(Hermione and Draco take on the zombie apocalypse) It's been five years since Harry, Hermione and Ron left Hogwarts.
Hermione, now twenty-two and engaged to Ron, prides herself in her intelligence. All her life, Hermione has always needed to kno...
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Draco sat back, looking at Granger as she finished tying off her sling. Her broken arm was now braced with two sticks and wrapped with ripped shirts neatly, another dull blue shirt used the tie sling over her shoulder. She used her teeth to pull the last knot tight and set her lips in grim satisfaction.
She looked up, her chocolate colored eyes meeting his and he darted his away, embarrassed to be caught looking at her. There was something in the set of her shoulders, a fierceness in her eyes that spoke of a will to keep going, to keep surviving. The war had made a warrior out of her.
He couldn't help but think the same war had made him a coward.
"That all set, then?" he asked, cutting through the morbid silence.
Granger's eyes darted to the sky then back to him. "It'll do. Magic, even a little bit would be better."
Draco shifted uncomfortably. He felt a pang of guilt for not healing her.
He fingered his wand, which continued to sit dormant in his pocket. Was it really because he feared to become weak from using magic?
Or, was he just afraid that it wouldn't work at all?
Magic. It had been a part of him for so long, it was who he was. He was a wizard, and a good one. If he didn't have his magic anymore, was he still even himself? Was he still Draco Malfoy?
He was afraid to find out. Draco couldn't fathom a future without magic.
Draco fisted his hands. He was already weak, he was afraid of the moment he went to use his wand, to cast a spell – and nothing happened.
Granger, now, she wasn't afraid of that. Maybe because she came from muggle heritage, and maybe because she was simply stronger than him. But no matter what this new, fucked up world threw at her. She would face it, and she would fight it.
Deep inside, he found himself jealous. He wished that he had that in him, right then. He needed some of her confidence. He didn't know what had happened back at the Burrow, but he could see how it haunted her eyes. Regardless, she didn't collapse into a ball and give up. Before he had made the choice to help her back in the clearing, when the muggle woman had almost had her, she wasn't ready to give up. She would have fought even the certainty of death.
Draco wasn't so sure he could do the same.
And maybe that's why when she looked at him earlier, the weapon in his hand, knowing he was more able bodied, he had complied. It had been against his nature to put himself at risk like that. To go around the corner to find one of those things feasting on a fresh, still alive, human being. But he had done it because, without Granger, he was alone.
He didn't want to be alone. Not in this world, not ever. And now, Granger, she was one of the only living human beings that he had seen in the last twenty-four hours, the others most of which were already dead.
