the sheets.

"I might be persuaded," she'd teased, as Draco pressed a kiss into her neck.

"I'll give you a whole workout instead," he murmured as his hand slid up and down her thigh repeatedly.

"I dunno," she'd said, but she was already breathless and surely he knew she wasn't going anywhere. She didn't want to go anywhere, she wanted to stay tangled up in the sheets with him all day. Hermione threw a glance to the window, it was hardly light out yet and she could almost taste the cool morning air. Draco felt her drifting, and shifted his weight, so that one hip pinned hers to the bed. He stroked her inner thigh, with each caress, circling closer and closer to where she pulsed in anticipation of his touch. "It was going to be a long one."

"Mhm," Draco hummed, pressing another kiss into her, as he dipped the tip of his finger into her to find the dripping effect his touch had. "Tell me how long."

But all Hermione could do was gasp as he swirled his fingers against her. Those bloody fingers were the only thought in her mind, the cool morning air a forgotten wisp in her mind.

Another thought soon found her, or rather, a feeling, of him, hard against her, as his breath ghosted up her neck until his lips found hers again. "Tell me," he'd growled.

"Miles," she gasped, tilting her head to chase his lips. He pulled back. She wanted to latch onto his hair and pull him back to her. She restrained herself, or rather melted under his touch.

"Where?"

"Oh fuck," she'd panted as he increased his pace, shifting his hand so that his thumb continued rubbing while two fingers slid inside her. "Fuck, Draco."

He slowed the arch of his fingers and worked his other arm so that he propped himself up on his elbow as his hand wove into the curls at the nape of her neck. Hermione's eyes had fluttered open to find his bearing down into her.

She could have been embarrassed, as she begged him with her eyes to continue what he'd started, and a small grin grew on his face as he began to move his thumb in a lazy circle that sent a clench through her abdomen.

"You didn't answer my question." Now he was teasing her.

She huffed at the same time he flicked his thumb down and forced her to draw a sharp breath. "I don't have a route, I just go as I please."

At this, he'd chuckled and shook his head ever so slightly.

"What?" she asked, moving her hand beneath the sheets to grab his, stopping their little game long enough to inquire, "What is it?"

Draco must've thought about protesting, because his fingers curled in her hair as he sighed softly. But instead, he smiled, "Every morning you show up at a different bloody time. It's the only thing that could explain your lack of punctuality."

A grin spread across her face as their eyes found each other again. "You wait for me?" she asked, reaching her hands up to cup his face and draw him to her. Of course he waited for her, she realized, she'd come quite close to suspecting it all along.

"I just happen to be –"

She cut him off with a kiss. "Don't lie to me now, Malfoy," she hissed as she crashed their lips back together and pulled him, by the jaw, on top of her. She'd hooked her leg around his waist and felt his erection pressing against her leg now. With another small adjustment of their hips, he pushed inside of her as she bit at his lip.

"Merlin, you feel good," he groaned, between thrusts as Hermione matched his every move.

Draco brought his hand once more beneath the sheets and picked up the circles he'd left off. This time, with the pressure of him, Hermione shuddered and clenched her legs around him. They were both panting, building towards a release that would rip through her like a bolt of lightning.

Hermione grabbed at his shoulders and raked her hands through his hair, between a blasphemous string of affirmations.

Draco's moans were coming more frequently and he surprised Hermione when instead of thrusting again, he reared his hips back. She found his eyes, hungry, devouring, as he licked his lips. "I promised you a whole workout," he said, as he kissed down her stomach until his tongue took over, and Hermione threw her head back as a new pleasure took over.

"Ahem," said Harry, with a rather blank expression on his face. "So, no standard route?"

Hermione blinked at him once, then twice, then a third time as she registered that she was not, in fact, deep in the throes of passion but in a hospital bed in St. Mungos. Where Harry was looking…strangely…at her.

She cleared her throat. "No. No standard route."

"Are you alright? You look flushed. I should get the Healers—"

"No!" squeaked Hermione. "I was just, er, nothing. Nevermind. Where's Draco anyhow?"

Harry's eyebrow twitched, but all he said was. "That's the second time you asked."

Hermione sighed, "Is there a question attached?"

"Well, you did save his father, quite publicly, just before being attacked. And I know all about the date, so we can't rule out pureblood extremists or even a particularly jealous witch out there. Have you received any threats? Since Zabini's party and the pictures?"

She shook her head. Surely one of Draco's fan-girls, if he had any, wouldn't have hospitalized her. Right? "There was press. McGonagall and Aberforth increased the warding. But no threats. And anyway he took me to Hampstead."

"Hampstead?"

"Surely, he told you that already," sniped Hermione. "If you know all about the date."

But they were both smiling at each other. Two moony grins of disbelief. "I can't believe he brought you home."

Hermione pressed her lips together and felt the faint thrum of her memory stirring up again. She wondered what exactly Draco had told Auror Harry. "It was a lovely night."

"I'm thrilled for you, really. Even if he's…" he trailed off.

"He's what?"

"Nothing."

"Don't make me ask again," she threatened.

"He's –" Harry started, before sighing and rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses again. "He's at the Manor, if he's not in class, but Ginny tells me he's never in class. He's worried, of course, everyone's been mental wondering when you're going to wake up…"

Weeks Harry had said, she thought, curling her legs up in the bed.

"He, er, he was the one who found you and brought you in," continued Harry, wincing slightly. Hermione's mind, the fickle thing, conjured an image of him cradling her body, hair still wicked, cigarette forgotten on the street. He was waiting for her, she realized, as Harry said it. "He'd been waiting for you, it seems. Said you were gone for too long, and he got antsy, so he took a stroll, when he found you. There was significant blood loss, Hermione, he had to bring you in. And it's good that he did. But, even still, given the nature of it being you…there's been restrictions on visitors put in place."

Hermione stared at the sheets in front of her. He brought her in, and they denied him from seeing her? She glanced around the room, all the belongings looked like they were Harry's. Not a scarf of Ginny's or a sweater of Blaise's.

"Everyone wanted to be here," Harry said softly, watching her eyes dart around the room. "But it was family only, and only family to approve additional visitors. So…"

"My parents don't even remember me."

"You see the problem. Ron was livid, of course the Healers didn't understand and we didn't tell them everything. It was Narcissa actually, and a bit of Molly Weasley, who got me approved to come in. You should have seen her outrage that you were all alone in here. Of course, it helps that I'm not just your best mate, but an Auror, and The Chosen One."

Hermione could see it clearly in her head and felt a wave of gratitude that Narcissa might fight on her side. But she also wanted to bury her face into a pillow and cry. "So it's just been you? All this time?"

It made no sense, her outrage that he hadn't been pacing the walls outside her warded door. Of course he was home, likely worrying from afar. He was worried, right? She chastised herself, thinking about him, covered in her blood, pulling his hair out in the lobby. Of course he was home. He hadn't abandoned her. That would be unfair. Ridiculous.

But she wanted to see him. A roaring desire that she couldn't quite get her arms around.

Harry sensed it. He said, "The others came for weeks, they'd still be in the lobby if they thought today was the day, or if I wasn't on shift. You'd never be alone, I promise."

She was furious about quite a lot. That she'd been out for weeks, that her friends were denied entry, that a bloody spell had hit her in the first place and scared the wits out of the boy she quite fancied. She was furious that she was bloody crying now, in front of Harry. She was furious that he had to spend weeks by her side, instead of trying to solve the mess.

Hermione wiped the tears angrily, and sniffled, "Thank you for staying."

Harry shook his head and surged forward to wrap her in a hug. He settled onto the bed with her, holding her in his arms as her tears flowed freely now. "Of course, Hermione. I'm so sorry this happened."

He murmured a thousand apologies and reassurances into her hair and held her there, tightly in his arms, as she cried. She knew he needed to get back to work. She knew they needed to call the Healers. But she couldn't stop the ocean streaming down her face, soaking his shirt in salty tears, until she fell asleep.

She woke up to blurry eyes and a Healer she'd come to know as Rosemary, who nearly whacked Harry upside the head for not calling them immediately as he retreated to his seat with a sheepish smile.

"Ms. Granger," Rosemary said. "It is so very nice to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

Hermione felt sad, but they weren't as concerned with her feelings as they were any more gashes opening up anywhere on her body. Now that she was awake, they kept her for a few more days, treating the additional symptoms of soreness, and scarring as Hermione herself helped identify them.

Harry stayed by her bedside for the entire duration of her recovery, insisting that the Auror department could do just fine without him for another week.

"You're under guard anyway," he said with a shrug, after a young clerk brought him more files of the ongoing investigation. "Consider me honored to be appointed."

Harry wasn't allowed to share any of the case information with her, but he frequently left the files open and within Hermione's reach as she poured over them and her own medical charts. She was definitely concerned about the caster, which signs continued to point to the Devourers, but she was actually more interested in the hex itself.

Her treatment, since she woke up, was confusing to her. They mended her skin when the gashes opened, until Hermione was able to do it herself (to Rosemary's chagrin), but were no steps closer to identifying the curse and properly countering it.

When she pressed Rosemary on this, she shrugged. "You're absolutely right, but we just don't have the wandpower to break all the curses that walk through the door."

So while she didn't know much about countercurses, she worked side by side with Harry until no more gashes appeared on her body, and the scars of the initial site were nearly faded.

Since she'd woken up, they'd kept her on a steady cocktail of calming and cheerful draughts to help keep some of the overwhelming dread and anxieties at bay. This had helped Hermione's mood and her ability to sleep, but also altered with her ability to slip into Shell Cottage the way she was used to. Sometimes, when she found it, it was just a house. Other times, the memories were mis-filed.

"Nothing to worry about darling," Rosemary assured her, after she voiced her concern to Harry and the nurse. "The potions have a funny way of dealing with memories. But it'll all come back once you're off them."

After a whole day without a new wound opening, the Healers began to wean her off the potions and get her ready for discharge. Hermione, finding her mind sharper (and more disturbed) than before, was eager to be released.

Harry, to his credit, was incredibly patient with Hermione's growing impatience. She wanted to know if Jennings had got anything out of the attacker, which allegedly she refused to put in a memo yet insisted could wait until Hermione was out of the hospital. She also wanted to know why some curses just stopped, over time, like the one on her seemingly had. She wanted Jennings to ask the man they had in custody about the curse's creation.

Harry wanted Rosemary to drug her with more potions.

But the thing that was really bothering her, the thought that rattled around ceaselessly, despite the Auror's office forbidding her from adding anyone else to her visitor's list once the attacker was confirmed to be a Devourer, was why the hell Draco hadn't come to see her once?

She tapped the quill she'd stolen from Harry against her medical chart and the cursebreaker's notes. "Has he at least asked you how I'm doing?"

Harry looked up, "Who? Ron?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Right, sorry, Draco, no. He hasn't. But everyone else bloody bombards me when I step out of this room. I'm sure he gets the news."

She huffed. That was not quite the answer she was looking for.

"You should be ready for that," Harry said, glancing back down at his notes. "The second you're out they're going to pounce on you. Ginny's furious at me that I haven't interrogated you about the date and all yet anyhow."

A tremor beneath Shell Cottage. The date. That night. Hermione really needed to figure out a way to store some of those memories so she could think about the night without descending into a blushing mess.

But the bloody potions made it so hard to think.

She huffed instead, and pushed the Calming Draught Rosemary had left on the bedside table away from her.

Harry clocked it. "If it makes any difference, I saw him after he brought you in. I wasn't going to tell you that he was here, pacing the halls, covered in your blood. But Jennings and I spoke with him then. She hit him hard with the dangers of you two, in particular, being out together now. Might've spooked him to keep some distance. I dunno."

She hated knowing that he was probably beating himself up for the best night of her life, and she fidgeted until Harry couldn't stop glancing at the clock and Hermione knew he needed to go.

"I'll be back first thing," he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead as if that was ever a thing they did before this whole ordeal.

She appreciated it, but for the first time, she desperately wanted Harry to leave.

The door clicked shut behind him and for the first time in weeks, nearly three at this point, Hermione found herself alone with a sober mind. Her stomach swirled as she flicked the lock on the door of her room, and stepped back into Shell Cottage.

It was the mess she'd left it in, but this time, she could see it clearly. She made quick work of the restoration, and flicked the memories back into their places.

There was a new one, smoldering in the fireplace, as it had been all afternoon, sending a rising flush to her face that Harry, bless him, pretended he never saw. She'd been puzzling over how to store it for a while now, and now, stepping up to the fireplace, she had a solution.

But first, she indulged in the sight of Draco, standing in her door frame, wanting to be a gentleman. And how quickly he'd changed his mind and pinned her to the bed. It was thrilling, she'd thought, as she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and her fingers fumbled with his buttons.

He tasted like expensive wine and cigarettes and she wanted all of him.

His shirt clung to him as it had at dinner, bulging over the muscles he'd never had before, the ones that lifted her now, as eager as she was to free him of his shirt, to settle her in his lap as his legs dangled over the edge of her bed.

She swore his skin was gleaming in the moonlight, but everything in the room had the fuzzy shine of dilated pupils and an extra glass of wine. She bent down to pepper his collarbone in kisses while she traced his back with her fingers. He was more than bloody bulging, she surmised, he was properly fit.

He shivered beneath her breath before wrapping one of his lovely, bulging arms around her lower back to pull her closer against him.

Hermione jeans skimmed over him as she crossed her legs behind his back, all the while whispering stupid, drunken things like "I've wanted this for so long" and "you look fucking incredible" between kisses.

The next time they broke away from each other, it was at Draco's doing, so he could lift Daphne's pretty top over her head. The result of Hermione Granger, sitting in his lap, in a lacy bra, hair a mess from his doing, nearly made him cross eyed.

"Stop looking at me like that!" She was laughing though, because his stunned silence was more a compliment than anything.

He kissed her again, this time slower, as he worked one hand into her hair and brought the other to her bra. A quick snap of his fingers (he must've had some practice) and she was shaking the bra off her arms.

Draco did not stop looking at her like that. In fact, But Hermione didn't push the issue, given that he then started to work at her nipple, while kissing just beneath her ear and she rather couldn't think much of anything anymore except how bloody warm his tongue was on her skin.

She let out a moan that made him smile against her, but there was no time for smirking, she wanted more of him, now.

Hermione had never been much of an initiator, in her few clumsy experiences thus far. But if Draco had taken so long to show up to the hospital, nevermind ask her out, she decided that she would be the one taking charge for the rest of the evening.

She made quick work of unfastening his belt, then commanded him, "Off," as she tugged at the waistband of his trousers. He stopped palming and kissing her long enough for her to step down from the bed, lift his lips, and let her pull his pants off.

He watched her with a hint of amusement, and a large dose of arousal (that she could plainly see now, in the outline of his underwear). Of course, all the amusement faded when she stepped out of her jeans.

Draco gaped at her instead and it was her turn to be amused that finally, she'd made him the one who was speechless.

"What?" she'd asked, a grin growing on her face. But he didn't answer. The second he opened his mouth to speak, Hermione shimmied out of her knickers as well.

He managed a strained groan as she climbed back on top of him. If he didn't get what she was after now, she thought, it was a lost cause.

But it wasn't, since she straddled him and immediately his hands roamed over her exposed skin. Her thighs, her arse, soft and smooth beneath his calloused hands.

"I want you to touch me," she whispered, before leaning down to kiss him again.

And the same fingers that dangled cigarettes to and from the long neck she now had her own mouth on, slipped between her legs. She was slick with arousal and soon his fingers were too.

He curled and arced his fingers beneath her as she began to move against him. Beneath his hand, and her warmth, his underwear felt ridiculous. She shoved at them insistently.

"Now?" Draco asked, a genuine question.

Hermione was panting already, she wanted all of him, now, so desperately she thought she would burst. She nodded, "Yes."

She'd cast a contraceptive charm every month since she turned sixteen, as a precaution, and like her mother always said, you'd never know who would turn your eye and when.

She didn't want to think of her mother now though. And all thoughts promptly vanished from her head when Draco curled his fingers against her and brought them both back to a sitting position.

Hermione gasped. Draco grinned. And his fingers resumed their delicate, vigorous circles inside of her and out. She came in a shudder, before he finally lifted his hips to remove his underwear.

They repositioned. He leaned on top of her, and her eyes fluttered, pleasure pulsed within her, and when he pushed inside, he felt it too.

"Are you okay?" he'd asked.

She'd laughed, because she was a far cry from okay. She was brilliant. A live wire, inches away from a pool of water that would zap her off the earth and tearing into space.

Hermione brought her hands to his face and tried to ignore the faint buzz in her own as she kissed him. Yes, she was okay.

Then, Draco started to move and Hermione realized it wasn't just space that she would travel through, but time and existence and whatever else it was, as the sweat from their chests grew slicker and he anticipated every rut of her hips against his.

Hermione couldn't imagine how she had been missing something as groundbreaking as this in her life for so long. Draco leaned back to angle her hips towards his with a pillow. One hand covered her breast while the other slipped back down to where she thought the pressure couldn't become any more ecstatic.

She closed her eyes and threw her head back and though she could hardly feel anything but pleasure she knew that she had never felt like this before. And it was glorious.

Until he slowed, and whispered, "Hey," as his hand left her breast, to find her face again. "Come back here."

She blinked at him, at first confused since she wasn't sure how they could physically be any closer. But then she found his eyes, and realized what he'd meant. Because while hers were elsewhere, lost in her thoughts (thoughts of pleasure, but still thoughts), his were perfectly clear.

He scanned her face, but not really her face, because he bore into her eyes.

Hermione looked at his hair (a mess), his chest (sweaty), his cheeks (flushed), while thinking she'd never been more exposed, more vulnerable, than meeting his eye while he was inside her. But she met his eye anyway and a stillness passed between them.

A stillness broken by a small twitch as Draco shifted, before leaning in closer and rolling his hips into hers again. And again. And again.

She wasn't sure how he did it, how he managed to move his body like that, while her arms snaked around his neck and she held on as he brought them closer and closer to exertion.

Of course, she didn't think that in the moment because that night was an eternity lost in his eyes.

But now, upon reflection, in the flecks of glitter whirling around a tiny metal figure of a restaurant in Hampstead, Hermione thought that she'd rather like another date with Draco, when she was discharged.

The glass set perfectly around her memory – a simple snow globe, containing the whirlwind of her feelings and her passions.

She placed it on a shelf in her bedroom, washed her face, then set about filling the shelf with the other intimate and passionate moments of her life. Kissing Ron in the Chamber of Secrets. The clumsy, yet passionate night they had together after the Final Battle, and the other times after, as they tried to revive a spark. Wrapping Harry in her arms before he went to face Voldemort. Viktor Krum's strong hands on her waist. Others too, but she was less interested in them now.

She made a collection of tiny snow globes for the fleeting moments Harry had found in her shoebox tucked under the bed. Then, she took painstaking care, to splice the morning she was cursed, from the morning she woke up next to Draco, and everything that came after.

She locked her blood and pain in a vial that she stored in the potions closet. Then she placed the snowglobe with the others on a shelf that she burrowed through the wall. She filled the barrier with her memory of the ocean-like abyss and fashioned a dummy shelf of souvenir snow globes, with hours of ocean spray and sunny heat and laughter and ice cream, to stand guard.

Hermione left Shell Cottage satisfied. She flicked her wand to unlock the door before Rosemary made her final round for the evening. She was so exhausted she didn't even need the Sleeping Draught Rosemary would bring, as she slipped into a sweet sleep, longing of her discharge that awaited in the morning.

A/N: Ta da! Hopefully they read okay and didn't make absolutely no sense in this chapter. I acknowledge they probably could have just been in chronological order but where's the fun in that! Hopefully it also helped spice up an otherwise depressing chapter about Hermione in the hospital! She'll be out soon! And where the HECK has Draco been….stay tuned to find out!

Thanks all for reading!