This one is a short one, because it would be way too long if I combined it with the next one. But at least this way you all get two chapters today!

Song Inspiration: We Are Broken - Paramore

Chapter 25

Later that morning, while everyone was eating breakfast around Bill and Fleur's large dining table, Hermione asked Draco to go get Harry and Ron. She wanted to see them, needed to assure herself that they were both safe, too. His reluctance to leave her side was easy to see, but he merely nodded in acquiescence to her request before leaning down to brush his lips against hers in a tender kiss.

Hardly a minute had passed before she heard thundering footsteps stampeding down the hall from the kitchen to Draco's and her room. She couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face at the noise and what it meant.

The bedroom door flew open, and she watched as Harry exploded into the bedroom, Ron hot on his heels.

"Hermione!" Harry said, a crooked grin on his face and green eyes bright.

She opened her arms up and he raced over to her, pulling her close to him in a hug that would have been uncomfortably tight had it not been exactly what she had needed at that moment. Harry was safe!

She looked over his shoulder at Ron, who was still standing a few steps back from the side of the bed, trepidation and happiness battling in the depths of his blue eyes. She kept her right arm tight around Harry but lifted her left to reach out for Ron's hand. With a sigh and a tentative smile, he moved closer until he sat on the bed, in the space beside her left hip, and held her hand securely in his own.

"How are you both doing? What happened when they took you away?"

"We were fine, 'Mione!" Harry said, clearly exasperated at her concern over the two of them when she had been the only one in any imminent danger. "No one even bothered us until right before Malfoy was sent to get us."

"Well, Pettigrew showed up," Ron added, almost as an afterthought, "but he didn't do anything to us and that silver hand of his ended up choking the life out of him for some reason…"

Hermione wasn't sure what to make of that information, so she filed it away for closer examination at a later time.

"I was so worried that they were going to come get you once the stinging jinx wore off, Harry. There would have been no denying who you were, they would have called You-Know-Who, and it would have all been over like that," she snapped the fingers of her right hand for emphasis.

"I know, but they didn't. Thank Godric they sent Malfoy down instead of someone else," Harry said. "You know, he's the reason we were able to get you out of there," he added thoughtfully. "I had no idea how we were going to manage it until he showed up. Not to mention he hardly left your side the entire time you were out of it."

Hermione felt a warm glow in her chest at his words. While Ron's face still looked slightly sour at the mention of Draco's name, he refrained from any badmouthing of the blonde, and she could see from the contemplative look in Harry's eyes that her best friend no longer saw her boyfriend as the enemy.

"Tell me everything that's happened while I've been unconscious," she requested, settling herself more comfortably amongst the pillows as her friends launched into the details.

"Thanks for giving us some time alone with her," Hermione heard Harry's voice say outside of her room.

"You got it, Potter," Draco said, and even through her exhaustion Hermione felt a small smirk spread over her face at his tone. He was trying so hard to maintain his former aloofness towards her best friend, but she could hear in his voice that he was fighting a losing battle.

In his defense though, she thought to herself, not liking Harry Potter is fighting an unwinnable battle. He's just impossible to hate.

The smirk turned to a genuine smile when Draco walked into the room, and she moved to get up to go to his side. She was so tired, though, and her body so weak, that she nearly fell to the floor at Draco's feet.

Draco darted to her side, scolding her about pushing herself too hard and letting herself get too tired, but his words only served to make Hermione more upset.

Her body wasn't responding to her commands, and she despised the weakness and fragility that weighed down her limbs.

"I'm not a fucking invalid, Draco Malfoy," she snapped irritably, batting his hands away where he fussed over her like a little old grandmother.

He looked at her appraisingly before reaching back out to her. He pulled her into his warm embrace, his strong arms holding her close.

"It's alright to be human, Hermione," he said knowingly. "Until you've had a chance to build your strength back up, you can use mine."

She pulled him to her more securely and felt the tears fall down her cheeks.

Over the next several days, Hermione spent as much time as possible with Draco. Not only had she missed him immensely, but she also knew that this respite would not last forever. She did spend an hour or two with Harry and Ron every day, planning out their next move and trying to decide what to do next.

Hermione knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something important was in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts. There was no other reason as to why the woman would have been so desperate to know how Hermione had gotten into it. So, they discussed one idea after another, trying to figure out how they were going to get inside to search for whatever it was that the deranged witch was hiding inside.

The remainder of every day was spent with Draco. They caught up on every little thing that had happened over the past months while they had been separated. She told him about her parents and spent hours afterward crying in his arms, completely shattered once again at having to tell Draco the truth. He had merely held her tightly and helped her fit the pieces of her soul back together again just as she had known he could.

They talked about her life on the run, as well as Ron leaving and the circumstances around him finding them again. She told him all about how they had landed in the hands of the Snatchers and had needed to physically restrain him from storming from the room to find Potter and land a solid slap upside his fool head at the realization that the wizard had been the reason they had been found and hauled to Malfoy Manor in the first place.

Hermione had experienced several ups and downs throughout those days as she had stressed over whether or not she would ever be back to normal. The biggest shock to her system, however, had hit her the day after she had awoken. Fleur had come in to check on the progress of her healing arm, the only injury that she hadn't been able to heal with magic. The marks had been an angry red and had oozed with blood for nearly a week at that point, and Thomas had eventually volunteered to go into the nearest Muggle town to get some of the same cream that Draco's mother had used on his own wounds on Christmas Eve over a year and a half ago.

When Fleur had unwrapped her left forearm, Hermione had finally seen the vicious scar for the first time since Bellatrix had carved it into her body. At the sight of the ugly word scrawled in untidy script on her arm, Hermione had lost it. If she had felt like she would never be able to go back to the witch she had been before, that had just confirmed it. She had been branded as inferior, as less than, and it cut her deeply.

Fleur had merely looked at Draco sadly before turning around to walk from the room.

Draco moved to the side of the bed and sat, gathering Hermione tightly into his arms. He held her close as she curled up into a ball, half on his lap and half off of it.

"That word on your skin, Hermione…. It doesn't mean what you think it does," he said quietly.

At her angry look at what she assumed to be an attempt to brush off the meaning of the slur, he shook his head at her and placed a kiss to her forehead.

"That word, that scar - all it means is that you withstood something that would have broken most other wizards and witches. Not only did you withstand it," he added, lifting her chin so that she would have no choice but to look into his grey eyes as he continued, "you came through it even stronger than you were before. You are amazing, Hermione Granger."

Hermione felt a wistful smile cover her face at his words, spoken with such sincerity, and merely nodded. While she knew that she would never be able to look at that arm again without remembering the pain of the wound or the hatefulness of the label, she would at least try to pull comfort from Draco's words. She would try her best to see it from his point of view, instead.