Touchstone || Dramione

Chapter IV: Expendable

Long days of stillness leave Hermione free to reminisce on so many things, things she'd rather tuck away to gather dust and—a more cowardly part of herself whispers—never be brought to the forefront of her mind again. When Harry and Ron had been alive, bravery was easier. When her parents still breathed, she hadn't felt like a total monster.

She'd thought tricking Riddle could earn her precious minutes of escape, but she'd never accounted for her parents' capture. Hope, blinding and reckless, had dulled her acumen. Despite all she'd done to protect them, Riddle cut them from her life with serrated finesse, leaving tattered bloody wounds over the scarcely healing devastation of losing her two best friends. She should've been less imprudent with Luna's life. Just because her gamble paid off doesn't mean what she did was right, or remotely reasonable.

This is their game, though. Isn't it? He made the mistake of striking the deepest depths of her heart and believing she'd sway to submission before him. He presumed he could dangle more of her precious friends in front of her and she'd bow like a good little seeker and find his puzzle box.

From one seeker to another. She sighs.

The central difference between Harry and herself is that the skeletons he dragged around are a dinner date compared to her macabre soiree of haunted faces.

'I know who you are Hermione. You're brilliant and perfect and you have the biggest heart of anyone I know.' Harry whispers in memory.

'You're scary, too.' Ron would always say. 'Scary and magnificent.'

Ron blushed the one time he called her beautiful. The image burned into her memory like a scar. What they could have been has flitted through her mind from time to time. She often wonders if the pretty ideas are merely that, ideas. Things always seem impeccable when they're existence relies solely on imagination. That's what the past is now, isn't it? Fantasy. Like the aging pages of her books. Words and voiceless elegies on flat expressionless parchment void of any warmth.

She taps a chewed nail at the spine of the book she's holding. The Crimson Gospels. How quaint. She grumbles aloud.

"Tilt your head for me, Mr. Malfoy." Madam Pomfrey says, her usually stern tenor softened in the wake of such uncomfortable circumstances.

He doesn't respond to her immediately, his fingers curling into the bed sheets of the hospital cot and his lips tightening. He is clean shaven now, his hair trimmed to his ears and his face reminiscent of his Hogwarts days.

The curtain shielding them allows some privacy, but Luna had been right. Everyone knows. It's taken every ounce of energy from Shacklebolt and other senior members to feed rumors and not facts. Madam Pomfrey looks absolutely frazzled by the effort. Plenty of curious and uninjured members have already tried to sneak a peek at the supposedly dead Draco Malfoy. And there were a few out for blood. Those situations are always the worst.

They'd tried to sneak a peek at her as well when Sera brought her into the infirmary the night of their arrival with a single parting word of solace before disappearing back through the door. Finding her in a dribbling mess on the loo floor with the smell of vomit still in the air was no doubt unpleasant for Sera. Hermione will apologize to her about it eventually, but she's just as comfortable forgetting the whole ordeal happened. From Sera's lack of comment on it, she probably is, too.

Hermione eventually escaped the infirmary after enjoying a solid night of Dreamless Sleep. The ward-matron's incessant mothering had been come as a surprise, not only because of the woman's firm nature, but also because of Hermione's standing among the Order.