The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Twenty-Four

Day: 1449; Hour: 2

She finds him in silence in his bedroom, the lamplight dull on his desk, his back pressed into the corner as he sat on his bed. His door was cracked, and she wonders if he knew she would come. He doesn't look at her when the door clicks shut behind her, or when she stands there silently for too long. She doesn't know if he's thinking about Neville or if he's thinking about all of the friends he lost, on both sides of the war. She doubts the latter, because taking on that burden would leave anyone too deep to dig out.

She thinks she understands what he had meant about not wanting to tell her about his father. After the funeral, thinking of Neville, she knew she wouldn't tell those memories to someone who hated him. But as much as Hermione would never know more than the evil in Lucius Malfoy, she did know the power of death, and the sorrow it spread like disease.

"Do you think we will ever get back what we have lost?"

"No."

He looks down at the notebook in his lap, indecision marked by the ink spots on his fingers. He meets her eyes and she drops them to her toes, but she knows that he's still staring. She clears her throat, having to talk before it grows more uncomfortable --before she backs out.

"Can I just...maybe...lay on the other side of the bed for awhile?" Silence. She does not want to be alone tonight, and she might go so far as to say she can't be. "I mean, my bed is...is... I, well, nev--"

"Lay down, Granger."

Her heart gives an unwelcome jolt, and her breath hitches just the slightest bit. She had been rambling in her awkwardness, and would have regretted asking had the uncomfortable air not at least put a rest to her thoughts for a bit. She had been backing out when he responded, and if she didn't want it so badly, she still would. If it had been that uncomfortable just waiting for an answer, the event itself would be drowning in terrible.

But she had already asked, and he has now agreed. Besides, she does need this, or else she never would have found the courage to ask in the first place. Neville, and her guilt and worry over Lavender, and then it was everything. It was everything to the point she might be losing her mind a little. She could have gone to Justin perhaps, but she didn't think about it. She has grown too used to going to Draco. Justin wouldn't have been the same.

She walks around the bed and lays down, tense and staring at the ceiling. He knocks his pen against his notebook a couple times, and she blushes at the thought that he might be staring at her in all her awkward glory. There wasn't much of a reason for her to feel such a way anymore, but they had only lain in bed together after sex. Sex isn't what she came for, though she would give it to him if he wanted. She just wanted to...well, lay there. If she is honest with herself she would like to put her head on his chest maybe, and lose herself in the blankets perhaps, but she can settle sometimes.

"Did you take the potions?"

"Yes." Which is the reason she can lay on her back at the moment, since the pain potions made sure she couldn't feel a thing. She really doesn't understand why he hates them so much.

"Where's the balm?"

"Justin put it on for me."

He grunts, maybe because she needs to take her shirt off for someone to put it on her back and shoulder blade. She has, without a doubt, seen Draco a little possessive and jealous before. She still likes it. She almost tells him that Justin was a perfect gentleman, and that she views him like a little brother, but she doesn't know how he will react to that. It might overstep a boundary - him knowing he was jealous, and him knowing she knew he was jealous. She never knows what's crossing the line with him, so she keeps it to herself, like she does with a lot of things.