She was in a rush.

Hermione ran down one of the hallways in St. Mungo and head-on smashed into a very real, very hard body as she sprinted around a corner. They both tumbled down to the floor and Hermione's poor excuse of an up-do opened and her curls came down in a wild mess. "What in Salazar's name," a male voice snarled and after hurriedly trying to get her curls out of her sight, Hermione saw a vaguely familiar face under her, sneering up at her.

Theodore Nott.

She was somehow sprawled almost completely over him while her healer alarm on her wrist was spouting off heatless colored sparks and showing her which patient was an emergency case right now and-

Right. Emergency case.

"Sorry, Nott," the witch muttered half-heartedly, pushed herself off the wizard and started to run again. Fortunately, the patient was a few doors behind her embarassing encounter and she quickly entered the patient's room. It was an especially busy night-shift in mid-august. It was half past three in the morning and that meant only five and a half hours to go until she could apparate home and fall into a coma-like sleep, finally able to avoid the dry air of the magical hospital.

"Listen, Granger," headhealer Winston instructed, "He has a major bleeding in his right lung and the wound on his leg is badly infected. He won't make it if we don't cure everything so hurry up." The muggle-born witch got to work and started to clean the wound on the old man's leg. She didn't know who the patient was but during the night shifts, she mostly tended to patients in the emergency ward so she didn't think twice about it.

For an amount of two seconds though, Hermione stopped working. The dark mark stared up at her from between half-healed scars and self-inflicted cuts on the bare forearm. The old man was thin and half-dead and she didn't recognize him immediately but she didn't care as she stopped working. "Who is this, Winston?" Hermione asked and the middle-aged man turned to look at her. They were the only staff in the emergency ward on this particular shift. Beads of sweat were collecting on his upper lip. "Nott senior," he lowly answered while grimacing, probably in fear that his only colleague for the night would quit her work and leave him alone.

The other witch started to breathe again and nodded. "Ok." She started to work again. Not because she wanted to or because she was being 'the better person'—she had given an oath to help and heal every person who was in need and she would follow that oath.

After a few hours, Nott senior was stable again and was suffering slight side-effects of some of the potions they had given him. Maybe, seeing that he was coming the long way from Azkaban, he suffered from the absence of the dementors. Hermione stared down at the man who was part of the people who had made most of her school life hellish and she barely kept herself from taking away the pain-relief potion.

Winston had already moved to Nott senior's bed neighbor; a boy who had been keen on fighting with a gnome and was suffering from multiple cuts and a finger which seemed to be too loosely connected to the rest of his hand. People forgot that gnomes were still dangerous sometimes and not simple decorations for their garden.

As the muggle-born witch snuck out of the relatively calm patient's room 423b, she almost collided with a person again. Unfortunately, it again was Nott and her mouth dropped open as she realized why he had been ghosting around the hallways of St. Mungo's. "You helped him," Nott stated and was hovering over her. She wasn't that short but he still had two—maybe two and a half—heads on her. He was rather lanky but not in a Ron-ish way. He was tall and slim but his green eyes had something strong in them. His question agitated her nonetheless.

"Of course I did," she replied and before she could half-shout angrily at him, she used her 'healer' voice. A calm, friendly tone which was so polite that most relatives of patients couldn't muster up the courage to keep being angry at her in their helplessness and despair. "Mr. Nott Senior has arrived with a partly collapsed lung and in an overall bad condition. He is stable for now but we will run further tests on him tomorrow to know more about the illness from which he is suffering." Nott looked stunned as he reached up and combed through his thick, black hair with his fingers. He was rather pale but she thought that most relatives were when she explained the condition of her patients. His features were unusually sharp and full of edges. Harsh.

"Okay," he said and wanted to brush past her. She caught his arm and he jumped back as if her touch was poisonous. She saw how discreetly he wiped the sleeve of his sweater over the place she had touched and gulped down her emotions once again.

"I'll have to ask you to retire for this evening. Your father is sleeping and he is weak. Influences from outside could worsen his state." Hermione's tone had turned rather cool and clipped but she was proud that she was still holding the healer tone up. "Okay," Nott said again but the stiff line that his lips made showed her that he wanted to say something else.

Hermione used the tip of her wand to ward the door so that no one except the staff could enter the room and pointed to a small table to their right. "You may sit down for a bit to calm down or in the waiting room downstairs but please refrain from trying to enter the room or I must ban you from the ward." The anger boiled in her stomach as she saw the way he looked down on her and then he walked to the small table and pulled out one of the chairs.

She started to walk away but turned half-around after a few steps. "Oh and Nott?" The pureblooded young man looked at her. "Here's disinfectant potion. I don't want you to catch cooties." She levitated a few vials over to him and left him there.

She didn't see him staring after her, the 'Okay' dying on his lips.

Welcome to this little hobbyesque project. Theomione is a new ship for me but I'm excited to be exploring it within this ficlet. The atmosphere will be from slightly dark to light but it won't be easy for the two. Expect short chapters in unregular spans.

xoxo