What the Room Requires

Chapter Eleven

VVVV

DAY FIVE

DRACO

            I opened my eyes. I blinked once. Then I jerked to a sitting position.

            I stared at my ankle. I had kicked off the ice packs during the night, and my bare foot lay on the white pillow. My perfectly normal-looking foot.

            My brow furrowed as I risked raising my leg up and rolling my ankle this way, then that. It didn’t hurt. At all.

            I looked over at Hermione, who lay asleep on her side a little way away, facing me. Perhaps there was something to that ice theory.

 I would never tell her that, of course.

I pulled my foot closer to myself and felt it with my thumbs, pressing down on the top of my foot. I explored the place where it had hurt the most, the center bone I’d been certain was broken. But it wasn’t. Not now, anyway.

For a long while, I sat there, staring at my foot and my ankle. Then, I reached for my sock, pulled it on, put on my shoe and tied it. Then I got up, the blue blanket tumbling off me. I glanced down at it.

I felt quite warm. Not hot, but warm, inside me. Like I’d felt when I used to sleep by the fireplace at home. Hermione, however, looked chilled. She had her knees pulled up to her chest, and her arms tucked in. I considered the blanket again, then picked it up and tossed it over her. Why not? I didn’t need it.

She took a breath, her brow tightened, and then she reached up and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. For a moment, I just watched her, then turned and pushed the willow curtain out of the way, and set out to test my newly-healed ankle in the cool air before the dawn.

VVVVV

DRACO

            It was broad daylight, mid morning, and I was still pacing experimentally back and forth outside the willow when Hermione emerged. She rubbed her face as soon as she stepped out of the curtain, and the wind caught her hair and tossed it. Then, she opened her eyes, saw me, and stared. Her mouth fell open.