Chapter 31
Hermione's Cottage
5am
More asleep than awake and trying to get warm, Theo cuddled closer to the heater that he knew instinctively was Draco, his love's unmarked arm twined around him. The pre-dawn was still dark, but purples had started to appear along the west ceiling as dawn drew ever nearer.
Theo looked around despite the faint buzzing of a headache in his skull and the dull ache in his chest as he breathed and discovered that Hermione passed out asleep on the floor next to the couch. The empty wine bottle had offered up its last couple drops onto the floor. Theo saw no sign of a glass anywhere and raised an eyebrow at the possibility that his swot was drinking right from the bottle.
Was she alright?
He carefully woke Draco with a kiss and a nuzzle to his attempted to ignore his disquiet when his body wasn't ready for more after the small intimacy.
Draco's eyes blinked open and he looked at Theo in surprise. Stroking Draco's face with one hand, Theo lifted a finger to his lips urging Draco to be quiet and tilted his head towards their witch, tears dried on her cheeks and red wine staining her sleeping lips.
Theo slipped off Draco's lap, careful to move slowly both not to wake their witch and also not to fall and hurt himself. His body still felt wrong.
Draco's eyes widened, his face pensive, but he rose silently at Theo's unspoken command.
The two of them gingerly carried Hermione to bed, Theo had her head and shoulders and Draco her legs and they still almost dropped her more than once. They both were horrified at how weak they were. Before Azkaban, either could have carried her singlehandedly as easily as a small toy. It was hard not to feel pathetic when faced with one's own entropy in such a way.
Once they had her settled into the middle of the bed, they crawled under the blankets around her. They talked for a bit, grey eyes meeting sapphire without illness clouding them for the first time since they had been in this strange liminal place that neither was sure existed outside their own minds.
"Maybe this is all real?" Theo wondered aloud, his fingertips running along Hermione's fuller curves and twisting her wild curls over his fingers.
"Would we imagine Hermione drinking alone and falling asleep next to her couch?" Draco asked, "I could imagine a lot of things, but this lonely little cottage in the woods is not something I would have imagined for our witch."
"Can we have the same delusion?" Theo asked, "Could it be mass hysteria?"
"Theo, we can hardly be having mass hysteria in Azkaban while locked in separate cells."
"Do you really think we are still in Azkaban, Drake?" Theo fought the way the possibility made his hands shake in fear. He took in a deep breath of Hermione and her hair and sweat to calm himself. She was real. She had to be.
"I don't know, I hope not." Draco sighed, "All I know is that if I wake up in Azkaban after all this, I think I will figure out a way to finally die."
Theo felt himself crumble at that, his lower lip shaking and he didn't even realise the tight sob that broke the silence of the cottage was his own.