The loud roaring of the engine was the only sound that accompanied Hermione besides Harry's quiet whimpers of pain and Ron's pained gasps as she sped along the backroads. Both men had been hit with Sectumsempra, but Ron had taken the worst of it. Harry was alert enough to be able to sit up. Ron, however, was sprawled out in the backseat of Harry's old muscle car.

Hermione glanced over at Harry for the fifth time since they had begun driving. His face was contorted in a painful expression. He was leaning against the window and cradling his right arm in his lap.

Next, she glanced over her shoulder at Ron. He was still laying across the backseat, hand clenched tightly around his bleeding stomach.

"Mione…" Harry weakly said. Her gaze snapped back to the black haired boy. He looked back at her with a half-lidded, drunken gaze. His head, now removed from the window, swayed from side to side, his neck struggling to hold up the weight. "The road." He simply said.

Hermione's eyes shot back to the windshield to find that she had drifted to the edge of the oncoming lane. She quickly jerked them back onto the correct side of the road.

Thank God, she thought. She could see Godric's Hollow. They were almost there. Harry had set up a safe house there, for Aurors that were too injured to apparate or port key to St. Mungo's, and anyone that needed to go into hiding. There was a healer that lived there full time that could help with any sort of injury.

"Why didn't you go after him?" Harry asked.

"Because you and Ron were injured!" She angrily shot back. Harry shuddered in pain, and Hermione pressed her foot harder against the pedal. She'd known for years that Harry didn't value his own life as much as he did everyone else's, but she didn't know when that had started to extend to Ron as well.

"The mission always comes first. Nothing else matters." Harry tried to lecture her in a stern voice, but just ended up sounding drunk. Hermione just ignored him. She knew, if the roles were reversed—if he wasn't the one who was injured—he would have done the same thing she was doing.

Harry shuddered again, and she looked back at him. His glasses were cracked in a spider-web pattern on the right lense, and his normally white dress shirt was tattered and stained red. His black trenchcoat hid most of the blood. If it hadn't been for the blood, Harry would have looked like a character from a black and white movie with how pale he'd become.

When she looked back at Ron again, she began to doubt that he was hurt worse than Harry, The-Boy-Who-Lived seemed to just be tougher. Ron had passed out from the pain before they had even left that warehouse, but even he wasn't as pale as Harry. She looked back to Harry. His eyes were screwed shut.

"Harry?" Hermione asked, on the verge of tears. At least one of them was likely to die tonight.

"Mm?" He groaned back in response. It was barely audible.

"I need you to stay awake." She commanded. He did his best to keep his eyes open, but they kept closing on their own. He kept having to quickly force them open.

"No fair, Ron gets to go to sleep." Harry weakly joked. She didn't laugh.

Looking back at Godric's Hollow made Hermione feel as though she was driving on a treadmill. She knew it was getting closer, but not close enough.

"Mi!" Harry suddenly shouted. He only called her that when he was trying to warn her about something. Her head snapped to look at the passenger seat, just in time to see a pair of headlights slam into Harry's side of the car. The car did a complete one-eighty, and threw Harry into her. The inertia made her crack her head on the driver's side window. The glass of the passenger side window splintered and cut her face, while the windshield just spiderwebbed. The impact had somehow turned the radio on, or perhaps Harry's hand had clipped the power button when he flew into her. Hermione heard old rock music fill the air for a brief second before the second car hit.

It had all happened in an instant, so fast that the other lane of traffic hadn't had time to stop, and another car hit the spot where the front passenger and rear passenger doors met. She heard the music continue as she faded into unconsciousness.

"I see a bad moon a-rising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightning

I see bad times today

Don't go around t..."

She wasn't aware of how far the second car had launched them. She didn't hear the drivers of both cars calling out to her. She didn't hear the ambulance approach, and she didn't feel the paramedics put her and her friends into said ambulance.

The next moment in which Hermione had awareness, she was laying in a hospital, the sun shining on her face. Slowly and carefully, she sat up. Her body was sore, but she wasn't badly hurt. Nothing was broken, thankfully. She was really disoriented, having been knocked unconscious in one place and waking up in another. It was a few moments before it all came back to her.

She gasped. Ron and Harry! Hermione spent the next couple of minutes pawing around for the 'Call Nurse' button. Almost immediately, a young woman with dark brown hair entered the room.

"My friends," Hermione asked in a scratchy voice. Her voice stopped wanting to comply for a second, so she tried again. "My friends." Hermione coughed. "Forgive me." The nurse nodded and pulled a small cup of water seemingly out of nowhere. Hermione drank it all down in one go, and tried to speak again. "Are my friends okay?" She asked.

The nurse flashed her a kind smile. "They're going to be okay." She told Hermione.

The rest of that day was a nightmare for Hermione. They kept running tests on her, and not telling her anything about her boys, just the same rehearsed statement over and over again; "They're going to be fine." After the first few times of hearing it, Hermione stopped believing it.

At times, Hermione felt like she knew more about Harry and Ron's condition than the nurses and doctors with how many questions they were asking her about what happened, why the boys were in the state they were in. She told them part of the truth. She told them that they'd been attacked, and that she'd been racing the two to the hospital when they were struck. This, of course, had resulted in a conversation with the police. She just lied and told them that she didn't know who attacked Harry and Ron and gave an official statement saying that she, Ron and Harry were just hanging out and talking when a man had shown up with a knife. Harry and Ron had jumped between her and the man, tried to disarm him, and had promptly gotten slashed up because of it. She told them that he'd just run off after that and she didn't know why.

The next morning, they confirmed that Hermione did not have a concussion, miraculously. Unfortunately, however, they wouldn't discharge her unless she had someone to accompany her, and they wouldn't let her see her boys until she was discharged.

Hermione reluctantly called the Weasleys, unsure if they would answer or if they even still had their phone line connected. She called them three times before Arthur picked up.

"Yes? Hello?" He asked annoyedly into the phone.

"Arthur?" She said, glad that she had finally got it through the Weasleys' thick skulls that you're not supposed to yell into the phone. "It's me, Hermione."

"Hermione!" He sounded elated to hear her voice. "Thank Merlin! The Ministry has been looking all over for you three! Are you alright? Are you safe? How are Harry and Ron?"

"Yes, I'm alright, I'm safe. I haven't been able to see Harry and Ron yet. They won't let me." She explained to him everything that had happened, and why she wasn't allowed to see her friends. Hermione had also asked him to bring a change of clothes for all three of them, as the clothes they had been wearing were ruined. Harry and Ron's with their own blood, Hermione's with a mixture of the two. He'd wasted no time in asking what hospital they were at and when she told him, he'd promptly hung up.

Not even an hour later, the entire Weasley clan was there. Arthur and Molly, Charlie and Bill, Percy and George. Ginny. Hermione was only a little surprised to see Harry's ex girlfriend there. She was, after all, Ron's sister. Her being there to see Ron was the only reason Hermione didn't jump down her throat after what she'd done to Harry. She'd broken the poor boy's heart by cheating on him.

Hermione had always thought that if Harry and Ginny had broken up, that that would be it for Ron and Harry's friendship, but the opposite had happened. Ron had let Harry stay at his place for as long as he needed and hadn't responded to any of the letters Ginny sent him. He had of course read them, if only to make sure no one had died.

Ron and Hermione had spent weeks comforting their distraught friend, assuring him that he'd never have to see her again. And here she was. Hermione just hoped Ginny didn't think she was going to see Harry as well. While Arthur signed Hermione's discharge papers, stating that he would report it if she showed any signs of a concussion or any other sort of side effect from the crash, Molly visited the boys with Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys.

Once Hermione was declared a free woman, she got dressed and entered the room that Harry and Ron shared. What she saw scared her.

When she looked at Harry, first thing she noticed was that the color had returned to his face, from what little of his face she could see. Large bandages covered one of his cheeks, forehead and chin. His right arm was in a sling and there was a bandage wrapped around his opposite bicep. Hermione could also see scratches along his neck and collarbone that weren't deep enough for them to have to bandage. In his left hand, Harry had an IV that Hermione assumed was pumping him full of all kinds of drugs. No doubt that when he woke up, he'd be high as a kite.

Next, Hermione looked at Ron, completely ignoring Ginny as she checked on him. He was no better off than Harry. He was also covered in bandages, with an IV stuck in his hand. The biggest difference between the two was that Ron had some kind of tube stuck down his throat.

Hermione just cried, terrified that she was going to lose one or both of her boys. She didn't think she could bear to lose either of them. They'd been there for her for fourteen years now, and she them. She just couldn't imagine life without them now.

She couldn't imagine life without Ron oversleeping and making them all late. Without Harry's self deprecating humor. Without Ron's overeating. Without Harry getting them all into trouble. Without her fights with Ron. Without Harry's fights with Ron.

Hermione was so scared of losing them, but deep down she felt it. Part of her knew that The Golden Trio wouldn't be leaving this hospital in one piece, she just refused to acknowledge that part of herself.

A/N: So, what'd ya think? It is based on another story. I could say, but I don't want to spoil things. Hehehehe.

You may be wondering why I split Harry and Ginny up like that, and it's simply because I don't like the canon pairings. Just my opinion. I'm just not a fan of Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione.

"Well that's fine and all, but why have Ginny cheat on Harry?"

Because this story is a collection of mistakes made by many different characters that just keep snowballing and having this Butterfly Effect on the rest of the story. It's like a Tragedy of Errors; so many of the characters' imperfections drive this story forward. Of course, it wouldn't be Harry Potter without a bit of a mystery going on in the background!

Also, Hermione's protectiveness just came from me being like, "oh, she obviously cares deeply for both of them, as we see every time either of them gets hurt in canon. Especially in DH, so how would she react if both of them were knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door?" And then came Protective!Hermione. I also think that deep down, she's very scared of losing Ron and Harry, especially the heart attacks they both gave her in DH.

In case you were wondering, btw; as far as this story goes, I'm pretending as though Ron/Hermione never happened. And this definitely is NOT a Ron/Hermione/Harry story. Their relationship is purely platonic in this story. Hermione's just the Mom-Friend.