#isolation8

Chapter 8: Touch

General Summary:

Hermione consoles Ginny but eventually goes back to her dorm in early morning, stumbling upon Draco’s unconscious body at the door

She heals him and gives him Dreamless Sleep Potion because he is in a bleary state, and she ends up sleeping on the couch in the living room opposite to the couch she levitated him to

When he wakes up, they discuss the reason for his escape, which was his fear that if she didn’t come back and if something happened to McGonagall, he’d die there, to which she reminds him that the wards would drop if McGonagall died

While healing his injured hand, she notices his Dark Mark and realizes that he hadn’t been willing to take it, which explains the irritated skin around the Mark

She admits to healing him because she doesn’t quite hate him but he, working through odd feelings towards her, only says that he hates her “more and more each day”

Detailed Summary:

Hermione consoles Ginny through the night but doesn’t sleep at all, consumed with thoughts of her parents, Harry, Ron, and eventually Draco

She mentally remarks that she’s found him “more bearable” recently

She admits that she’s trying to “break his prejudices” and that even if it’s a fruitless task, “she’d try anyway; if only to erase the word Mudblood from his vocabulary.”

At 6:30 AM she decides to leave and go back to her own dorm, leaving Ginny a note

On her way in the entrance, she trips and falls over Draco who is still unconscious on the floor, and “look[s] dead”

He still has a pulse and she realizes that in her panic, she’d cried over him

She levitates him over to one of the couches and prepares to wake him up, but studies his features and finds herself entranced by him

“Some of the colour returned to his face as she grazed his skin, and she couldn't help herself as she brushed her thumb against his lower lip. He was...warmer than she'd expected...

She snatched her hand away and gave it a horrified glare. This was what insomnia did to her; messed with her brain and encouraged to do stupid and inappropriate things.”

She wakes him back up and shockingly, he puts his injured hand on her face for a moment, and then goes still and drops his hand, “simply staring at her with a blank expression”

She gets him Dreamless Sleep Potion, forcing him to take it since he’s shaking so badly that he can’t do it himself, and she cares for him, tucking him in with a blanket on the couch and watching over him to check that he’s alright

She washes his bloody handprint off her cheek and grabs a blanket from her bedroom to sleep on the couch across from him in the sitting room

Hermione wakes up before Draco and is looking at him when he wakes up

“She'd expected nothing but rage and embarrassment, but she saw only irritation and a hint of shame swirling in his rain-cloud eyes. The silence seemed to spark between them as the eye contact refused to shatter, and Hermione's voice found her before she could turn it away.”

She goes and sits on his couch by his feet and asks what he was thinking, to which he answers that she didn’t come back the night before

“"Nobody else knows I'm here." he hushed her, his words strained and quiet. "If something happens to you then I am royally fucked-”

“"McGonagall knows you’re here," Hermione pointed out. Her voice was soft and patient, as though she was comforting him, and Draco was too confused to be disgusted by it. Despite his best attempts to ignore it, there was something about Granger's proximity that steadied the remains of his tempestuous soul, and for the moment, he didn't want her to leave. Not yet.”

She says that if something happened to McGonagall, the wards would drop and he would be able to leave, and he feels silly for his dramatic reaction to her absence from the dorm

“"Why would you help me?" he asked her, narrowing his eyes into suspicious slits.

"Because you needed it," Hermione shrugged, as though it was nothing. "The wards are strong and dangerous, and you could have-

"You hate me," he hissed, perhaps more to himself than to her. "We loathe each other, Granger. Why the fuck would you-

"I don't...I don't think I really...hate you," she stuttered shyly, and Draco clamped his mouth shut with an audible snap. "Hate's a strong word. I would never wish anything fatal on you-”

She insists on looking at his injured hand and heals it, but as she’s doing so, she sees his Dark Mark, and though he tries to pull his arm away, she tightens her grip so that she can study it

She notices that the skin is “still raised and red with irritation” meaning that he hadn’t been willing to take the Mark

“"Your body rejected it because you didn't want it," she explained, gesturing to the inflamed skin around the tattoo-like symbol. "This would have calmed by now if you had been completely obedient."”

He gets pissed off because she’s right and he doesn’t like being analyzed but she manages to convince him to sit back down so that she can finish healing his hand, promising not to look at his Dark Mark

He finally goes back to his room but before he does, she asks how he feels about her now given their previous conversation when he first arrived and her admitting that she doesn’t hate him

“The question seemed to ring in his ears and stir memories of his obsession with her showers, and the almost civil talks that they'd accidentally stumbled into as of late. Did he hate her? Yes, just not in the same way. He hated her now for confusing him and screwing with his predefined perceptions of her. He hated her because she had somehow become borderline tolerable, but he hated her most because she made him think; made him question himself.

"Do I hate you?" he repeated with a flawless patronising snarl. "More and more each day."”

He goes back into his room before he can see her reaction and thinks about Hermione

“He'd been wrong; this was what he loathed most about her. She was polluting him like a blissful virus, infecting him inch by inch; sense by sense. He went through the motions in his head, listing her invasion of his senses. First it had been her smell, closely followed by her shower sounds. And then his eyes had come to acknowledge that she wasn't the ugly Muggle-spawn she was supposed to be. And now, he could feel her; her touch across his skin and her essence still waltzing in his veins from the day on the bathroom floor.

That was four; smell, sound, sight and touch. What was the fifth?

Oh yes. Taste.”