2: Breaking and Building

When she awoke the next day, it was a little past noon, and she rushed downstairs to check her patients, not bothering to change out of her slept-in dress, just strapping a wand holster to her forearm. She gave another dose of Skele-Gro to Dean Thomas, who had badly broken his leg, and moved on. She was rolling her wrist and listening to the clicking—it had never healed correctly after Bellatrix broke it—as she approached Draco's bed. She had stopped the bleeding quickly last night, but had not done anything to heal the broken bones. He was waking up at present, and tried to sit up as she moved closer to inspect the damage. He was still in his filthy clothes, stains of blood on his shirt that she assumed was Narcissa's. He spoke harshly, turning his head towards her, a black blindfold firmly on his head,

"Who are you? And why the fuck can't I see?"

"You're blindfolded Malfoy. Drink this, it'll stop the pain."

He didn't seem to recognize her quiet morning voice, because he held his mouth in a firm line, not trusting her. She sighed heavily and spoke more assuredly, hoping that he would recognize her voice,

"You know who I am, and you're blindfolded because you're at the Order of Phoenix Headquarters. Now, I can help you sit up to drink this, or you can do it yourself and risk more pain. But I have to re-break this to set it properly, and it's going to hurt."

He hissed and pointedly dropped his hands to his side and shoved himself into a sitting position, gritting his teeth against the pain, but not crying out. She saw, but didn't comment on, the small wet spot on the blindfold. He would be in an incredible amount of pain; he was entitled to tears if he was too stubborn to scream. She held out the potion in one hand and grabbed his other hand to guide him to it, ignoring the fact that he recoiled from her touch. When he felt the cup in his hand he relaxed, and drank it silently, making a face at the taste.

"So Granger, why am I here?"

"I brought you here so I could heal you. Mulciber made a bloody mess of your leg."

He laughed, a bark-like incredulous sound loud enough to shatter the tense quiet in the room, and smirked before he spoke again,

"You still didn't answer me question. Why?"

"Because you needed to be here."

She refused to get into a verbal sparring match with him when she had work to do. She would no more explain her reasons to him than she would to Ron. She took out her wand and slid it up his bloodied pant leg, avoiding the protruding bone, and whispered 'Diffindo!' to cut it open. He must have felt the change as she pulled back the wet sticky fabric, and his face tightened at the small 'ugh' that escaped her mouth.

"That bad, is it?"

"You can't feel it?"

"Not anymore, no."

"Good." She pushed up her long loose sleeves and reached her hand forward, cleaning the wound out with a quick spell before setting her wand next to his leg, and speaking to him in a clipped business tone,

"Tell me if you feel anything. Don't try to be stubborn about pain, just tell me."

"Fine Granger. Just do whatever it is you have to and get it over with."

She pulled back the flap of mangled, swollen skin from his bone and poked around for a bit. His leg was quirked at an angle, partially pulled up and twisting off in the wrong direction. She looked closer to see where the bones were so she knew where to break the bone to get it back inside him and then it could heal properly with spells. She picked up her wand and made a small incision, letting loose the blood that had swollen near the surface. When the swelling went down she could see better and she knew the bone would fall into place correctly when she went to work. She gave a tiny touch to the back of his hand to get his attention, he did not recoil,

"I'll be right back; I need to get everything ready before I start this."

She walked into the kitchen and gathered another bottle of Skele-Gro, gauze, a tube of burn paste, a tube of a skin salve that would ensure no scars formed, and then turned to two men sitting at the table: Snape and Lupin. She knew her expression looked grim and her voice was cold and hard when she addressed Snape,

"I'm going to need your help with your Godson, you too Lupin."

She had long ago gotten over prefacing their names with 'Professor,' war had changed her a lot. They nodded and followed her into the other room, looking at Draco, sitting up apprehensively in the bed, blindfolded, and gripping the sheets with white knuckles.

"Hold him down. Serevus, you get his shoulders. Remus, I need you to hold his feet in case he kicks."

Draco spoke, confused, his face pointed up hopefully in the direction of his Godfather,

"Severus?"

"Yes Draco, I'm here. Granger's going to heal you. I'm sure she's already explained. Just try your best to stay still. You could worsen your condition if you struggle too much."

Draco's grip on the sheets got even tighter, his hands taking on a blue tinge as the blood was squeezed out of them and he went stiff as a board, and Hermione took this as preparedness. She put her wand tip against the bone jutting out of his torn muscle and skin and broke it magically without words. Draco growled viciously, more wetness gathering on the blindfold, but no other sound escaped him. She moved the bone back into its proper place, moving muscle and veins out of the way as she worked. Then she moved all that tissue back in place and healed the rips in it. She then moved the skin back over the whole mess, and magically stitched it shut. She aimed an 'Episkey!' at his leg to properly align the bones and coax them into healing, then gently applied the scar tincture to the faint pink lines on his skin, and they disappeared entirely. Severus and Remus released him and stepped away, allowing her past to give Draco a small cup of Skele-Gro to speed up the healing process. She went upstairs and pulled a set of old trousers and white button down shirt out of Regulus' wardrobe and brought them back down. She switched them onto Draco's body and threw his bloodied, cut up clothes in the bin for used medical supplies that she would 'Evanesco!' later. She approached him again, hesitantly, and then spoke quietly her sorrow showing through for just a moment,

"All-All the bodies have been removed and the Manor is being repaired by your Elves. You can go retrieve your parents from the Ministry morgue as soon as you're healed and bury them as you like."

"Tell them to burn my father for all I care Granger…Who went to the Manor to gather the bodies and send them to the morgue?"

"I did."

He held back a sob in his chest, she could feel it in the air, his tight hold on his emotions and the flood behind that control, breaking out just a little when he next spoke,

"My-my mother?"

"I cleaned her up and changed her robes like I just did yours before I sent her along."

He was soaking the blindfold, tears now running down his face despite the absorbent fabric. It was bothering him; she could feel him pushing away his grief in favor of irritation and watched as he reached up to pull the offensive thing off his head.

"Fuck!"

He wrenched his hands away from it, pink burned flesh and a few small blisters forming on his palms and the inside of his fingers.

"I put a jinx on it in case you tried to remove it. If you'd like a new one," she was going to say 'dry,' but didn't want to insult him, "…to be more comfortable, I can get you one."

"Just take the fucking thing off. I don't care where I am. And you don't have to worry about me seeing anything or telling them. I never was one of them and I'm never going to become one!"

He pulled up his left sleeve for emphasis, revealing clean, white skin. She looked to Snape still hovering nearby, asking with her eyes if this was alright. He nodded. She reached forward and put her head behind Draco's head and picked it up, so she could untie the knot. She slid it off, and handed Draco a handkerchief with a muttered 'to clean your face,' again not addressing his tears. Then she took out the burn salve for his hands, knowing that he would touch the blindfold eventually. She thought absently about his mother's death as she applied it to the burns. When Deatheaters had killed her parents she hadn't gotten out of bed for over a week, crying the whole time and screaming at everyone that came to comfort her. Their pity had felt insincere at the time, contrived, patronizing. She didn't want to patronize him either; she knew how infuriating it could be. It was Moody who'd pulled her out of it, telling her to use that pain and anger to be strong. Teaching her to fight, to be brutal when she needed to be, and teaching her to channel her efforts in one direction at a time. It was Moody that brought her the first meal she'd actually eaten in two weeks, and forced her to eat. Moody forced her to start training, to hit back, to strike, to be a warrior. She left the room for a moment, controlling her train of thought to avoid tears, and returned with parchment and quill for Draco.

"If you wish to inform the Ministry of your decision about your father's burial, use this, call me, and I'll send it off with an owl."

He nodded stiffly, and picked it up immediately. He scribbled furiously, his script looking angry, but still nearly perfect, and then folded it up tightly. She conjured a small blob of wax at the closing point and he overturned his hand to push in his family signet, and then handed it rigidly back to her. When he looked back up at her, his face seemed to falter for a moment as he noticed something for the first time and he spoke in a voice so quiet and full of amazement,

"Merlin, Granger, you've got your nose pierced!"

She did, but she often forgot the tiny silver ring was even there. She'd gotten it at Moody's insistence—that she do something to commemorate the anniversary of her parents' deaths that intrinsically involved pain—to complete her training. She rolled her eyes at him and left the room to send off his letter. She spent the rest of the day in the kitchen with Molly and checking on her other patients. Harry and Company had all holed up in the dining room making plans for the Final Battle. Voldemort had been in the dining room in Malfoy Manor but had apparated away at the sight of Harry—hence Harry's angry bellow that night. She ignored this process, knowing that the Final Battle would be between just Harry and Voldemort and not wanting to address the possibility that her best friend may die, or worse, fail to destroy the Dark Lord and die. She shuddered.

An hour or so later she wandered in to check on Malfoy and found him feverish and sweating, she went back to work. She forced a quick fever-reducing potion into his hands, which he drank and pulled back the blankets to check his leg, but it was fine. The fresh shirt she'd put on his however, was bloodied.

"Shit."

She hissed out her words, frustrated with herself that she hadn't checked the rest of him for injury, assuming it was just his leg. She pulled it open forcibly; buttons popped off and cascaded to the floor heedlessly, to find his wounds. Two punctures, small and not too deep, that were simply topped with blood, just barely bleeding under his collarbone by both shoulders and a virgin's crescent carved into the center of his chest. She looked at them, surprised for a moment before leaning in with her wand to seal the skin shut and applied the scar tincture again. The pink lines were persistent however, and did not fade. She knew that these wounds had been magically inflicted, but not how or by whom.

"Who did this to you? I know Mulciber fucked up your leg," he looked shocked at hearing her curse but she continued, "but these are magic wounds, won't close, and won't heal all the way."

"I woke up with them yesterday morning. I don't know if someone gave them to me, but my mother," his breath hitched in his throat, "…attending to me in the morning, did the same thing you just did. They were open and bleeding again by noon. She called them something…" He hesitated and shut his eyes, struggling to remember the sound of her voice before all the screaming, "…she called them Orion's Marks. But I have no idea what that means."

"Right. I'll be back to re-heal them in a few hours then."

She turned and headed to the library. She had to figure this out.