Return of the Young Husband - Dramione

Return of the Young Husband

Hermione dropped to her knees beside her husband, pulling him to sit against her as the rest of the employees at the Granger-Malfoy Institute for Magical Memory Research stood gaping.

"Which machine was it?" Hermione was asking them. "Which one went off and hurt him?" Someone pointed to the hunk of metal and crystal still hot and smoking on a worktable.

She took Draco's face in her hands. His skin was warm but his eyes were closed, the muscles of his neck loose, his head lolling against her. "No, Draco. Come on..."

On the portico of St. Mungo's Hospital, she and an unconscious Draco appeared with the noisy, crackling racket of an urgent apparation. It took hours before Draco was finally admitted to a bed on the critical injury neurological ward where he remained in a sleep-like stupor. While they waited, Hermione sent for their teenaged son, Pollux, to fetch important documents from home. Draco's current passport, their marriage certificate, the children's birth certificates, baby photos, the news item on the opening of the institute - she wanted all of it at the hospital to show Draco to confirm whatever he might have forgotten in the accident. Necessary or not, she wanted to be prepared. This is how she handled stress and tragedy, with work.

A doctor had come to consult. "Well, I don't know much about the particular memory apparatus that misfired on him. You'd be the expert there, of course," she told Hermione.

"Yes." Hermione nodded. "I just need to hear it from someone else. Draco is who I usually consult with but - and anyways, my judgment is all shot through with panic right now."

"Of course," the doctor agreed. "Whatever happened, I'm confident the best course at this moment is rest and quiet. They've given him a sleeping draught to keep him in a state of deep, healing silence." She glanced at the timepiece hung around her neck. "When he's awake we'll see whether there's anything to all this fuss and commotion. It's possible he could wake up with no ill effects at all. Or, he could have some short-term memory loss — missing all or part of the past few weeks, that sort of thing. Or, well, it's not impossible that, that..."

"That he has long-term losses, and he may come round with no memory of me or the children at all," Hermione said, deflating in a single breath.

The doctor nodded. "That is a remote possibility. But remember that even if it comes to pass, we will still have reason to hope for his full recovery."

She took her leave, turning down the lights in the hospital room, leaving Hermione alone for a night-long vigil at her husband's bedside.

Pollux came with the papers his mother wanted, but then she sent him back home. If Draco did have long-term memory damage, it would be best if the first thing he saw upon waking wasn't a man-sized child of his. That wasn't how she explained it to Pollux. She told him she needed him to be with his sister. At a time like this, Hermione had no idea what to do for her children but let them spend what might be one last night of peace in their own beds.

For herself, Hermione sat in a chair pushed to the edge of Draco's hospital bed, watching him over the top of a classic book on memory accidents that she couldn't force herself to read again. In his sleep, he looked perfect, always perfect. If he woke up unable to remember her, this might be the last time she watched him like this — possibly forever. She would read and read until she found something to fix him.

That's what she told herself, but maybe tonight was too soon. Everything was too hard, too tense. Closing the book over her finger, she reached for his limp white hand, and pressed it to her lips.

As the night went on, she held his hand as she nodded in and out of sleep. Just for a few minutes, she told herself, as she'd laid her head on the mattress beside him. There were still hours left in the sleeping draught. She didn't want to startle him awake with a woman he might not remember resting on his bed, but there would be no harm in sleeping like this for a few minutes. She pressed his hand to her cheek and lowered her head, her face nestled against his warm flesh, the scent of his skin filling her senses, her heart thudding with adoration and with the fear that's inseparable from it. Just a few minutes...