Painful Healing

Pairing: Hermione/Draco

Rating: PG-13

Summary: In times of war innocence is a trade-off loss and PAIN are inevitable. War wasn't meant for seventeen year olds. One casualty of war is picking up the pieces of her shattered world and the only missing piece, even after she is left all alone in a world she doesn't wholly understand, is the one she never wanted. Will the past keep her from being complete? HDr.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything you find familiar.

A/N: I Suck at this stuff, I know. But PLEASE REVIEW THIS… even one review can really motivate an author to keep writing.

Warning: THIS IS NOT BETA'D… If you'd be willing to help me, and yes, I AM asking for help, it would be appreciated.

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It's tomorrow! It's tomorrow! It's tomorrow!

Not the incessant mumbling of a hyper five year old... but the sound of the bitter truth reverberating through my mind and soul... tomorrow is the day it begins- The Final WAR...

INNOCENCE- my innocence lost in time, I'm no longer innocent... fallen creature of the night that is sure to burn in the perpetual fires of hell... because that's what happens tomorrow... Hell Freezes Over... The earth, the desolate body of unending suffering becomes the walking ground of the roguish, unwelcome beings that threaten our very existence...

FAITH- my faith faded into the truth, or a horribly garbled version of it... the fire is all consuming, it licks, kisses, bites... burning my faith and innocence with its roaming, incinerating hands... the shocking reality of it etched in my mind over and over and yet it's still to hit...

The final push against the threshold of decency... pushes me higher and higher and all the while making me feel lowly, uncouth and unclean... I have nothing holding me to reality as fade into and out of insanity- my conscience flickering along with my hope...

My distant ray of hope fades as it begins... dark clouds rolling in the distance making ungodly sounds that painfully make me realize that I have nowhere to go, nowhere safe and protected like my life has always been...

I have to fight this War... this war that will finally cut the umbilical cord between a mother and child... I have far too much at stake... and far too little to lose... I will be a ruthless murderer for the sake of both... and yet... inevitably I must lose... no matter what... no matter how... I have nowhere to go but down...

and then

IT HITS!!

12.01 a.m. Friday October, 13

The thunderous footfalls of an army of thousands of Death eaters storming towards the gates of my school… my home… my best-friends armed with nothing but their bravest hearts and wands. Harry's face was so hard-set it was heart-breaking. Ron's eyes ablaze with a raging fire almost as red as his hair. Ginny standing behind Harry one hand on his shoulder with a look that said she wasn't going to leave his side till death-do-them-apart. She struck me the hardest- a broken girl with her red hair floating in the breeze portrayed the complexity of the innocence that was taken from her. She looked forward and never once wavered from her decision. She was the youngest of the lot that day on the astronomy towers. Even though Harry was no longer Ginny's beau she refused to back-down from his side. A lioness if there ever was one. I looked around me at the various soldiers around me and their subtle show of companionship and solitude and suddenly felt very alone.

In times of war innocence is a trade-off… we all saw things that no seventeen year old should ever have been subjected to. Harry saw the worst of it all.

Everything seemed a haze at that moment. I couldn't tell reality from fantasy. It all seemed so real and yet so far away... I was lying on my back after a rather nasty spell sent my way once again by Dolohov. I was about to get up when a blast of white light resonated through everything, the intensity made me close my eyes involuntarily. I tried to see through it all, and then darkness surrounded me.

I was fading in and out of consciousness... I remember seeing Harry's face looming over mine, he was saying something but as I tried to make out his words I began fading away from the conscious world... I remember intense grey eyes keeping vigil over me countless times... I remember a sea of red hair and had a consciousness of wetness over my left arm...

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When I woke up I was in a bed at what looked like the school infirmary. A loud beeping sound was emitted by one of the contraptions around me. Madame Pomfrey came rushing towards me through the drapes with the ghost of a smile. Her dark auburn eyes were droopy and she had dark circles that accented the wrinkles around them.

'I thought you weren't going to make it, dear.' She said smiling at me in a way that reminded me of my mother. It was gentle but stern in a way I didn't quite understand.

'How are they?' was the only thing I managed to croak out before groaning in pain.

'Now, now dear, rest yourself, don't strain. You've been out of it for 4 months. If it weren't for him you wouldn't have made it at all' She coddled, carefully avoiding around my question with an uncertainty that made my heart clam up and beat at the pace of a mad jackal.

'No! Tell me!' I said gripping her hand with all the strength I could muster. I gave her a determined look and she sighed.

'They're all fine. Breathing and alive.' She said with a sadness that haunted her eyes. I wouldn't miss it anywhere. She wasn't telling me everything.

'Give me the truth, Poppy. I don't need to be fed a sweet medicine, I can take the bitterness better than anyone' I bit out between groans of unbearable pain as she wrung her hands unsurely.

'Ginny is fine, she only took a muscle-deadening curse, she'll be fine physically…'

'and mentally?' I groaned out.

'Considering that I don't think Harry will make it, I'm not sure she'll want to continue living.' Madame Pomfrey was now using her professional tone, knowing that I was not someone who could be 'sweetened'.

'What about Ron?' I asked, choking on a tear as I saw Madame Pomfrey's haunted expression.

I repeated myself rather hysterically 'What about Ron?'

'Hermione. Ronald Weasley is a martyr.' And that's all it took for me to break.