Many thanks to my superb alpha/beta team: LadyKenz347 and ravenslight. They went above and beyond this week and I can't thank them enough. Any remaining mistakes are all on me! Oodles of love to QuinTalon for pre-reading this chap and helping me get unstuck!

The only sound in the small room was the scratching of Hermione's pen as she sat hunched over her desk. Packing away the worry and confusion she felt into a box to be sorted through later, she'd spent the day buried in her work.

And it had been successful at keeping her mind occupied, for the most part.

At five o'clock sharp, Harry's shadow darkened Hermione's office door. "Ready, sweetheart?"

Ah, right. He was there to escort her home. She understood the need for protection, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.

Early that morning, Harry had met her at the stairs to her building, beginning day one of her forced protection. Knowing that whoever was after her had dared to lay a finger on Crooks made steam shoot out of her nostrils. All that fear and worry she'd had when she'd found her door open and Crooks acting funny rushed back anytime she thought about the threatening letter she'd received. Frustration coursed through her to heat the tip of her ears when she remembered writing off the strange signs from that day and conceding that Crookshanks must have eaten something outside.

Someone had entered her home, her safe place, twice, if not more.

Hypervigilance had stuck with her long after the war ended, and she sometimes second-guessed her instinct, concerned that it might be unfounded paranoia.

That combined with the other threats had led Hermione to concede this point and accept a security detail. If someone was angry with her for her work, there was a very real possibility that they might try to use one of the children or families she worked with as leverage, and that was unacceptable. She'd never let anything happen to those children; some of them had no one else but her to care for them, to care about them.

Magnanimously refraining from letting herself get riled up about it, again, Hermione nodded at Harry, waving a hand in his direction as her pen flew over parchment. "I just need to finish this."

Harry sunk into the seat in front of her desk and kicked his boots up on the corner, leaning back with his arms crossed behind his head until Hermione gave him a pointed look.

Releasing a very put-upon sort of sigh, he pulled his feet back and let them fall to the floor with a thunk.

"Sorry." He sounded like a petulant child who'd gotten caught doing something naughty, and it was so entirely at odds with his very grown-up, very… manly appearance that she had to stifle a chuckle.

As she wrote, she asked, "Any news?"

Unfortunately, she, Harry, and Draco suspected that her stalker was connected to a child she worked with. After Hermione's encounter with Elenor Walton at the hospital the other day, Harry reached out to contacts with a request to be notified if anyone saw or heard from Elenor's father since then.

Harry nodded. "He was fired from his job and came back to St. Mungo's, trying to force his way in to see Elle again."

Setting her pen on the desktop just a little too harshly, she leaned forward. "They better not have—"

"No. Not this time. Robards may have put a little pressure put on the hospital staff," he said, mouth quirked to the side. "This time they actually did their job and denied him."

Letting out a huff, she dipped her chin with a single nod. "Lucky for them. Did you read the incident report?"

"He got agitated and the healers had to call for help. They detained him for a short time, but there was nothing to hold him on."

"And no evidence pointing to him, I suppose?"

"Not yet. We'll figure it out, Hermione." When she sighed, he sat up, leaning across the desk to catch her chin and bring her gaze to his. "I promise. Okay?"

She just wanted all this nonsense to be over with so she could get back to putting all her effort into her work.

Adding to the issue, Draco had been missing for days with no word. The last they'd seen of him was when he stormed out of Harry's home Friday afternoon. Hermione had her theories as to what had happened—namely that his insecurities had gotten the best of him.

The only reason Hermione wasn't panicked was that she hadn't felt any true distress. In actuality, she'd felt nothing at all.

Like he'd gone numb.

"Have you heard from him?"

Harry shook his head, twirling his wand between his fingers. "No one has. Robards has been trying to get a hold of him with no luck. When he wants to disappear, there's no finding him."

Though she wasn't surprised, her brows pinched together as she finished writing a note to Draco.

Draco, please just let us know you're alright. We're worried about you. I miss you. Harry misses you. Come back to us. Plus, you've left your bookshelves entirely defenceless. I may not be able to keep from clearing them out with no one there to stop me. You'll never see them again.

Hermione

Signing with a final flourish, she tapped her wand to the letter, duplicated it, and then put each one in its respective envelope.

Pushing open her window, she sent the letters off with a Ministry-appointed owl—one to his flat and one to his family home just in case he was holed up there. "Alright, we can go now."

Like a perfect gentleman—Draco's debutante manners had clearly rubbed off on him—Harry took her bag and offered his arm. Tucking her hand around his elbow with a smile, she locked up her office, and they set off down the stairs.

She'd never get used to travelling via the toilets no matter that she did it every weekday and had for years. It was strange, and she always felt the need to take a scalding hot shower afterwards. When they popped out this time, Harry led them down an alley one block away where they could Apparate safely.

The flicker of a shadow caught her eye and she halted mid-step, scouring the darkness. She found nothing, but knowing the number of strays that wandered this part of town, she figured it was probably just a cat digging through dumpsters for scraps.

Before she could take another step forward, a figure pressed itself against her back, one arm wrapping around her neck and tightening under her chin as the firm press of wood dug into her temple. Driven on instinct and her fight response, her fingers grappled at the intrusion, words failing her as she sank her nails into the forearm crushing her windpipe. The man pressed against her back didn't twitch, seemingly not registering the pain even as she clawed wildly at him.

Adrenaline rushed through her like ice water in her veins. Her wand. She needed her wand. Where was her wand?

Harry had spun around as soon as the air shifted beside him, wand drawn. He was quick, reacting only a second after she was grabbed, but it was a second too late.

She watched fire flare in his eyes, burning flames she hadn't seen in years that guaranteed the destruction of anything in their path.

"You're going to want to be very careful with what you choose to do next." Though Harry spoke calmly, there was a threat inherent in the words, and the fury in Harry was mirrored in Hermione, making her chest even tighter, impossible to take a full breath.

Where the hell was her wand?

Closing her eyes, she focused on the magic within her, simmering just below her skin, hoping she could wandlessly summon her wand. Imagining the tendrils like sparkling threads wound around her, she called out, "Accio wand," hoping for the best.

Nothing.

Shit.

A raspy voice rumbled against her back, sending unpleasant shivers of revulsion down her spine.

"Lower your wand." He sounded deranged, voice unsteady and pitched just a tad too high as he spoke around a tense jaw.

Harry's expression stayed hard, but a flicker of incredulity from him whispered across Hermione's skin. The man at her back was delusional if he thought all it would take to hold Harry off was a poorly presented command.

Curling her fingers around the man's forearm, she tugged just enough to release some of the pressure on her throat. "What do you want?" she bit out.

"Fucking Mudblood—it's all your fault." His grip tightened on the last syllable, the forearm across her windpipe pressing closer and cutting off her air. Her head throbbed, matching the erratic galloping of her heart as tremors shook the arm wrapped around her. "They wouldn't let me... It's your fault!"

It was clear now, though, who was crushing her windpipe. For just a moment, her eyes fluttered closed as memories of her first meeting with Eleanor's father flashed across her mind. His potion habit had been clear even then and Hermione had hoped it wasn't insurmountable at the time. Little Elenor had lost her mother and the last thing she needed was additional trauma heaped upon her by her father's actions.

He faltered, movements sharp and erratic, and just by the way he held her she could tell he wasn't in his right mind.

Backing up a few steps and pulling her with him, he seemed to realise he couldn't keep his wand to Hermione's head as a threat and Apparate at the same time.

Somewhere in her panicked brain, she dimly registered the fact that Harry hadn't moved, wand still drawn, and she glanced up from scanning the ground for her wand to look into his eyes.

Meeting his gaze grounded her, and her head cleared in less than a moment, all of her possible options illuminated and sorted through rapidly until one broke free of the rest.

Now she just had to communicate it to Harry.

Taking one deep breath in, she focused on Harry. With an almost imperceptible nod, he acknowledged her.

Bringing the heel of her shoe down on the man's foot as hard as she possibly could, she slammed the back of her head into her captor's face. A sickening crunch sounded from the collision and she wrenched free from his grip and leapt towards Harry.

Everything slowed, suddenly and entirely, until it felt like she was underwater. There was a shout and the acrid scent of spellfire in air, curses rebounding in the narrow alleyway as she braced for the impact of whatever spell was surely coming at her.

It never came.

Instead, her vision was obscured by Harry's back, and in the single moment that passed between the now and what happened next, she absently noticed the fine stitching of his robes, dark brown with golden thread.

When a crackle like that of electricity filled the air, the world snapped back to sharp focus like it had been given a command, and the dreamlike state she'd been in disappeared. Everything happened all at once.

A jet of purple magic barreled at Hermione's head. Before she could even think well enough to duck, Harry took it instead, the magic colliding with his chest and sending him flying backwards. The sickening thud of his head against the pavement and her resulting scream rang in her ears.

She stared where he lay crumpled, shock rioting through her system when suddenly a brilliant, pulsing light spread out from the patch of ground where Harry had stood like an aftershock during an earthquake. Hermione felt the magic of it reverberate through her, and she watched in wonder as the next curse flew towards her head only to be stopped midair, dissolving into nothing.

Quick as a Snitch, the wand that had slipped from Harry's hand flew to her and landed in her open palm. She had no time to wonder at why it had come to her without prompting. As soon as her fingers curled around the rugged handle, she pivoted, pointing it directly at the wizard standing in stunned silence, mouth agape and eyes wide.

With a firmly spoken incantation, thick coils of rope shot from the wand tip, slithering over the man's ankles and wrists to pin him to the wall, suspended a bit so his feet dangled just above the ground. Relief rushed through her.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Pulse pounding in her ears, Hermione threw another spell at him for good measure, her stance tense until she was sure he wouldn't get free.

The rest of the scene began to bleed back into focus, and she spun towards Harry's limp body on the ground, falling to her knees beside him and carefully lifting his head just an inch to press her fingers to the back of his skull. When she pulled her hand back, the sticky scarlet blood coating her fingers made her stomach churn, and she fought the urge to be sick all over the pavement.

Each moment after that was hazy. Hermione had no sense of time. Someone—she assumed it was herself—had sent for help, and soon a team arrived, turning the little alley abuzz with activity.

They took Harry to St. Mungo's via Portkey as his head injury made Apparation risky, and Hermione was kept at the scene, answering questions and forced to walk officers through the horrid events over and over again, the now familiar words tumbling from her mouth by rote, and when she was finally allowed to leave, the tears she'd been holding back came upon her with a vengeance. She took her wand from the officer who'd found it lying behind a dumpster and left.

When she arrived at the hospital, she ran to the loo to splash water on her face, willing the red to fade from her complexion before she went to see Harry and get information about his condition. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, dragging in slow, steadying breaths until her fingers stopped shaking.

The walls of the fourth floor of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries were painted a soothing shade of robin's egg blue.

Hermione, however, was anything but soothed.

She sat beside a hospital cot on a stool, on which one leg was just a little shorter than the others, and every time she shifted, it wiggled unsteadily. Right hand wrapping itself around her left arm, her fingers tapped an erratic beat on the paper-thin skin of her inner wrist as she clutched her wand with her other hand, her eyes running over the form of the wizard sleeping next to her.

He's alright.

It was a phrase she had to keep repeating when the memory of the sound of Harry's head cracking against the pavement as he'd been blown back ran through her mind and made her short of breath.

When he'd fallen, her heart had stopped, her whole world narrowing to Harry and his attacker, and for a split second, just a breath of a moment, she'd wanted to rain down Fiendfyre and watch the awful man disappear in a column of flame.

The thought should have scared her, but all she felt was the pleased purr of her magic at the very idea. Inside her was a drive to protect that had always been there after so many years of doing her best to take care of Harry and Ron, but now it was amplified, pain slicing through her heart at the very thought of Harry or Draco being hurt.

Scooting the stool closer, she reached out and pressed two fingers to the inside of Harry's wrist, breath coming a little easier when the faint pulse of his heart doing its job reminded her that he was alive.

There was no world in which she could live without Harry Potter. He was… everything. The paste that held her together. The knight who fought off her monsters, expecting nothing in return. The linking point between her and the other most important person in her life, someone she'd never thought she would truly know in any way that mattered, and it was one occasion on which she was utterly delighted to have been wrong.

She wanted Draco here, too. She yearned to hold them both close and press her face to their chests, reassuring herself with the warmth of them.

This feeling was familiar. She knew what it was, this ache behind her breastbone. It had been slowly building for weeks now, growing stronger with each kiss, each touch, each night she fell asleep between them, warm and safe.

It grew with every laugh, every soft brush of lips across her knuckles. Each pass of her fingers through silky fair hair or thick black locks stoked it further until it encompassed her entire being, no longer contained in one spot but everywhere, sunken into bone and blood and the very heart of her magic, irrevocably changing her.

The burden of the day caught up with her as she let her eyes fall closed, exhaustion hitting her all at once. Barely a few minutes passed before she felt a surge of anguish that was not unfamiliar but certainly not her own.

Harry was still knocked out cold from the pain potions the Mediwitch had given him and entirely unaware, but a wave of nearly unbearable distress hit her with all the subtlety of a Bludger. Whatever Draco had been doing to keep her from feeling him must have worn off because there was no denying the pain in her chest.

Staring at the door, she waited, unsurprised when a haggard vision of Draco appeared.

On a shuddered breath, he croaked, "What happened?" He looked so defeated, concern and something like guilt etched into every line of his face and the set of his shoulders. "Fucking useless officers out there won't tell me what's going on."

Standing, she rushed to him, throwing her arms around him and fighting back tears of relief that he was whole and there, right in front of her. He was tense beneath her touch but after a moment one arm curled around her, patting her back a few times like he didn't know what to do with his hands.

Pulling back, she gestured to the end of the bed. "Sit down."

He dug his heels in and started to shake his head when she said, "It's fine. There's room, and you couldn't wake him up if you tried. Just sit, Draco. Please."

The stubbornness in his dark grey eyes flashed for a moment, abating almost as quickly as it had come, and he carefully leaned his hip on the foot of the bed.

That wasn't exactly what she'd meant, but she would need to tread lightly; he was a thin piece of glass in her hands, ready to shatter at any moment.

All the emotion she had seen on his face just moments earlier had vanished, replaced by a steel wall of indifference as he waited for her to speak.

"Don't freak out… but do you remember Elenor?"

Confusion flickered across his face. "Elenor? From downstairs?"

Hermione nodded. "Her father was the one sending me threats. He ambushed us in the alley, high out of his mind. Harry—" Her voice broke, and she had to pause to clear her throat. "He jumped in front of me. He saved my life. The spell propelled him backwards and he hit his head pretty bad."

"What?!" Draco was on his feet, fingers curling in a tight fist. "How in the fuck—"

"Draco," she hissed, eyes darting towards Harry. "He doesn't need this volatility right now; he needs you. Getting upset isn't going to change what happened."

Draco considered it a moment, his lips folding in as though he were keeping his anger locked in his mouth. With an agitated click of his jaw, he sat back on the edge of the bed. "Then what happened?"

Brow puckering, Hermione replayed the moment for the countless time. "His wand came to me as some sort of shield went up. Spells melted into nothing before they ever reached me."

"Like sacrificial magic?"

Hermione shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I haven't been able to look up anything about it yet, but it seemed to be something like that. It was powerful. Like live magic vibrating through me. I don't even know how to explain it, really." Her vision went a bit blurry as she thought about it, rifling through the files in her mind for something that would make sense of the bizarre events.

"Then what happened?" Draco said softly, bringing her back to the present.

"I incapacitated Elenor's father and Harry…" The next part was painful to recount.

"It was awful. He was bleeding profusely, unconscious and unresponsive, and I was so—" She cut herself off before she admitted how frightened she'd been, steadying herself with a deep breath and trying again. "I didn't know what to do. I always know what to do, Draco." Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, she blew out a harsh breath. "I feel so helpless. But I must have sent for help because people came and they took him away from me, and then I didn't get to see him for hours."

Empathy flared in his cold eyes, the first hint of real emotion she'd seen since he'd walled himself up. His arm lifted, reaching towards her, and she leant forward, letting him take her hand.

The room was quiet for a moment, the only sound the tap tap of Draco's shoe against the linoleum as his thumb brushed back and forth over her knuckles.

"I felt it, you know."

She didn't have to ask what he meant. The sudden wave of high-strung emotions hitting him must have been overwhelming.

"Panic, boiling rage, and surprise, and then it just… blinked out." His gaze was fixed on a water stain on the floor. "For a minute I thought he… I thought he was gone."

Oh.

With slow movements, she stood, hopping off the stool to stand before him, hand still wrapped in his.

"I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how scary that must have been. Come here with me." She tugged at him until he moved with her to the head of the bed, and she guided him with her fingers over his, pressing the flat of his palm to Harry's chest.

"He's alright now, see? Steady as a drum." The reassurance of Harry's vitality worked as she'd hoped it would, the tension coiled in Draco's shoulders and neck releasing just a fraction.

The very existence of that stupid stool was still driving her mad, and she flicked her wand in its general direction, pleased when it morphed into a sturdier, four-legged chair. She urged Draco forward, and he sat heavily in the chair, gaze still fixed on the unconscious wizard on the bed. Backing up until her bum met the bed, she planted her hands on the mattress and leaned back.

"Why did you leave? Grimmauld, I mean. The other night."

A flicker of an unreadable expression crossed his face, but she felt the surge of shame and frustration within him.

"I don't know. I just…" He paused, roughly running his hand through his hair and pushing it away from his eyes. "It wasn't you. Either of you."

"Okay… then what was it? We haven't heard from you for days, you didn't even Floo into work. Robards was—"

"I don't give a shite about Robards." His lips pulled back into a small sneer, and the shame she had felt a moment earlier now billowed off him. "You two don't get it. You have history and a bond that I'll never have. You fall into each other and your quirks and your bloody annoying anecdotes and I'm an outsider. I just got added in."

"Draco…"

"Don't. It's fine. It's my penance for the shite I've done, but I was stupid for allowing myself to believe that we were in this together because at the end of it all, I'm never going to live up to Harry Potter and the Golden Girl."

Her heart seized in her chest, magic unfurling and reaching for him before she could even think to do so. She crossed the space between them, standing so close their knees touched. Hermione cupped her hand at his nape, a question in her eyes as she looked at him. When he released a sigh and finally leaned into her touch, she gently pulled his head to her chest as she spoke in soothing murmurs and stroked her fingers through his dishevelled hair, hoping everything she felt for him in that moment was reflected in his own heart.

"I don't want you to be Harry Potter, and I definitely don't want you to be the Golden Girl." A wry laugh rumbled through him, and she could feel it seep into his soul, his spirits tangibly lifting if even infinitesimally. "I want you, Draco. You don't have to be anything other than you because you're already enough."

She wouldn't say it yet, those three words. He wasn't ready. And if she were being honest, she probably wasn't either.

In a precious, peaceful moment during the practically non-stop turmoil of her youth, she'd allowed herself just once to wish for what might be after all the uncertainty and fighting, and she'd dreamt of a vivid image she was sure she'd never have: a pretty dress and shiny black shoes and flower petals falling softly to the ground.

They weren't there yet, and that was okay.

But she knew in her heart how she felt, and she hoped that Draco felt it just as viscerally. She knew it from the way her world narrowed to just the three of them there in the sterile little room, everything else fading away.

They were it for her.

A/N: Thank you for your patience with the delayed update last week! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thank you so much for reading. I'd love to know your thoughts, and I always welcome concrit.

I'm switching to a different update schedule, so you can expect updates every other monday from here on out!

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