"Is there more dittany?" Hermione had cut through the thick robes despite the way they'd started to dry and stick to the man's flesh. It was just in time, as getting cloth from wounds was both painful for the patient and irritating for the medic, magic or not.
Draco swept a hand through his sweaty blond hair, looking every bit as bedraggled as she felt. "More?" Hermione nodded. "Bloody hell. Yes. In the cupboard there are shelves stocked with potions. We should have at least another bottle."
Hermione crossed the makeshift infirmary and started skimming the labels as soon as the door was open. A cry sounded over her shoulder and she whipped her wand impatiently, Summoning the vial to her fingers. She was back at her patient's side in time to push at his chest, the stuffy man protesting against the need for treatment again.
"Please let me do my job, Mr. Diggory," she repeated for the third time, thumb deftly popping out the cork. "Once you're healed enough to walk without a limp we'll see about returning you to the field."
Nearly every conscious person who'd come into the manor made the same assertions. They were fine; they didn't need healing, they needed to rejoin the fight. It was nearly as exhausting convincing them to receive care as it was to provide the care. At first it had heartened her, though that was tinged with muddy guilt that she had not joined the fray herself. Now she'd accepted her role as necessary, and wanted to see to it as quickly as she could in order to move to the next injured witch or wizard in the queue.
She was nearly dead on her feet, but a Pepper Up and determination kept Hermione going. "Alright, let me see you walk." She finished bandaging the man and stepped back to let him amble in front of her. "Hydrate and eat something- the elves have nourishment laid out across the hall- and you can return to the battle."
"Right." The man beamed at her. "Thank you, Miss Granger. I will see you after this mess is finished."
Hermione nodded and waved her hand toward the door, glancing around for her next task. Draco was hovering over an unconscious girl. She recognized her as a muggleborn from Ravenclaw, a girl who would be a sixth year were she allowed at Hogwarts now.
She drifted toward him, a hiss wincing from clenched teeth as too much blood entered her vision.
That explains his concentration . Dittany might help, but blood replenishing potions were called for, certainly. She darted to and fro while Draco incanted solemnly over the Ravenclaw. He slumped against the wall, cheeks flushed from effort, and Hermione lifted the girl's head to tip the red potion against her lips.
"Hope there aren't too many of those," he huffed. " Vulnera Sanentur is bloody draining as fuck."
Her brows rose but she didn't chide him; as the hours wore on, Hermione had learned that Draco Malfoy had the mouth of a Royal Marine. She stroked the girl's throat and lowered her head back to the square little pillow. "She's so young."
"So were you." His voice was heavy as stone as he studied her. "So was I. Fuck, we still are."
And what could she say to that? They were.
The girl stabilized and the two makeshift healers took the momentary peace to collapse into their seats. She was bone weary, drained physically and emotionally and, for the first time in too long, magically as well. The world drifted away in the fluttering of her lashes.
"You!" Her heart leapt into her throat as Hermione jerked violently from her nap, body stiff from sleeping in the bare wooden chair. Her torso was jolted forward, hot breath on her face as she blinked sleep away. Red-faced and snarling, Lucius Malfoy growled down at her. "You little bitch, you didn't kill him?"
Her lips parted twice in effort to catch up to the moment, but her mind was sluggish with thoughts of dittany and blood. It took a moment for context to settle in, understanding finally sliding behind her eyes. "No."
Mr. Malfoy hauled her from her seat, her shoulders meeting the wall with a thunk . "Do you have any idea what you've done, you daft cunt?"
"Father-"
Her throat pounded against the forearm he'd laid across it, his grip tightening on the collar of her dress. He snapped a palm out to silence his son, eyes like the horizon cutting through her. "That is now the most dangerous man in all of Wizarding Britain. Perhaps all of Europe itself. I asked if you'd killed him and you told me you had. Tell me right now why I shouldn't toss you out for him to collect?"
Memories flooded her of her hours of indecision, padding back and forth in her mind as she warred between incapacitating her captor and well-deserved death. How she'd stood before him, locked inside herself and shaking, his cruel eyes burrowing to her quick. Tears rushed to her eyes as terror overwhelmed the residual weariness from her bones. "P-please, Mr. Malfoy. I c-couldn't."
The quiet loathing in his voice was far worse than the growl of his previous words as he said, "You couldn't kill him. You couldn't kill the man who had held you captive, raped, tortured, and humiliated you for half a year?" The black of his pupils pinned Hermione as she trembled, crying silently. She thought he might kill her until cold laughter stroked her cheeks. "You pathetic creature. On your own head be it." After a last shove Lucius Malfoy stepped away and she slid to the floor in a shaking heap. She cowered against her own knees, freezing, aching, wrung out, reality around lapping in waves.
Draco and his father were shining blurs as they exchanged low words; there was a startled exclamation and then Draco was shaking her, joy radiating from him like a fresh breeze. "Granger, we did it! He's gone. We fucking did it."
She wiped the stream from her eyes and sniffled. "What happened?"
"He's dead," the young man repeated, beaming the news at her like an angel reciting the gospel. "The Dark Lord- Lord fucking Voldemort ," Draco said as though he relished taking the name in vain. "He's dead. Just a corpse. An ordinary body on the battlefield."
"The Dark Lord is dead? You're sure?" Tears suddenly forgotten, she peered between the two men, Draco who was bursting with the news and Lucius who had removed his outer robe and was neatening his cuffs.
The latter gave a stiff nod. "I must fetch those whose wounds were not enough to need tending during the battle. Draco, make sure Miss Granger doesn't do anything else stupid." The words fell like spit over her, wrenching out a flinch of self-loathing from the girl.
"Wait. What happened with…" Hermione couldn't say his name.
Lucius sneered down at her and turned away.
"Come, now. It's alright." Draco slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his shoulder. "You couldn't kill him, huh?" She started sobbing again and he ran a long-fingered hand over her knotted curls. "I couldn't kill either when it came down to it."
Hermione hiccoughed an unwilling laugh against his wrinkled white shirt. "You were ordered to kill Dumbledore. It's hardly the same."
He was silent and still as marble, then resumed stroking the back of her head and over her spine. "You had it harder, I think."
"Really? Hermione pulled back enough to stare earnestly up at him. "Why's that?"
Pain flashed across his face. "You lived with him for six months, no one to support you or care about you. Alone and going through things, terrible things you shouldn't have experienced. Of course you couldn't kill the one constant in your small, cruel world."
Hermione laughed bitter shards of glass, then wiped her hands over her face, tears salting her skin. "I suppose I should be glad Harry and Ron are spared this, at least." The boys' names twisted her heart and she frowned into nothingness.
"Well, about that…" She frowned at him in query, but he didn't need to answer, the truth already on its way to her. He was staring at the door, anxiety written across his features.
A commotion in the hall drew her attention and Hermione stared toward it and used the wall to brace her rise; voices and pummelled and footsteps barrelled toward the room preceding the tumultuous wizards that rounded into sight, battleworn and bleeding, bedraggled and weary.
At their appearance all the air vanished from the room. The vacuum in her lungs overcame her and she leaned back against the wall in wide-eyed disbelief.
"Hermione." The burly young man crossed the distance in three long strides and trapped her in his arms. He smelled of sweat and grass and spearmint, of a home she'd thought lost.
It took three tries for her to murmur the name, the question in it a desperate prayer. "Ronald?"
A/N:
Two more chapter... I'm about halfway through my updates and then I will feel I can start the sequel. I've posted hints and polls and whatnot on twitter.
