ashes to ashes

How we bite the hands that feed us.

There’s a muggle expression.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Hermione did not.

But, in some twisted way, the saying came to mind time and time again as she did something near the opposite.

She didn’t bite the hand that fed her.

No, she held the hand that’s ring’s silver teeth drew blood from the lip it slashed, swift and merciless.

She kissed the palm of the hand that swished a wand as unforgivable words were bit out from between snarling lips (but chattering teeth).

And then she welcomed that hand resting against her stomach as a chest rose and fell with uneven breaths that grazed against the nape of her neck.

When those breaths broke on a sob, she took the hand into hers. She brushed her thumb over the knuckles that had been bruised against the jaw of someone not so different from her. The difference lay only in their luck.

She placed a palm against his cheek. He rested his ever-offending hand against her face with a tenderness that would’ve appeared alien to anyone else.

Their tears were growing less frequent these days. But they were steeped in a deeper sorrow each time.

Their hands remained intertwined as they slept.

—

What Draco did rang much truer to the idiom.

He bit the hand that had fed him nothing but poison for years.

He bit the hand that had only fed his arrogance and his wallet.

He even bit the only hand that had allowed him the barest scraps of compassion and comfort.

The first and last thing of the sort he’d known before his hand had found Hermione’s.

And that, too, hadn’t come easily.

The first time he’d felt her palm against his skin, it had stung. His reddened cheek burned with the remnants of her touch for what felt like forever afterward.

It was years until she touched him again.

And even then, it wasn’t deserved. Her cool hand had felt like salvation against his fevered skin as she’d healed him with the magic that flowed from her, and he felt it—felt the shockingly pure magic course through him alongside the confusion and awe. Healed by the hand of his supposed enemy while dying by the hand of one of his “own.”

So, now, he ate at their table. He laughed at their cruel jokes. He aimed curses in whatever direction he was pointed (at people that Hermione would heal). He allowed the hand to feed him as fantasies of severing it at the wrist fueled the hatred he needed to get through the day without discovery.

And, at night, when he was supposed to be sleeping between emerald satin sheets, in a room large enough to house a small family, he would instead share a bed miles away that was only big enough to accommodate two people pressed closely together.

This was of no relevance to him, he’d sleep wrapped around her regardless.

And so.

Hermione caressed the hand that wounded her.