There Is This and Then There Is Reality

Wasn't it the heat that kept us warm at night?

Wasn't it the hunger that made us want more?

-Keri Noble

Hermione spent the day catching up with Lupin while Draco slept. Lupin had had a rough war, living mainly out among the wilder werewolf clans. He had managed to get into one that was sympathetic to Voldemort, but because of his known ties to people like James Potter and Sirius Black he was under constant suspicion. This, of course, meant he had to prove again and again that he was trustworthy. Finally he had been asked to kill, which was an act he was not prepared to do, and the clan had ganged up on him and beaten him up before turning him over to Voldemort. The worst thing, Lupin said, was that he had not been able to get anything out of being accepted there. He was never trusted enough to be out of their sight, which meant he had not been able to report any of his findings. His friends had no way of knowing how or where he was.

Throughout the day Hermione would check up on Draco every five minutes, making sure he was still breathing, keeping him cool with more wet rags. Every now and again he would wake up suddenly, eyes wide open gasping for air, cold with sweat. She didn't know what caused these reactions from him, but then she didn't know half of what he had been through either.

She was starting to rethink her positivistic attitude about his recover. He had admittedly seemed to cool down, and his gash across the stomach had finally started healing and gone somewhat dry, but he was nowhere near full recovery still. When he finally awoke, it was only to lie still, eyes half closed and breath coming unevenly. She had asked him how he felt, and he had merely closed his eyes and snorted in that annoying malfoyesque manner that said 'this is a very silly question that I will not degrade myself to answering, especially as it is coming from you'.

Hermione let Draco have the bench that night too, and bundled up her cloak into a pillow so she could fall asleep on the floor. Draco watched her suspiciously through half closed eyes, then realizing that she was attempting to sleep he inched backwards on the bench so his back was propped up against the stone wall on the one side. Hermione suspected he did not want to risk sleeping if no one was there to wake him if he stopped breathing.

She was awoken by a soft voice in the middle of the night. A woman was calling softly for Draco over by the other cell. Lupin was apparently fast asleep, and did not answer. Nor did Draco. Hermione looked over and saw him sitting there, still in the same position he had been in when she went to sleep, but now with his eyes closed. Her heart beat faster.

"Oh, God, Draco," she squealed, jumped up and rushed over.

The woman on the other side of the bars heard her cry, and came over to their cell, but Hermione didn't notice her. Draco was lying very still, and did not seem to be breathing.

"No no no no, Draco, please," Hermione said, holding her face in her hands. She was just about to reach down and shake him when she heard it. Draco drew one long rattling hoarse breath, and let it out again. She let out the breath that she didn't know she was holding.

"How is he?" came the soft voice from the outside.

Hermione looked over and saw Narcissa Malfoy standing by the bars. She looked horribly sad, and Hermione had to sympathise with her. It must be hard seeing your son in this kind of condition and not be able to help him. This was their own dungeon, but Hermione suspected Narcissa had little to say about how the dungeons were used. Perhaps she knew a way to get him out, but what good would that do. Draco was in no position to be on the run, and where would he go if she did let him out? Hermione figured it might be best if Narcissa did not have any possibility to free Draco, at least that way she could not feel guilty for not setting him free and sending him to his death. Yet it had to be difficult to be free every day, knowing your son was down here living like this. To know that even leaving him like this would be better than letting him out, because at least this way he was alive.

"He's not doing well," Hermione answered. "Do you have your wand? I know some spells that might make him better."

Narcissa shook her head and looked even more profoundly sad.

"I can't do magic in here."

Hermione had anticipated this, but it still disappointed her. She knew the dungeons must have some form of wards up, but when she had seen Narcissa she had still hoped that her visit could do them some good. Then she had an idea.

"Antibiotics," she said, "he needs antibiotics. Do you think you could get me that? It's a Muggle medicine. No magic. It kills the infection."

Narcissa looked confused, but determined.

"I'll try," she said, and Hermione knew from the way she said it that she really would. She took one last, longing look at her son, and then walked out as silently as she had come.

Hermione went back to Draco, who was now shivering, his breath being very unstable. He would breathe normally for a minute or two, and then he might either gasp as if he had been chocking or he might stop breathing for several long seconds. All the time his body was shaking from cold. He was still sleeping, which Hermione found very odd given his violent shivering, but he was after all very exhausted. She sighed, picked up her own cloak from the floor and wrapped it around him before sitting down beneath the bench.

Malfoy was still shivering with cold when he woke up sometime between half an hour and an hour later. Hermione was dozing with her back towards the wall, keeping half her attention on Malfoy's unstable breathing. She noticed him waking as he moved, sinking further down on the bench, wrapping himself more fully in the bundle of cloaks and blankets. She sat up and looked at him, his skin so inconceivable pale in the white moonlight seeping through the windows, his grey eyes cloudy with fever and pain.

"I'm cold," he whispered through chattering teeth.

"I know," Hermione said, feeling helpless.

"Lie with me," he said, so silently that she almost didn't hear what he said. Even though she was sure she heard him right, she couldn't believe it.

"What?"

"Please, Granger, don't make me beg."

His tone was spiteful, and he looked like it almost pained him more to ask her this than to be as cold as he was.

"I'm so cold," he said desperately. "I need warmth."

He held up the blankets and cloaks behind him, and after hesitating for a moment or two she climbed carefully over him to lie down behind him. At first she felt very awkward. She didn't know what to do with her hands, but finally she found it was best to put them around him. He was still shivering, and his skin was cold and clammy. She was surprised - feeling the cold coming off him - that he was even alive at all.

He had been considered attractive by some back at Hogwarts. Hermione had never really seen it, she had been too disgusted by his personality, but she remembered bumping into a giggling Ravenclaw sixth year prefect last year who had just walked in on Draco in the prefects' bathroom. Lying here now, arms around the shivering and sickeningly thin Draco, Hermione could remember the Ravenclaw saying, 'They were this big,' indicating to her friend with her hand on her arm how she remembered Draco's biceps to be. All that had gone now and she assumed the Ravenclaw would be less than impressed if she had seen Draco like this.

Draco shifted and moved closer to her, drawing the blankets closer around them. He was still icy cold, but his shivering had died down some. She wrapped her arms more tightly around him, but felt as though her heat stayed mainly inside of her own clothes. She knew that in order for him to get any real heat off of her body they would both need to remove at least their shirts, but she felt that this was a step to far, even if it had to do with keeping Draco alive.

***

She must have fallen asleep there against Draco. She remembered his violent shivering calming down, remembered his body growing slightly warmer, yet still nowhere near what a body was supposed to be, and then she remembered no more until she heard a man's voice speak.

"In your proper place now, aren't you little Malfoy," the man said.

Hermione opened her eyes and looked at him. He was not someone she had seen before, but Draco seemed to know him, because his whole body was alert, awake and tense. Hermione removed the hands she had around him, and sat up. The man watching them was tall and slender, with elegant clothing, and seemed to be no more than ten years older than them. He was handsome, Hermione thought, but the cold cruel look he gave them made his eyes seem mean and ugly, and his lips were stretched in a very unattractive sneer.

"In bed with the mudbloods," he continued. "After all, you seem to love the Mudblood-lovers, why not go the whole nine yards."

Draco stayed completely still, but Hermione could tell that he was so mad he was nearly shaking. His whole body was tense, and as she looked down she saw that he was wearing a scowl that betrayed just how difficult it was for him to lie there and take this. The man at the bars looked down at his hands, where he was holding a box of pills.

"Your mother brought this," he said with disinterest. "Tried to smuggle it down. They say you can have it anyway, it's purely Muggle, worthy of a Muggle-lover."

He threw the box into their cell, and watched it roll to the far wall.

"Tata, lovebirds," he said as he turned and left, giving them one last cruel smile.

Hermione waited until he was gone before she eased herself over Draco and went to pick up the box. As she turned around she saw Lupin at the bars of his cell, giving her a look she didn't recognize.

"Who was that?" she asked him.

"Zabini," Draco spat before Lupin could answer. "Blaise's uncle. I beat him in a duel when I was fifteen and he was twenty-one, he's hated me ever since."

Hermione didn't ask more, but instead walked over to him with the antibiotics.

"I don't know how your mother got hold of these so quickly, but I think they will help you," she said, taking a pill out and offering it to him along with a cup of water.

Draco eyed them suspiciously. He was still freezing, she could see him shivering, but he seemed clearer today. Whether that was because he was better or because of Zabini's visit, Hermione didn't know. Finally he reached out a hand and took the pill, swallowing it down with water without questioning why.

"My mother has been here?" he asked instead.

"Yes. Last night. I asked her to get you these."

"You shouldn't have made her," Draco answered curtly, turned over and tucked the blankets closer around himself.

"You need to eat," Hermione said, thinking about how incredibly thin Draco had felt the night before. "And I should have a look at your stomach."

"Don't bother."

She could see him pulling at the edges of his blankets, as though if he just got them to come closer to his body they would give him the heat he so desperately desired.

"You won't get warm unless you eat, Malfoy," she said with a sigh.

"Fine," he answered defiantly and sat up. His eyes were angry, but she felt better about that than the glazed feverish look he had had the last couple of days. "Bring it here."

She thought about telling him that she wasn't his servant, but decided she didn't want to force him to move around too much. She brought it over, and he ate as though he had just sat through a five course meal, but was pushing down some more to please her. When he put his food down she could barely see that he had touched it.

***

Somehow that day too passed. Draco spent all day on the bench slipping in and out of sleep, blankets and cloaks wrapped around him, without ever managing to get warm. Hermione spent it talking to Lupin again. They mainly talked about happier times; Lupin talked about his days at Hogwarts and Hermione about hers. Somehow their situation felt less real when they didn't talk about it. As night fell and the moon rose, Lupin's eyes suddenly sprung open in the middle of a story.

"Oh, no," he said, and Hermione immediately understood. The moon was full. Hermione suddenly realized why the guards had said Lupin would kill her. His transformation had begun. Even though there were bars between them she did not feel safe; she had seen him transform before and knew it wasn't something you wanted to stick around and watch.

She turned around and looked at Draco as whimpers came from Lupin telling her that the painful transformation had begun. Draco was shivering, but as he saw her wide eyes he gave her a weak smile. It was perhaps the most genuine smile she had ever seen him give. Then his smile vanished and he drew his shoulders up, tensing his muscles.

"Why is it so damned cold in here," he whispered through chattering teeth.

Hermione looked at him and sighed. She had her back towards Lupin and was determined to ignore him, and so she decided instead to focus solely on Draco. He looked so pitiful as his whole body shivered, and she decided that she had to try to help him no matter what. A little hesitantly she removed her shirt, and told him to do the same.

"I appreciate the offer, but I am not interested," he said icily, trying, but failing, to keep the shivering out of his voice.

Hermione was used to his behaviour by now. She figured he was putting up some sort of defence, and didn't take much offence by his cold words any more. Instead she merely tipped her head and looked at him, raising one eyebrow, and then held up her shirt as if asking if she should just put it back on. Malfoy took only a moment before he decided he'd rather be warm than proud, and removed his own shirt.

She climbed in behind him again and wrapped her arms around his now naked torso, feeling the coldness of his skin. Only her breasts were covered by the cloth of her bra, so her whole torso felt the chill he gave off. She inched closer, letting him steal more of her body heat, and could hear him sigh as his back felt the warmth he had needed for so long. She moved her hands up and down his arm to give him even more warmth. Somehow the sounds escaping from Lupin's cell seemed further away now, and she was happy about that because they frightened her. After some time she could feel Draco's back regaining some of his own temperature. The cloaks around them seemed to heat up as he grew warmer, and she could tell by his breath that he had finally fallen asleep in a sleep undisturbed by violent shivers.

***

She didn't hear them during the night, but they must have been there, because when Hermione woke up, her arms still wrapped around a slightly less cold Draco, Lupin's cell was empty. She got up quickly and ran over to the bars, searching desperately for a heap of robes or blankets hidden by shadow that would disprove her first impression, but since the cell was not very big, there wasn't much hope.

"Oh, God," she said closing her eyes, tears welling up behind her eyelids.

There was no way for her to know what had happened to him, and she tried not to think about it, but horrible scenarios kept playing out in her head. She shivered violently, partly from the thought of Lupin somewhere unknown, and partly from being out in the cold dungeon wearing only her bra. Still trying not to think about Lupin, knowing there was nothing she could do, she made her way back to the bed where Draco lay still asleep. She blinked furiously, trying to rid her eyes of tears, but failed miserably. Before she had made it all the way back to the bench that was their bed, she broke down and cried, flopping herself on the cold floor in a heap.

She didn't know how long she had been sitting that way, although she could feel her head hurting from crying too much and her body was shivering from the cold air around her. Finally she felt a cloak being put around her shoulder, and Draco came to sit beside her. She never questioned why he would bother to be kind to her, instead she turned around and threw her arms around him, burying her head in the nape of his neck, making his shirt wet with tears. Draco made no resistance, and after a couple of awkward seconds he even put his own arms around her. He said nothing, no words of comfort or encouraging, but Hermione didn't need him too, she just needed someone to be there.

Finally it felt as though Hermione was all out of tears. Her head was aching, her nose stuffed and her eyes were red. As she was letting her last sobs vanish into the cloth of Draco's shirt, she started to become aware of him shivering. He had been smart enough to put on his shirt before approaching her, but that was now rather wet at the shoulder, and he was not wearing a cloak.

"Damnit, Draco," she reprimanded him in a voice still unsteady from crying, "you should be keeping warm under blankets."

She took the cloak he had given her off, and swung it around his shoulder instead. She fastened the claps, her chest almost touching his and her face closer to his than she had probably ever been in her life. As she finished and looked up their eyes locked. It was only a second, but Hermione felt like there was something about that second that was special. She couldn't find a word for it, couldn't even explain it to herself, but there had been something about the way he looked at her, or perhaps it was the way she had looked at him. She didn't say anything about it, however, and she tried to act as though she had not noticed anything. Instead she ordered him to get back to bed, and he complied without complaining.