Night 39

It was the last night of their one week trial run, and strangely, Hermione felt more nervous than all the other nights before it. Not that she'd ever really felt comfortable, there was nothing comfortable about falling asleep with Draco Malfoy sitting next to her.

They were standing in front of the old potions classroom, their unofficial meeting spot, both guarded and a bit tense.

"Well?" She said, shakily.

"Well what Granger."

"Have you noticed anything?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her, his silent way of telling her that he thought she was an idiot.

"You snore a bit."

She rolled her eyes, partly because she didn't believe him, partly because she wanted very badly to get on with the conversation and then, their respective lives.

"Yes but I mean, anything useful? Anything that could help figure out what this is?"

Draco glared at her, and by the look, she could tell he wasn't going to come up with anything helpful.

"You're sleep walking Granger. You have night terrors. I don't think there's anything more to it than the fact that you're fucked up, just like the rest of us."

Hermione stared him down, then, when he didn't give any further, threw her hands up in exacerbation.

"So that's it then? Why the bloody hell did we even do this if we didn't learn anything, if there's nothing that's going to-"

"Fuck you. I don't need this, I have no clue why I said yes to this it's-"

"Fine then! That's absolutely fine with me Malfoy. God, I'd rather tear myself up then-"

"Why the fuck would you even- I'm exhausted, Granger, there's no other reason I would have said yes to-"

"but you did! You did so don't you dare start acting like I'm the crazy one because like it or not Malfoy we both agreed-"

"Well I'm out."

"Good!"

Malfoy shrugged off of the wall he was leaning on then stalked away, muttering curses under his breath.

Hermione stood, rigid and alone, her skin flushed with anger. She didn't know what else she could have expected. Didn't know how they'd even gotten this far, and she supposed it was predictable that it would end this way, with nothing but the realization that it had been completely ridiculous in the first place.

She took the long way back to her dorm, through the cold broken halls of the castle. She'd be happy for it, she knew, happy to be rid of Malfoy and their strange but brief truce.

She knew that, but it still didn't help the edge of worry to her thoughts, the and the one thought in the back of her mind that was pushing itself forward- that she'd have to go back to where she'd been, having learned nothing. Back to sleepless nights full of horror and self brought destruction. She worried her lip, anxious despite herself at the idea of returning to that. If only it hadn't been Malfoy. If it were anyone else, she could have made this work. Could have used the help. But there was nothing else for it, it was Malfoy, and for that reason alone she'd have to be alright with facing this by herself.

Night 40

The next night she didn't sleep at all, and her body protested it even more urgently than before, having gotten used to the slight amount of rest it'd been afforded in the week prior.

It made her sluggish and rightly pissed off for the entirety of the next day, to the point where people avoided her eye, even more than they had before.

By the time she made it to her bed, collapsing, she was enough in a state of self pity to consider finding Malfoy again. But then she laughed, bitterly, and turned on her side, refusing the thought as quickly as it came.

Night 41

She woke in the restricted section of the castle, which was clockwork at this point, sweating profusely from the dream she'd had. It had involved laying paralyzed on the floor of the forbidden forest, thousands of spiders roaming over her body as she waited until she could move again and find her wand- a relief which didn't come until she was awake.

She got up and brushed herself off, doing an embarrassing sort of shivering dance, just to make sure there was nothing really crawling on her. She stopped, then stilled when she heard a far off sound of scraping somewhere in the hall over. She glared into the darkness. If it was the blond, she did not want to see him. She double checked to make sure she had her wand, then crept quietly away until she was out into the regular halls, and closer to the Gryffindor dorms, where she'd spend the rest of her night with her head bobbing uselessly as she tried to study.

Night 45

"idiot."

She said, but there was panic laced in her voice as her hands fluttered to the blood matted hair that was sticking out on his forehead.

At another point in time, she'd have told herself that she didn't cared if he died. Had probably said the same thing to him at one point or the other. But the fight or flight she'd learned from the war had kicked in, and there hadn't been another thought in her head when she found him slumped over, his face paler than it should be, if it were possible, passed out and bleeding from the impact of something.

She breathed out a string of healing and reviving spells, her hand shaking as it supported his head, the other holding her wand as steady as was possible for the moment.

When he came to she was crouched over him in an awkward and uncomfortable position that probably looked ludicrous, but she didn't care at all, not even when he furrowed his brow and started to sneer out the beginning of some nasty comment.

"You are an idiot Malfoy,"

She seethed, eyes wide and livid. "Can't you tie yourself to your bed or something? Why is it that I have to-"

"Move." He said, his voice coming out low and scratchy, his arm swiping out at her to knock her away from him, which worked because she fell from her awkward crouch and onto her bum, catching herself with her hands and righting herself before he noticed.

"I swear, if I hadn't-"

"Shut. Up." He said through clenched teeth, his eyes scrunched tightly together as his hands came up to cradle his head.

"I bet it hurts Malfoy." She said cruelly, "That's what happens when you go and hit your head like that. You're probably concussed, and if you'd just-"

Malfoy shot to his feet, faster than she'd expected of a man who'd just cracked his skull open on castle stone, though he did wobble a bit. He advanced on her, taking hold of her shoulders in his hands and shaking them.

"Shut up Granger. Shut up! Didn't I say I didn't need your help? I don't understand why you can't just leave well enough alone."

His eyes were dark as they glared down at her, his voice dangerously low as he loomed too close to her.

She stuck her nose up at him, despite the fact that he'd genuinely caught her off guard, and that she was surprised and a little more than wary that he wasn't letting her go.

"If I had Malfoy, you'd be dead."

He scoffed, then let his hands drop to his sides, but didn't step away.

"Just- just leave me be."

But his voice betrayed the tiredness she knew he felt. He turned, touched his forehead, and walked away.

Night 46

Neither of them said anything when Hermione made it to the old potions room, where he was already sitting, his jaw clenched and his eyes not meeting hers.

She took out her quill and a fresh page of parchment from her book bag and quietly started on her work.

Night 47

"So then, why aren't you with Potter and Weasley?"

Hermione stilled, her eyes fluttering away from the text on old Runes she'd been pouring over for the last few hours. It was the first time he'd willingly started up a conversation with her, and she found herself instantly made defensive by it.

"They're Aurors."

Malfoy rolled his eyes, twirling the quill he'd been writing with, which he obviously must have grown bored of if he was willing to talk to her.

"Well I know that, I'm wondering why you aren't with them. Don't you three travel in a pack?"

Hermione set her jaw, closing her book. "I have my own brain, thank you Malfoy. I don't have to do everything Harry and Ron do."

"Hm."

She glared at him, and he quirked a smile.

"I mean I just figured. Potty and your boyfriend go off on their own, and what, you stay behind to live out the glory days?"

Hermione opened her book again, doing her best to ignore him. She didn't feel like explaining herself to Malfoy. Even still, "he's not my boyfriend," came out in a mutter under her breath as she tried to find her place in her book. Malfoy was silent, and when she glanced back up at him, suspicious, she found him staring at her with his brows raised.

"I'm trying to read Malfoy." She snapped, though he didn't say anything.

A moment of silence passed, and Hermione's face was burning hotter than it should have. She'd almost just began to read again when he said, lowly:

"So they left you."

She clamped her book shut with a loud thump, placing it to the side. It was her turn to go for a walk.

Night 48

The next night they didn't talk much, which Hermione was grateful for. She was still feeling sore from what Malfoy said about Harry and Ron, but if she were being honest with herself, that was more to do with them than with him.

In truth, it had bothered her that they'd walked away so easily. She knew it was right for them, and that staying was right for her, but still. There hadn't been much of a fight when she told them she'd be returning to Hogwarts. And maybe she'd been expecting just a bit more. Some kind of an attempt to make her come with them, a bit of pleading, if she could admit that.

She tried her best not to think about it, about the sting it left in her chest when she imagined them still together, fighting the good fight without her. But with Malfoy's words hanging over her, he presented any easy target for those uncomfortable feelings. It was why she decided to break the hours long silence, hoping in some fashion to get back at him, or even just to lash out because maybe that would make her feel better.

"So why are you here, Malfoy?"

He'd been scribbling in a journal for what she'd assume were the past three nights, but she wasn't curious enough to ask. Rather, she'd prefer a fight, if he were up to it. Which, he usually was.

She got her confirmation as his quill stilled and he looked over his notebook with an icy glare.

Hermione realized he didn't plan to respond, and being that she was in a rotten mood, decided to push it.

"I just thought, someone like you-"

"Someone like me?" He sneered.

She looked up at him, meeting his angry stare.

"It just doesn't seem like there'd much for you here. And, I don't really know why you'd want-"

"Please Granger," he bit out "tell me exactly what kind of person I am, and what it is I want, since you seem to know."

"Oh don't pretend-"

He lurched forward, pointing at her, disturbing the journal on his lap and the papers around him with a lame flutter. Sill, there was an intensity in his eyes and a hard set of his shoulders that made her go still.

"No you don't pretend Granger. Don't pretend like you get to know a thing about me. I don't need to explain myself to you."

She sat up, her blood boiling in an electric sort of way.

"Really Malfoy? I thought of everyone, I'd be exactly the person you'd have to explain yourself to. Or does it all just not matter, did all of that just not matter?"

He shook his head "You don't get to-"

"So after everything you're just the same git, with the same archaic prejudices that meant that my friends had to die, that ended us up here, where we-"

"Typical fucking Granger! You think you can just assume you know everything about everyone because your bleeding heart and big brain are just too-"

"And when I've saved your life, twice now! Twice! Maybe three if we're counting-"

He snatched his things up in an angry flurry, crumpling paper into his bag, standing on his feat just as quickly as she'd got to hers.

"Just leave then, we both know you'll-"

Again, he jut his finger out to her in accusation, standing too close which she was finding to be a custom intimidation tactic of his.

"I've saved your life too you know, which you might remember if you weren't so caught up in your own self righteousness."

She puffed out her chest, breath coming out hot and angry through her nose.

"That doesn't- that hardly counts."

He let out a sardonic laugh, shaking his head.

"Of course it doesn't."

A part of her felt that she should backpedal at this point, but he'd incited her rage now, and her pride, and she couldn't see herself stopping.

"I just don't think it's an excuse. That because you did one almost decent thing-"

"Do you think it's easy for me to be back here? Do you think honestly think that if I were the same person as I was before the war, I'd be here, taking this shit? That I'd even bother? The truth is Granger, there is nothing, nothing I could do to make you see me any differently because you don't want to. You're just as prejudiced as me or anyone else because, ultimately, you're not willing to think, to even consider-"

"I'm prejudiced? I'm prejudiced? Me, the Mudblood?" Her eyes were brimming with tears now, which was ridiculous, but she'd always been an angry crier.

"Fuck you Malfoy. I fucking hate you. And the next time you bang your head off a castle wall-"

"I won't look to you for help, yeah, I got it."

And then they were both walking away, not bothering to spare the other a glance.

Night 49

Hermione didn't bother going to the old potions room again, too angry to even consider seeing Malfoy, which was probably for the best. She'd have loved to imagine him, sitting there, awkward and angry, wondering if she was going to show up. But she knew after their fight that he wouldn't, that they'd both avoid it, and that was fine too.

Night 50

Tears were streaming down her face when she woke up, though she couldn't even remember the dream she was having- all she knew was her eyes were suddenly open and splotchy, that the castle air was cold and stiff around her and more real than whatever terror she'd been in, and that there were a pair of hands from someone behind her, latched onto her shoulders and guiding her somewhere.

She looked down at them, stumbling a bit as she regained consciousness over her feat, and saw that there was blood splattered over the long pale fingers.

She shook out of his grasp just as he let her go, and turned to stare at him.

He looked shaky, and out of breath, and both his hands were covered in blood.

"Go back to your dorm Granger, and don't say a fucking thing."

She blinked, and recognized through her haze that he'd led her to the Gryffindor hall, before he'd stalked off and left.

Back in her dorm room she traced over the freshly healed scar across her shoulder blade and realized that it was her blood staining his hands.

Night 51

Back at the old potions room, neither spoke a word. But she'd come back, and so had he, and that knowledge hung awkwardly in the air around them until one of them succumbed to exhaustion first. Which one of them it was, Hermione couldn't say.

Night 52

Hermione was too tired to reconcile her thoughts of him, healing her bleeding shoulder, getting her supposed dirty blood all over him before he steered her back to the safety of the Gryffindor dorms, with all the nasty sneering and brooding she knew him for.

It wasn't quite trust, but it was close enough. So she came back again, and after pretending to do her work, pretending because she really was too exhausted to think of anything but sleep, let herself drift off with her head slumped in her hand and with Malfoy scribbling silently across from her.

She woke briefly to find herself fully curled up on the castle floor, and blinked wearily to see that Malfoy too was asleep. But she wasn't cold, which she realized was due to the fact that there was a little ball of paper and flames, hanging quietly above her.

She flicked her wand to engorge it, and maybe to move it just a bit more to the center of their huddled space, where the licks of warmth could reach him too.

Night 53

Hermione glared at him, shuffling her papers together neatly, until he noticed.

"What."

"You always take the seat against the castle wall Malfoy."

He knew what she meant. Hermione wanted to nod off covertly, which would be much harder to do in her seated position with nothing to lean back against. She'd noticed it was his habit to take his seat against the wall, and in her tired contempt she felt he was being greedy for it.

He quirked a brow at her. Then he pat his hand against the castle floor next to him, in a way she assumed must be a joke.

"Plenty of space Granger."

Night 54

"Granger, come on Granger you crazy fucking- stop!"

She was crying and fighting him, and there was blood on her she thought, from the smell and the warm wetness that was coating her arms. Her back was pressed up against him and he'd somehow got the full length of his arm span wrapped around her, leaned up against the castle wall and struggling, wheeling his feet against the ground to keep her in place.

She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, waking up and trying to remember what it was she'd been sure she was fighting just moments ago.

"There," he said panting heavily.

She stopped struggling so much, and maybe he was as exhausted as she was because could feel him slide down to ground, so that he was seated and she was still awkwardly clutched to him. His grip on her was so tight it burned and she tried to struggle again, but her head hurt, throbbed in fact, like she'd hit it.

She closed her eyes, and images of Death Eaters began dancing in her mind. She shook her shoulders, going rigid, but she couldn't move. Eventually the darkness closed around her, never having fully lifted in the first place. And then she was asleep.

She woke up slowly, light cresting her eyes from a split in the castle wall. But even though the cold air of early morning was leaking in, there was warmth around her, a slow and heaving chest rising up her shoulder, a heavy arm slumped to her side.

She turned her face, and found herself so close to him that her nose could graze his cheek. And she was-

Her cheeks burned as she realized they were slumped together, huddled close in their sleep for what must of been a need for each-others body heat. That same musky, piney smell of cologne was invading her senses with every breath she took, and she could see in sharp clarity every line and angle of his face.

She lurched upright, her legs still huddled against him, and it was enough to startle him into waking.

He stared at her, eyes working their way down and making a quick appraisal of their proximity.

Her breath was coming heavy, and she felt for a moment, frozen against him. So close, he was so close to her. His eyes were roving over her face, trying to sort out something.

Before he could say a word she got up, her legs shaky, and collected her things. When she looked back at him, that same quiet dumfounded look on his face, and all she could think to say was:

"We'll be late- I mean- we'll be late for class."