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Hermione wakes as she has every night- to the feeling of Draco stirring in his sleep. There is no screaming, only silence as he writhes in the sheets. She leans over him, slowly reaching out to drag her fingers along the bare skin of his shoulder. Draco is awake within moments, staring up at her with tears in his eyes. "Are you really here?" He asks, as he has every other night for months now.
The open window has wind fluttering the curtains. "Yes," her reply is soft, nothing more than a whisper in the darkness. Somewhere between the accident and her dying, Draco had changed. He wasn't a broken man when she left; a promise of returning soon her last real words to him. After three long weeks in Switzerland, Hermione remembers little of the day she came home and nothing of the accident. Only that space of endless nothing where she had been dead for thirteen minutes. She was changed now, too.
Now, she was constantly told of how she used to act, what she said and thought before. A part of her died that day, and she fears it'll never return. That she's forever different because of it.
The one thing Hermione remembers for sure is how to comfort Draco. The knowledge is vivid in her mind, burned into the very memory of her nervous system. On a whim, Hermione sits up. She crawls around the bed until she can sit at his feet, wrap her fingers around his bony wrist, and pull him towards her. In the traces of moonlight, she sees the dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks gaunt with stress. It doesn't take much for Draco to fall forward into her arms, his wet face pressed against her collarbones.
Hermione runs her fingertips along his spine, drawing runes into his skin. "Promise me," he sobs, his hands digging into the fabric of her night dress.
Not a heartbeat passes between his words and hers. Her body knows she's said it before, but that doesn't stop her from swearing to him, "Anything." Hermione feels his reaction pressed against her, his breath hitching and his grip tightening until she knows there will be bruises on her skin come morning.
Her skin is damp with the essence of his sorrow, it takes so long for him to respond that she starts to believe he won't say anything at all. "Promise you'll never leave me again," memories lost since the accident prod at the edge of her senses; it all feels so familiar. They've done this before, maybe a million times in another time, in some other place.
Her response is automatic, coming so quickly she's hardly even thought it before the response leaves her lips. "I promise." Hermione vows, but the words feel like lead on her tongue.