It was a long day.
Not only was it long and tiring, but it was eventful as well. Hermione Granger had woken up at 4 am that very morning from a nightmare about a faceless armed ninja chasing after her around a shopping mall. She was running near the railings of the fifth floor and got too close to those fragile railings -for in dreams the odds are never in your favour- and fell over, along with the giant piece of glass underneath her, and everything was in slow motion for awhile, until she flinched in bed and escaped that terrible nightmare, cold sweat dripping down from her forehead.
Since then Hermione had been unable to go back to sleep, so instead, she tried to settled with watching some old dramas that were usually on at those late hours of the night. Horribly old and boring, but it managed to entertain her for about 20 minutes before she gave up and reflected on the nightmare she had. She mentally berated herself for not remembering she had a wand and could easily use it to stupefy that stupid ninja, before thinking of other possibilities of an alternate ending than to that never-ending fall which will ultimately lead to a very gruesome landing- with her guts splattering everywhere, no doubt.
She winced a little at the mental image her traitorous brain conjured up and distracted herself with checking the time. It was only 4.36 am. Well, what else to do than take an incredibly long bath which might or might not have lasted for more than an hour before she begun to freshen up and prepare for the day. After which, Hermione set about to prepare her own breakfast- something she had not done in awhile as she was always too busy with her work at St. Mungos as a healer in the Magical Accidents Department, in addition to the erratic working schedule. She was what most of her friends would call a 'workaholic' which she completely disagrees with. Striving for efficiency and results does not make one a work-maniac. It's the result of working too much which leaves one too little time for a social life that makes someone a wor- Oh. Okay, so maybe she's a little more devoted to her career than most people. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Her devotion was not the only reason that's causing this lack of social activity between her and her close friends. They had their own jobs too, (well, except for Luna, she kept changing her ambitions and never really had one job for more than 2 months.) and on days when she was free, they would be busy and vice versa, though she still goes for the weekly Friday dinner at the Burrow. It's hard to resist the lure of Mrs. Weasley's fine culinary skills.
So anyway, she decided to indulge herself that morning with a delicious omelette, 2 pieces of toast and a cup of tea. There's nothing like caffeine to start your day right. As she sat down and dug into her omelette, the Daily Prophet arrived. Hermione paid the owl two Knuts and let it nibble on a bit of toast before it hooted, satisfied, and flew off. She quickly finished the omelette before moving on to the toasts, when she opened up the newspaper and read through the headlines.
"International Quidditch Cup Practice Match Tickets SOLD OUT!"
Yes, it was the Quidditch Cup season again and Hermione still does not have an ounce of interest in that barbaric sport, even though Ron and Harry were both playing in Puddlemere United. Some things just never changed. She couldn't believe people would actually pay for tickets to the practice matches. The results weren't even going to matter, so why watch?
She started reading the article as she drank her coffee when suddenly a loud, booming voice which belonged to her boss Healer Thomas Maxwell sounded from outside her window, "Healer Granger! You are needed at the hospital! There's been a huge accident and tons of people- Magic and Muggle- are injured and we desperately need back up. Please come in ASAP -Maxwell"
Upon hearing this Hermione downed the rest of her coffee and sent all her dishes to the sink quickly and ran upstairs to her bedroom to change into her work robes and immediately apparated to the reception area of St. Mungos. There were loads of people there. "Must be families," thought Hermione wryly.
Hermione squeezed up to the counter and greeted the receptionist, "Hey Helen, I was called in by Thomas for this thin-"
"Yeah, he's in ER 3 right now and wants you to report to him first so he can have a short briefing." Helen informed her while telling families of victims to wait for a moment.
"Kay thanks." Hermione smiled and started walking towards the direction Helen pointed her to. Helen was a jolly old lady in her 60's, kind, motherly. She and Hermione were rather close.
"No problem, you'd better make haste, there's really a lot of people. Be careful!" warned Helen. Hermione waved backwards and picked up her pace.
She walked into Emergency Room 3 (ER 3) to find a battlefield. It was the epitome of chaos and pandemonium. Healer Maxwell spotted her and she could see his obvious relief at having one of the best healers around to help cope with this catastrophe.
"Healer Granger! There's been an accident at a Quidditch practice match and the bludgers and quaffles started going haywire and blasting off everywhere, hitting the players, the audience, everything. There were also people suspected to be Voldemort sympathisers firing off spells randomly at people, and many were heavily injured, especially the players." Healer Maxwell spoke in a rather calm and authoritive voice, compared to the noise emitting from everyone in the room right now. "We need you to tend to those more heavily injured ones. They're all in ER 1, quickly go there now. "Hermione nodded at him and took off to the door furthest from the reception area.
She entered and all she could see was a blur with the flurry of activity. Nurses summoning potions at Godspeed and Healers shouting orders and checking for injuries and stuff. She fervently prayed to the gods that Harry and Ron would be fine and unharmed. One of the nurses saw her standing at the door and dragged her to the nearest unconscious patient and drew the curtains, where Hermione snapped into Healer mode and started diagnosing the patient for all his injuries with her wand.
She started scanning from his toes, then slowly the list of injuries popped out in front of her and as she read through the growing list, her eyes stretched bigger and bigger as she took in every injury he sustained. The poor guy was having it bad. She scanned up the neck, and then she froze when she saw the face of the person.
It was the one and only Draco Malfoy.
He was looking dreadfully pale even for his standards and he was bleeding profusely on the sheets, blood seeping through his clothes from his cuts everywhere. Hermione may not like him very much, but even she wouldn't wish his current situation on her worst enemy. She spelled his clothes off and grimaced at the amount of bruises and cuts on his whole body. If it looked this bad at skin level, imagine his innards, goodness. She read through the list and tried to match the injury. His right leg was twisted in an odd direction and a few of his rib bones had cracked. He also had a broken arm. From those injuries, she assumed that he fell from his broom, and it wasn't from just 10 feet above the ground or something, it was more like 40-45 feet of impact. It was a miracle he even survived. And then she saw it: A small circular open wound on his shoulder that suspiciously looks exactly like... A bullet wound?
What the hell really happened at this purely innocent Quidditch match?
Hermione barked out the names of the necessary potions to a nearby nurse, and the nurse sprang into action immediately. Within seconds, the tray of potions was hovering right beside Hermione as she administered them one by one and used spells to clean the wounds and stitch the open cuts back together. After cleaning up the minor injuries, she set to mending his bones. As she used the spell, she could just hear the sound of Malfoy's bones shifting and grinding a little. It was kind of nauseating. No amount of experience could get Hermione used to the sounds of healing bones. If not for the sleeping draught she fed him, Malfoy would've winced in pain, even after he passed out. It was that bad.
When she was done healing him, Hermione quickly called the nurse to send him to a ward so that he could rest. She couldn't help but not feel bad at the state Malfoy was in. Then she froze with realisation. In all her years of being a healer, apart from when she just started, she had always managed to not worry too much for a patient. After all, it was a bad thing to let your emotions control you, especially when you're supposed to heal someone. I mean, what if their injuries looked so painful and horrible that you started crying and trembling and cut the wrong place or something? That would be disastrous! Maybe it was that morning's nightmare or maybe it was seeing someone she shared classes with for close to 7 years get hurt to that extend, even if he was a slimy foul git and a great big prat towards her and her friends, which left her in a temporarily weaker emotional state. This was bad. If Ron and Harry were injured she had to get a grip and not lose herself like with Malfoy. Hermione took a deep breath to keep her emotions in check and went to heal the other patients.
"Great work, Hermione," Healer Maxwell smiled tiredly at her, a little out of breath, as if they just conquered a bunch of raging giants that were out to kill them all- victorious but exhausted. It seemed like it to her as well. It took all of them -every healer they had- 6 hours to cure all the patients from the accident. Even so not all of them were out of the woods yet, as some of their injuries were really bad and some healers were assigned to each such patient.
"I'm just glad to be able to do my job. And that my friends weren't injured, I was really worried about that the whole time." Hermione sighed in exhaustion, shaking her head.
"Yes well, it's time to do more of your job that you are glad to do, 'cause we really need to go check on our patients," Healer Maxwell then gathered everyone in the healer's lounge where they were all resting and started assigning patients to healers.
"... And uh... Megan to Mr. Bagshot. Is that okay with you? Good. Next one... oh." The remaining healers in the lounge stared at healer Maxwell in silence.
One of the healers, Alicia, broke the silence, "'...Oh' what, Thomas? "She raised her eyebrows in concern.
"Um... Mr. Malfoy. Who wants to take Mr. Malfoy?" Why he had to ask? Lemme break it to you: Even though all guilty death eaters had either been sent for the kiss or put into Azkaban, majority of the public still held contempt to those who managed to avoid Azkaban and were let off with lighter sentences, the Malfoys being one of those lucky ex-Voldemort-supporters-who-saw-the-light-and-switched-sides-before-it-was-too-late.
So at the mention of Malfoy's name, many of the healers grimaced and kept silent. Those who didn't just kept a passive face and waited for orders. They wouldn't ask for the job, but that doesn't mean they would reject it too. Hermione looked around at everyone, sometimes catching their eye and seeing the slight disgust at Malfoy, and frowned. What's it to them? It's been what, four years since the fall of Voldemort, and yeah, so some people died, but being prejudiced towards a group of people was what caused this war in the first place. If people don't start letting go of their hatred for the Death eaters, Hermione was half convinced that another Great Battle would start again. Hermione shuddered in that thought.
"Hermione, you alright? You're shivering, "Maxwell asked concern, apparently mistaking Hermione's thoughts for illness.
Hermione shook her head gently, "No, no I'm okay. Um... I'll take Malfoy's case... Hum since I healed him just now."
At her words, Maxwell's face softened with relief. "Okay then, here you go, and the rest of you, well you can go back to your normal routines!" The other healers, slightly shocked by Hermione's actions, slowly yawned their goodbyes and left the lounge, one by one back to their lovely, warm beds back at home. Hermione shook her head slightly, some things really never changed.