Black, White and Grey

Hermione stirred slightly, and tried to open her eyes – nothing. She raised her hand to the blindfold covering her face and then remembered.

“Hermione?” a familiar voice said.

“Ginny?”

“Hermione, you’re awake! Hey guys, she’s awake!”

She heard sudden footsteps coming closer to the bed and felt a couple of people sitting down on the covers.

“How do you feel?” Ron asked as a hand, presumably his, lightly swept some hair off her face.

“Umm, better, I think,” she replied, pushing herself up into a sitting position and feeling a little disoriented. “What day is it?”

“It’s Sunday, you’ve been asleep a whole day,” Harry said. Sunday – she and Draco had their detention in the forest on Friday night. “What happened, Hermione?”

“Yeah, Malfoy was a little vague on the details,” George put in.

Hermione tried to remember what had happened, but after jumping on the back of Draco’s broom the memories were just a hazy blur of pain. “What did he tell you?”

“He didn’t, actually,” Fred said. “He just burst into the common room -”

“Covered in your blood,” Ginny chimed in.

“Brandishing two wands and started shouting about how you were dying,” Fred finished.   

Harry chuckled. “Ron was about ready to curse him into oblivion. We all thought he had done something terrible to you.”

“It was all very dramatic,” George said cheerfully. “If we hadn’t all been so worried, it would have been very entertaining.”

“Well I’m glad to know that my potential death amuses you,” Hermione said dryly, and they all laughed.

“Is she awake?” she heard the voice of Madame Pomfrey ask, her bustling footsteps coming closer. “Excuse me please, boys.” There was a slight shuffling, and then she felt someone taking her pulse.    

“I was bitten, wasn’t I?” Hermione asked the matron. “Is that why I can’t see?”

“Yes, it’s an effect of the venom,” she answered. “Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

Hermione nodded to herself, she remembered reading about the blinding affects of the Acromantula’s venom.

“How did I get up here?” She wondered out loud. She and Draco had been in the middle of the forest, miles from the castle, yet spider’s venom would have been so fast acting that she should only have had minutes to live.  

“Young Mr Malfoy came banging in here with you cradled in his arms, shouting that he needed help” the matron said noncommittally as she checked the bandage on her shoulder, not realising the effect her words were having on Hermione. “He was seemed very shaken up and was extremely reluctant to leave your side. Professor Snape had to practically force him from the room to fetch Professor McGonagall.”

“That doesn’t sound like Malfoy at all,” Ron said. Hermione could tell from his voice that he was frowning.

“He saved my life,” she whispered to herself, slightly awed. She could remember him shouting for her to get behind him as the spiders approached, the panic in his voice when she had been hurt and the way he had picked her up, the strong heartbeat in her chest that had been her lifeline in the darkness. He must have carried her all the way from the forest, she realised.

“Why though?” Harry asked, sounding perplexed. “I mean, he’s a Slytherin.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not -” She broke off and bit he lip, wondering how she could explain her newfound empathy for Draco. She had always sympathised with Harry for living with the Dursley’s, but now she realised Draco’s upbringing had been far worse.

She remembered the way his eyes had blazed as he had told her of the horrors in his childhood. She had been shocked and confused, able to make the connection from that poor abused child to the arrogant young man in front of her far to easily, and hating the sudden rush of sympathy she had for her enemy. She had said he was just like his father, but his father would never have carried her broken body in his arms or stayed by her bedside.

“Not what, Hermione?” Ginny asked.

“Nothing,” she sighed. She wanted to tell them this new opinion of Draco, but knew it was not her place to tell another persons secrets. They wouldn’t believe her anyway.

There was a slight pause.

“Your parents are coming up, they should be here tomorrow,” George told her.

“Really?” Her parents had always wanted to see Hogwarts. She smiled to herself, imagining showing them the moving portraits and shifting staircases.

“Yep,” Fred replied. “But we better go, Hermione, or we won’t be getting any dinner,”

“That’s fine, I’m probably going to go back to sleep anyway.”

“We’ll come back and visit at break tomorrow,” Ron promised.

“Here, wait a moment. I almost forgot, we bought this down for you too,” Harry said, and a book was pressed into her hands. She ran her fingers over the familiar cover, feeling her smile widen. Her friends knew her so well.

“It was Ron’s idea,” Ginny told her. “Even though you can’t read it yet, he said you probably wouldn’t be able to sleep without Hogwarts: A History by your bed.”

“Besides, you know it so well you could probably just open it to any page and be able to read it by heart,” Ron said sounding both pleased and a little embarrassed.

“Thanks guys,” she said, letting all her love and affection for her friends show in her voice. “Will you put it on the bedside table for me?”

The book was lifted from her hands and she heard a muted thud as it was put down. She frowned, suddenly remembering something that was missing. “Is my wand there, by any chance?”

There was another pause, and she heard objects on her bedside table being moved around as one of them searched.

“Its not here,” Ginny said.

“Malfoy had it,” Ron said slowly. “When he came in the common room.”

“You think he’s still got it?” Harry asked.

“I don’t know. But if we see him at dinner, we will get it off him for you, okay Hermione?”

“Okay, and thanks guys.”

“No problem,” Ron said.

There was a chorus of goodbyes and Hermione was suddenly overwhelmed by a series of hair ruffles, hugs and a kisses on her cheek. And then they were gone.

She leant back against her pillow and sighed. Everything had been so much easier when she had seen the world in black and white, but it now turned out that Draco was a highly infuriating and incomprehensible shade of grey. She could no longer place him with the Slytherins or see him as a future Death Eater, following in his fathers footsteps, but nor could she imagine him fighting alongside them or joining the Order as she planned to do the moment she graduated.

She thought about the way he had kissed her in the Prefect Bathroom, and then the way he had pinned her against the tree in the forest with a hand wrapped around her neck. She should have been terrified, since she had been wandless and restrained by an angry Slytherin she had just been tormenting, yet all she had been able to think about was the heat that had emanated from his body as it had pressed completely up against hers.

The door of the hospital wing opened and she heard soft footsteps coming down the ward. She tilted her head towards the sound. “Who’s there?”

Whoever it was gradually approached her bed, and she felt the person sit down on the covers next to her.

Lips suddenly brushed against her own, startling her. He kissed her softly for a moment, and then sighed. She could feel his warm breath on her skin, leaving her incapable of speech.

He pressed her wand into her hand and then stood up before starting to walk away.

“Draco?”

The footsteps paused.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she murmured.

“Don’t mention it, Granger,” he replied, though he sounded tired.

“Do you want to stay a while?” she asked nervously fiddling with her wand, not sure how he would respond.

“Would you like me too?” He sounded a little shocked, as if he hadn’t expected her to ask such a thing.

“Yes,” she said honestly.

“Then I’ll stay.” She felt him sit back down on the covers. “What have you got there?”

“What?”

“Hogwarts: A History.” She could hear him riffling through the book.

“Oh, Harry bought it down from the common room for me.”

“Why?” Draco asked, sounding sceptical. “It’s not like you can read it.”

“No, but I like having it there.” She laughed to herself, remembering all the times Harry and Ron had teased her about her love of the book. “I practically know it off by heart. I’m rereading it for about the hundredth time.”

“Where abouts are you?”

“The forth part. The purging of the trolls from the forest – though clearly they forgot about the spiders.”

Draco laughed and flicked a few of the pages before starting to read aloud to her. Hermione burrowed deeper under the covers as she listened to him talk. He wasn’t drawling his words as he normally did, and she noticed for the first time just how appealing his voice was when he wasn’t being nasty or boastful.

He had just got to the ghost revolution when Madame Pomfrey’s footsteps came towards them again.

“Five minutes Mr Malfoy, visiting hours are almost over.”

“Alright,” he said, closing the book.

“You should be able to read the book again for yourself Miss Granger, I believe the blindfold can come off tomorrow,” Madame Pomfrey told her as she fluffed her pillows.

“Good,” Hermione sighed. Draco’s lulling voice had made her sleepy.

Madame Pomfrey stopped her fussing. “Mr Malfoy, you should really let me heal that for you.”

“No, it’s not necessary,” he said.

“Here, I  insist – Episkey!”

“Oh, well thanks.”

“What was it?” Hermione asked curiously.

“Spilt lip,” Draco replied.

“How?”

“You did it Miss Granger,” Madame Pomfrey said as she straightened the covers.

“I did?”

“Yes, when you were convulsing due to the poison. Mr Malfoy was trying to restrain you.”

“Oh,” was all she could say.

“Remember Mr Malfoy, five minutes.” The matrons’ footsteps receded down the ward as she left, leaving them in silence for a long moment.

“Draco, what really happened last night?” she said eventually.

“How much do you remember?” he asked softly. He took her hand and started playing with her fingers.

“Not much. The last thing I remember clearly is getting on the back of your broom.”

He sighed unhappily. “A spider jumped on your back,” was all he said.

“And?” she prompted.

He was quiet for a long moment, and then she heard him swallow nervously. “I killed it.”

“How?” she asked, shocked. “None of the spells were working …”

There was a long silence. She could feel him still sitting on the bed, though he was stiff and unmoving. His hand was curled into a fist in hers.

“Draco?” she said timidly, stroking the back of his hand.

“I used Avada Kedavra,” he whispered, sounding horrified at himself. Then he continued, his words coming quicker than normal. “I don’t know how it happened. I wasn’t even thinking. It just came out.”

Hermione was stunned, unable to speak at first. He had used an Unforgivable Curse, yet he had done it to save her life.

“And then?”

Draco sucked in a shocked breath. He must have thought she would be appalled and frightened by his actions. His hand loosened in hers, and his fingers wandered in an aimless trail over her palm as he told her the rest of the story in a low voice.

“You stayed with me?” she breathed, as he finished the story.

“Of course,” he said simply.

He had risked his life to save her, and then stayed by her side – her, a mudblood and a Gryffindor. He really was not the person she had thought he was.

“Kiss me again,” she whispered to him.

He released her hand and she felt cool fingers just under the edge of her jaw, tilting her face upward.

She heard the door at he far end of the ward open, and his hands dropped from her face.

“You’ve had nearly ten minutes, Miss Granger needs rest,” Madame Pomfrey called.

Draco sighed, and lightly kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back soon,” he murmured, before she heard his footsteps heading out of the hospital wing.