"Hermione!"
Hermione turned around quickly as she heard the familiar voice calling behind her.
"Harry!" She smiled, walking towards him.
"Hey, where have you been?" He asked, sounding conversed.
"What?" Hermione questioned, momentarily forgetting she'd been off the day before.
"I didn't see you in yesterday, I sent a message to your office but didn't get a reply, and wel-"
"-I had something come up." She snapped quickly, slightly annoyed by Harry's question.
"It's not like you, that's all." He seemed shock at her change of tone, but the I clever statement just drove her tired mind louder.
"I'm allowed to have a day off aren't I, Harry? Just once? Maybe?" she shook her head, annoyed, ready to turn away.
"Are-Are you okay?" Her best friend questioned, a worried look on his knowing face.
"Yeah-" She changed her tone softer, "yeah, sorry, just tried."
"I spoke to Ron yesterday..." Harry's tone turned darker as he trailed off.
"What about?" Hermione really wasn't in the mood for this conversation.
"He wants to speak to us. To you." Harry was suddenly serious, his eyes baring into Hermione.
"Tell him he can, anytime he wants." Hermione answered with a roll of her eyes, bored now, "I've told you, he can come up to me at any time."
"He's worried you'll hex him...again." Harry answered with a small grin, as he moved away from a wizard trying to move past him.
"There's nothing stopping him, I'm past that."
"He misses you."
"And I him." Hermione said, confessing the truth out loud.
"We could meet tonight? All of us, again, tonight?" Harry sounded enthusiastic, excited even. They hadn't been the three of them together in months, not since...not since Ron did the thing that couldn't go un-forgotten.
"Harry...not that I don't think that's a good idea, which I do-but I have something on tonight." Hermione looked to the floor, the other thing on her mind suddenly coming back to the forefront.
"I don't know whether to ask why, or what?" Harry asked, trying to find Hermione's eyes again.
"I'm going to be late." Hermione said, both to avoid the answers and because she really was late."
"I'm just asking, what would be so hard?" Harry asked as he started to move her along to the direction of the elevators.
"I just don't know if I'm ready to start things up again." Another confession.
"He's really sorry Hermione." He looked up at her, but Hermione refused to look back, instead keeping her eyes fixed on the elevators she was walking towards.
"Maybe sorry isn't good enough, not this time. Maybe he should have thought about that before he went and did what he did?"
"Look, Hermione, we spent the best years of our lives together-more than half, and I want that back, he wants that back."
"I'm sure he does." They stepped into the lift, side by side.
"I know you do to." He said sternly, punching in their number floors on the buttons to the side.
"I do. But I can't do tonight." Her tone was flat, but still, annoyance was coming through.
"What do you want me to tell him?"
"I've got no problem with you talking to him, Harry." Hermione interjected, dodging the question again.
"Even if I didn't want to, he's my brother-in-law, it's hard not to." Harry sounded sorry, as if he wished he could change the fact.
"I know," Hermione said, dropping her shoulders and loosening slightly, "I just wish he would come to me himself."
"He wants to. I know he does."
"Tell him to come and see me then, he knows where my office is." Hermione stepped out of the lift as it suddenly ground to a halt.
"Tonight?" Harry asked behind her.
"I can't do tonight." She stated with a sigh, looking back at Harry quickly, the doors closing before the man could ask her why.
She wasn't sure when she would be free.
Although Draco wasn't her responsibility, and he would hate to think that he was-he had made that quite clear when he had first come to her, when they had stayed up all night talking about it, when they had discussed the plan. There was no plan.
She wasn't sure if she was allowed to tell Harry. She wasn't sure whether she would. But he was her best friend. But she was scared of what he would say, of his reaction.
Harry had other things on his mind-Ginny was pregnant, for one, and relations with Ron weren't exactly at their best right now. It was amazing how much the two of them could get away without seeing him for months, even though they worked under the same roof. And now it seemed like Harry was getting back in touch. Not that he could avoid being his brother-in-law, or his best friend.
But Draco, that's what Hermione had to keep her mind on.
Come to think of it, as she sat down on the familiar stiff, wooden chair in her office, she didn't have to have her mind on either of them. Neither of them were her concern. Work should, and would, be her priority. Always.
Except her mind kept wondering to a certain red-head sitting only rooms across from her own, and a certain, particularly nasty, blonde lying in a hospital bed with a brain tumour the size of a peanut, waiting for her to be home so he could have a fresh sleep.
"Draco?" Hermione called out from the landing as she heard the familiar crack issuing from below her.
"That's me." Malfoy groaned, stumbling over towards the sofa he slept in last night and falling into a sitting position on it quickly.
"Are you okay?" Hermione asked, hurrying down the stairs.
"Just a bit fatigued if I'm honest." He stated through another groan, getting himself more comfortable on the cushion covered couch.
"I've just got the room upstairs ready for you." She said, walking into the kitchen and fetching a glass of water for the man sitting awkwardly in her living room, his bloodshot eyes standing out behind his pale skin.
"I don't know if I'll be able to make it up the stairs." He admitted, stifling a yawn.
"If not, we'll just use a few charms, I'm sure." Hermione answered, trying to keep the pity from her voice as she handed the half-asleep Malfoy the glass, which he took with a nod.
"Ready?" Hermione asked once Draco had set down his now empty glass.
"Guess I'll have to be." He said sarcastically, rolling his eyes slightly as he tried to lift himself up off the deep sofa.
Hermione hurried over, grabbing hold of an arm to help hoist him up, before she was ushered away by Draco with him pulling his arm away with distaste. Muttering to himself angrily about not needing help.
This was obviously a lie to himself as he struggled to even get from the sofa to the fireplace without having to run at it for support, then having to lean from the ledge to the doorframe before stumbling to the foot of the staircase.
With all his weight resting on the banister, determination steamed through his tired eyes as he refused to accept and give in to the locomotor charm, Draco carefully, and extremely slowly, shifted himself up each step, with Hermione standing just behind with her arms outstretched ready to catch him-much to his annoyance.
Eventually, after what was much too long for a normally simple and automatic task, Draco made it to the landing, trying to hide his pants for breathe with great difficulty as he draped himself over the wooden railing.
"It's just this room here." Hermione said softly, stepping around him and opening the door into the guest room.
Grunting, in (as what Hermione took to be) appreciation, Malfoy shuffled inside without a word and set himself down on the newly made bed.
"Is there a potion or anything I can make to help with the symptoms?" Hermione asked shyly, charming water into a glass on the bedside table.
"No, I've tried all the spells already and there's no potion." He answered, reaching for the glass.
"How would you know?" The woman questioned, watching Draco gulp down the water.
"My mother was a Healer, she taught me everything she knew-and as I said, magic can't help this cancer thing." Draco mumbled, speaking to the glass in his hand.
"I didn't know your mother was a Healer." Hermione commented, genuinely surprised.
"What? Don't think she would be caring enough? She wasn't," He scoffed, setting back down the glass, "Not many people knew anything about my family."
"Not not caring enough, I know what she did for Harry-" Draco raised his eyes at her, as if suggesting that this one act did not constitute for her being caring, "-I'm just surprised she chose that line of work, knowing her sister…"
"Which one? Because I'm pretty sure the one we don't talk about also was." Draco said sarcastically, settling himself deeper into the bed.
"I meant…it doesn't matter…" Hermione trailed off, noticing Draco closing his eyes in dismissence, "do you need anything? More pillows? Some food?"
Draco shook his head in reply before turning himself to the side, his back to Hermione, "Turn the light out." He demanded, as Hermione's footsteps retreated backwards.
Hermione smiled to his back sarcastically, reaching out to turn off the light before giving a small mock bow to an empty audience.
"Draco." Hermione whispered from the door frame, knocking gently on the open door and waking Draco up with a start.
"It's really weird hearing my name in your voice." Malfoy said raspily, opening his eyes after a moment.
"To be honest, it's weird saying it." Hermione laughed slightly, bringing a tray towards the bed.
"I'm starving!" Draco announced happily, sleep still in his voice.
He took the tray off Hermione and set it on his lap, grinning greedily at the soup in front of him.
"You look like you haven't eaten in weeks!" Hermione laughed, passing him a spoon.
"I feel like I haven't eaten in weeks!" Draco said through a yawn, almost snatching the spoon before scooping it into the soup, "This is also my favourite." He grinned, eating hungrily.
"Oh," Hermione laughed sheepishly, "I didn't know that."
"I would have been scared if you had!" He winked up at her, grabbing a piece of the thick bread from the tray and scooping it into the bowl.
"You're the one scaring me now…"
"Blame the drugs, or the sleep-I don't think I've ever slept as well before."
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking a piece of the bread.
"Insomniac." Malfoy commented without hesitation, focusing on his food.
" Oh, right…" Hermione said, surprised.
"I'm telling you now, you wouldn't even wish night terrors on your worst enemy-not even Potter." Draco scoffed darkly, too bust concentrating on his food to notice Hermione's disapproving look at his last comment.
"After everything that's happened, Harry is still your enemy?" Hermione questioned with raised eyebrows, picking at the bread roll in her hands.
"Some people you just can't let go of," Draco winked at her, "no, of course I'm only joking."
"Harry asked me to go out with him and Ron tonight actually." Hermione remembered suddenly.
"Who would be the third wheel for that date then," Draco grinned to himself, gulping down the last of the water, ""Why didn't you go?"
"Because Ron and I-because I wanted to make sure you were okay after yesterday." Hermione covered up hastily, ignoring Malfoy's questioning look.
"Did you tell him that?" Draco asked, quickly deciding not to delve into the real reason.
"Tell him what?"
"About me?"
"Oh, oh no-why would you want me to?" Hermione asked, her mind wandering.
"Merlin no! My head hurts enough as it is without him storming around here to shout at me for using you or some shit he would make up."
"I doubt that…" Hermione said seriously, taking the cleared tray off Draco's lap and standing up.
"I don't put it past Potter, always assuming things-especially about me."
"And he's never been wrong?" Hermione raised her eyebrows, smirking.
"…That's not the point." Draco huffed, a dark smile creeping up on his lips as he remembered breaking his nose at the start of sixth year.
"It's off putting, that smile." Hermione laughed, tapping the empty glass on the table with her wand and refilling it.
"After all I've told you in the last two days, it's my smile that you won't allow?" Draco answered with mock hurt.
Laughing gently, Hermione shook her head and turned to leave , glancing back slightly to see Malfoy swallowing his tablets; she smiled lightly and shut the door behind her without another word.
The last seven minutes had given her more insight into Draco Malfoy than the seven years she's spent every day with ever had-and she had no idea how to feel about it.