Disclaimer:I don't own anything. I don't own the characters, the setting, or anything. Except the plot bunny. I guess you could say I own that. Also, Whispers In The Dark belongs to Skillet.

Author's Note: I would like to thank Somnus Verus and Just another ginge for reminding me that Hermione's scar didn't happen until seventh year. It's all better now in chapter seven, so if you unfortunately read the unrevised edition, just pretend that the last paragraph or so never happened ;]

Dedication: girlfromCostaRica, my "wifey", because she begged me to update before next week. I figured I could bow down to one of her demands – the one that I update – since there was no way I was going to bow down to the other – that I update with three or four chapters.

Chapter Eight – Whispers In The Dark

"Hey 'Mione, you want to play a game of chess with us?" Ron Weasley looked at the brunette who was currently sitting at the kitchen table with a frown on her face. He'd noticed that she'd been frowning a lot lately, especially after coming back from the room where Malfoy was staying, but anytime he brought it up to her she changed the subject. With a shake of his head he walked over to the kitchen table, waving Harry off as he went, and sat down in the chair beside his female best friend. "You know you can tell us if he's done something to bother you," he said the words so quietly that he knew only the intended's ears would pick them up.

Still she didn't look up at him. But at least she didn't keep ignoring him. "Ron, if he had done something to bother me I would handle it myself. If there was something that I couldn't handle by myself then I would make sure to let you know."

He knew he couldn't give up that easily. She'd been moping for days when she thought nobody was paying attention. He looked down at his ratty tennis shoes, the laces coming untied, before looking back up at her. Something had to break through to her. Noticing that her hand lay on the table in front of where he sat he picked it up gingerly and held it between his own larger hands. "Hermione, please tell me what's bothering you."

He knew he'd done the trick the moment her eyes met his. Her left wrist was bent, her elbow on the table to hold up her head which she'd cocked slightly so she could see him. Her eyes were rimmed in a dull pink that he knew without words meant she wasn't sleeping well. He would have wondered why he hadn't noticed any crying out from nightmares, or as rustling bed sheets from movement, but he knew that he slept too heavily. He wouldn't even have noticed if she'd been in the same room, the same bed even.

He watched as she rolled her shoulders in a shrugging motion and then pulled her hand out of his slowly, so as not to offend him. "I don't want to talk about it." He could deal with that only slightly better than he could deal with her lying and saying nothing was bothering her. But at least she'd conceded that something was in fact troubling her. "But when I want to talk about it, I'll let you know."

Ginny laid back in the tub, the bubbles forming all around her body when she heard a knock on the door. "I'm sorry. The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. If you are willing to wait a couple of hours then your message can be delivered in person," she said out loud with a smile on her face.

"That almost sounded perfectly like a muggle answering machine, Gin," Hermione said when she realized that Ginny had to be taking a bath since there was a slight sound of water sloshing against the edges. She opened the door and quickly shut it behind her, sitting on the toilet cover. "I needed to get away. It was either you or Malfoy."

Ginny laughed and nodded, completely understanding the need to get away from the boys every once in a while. "We have a meeting tonight, don't we?" There hadn't been an Order meeting for a few weeks, at least not to the kids' knowledge, but Dumbledore had specifically requested their attendance tonight. Probably because he had some questions to ask about Malfoy's recovery process.

Hermione's lids closed, her lashes brushing her cheeks roughly before she nodded. "Yeah. Professor Dumbledore said he had some questions for us." Biting her lip she amended what she'd said. "Actually, he said that he had something he wanted to ask Harry and I. But he seemed to know that you and Ron would find out what had been asked either way, so he invited the two of you along too."

Ginny stuck her tongue out at her best friend, pretending to be jealous that Albus Dumbledore didn't actually want to speak with her personally. She splashed a few bubbles in the brunette's direction and then settled back into the water to relax. It was rare that the boys left them alone long enough to let them have a bath instead of a shower. If the tub was large enough that they wouldn't touch she'd have invited Hermione in to soak in the warm water, but the tub wasn't large enough. Not to mention she had noticed that her friend hadn't been sleeping well and she was afraid that the water would put her to sleep.

It was another forty-five minutes before anybody started calling for the girls. Ginny had managed to get all pruny, just the way she liked when she relaxed, and then had started a water fight with Hermione. The brunette's frizzy hair lay plastered against her skin, curling loosely in her face. Her clothes were dripping even more than her hair, but Ginny had stepped out of the bath water and taken Hermione's wand so she couldn't dry herself off. "Gin, come on! You're really going to make me go downstairs looking like this?"

Ginny just smirked at her best friend and nodded, wrapping a towel around herself and running from the room into their shared bedroom so she could get dressed. Hermione sighed and headed out of the bathroom, starting to follow Ginny into the bedroom when she thought better of it. The meeting could take hours if it went like many of the other meetings, and she knew that she hadn't really bothered with Malfoy much today. She should probably check on him.

She headed to his room and opened the door, peeking her head in to see if he was even awake. When his gray eyes met hers she watched as he raised an eyebrow at her. "You look like a drowned rat." He let his eyebrow lay flat again.

"Right." Hermione cleared her throat and smiled at him. "I do. Except, I already know that. So your snide comments, which are, as always, unwelcome, aren't needed. Besides, I'm having a good day and I'm not about to let a spoiled little boy ruin it for me. I just came to ask if there was anything you were going to need within the next few hours." She was happy to note that he had been slowly getting more mobility in his joints. She also noticed that he'd been sitting up a lot more, meaning that his ribs were bothering him less and less. Maybe it won't take the full six weeks, she thought, hoping.

"No. I'm not going to need anything while you hang out with the rest of the Order." Draco rolled his eyes. He hated that he was stuck upstairs and wasn't trusted enough to speak with anybody else. He knew that it was going to take a while, but he hadn't expected it to take this long. It'd been two weeks already!"

"Okay well then I'll see you later."

The meeting was well under way and Dumbledore hadn't even begun to mention why the four teenagers were allowed to sit in and listen. He hadn't even looked their way. He'd simply started mentioning anything and everything he could think of that the Death Eaters had done in the past couple of weeks, things that hadn't even made it into the papers. Another giant, though thankfully nobody was hurt and nobody saw what happened so the Obliviators weren't needed for that one, a werewolf pack attacked a small town, thankfully on that one they had managed to kill everyone that they had attacked rather than turning them into werewolves. The list went on and on, until finally Dumbledore turned to look at Hermione.

"And how is our patient healing, Miss Granger?" The old man looked at Hermione, his hands behind his back, and waited for her long speech. It was almost inevitable that whenever Hermione was chosen to speak that she would ramble on for as long as she could, exhausting one subject before finding another.

Fortunately, Hermione chose not to indulge her Headmaster. "He's getting better every day. I doubt he'll need to be bedridden for the whole six weeks. He still won't be able to walk, because his legs were so damaged that they will take longer to heal, but after four or five weeks he'll probably be able to walk around on crutches." She knew that normally she would tell them everything she had noticed about Malfoy. The fact that he had been tortured by his own father, the fact that the cuts and bruises were slowly healing. But she also knew that he only cared about whether or not the boy was going to live. Cuts and bruises healed.

"Excellent. Well then I think that's all we have to deal with tonight. Harry, might I speak with you alone?" The older man waited for everyone to file out of the room before going and sitting next to Harry. The three teenagers stood in the open doorway waiting for their friend. "I was wondering if you would be willing to run an errand with me. Why he asked, nobody knew. They all knew that as soon as Dumbledore asked he was actually saying "Harry, we're going to run an errand. There's no choice in the matter."

Harry simply nodded and Dumbledore smiled. "Right, well then by all means go get your jacket. The nights have turned chilly." He stood up, always hiding his hands behind his back where nobody could see them and waited for the raven-haired boy to come back into the room. Turning to where the other students were still standing, watching their Headmaster, his eyes twinkled. "Don't worry, children. I'll bring him back before morning. I simply wish for him to come with me."

The three that weren't going with him hugged Harry goodbye and then went back into the living room to play a couple games of chess and exploding snaps. Anything to pass the time before Harry came back so they could find out just what Professor Dumbledore needed the boy to go do.

It was still dark outside when Draco Malfoy opened his eyes. He had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night, which he'd taught to himself, because he knew that if he stayed asleep for the full eight hours without a break in the middle that he would start to have nightmares of the night he'd been nearly killed. As it stood now he only had recurring thoughts about it.

He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, making out the dresser, the nightstands, the desk. He looked to his left to where a single oil lamp stood waiting to be turned on. Thankfully since he could move his elbows now he was able to strike a match and light the wick of the oil lamp, turning it down so that it didn't hurt his eyes.

His breath picked up when he noticed something – or rather someone – curled in the chair that usually lay in the leg space of the desk. His eyes roamed over the body of the stranger in his room for a few minutes before he realized just who it was. But what would Granger be doing in my room in the middle of the night? Asleep.

His brow furrowed as he continued to watch her for a few minutes. She looked terribly uncomfortable, as anyone would really when falling asleep curled up on just the seat on a wooden armchair. She hadn't bothered to throw her legs over the arms to give herself more room. Her legs were pulled up to her chest and her head lay on her knees, leaning against the back of the chair.

"Oi, Granger," he hissed so as to wake her up without scaring her so much that she hexed him. He watched the young girl jump slightly, and turn her head to look over at his bed. "What are you doing in my room in the middle of the night?" It was hard to tell because of the shadows that lay over her face from the dim oil lamp, but he was sure that she'd turned pink at his question.

"S-sorry, Malfoy," she yawned, covering her mouth. "I couldn't sleep. I came in here to be alone." With a raised eyebrow from him she conceded, "Okay well not alone, per se, but away from everyone else. I couldn't sleep, and since you were already asleep I figured it wouldn't bother you. I didn't think you would wake up in the middle of the night to catch me here."

"You couldn't sleep so you came in here? To what? Watch me sleep?" Malfoy smirked knowing that wasn't what she was saying at all, but it was fun trying to mess with her head. He'd spent over five years trying to get Granger to admit that she had a crush on him like everyone else in school did. He wasn't about to stop now.

"No, I didn't come in here to watch you sleep." She huffed indignantly before letting her legs fall, her feet touching the floor as she rolled her neck to try and work out the kinks. "I just wanted to get away. I knew that nobody would check in here if they noticed that I wasn't in bed as I was supposed to be. They may check downstairs, but they wouldn't check in here."

Draco nodded. He understood why they wouldn't come in here. For the same reason that he was surprised to see her there. She hated him. It boggled the mind why she was capable of sleeping in the same room as someone she hated rather than one of her best friends. "Why couldn't you sleep?"

Figuring that six weeks was a long time to forcefully hate someone when he wasn't really doing anything to make you hate him – unlike when they were in school – she shrugged. It wasn't as if it was going to kill her to tell him a vague enough reason why she couldn't sleep. "Bad dreams." It was true enough. She had been having bad dreams. Ever since Malfoy had told her that his dad was the reason for the scars all over him she'd been having nightmares about it. About the boy being whipped, being hit with spells that could hurt him, even being hit with the Cruciatus curse. She wasn't about to go that in depth to him though, she knew that he would make a big deal out of the fact that she'd been dreaming about him.

But she wished that the dreams had only been about him. It might make it easier to sleep, even if it was hard on her to think of those things happening. But it was inevitable that anytime the dream started and she saw Malfoy being hit with the Cruciatus curse, the dream would morph. Suddenly, it wouldn't be her watching Malfoy get tortured by his father. Suddenly the dream would be her imagining what it would like to be in his place. She'd go through the same dream over again except that she'd be the one getting tortured at the hands of her father. She knew that was the significance. Not that Malfoy had been tortured by Death Eaters, but that his own father had played a part in it. It was also how she always knew it was a dream, because her father had no magical abilities.

"I know what you mean," Draco finally whispered. He could tell by the way her eyes had darted towards the ground when she'd stated that she had bad dreams that she didn't want to speak about them. He'd waited until she'd lifted her head and looked at him again before he'd spoken. "That's why I wake up in the middle of the night. So I don't get them."

Now it was Hermione's brow that furrowed. "What do you mean? You can wake yourself up from them?"

Draco shook his head and sighed. "No, they don't usually occur until about now. Or they would, if I had continued to sleep through instead of waking up. It takes a few hours for my body to calm or my mind to fall asleep long enough for the dreams to force themselves in."

"Oh." He could tell just by her expression that she was disappointed with what he'd said. "Mine always occur almost immediately. Sometimes it takes a full hour if my mind has been going non-stop." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. It had fallen out of her ponytail while she'd been asleep and ringlets rimmed her eyes and cheeks, sticking to her face from the sweat caused by the dreams. "And they reoccur. It doesn't matter if I've already dreamt about it that night, it'll happen again and again until morning."

"So it's probably, what, about two, maybe three o'clock?" Draco asked as he tried to look at the darkness outside of the window. Sadly, Hermione had moved into his way and he couldn't see around her well enough to judge it.

The young woman looked down at the watch she wore on her wrist and nodded. "Yeah, it's two thirty-seven." She yawned again and cocked a brow at him. "Why?"

"Well you said that you're just going to be plagued with the nightmares again, so what would be the point of going back to sleep? I assume you don't want to take dreamless sleep for your own reasons, so I just figured I would stay up with you. If you wanted, I mean."

Hermione couldn't help the smile that graced her face when Malfoy offered to stay awake with her. She'd been too embarrassed to ask him if he would, but she knew that if she went downstairs to start reading that she would fall asleep anyway and that would defeat the purposes of staying awake. She was also pleasantly surprised that he'd guessed correctly that she didn't want to take a dreamless sleep potion.

She had the dreams nightly. She didn't want to become addicted to the potion, not to mention that she didn't feel it was her right to take the potions when they could be used for Harry when he had his nightmares, or for someone else who truly needed them. She could get by without them. Even if it meant having Malfoy for company.

"I'd like that."

Author's Note: I know, I know that's not how Dumbledore asked Harry to go get Slughorn but come on, we have to make due since I moved everything to Grimmauld Place. Also.. Yay! Draco is making an effort. See? He can be a big boy. Sorry there wasn't a whole lot of action in this chapter. I was going to make it longer, to add in the morning when Harry got home, but that will be next chapter. I liked the way this one ended. Plus, my "wifey" girlfromCostaRica has been begging – begging I tell you – for me to update. Apparently she didn't want to wait until next week. :P