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- "You can't know Hermione. You'll kill me." -

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My mind couldn't contemplate what was happening, but I knew this had to be what dying felt like. My body contorted and shook, and when I opened my eyes, my white shirt was now blood red. The water beside me was being dyed the color of my blood. I shut my eyes and moaned, the pain too much for me to handle.

I heard Granger's screaming, "Help! Help! Anybody?" at the top of her lungs. Desperation was an understatement for the panicked tone of her voice, and in what seemed like seconds, Professor Snape was by my side.

"Vulnera Sanentur," he muttered, "Vulnera Sanentur. Vulnera Sanentur." By the third repetition, the pain had subsided. The cuts had been closed, but I still felt the sting of where they had been. I felt dizzy, lightheaded. I had no idea what had just happened to me, but I knew that it was horrific.

"Granger, leave," he was livid, but that is as much as I can remember. When Professor Snape lifted me off from the bathroom floor, the world started spinning and I drifted into unconsciousness.

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I woke in the hospital wing with bandages across every part of my chest. The only clothes I had left on was my trousers, which felt sticky for some reason. I sat up, completely dumbfounded as why I was there. Where is my shirt? Then the dizziness came back and I flopped back on my pillow.

I had just awoken from a nightmare where Potter had slashed me with the Sword of Gryiffindor, surely that couldn't have been what had happened.

"Oh, thank goodness Mr. Malfoy, you're awake!" the warm and loving voice of Madam Pomfrey told me as she scrambled over to my bed. "You gave me quite a scare last night. Professor Snape had to carry you in, cuts all over your body!" she squealed.

So it hadn't been a dream after all, that is what happened. Well, maybe not to the extremes I had imagined it. I could remember Potter shouting a curse at me before the pain had started, what was it again?

"Not to worry dear," she said as she saw the confused expression on my face, "I put dittany on every last one, so there should be minimal scarring. But I have to say, I don't know what happened to your forearm there, Professor Snape wouldn't let me touch it."

My eyes darted, panicked, to where my dark mark was, and I was relieved to see that it was so bandaged that you wouldn't have a single inkling that it was there at all. The professor was clever, he had wrapped it up before anyone could see it.

"Thanks, ma'am."

"No problem dear," she smiled and headed off, then she came back, remembering something, "I should tell your friend, Miss Granger, that you are awake. She came by last night to see you, but you were fast asleep so I had to send her to her dormitory."

My heart stopped, Hermione had come by to see... me? My heart smiled, "Yes, that would be nice."

Not even twenty minutes later, Hermione came bursting through the door, a worried expression on her face. When she saw me smiling at her, my head propped up on a pillow, her shoulders relaxed and her face turned a shade of pink that I hadn't seen on her face for months.

"Hi," she said as she sat down in the chair beside my bed.

"Hey," I responded. For that moment, all horrors between us were forgotten. It didn't last long enough though.

Her eyes said, I'm glad you're alright, but she whispered, "I can't believe you have done all those terrible things!"

I sat up straighter in my bed, causing my sheet to fall to my waist, exposing my bandaged chest to her. If the bandages weren't covering me so intently that they could have been mistaken for a shirt themselves, I would have felt uncomfortable at the informality. Her eyes glanced at the extent of my wounds, and lingered at the bandage that covered the dark mark on my forearm, but, she eventually shook her head and forced herself to stop growing attached. As she should, I thought.

Instead of facing her wrath, I hung my head in shame, letting her dig her nails into me.

"You cursed Katie. You poisoned... R-Ron," she stumbled at saying what I had done to her other love. "Why?"

"They weren't my target," is all I said. I shouldn't even be telling her anything. I had promised myself I would keep her out of this, but she had to know that hurting her friends was never my intention.

She was taken aback, this wasn't the explanation she expected. I saw the information being processed in her mind before she said, "Professor Dumbledore."

That is when I reacted. I grabbed her shoulder, wincing at the pain it caused, "You can't tell anyone Hermione, please?"

"I promised I'd keep your secret as long as you didn't cross that line," her heart was breaking, "You have! You've hurt people Draco!" Seeing her eyes well with tears made mine do the same.

"I don't want to," I muttered.

"Then why do it?"

"Hermione, if I don't, he'll kill me."

The shock didn't register on her face until seconds after I had whispered it. Her mouth hung open, the horror of my situation registering. "Who will kill you Draco?" she asked, but we both knew the answer.

"The Dark Lord."

She wrapped her arms around me, holding me with a bittersweet affection. She cared for me, but, in a different way, she cared for Professor Dumbledore as well. There was a conflict in her that I recognized immediately. It was my own. The tearing of your heart where you have to decide between one person you care about or another. For me, it was my family or Granger, and for her, it was her loyalty. Depending on who she told and who she didn't would decide who would be lying in the ground in four months time.

"Please Hermione," I begged.

"I can't Draco, you know I can't."

"Yes, I know." I reached for my wand on the table next to me, and I brokenheartedly pointed it at her. With lightning fast reflexes, she pulled her own on me.

"Don't you hurt me Malfoy," she warned.

"I could never hurt you Hermione. I only want to make you forget," I lamented, "Obliviate."

"Protego," she breathed instantaneously, shooting my memory charm against the wall of the hospital wing. She looked so betrayed, more so than when she found out that I was a Death Eater. She looked like she had just been inflicted with the curse Potter had cast on me in our bathroom duel the night before. "Draco?"

"You can't know Hermione. You'll kill me."

Sadly she nodded, understanding. She breathed to calm herself, knowing the weight of the decision that she had to make, "I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you."

She stayed for another quarter hour, tracing the bandages that I had on my chest as if she was trying to enjoy me while she could. When her fingers ran down to my dark mark however, I stiffened, expecting her to lecture me some more, but she only encircled the mark with her finger, drawing a marker as if to remind herself who I was.

I'm not the boy she should give up everything for. I'm not the boy deservant of her love or her protection. She knew the weight of her decision to hide my secret and she chose the darkness inside of her. As dark as her choice was, it still made her strong. This is the most significant difference between the two of us. More than she was a confident young woman, and I a scared little boy. More than she was a Gryffindor, and I a Slytherin. She was strong, and I was not.