Her head was beginning began to throb.
“Ginny, Granger needs to rest now,” Draco's cold voice suddenly broke in.
Hermione blinked.
Ginny's expression froze and then fell. “Sorry. I get carried away.” She forced herself to smile again. “James needs lunch anyway. Rest. The elves will bring more food. If you — if you need anything, we're here.”
Ginny's eyes and mouth were strained as she shifted James back onto her other hip and turned away, heading back to their wing of the rambling house.
Hermione watched them go. “She's so lonely, Draco. You could have let her tell me more about James.”
“You need to rest. You have years to get to know him.”
Hermione wanted to argue, but she did feel ready to fall asleep standing.
She curled up in bed and closed her eyes.
Draco sat beside her, holding her hand the same way he had during her morning sickness, his thumb running along the ridges of her knuckles.
She was just drifting off when she felt her hand gently set down on the bed. The mattress shifted.
She watched through her lashes as he looked down at her a moment longer and slowly turned, resting his hand against the wall as though he were feeling something inside it.
He drew his wand and started muttering spells.
Hermione watched him as he added enchantment after enchantment to the room. Some were simple, innocuous spells and others elaborate, magical incantations. She cringed when he slipped a knife out of his robes and held the handle between his teeth as he sliced his hand open and used the blood to draw scarlet runes on the walls. The symbols glowed as he kept adding more and more until they finally faded into the wall and disappeared.
He pulled out a vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion and took it before fishing out a vial of Essence of Dittany which he used to close the cut. He stared at his blood-covered hand and wiped it off on his robes before scourgifying his clothing.
He rested his hand on the wall again.
His shoulders slumped down for a moment before he squared them and headed for the door.
“Draco?”
He froze and slowly turned back to her. His expression was closed.
She just studied him for several seconds, her heart felt like a lead weight. “Are we safe here Draco?”
“Yes,” he said immediately.
She sat up, and his expression tensed.
“Really?”
He stood in the doorway, his wand in his hand. “It's safe here. You have my word.”
She nodded. “If you say so, I believe you.”
He gave a stiff nod of his own.
She licked her lips. “Do you need to keep adding wards then? If we're safe.”
He stood staring at her, apparently uncertain about how to reply.
She gave him a wan smile as a throbbing sense of grief swallowed her chest. “We're supposed to get to rest now. You're not supposed to keep — soldiering on and on like we're still chained to the war.”
He just kept standing by the door.
She studied him sadly as she realised the difference between them: he had never had dreams about what he'd do or be after the war. Unlike her, he had few expectations to be disappointed by.
He also had no idea what to do but continue with what he'd always done.
She reached out towards him. “Stay with me. This is supposed to be the part where we get to rest.”
He kept standing at the door, his eyes flickering towards the next room.
“If there's something you need to do, I'll wait for you.”
She saw his hand twitch before he gripped his wand in a fist. His eyes were suddenly boyish and uncertain.
He had no idea how to do anything but be a soldier.
He glanced towards the next room again.
She reached towards him. “Stay here, Draco. You're supposed to rest now too.”
He nodded slowly but didn't move from where he stood in the doorway. Hermione got up and walked over. She met his eyes as she slipped his wand out of his hand, placing it on the dresser. She pushed his robes off his shoulders and ran her hands down his shirt and trousers, finding the multitude of concealed pockets he had, slipping out extra wands and weapons.
She wasn't sure if he'd brought any belongings with him but weapons.
He grimaced as she removed everything and piled it on the dresser.
She paused and looked up into his eyes. “We're safe, right?”
He swallowed and nodded slowly.
She took his hand. “Then put it down.”
She stared at him as they lay face to face on her bed. His eyes kept flickering past her to the weaponry she'd taken off him.
“What did you want to be — before you were forced to become a Death Eater? What would you have done if the war hadn't happened?”
He looked at her expressionless. “I was the Malfoy heir. If I hadn't become a Death Eater, I would have just been the Malfoy heir. My father had political aspirations for me — I would have been a politician.”
“Oh... Well, what was your favourite subject in school?”
Somehow she'd never asked him that question before, and she wasn't sure she could guess the answer. They only knew each other through the facets that had been polished by war.
He was silent for several seconds, and he seemed to be trying to remember. “I enjoyed Charms.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “I should have guessed that. I remember that you were good at them. You could take it up again. Alchemy uses charmwork quite heavily. Maybe we could work together on projects someday.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Maybe.”
He looked tired. Hermione burrowed against him, and he tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her closer.
“We're safe here?” she asked again, running her fingers along the placket of his shirt. “You're not — you're not just saying that we are so I'll stay calm, are you?”
Draco drew back and looked at her. “We're safe, Hermione.”
A catching sensation in her chest faded away. “Alright then.”
She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.
When she woke hours later, he was asleep too. It was as though nine years of exhaustion had finally risen up and swallowed him.
He slept for days, nearly insensate. Hermione could unbandage his arm and treat it, and he wouldn't twitch.
She slept with him for the first week. She hadn't thought she was tired enough to sleep for consecutive days on end, but it was as though a relentless tension she hadn't even registered had finally eased for the first time in memory, and sleep was more refreshing than it had ever been in her entire life.
Her headaches gradually went away for the most part. She found some parchment and a quill and carefully wrote down everything she could recall of the fading memories, and when she reviewed them several days later, many of the details were unfamiliar.
But her mind felt as though it had found a precarious type of equilibrium.
Draco kept sleeping steadily into the next week. He'd wake briefly to get up and eat, check the wards, and then collapse back into the bed, gripping Hermione. Sometimes she worried he must be ill to sleep so much. She'd check him with diagnostics to reassure herself.
He didn't sleep if she left.
She tried slipping quietly into the next room to explore the bookshelves, but he appeared in the doorway within two minutes, wand in hand. She grabbed several books off the shelves and returned to their bed.
“I can get up now,” he said, still standing in the doorway.
“No. I should keep resting,” she said, lying smoothly. “I just wanted to do some light reading.”
He was asleep again in minutes. She laced their fingers together while she read.
He'd been sleeping for nine days when there was a light tapping on the door.
Ginny slid the door ajar and peeked in. “James is having his nap. Can I come in?”