45 years ago

"Well this is annoying." Hermione muttered to herself as she observed the page numbers and found that pages 322 and 323 were missing. She finished the story anyway. The title page of the book was ripped out and the cover was scarred, yet somehow, she expected the story to be okay.

It wasn't.

Malfoy had been gone for almost thirty minutes, longer than ever before and she sat alone in the infirmary. Her mind was disorientated by the realisation and suddenly, she wondered what she could be doing instead of laying in bed with a scavenged book. She eyed the chess board on its chair shrine to Ron before deciding.

She was going to walk to the window to peep at the sky.

The floor was cold on her feet, even through the socks Malfoy had put on her for the gradually chillier nights. Inexplicable fear shot through her, and she had to actively slow her breathing and analyse why.

The last time she had gotten out of her bed to do something more than using the toilet had been… The last time she had seen the sky had been the final time she set eyes on her baby. Her body sank back into the bed. The softness was a vice grip on her limbs and she could no longer move. Her breathing quickened, her vision became unfocused. She was slipping from her precarious perch.

There was a clatter and footsteps.

"Granger!" Hands grabbed her and heaved her sagging body back onto the bed. His arms were firm as they slotted under her knees to carefully place her into the arms of sleep.

He smelled strangely intoxicating. Like herbs and spices, spicy mustard and his musk. She pressed her nose to his neck and inhaled drowsily, groaning as he set her back onto her pillows. The tightness in her chest felt like a cage too small for a beating heart.

Malfoy was panting as hard as she was when she managed to open her eyes to get a look at him. His cheeks were flushed, his pupils had blown wide, and there was a yellow stain down the front of his robe.

"What happened?" He tucked loose hair behind her ear, holding her eyelids open; she presumed to check her eyes like he always did. "Are you okay?" He pressed a warm palm to her forehead and then her throat. She could feel the tackiness of her skin against his and wondered vaguely how poorly she smelled in comparison to his clean body and clothes. That's right, she thought, he smells like detergent too.

"I wanted to see the sky." She was slurring slightly and she closed her eyes, letting the full weight of her head sink back into the pillow. Her t's sounded more like d's and she giggled. "But then all I thought about was him ."

Malfoy took a second and his silence was filled with his confusion. Then he exhaled sharply and she opened her eyes to see if he pitied her. She wanted to keep hating him, his pity toward her was easy to use as fuel. His eyes hardened. His jaw ticked.

For a moment, she thought she had angered him, and maybe she had. He turned so abruptly and strode back to the door, she was about to pick an argument with him just to have someone to talk to. She swallowed it when he stooped out of sight and rose with a plastic saucer and his wand.

"Wha-" She followed his wand's flick and a sandwich returned to the saucer in pieces, all in the wrong order. Deli meat, lettuce, bread, tomato, bread, deli meat. He hovered another saucer Hermione hadn't noticed on the bed with a perfectly intact sandwich and a mismatched plate. Then he placed it on her lap.

"Eat." She didn't. She watched as he reassembled his sandwich with his hands, his face was exhausted and the bags under his eyes had become purple. The yellow on his shirt was the excess of mustard from his sandwich which was soaked in the thick stuff.

"What happened to you ?" She quipped, still giddy from lightheadedness and pretending the cage on her heart had gone away. He rolled his eyes very slightly. She caught it in the semi-darkness because his skin was just so fair, he stood out like a high definition image against a blurry background.

"I saw your dumb ass slipping off the bed like a sack of potatoes, so I had to catch you before you hit your head and got more brain damage." Draco tapped his sandwich with his wand and Hermione assumed he was trying to clean it. It annoyed her that he didn't clean his robes and she looked for her own wand. She couldn't find it.

"Why'd you drop the food instead of magicking me?" Malfoy was in the middle of lifting his sad looking sandwich to his mouth when he sighed, dropped the sandwich with what could only be described as exasperation and locked eyes with her.

"If you must know," he said slowly and with the air of a person speaking to their mentally slow grandparent, "I've been spending a lot of time with muggles, amongst them, and I've gotten a little too used to not using magic to do shit."

"I'm shit, am I?" She kicked herself because he was talking to her perfectly well without needing to antagonise him, and he had given her the untarnished sandwich.

"I'm not doing you, so your little joke doesn't apply." Malfoy shut his mouth as soon as the words left him. His ears went pink and he swallowed as he waited for her reaction. She really wanted to hate him.

"You should take my sandwich." Hermione nudged the plate with a limp finger. "I don't want-"

"You have to eat." Malfoy immediately lost his shyness and clenched his jaw. She briefly wondered about the state of his teeth and if he ground them in his sleep. A grimace tightened her mouth as she held the soggy sandwich. "And starting tomorrow, I'll be taking you outside for a walk once around the building."

It occurred to her that she had no idea where she was. She knew where Headquarters was, but she had never been to the infirmary or the offices attached. "Do we have to?" Her heart skipped inside her chest again and understood for a mortifying second that she was having a panic attack when he found her. And his presence had calmed her down. Without her even noticing that he had.

She hated him for it.

"Yes." Malfoy said firmly, swallowing an entire glass of water. "I'm your healer and it's about time you get on your feet."

Hermione finished her sandwich in begrudging silence.

—

"Ouch." Hermione grumbled as Malfoy gripped her waist when she stumbled. She pushed him off her because the smell of his laundry detergent had filled her lungs and she was annoyed with herself when she subconsciously began searching for it with every breath. He let her go, but he stayed close.

"Don't go too quickly, Granger." Malfoy called after her as she put more length in her stride.

"Otherwise, I'll fall and hit my head and get more brain damage." Hermione called over her shoulder. "Got it, doc." She thought she heard him exhale sharply, it even sounded like laughter. But she was busy.

Because the air was fresh, crisp, cutting through her three layers of fabric. It was the middle of autumn. The leaves had all turned magnificent hues of reds and burgundies with splashes of yellows and oranges. Stubborn trees remained green, refusing to let their leaves go. The sky was grey; overcast with fast moving heavy clouds as gusts of wind thrashed through the tall grass at her ankles and imitated the crashing ocean waves as it wove through branches above her.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled. The cage in her chest had widened a little, and her heart beat a little less painfully. There was room.

The house below them was set in the countryside. It was nothing like headquarters. The headquarter building was an abandoned muggle building with a magically expanded interior. To any onlooker, it resembled a busy cafe, people went in and out and the mild smell of coffee always lingered. There were too many people in the street and they used that as a disguise for coming and going.

When compared to the lonely house here, there was a stark difference. Where the hill sloped down to meet the three story building. Hermione could smell in the wind a little fresh earth and manure. She thought of the cows or horses grazing, and how peaceful it must be to live on a farm, or in the countryside.

She studied the house again and noted that it had an attic, a full basement, and two stories between them. She could see the little half-window that bore her light on the mornings until early afternoon before the sun disappeared.

"What's upstairs?" Her words were thrown to the wind, but they found him.

Malfoy was staring pointedly in the other direction and she had the vague impression that he was giving her some privacy. Even though, she felt the most exposed since…that day. When he turned his head to look at her his hair was scooped off the back of his head and into his eyes. She had the thought to tuck it back again, the way he had been doing for her, but the wind pushed it back into place before she could act.

"Recovery centre." Malfoy's eyes settled on the dimly lit windows. "Poppy oversees a lot. They let me deal with trauma then they move out and on, or upstairs."

"Where do all the people come from?" She had to approach him if she wanted to continue the conversation without yelling. The wind was rising, it whistled in her ears like a warning song. The air shifted. The scent of it was wet and earthy, fresh as it came now with a sharper, cooler sting on her face.

"War breeds lost people." Malfoy extended his palm to her and she took his hand. It was oddly intimate, but he immediately wrapped her arm around his so she would be steady in the increasing wind as they descended the hill.

"It's been quiet the last two days." Hermione thought it was two days but she couldn't be sure.

"The Order halted operations." Malfoy's voice was so quiet, the wind blotted him out like a poorly connected radio. She read his lips easily then glanced away because she had been staring. "Poppy sees most of the refugees."

"Shouldn't you be helping?" Her wounded side twinged from the effort of walking on a slope, but she would not tell him that. Being in the basement had acclimated her to the dark. She wasn't going to find her baby's murderer by staying in the dark. "Instead of babysitting me."

"I'm a Malfoy." She turned to go around the back of the house but Malfoy firmly guided her back to the basement door. "And I still have the mark. No one trusts me."

A trickle of sadness seeded itself in her thoughts. Then she remembered his pity, and how much she hated it, so she uprooted it and tried to rid herself of it.

"I thought you said around the house?" Hermione glanced at Malfoy's face and maybe she had gotten better at reading him, or maybe he had been poor at hiding his thoughts, but she saw his jaw tick. A hidden wince.

"It's going to rain." He looked to the sky and his eyes reflected the dark grey above. "And the cemetery is not what I had in mind, so…" His eyes flickered to her face before fixing on the basement door. Hermione was reminded that the cage was in her chest and that she was not free.

"Does it contain many-" She tried to remember his words from moments ago, "-lost people?"

"Some," Malfoy hummed, "but families take their loved ones most times." He bodied the door open, and the quiet of the basement immediately enveloped her. Her ears rang for the lack of sound, and the warmth felt like a physical blanket.

He helped her settle back into bed and fatigue immediately weighted her body.

"I got you something," Malfoy almost sounded shy. He left her side and ruffled around at his desk. When he returned, he held a taped up paperback. "I found this on my last outing. Patients at the hospitals leave things behind all the time, and this one was sitting there unclaimed for days, so I-"

"Thank you." Hermione cut his rambling short. The rest of his words were swallowed audibly. She took the book from him and hefted it in her hands. It bore red archways and the name was covered by duct tape. But the author's name adorned the top half: Anne Rice. She smiled immediately, the sensation felt tight on her facial muscles but she didn't care.

"I love Anne Rice!" Malfoy blinked at her and she knew he had no idea what she was getting at. So she continued in a breathless giggle that sounded nothing like her. "My mom and dad used to have a tiny library of books in the waiting room. There was this one book from her that I read, about a woman who was a vampire and it was a series but I never got the rest-"

She stopped talking because Malfoy was just staring at her. "What?" She looked around, then to her torso where the bandaged wound remained dry; her wound undisturbed. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Sorry. No." Malfoy shook his head. "I just zoned out, you know. You're yammering on about books- ouch !" Hermione threw the other tattered paperback at him.

"That was shit, by the way." She jabbed an angry finger in its direction. Malfoy picked it up and the spine split in half, a mournful tear echoed through the room as half the book fell to the floor. "The heroine was a bimbo and completely unlikeable."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "Why, yes Granger. I thought you'd resonate with her. That's why I chose that one for you." Hermione prepared to throw Anne Rice at him, and he braced with a smirk, but she didn't do it. She slid it onto the chair where the chess set and its pieces peered up at her.

"Did you want me to get rid of it?" Malfoy asked, after seconds passed where she stared at the chequered pattern.

"Hmm?" Hermione blinked the squares from her vision. "Oh. No. It's alright." She laid back into her pillows and got comfortable. "I need a nap."

"I'll bring you dinner when it's done." Malfoy returned to his desk. Hermione fell asleep to the lullaby of his scratchy quill.