My first story written for a competition! 2012 Hogwarts Games, Freestyle Swimming.

My problem is that I usually write stuff that's upward of 2300 words, and I chose the 1000-2000 category... Let's hope I did well.

They were running, Hermione, him. The ground flew under their feet in the darkness, luck preventing trips and falls and accidents as the forest closed around them. Draco didn't have a clue what they were doing or where they were going, just away. His arm burned in his Lord's last-ditch effort to remind him that he was a coward, he wasn't supposed to do brave, stupid things like this, but just once it didn't work.

Draco heard Hermione sob and for a second stretched out a swinging hand in a gentle touch as he could manage. Almost to the edge of the wards.

Bellatrix was demanding something, an object, in her vault, how had they gotten it? Hermione's reply was swallowed in another scream.

He could feel the wards left behind, a strange, buzzing feeling over the skin, just as the burn in his left arm went away. Now they could apparate, now they were safer. He reached out, grabbed Hermione's shoulder and pulled her to the ground as she let out a harsh scream. He collapsed next to her, holding them both against the steady roots of a tree.

"It's-it's okay, Granger," he managed to whisper into her hair. It had lost its strange bushiness, weighed with dirt and grease, some of its curls merely consigned to time. He let one hand knot in her hair and held her head to his chest, needing to grip something to anchor himself.

Why had he done this? What stupid idea had lodged itself in the corner of his brain and made this seem okay? He had jinxed Bellatrix, run out on Voldemort, destroyed a window of the manor with his shoulder.

There was Potter, there was Weasel, trying to get to Granger, idiots! They were going to-

Die...

Weasel hit the floor with a thump, Potter folded in half and fell forward.

Just thinking about his shoulder made it ache. His free hand curled around his still-sobbing burden, reaching around to touch the pain, and finger the edge of a shard of glass he'd fallen on. He had barely noticed it before, making sure Hermione didn't throw herself back inside and pulling them both across the wide grounds and over a wall. Now, screams of pain choked in his throat, and usually he'd let them out, anything to get something done about it, but anything for miles could find them. Kill them. Fenrir could be hunting these woods right now...

Hermione's sobs became louder, more piercing, even while she tried to muffle them in his chest. In the gloom, he peered down, one of her half-curled fists catching on his other shoulder. There was something on her wrist, blood, dark and sticky.

Draco stopped curiously causing himself pain trying to remove the shard and turned his attention to her wrist, feeling like a young child, so blank. His thoughts were strangely unorganized and he couldn't pull himself together enough to even care, never mind clean up his mind.

Hand curling around her wrist, her sharp gasp and choking sob, he wiped some of the blood away and found himself faced with letters.

Rough characters, done with the point of a knife, victim had struggled. The facts marked down automatically.

O-O-D

Words ending like that, the first one that came to mind was blood. He swallowed, ignoring her scream as he continued, the clotting and thickening blood sticking to his fingers.

M-U-D-B-L-O-O-D

Something sour gathered in his throat. That word suddenly seemed so... He looked at his fingers, then at his shoulder, the stains were the same color.

The numbness suddenly broke, but there was no tears, no sudden epiphany about that insult, nothing. Only a confirmation of something he'd known distantly for years.

No, what he suddenly realized was that Harry Potter had folded over a knife, red spreading fast over his stomach. Blood. Potty, Pothead, Scarhead, Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Die, the Chosen One. Dead. There was no one. No one would kill Voldemort. Voldemort had cast his Killing Curse so fast he'd almost misaimed and even if he had... Aunt Bellatrix's knife.

Maybe he should have been wondering what Voldemort had been doing in that room, who had called him, but he didn't. There was no point. No point in examining the events up to that moment, all that mattered was that there was no hope.

Hermione had settled for whimpering. She was clinging to his chest, whispering the names of her two friends with little sounds of pain in-between and Draco suddenly realized he'd knotted his hand so tightly he was nearly pulling her hair out. He tried to persuade his fingers to let go, loosen. They seemed frozen into claws. Shakily, his other hand pried his fingertips loose one by one. She let out a gasp, panting for air as if she had suddenly come up for air in a lake.

"Wh-Malfoy? Why-what-" She buried herself against him again like this was all a bad dream. The pain in his shoulder began to sharpen. "Why does it hurt?" she whispered.

No words came to mind, no snarky replies or comforting whispers, nothing. He gripped her wrist as gently as he could and tried to remember all the actions to a healing spell. He was sure he missed a loop or a turn, but those horrid bleeding cuts sealed themselves, became scars.

She stared at the letters blankly.

The staring was better than sobbing, quieter, at least. He bit down on his back teeth, eyes narrowed, and lightly curled his fingers around the shard.

Then he tightened his grip and yanked, hard.

The shard came free, his first response was to shriek, and to his surprise, Hermione slapped her hands over his mouth. They stared into each other's eyes.

There was no spark, no sudden burst of love, there wasn't a sudden discovering that he'd loved her forever, nothing of a cliché from a novel. But there was the realization that they were both depending on each other now, even if they didn't want to.

She took his wand from his grip and healed his shoulder. Self-healing was never a good idea, and rarely safe.

"We shouldn't apparate, should we?" she said, staring at her hands. He shook his head. His voice was still missing.

"But we can't stay here."

He gave a look. A twinge of reflex made him scathingly wonder if she always had to state the obvious.

She stood up shakily, and Draco had to quickly follow, hands on her shoulders, to keep her upright. She was apparently cycling through periods of sense and shock.

He coughed to clear his throat. "This way... Hermione."

Her name tasted strange and yet clear on his tongue while he led her deeper into the woods around the manor. But, at least, it was something to focus on, something that wasn't the fact that someone had never depended on him before.

H-E-R-M-I-O-N-E

If you made it all the way down here, congratulations! And thanks. Once the contest is over, I'm probably going to expand this to a two or three-shot to make it fulfill my Dramione needs.