Malfoy’s hair was cropped against his skull when they brought him from Azkaban to St Mungo’s.
Hermione almost didn’t recognize him, just skin and bones, and none of that pale white-blond hair. She remembered the flashing lights, the healers and aurors scurrying through the halls.
Day of his release — Not conscious — How long? — Vitals unstable — How long did the Dementor have him?
The words bled together, the clamor went on.
After two months, he was still unconscious. It didn’t take all of his soul, she was told. There was a possibility he might wake, but they put him in permanent spell damage.
An extra room added to Janus Thickey for the unusual case.
He just lay there, bone thin, grey eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. Never moving.
Unaware, unresponsive, said his file, palliative care necessary.
He filled out again. Round the clock hospital care could do that. Eventually the hollows in his cheeks faded and color returned and he looked like Draco Malfoy. He stayed that way, as if encased in amber, frozen in a moment.
Only his hair changed, growing.
She thought about cutting it. When it reached his shoulders, she told herself she would. If it tangled or matted it would create discomfort, but she felt unsettled by the idea of looming over him with scissors. Most care used spells, but hair was finicky.
She didn’t want to give him another Azkaban hack job.
She’d do it when he started looking like his father; it would be more than enough reason.
Instead his long hair accentuated the ways he didn’t look like his father. His features were not so sharp, his mouth flatter, sadder.
It made her realise that Draco Malfoy was not just a replica of his father.
He was someone else, and his life was slipping by like sand in an hourglass. She didn’t even know if he knew.
She started talking to him, not on purpose, it happened eventually, just narration at first, but after so many circular discussions with Lockhart, it was novel to have someone who didn’t interrupt or walk away when she talked about the books she read, her friends, and her research on mind-healing, while she set him up in a chair, combed his hair and enchanted a view.
She knew he didn’t really listen.
When his hair reached his elbows she knew she needed to do something. She combed it, but couldn’t bring herself to cut it. It was the only thing about him that reflected the passage of time.
She hesitated and then set the scissors down, lacing her fingers through carefully, she braided it down his back, pulling it away from his eyes and tying it off with her hairband.
She stepped around and studied him, and then pulled out a mirror, holding it so that he could see his reflection, their faces side-by-side.
“See?” she said. “You aren’t your father.”
His hand twitched, long fingers curling, and she watched his eyes move as if trying to focus.
Her voice caught in her throat. “Malfoy?”
That was all she could say before all the monitors went off, the room filling with sounds and colors. Healers came flooding into the room, and Hermione barely got a word out before he was whisked away.
Because if he was responsive that meant his soul was intact, and if his soul was intact it meant he would recover, and if he could recover then that meant he no longer belonged in the Janus Thickey Ward for Permanent Spell Damage.
By the end of the day, the room was cleared, cleaned, and waiting for the next long term resident to occupy it.
Hermione resolved not to visit him, even though the miraculous recovery was all the hospital talked about for several days. It was not as if she’d had anything to do with it. Assuming he’d recovered as much as everyone was saying, he wouldn’t be pleased if she showed up acting like they were friends because she’d been his palliative care healer. He probably had no idea at all. He’d be horrified.
She had tea with Lockhart and accepted bubblegum wrappers from the Longbottoms, and looked through her mind healing books again, because surely if a sliver of a soul was enough to bring a person back, then a whole lifetime of memories could be restored somehow. Somehow.
“He wants to see you,” a very irritated wizard announced, making her jump.
“The Malfoy boy. Says he wants to see ‘his healer’ which should me, but it’s apparently not me. And if it’s not me, it should be Jorkins, who is a legend here at St Mungo’s, but it’s not him either. ‘Granger’, he says, he wants to see ‘Granger’.” The healer puffed out a breath.
Hermione’s heart was in her throat. “Me? Why?”
The healer just waved a hand. “He’s a toff. We do as he says, we get a new wing in the hospital as thanks.” He glanced at the walls and then emphatically at her. “We really could use a new wing.”
Hermione gulped and followed him.
The healer glanced at her. “So, how’d you do it?”
She choked at that. “I didn’t — I just cared for him.”
The healer stopped short, an odd look on his face. “Don’t you know how it works with souls?”
“My specialty is mind-healing.”
“They don’t come back. The souls. Not after dementors. They could in theory, but they don’t. They unravel completely after a few years.”
“Then why did Malfoy come back?”
The healer shrugged. “They always say it’s the bastards who never die. Ask him.”
Malfoy was waiting for her.
She was so used to his eyes being blank and unresponsive, it was startling to find him staring at her the moment she entered.
“Granger,” his voice was faint. Relieved.
It’s then she knew that he recognized her, knew her, was aware of the things she’d talked about to him.
“Hi,” she said nervously. “They said you wanted me.”
A shiver ran down her spine. His hair was still braided with her hair tie.
“I thought you’d visit eventually,” he said, studying her. “You didn’t.”
“I was told you’d be unaware of my care.”
“Always?” she asked faintly.
“How did you come back?” she asked.
He looked down. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to fade. I thought I was just another Malfoy, an iteration played over and over, and what would it matter if there was one less? I didn’t know how to do anything but make the same mistakes as my ancestors. To follow their path. But then you of all people were there. I could watch you, listen to you talk. You talk quite a lot. You were fixing your mistakes rather than assuming you’d make them again. I lingered, wanting to know if you could. But I thought, I’m nothing but a reflection of my father, that’s all anyone will ever see in me. But not you.”
Hermione’s heart was pounding.
He exhaled and stared at her, eyes burning. “I had came back to show you, you were right.”
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