Title: A Cure to Insomnia
Author:![]()
withdrawnred
Rating: T
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Word Count: 5,400
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to Great Ormand Street Hospital, J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Summary: They’d all been forced to grow up too fast, too soon. Wartime AU.
Warnings: Minor character death (offscreen), some profanity
Author’s Notes: Written for round 4 of![]()
dramione_remix to the prompt of Peter Pan/Wendy. Again and again, I have to thank my betas for their unwavering support. Without ![]()
callarose, ![]()
dormiensa, and ![]()
unseen1969, this story wouldn’t be half of what it is now.
A Cure to Insomnia
one.
Hermione yawns as she pulls spices and sugars from the cupboards. She’s careful not to slam the doors; it’d be no use to get scolded for making a ruckus at half three in the morning. Just because she can’t sleep doesn’t mean the entire house should suffer the same fate.
Earlier that week, she had been on courier duty. It was nothing special, just delivering a package to point A by X time. Generally, she enjoys courier duty. It gets her out of Grimmauld in daylight. Sometimes she needs a reminder of what life will be like when they win. But today was a reminder of what life should have been like — both now and in the handful of years previous. It was just the sight of a group of three young girls. They must have been fifteen years old, and their high-pitched giggles carried several metres. As did their shrieks, as they discussed boys and dresses and formals.
Unexpectedly, Hermione had filled with a substantial amount of jealousy. She was no longer fifteen by any means, but even five years before, she’d never been that carefree. She did have a formal that year, but she’d been slightly more occupied with worrying about her best friend and whether he’d survive fighting a dragon, swimming with merpeople, and that blasted maze. It really did not do to think about the maze. And the following year was the year of the battle in the Department of Mysteries.
Needless to say, she envied those girls their untroubled lives.
Her insomnia has been brutal lately, and her preoccupation with that carefree group of teenaged girls just made it worse. Twice already this week, she’s spent her nights staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, cataloguing the blemishes for future reference. Cabin fever has started to set in, and she’s determined to not spend another sleepless night lying around. She might as well do something with her time.
In this particular instance, that something is baking. The what isn’t important. Baking is familiarity, and she needs the comfort right now.
She can smell her grandfather in the precise mix of cardamom, cloves, and cocoa; she can feel the warm, guiding press of her grandmother’s hands on her own as she kneads the dough. Even as she whisks, her ears are filled with the light songs the three had created to balance the clockwise and counterclockwise turns.
It may surprise some to learn, considering her parents’ shared profession, that her paternal grandparents had a very successful confectionary in London. Her family home had always been something of a candy factory around Christmas.
Baking and making sweetmeats has the double benefit of making herself useful - surely the rest of the house will appreciate fresh sweets - and curing some small bit of her homesickness. That’s the hope, at least.
Though, honestly, it just reminds her of her childhood and how very short it was. They’d all been forced to grow up too fast, too soon.
Around four, she hears padded footsteps approach. She’d figured that someone would eventually be drawn to the smells and sounds emanating from the kitchen, so she can’t say she’s surprised. That doesn’t make her less disappointed that her alone time has been cut short. And she doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that her late-night companion is Malfoy.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, perhaps too sharply.
He seems loath to answer her. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t really have a right to grill him.
“I cure my insomnia with tea. Less messy than baking, but just as effective, I’d say.”
Her mouth is set in a straight line. She has no response to that. Especially with the utter lack of malice in his words and current demeanor. There’s nothing she can argue with. She sighs, having no energy to even try to decode anything. “Everyone’s got to have something, I suppose.”
Malfoy grunts in response, moving to continue his insomniac routine - preparing a quick cup of tea for himself. Chamomile, she notices. She wishes that worked for her. Herbal teas don’t do anything for her. Sleeping potions make her feel too foggy. Staring at her ceiling is just unproductive and . . . boring. She’s quite given up on finding a cure.
Bracing her palms on the counter, she stares at this early morning’s creations. This is the part she liked so much about making sweets with her grandparents: she could take the few pieces she wanted for herself and send the rest to the storefront to be sold. Now, she has a large selection of sweets to dispose of, coupled with no desire to eat the entire lot.
Then it hits her.
She turns her head towards Malfoy, who’s observing her array of treats whilst sipping his tea. Her jealousy that chamomile tea is effective with him hasn’t abated, but she moves past it. “You like sweets, right?”
His eyes dart from the sweets on the counter to her own. His eyebrows pull together, and she has a hard time believing he hasn’t put two and two together yet. It’s quite simple. She knows his mother used to send him boxes of incredibly expensive sweets at Hogwarts. She knows she won’t want more than a small handful of the ones on the counter. The obvious avenue for her is to offer them to him.
“Well, help yourself.” He doesn’t look convinced. Or very trusting, for that matter. “Please. I’ll only eat maybe two. I’ll just leave them out for the house anyway.”
His expression just grows more confused. “Then why even bother?”
Not everyone can drink bloody chamomile tea and go directly to sleep again, she thinks bitterly.
“I guess it’s therapeutic,” Hermione says, focusing her gaze on the counter she’s scrubbing clean so she can avoid looking at him. He’d probably think she was being ridiculous. “Besides, my metabolism has never been that great - all that sugar would just weigh me down in the field.”
Because that’s what everything comes down to ultimately. Her responsibility to the rest of them. To the world.
two.
It’s a funny moment - when she realises it’s become a routine, and a joint one at that. He’d come for the continuous and free samples. Eventually, she realizes he stays for the company, too.
The previous night, dawn had arrived before Malfoy had made his way out of the kitchen.
She hasn’t spent a single night staring at her ceiling in at least three months. Every night she can’t sleep is spent in the kitchen, and he always shows up. At first, he’d simply prepare himself his chamomile and then head straight back to bed, swiping a sweet or seven on his way out. Most of the time, he didn’t comment on their imperfections. As the weeks progressed, however, he lingered longer and longer. Suddenly, conversation was part of the routine - and over time both the quantity and quality improved.
Tonight, she’s baking cookies. Someone left chocolate chips in the cupboard, and she’s not about to argue with fate. Merlin only knows when she last had a good chocolate chip cookie.
Well, she would be baking cookies if there’s any batter left by the time the cooker finishes pre-heating. At the rate that Malfoy’s fingers are flying in and out of the batter bowl, there’ll be enough for one. Maybe.
Her nose scrunches when she realizes he’s been dipping fingers wet with his saliva back into her bowl. “That’s disgusting.”
“Hmm?” he grunts. It’s barely a question.
“Don’t you know that there’s tasting courtesy, Malfoy?”
“Not familiar with your strange Muggle customs, Granger.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a Muggle custom. I’d call it common courtesy. Even you pure-bloods have rules about politeness, don’t you?”
He smirks, and she tries very hard not to mirror it. She fails. “Rules are meant to be bent.”
“Not this rule,” she mumbles, trying in vain to distance him from the bowl — now half-full. “You’re going to get whoever else eats these sick.”
“Oh, please,” he says, his long arms easily reaching to his beloved sweet. “Like anyone else will be eating them.”
“You don’t understand the power of this pastry, my friend.”
“You don’t understand the power of my sweet tooth. If they taste this good uncooked, I will fight to the death.”
A short buzz sounds, and Hermione shoves Malfoy over towards the table, so she can at least get a couple of the bloody things baked before he gets salmonella. She thought about telling him he’s in danger of getting it, but the amount of time she’d have to use to explain the concept of bacteria and the effects of raw eggs aren’t worth it. He’d probably think it was some mysterious hex she’d read up on.
Twenty minutes later, he’s decided that it’s okay to wait to have the dough cooked. But that doesn’t mean he wants to wait to have all the dough cooked. Delayed gratification has never been Draco Malfoy’s forté.
Consuming sweets, though? Definitely his forté.
In all honesty, she‘s happy to have a receptacle for the treats. She doesn’t need the sugar, and so never planned to eat much of what she made. These sweets were a piece of her childhood, resurrected for nostalgic purposes. They remind her of more innocent times, when her family was intact and she had the whole world at her fingertips, when hope sprang eternal. The process is purely cathartic for Hermione. Draco, whose sweet tooth is certainly no secret, happily consumes the confections, considering how seldom he gets any sweets at Grimmauld.
What she hadn’t counted on when she first offered him a bit, four months before, was the relationship that developed between the two of them. Over time, they’d unwillingly accepted that they actually have many things in common. In fact, they turned out to be incredibly compatible partners, something that Moody took joy in. He’d found a partner pairing that maximized both Hermione and Draco’s potential. Draco no longer spent half of his time looking over his shoulder for the Death Eaters out to murder him and the other half at his team, paranoid that the Order volunteers, too, would kill him if ever given the chance. Similarly, when Hermione wasn’t mothering her partner or her team, as she did too often by reflex when Harry or Ron was involved in her mission, her efficiency as a part of the team must have quadrupled.
It didn’t take long for Moody to mandate that they always be partnered together.
The others hadn’t complained - much. The complaints certainly dwindled when it came to light how much more innovative they were together. It’s no secret that they liked to challenge each other. But whereas before their challenges had been to undermine for the most part, Hermione and Draco began to visibly improve in each of their field skills.
Their hexes are stronger and faster. They’re both quicker on the draw. Overall, they are just better. It really boiled down to the joy they each found in a challenge. In fact, much of his free time is spent finding new spells, practising them on some of the Order’s dummies - even sometimes challenging any willing Order member to a short duel. Hermione spends most of her time in the library, researching defensive tactics for Kingsley, but she often finds herself watching Draco while he’s doing any of those things, when he felt challenged. Somehow, despite the obvious concentration on his face each time, the joy is evident in all of his being. It makes her feel alive.
three.
She moves more lethargically tonight, though this is the product of more than her lack of sleep. The day’s events were surprising, unwanted, and exhausting. Her vision is more full of her fallen friends than the stove in front of her. Hermione doesn’t even notice Malfoy’s standing with her in the kitchen until he yanks her hands away from the assault of popping hot oil.
“Are you trying to burn your hands off?” His voice is angry, but she sees none of it reflected in his face. “I’m fairly certain you’ll need those.”
She gasps and yanks her hands out of his grasp. “I don’t see why you’re so concerned.” But he’s right. She shouldn’t even be at the stove now. She’s too frazzled. But she’s in dire need of the familiarity, of the routine. There has to be something in her life remaining constant. At the rate this war has been going, today’s surprise attack is just the beginning.
Just a smirk in return. “Well, who else is going to appease my sugar cravings?”
“Molly,” she offers half-heartedly. Even to her ears, it sounds petulant.
“Don’t make me laugh.” A scowl this time. “I swear that woman’s waiting for her chance to poison me.”
Hermione snorts. Finally, she looks down at the damage the oil did to her hands. Not bad, though they could probably use some of that balm Remus keeps in his trunk. She’ll just deal with it, though. Remus has enough to deal with right now. Her hands would survive a little oil burns the Muggle way. “Molly isn’t going to poison you.” She runs her fingers over the burns gingerly, testing her pain threshold. Three out of ten.
“You don’t know that. I did poison her son, after all. And unfortunately, it seems the whole world knows how fond I am of sugar. It’s the perfect opportunity.”
“Do you forget that you’re not, in fact, dealing with a Slytherin? Maybe she’s actually a kind woman with no intention of poisoning you, despite the fact that you accidentally poisoned her child.”
“Everyone has a dark side, Granger,” he says with a sidelong look at her. “And something tells me one of Molly Weasley’s triggers is her brood.”
Hermione sighs, raking a hand through her hair. She winces as the tangled curls block her fingers’ way. “Nonsense. Even if - and that’s a bloody huge if - she felt the need for revenge for her still-alive-and-well son, she knows not to waste her energy.”
She continues in a whisper, “Or our manpower, for that matter.” For a while, their conversation had distracted her from the day’s events. Her own comment pulls her out of that comfort and straight back into her grief.
The air thickens with tension, as she figured it would. Malfoy’s eyes are boring into her face when she finally looks up, as if he’s searching for the key to a very valuable trunk, deciphering each detail and shelving it away for later analysis.
“She was a good woman,” Malfoy says after clearing his throat. Probably a lump. His voice sounds considerably lower in octave than it had just moments before.
She nods. “The best.” The entire house had been covered in a thick layer of solemnity all evening, and into the late hours. Tonks had touched everyone during her short life - even Draco, who tended to distance himself from the rest of the Order. Granted, they were cousins, but Tonks still had made a conscious effort to be friendly with him.
Her vision blurs when she thinks of the poor little boy, now motherless, sleeping upstairs. Tears well, and she tilts her head back, batting her eyelashes feverishly, in an attempt to rein her tear ducts back under control.
“It isn’t fair,” she says when she locks eyes with Malfoy again, gripping the edge of the counter with all of her strength. “Teddy deserves a real childhood. One where he has a whole mother and father, a loving family that’s only really concerned with raising an upstanding citizen. Not this - Christ, this world!”
He smiles, but it’s clearly a pained one. “This bloody world is something else, isn’t it?”
“That goes for us, too, you know.”
“Pardon?”
Hermione takes a step towards him, wringing her hands. “We all deserved a real childhood. And what did we get? A boy saviour, orphaned. Broken families. Dead siblings and aunts, uncles, cousins. Friends.” Her mind immediately goes to Luna, the first friend she had buried, and she struggles to swallow the bitter taste conjured by that memory. “We had to make sacrifices to save our families." He looks sharply at her, but she doesn’t waver. "We got tasked with things no child should experience, even in nightmares. We all had to grow up when we were still children. And chances are, so will Teddy. It isn’t right.”
She stares at her hands then, the words coming out of her mouth too harsh, too pointed. Really, she hopes he doesn’t lash out at her for that last comment. She never has been able to predict what he’ll do, and it unnerves her - a lot.
The sound of his sigh surprises her, but only because it is so much closer to her than she had expected. Sometime during her monologue, he’d closed much of the distance between them.
“Is that not what this is all about?” He gestures towards the very house they are standing in. His voice sounds lower, and she feels her skin grow hot for some reason. “To give them their best chance? The younger generations. You’re right.” Hermione’s eyes widen and snap to his; she’s never heard him utter those words in quite that order, especially directed at her. “We never really had a chance to be young and carefree and make stupid mistakes. When you were caught out after hours, you were saving the world. I spent my Christmases worrying that, at any second, my parents could be killed in their own parlour.”
Hermione starts when she feels his hand wrap around hers, squeezing slightly.
“But does it have to be a black and white thing? We live in a world of grey, and the measure of a childhood is no different.”
“I’m not saying it’s black and—”
“Shut up. Yes, you are.” He sighs, leaning back against the counter. “You’re aching to compartmentalize everything, but this isn’t something you can put into clean boxes.”
She nods quietly, finding it harder to hold back her tears. “It’s just so unfair.” She lets a deep sigh escape her. “I almost think that they’re the lucky ones. Luna’s free now. No responsibilities weighing down what should be an untroubled time. No war, no sacrifice. Maybe that’s it for us now: we’ll get our chance at a proper childhood when we’re six feet under.”
He reaches up, his hand gingerly cradling one side of her face. “Maybe. But it would be as unfair if we were in our thirties when this bloody war started. We have to move forward. Dwelling on the past doesn’t help anything.”
For the first time that night - perhaps in the entirety of their acquaintance - Hermione predicts Malfoy’s next move. She lifts her head as he lowers his own, and warmth unlike anything she’s ever experienced spreads throughout her being when their lips meet.
four.
Hermione pauses at the entry to the kitchen, resting her palm against the door frame. It doesn't calm her heartbeat as she'd hoped it would.
He's there; she can sense it.
A part of her hates that - how in tune with him her body has become. It’s been exactly eight days, two hours, and twelve minutes since she last spoke to him — since they kissed. Hermione spent at least seven of those days avoiding him, because she’s never been good with boys or romance or next steps after kisses. Especially when said kisses were with your dedicated partner and former “enemy”. She didn’t know whether he wanted to ignore the occurrence or if he wanted more or if she wanted more or if he never wanted to see her again. She didn’t even know what she wanted, much less how to read Draco Malfoy.
One of the only good things about today’s battle, other than the fact that they were lauding it as the Battle that Won the War, was how little she cared about the answers to those questions now.
That he's there before her should be a testament to how very late she is - how very off. She had, in all honesty, lain awake the past few hours in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her mind played memories of that day over and over like a song on repeat. Like a terrible, annoying song that you want to forget, but it’s just played on the radio and stuck like an earworm. Except there isn't much to celebrate in this. It has more than its fair share of darkness and pain and could use quite a bit more happy.
She's had days like this. More and more frequently of late, much to her displeasure. Friends and peers falling, the injured list mounting, and the morale dwindling. But today affected her more than most.
Until today, she hadn’t known just how much she cared for Malfoy. Seeing his body fall in battle quickly informed her. Yaxley had sent a particularly heinous curse his way from behind, and although he had survived, it'd taken their best Healers six hours to perform enough magic that he could be pulled back into consciousness. The sight of him on the ground, limbs akimbo, possibly dead, had pulled more from the depths of her soul than she had been prepared to deal with. Sure, she knew that she cared for him - but not quite to that degree.
She’d spent several hours at his side at St Mungo’s, until he’d began showing some signs of rousing. Remus basically threw her out, sending her home to shower and rest under the pretense of an empty threat. She complied, but both chores amounted to too much time alone with her own thoughts. Her mind drifted back again and again to her imaginings of a world without. Already, she knew a world without so many who’d lit up her life—Luna, Tonks, and Ernie, among others—and she didn’t care to deal with a world without Draco Malfoy.
Hermione heard them when they returned an hour or so before, Malfoy and Remus. She had to gather herself before wandering down. It's all too clear to her: she can't go back to thinking she just cared about him in a general sense. No, it's more like the huge caring, the kind that wrecks you when you lose that person. The kind she's not sure he would approve of within the limits of their relationship - if they could even call it that.
She removes the muffling charm from her feet before breaching the threshold into the kitchen.
If he were any other man, he would've said something to acknowledge it - like You're late, as simple as it is. But he isn't. So he just looks at her like he's going to deduce everything about her - inner turmoil included - without her verbal input.
Sometimes she feels like there's a bit of Luna in him. Not the dreaminess, Merlin forbid. It's the intuition. Luna's had been weird, almost ethereal. Eerie because it was always spot on. Draco is intuitive like she had been, but he doesn't care to package his thoughts up nicely, especially with Hermione. What it really means is that Hermione never even tries to cover up whatever it is she's thinking or feeling. There's no point.
Hermione takes in his appearance, mentally cataloging all the pieces for later analysis. He’s pale, moreso than usual. She doesn’t want to think about the blood loss he’d suffered from Yaxley’s sadist streak. It’s no secret that Malfoy’s always been in more danger than most of them. Being a traitor was up there with being The Boy Who Lived, from the reactions most Death Eaters had to his appearance on the Light side.
His hair is tufted in the back, something she would have found endearing in another time. Preferably a time where the second thing she noticed about him wasn’t the plentiful scratches decorating his arms — and that’s just the exposed areas. Mungo’s must be growing more economical with their resources, if they’d allowed him to leave hospital like that.
Most striking, however, is the lack of a teacup between his hands. Pleased at having found something to do other than stare and catalog him, Hermione quickly starts the kettle. Rather than facing him again whilst the water boils, she tends to the counter, wiping up excess crumbs left by whomever last used Grimmauld’s kitchen. Or maybe not the last person, considering how caked-on the messes are. By the time she’s cleaned a quarter of the counter space, the kettle whistles, and she rushes to remove it from the cooker before the noise wakes up the rest of the house.
Less than thirty seconds later, she’s placing a cup of chamomile tea in front of him. Her own is Earl Grey — caffeinated, but she knows there’s no hope of sleep tonight regardless.
Malfoy just stares at the mug. “What’s this?”
“Chamomile. That’s the last bag,” she informs him, thinking of how annoyed she gets at an empty tea box or tin.
“Why did you make tea for me?”
Her eyebrow rises. “Because I wanted to.”
He glares down at the mug, although she’s not sure what evil he’s wishing on the piece of ceramic.
“Is there a problem?” she asks. “It was that or Earl Grey, and —”
“So you’re making my decisions for me now, is that it?”
Hermione sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to quell a certain headache. “Look, take the bloody Earl Grey if you want it. I’ve only ever seen you drink chamomile at this time of night, so I figured —”
He scoffs, interrupting her once again. “Yes, because you know me so well.”
“Why are you lashing out at me?” she asks, her voice low.
“I’d be careful, Granger. Someone might think you care.”
She blinks, bemused. “Well, it’d be the truth.” Hermione Granger has never been a woman ashamed of caring. The war has made her more likely to admit to caring than she had been before. "Is that such a crime? Caring?"
"The real question is what don't you care about?"
"You're right, I care about a lot of things. I want to do good by this world. But that's not what I meant, and you know it."
His mouth twists into something ugly. "That sounds an awful lot like another word I've heard of."
She rolls her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not trying to profess my undying love for you through herbal tea, Malfoy."
"Just your undying care, then?"
She looks at him, surprised by how oddly uncomfortable he looks under her gaze. "It's not something you can choose to accept, you know. Whether you like it or not, I care about you. And I wouldn't be able to just continue on with my dailies the day after you died."
The air is tight with the silence that follows her statement. Their eyes are locked, and she refuses to back down. He knows, first hand, what an abysmal liar she is.
She poses her question differently this time. “Why are you angry?”
“Just because I’m in a bad mood doesn’t mean I’m angry,” he bites out.
Hermione shakes her head. “Don’t patronize me. You may not like it, but we’re friends. And you’re more snappish than you’ve been in months.”
“Just leave off, Granger.”
“Are you upset because I care about you?” When he glares at her, she offers a faux gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that too feminine a word choice for you?”
He glowers, finally taking a sip from the cooling mug.
“What’s wrong?” She could ask him the same question all night. Eventually, she’d find an iteration that he could deign to answer.
“You have enough people to mourn already. You don’t need to add me to the list.”
Hermione reaches across the table and grabs his hand. By now, he should be used to how tactile she is. “That’s the thing about caring. It’s not a voluntary act. I didn’t wake up one day when I was eleven and decide I’d care for a couple of boys who do nothing but attract trouble. I didn’t choose to care for them, and I didn’t choose to care for you. But I’m not about to fight it, either.”
His eyes look haunted, raw. She can’t tell if what she’s saying is inflaming or helping him. With someone as guarded as Draco Malfoy, she can only hope for the better of the two. Hermione rubs his wrist, thankful that he’s allowing her to find comfort in him. She understands this as his acceptance. She won’t read further into it, along the lines of it meaning he also cares. For now, at least. For now, she’s content to have that tactile contact, the feel of human skin on human skin. Though the gray scar marring his otherwise marble skin is a gross indicator of his fragility — something she’d rather not think about.
The two-inch scar is all that remains of his larger injuries from the day's activities. When he first arrived at St Mungo’s that morning, Malfoy had a few broken bones and too many lacerations. The Healers had taken to a new technique: compressing all major injuries to one spot, so that they could treat them all at once. Any recurring pains are thenceforth centralized to one small area, two inches in diameter.
"Are you in pain?" she asks, moving her thumb gingerly around the scar, careful not to touch it directly.
“No, so long as I avoid contact,” he murmurs as she studies the scar closer.
The idea still amazed her — that all serious damage could be reallocated to one location. He still has some scratches, but they’re all too shallow to bother transferring. With luck, he’ll be able to get the tissue healed entirely, but this quick fix was another way to save resources for high-volume times like today. The magic behind the spell is still impressive, though, and Hermione’s sure the skill of those who perform this is paramount. Just thinking about how steadfast, how focused, how powerful a Healer one would have to be to successfully perform such a spell — that astounds her. Even after a decade, Hermione Granger is still as in awe of magic as ever.
Draco looks almost mischievous. His eyes are still sort of haunted; she doubted that gaze would ever leave the faces of the young fighters. But at least now there’s something more than just the hauntedness.
“When I was a boy, my mother would kiss everything better."
Hermione can’t help but smile at the thought. She can just imagine it: a young Draco, reckless one minute and running to his mum for comfort the next. That child is still inside the man she’s looking at, in that his experiences helped form the man.
Her Malfoy-less week had been at least partially spent processing his jab about her compartmentalizing; in the end, he’s right. A person isn’t a black and white combination of experiences that fit together rigidly, like a jigsaw puzzle. No, a person is shades of gray, blending together like watercolours on canvas. Her own experiences as a young girl had influenced her experiences in her early years at Hogwarts, which in turn had influenced her decision and experiences later. The process repeated, and she’s sure it’ll repeat until her dying day.
It’s taken until the eve of the final battle, but she has come to accept the cards she was dealt, scars and all. Hermione would never go back on her experiences; that would nullify her friends’ sacrifices, making them meaningless. She refuses to live in a world where such beautiful people died in vain. All she can do is move forward, live a life to proud of, not dwell.
Despite that she knows he’s baited her into it, she bends her lips to his arm and places light kisses along the outer perimeter of his new scar, careful not to place much pressure on the actual scar tissue. From her memories of his injuries, she can only imagine the pain he’d experience with even the slightest touch.
She finds a better use for her lips soon. And later is reminded that Malfoy isn’t one to talk about his feelings; his efforts are much better spent showing it.
Author:
withdrawnredRating: T
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Word Count: 5,400
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to Great Ormand Street Hospital, J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Summary: They’d all been forced to grow up too fast, too soon. Wartime AU.
Warnings: Minor character death (offscreen), some profanity
Author’s Notes: Written for round 4 of
dramione_remix to the prompt of Peter Pan/Wendy. Again and again, I have to thank my betas for their unwavering support. Without callarose, dormiensa, and unseen1969, this story wouldn’t be half of what it is now.A Cure to Insomnia
one.
Hermione yawns as she pulls spices and sugars from the cupboards. She’s careful not to slam the doors; it’d be no use to get scolded for making a ruckus at half three in the morning. Just because she can’t sleep doesn’t mean the entire house should suffer the same fate.
Earlier that week, she had been on courier duty. It was nothing special, just delivering a package to point A by X time. Generally, she enjoys courier duty. It gets her out of Grimmauld in daylight. Sometimes she needs a reminder of what life will be like when they win. But today was a reminder of what life should have been like — both now and in the handful of years previous. It was just the sight of a group of three young girls. They must have been fifteen years old, and their high-pitched giggles carried several metres. As did their shrieks, as they discussed boys and dresses and formals.
Unexpectedly, Hermione had filled with a substantial amount of jealousy. She was no longer fifteen by any means, but even five years before, she’d never been that carefree. She did have a formal that year, but she’d been slightly more occupied with worrying about her best friend and whether he’d survive fighting a dragon, swimming with merpeople, and that blasted maze. It really did not do to think about the maze. And the following year was the year of the battle in the Department of Mysteries.
Needless to say, she envied those girls their untroubled lives.
Her insomnia has been brutal lately, and her preoccupation with that carefree group of teenaged girls just made it worse. Twice already this week, she’s spent her nights staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, cataloguing the blemishes for future reference. Cabin fever has started to set in, and she’s determined to not spend another sleepless night lying around. She might as well do something with her time.
In this particular instance, that something is baking. The what isn’t important. Baking is familiarity, and she needs the comfort right now.
She can smell her grandfather in the precise mix of cardamom, cloves, and cocoa; she can feel the warm, guiding press of her grandmother’s hands on her own as she kneads the dough. Even as she whisks, her ears are filled with the light songs the three had created to balance the clockwise and counterclockwise turns.
It may surprise some to learn, considering her parents’ shared profession, that her paternal grandparents had a very successful confectionary in London. Her family home had always been something of a candy factory around Christmas.
Baking and making sweetmeats has the double benefit of making herself useful - surely the rest of the house will appreciate fresh sweets - and curing some small bit of her homesickness. That’s the hope, at least.
Though, honestly, it just reminds her of her childhood and how very short it was. They’d all been forced to grow up too fast, too soon.
Around four, she hears padded footsteps approach. She’d figured that someone would eventually be drawn to the smells and sounds emanating from the kitchen, so she can’t say she’s surprised. That doesn’t make her less disappointed that her alone time has been cut short. And she doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that her late-night companion is Malfoy.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, perhaps too sharply.
He seems loath to answer her. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t really have a right to grill him.
“I cure my insomnia with tea. Less messy than baking, but just as effective, I’d say.”
Her mouth is set in a straight line. She has no response to that. Especially with the utter lack of malice in his words and current demeanor. There’s nothing she can argue with. She sighs, having no energy to even try to decode anything. “Everyone’s got to have something, I suppose.”
Malfoy grunts in response, moving to continue his insomniac routine - preparing a quick cup of tea for himself. Chamomile, she notices. She wishes that worked for her. Herbal teas don’t do anything for her. Sleeping potions make her feel too foggy. Staring at her ceiling is just unproductive and . . . boring. She’s quite given up on finding a cure.
Bracing her palms on the counter, she stares at this early morning’s creations. This is the part she liked so much about making sweets with her grandparents: she could take the few pieces she wanted for herself and send the rest to the storefront to be sold. Now, she has a large selection of sweets to dispose of, coupled with no desire to eat the entire lot.
Then it hits her.
She turns her head towards Malfoy, who’s observing her array of treats whilst sipping his tea. Her jealousy that chamomile tea is effective with him hasn’t abated, but she moves past it. “You like sweets, right?”
His eyes dart from the sweets on the counter to her own. His eyebrows pull together, and she has a hard time believing he hasn’t put two and two together yet. It’s quite simple. She knows his mother used to send him boxes of incredibly expensive sweets at Hogwarts. She knows she won’t want more than a small handful of the ones on the counter. The obvious avenue for her is to offer them to him.
“Well, help yourself.” He doesn’t look convinced. Or very trusting, for that matter. “Please. I’ll only eat maybe two. I’ll just leave them out for the house anyway.”
His expression just grows more confused. “Then why even bother?”
Not everyone can drink bloody chamomile tea and go directly to sleep again, she thinks bitterly.
“I guess it’s therapeutic,” Hermione says, focusing her gaze on the counter she’s scrubbing clean so she can avoid looking at him. He’d probably think she was being ridiculous. “Besides, my metabolism has never been that great - all that sugar would just weigh me down in the field.”
Because that’s what everything comes down to ultimately. Her responsibility to the rest of them. To the world.
two.
It’s a funny moment - when she realises it’s become a routine, and a joint one at that. He’d come for the continuous and free samples. Eventually, she realizes he stays for the company, too.
The previous night, dawn had arrived before Malfoy had made his way out of the kitchen.
She hasn’t spent a single night staring at her ceiling in at least three months. Every night she can’t sleep is spent in the kitchen, and he always shows up. At first, he’d simply prepare himself his chamomile and then head straight back to bed, swiping a sweet or seven on his way out. Most of the time, he didn’t comment on their imperfections. As the weeks progressed, however, he lingered longer and longer. Suddenly, conversation was part of the routine - and over time both the quantity and quality improved.
Tonight, she’s baking cookies. Someone left chocolate chips in the cupboard, and she’s not about to argue with fate. Merlin only knows when she last had a good chocolate chip cookie.
Well, she would be baking cookies if there’s any batter left by the time the cooker finishes pre-heating. At the rate that Malfoy’s fingers are flying in and out of the batter bowl, there’ll be enough for one. Maybe.
Her nose scrunches when she realizes he’s been dipping fingers wet with his saliva back into her bowl. “That’s disgusting.”
“Hmm?” he grunts. It’s barely a question.
“Don’t you know that there’s tasting courtesy, Malfoy?”
“Not familiar with your strange Muggle customs, Granger.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a Muggle custom. I’d call it common courtesy. Even you pure-bloods have rules about politeness, don’t you?”
He smirks, and she tries very hard not to mirror it. She fails. “Rules are meant to be bent.”
“Not this rule,” she mumbles, trying in vain to distance him from the bowl — now half-full. “You’re going to get whoever else eats these sick.”
“Oh, please,” he says, his long arms easily reaching to his beloved sweet. “Like anyone else will be eating them.”
“You don’t understand the power of this pastry, my friend.”
“You don’t understand the power of my sweet tooth. If they taste this good uncooked, I will fight to the death.”
A short buzz sounds, and Hermione shoves Malfoy over towards the table, so she can at least get a couple of the bloody things baked before he gets salmonella. She thought about telling him he’s in danger of getting it, but the amount of time she’d have to use to explain the concept of bacteria and the effects of raw eggs aren’t worth it. He’d probably think it was some mysterious hex she’d read up on.
Twenty minutes later, he’s decided that it’s okay to wait to have the dough cooked. But that doesn’t mean he wants to wait to have all the dough cooked. Delayed gratification has never been Draco Malfoy’s forté.
Consuming sweets, though? Definitely his forté.
In all honesty, she‘s happy to have a receptacle for the treats. She doesn’t need the sugar, and so never planned to eat much of what she made. These sweets were a piece of her childhood, resurrected for nostalgic purposes. They remind her of more innocent times, when her family was intact and she had the whole world at her fingertips, when hope sprang eternal. The process is purely cathartic for Hermione. Draco, whose sweet tooth is certainly no secret, happily consumes the confections, considering how seldom he gets any sweets at Grimmauld.
What she hadn’t counted on when she first offered him a bit, four months before, was the relationship that developed between the two of them. Over time, they’d unwillingly accepted that they actually have many things in common. In fact, they turned out to be incredibly compatible partners, something that Moody took joy in. He’d found a partner pairing that maximized both Hermione and Draco’s potential. Draco no longer spent half of his time looking over his shoulder for the Death Eaters out to murder him and the other half at his team, paranoid that the Order volunteers, too, would kill him if ever given the chance. Similarly, when Hermione wasn’t mothering her partner or her team, as she did too often by reflex when Harry or Ron was involved in her mission, her efficiency as a part of the team must have quadrupled.
It didn’t take long for Moody to mandate that they always be partnered together.
The others hadn’t complained - much. The complaints certainly dwindled when it came to light how much more innovative they were together. It’s no secret that they liked to challenge each other. But whereas before their challenges had been to undermine for the most part, Hermione and Draco began to visibly improve in each of their field skills.
Their hexes are stronger and faster. They’re both quicker on the draw. Overall, they are just better. It really boiled down to the joy they each found in a challenge. In fact, much of his free time is spent finding new spells, practising them on some of the Order’s dummies - even sometimes challenging any willing Order member to a short duel. Hermione spends most of her time in the library, researching defensive tactics for Kingsley, but she often finds herself watching Draco while he’s doing any of those things, when he felt challenged. Somehow, despite the obvious concentration on his face each time, the joy is evident in all of his being. It makes her feel alive.
three.
She moves more lethargically tonight, though this is the product of more than her lack of sleep. The day’s events were surprising, unwanted, and exhausting. Her vision is more full of her fallen friends than the stove in front of her. Hermione doesn’t even notice Malfoy’s standing with her in the kitchen until he yanks her hands away from the assault of popping hot oil.
“Are you trying to burn your hands off?” His voice is angry, but she sees none of it reflected in his face. “I’m fairly certain you’ll need those.”
She gasps and yanks her hands out of his grasp. “I don’t see why you’re so concerned.” But he’s right. She shouldn’t even be at the stove now. She’s too frazzled. But she’s in dire need of the familiarity, of the routine. There has to be something in her life remaining constant. At the rate this war has been going, today’s surprise attack is just the beginning.
Just a smirk in return. “Well, who else is going to appease my sugar cravings?”
“Molly,” she offers half-heartedly. Even to her ears, it sounds petulant.
“Don’t make me laugh.” A scowl this time. “I swear that woman’s waiting for her chance to poison me.”
Hermione snorts. Finally, she looks down at the damage the oil did to her hands. Not bad, though they could probably use some of that balm Remus keeps in his trunk. She’ll just deal with it, though. Remus has enough to deal with right now. Her hands would survive a little oil burns the Muggle way. “Molly isn’t going to poison you.” She runs her fingers over the burns gingerly, testing her pain threshold. Three out of ten.
“You don’t know that. I did poison her son, after all. And unfortunately, it seems the whole world knows how fond I am of sugar. It’s the perfect opportunity.”
“Do you forget that you’re not, in fact, dealing with a Slytherin? Maybe she’s actually a kind woman with no intention of poisoning you, despite the fact that you accidentally poisoned her child.”
“Everyone has a dark side, Granger,” he says with a sidelong look at her. “And something tells me one of Molly Weasley’s triggers is her brood.”
Hermione sighs, raking a hand through her hair. She winces as the tangled curls block her fingers’ way. “Nonsense. Even if - and that’s a bloody huge if - she felt the need for revenge for her still-alive-and-well son, she knows not to waste her energy.”
She continues in a whisper, “Or our manpower, for that matter.” For a while, their conversation had distracted her from the day’s events. Her own comment pulls her out of that comfort and straight back into her grief.
The air thickens with tension, as she figured it would. Malfoy’s eyes are boring into her face when she finally looks up, as if he’s searching for the key to a very valuable trunk, deciphering each detail and shelving it away for later analysis.
“She was a good woman,” Malfoy says after clearing his throat. Probably a lump. His voice sounds considerably lower in octave than it had just moments before.
She nods. “The best.” The entire house had been covered in a thick layer of solemnity all evening, and into the late hours. Tonks had touched everyone during her short life - even Draco, who tended to distance himself from the rest of the Order. Granted, they were cousins, but Tonks still had made a conscious effort to be friendly with him.
Her vision blurs when she thinks of the poor little boy, now motherless, sleeping upstairs. Tears well, and she tilts her head back, batting her eyelashes feverishly, in an attempt to rein her tear ducts back under control.
“It isn’t fair,” she says when she locks eyes with Malfoy again, gripping the edge of the counter with all of her strength. “Teddy deserves a real childhood. One where he has a whole mother and father, a loving family that’s only really concerned with raising an upstanding citizen. Not this - Christ, this world!”
He smiles, but it’s clearly a pained one. “This bloody world is something else, isn’t it?”
“That goes for us, too, you know.”
“Pardon?”
Hermione takes a step towards him, wringing her hands. “We all deserved a real childhood. And what did we get? A boy saviour, orphaned. Broken families. Dead siblings and aunts, uncles, cousins. Friends.” Her mind immediately goes to Luna, the first friend she had buried, and she struggles to swallow the bitter taste conjured by that memory. “We had to make sacrifices to save our families." He looks sharply at her, but she doesn’t waver. "We got tasked with things no child should experience, even in nightmares. We all had to grow up when we were still children. And chances are, so will Teddy. It isn’t right.”
She stares at her hands then, the words coming out of her mouth too harsh, too pointed. Really, she hopes he doesn’t lash out at her for that last comment. She never has been able to predict what he’ll do, and it unnerves her - a lot.
The sound of his sigh surprises her, but only because it is so much closer to her than she had expected. Sometime during her monologue, he’d closed much of the distance between them.
“Is that not what this is all about?” He gestures towards the very house they are standing in. His voice sounds lower, and she feels her skin grow hot for some reason. “To give them their best chance? The younger generations. You’re right.” Hermione’s eyes widen and snap to his; she’s never heard him utter those words in quite that order, especially directed at her. “We never really had a chance to be young and carefree and make stupid mistakes. When you were caught out after hours, you were saving the world. I spent my Christmases worrying that, at any second, my parents could be killed in their own parlour.”
Hermione starts when she feels his hand wrap around hers, squeezing slightly.
“But does it have to be a black and white thing? We live in a world of grey, and the measure of a childhood is no different.”
“I’m not saying it’s black and—”
“Shut up. Yes, you are.” He sighs, leaning back against the counter. “You’re aching to compartmentalize everything, but this isn’t something you can put into clean boxes.”
She nods quietly, finding it harder to hold back her tears. “It’s just so unfair.” She lets a deep sigh escape her. “I almost think that they’re the lucky ones. Luna’s free now. No responsibilities weighing down what should be an untroubled time. No war, no sacrifice. Maybe that’s it for us now: we’ll get our chance at a proper childhood when we’re six feet under.”
He reaches up, his hand gingerly cradling one side of her face. “Maybe. But it would be as unfair if we were in our thirties when this bloody war started. We have to move forward. Dwelling on the past doesn’t help anything.”
For the first time that night - perhaps in the entirety of their acquaintance - Hermione predicts Malfoy’s next move. She lifts her head as he lowers his own, and warmth unlike anything she’s ever experienced spreads throughout her being when their lips meet.
four.
Hermione pauses at the entry to the kitchen, resting her palm against the door frame. It doesn't calm her heartbeat as she'd hoped it would.
He's there; she can sense it.
A part of her hates that - how in tune with him her body has become. It’s been exactly eight days, two hours, and twelve minutes since she last spoke to him — since they kissed. Hermione spent at least seven of those days avoiding him, because she’s never been good with boys or romance or next steps after kisses. Especially when said kisses were with your dedicated partner and former “enemy”. She didn’t know whether he wanted to ignore the occurrence or if he wanted more or if she wanted more or if he never wanted to see her again. She didn’t even know what she wanted, much less how to read Draco Malfoy.
One of the only good things about today’s battle, other than the fact that they were lauding it as the Battle that Won the War, was how little she cared about the answers to those questions now.
That he's there before her should be a testament to how very late she is - how very off. She had, in all honesty, lain awake the past few hours in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her mind played memories of that day over and over like a song on repeat. Like a terrible, annoying song that you want to forget, but it’s just played on the radio and stuck like an earworm. Except there isn't much to celebrate in this. It has more than its fair share of darkness and pain and could use quite a bit more happy.
She's had days like this. More and more frequently of late, much to her displeasure. Friends and peers falling, the injured list mounting, and the morale dwindling. But today affected her more than most.
Until today, she hadn’t known just how much she cared for Malfoy. Seeing his body fall in battle quickly informed her. Yaxley had sent a particularly heinous curse his way from behind, and although he had survived, it'd taken their best Healers six hours to perform enough magic that he could be pulled back into consciousness. The sight of him on the ground, limbs akimbo, possibly dead, had pulled more from the depths of her soul than she had been prepared to deal with. Sure, she knew that she cared for him - but not quite to that degree.
She’d spent several hours at his side at St Mungo’s, until he’d began showing some signs of rousing. Remus basically threw her out, sending her home to shower and rest under the pretense of an empty threat. She complied, but both chores amounted to too much time alone with her own thoughts. Her mind drifted back again and again to her imaginings of a world without. Already, she knew a world without so many who’d lit up her life—Luna, Tonks, and Ernie, among others—and she didn’t care to deal with a world without Draco Malfoy.
Hermione heard them when they returned an hour or so before, Malfoy and Remus. She had to gather herself before wandering down. It's all too clear to her: she can't go back to thinking she just cared about him in a general sense. No, it's more like the huge caring, the kind that wrecks you when you lose that person. The kind she's not sure he would approve of within the limits of their relationship - if they could even call it that.
She removes the muffling charm from her feet before breaching the threshold into the kitchen.
If he were any other man, he would've said something to acknowledge it - like You're late, as simple as it is. But he isn't. So he just looks at her like he's going to deduce everything about her - inner turmoil included - without her verbal input.
Sometimes she feels like there's a bit of Luna in him. Not the dreaminess, Merlin forbid. It's the intuition. Luna's had been weird, almost ethereal. Eerie because it was always spot on. Draco is intuitive like she had been, but he doesn't care to package his thoughts up nicely, especially with Hermione. What it really means is that Hermione never even tries to cover up whatever it is she's thinking or feeling. There's no point.
Hermione takes in his appearance, mentally cataloging all the pieces for later analysis. He’s pale, moreso than usual. She doesn’t want to think about the blood loss he’d suffered from Yaxley’s sadist streak. It’s no secret that Malfoy’s always been in more danger than most of them. Being a traitor was up there with being The Boy Who Lived, from the reactions most Death Eaters had to his appearance on the Light side.
His hair is tufted in the back, something she would have found endearing in another time. Preferably a time where the second thing she noticed about him wasn’t the plentiful scratches decorating his arms — and that’s just the exposed areas. Mungo’s must be growing more economical with their resources, if they’d allowed him to leave hospital like that.
Most striking, however, is the lack of a teacup between his hands. Pleased at having found something to do other than stare and catalog him, Hermione quickly starts the kettle. Rather than facing him again whilst the water boils, she tends to the counter, wiping up excess crumbs left by whomever last used Grimmauld’s kitchen. Or maybe not the last person, considering how caked-on the messes are. By the time she’s cleaned a quarter of the counter space, the kettle whistles, and she rushes to remove it from the cooker before the noise wakes up the rest of the house.
Less than thirty seconds later, she’s placing a cup of chamomile tea in front of him. Her own is Earl Grey — caffeinated, but she knows there’s no hope of sleep tonight regardless.
Malfoy just stares at the mug. “What’s this?”
“Chamomile. That’s the last bag,” she informs him, thinking of how annoyed she gets at an empty tea box or tin.
“Why did you make tea for me?”
Her eyebrow rises. “Because I wanted to.”
He glares down at the mug, although she’s not sure what evil he’s wishing on the piece of ceramic.
“Is there a problem?” she asks. “It was that or Earl Grey, and —”
“So you’re making my decisions for me now, is that it?”
Hermione sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to quell a certain headache. “Look, take the bloody Earl Grey if you want it. I’ve only ever seen you drink chamomile at this time of night, so I figured —”
He scoffs, interrupting her once again. “Yes, because you know me so well.”
“Why are you lashing out at me?” she asks, her voice low.
“I’d be careful, Granger. Someone might think you care.”
She blinks, bemused. “Well, it’d be the truth.” Hermione Granger has never been a woman ashamed of caring. The war has made her more likely to admit to caring than she had been before. "Is that such a crime? Caring?"
"The real question is what don't you care about?"
"You're right, I care about a lot of things. I want to do good by this world. But that's not what I meant, and you know it."
His mouth twists into something ugly. "That sounds an awful lot like another word I've heard of."
She rolls her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not trying to profess my undying love for you through herbal tea, Malfoy."
"Just your undying care, then?"
She looks at him, surprised by how oddly uncomfortable he looks under her gaze. "It's not something you can choose to accept, you know. Whether you like it or not, I care about you. And I wouldn't be able to just continue on with my dailies the day after you died."
The air is tight with the silence that follows her statement. Their eyes are locked, and she refuses to back down. He knows, first hand, what an abysmal liar she is.
She poses her question differently this time. “Why are you angry?”
“Just because I’m in a bad mood doesn’t mean I’m angry,” he bites out.
Hermione shakes her head. “Don’t patronize me. You may not like it, but we’re friends. And you’re more snappish than you’ve been in months.”
“Just leave off, Granger.”
“Are you upset because I care about you?” When he glares at her, she offers a faux gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that too feminine a word choice for you?”
He glowers, finally taking a sip from the cooling mug.
“What’s wrong?” She could ask him the same question all night. Eventually, she’d find an iteration that he could deign to answer.
“You have enough people to mourn already. You don’t need to add me to the list.”
Hermione reaches across the table and grabs his hand. By now, he should be used to how tactile she is. “That’s the thing about caring. It’s not a voluntary act. I didn’t wake up one day when I was eleven and decide I’d care for a couple of boys who do nothing but attract trouble. I didn’t choose to care for them, and I didn’t choose to care for you. But I’m not about to fight it, either.”
His eyes look haunted, raw. She can’t tell if what she’s saying is inflaming or helping him. With someone as guarded as Draco Malfoy, she can only hope for the better of the two. Hermione rubs his wrist, thankful that he’s allowing her to find comfort in him. She understands this as his acceptance. She won’t read further into it, along the lines of it meaning he also cares. For now, at least. For now, she’s content to have that tactile contact, the feel of human skin on human skin. Though the gray scar marring his otherwise marble skin is a gross indicator of his fragility — something she’d rather not think about.
The two-inch scar is all that remains of his larger injuries from the day's activities. When he first arrived at St Mungo’s that morning, Malfoy had a few broken bones and too many lacerations. The Healers had taken to a new technique: compressing all major injuries to one spot, so that they could treat them all at once. Any recurring pains are thenceforth centralized to one small area, two inches in diameter.
"Are you in pain?" she asks, moving her thumb gingerly around the scar, careful not to touch it directly.
“No, so long as I avoid contact,” he murmurs as she studies the scar closer.
The idea still amazed her — that all serious damage could be reallocated to one location. He still has some scratches, but they’re all too shallow to bother transferring. With luck, he’ll be able to get the tissue healed entirely, but this quick fix was another way to save resources for high-volume times like today. The magic behind the spell is still impressive, though, and Hermione’s sure the skill of those who perform this is paramount. Just thinking about how steadfast, how focused, how powerful a Healer one would have to be to successfully perform such a spell — that astounds her. Even after a decade, Hermione Granger is still as in awe of magic as ever.
Draco looks almost mischievous. His eyes are still sort of haunted; she doubted that gaze would ever leave the faces of the young fighters. But at least now there’s something more than just the hauntedness.
“When I was a boy, my mother would kiss everything better."
Hermione can’t help but smile at the thought. She can just imagine it: a young Draco, reckless one minute and running to his mum for comfort the next. That child is still inside the man she’s looking at, in that his experiences helped form the man.
Her Malfoy-less week had been at least partially spent processing his jab about her compartmentalizing; in the end, he’s right. A person isn’t a black and white combination of experiences that fit together rigidly, like a jigsaw puzzle. No, a person is shades of gray, blending together like watercolours on canvas. Her own experiences as a young girl had influenced her experiences in her early years at Hogwarts, which in turn had influenced her decision and experiences later. The process repeated, and she’s sure it’ll repeat until her dying day.
It’s taken until the eve of the final battle, but she has come to accept the cards she was dealt, scars and all. Hermione would never go back on her experiences; that would nullify her friends’ sacrifices, making them meaningless. She refuses to live in a world where such beautiful people died in vain. All she can do is move forward, live a life to proud of, not dwell.
Despite that she knows he’s baited her into it, she bends her lips to his arm and places light kisses along the outer perimeter of his new scar, careful not to place much pressure on the actual scar tissue. From her memories of his injuries, she can only imagine the pain he’d experience with even the slightest touch.
She finds a better use for her lips soon. And later is reminded that Malfoy isn’t one to talk about his feelings; his efforts are much better spent showing it.
