"I hate you, Malfoy."
She had said it before storming out of the Hospital Wing, leaving him alone with Snape.
He didn't look at his professor, his Head of House. He stared at the space where Hermione had been.
His side, where she'd been curled, felt cold. His arm, which she'd been holding, felt empty.
He couldn't move.
His chest ached — and it wasn't the cuts from Potter's curse anymore. No, this was something deeper, something beneath the surface, somewhere inside him rather than on his skin.
Draco breathed in — shallow, sharp — trying not to let it become a sob.
Snape hadn't spoken. He was still standing at the end of the bed, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
He didn't care.
I kissed you.
I trusted you.
I loved you.
Snape's boots clicked against the stone floor as he began to pace.
"Stupid boy," he muttered, too low for anyone else to hear. "Reckless. Irresponsible."
Draco didn't answer. His fingers twitched as his eyes drifted to his professor.
Snape's voice sharpened. "You'll be fortunate if she doesn't go straight to McGonagall. Or the Headmaster. Or worse — the Ministry."
A pause. "Do you have any idea what they'll do if she talks?"
"Kill me?" Draco offered.
Honestly, that didn't sound like the worst outcome.
Snape stopped pacing, turning to face him, eyes sharp. "Do you find this amusing?"
"I think I'm already dead." He said.
"She could ruin you! With a single word to Potter!" Snape snapped.
Draco didn't say what he wanted to. That she already had. Not when she saw the Mark and he'd begged her to stay with his silence. Not when she said she loved him. She had ruined him months ago.
"You won't simply be expelled, Draco — a cell in Azkaban will be waiting with your name on it. Or worse — they hand you straight back to the Dark Lord."
His robes billowed around him as he paced. "Do you think this is a game? You've compromised the entire mission. You've put your life at risk. Your mother's life. Her life. My life. And for what? A schoolboy infatuation?"
Draco flinched.
Her life.
It rang louder than the rest.
Snape was staring, waiting for the right kind of fear, the right kind of shame. "Well?"
A schoolboy infatuation.
He could almost laugh at how it sounded.
"It's not," he said quietly.
"It's not what?"
Draco swallowed, tilting his head slightly. "A schoolboy infatuation."
Snape's expression twisted with disbelief — as if he couldn't fathom what he was hearing. "Oh, spare me," he spat. "You think this is some tragic romance? A Muggle Shakespearean tragedy? That you get to throw everything away because you've confused obsession with affection? Hormones with loyalty?"
Draco wasn't looking at him anymore. He scoffed.
Snape's eyes flashed. "You just couldn't help yourself, could you? The perfect Malfoy heir, always wanting what he couldn't have." He sneered. "You couldn't keep your head."
Draco's head snapped up. "You can't be —"
"You've compromised everything because you let yourself want her!" He advanced on him. "You think you're the first pureblood fool to confuse lust with love?"
"Stop. Just — stop." Draco hissed, looking away, swallowing hard.
"Oh, don't turn away now. What? You want to act like a man? Then face the consequences like one." Snape spat.
"Do you have any idea what she is? What she means to them? What she means to him? She's Potter's. She's Dumbledore's. She is everything we are meant to oppose. And you —" Snape laughed — cold, cruel. "—you let her into your bed."
"I didn't plan for this!" Draco snapped, looking back at him. "It wasn't — she —"
"What, Draco? She smiled at you and you forgot everything? Forgot who you were? Who she was?"
His throat tightened. He wanted to defend her — she didn't do that, she was never like that — but he said nothing. Not with Snape circling him like a predator and him just the bleeding thing on the bed.
"If you fail this task," Snape said, stopping at the foot of the bed, "there is no leniency. No second chance. Your mother's pleas will mean nothing. Your father's name will be worth less than a Knut."
"I know!"
"No — I don't believe you do." He pointed toward Draco's left forearm. "That Mark on your arm means your choices are no longer yours."
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair. It is war. You were given a task. I told you to maintain your distance and stay focused." His voice came like a whip. "You are not the hero of some romantic tale, Draco."
"I am doing what I was ordered to do!"
"Not well enough. You are compromised."
"I'm not compromised, I'm in —"
Snape raised one hand. "Don't."
Silence stretched between them — long and heavy with everything neither would say.
Snape lowered his arm slowly. "You should have Obliviated her."
He shook his head. "No. You're asking me to take her memories?"
"I am asking you to behave as though your life depends on this. Because it does. I want you to remember what will happen to her — to that girl — if the Dark Lord discovers you've let a Muggle-born close enough to learn your secrets."
Draco slumped back against his pillows. "I'm tired and I ache. Everything aches."
"And everything will hurt considerably more when you're being Crucioed on your own ballroom floor."
---
The light was too bright, cutting through the shutters toward where Draco lay on the hospital bed.
He stared at the ceiling. He'd counted four hundred and thirty-two cracks. Then counted again to be sure.
The linen sheets itched against his skin, and the healing salve clung to his body almost as stubbornly as the guilt.
"Good morning, Mr Malfoy," Madam Pomfrey said, crossing to him. "Let's have a look at those wounds."
She didn't ask how he'd slept. Perhaps she could tell.
Her wand moved with brisk precision over his chest, shoulders, and ribs, muttering diagnostic incantations under her breath.
He didn't move to sit up. Didn't speak.
She hummed. "You're healing, though not as well as I'd like."
Silence.
She tucked her wand away. "I'll have an elf bring breakfast."
"Don't bother." His voice came out hoarse.
Pomfrey raised an eyebrow. "Would you prefer to walk to the kitchens yourself? Movement will help your muscles —"
"No."
Pomfrey exhaled through her nose — not impatient, just resigned. "You'll stiffen if you don't move."
Draco didn't answer. He shifted onto his side, just enough to curl his fingers under the pillow. Even that made his ribs ache.
"I'll return in an hour." She sighed, walking away.
He stared at the doors.
Waiting.
Not for Pomfrey. Not for Snape.
Not for his friends or for Hermione.
Just waiting. For the punishment. For the fallout. For whichever thing would come for him next — Potter's fury, the Dark Lord's wrath, perhaps the Ministry.
---
"You look like something the Kneazle dragged in," Daphne said, dropping into the chair beside his bed and tossing a takeaway box onto his lap.
Draco didn't respond. He was still staring at the doors.
Daphne hesitated. "You're not hungry?"
"Just ate." He lied.
She didn't push, tucking her legs beneath her. "Theo's taking bets on when Pomfrey kicks you out of here. Blaise says Wednesday. Pansy hasn't said much. I say four days."
Draco didn't laugh. Didn't blink.
She tilted her head and glanced behind her. "What are we looking at?"
"My imminent doom."
---
"I'm telling you!" It was three days later, and Theo was pacing around Draco's bed. "McGonagall is utterly unhinged. I told her you were still bed-bound — that we were all in mourning for your personality — and she still assigned a four-foot essay for next week!"
Draco didn't react. No smirk, no snide remark. Not even a blink.
"Nothing?" Theo stopped. "Not even a comment about my essay being shorter than my attention span? Something? Anything?"
He slumped into Daphne's chair, propping his legs on the side of the bed. "You're really not going to say a word?"
Draco rolled over onto his other side, hissing as a healing cut reopened.
Theo winced, half-rising from his chair.
"Touch me and I'll hex you." Draco muttered.
He dropped back down. "Sorry. I'm not 'Mione."
Draco's back went rigid. His jaw tightened.
Theo blinked. "It was just —"
"It wasn't funny."
Silence. Not the comfortable kind.
---
"You have to go see him," Daphne hissed at Pansy in the library. It was the first moment the four of them had been without Hermione.
Pansy closed her book. "No."
"He hasn't moved," Theo said, lowering his voice. "I heard Pomfrey telling someone about it earlier. He should have been up and moving two days ago."
"I'm not a Healer."
"You're his best friend," Blaise said.
"So are all of you."
The three of them gave her a look.
Pansy's jaw clenched. "You want me to do what, exactly? Go in there, hold his hand, smooth his hair, and pretend everything is perfectly fine?"
"No," Daphne said carefully. "We want you to go in there and remind him he's still alive."
Pansy was already on her feet. "I can't go in there and see him lying like that." She said flatly, and walked off.
---
Daphne took the next morning shift, sitting across from Draco, her eyes narrowed.
There had to be something she could say.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "Just ask. You know full well you're dying to."
"Ask what?" he muttered.
Her eyes practically gleamed.
"She looks dreadful. Like you, but cleaner. The hair's worse, though." She sat back, feigning nonchalance.
"You've spoken to her?"
"She's been sleeping on my floor."
She said it casually. As if it were nothing.
Draco blinked and slowly sat up to look at her.
Daphne did her very best not to let her surprise show.
"Why?" He finally asked.
"Her Gryffindor dormitory has developed a gossip problem," she shrugged. "Weasley's been insufferable as well. She feels safer with us."
Draco swallowed. "Has she said anything?"
Daphne stood, smoothing her school skirt. "Take a walk around the room, and I'll tell you more."
---
It was the middle of the night.
Pansy sat on the cold tile floor of the bathroom she shared with Daphne, her knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them, her forehead resting on her knees. Silent sobs shook her shoulders.
The tile was frigid beneath her, seeping through the thin cotton of her pyjamas. She'd pulled her sleeves up over her mouth to muffle the sound.
She didn't want Daphne to hear. Didn't want anyone to see.
This was who Pansy Parkinson was: sharp, quick-witted, far too snarky for her own good, and absolutely terrible at showing the parts of herself that hurt.
It had been happening every night since that day in the bathroom.
Every night, when she finally lay her head down on her silk pillow, the same images found her.
She had been looking for Potter. Had intended to sidle up alongside him — a little too casually, say something a little too pointed, let her hand drift down his arm and tilt her head in just the right way.
She'd been two steps behind him, apparently not close enough, because he'd vanished from her sight.
She'd decided to bide her time and look for him later, and started actually walking toward class.
But as she walked, her shoes grew wet. Water pooling into the corridor.
She'd groaned. Some careless first-year had left the taps on.
Prefect duties. Dreadful, really. But she'd bitten the bullet and followed the trail — round the corner, and then the next — the soft splash of her footsteps following the sound of hissing pipes.
Something was wrong with the smell. Copper. Burnt.
For a moment she'd thought a duel had gone badly. Or a Potion had taken a catastrophic turn. Maybe a pipe had simply burst.
But as she turned that last corner, the clear water beneath her shoes had gone dark.
She'd frowned, pushed open the bathroom door —
The first thing she registered was the sound. Water spraying, loud and relentless. The second was Harry Potter standing in the middle of the room, wand in hand, shaking slightly. The third was the smell, grown unbearable.
She'd walked in slowly. "Potter, you do realise this is the girls' bathroom?" She'd drawled.
She hadn't yet looked at anything else.
Her eyes caught a glint of glass floating in the reddened water toward her.
And then she'd looked up.
His white-blond hair was darkened and slicked back with blood. His limbs limp. Like a shattered porcelain figure thrown aside once the game had turned ugly.
She didn't remember screaming. But she must have — because Potter jolted, his eyes snapping to her as if he'd forgotten where he was. He looked haunted. Soaked from the knees down, wand trembling.
She'd pushed past him without a word.
"I didn't — I didn't mean to — it just —" Potter had been saying, voice stumbling.
She'd dropped to her knees in the water beside Draco, her own hands already trembling as she looked at what was left of his white shirt.
The water soaked through her skirt immediately. She didn't care. She reached out, not knowing where to touch, or how, or whether she even should. His chest rose.
She'd whipped around to Potter. Still standing there, dripping, wand limp.
"You utter fool!" she'd screamed.
Harry flinched.
"What did you do?!" She was pulling out her wand, every healing charm she'd ever half-learned rising to the surface of her mind. She cast them. All of them.
Nothing worked. The bleeding didn't stop. Her skirt darkened, her socks turned red, her shoes were ruined.
"Draco. Draco, can you hear me? Draco." She kept saying his name, setting her wand aside when it rolled away. She grabbed his face, thumbs against his cheeks, his eyes drifting in and out.
They were trembling — she hoped not too cold — as she ran her fingers over his face, forcing his eyes open, his name falling from her lips on a loop.
Her head snapped up. "Go! Get Snape! Go!" She screamed at Potter.
She didn't watch him leave. Her eyes were back on Draco, and she was unbuttoning his shirt, trying to understand the damage.
Her face went pale.
The wounds weren't clean. They were wild, jagged, brutal — skin torn open in cruel ribbons down his chest and stomach. Some shallow, some horrifyingly deep.
Her vision blurred. She blinked her tears away hard, not letting herself stop.
How far down did they go?
"You absolute idiot," she hissed, pressing her palms to the worst of it, trying to apply pressure, her hands immediately going slick with red. "You do not get to die in the girls' lavatory, Draco. That is a pathetic tombstone."
Her hands kept slipping.
She looked down at his robes. Also red.
Was it just the blood in the water soaking through? Or had the spell reached further than she could see?
"Granger is going to murder me," she muttered, pulling her hands away from his chest, moving lower.
She hesitated. Her hands shook worse now. Blood on her palms, her wrists, under her nails. She didn't know what she was looking for — exactly how far the damage went, how bad it truly was. Her hands hovered.
He would hate this.
The thought arrived unbidden.
He would hate being seen like this. Bare. Broken. Undone.
She fought through the fabric, inch by inch, and as she drew it away —
Her breath left her.
The wounds didn't stop at his ribs. They carved down past his hip — twisting, brutal — as if whatever Potter had cast hadn't known how to stop.
"Merlin, Potter," she breathed.
She moved back up to his face, taking it in both hands again. "Draco. Draco, stay awake. Snape's coming. Snape will fix this. Just stay awake. For me. For your parents. For Hermione —"
His eyes were slipping shut.
"Hermione." It left his lips, barely audible.
His eyes closed.
Pansy pressed her face harder into her knees, muffling the sound.
---
"You're behind in Runes," Pansy said, dropping a pile of parchment on Draco's lap the next morning, as if nothing had happened the night before. "Granger would be appalled."
Draco looked up at her, slowly. His expression was unreadable — flat, exhausted, but not blank. Too much sitting beneath the surface to surface cleanly.
"I'm not doing it."
"Fine." She crossed her arms. "Then you'll fail. And when the Ministry's done with you and Hogwarts is rubble, you'll have a lovely time being a wanted criminal without so much as an O-level."
He narrowed his eyes. "You sound like my mother."
"I'll take that as a compliment." She decided.
A beat of silence.
"You're here," he said quietly.
She sucked in a breath. "I had a proper tantrum about it, if that makes you feel better."
"Not really."
Pansy stood where she was, arms crossed, eyes roaming the ceiling.
"I removed your trousers," she said.
Draco blinked.
A long pause.
"I beg your pardon?" He asked, certain he'd misheard.
She exhaled through her nose, lips pressed together, still not looking at him. "I removed your trousers," she repeated.
He blinked once more. Slowly.
"Should I be flattered or concerned?" He asked.
Her eyes snapped to him, and even through everything, he could make out the flush creeping up her neck.
His lips twitched — the first ghost of something resembling a smile in days. It wasn't often one got to see Pansy Parkinson embarrassed. "Did you enjoy the view?"
"It's seared into my mind forever."
"That good?" He did smirk then.
Pansy rolled her eyes.
He let his head fall back against the pillows. "You always said I had nice legs."
"I said you had long legs," she corrected. "There's a difference."
"Long. Well-proportioned. Particularly —"
"Do not make that joke right now."
Draco raised his head. "Did you check everything was still in order?"
She looked scandalised. "No!"
He raised an eyebrow.
"…Maybe." She muttered. "For Hermione."
He chuckled — then immediately clutched his side, hissing at the effort. "So you and I have now officially gone further than I've managed with my actual girlfriend." There was a hitch in his voice at the word, his tongue pressing briefly to his cheek as if he wasn't entirely sure it still applied.
He was fairly certain it didn't.
Pansy's mouth opened — some joke poised and ready — but nothing came out. Her arms dropped to her sides.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said quickly. "Any of it."
---
"Your heartbeat is slower than it should be," Pomfrey said as she completed her final examination of the day. It had become routine over the last ten days.
Draco hummed. "It's peaceful in here."
Madam Pomfrey drew her wand back, tilting her head. "You are not the only stubborn sixteen-year-old I've had the displeasure of treating, Mr Malfoy. Though you may well be the most stubborn." She handed him a Restorative Potion. "You have barely eaten, you've hardly moved, and while your scars are finally beginning to close, I fear your magical core is destabilising."
He sighed and drank the potion. "I'll walk tomorrow."
---
That night, he didn't sleep.
Sometime after midnight, he pushed himself upright, muscles screaming, ribs protesting every breath, and forced his legs over the edge of the bed. The floor was cold against his bare feet. He braced himself on the bedframe.
One step at a time, reaching for anything he could use to steady himself, he made his way toward the great wooden doors.
Each breath was shallow. Each movement cost him.
He didn't know what he was waiting for.
He'd been staring at the doors for days. It seemed right that this was where he ended up.
His forehead came to rest against the wood with a dull, quiet thud. Cool against the heat of his skin.
Draco closed his eyes.
---
Two days later, Pomfrey discharged him. He wasn't healed — but she insisted he return to some semblance of a routine.
It was a Saturday. No classes. He made his way slowly to the dungeons, found Snape's office, and stood outside for a full minute before knocking.
The door opened almost at once, as though Snape had been expecting him.
The professor raised an eyebrow. "You live."
"Dreadfully so." Draco muttered.
Snape studied him. The way he wouldn't quite meet his eyes. The way his throat moved when he swallowed words. The slight slump in his shoulders, as if he'd finally run out of something to hold himself upright with.
"What can I do for you, Mr Malfoy?"
Draco opened his mouth. "I…" He stopped, glancing off to one side with a faint, humourless scoff.
"I need your help." His voice came out quiet and rough.
Snape's eyes narrowed, though his tone stayed dry. "I have been offering my help all year. You have refused it, spectacularly, at every opportunity."
"That's not what I mean." He snapped.
Snape raised an eyebrow, arms folding. "Do enlighten me."
Draco shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I can't do what I need to do while Hermione is in the middle of it."
"I am painfully aware of that, Mr Malfoy." Snape drawled. "As I believe I warned you months ago."
"What do you want from me?!" Draco snapped, looking at him. "I made a mistake, alright? I let myself fall — I let myself want her, and then I had her. I made a mistake. I know it. Do you want a public apology? A written confession?" He ran a hand over his face. "I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm asking you to help me make sure she's safe."
Snape exhaled very slowly through his nose, expression unreadable.
"That is quite the request," he said at last. "Particularly given the chaos you've already caused."
Draco swallowed. "I know."
"I don't think I will," Snape said simply. "You made your bed. Now you must lie in it."
"She'll get hurt."
"She was always going to get hurt," Snape said flatly. "You made certain of that."
Draco took a step back, shaking his head. "Forget I said anything. Forget all of it. I have a cabinet to finish." He turned and walked away, heading for the Room of Requirement.
He let the door fall shut behind him, walked in, and stopped just short of the Vanishing Cabinet.
The bed was unmade. A few pillows had been thrown onto the old sofa. The small side table was cluttered with the remnants of a half-eaten apple tart — her doing, he knew it immediately.
He exhaled.
Crossed the room.
Pulled the cabinet open.
A white dove burst out, darting into the air above him.
Draco stood absolutely still, breath knocked clean from his chest.
He leaned his forehead against the cabinet door, a sob breaking from him as his shoulders shook.
"Merlin," he whispered.
"She's going to get herself killed."