She didn't touch it. With a flick of her wand she levitated the stone so that it hovered in the air. She could feel the magic emanating from it. It made the air hum. She reached over and pulled Draco back into her arms, trying not to put any pressure on the runes.
Then she floated the stone over and lowered it to the left side of his chest, against his bare skin.
It started glowing, brighter and brighter, until she had to squint. Then she watched as the light slowly sank into his skin and faded away.
Hermione stared, wondering if anything else would happen; if there would be any immediately noticeable effects. There wasn't an abundance of information about how to process worked.
She performed a diagnostic and inspected it, Draco was sleep deprived and living on a high dose of top quality pain relief; he had muscle damage from the cruciatus, and the runes were still an unintelligible, mangled concentration of wounds and poison and ritual curse. The diagnostic charm did not indicate anything else. Which was normal — she thought — that was how it was supposed to work.
After a minute, when nothing else occurred, she carefully leaned Draco forward in the chair again.
She reapplied the salve she'd made, pressing it in as lightly as she could before replacing the containment enchantment and all the protective spells.
Then she slipped the remnants of the amulet into her pocket and rennervated Draco.
He lifted his head sharply and stood. Hermione gently pulled his shirt back up over his shoulders. He stared down at her as she buttoned his shirt and then straightened the fabric before staring up at him. He had a tired expression on his face as he stared down at her.
She impulsively reached up and touched him on the cheek. She felt his jaw twitch faintly under her hand as she studied his expression. She thought his skin felt a little less cold.
His eyes glittered, and the corner of his mouth twitched, but he didn't pull her hand away.
“I have to go,” she said, “I'll see you tomorrow night.”
Draco didn't say anything as she left the shack and apparated away.
The next night, there was no poison or dark magic bleeding out from the runes. Hermione said nothing as she quietly removed the salve, cleansed the incisions, replaced the salve, and then carefully recast all the spells.
Draco was more silent each night. He'd tense and gasp slightly in pain as Hermione cleaned the wounds, but he rarely said anything unless Hermione asked him a question.
“Is it going to be suspicious — that someone is healing you?” she abruptly asked after several days.
Draco froze for a moment and then laughed faintly. “Did that just occur to you now?”
Hermione flushed. “It's not usually a concern.”
He shook his head. “There are no orders restricting me from getting them treated. If you somehow manage it, it will hardly be the first time I've succeeded at something against improbable odds.” His lip curled faintly. “So by all means, continue poking at them with your wand.”
Hermione continued without another word.
She discovered, to her faint offense, how rarely anyone paid attention to her comings and goings. She didn't even need to offer any excuses for leaving Grimmauld Place every night.
Harry, Ron and Ginny had gone to investigate a lead on horcruxes. Hermione had realised that several artifacts of the Hogwarts founders had gone missing during Voldemort's lifetime and so the Order had assigned Harry to try hunting them. Hermione suspected that Kingsley and Moody had very little hope that Harry would find anything; she thought it was likely just a way to keep Harry from insisting upon fighting in every single skirmish.
With the intelligence Draco provided, Moody and Kingsley had begun approving more risky and ambitious attacks. The decisions were partly because of the opportunities that Draco had afforded the Order, but primarily because the situation was dire enough that Order had to either begin taking risks with long odds or conceding that they couldn't win the war.
Despite the success of the Order's attack, it had also set them back severely.
They had hundred of new fighters to feed and house, and at the same time their resources in Europe were steadily drying up as Voldemort's hold grew stronger. The French Resistance had all but vanished. They had received word that Hagrid and Olympe Maxime had been captured and executed shortly after the prison attack. All of Eastern Europe was firmly under Death Eater control, while the Northern European countries were so occupied with keeping Voldemort's encroaching forces at bay that they had little support they could offer.
The Order was running out of money. Running out of resources. Trying to feed an army with personal vaults and secret donations. It was difficult for Resistance fighters to hold jobs in the muggle world.
Hermione had nearly drained her own bank account personally paying for potion supplies as the Order was forced to repeatedly slash her budget even while the need for the healing potions increased sharply.