A/N: Loudest of shouts and beta love to Ravenslight. All remaining mistakes are mine.
May 24th, 2003
Since Luna had departed only a few short weeks before, the cottage had transformed. Near the cliffs, a small garden was starting to bloom, full of plants that would someday be boiled, cut, and crushed down for healing potions.
She had since treated two more wounded from the battlefield, Lee Jordan and an auror who went by her last name, Connor. Both of them had stayed a little more than a week, and Hermione was feeling restless yet again now that her beds were empty.
The garden kept her mind busy. There was an entire world she needed to know more about in order to sustain this small plot of earth. Neville stopped by several times in order to walk her through the basics and each time she would fill a notebook with his musings on gardening.
For instance, Dittany shouldn't be watered more than twice a week, clearing the weeds from the area was the only way to keep it from being smothered. Goosegrass, on the other hand, needed constant tending and even enjoyed a song, according to Neville.
Hermione had rolled her eyes at the idea of singing to a plant, but when the other plants began to thrive and the Goosegrass did not, she gave it a go. She sang a nursery song from her childhood late one evening, and the next morning, she froze in her steps as she eyed the proud plant, now an inch higher. So now, to Hermione's extreme displeasure, she sang to the Goosegrass most nights.
Tonight, a full moon hovered over the ocean, setting a glow on the water and the crashing waves below. Her voice floated over the wind, through her garden and out to sea.
"I see the moon,
The moon sees me,
The moon sees the one that I long to see,
So God bless the moon,
And God bless me,
God bless the one that I long to see."
She sighed, sitting in her garden on a soft bed of dirt. The soil had been tilled and watered, almost silky as it sifted through her open fingers again and again. Her feet were bare and buried in the soft earth. She felt… grounded. Empty, sure, but grounded. For months, she had been floating in her depression and something about sitting in this patch of earth made her feel like she finally had a purpose.
Hermione woke in a start, her heart seizing her in caged chest. Outside panicked voices lofted through her open window, and it took her far too long to place her surroundings. She thought at first she must be dreaming, that she had somehow been returned to those damned woods.
She patted the mattress around her and breathed a sigh of relief when she found that she was safe in her bed, but the voices were very real. She perched at the giant window behind her bedframe and looked down toward the moon-bathed lawn.
Harry and Ron again dragging a limp form between them. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and slipped on her robe, tying her hair up out of her face. She reached the door before she remembered her wand, tucked into the side drawer and hastily returned for it.
She padded down the stairs and towards the front door, flourishing her wand in the air, bringing the lights of her cottage to life.
She opened it to Harry and Ron shouldering a hooded form. They both were streaked with blood and dirt and she could feel dark magic in the air like a stench.
"Come in, come in," she ushered, opening the door widely and gesturing towards the kitchen table. "Do you know what they've been hit with?" Her mind was busying cataloguing, sifting through her list of diagnostics and imagining the wand work in her mind.
"Cruciatus is apparent, but we didn't have any time to evaluate his injuries in the dungeon."
"Dungeon? This was a rescue?" Hermione asked vaguely.
"Kind of…" Harry hedged.
"Who is it?" Hermione's brows fell low as she stepped up to the table and drew back the ebony hood. With a gasp, she recoiled, jumping as if a cobra had been in wait for her.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" she swore uncharacteristically at the pair of them, her eyes darting between the three men in her kitchen, "You can't bring a Death Eater here! Are you barking mad?" She shook her head violently, not able—not willing—to believe that Draco Malfoy was lying unconscious on her dining room table
"Listen, it's not what you think, okay? We can't take him to the other safe houses. If you don't treat him, he could die…"
"Well, that's not much incentive for me to treat him, now is it? Are you both Imperioused? What in the world could possess you both to do something so stupid?"
Hermione had backed up until she felt the wall against her back, and her hands shook. Flashes of the forest flew through her mind: his sad eyes looking down on her, his voice when he spoke to Rookwood. She had often wrestled with Draco's actions that night, with what his intentions might have been.
No. Fuck him.
He could have killed Rookwood. He could have at least let her kill him. Cowardly, he had simply stood there and watched.
"You're asking too much." She gulped, her eyes darkening as she retreated. "I can't do this." She felt violent tremors in her hands, searing memories scorching their way into her vision, the sounds of Lavendar whimpering buzzing in her ears.
"Listen, a lot of this information is confidential. I can't tell you much without approval from Mad-Eye or Lupin."
"Well, then run off and go ask Mad-Eye or Lupin to save him!"
"Merlin, Hermione. Don't you trust us?" Ron asked sadly, "We wouldn't ask you if we didn't have a good reason."
Hermione considered what Ron asked thoughtfully. Of course she trusted them; that wasn't the question.
The question was whether or not Draco Malfoy was worthy of saving, and whether or not she had the right to make decisions regarding life and death.
Hermione had always wanted to believe that she was the type of person who would risk anything for a stranger but this wasn't a stranger; she knew him intimately. If this was some test of her character, she was dangerously close to failing.
"I'll do what I can, but you're helping." They both nodded. "And he doesn't stay here. I don't give a shit where he goes… but not here."
"Hermione…"
"No. Not unless you come back with all that fancy clearance you need. I won't be housing the enemy. You'll take him tonight."
"We can't… I know it's makes zero sense… but we can't." Harry's voice was pleading.
She stared into her friends glassy emerald eyes and sighed in concession. "Then you'll stay –. I don't trust him. I won't be able to close my eyes for a blink if I know he's here unattended."
Harry and Ron exchanged worried glances. "Okay. One of us will stay... until we get the clearance," Ron amended quickly.
Hermione gave a tense nod and pushed her sleeves up.
She approached the table where Malfoy lay and pushed the hooded robe from his body. He was wearing what looked like used to be a very nice set of trousers and white shirt. Now it was tattered and ripped, blood soaked in more places than seemed natural. Pink puckered scars littered all over his abdomen.
"He's been healed… badly. And the wounds… they aren't magical, it looks—it looks like he was stabbed," her eyes darted up to his face, he had a broken cheekbone and nose, his lips were split and cracked.
She removed her wand and pointed it at his chest. "Diffindo." Her magic sliced away at the weak remnants of cloth still clinging to his body and she gasped as his torso came into full view.
"It's like they stabbed him and then healed him. Kept him alive… but for what purpose?"
"To hurt him some more," Ron said, his lips in a flat line and a strange bitterness lingering in his words.
"His shoulder is dislocated, but most of these wounds are healed. Unless you know what else he's been hit with, there's not much I can do. I can fix the shoulder and his broken nose… but I don't know what else you want me to do."
"At Mungo's, they have a spell that highlights curses and issues. Can you do it?" Harry peered over his wiry spectacles at her.
Hermione chewed on her lip. "I can try… I've read about it but... I'll try."
She placed her hands on Malfoy's chest, and felt a ripple of goosebumps up her forearms at the contact of icy chest.
"Injuriam Revelare."
Nothing happened, and she shook her head and sighed. Focus, Hermione.
In her mind, she imagined the inner workings of the body; she pictured the blood coursing and travelling from head to toe, the heart pumping, the lungs filling and collapsing.
"Injuriam Revelare," she recited, her magic coursing from her fingers and wand and soaking through the frigid, pale skin of Draco Malfoy. She imagined her magic trailing where his blood went, a golden light touching each organ and covering it in its light before moving on.
She could see it behind closed lids; she could see her magic moving down his esophagus and to his stomach. The light paused and finally surrounded the organ, lighter in some areas, before moving to the liver. The light didn't touch it, it kept moving, and ignored the spleen as well.
Her eyes shot open as a realization slammed into her, sucking in a huff of hair.
"It's not magical."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, whoever did this," she lifted her hands and gestured to the bruises and scars across his broken body, "They didn't use magic. They beat him. He has internal bleeding in his liver and spleen from what I can tell, a little damage to his surrounding organs. He is losing too much blood."
She felt her heart soften as she looked as his mutilated body, and with a groan her hear resolved itself. She needed to help him. She took a deep sigh, and when she opened her eyes, she was recomposed.
"Right. Accio Blood Replenishing Potion." the vial flew from the cupboard into Hermione's open hand, and she handed it to Harry. "Give him this."
"Sana Organi… Sana Corpus… Sana Organi… Sana Corpus…" Hermione waved her wand in intricate formations around Malfoy's abdomen, her eyes closed, and her pulsing magic focused solely on him. Healing spells drained the energy of their caster, pouring it into the patient. She wasn't trained for this; she couldn't go for long.
After about three minutes of intensive casting, her hands fell to the table and her head drooped.
"I need a break… that should help him for now. I need to rest. I'll go again in a while."
Ron's arms were around her before she could think to ask for them, and his arms scooped her up by the backs of her knees.
"You take him into the room; I'll stay with her. Head back to HQ, tell them it was a success, and get the clearance to debrief her, yea?" Ron guided. Hermione's conscious was wavering, but she felt a vague sense of pride for his leadership of Harry.
"Yea, sounds good, mate. I'll be back by morning. I'll get him in the room. Moblicorpus."
Hermione felt the steps beneath Ron's feet as he climbed her up to her bedroom and she leaned into his familiar arms.