Twenty-Three

Draco's staring at himself in the mirror, leaning heavily on the sink with one hand as he gingerly touches his nose with the other. He hasn't seen her there in the doorway yet, his left eye puffy and swollen half-shut. He looks like a mess, the idiot. Like he stepped in front of a bus. Like he fell off his broomstick during a Quidditch match. And he wants to go and fight? And risk this happening again, or dying? Or capture? Screw him. He's such a selfish bastard. So stupid. Trying to be noble. She watches as he carefully splashes his face with water, hissing at the pain, still not alerted to her presence as he dabs his face dry with the hand towel.

He's supposed to be a Slytherin, not some headstrong Gryffindor, so why does he insist on wanting to run out there and sacrifice himself? He's done enough for the Order – he's suffered enough for them. More than enough. While Lupin has been kind and understanding, Kingsley – and the Order as an organisation – have treated him like a disposable tool, to be used hard until it breaks and then thrown away. It's cruel. Wrong. Draco owes them nothing, after everything he's done. If anything, he owes her, she thinks childishly. It should be her who holds his life in her hands, who gets to decide whether he risks himself.

She can't manage without him.

He peers at himself in the mirror, so lean and wiry, the sleeves of his long-sleeved t-shirt pushed up to his elbows, as he pinches his nose carefully and then – "Oh my god!" she squeaks in horror as he forces his slightly crooked nose back into alignment with a faint crunch. He flinches, startled, and looks up at her in the mirror, his one good eye clear grey and beautiful – and watering with pain. Idiot. He blinks the tears away. Her hands are raised, fluttering at her sides as if she can somehow stop him from setting his nose like that, despite it being too late.

"Granger." He says just her name and nothing else, and his expression is serious but otherwise unreadable for a second. He has a litany of injuries just on his face alone. Split lip and left eyebrow, the left side of his face and jaw bruising up impressively – badly enough to obscure the thin scar cutting down it – his eye blacked, and his nose swollen and bloodied and perhaps still not entirely straight. Hermione clutches her hands together, anger and distress mixing in her belly. She feels sick. And that can't have fixed his nose properly. Idiot.

"You need to guard your left more," she says dumbly, looking at how that side had caught most of the damage and remembering the last minute or so of the fight that she'd seen – transfixed horrified on the stairs, her wand forgotten on the bed. He looks at himself in the mirror and then barks out a hoarse laugh.

"Yeah," he says simply, still sounding slightly nasal. "I do." He looks at her in the mirror again, and she can't decipher his expression through the injuries of the fight. Regret, she thinks, and a mute apology. But really, who knows? She had seen how he'd come so wholly alive in that brief fight, and she hates it. Alive, filled with an intent, vital passion that was the same as when he kissed her, as when they'd had sex less than a few hours ago. It seems both fighting and fucking bring him to life, she thinks crudely; they both crack through the mask he tries to keep up to cover the raw self beneath, which is filled with so much emotion it hurts to see. She isn't sure what that says. What it means. She swallows hard.

She had seen the depth of the self-loathing on his face when he'd said, let me atone.

"Sit down then," Hermione snaps, pulling her wand, which she'd retrieved while he was slowly limping his way up the stairs. "On the toilet," she directs him and then mumbles, "idiot," under her breath as he limps to the toilet and flips the lid closed, sitting down carefully. He's moving like an old man. He leans back, looking up at her, and she thinks he heard her mumbled insult from the rueful smile he gives her.

"Ouch," he says as his lip cracks and starts bleeding again, licking away the blood with one sweep of his tongue, and Hermione winces and hurries to fetch the jar of bruise cream, the essence of dittany and cotton wool balls from the cabinet.

"Idiot," she mumbles again, furious as she tucks a damp lock of hair behind her ear. She sets the dittany and cotton wool on the counter beside the sink and then takes Draco's chin in her hand, turning his face toward her. She can't believe Harry and Ron have done this. It's lucky Draco hasn't been hurt worse – as it was, he'd ended up holding his own surprisingly well. "Two against one," she mutters angrily, following a ragged trail of thoughts in her head. "The gits." The corner of Draco's mouth twitches into a bloodied smile, and Hermione frowns.

"Episkey," she says sharply, and his smirk vanishes as he whimpers and his hand comes up to his nose, which is now undeniably fixed. It looks like it hurt him. Good, she thinks viciously. Meanly.

"Fuck!" he says quietly but emphatically, grimacing.

"Don't be a baby," she says, angry. Too angry to be reasonable. Her chest feels tight and hot. Harry and Ron are meddling arseholes, and Draco is stubbornly determined to hate himself, and she thinks of him going out there on missions, fighting, and she wants to scream. Hermione knows that she's not capable of fighting anymore. She's aware her capture put paid to her being able to go on missions without being a liability, for the foreseeable future at least. Put her in front of a Death Eater and she'll crumble. So Draco would be out there without her, while she sits here waiting to know if he's even coming home – and that might just kill her.

She damps a ball of cotton wool in the essence of dittany and – pinching the cut together – dabs his eyebrow, less gently than she might have if she weren't so angry. His eyes study her – she can see his steady gaze in her peripheral vision. The wound begins to seal slowly as he grits his teeth, jaw tight and shoulders hunched. Dittany stings and normally Hermione would feel sympathetic, but right now she doesn't. "Close your eyes," she tells him, all hard, brittle edges, tears threatening to spill over. She stares into his eyes – one swollen and one beautiful – and feels like screaming and stamping her foot like a child as she reads the tired, remorseful certainty in his gaze and the set of his bloodied mouth. It makes her feel like slapping him.

He wants to fight. Well, he can't. He can't. "Close your eyes," she says again very tightly. Very angrily. Draco stares at her for a second as though weighing up the degree of her anger, and she glares. He sighs and shuts his eyes obediently, tongue playing with the split in his upper lip.

"Hermione," he says very softly and calmly, and she doesn't want to hear whatever he's going to say, because she knows it won't be 'I'm sorry, I don't want to go on missions'.

"Shut up." She runs the cotton ball over his eyelid, gentler than she wants to be. He still winces, pulling back, and she tightens her grip on his chin.

"I didn't go down there intending to pick a fight," he says, tired. Weary. His hand lands on her hip, warm and firm, and she looks down. His hands are large and bony, his knuckles abraded and a little swollen. She wants to sink into his touch. She wants to climb on his lap. She wants to cry. She wants to fuck him again. A tear wells over her lower lid, and she lets go of his chin to swipe it away with the back of her hand, sniffing wetly.

"Fuck," he mumbles, and when she looks up at him, there's a sharp misery on his face, remorse clear despite the mess Harry and Ron have made of his features. He lifts the hand that's not resting on her hip to her cheek, tracing gently along her cheekbone. "Please don't cry, Hermione," he says very softly, and it is a plea. "I didn't want this." She doesn't entirely believe that. She saw how much he enjoyed that damn fight. She bats his hand lightly down and throws the dirty, blood-pinked cotton ball in the small bathroom bin, wetting a fresh one.

"They had me bailed up in the kitchen, Hermione. Potter was blocking one door and Weasley the other," Draco explains. His thumb rubs over the waistband of her joggers as if trying to soothe her. It's not working. "They were looking for a fight."

"Well, I'm sure you could've avoided it somehow!" Hermione takes his chin in her hand again, finishing with his eye, the swelling already reduced by half and any abrasions gone. She'll need to put bruise cream on it though. Just like on the rest of his stupid face – he'll be blossoming in healing green and yellow bruises for a few days. His eyes are shut again, but somehow she can still tell he's feeling guilty and a little smug at once. They both know he could've found a way to defuse the tension if he wanted instead of fighting. Not that he should have had to. Merlin, Harry and Ron are such prats. She can decide for herself who she wants to have sex with. How dare they. She's so sick of being constantly controlled. Constantly handled. Anger seethes under her skin, spilling out of her messily.

"I should be bathing in the fucking afterglow right now," she says, her frustration hot and her distress a flailing, panicking creature. She feels like she can't breathe. "And instead, I'm looking after you because you just had to go and fight, like a –"

"I didn't want to fight, Hermione," he says, tone sliding toward frustration, wincing and flinching back as she wets a fresh cotton ball with dittany and swipes it over his mended but still swollen nose, a cut on the bridge.

"Oh? I thought you did. In fact, I distinctly heard you say to Remus that you did," she says tartly, deliberately being obtuse.

"Not like that. Not Potter and Weasley. You know that. Salazar's sake, I'm sorry, but –"

"No, you're not. You're not sorry! If you're really sorry, then you won't go and ask Remus to fight, but I bet you will," she tells him viciously as she smears dittany roughly over his puffy, split top lip, and he makes a small sound of pain in the back of his throat and grabs her wrist.

"Granger..." He says her name wearily as he holds her wrist, and that grip makes her feel trapped. Panic fizzes. "That actually hurts, you know," he says, and the genuine annoyance in his voice makes her stomach twist sickly.

"Then do it your bloody self!" she gets out shakily, furious as she wrenches her wrist away from his grip – he lets go, good eye widening as if he realises what he's done – and throws the cotton ball into his lap. She backs up against the bathroom wall, arms wrapped around her middle, trying not to cry. "I'm supposed to feel happy right now! I did feel happy!" She hitches in a shaky breath, tears stinging her eyes, short nails digging into her forearms. "Fuck, I can't believe I thought I could have something good. So fucking stupid. I should've known –"

Draco's lips press together before he speaks, tossing the cotton ball in the bin and standing with a wince and a stagger as his knee nearly goes out from under him. "Shit. I didn't want that, Hermione." He rubs his wrist tiredly over his forehead, looking wretched as he stands in front of the sink, staring in the mirror. His gaze catches hers. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to –"

"Don't! Just...shut up. I know it was Harry and Ron's fault! And I'm furious with them. But it's you who wants to go out on missions!" she snaps, watching as he begins to dab bruise cream onto his face, his expression grim.

"Weasley fights," he says, as if that means anything, and Hermione makes a harsh, angry sound.

"Ron isn't you! I don't –" Draco strips his shirt off and shoves it on the counter, and Hermione loses her train of thought. He's so bruised. All across the small of his scarred back, and over his abdomen are dark violet blooms, vivid against his pale skin. God. It looks awful on his back; the way the bruising and swelling interact with the ropey scars is ugly and painful looking. They're puffy and more discoloured than usual. A ragged, rough quilt that makes Hermione's anger dissolve in a moment. He took that for her. Some of it comes from her own whiplashes. She did that to him. Guilt writhes in her as he starts smoothing cream down the lean planes of his abdomen, scars etched into his skin there as well. Older and silvered-purple, they're from well before her capture. There is nearly nowhere untouched on him.

How can Hermione be angry at him over wanting to do what he sees as the right thing? And yet she is angry because she's terrified.

"You don't what?" he asks. She swallows hard, walking forward and dipping her fingers in the bruise cream.

"I don't need him," she says softly, swiping cream over the rough scarring, gentle now. She feels a little tension run out of him, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he keeps applying the cream to his abdomen. "I love Ron, and care about him, but not the way I love you." Hermione sighs, cream-covered fingers sliding to his side, pressing her lips to the patchwork of his back. She wishes again that he'd let her put scar liniment on it. The scars could be reduced to nearly nothing in less than a year with regular applications, but he's so damn stubborn. Draco leans back slightly as if pressing into her touch, hungry for it.

She kisses his back, right over his spine, and then starts smoothing the cream back into his bruised skin. She tries to be calm. Reasonable. "I just can't stand the idea of you going out there, Draco. You've done enough. They don't have the fucking right to ask any more of you after the things that you've done for them. What you've done to yourself for them. And they're not asking you to. So why are you offering? Do you just have a fucking death wish?" There's a silence that stretches out horribly.

"No," he says at last, too late. The pause was too long. Hermione feels cold. Chills run heavy through her, making her leaden and numb. She steps back from him, fingers greasy with cream curling into a fist as she looks at him in the mirror.

"You bastard." How dare he. How dare he think that of himself. It's as though he thinks he has no value, and he's so, so wrong. He's broken himself for the Order, for years. He's done more than anyone could be expected to do, and the terrible thing is that he's probably never going to get the recognition he deserves for it. It was a job done in the shadows, involving terrible things, and it has damned him. Hermione is well aware that even if – when – they win the war, Draco will never be praised by the public. He will never be hailed as a hero. The information he gave the Order was invaluable – Remus had told Hermione so – but what he had to do to stay undercover, to get the information, and pass it along...

"I don't," he says quickly. "Not a death wish. I'm not suicidal, for Merlin's sake. I just – you don't know what I've done, Hermione." She can imagine, and it makes worms squirm in her stomach. "You don't know what I fucking live with. I can't stand it. I need to do something good."

"You're wrong. You've done so much good. You have. You risked your life for the Order. You put yourself through hell doing a thankless, terrible job. You saved me! And you did what you could to try to help the people you could help. I know that you did. I saw you try to look after those women in the dungeons. You didn't have to do that. It put you at risk of discovery. But you still did it."

"It's not enough," he says blankly, his eyes very far away, hand pressed against his abdomen, which is black and violet and shiny with bruise cream. "It's not enough. I want to actually be fighting on the right fucking side for once. To do something actually, openly good. Something that isn't fucking awful, and disgusting, and destroying." His expression is bleak as he remembers.

"And what about me?" she asks, selfish and unfair perhaps, but she doesn't care. He can deny it, but he clearly thinks he deserves to die – or doesn't deserve to live, if there's a difference – and if he goes on missions with that attitude, he will die, eventually. She's seen it happen. The people who have lost hope, the people whose survival instinct has become blunted by loss and despair – they always end up dying. And then she'll lose him. It's not fucking fair. He's only one man – what difference will he make, really? He's contributed enough to the war. Her fists squeeze tight. "What about me?"

"I'm sorry," he says helplessly. "But –"

Hermione shakes her head wildly, rubbing at her tears as she stares at his bruised face in the mirror. "No, you aren't. You aren't."

"Hermione, please." His eyes beg her to understand, but she doesn't. "I need to do this, if the Order will let me. When they let me."

"Fuck you."

"I'm sorry." Draco's gaze is steady on hers in the mirror. She wants to cry. Her chest hurts, a pang straight through it.

"Stop saying that! You're not!"

"I'm sorry I ruined what should have been special," he says, and his bruised face is indeed filled with regret as his shoulders hunch a little, his chin dropping as he goes on awkwardly. "Today, with the – the sex..." His cheeks flush slightly, where they aren't bruised. He looks boyish and young, and filled with uncertainty, but Hermione is hurt and angry. She keeps thinking about him dead. Or captured. She thinks about his back and the way it restricts his movements. She thinks about how he called himself expendable. She thinks about how he would've stayed behind at the mansion and died. She doesn't trust him to stay alive.

He's looking at her, hand still splayed over his stomach, hair falling over his eyes and face still half-battered but beautiful. "I'm sorry, Hermione."

Tears cloud her eyes. Panic bubbles in her chest. She wants to lock them both in a room and never come out again. She hates this fucking war.

"I'm sick of you apologising to me after you've put your dick in me," she says bitterly, and regrets it immediately as his expression crumples. He's wide-eyed, wounded and wretched, as if he can't believe she'd say that – and honestly, she can't believe it either. She feels as though she just shot him point-blank, and she wants so badly to take it back. She feels as though she just punched herself in the stomach. "I –" she begins and he shakes his head fast.

"No," he says, low and rough, and anger vibrates in the one word. His features are somehow stony cold and utterly raw all at once. Furious. "No. Don't. Get out. Get out before I say something I regret."

She flees.

Draco can hear her shouting at Potter and Weasley from the bathroom as he leans forward over the sink, gripping the edge of the counter tightly enough that his knuckles creak, his head hanging down as he breathes hard. He feels sick to his stomach. It sounds like she's yelling through her tears, full of utter fury, her words coming in uneven, broken-up strings. He can only hear occasional snatches of them.

Fuck.

The rage that had boiled up only minutes before had frightened him – the intensity of his anger, the urge to slam her up against the wall with his hand over her mouth to shut her up and...and then what? But what she'd said, after everything that had happened today? Draco hadn't been able to handle it. He's at breaking point. He's past it, and just clinging on desperately. He would never actually hurt her, but he might've said things that did damage he couldn't take back. Cruel, awful words. Her own words echo in his mind even as he hears snippets of what she's shouting now, interspersed with quiet as – presumably – Potter or Weasley respond to her.

"– ruin everything – fucking bastards – to hell – you've done – hate – it's my choice – at him when I should've – at you!" And then a moment later: "Because I love him!"

He closes his eyes for a second, a small pain sliding through his chest at that. Relief, he thinks, mingled with a persistent anger. It feels foreign, being angry at her. It's not pleasant at all. He knows full well why she's lashing out, but that doesn't alleviate the hurt of hearing her say what she'd said. And it doesn't make it any less frustrating to have her try to wrap him in cotton wool – he flicks a ball into the sink – and prevent him from fighting. She doesn't understand – she can't understand, and thank Merlin for that because he doesn't want her to feel how he feels. But stuck in this safe house, watching Weasley and the others go out on missions, he feels like he's caught in the jaws of a trap that's slowly crushing him.

The need to join the right side of the fight eats at him. He wants to go on a raid and kill the fucking Death Eaters, instead of innocent people. Just for once. For once that might be nice.

There's the slam of a door and then the creaking of footsteps running up the stairs, and then faintly, the slam of another door. Hermione's shut herself in their room, Draco guesses. He inhales deeply and lets the breath out slowly, and then straightens and pulls his shirt back on with a grimace. Even with the bruise cream, it's sore. And she didn't finish his back properly. He shucks his trousers down around his ankles and rubs his knee with the cream in the hopes it helps, although it seems less bruised and more strained. Either way, it'll heal, he thinks grimly. Potter and Weasley got in a few good shots, although really, their showing was pathetic, considering it was two against one. He's had far worse.

Draco pulls his joggers back up and runs his hands through his hair, shoving it back and examining his face in the mirror. He looks like he was in a fight three days ago instead of less than an hour, but it still isn't pretty. He straightens. As much as he wants to just sit on the toilet and contemplate the ways in which his day went horribly wrong, and then so fucking right, and then horrifically wrong again, he can't hide away in here all day. Although he can't imagine Hermione is going to want him in their room. Shit. He sets his jaw and lifts his chin, and leaves the bathroom at a slow, limping pace.

No one is around on this floor; all the doors shut. If they're in their rooms, no doubt they're trying to avoid the drama. He can hear the wireless downstairs and the faint whistle of the kettle, but nothing else. It's as though everyone else has melted away. The house is occupied by ghosts. Draco abandons the idea of making tea. He doesn't think his knee can take the trip down the stairs and back up again, and he doesn't think Hermione would welcome it now anyway. For a moment he pauses in the doorway, not knowing where to go, and then he remembers the spare room in the loft next to their room. He feels sick as he limps down the corridor. He's angry with Hermione, and she's angry with him, and he can't see a way to fix it. He's not going to decide he's happy sitting out the war without fighting, and she's not about to decide she's okay with him going out there.

Their bedroom door is shut as he walks past, knee crying with pain. The loft room is quiet and musty from disuse, two easy chairs sitting near the doorway, and a homemade quilt on the bed. He wonders who this house belonged to as he lies down on the bed and takes the weight off his knee. Whether they're still alive. He stares at the ceiling. It's weird to think that just a few hours ago, he'd been having sex with Hermione, and everything had been blissfully, wonderfully good. And now...

Now she's furious, and Draco's angry too, as much as he wishes he wasn't, and it's fucking horrible. He doesn't know how to deal with this. When he and Pansy argued, it had been over minor, stupid things that they could both grumpily compromise on. Not to mention, they'd been kids, and it had all been a lot less serious. This is something entirely different. And the way Hermione had said what she had about sex – sick of you apologising – fuck, he feels hot and ill, and angry enough that it takes him a while to realise he's shaking. He shuts his eyes and flings a forearm over them, and tears start flowing silently.

He'd tried so fucking hard to make it perfect for her in that moment. Perfect for them both – he'd had his own demons to exorcise. And then, thanks to the catalyst of Potter and Weasley, it had all gone so horribly fucking awry.