SUMMARY
❛If this happens again,❜ George warned lowly, ❛Fred will hear about it.❜
After the brightest witch of her age miraculously saved Fred from the brink of death during the Battle of Hogwarts, his twin begins to realize that Hermione didn't simply heal him. Every time Fred gets hurt, he's instantly healed and the wound reappears on Hermione. The young witch wants to keep the truth to herself, insisting that all is fine. But George knows better, and it's only a matter of time before one of them gets hurt beyond repair.
✥ 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑:
- I clearly don't own HP or the Wizarding universe, I just enjoy dabbling in the world.
- Original artwork of twins by AnnikaLeigh16 on DeviantArt
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01 | A BRUSH WITH DEATH
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- BATTLE OF HOGWARTS
"No – no – no!" someone was shouting. "No, Fred! No!"
They didn't have even a second of warning before the world shattered to dust around them. Hermione couldn't feel anything but the sharp ringing in her ears. She tried to climb to her feet but fell immediately. Harry crawled over to her, helping her up. They stumbled over to where the three Weasley brothers were on the floor. Ron and Percy scrambled to dislodge the large stones piled atop a painfully still Fred Weasley. The trio had barely just survived the inferno in the Room of Requirement only to fall into another nightmare.
"No! Fred, no!" The agonized bellow from Ron made Hermione's soul crumble. Her friend of nearly a decade spun back towards her, panic and grief mingling into desperation. "Hermione! Save him," he begged. "Please, you always know what to do. Do something!"
Hermione felt her feet carry her forward, the ringing still not gone from her ears. She sunk to her knees beside Fred's body, shakily pressing her fingertips to his neck to check for a pulse. Her heart sunk when she could barely pick up on a faint pulse, which was fading quickly. One after another, spells poured out of her mouth. Numbing charms, healing charms, reviving charms. With each spell that failed to get the jokester to open his eyes, the more frantic Hermione became. Bone repairing charms in his skull. Healing charms on the incisions on his skin. Nothing worked. She could practically feel Fred's limbs losing their heat even as she desperately tried to bring him back. She could feel Ron shaking at her back as he watched on in suspense. Percy kneeled beside her, looking as though he were already mourning. And he might as well because Fred was teetering over the brink of death, and none of the superficial spells she could conjure up right now would be enough to heal the paralyzed magical core that was failing to sustain him.
But just as she'd lost all hope, Hermione felt indignation fill her suddenly. Fred couldn't die! Not him. If Fred dies, part of George will die right along with him. Then who would teach them all to laugh again once this bloody war was over? Losing Fred felt like too great a symbolic sacrifice that spelled out nothing good for any of their fates at the end of this long, dark tunnel.
A passing thought came to Hermione. It was a hail Mary, but she jumped on it like a lifeline. Without giving herself a chance to think about any of the possibly disastrous repercussions, she was already murmuring an incantation she knew by heart but never thought she'd have to use.
The boys around her froze in awe as a bright golden light encompassed the pair of them.
If Hermione had let herself think it through like the logical witch she prided herself on being, she'd have realized what a potentially disastrous idea this was. Because the spell she'd just repeated could only be found in one book that she knew of.
The same book that contained the chapters on Horcruxes.
With a heaping gasp, Fred jerked up from his supine position, eyes blown and pupils dilated.
"Fred!" Ron cried in relief.
Fred's brothers rushed around him, unable to believe he was truly alive. The revived wizard had a wild, nearly haunted look in his eyes. He accepted his brothers' grateful embraces in a dazed haze, still trying to get his senses and wits about him.
Hermione pushed back, giving the brothers some space to check on the sibling they'd nearly lost. She felt a surging moment of triumph as she'd practically felt Fred's magic spark to life under her fingertips. But the very next moment, she felt the strength in her own limbs disappear. It was as if someone had come up to her and cut deep gashes across her entire body, Hermione could feel her energy and magic pool out of her body like blood from a wound. The dizziness hit her harder than a bout of apparating.
Only Harry, who'd stayed back to give the Weasleys some space to process, could see as Hermione swayed unstably.
He saw his best friend stumble over her own feet and barely rushed forward in time to catch her. Grunting from the impact of her dead weight, he guided her to the floor.
"Hermione?" He demanded, concern seeping into his voice. "Bloody hell... what did you do?"
Harry's face swam above her as she tried to focus her vision. She could make out his lips moving as if trying to tell her something. What that was, she would never know. The ringing in her ears from the explosion earlier sharpened to a near defeating level.
The world span around her with an alarming speed.
Perhaps she should sit down.
Oh... she already was.
The last thing she heard was a familiar voice screaming her name as darkness closed around the edges of her vision.
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