Snippets

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hermione's eyelids flutter open, taking their time adjusting to the dimmed room surrounding her. Her recovery room is softly lit by a wall-sconce with a short, rounded candle sitting inside and she thanks– perhaps for the first time ever– the magical world for being behind in the department of fluorescent lighting. Her headache, at least, is thankful for that lack of advancement.

Unfortunately for her, the first thing that Hermione notices once her vision becomes clear is that she is decidedly not alone in her room. Sitting in a chair beside her bed with his elbows propped on his knees, and his chin resting on his knuckles is– of course– none other than the blonde prat himself.

"You really need to make up your mind. Your indecision is getting on my nerves," Hermione grumbles, her voice scratchy from disuse, as she eyes Draco disdainfully.

Draco scoots his chair closer to Hermione's bedside and stares intently at her.

"I've made up my mind. I choose you, Hermione," he says quietly, reaching forward tentatively and wrapping his larger hand around Hermione's small one resting at her side. "There are a thousand reasons why I shouldn't, and why you shouldn't allow me anywhere near you, but I'm quite finished trying to convince myself that how I feel about you is ignorable."

Draco squeezes Hermione's hand tenderly for a moment before he continues his monologue.

"I'm in love with you, Hermione, and if you will allow me to, I will prove that to you."

Something in Hermione's stomach sinks at those words. At Draco's declaration, Hermione is reminded violently of the visions which she has deliberately kept secret from him– namely, any of the ones featuring the small, blonde child and/or Hermione's vision-pregnancy.

Hermione knows that it isn't fair to Draco to continue much further when he doesn't have all of the information. It is also decidedly somewhat paradoxical to think of the fact that Draco Malfoy has just told her that he is in love with her, but Hermione resigns herself to dealing with that later.

"Do you want to hear what I think?" Hermione croaks, knowing that she is about to push Draco away– she knows that she is, but she also doesn't think that there is another way. "I think that you have a savior complex and are conflating your love for Healer Greengrass' sister with me."

Draco scoffs.

"I have a savior complex? You must be confusing me with someone else, Granger," Draco smirks, and it surprises Hermione that he seems to have not taken offense to Hermione's statement. "And I'm certainly not conflating anything. Believe me, if I could spare myself this pain a second time, I would. I'm rather selfish that way."

Hermione slips her hand out of Draco's and crosses her arms over her chest defiantly.

"You don't have all of the information. I've had visions that you don't know about and more that have come true, too," she huffs, still half-expecting that Draco will turn tail and disappear the moment that things get complicated again.

"So, tell me about them," Draco shrugs, leaning back in his chair as he crosses his own arms and raises an eyebrow at Hermione as if daring her to try him. "I'm all ears, love."

Hermione rolls her eyes, thinking that in this moment, she might actually miss the silence.

The morning after Draco's unexpected visit to Hermione's bedside, she again, wakes up to realize that she is not alone– though this time is a much more welcomed surprise.

"Morning, 'Mi," Harry smiles from his position standing beside her bed in approximately the same spot as Draco had sat the night before, though it appears that the chair has been moved back to the far side of the room in his absence.

"Morning," Hermione whispers, her eyelids still drooping from exhaustion. Hermione doesn't think that she feels quite as awful as she had after her first treatment, but she also has to remind herself that she has no idea how long she has been asleep this time.

Harry takes a seat on Hermione's bed beside her hip and rests one hand on either side of her to balance himself.

"Healer Greengrass was just here to check in on you," Harry explains, his eyes clearly searching Hermione's face for any sign of discomfort. "You've been out for over a week again. Healer Greengrass says that the spells she cast on you while she was here indicate that you woke up briefly last night, but that otherwise you've been consistently stable."

Hermione nods, unfortunately remembering her short time of wakefulness last night quite vividly.

Hermione had not, in fact, told Draco about the visions which she has, to this point, kept from him. She had been entirely too exhausted to hold up much of a conversation and had fallen back asleep before she knew it– a fact which she is grateful for. She knows that she has to tell Draco about their evident vision-offspring eventually, especially when she considers the fact that if Draco is truly in love with her as he claims he is, he likely is not going away any time soon, but that doesn't mean that she is in any way eager to do so.

"How are you feeling?" Harry asks, his voice soft, if a bit concerned.

Hermione shrugs. Physically, she feels a bit like a squashed bug– and she supposes that emotionally, she feels similarly.

"Fine," Hermione lies, deciding at this moment to keep Draco's confession to her a secret. She isn't entirely sure what she plans to do with that information, anyway, so there's no sense in mentioning it to anyone just yet.

Harry raises an eyebrow at her, clearly indicating his disbelief.

"Would you like to try that again?" Harry presses, eyeing Hermione pointedly.

Hermione sighs.

"I'm fine, Harry, really. I'm exhausted, but fine."

The early summer sun shines warmly on Hermione's skin as she finally steps outside of St. Mungo's after a nearly two week stay within the hospital. Today is one of the first truly sunny days in what feels to Hermione like months, and it gives her hope that perhaps it is an indication that the rest of her recovery at home will go well.

"I still don't think you should be left alone," Padma frowns dramatically as she insists on tucking Hermione into her bed as if she is her own child. "Are you sure that you don't want me to stay with you for a while?"

Hermione smiles half-heartedly at her friend.

"I will be fine, Padma," Hermione assures her as she settles back against her pillows comfortably. "I promise to send you a patronus or an owl if I need anything."

Padma eyes Hermione skeptically for a moment with her arms crossed over her chest before she seems to concede to Hermione's guarantee.

"I'll be back to check on you this evening, okay?" Padma states, and Hermione understands that this statement from her friend is decidedly not a question.

Hermione nods in assent and watches as Padma leaves her bedroom and closes the door behind her. A handful of moments later, she hears the floo in her sitting room activate, leaving her alone in her flat.

Hermione exhales, curling onto her side and closing her eyes in an attempt to rest for a while because she knows for an absolute fact that Padma was not lying when she said that she would be back.

Hermione is grateful for her friends' support and she has no idea what she would do or where she would be throughout this ordeal without them, but she also thinks that perhaps her independence has been challenged, too. She knows that she can't do everything on her own, but she also knows that she does not want to be coddled either.

Hermione also finds herself feeling a bit uncomfortable talking to her friends, like Harry or Padma, at the moment– in large part due to Draco's abrupt declaration of his apparent love for her. He visited her twice more since then while she was still under observation before she had been discharged from St. Mungo' and both times, he maintained his stance.

The second time he visited her, which was also at night– presumably after his shift, as he was still in his viridian Healer robes– he had apologized for overwhelming her with his confession and told her that he is in no rush to hear those same words from her (though he did say that he has every intention of convincing her to fall in love with him by 'courting her properly' as soon as she is well enough to be discharged), and that he accepts the fact that he is going to have to work for Hermione's forgiveness after abandoning her once more.

The third time he visited, he was again in his Healer robes and had looked completely bedraggled after a long day of Healing. He had sat down on the chair he'd claimed as his own after that first visit and laid his head back against the backrest with his eyes closed. After a few moments of rest, Draco had straightened up, explained to Hermione that he had told himself throughout his difficult day that 'if he could just make it through the day, then he would go see Hermione', and reached into his pocket to pull out a shrunken down book. He then removed the shrinking spell, plucked his reading glasses from his breast pocket and perched them upon the bridge of his nose as he flicked open the book to begin reading aloud to Hermione, citing his reason as being if he was reading aloud, then he wouldn't fall asleep right there in Hermione's hospital room. The book in question was a seemingly near-pristine copy of Hogwarts: A History, and the idea of having a wizard read Hermione's favorite book to her may or may not have partially fulfilled a certain long-held fantasy of hers.

Hermione had drifted off to sleep with the sound of Draco's voice in her ears and had actually found herself disappointed when she had awoken and found him not where she had left him.

Hermione had also dreamed about Draco that night and in this case, she believes that it was just that– a dream. It hadn't felt like one of her visions, and it hadn't woken her like many of her nighttime visions tend to do. Instead, she woke up the following morning with just the lingering thought of Draco Malfoy tickling the back of her mind.

Hermione buries her head in her pillow and sighs. If she's being entirely honest with herself, she thinks that perhaps it might be all too easy to find herself falling for the blonde git– even without her visions which put very specific ideas into her head.

The visions– perhaps obviously, Hermione thinks– do color her perception. How could they not? But even without them, if she looks at who Draco Malfoy is and not who he might be, she finds that she still cares quite greatly for him. Yes, he has hurt her, even since reemerging in her life again post-Hogwarts/post-War, but not in the same ways as his teenaged counterpart had– not in the same ways at all.

Hermione can see clearly that the Draco Malfoy that she knows now is worlds away from the Draco Malfoy who taunted her all of those years ago in school. After all, the Draco Malfoy that she knew in school never would've become a Healer who treats patients indiscriminately. He never would've helped her research her condition with nothing to gain from it himself. He never would've touched her or kissed her, let alone slept with her– and he certainly wouldn't have fallen in love with her, if his words are to be believed.

Hermione also finds that she does believe him. In spite of everything, she trusts him. She wants to believe that the immense depth of his capacity for love which she has already seen might actually be shared with her. She still thinks that she is feeling quite weary of giving Draco the opportunity to hurt her again, but as foolish as it may be, she decides that perhaps one last chance may be in order.

Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday! (:

I dunno what it is about this week, but basically all day yesterday, I thought that it was Tuesday. It wasn't, lol. So, here we are now.

Anyway. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter and I thank you so much for spending a bit of your time here with me. I truly appreciate your support, more than you know.

If you feel so inclined, please leave a review. I love reading your thoughts, observations, opinions and favorite parts of each chapter. (:

See you again next week.