s. “Hermione.” He holds an arm out to her but she is too far away to give her a hug and he cannot bring himself to get up from the bed. It would just hurt too much, and he’s pretty sure the effort would make her burst into tears again. “It’s not your fault.”

“How could it not be?” She wailed, and the volume makes him wince. “You only got hurt because I was too stupid to notice what was happening.”

“Why would you have expected anything like that to happen?” Draco demanded, his own voice climbing and bing increasingly higher pitched. “We were in the Ministry of Magic!”

“It’s not like they’ve stopped bad things from happening before!” She shot back, and this was familiar, easy. “They’re all terrible at their jobs, honestly.”

Herment was derisive, and funny, and then Draco was laughing and could not stop even though it hurt. After a moment of watching him, Hermione smiled, just a smallest twitch of the lips. “You are alright, aren’t you?” She asked, when it was all over and he had calmed himself down. “I would feel terrible if you weren’t alright.”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t. Everything hurt because they wouldn’t heal him any further, and people kept dropping in even though he was tired and would rather sleep, which made him feel like an awful person, and all the potions he had to drink tasted awful. “Be better if Harry dropped in, though.”

He still hadn’t stopped to say hello. Every time he heard the door opened, he looks up expecting to see him and is disappointed all over again. At this rate, he better being up with a very good excuse as to why he hasn’t been here yet.

“Harry’s…” She hesitated, and he could tell she was deciding which side to go with—forting Draco or keeping Harry’s trust. “He’s getting something done, Draco. Something we all should have taken care of, a long time ago.”

“Something important?”

Hermione was watching him with sad eyes. “He thinks so.”

“More important than me?”

“Oh, Draco. I don’t think there’s anything Harry finds more important than you, lately.” Hermione stood up with another wince and gathered her bag over her shoulder, leaning down to give him a hug before she leaves. “I expect that’s part of the reason he’s doing it.”

All in all, by the time the evening healeres in to give him his late night potion that sends him off into a dreamless sleep, he’s grateful.

When he wakes next, it is dark, but he is certain that there is someone watching him.

“Hello?” He fumbles for his wand on the bedside table and only seeds in knocking it to the floor. “Who’s there?”

“Relax.” The light flares on and Dracoes face to face with the last person he thought he would see sitting vigil at his bedside—Ron Weasley. “It’s only me.”

“That’s supposed to put me at ease, is it?” Draco snaps, grudgingly epting the helping hand pulling him into a sitting position. It’s harder to start moving again after he had been asleep. “My knight in shining armor.”

He’s angrier than he would normally be. He and Ron havee to a sort of truce over the past few weeks, where Draco does not expect anything but civility from Ron and Ron restrains himself from doing anything that may be considered rude or threatening, but still, he cannot help himself. When Draco saw the shadow in the corner of the room, part of him was hoping that it was Harry, even as the other part prepared for an attack.

Ron didn’t take the bait. He didn’t answer at all, actually, just sat back down in the chair without another glance at Draco and kept staring at the door, Ron laid flat across his knees. He looks casual, but Draco had seen Harry sit that way often enough to know that it was a by-product of their auror training, where they could look unbothered but still be ready to send a curse at a moment’s notice.

“What are you doing here, anyways?” Draco shifted himself out from under the street and let his legs hang off the edge of the bed. It hurt, but this was the only way to be able to look at Ron when he insisted on avoiding eye contact with him. “Didn’t think they’d let a visitor in here, no matter how big of a war hero they are.”

Ron squirmed after the use of the word war hero, but other than that, he made no sign that this was anything out of the ordinary. “I’m not visiting. I’m your guard.” Draco wondered, briefly, if everyone else that was here earlier was only part of Harry’s makeshift order, like if Harry can’t be here to protect him himself, he would make sure someone was, but threw the thought away. “They don’t know I’m here.”

“Does anyone?” What he really means to ask is does Harry, and the question must have came through, because something in Ron’s face softened.

“No.” Ron makes hasty eye contact with him and then breaks it to go to the window, poking away the curtains to peer down at the street below. Not like he could see anything. “Well, Hermione does,” He amends, shrugging. “but it’s self-appointed guard duty.”

Draco blinked. “Why?”

At some other time, he would like to think that he would be better at this. That he would be less trusting of a man that claimed to still hold all kinds of childhood grudges over both their heads, that he would have snappier retorts, more biting questions. That he would be able to demand for him to leave or else ask about Hermione, anything other than this passive eptance that anyone who wants to wander in through this room was allowed to be here. But he wouldn’t do any of that, he would just sit here and not wonder how strange it was that Ron would make himself Draco’s self-appointed guard after eighteen years’ worth of solid dislike and not even bother to try to turn him away. Draco was simply too tired for it, and in too much pain, and his nightly potion was still there fogging up the brain.

That doesn’t need to happen, he distracts himself, watching as Ron jiggles the lock on the window and lets the curtains fall back into place. If I was the one to make it, I would be able to take the grogginess out of it entirely. Too bad they won’t allow that here.

“What do you mean why?” Ron throws himself back into the chair and glares at him, stubborn as always. “Someone has to keep those people froming to finish you off.”

“I meant why you.” Draco attempted to stand up, hut couldn’t, just fell back down to the mattress instead. “Why you would even agree. You hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.” There was a desperate plea to Ron’s voice, a underlying wish for Draco to understand. “I thought I did, but I don’t. I know that now.”

“What changed?” Draco did not want to hear this. Not when he was tired and wanting ten more hours of sleep, not when he was covered in bruises, not when he could not even hold his own if this turned into a shouting match.

“I watched you get buried under a pile of rubble and realized that despite how much of a gigantic arse you were in past, I wanted you to live.” Ron looked down at his hands, and Draco imagined that they were still coated in the dust from when the ceiling collapsed and the chandelier toppled. Ginny had been the only one to think that he was strong enough to hear the ount of what had happened, and it was Ginny who told him that even though Harry was the first to fall to his knees beside the pile and start rummaging for any sign of life, it was Ron who had been the one to pull him out of the dust. “And because you saved her.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” Draco wasn’t sure why his first reaction was always to go on the attack with some snide remark that wasn’t even that hurtful. He would make all these jokes and drawl out all these insults and none of them were even funny. “I did it because she’s my friend.”

She’s my friend. The words echo in the room between them and for the first time he might be getting why he and Ron were suddenly on speaking terms—the fact that Hermione cared about both of them and they both cared about her, and Ron was willing to put aside any past feud to make her happy.

“Exactly. You saved her life.” Ron’s voice cracks on the last word and Draco can see his eyes shining in the lamplight. “You saved her even when I couldn’t.”

Draco knows about debt. About a gratitude that you never want to feel, about an ount of rights and wrongs that you can never even out. He didn’t think he would ever have to face that same feelinging from Ron.

“You don’t owe me anything for that.” It was an awkward sentence to force out. “I’d do it again.”

“You don’t understand,” Ron said, raking his hands through his hair, yanking so hard Draco thought it was likely he would rip some out. “I’m supposed to protect her.”

“Ron—” He wants to help him, but does not know how. Not that it mattered. Ron just kept talking.

“No, listen.” He looks like he might start crying, like he’s fully on the verge of toppling into a sea of panic. “We saved her from this troll, right? Me and Harry. But it didn’t really count as us saving her because I was the one who made her cry and hide in the bathroom in the first place, so I got it into my head that I would have to make sure she didn’t get hurt again, to make up for it? And I tried, I have, that’s all I’ve ever wanted, to protect her and my family and Harry, but you can’t do that, there’s never enough of one person to protect everyone they care about, so I thought—somewhere along the line I started thinking that it didn’t matter if I couldn’t protect anyone else, even myself, as long as I managed to protect her. All I’ve ever tried to do my whole life was take care of her, but I can’t even manage to do that.” He’s breathing hard. Draco half thinks he did start crying, the kind where your eyes are burning but there is not enough tears and there is no way to get any air into your lungs. “But you did. You saved her when I couldn’t, and nothing else matters. So just let me do this for you, alright?”

It was iveness. That’s what Draco was being offered in this moment, a promise that even after everything, all the horrible things he had said and the things he had done, Ron had finally gotten past it.

“I still think it’s creepy. You, lurking in the dark.” Draco wanted to go back to sleep, but he couldn’t bring himself to struggle back under the covers. “Juste visit during the day next time, okay?”

Ron didn’t smile like Draco had wanted him to, just clenched his jaw and took up his position again, ready for whatever maye through the door.

By the time Harry shows up, exactly a week after Draco had been buried underneath the better half of the ceiling, Draco had half expected he was not going to show up at all.

Draco’s almost annoyed that he hadn’t waited longer, because now that he got to lay eyes on him, with the fresh cuts and black eye and tousled hair and clothes that he obviously hadn’t bothered to change for days, the speech that he had been about to give died in his throat. He’s spent the better part of the past two days preparing it, but now it’spletely useless, because it is hard to stay angry at someone when you are busy thanking God they were able toe back to you

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