Author's Note: (1) JKR's work is not mine. I don't intend to make $ with it. (2) There will be bad language. (3) I can't emphasize enough, this is for fun.
\\\\\\\\\
He tore through the forest, crushing the twigs and dry leaves beneath his boots. He ran to the beat of the pounding blood in his ears. The tattoo was pierced by faint cries in the background. He poured his focus into scanning the landscape ahead of him, but he could hardly see in the inky darkness as blood steadily dripped over his eye and down his face.
"I see him!"
Gasping in pain, he twisted around to shoot a curse. Red light shot out haphazardly from his wand, arcing into the darkness. The shouts became louder. He dove to the side as a beam of light shot over his shoulder and into a tree, leaving a large smoldering crater.
He exchanged fire with his assailants, snarling one curse after another, hoping it would fend them off long enough so he could gather his wits and disapparate. He let out a growl of pain as spikes of shattered wood sprayed his collarbone. Suddenly it was hard to breathe, and the effort of taking another breath was enormous. He rolled over and took cover behind a large tree. The denial of his dire straits was now coming loose. There was no one on his side, only forces amassing against him. He sat with his back against the hard wood, surrounded by the acrid smell of burning bark.
His mind was becoming cloudy. But he picked up the novel chorus of screams, rising from the east. The sounds of distant chaos and destruction echoed.
"Shit," one of his attackers cursed.
"There must have been a muggle encampment here, we'll have to go back"
"But he's right here!" the other argued.
"The Death Eater isn't as important as innocents!-"
Severus hoped fervently that the Aurors would leave quickly, but the over-zealous one seemed determined to argue. He had imagined his death would come about in many gruesome and ignoble ways, but he couldn't die like this. Like a beaten cur on the street. He absolutely refused. Yet despite his adamant mental rages, he couldn't hardly muster the physical strength and coordination needed to escape.
Amid the flashes of light, he suddenly saw a figure standing in front of him. It was impossible to make out of the features, but it kept appearing closer and closer with each eminence. Severus felt an overwhelming fear creep up from his stomach. He was defenseless, dying, and this apparition was about the deal the final blow. The ghost drew closer to him. The eyes were large and luminous, reflecting back the Morsmordre that now covered the sky. Was this his fucking personal demon, in the shape of a woe-begotten woman, come to drag him down into the depths of hell?
He let out a strangled guttural cry as cold hands wrapped themselves his neck, and he lashed out, punching the very corporeal ghost.
The ghost screamed, and the Aurors snapped back to attention, resuming their hunt.
"P-Please," came a feminine voice, "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm trying to help"
It didn't matter much to him anymore. He was taking shallow childlike breaths, and each was making it paradoxically harder for him to take the next one. His head was swimming, and he raised his arm in a feeble attempt to beat off the ghost. The ghost's hands were all over his neck, probing.
"Come on, Death Eater! You won't get out of this one alive!" taunted the Auror.
"-the hell," the ghost muttered, and yanked a wooden barb out of his chest.
"Unngh," moaned Severus.
And then the ghost stabbed him with it, shoving something else into the wound. The treacherous wench- he made to grab the slender neck and throttle it before it could finish him. There was pain, but if he wasn't mistaken, it was starting to get easier to breath.
"I've got you," came a quiet murmur of satisfaction, and Severus glimpsed an eerily light image of the Auror's face, hovering over him.
He had no choice. With the last ounce of will, he thought of towers and dungeons, and the Auror was left stomping his feet and fuming in rage as there was a tiny blip.
His consciousness exited the vortex, and returned to screaming. But this was ear-splitting, not some far off sound. A figure was lying, curled in on itself in front of him. It writhed and yelled in pain. He miraculously didn't feel any splinched bits of himself, and noticed blood pooling underneath the other person. He reached for them, his fingers just grazing their side. They turned. Her face was ashen, framed in a messy array of dark hair and blood. She clutched her arm, which ended in a red spurting stump.
"Constringo," he managed to cough out.
Black straps appeared in the air and provided a tight touniquet for limb. The woman was trying to rein in her cries and cradled the arm as she looked to her partner. Severus had long since passed out and lay sprawled in the grass. The woman, now brought a bit closer to reality, took a brief look at the landscape. It was all tranquil darkness and rolling hills. Lights in the distance from, could she really believe it? A castle.
She glanced at her handiwork in Severus' chest- a hollow pen was lodged beneath his ribs. It wouldn't hold for long though, and she grabbed his arm with her good hand, and attempted to haul him over to the castle. A full grown man was far too heavy for her to lug anywhere, and she collapsed into the cold grass. The adrenaline, which had briefly kept the searing pain of her wound at bay was leaving her now, and she fell into darkness.
\\\\\\\\\
Erin woke slowly. Everything was too bright. She saw white images and white, and winced, raising her arm to cover her face. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes and the cobwebs in her head. The sight that materialized before her was comforting in its familiarity. A hospital bed with clean white sheets. A white curtain drawn around the bed. A small rolling cabinet with what she could only assume were medical supplies. There was something she felt was missing from the sight, but she couldn't quite place it. She went to rub her arms from the psychic chill she had gotten, and then looked down at her limbs. Her left hand was gone. In its place was a clean white cloth bandage. She suddenly felt ill.
So it wasn't a nightmare. Her hand was gone. She felt her heart beat convert to a pound, and she became shaky as she got up quickly. She used her good hand to swipe the curtain away and walked on the stone floor barefoot to the next bed. The man was lying in it, asleep. It really wasn't a nightmare. It was bloody real.
She stood transfixed at the spot. He was horribly disfigured, with a swollen and split lip and black and blue bruises all over his jaw line. She had never in her career seen someone so badly beaten. It was then she realized what was missing from the scene. There were no machines. No heart monitor, no respirator. Just a man in a bed. She squatted and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Wake up," she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Wake up!" she hissed.
He grimaced and opened his eyes just so they were black slits.
"Poppy," he half-groaned and half-shouted, his voice deep and gravelly.
Erin didn't manage to hightail it out of there before she was confronted with the large frame of another woman.
"Oh my, you're awake," this woman said mildly.
"I-," Erin said
"You need to rest. It was quite an attack you and Severus survived," the matronly woman, who looked to be in some modified nurses' uniform, walked her to her bed and forced her back into it.
"Is he going to live?" was somehow Erin's first question.
The stranger wore a tight smile.
"He'll pull through"
"My hand," she said next. She couldn't help from asking about it, despite knowing she was in a strange place.
The woman gave her a look of full of sympathy, "I'm sorry dear, but we couldn't recover it. ...it won't be possible to go back to the site you lost it until it's cleared by the Aurors, and by then...well, it'll be too late to re-attach"
Erin didn't know what to say.
"Now rest," she said sternly, and suddenly Erin felt the irresistible urge to sleep, and she did.
Her last thought was whether she'd could throw a stitch one-handedly.
Constringo- to bind