Hey guys(: So, I got this idea from the 100 Prompt Challenge. I'm going to write a chapter for every prompt. It'll be an adventure, but I'm definitely ready to try it! The story is Hermione/Draco/Ginny. Which means he's two timing and they're unaware. It's going to take place after the war. I'll explain how that works in the Prologue. Ready? Okay! :D
Prologue - Haunted
The two coffins sat side by side, still and omonious. The small crowd around them was silent and mourning, preparing for the burial of two of the greatest war heroes ever to be known.
Hermione Granger, the best friend of the fallen men, stood beside Ginny Weasley, the wife of the late Harry Potter. Tears streaked the small girl's faces, blotted away every so often by a tissue or two. Hermione was remaining as calm as possible, all things considered, because Ginny was taking the deaths harder than she was. Not only was it her husband, but also her brother. She was the most affected by the loss, though Hermione was not lost to the fact that her boyfriend and her best friend were dead.
The ghost of the men's memory would haunt the girls forever, but Hermione prayed for solice and peace on the horizon to come.
Chapter One - Clock
Five Years Later
The clock behind Hermione chimed with the hour and she pushed away from her desk, stretching her arms above her head and yawning quietly. It was two in the morning, much later than necessary for her to be at work. She had so much paperwork, however, that it was impossible to leave at a decent hour. However, since it was so late, she was going to allow herself to have a little break. She definitely felt she deserved it.
Getting up, she saw the sliding glass doors open at the front of the hospital. She had been working as a Healer for six years and always took the nightshift at St. Mungo's. She was good with crisis situations, she was told, and that made her the perfect choice for working night-trama-shifts.
There was a lot of blood all over whoever it was that was being carried through the doorway before her. She rushed around her desk, conjuring a stretcher. The person holding the body was familiar to her; Draco Malfoy. She looked down at the woman on the stretcher. It was his wife, Astoria.
"Help her. Please." he pleaded, his face streaked with her blood. He didn't seem to realize who he was talking to as he pleaded with her. Hermione just nodded her head, calling for the other on-call doctors via a button on her desk. Most of them stayed in the conference room on the upper floors during the night. It was the closest to the vending machines that had just been installed the week before.
"Stay out here." she instructed a very battered and crying Malfoy. "A Healer will be out here to check on your injures." she told him before taking his wife into her own room. She was bleeding out of several slices to her waist. Hermione began working quickly, following her training precisely. The poor woman had already lost so much blood, it almost seemed impossible.
"What have we go?" Healer Tobin asked, coming in behind Hermione and looking at Astoria critically. Hermione gave him a run down on her injuries, told him everything she had already tried that wasn't working right and he began to assist her. It wasn't looking good for the blonde woman though, Hermione realized ruefully.
"Call it." Healer Tobin said an hour later, a scowl of frustration on his face. It was a look that spoke volumes of defeat and self-loathing.
Tobin wasn't used to losing patients, but whatever happened to Astoria was too much for them to work with. They could heal body, but there was something deeper to the curse that had made it impossible to fix every problem. When one disappeared, another arose. Hermione was flustered, because she couldn't figure out what kind of curse it was. She recalled Harry's Potions book from her sixth year. Severus Snape had made his own curses. This must have been much the same. Someone created a curse and it was far more lethal than any she had seen before. Not only did it kill, it maimed and scorched whoever was on the recieving end. It was gruesome.
Hermione checked the clock on the wall and whispered, "Three fifteen A.M." before walking out into the waiting room.
Malfoy was sitting where she left him, looking much better than he had been. She had been told he had had three broken ribs and a skull fracture, but things like that were easily fixed. She mourned momentarily for his wife. Touching his shoulder lightly, she sat next to him.
His face fell and his eyes filled with tears. "No. Don't say it." he pleaded, the tears spilling over. He lost himself, sobbing on Hermione's shoulder as if they were old friends. She offered him her comfort, because she knew the pain of losing a loved one. It was impossible to live through at first and she wouldn't deny him the chance to let it out now.
After his sobs subsided, he was allowed to go see his wife for the last time. Hermione sat in her chair for a long time, staring at the tiled floor of the waiting room. It was empty now, except for her. She looked down at herself and saw blood on her robes. Astoria Malfoy's blood. She grimaced at her appearance and wondered how Draco had standed it, before going to her office and changing into something clean.
There was a tap on her door and she turned to see Ginny Weasley standing in the doorway. She hugged girl briefly. "Are you alright?" Ginny asked her, knowing how hard Hermione took it when she lost someone. Hermione just nodded, sinking into the chair behind her desk and brushing her hair out of her face.
"It's just hard." she admitted. Ginny nodded, sitting on the edge of her desk. "I've never seen a man break down so completely." she added, gaining a strange look.
"What man?" Ginny asked, unable to stop her curiosity.
Hermione sat up straighter. "The woman was Astoria Malfoy." she told her friend.
Ginny's eyes widened in shock and her hand came up to cover her mouth, stifling her gasp of shock. "Oh my God. Do you know what happened?" she asked once she recovered enough to speak.
Hermione shook her head. "No. But I intend to find out." she said with determination. She was baffled by the mystery, but she needed answers. She would get them, she resolved, because it was the only way for her to deal with what she had seen that night.
Please, please, please review! XD I'll love you all forever!