Lover of the Light

The Oddity of Change

Lover of the Light

Chapter Twelve: The Oddity of Change

One.

One, two.

One.

One, two, three—open.

Her eyelids felt heavy, like she hadn't slept in ages, just the way she remembers feeling when Harry and her took turns sleeping short hours when they camped out in the Forest of Dean. It was far more difficult this time to open her eyes, to blink with the weight her eyelids seemed to be carrying, but she eventually did so. The walls weren't those of a magicked tent and she didn't see the shadow of someone sitting outside keeping guard. She felt relieved that she wasn't back in the times of war.

It was dark where she was except for the flicker of a candle burning out on top of the white-marble nightstand that barely highlighted anything. The nightstand. Once again she felt relieved that she recognized something in the darkness, and if that nightstand with metallic knobs and the five cylinder vases containing five purple flowers on its surface was anything to go by, Hermione knew she was in her bedroom in the Zabini mansion.

She swallowed a knot of emotion as her eyes looked at the candle and the nightstand. Strange as it was, strange as she felt, Hermione was comforted by the idea that she was inside Zabini walls. She didn't think that would ever happen.

Wanting more comfort, wanting to be wrapped around it to shake off this feeling, this drowning sensation that she couldn't really identify in her half-asleep state, the brunette pulled her heavy body into a sitting position. That action of stretching out her arms to remove the silk sheets tucking her in tightly to the mattress was enough to make her body feel like it was about to explode with pain, but as she put pressure on her chest, she almost fainted.

Groaning, tears welling up in her exhausted eyes, Hermione managed enough strength to only outstretch her right arm toward the nightstand. Careful not to stick her fingers in the candle flame, she struggled for a few seconds until her hand felt the warmth of her wand.

Her wand.

Why did she feel so happy to have her wand between her fragile fingers? Why did the blood in her veins start pumping with excitement, like her magic was grateful for the wand now in her hold? She knew about the homey feeling a wizard felt with their wand, but this? She'd never felt so safe holding it during times outside of war.

"Lumos." Her voice came out in a scratchy whisper, a mumble of a word her throat barely allowed access to be spoken. Her throat hurt, like she'd been screaming, and her mouth was dry, like she hadn't had a glass of water in ages.

Ignoring the thought that told her she'd been unconscious possibly for days, Hermione would have bolted upright into a sitting position by what the light of her wand exposed if just breathing didn't hurt her chest and her bones didn't hurt by just being awake. A few feet away from her bed, not too far and yet not too near, in an armchair that hadn't been in the luscious bedroom the Zabinis had provided for her before, an open book balancing awkwardly on the armrest, was Draco Malfoy. A sleeping Draco Malfoy.

Pointing her wand to a nearby lamp, Hermione's wand-tip extinguished the light it had been conjuring when an automatic source lit up the room. Lifting her head as much as she could, she fixed her brown eyes at the blonde a distance from her. He looked so defenseless. There was never a time when Hermione reckoned she saw Malfoy look such way. He was always trying to put up a front; hidden behind walls of sneers, taunts, fears, and most recently, seriousness. But there, in that armchair as he slept, he looked like nothing he'd been showing the world.