So, here we are with Chapter 2! Thanks again for all the love and support! I promise I'll get to answering those reviews tonight! I never have much to say, so on with the show!

With another crack, Antonin reappeared in a library.

Placing Granger on a settee, he called for a house elf. "Nipsy!"

With a pop! a small house elf appeared next to him.

"Master Antonin calls for Nipsy?"

"Where is he?"

With a sigh, the house-elf replied, "Master is still in his chambers. Nots good for him to be abed all day, Nipsy tells him, but he just tells Nipsy to find something silver to polish."

"Of course. Please inform him that he is needed in the library?"

"Right away," the elf said before disappearing.

While waiting for backup, he turned back to the woman on the settee. He ran a diagnostic spell over her with his wand and cursed at what it read. Pacing back and forth, Antonin muttered to himself about stubborn women and lazy men. After a bit, the door of the library pushed open and Rabastan Lestrange walked in.

"What is it? Nipsy said you needed my help with some...thing…Toshka...Why is Potter's Muggleborn in my library?"

"She's going to bleed out."

"And?" Rabastan drawled.

"We both know you're the best person to help her. You have a better grasp on healing magic."

"I repeat...and?"

"Chert poberi, Rabastan! You know I can't let her die! I need your help!"

With a curse, Rabastan came over and began running diagnostics and sealing up the wounds he could see already.

"What the fuck happened, Antonin? She's covered in blood. Hmm. The wounds don't look new ...what did she do to herself?"

Standing to the side and out of the other man's way, Antonin said, "It was a magical backlash of epic proportions. She was barely aware of it and I had to ground her before it erupted and took down the restaurant and destroyed her. Even with grounding her, it was still too much. It localized in her chest and reopened all her scars. I'm surprised her heart didn't stop. It felt like a fucking livewire, Rab."

Rabastan looked at the woman and thought back to what he knew of her. Draco had often complained about her in the past, so it was a surprisingly large amount of information. It seemed like the Gryffindor was always in the thick of things. Survived a troll attack, Polyjuiced into a cat, petrified by a basilisk, pursued by her werewolf teacher, kidnapped and hidden in a lake, punished by Umbridge's blood quill, breaking in to the Department of Mysteries, the skirmish at Hogwarts her 6th year, the cafe in Muggle London with Toshka and Finn, the Manor over Easter hols, breaking herself in to and a dragon out of Gringotts, and the final battle. 'Fuck,' thought Rab. 'She's probably littered with scars.'

"Toshka...I'm going to need to remove her clothes to get to them all. Merlin, I'm surprised she's still breathing. Nipsy!"

The little elf popped in and saw the injured woman on the settee and let out a small squeak. Turning away from the sight, Nipsy looked at her master expectantly.

"Master called for Nipsy?"

"I need blood replenishers, dittany, a bowl of water, a flannel...and a calming draught for when she inevitably wakes up and tries to kill us both."

Gone and back in a flash, the elf placed the requested items next to her master and disappeared.

Starting with a severing charm, Rabastan began to cut away Granger's blouse to expose her wounds.

"Merlin," he heard his companion mutter as he began to siphon the blood away from the wounds. As each became visible, both men's respect for the witch rose.

"I know some of them. This one, at her collarbone? Bella. That cursed dagger the bitch loved so much. Here in the centre of her chest?"

"Fioletovoye plamya, my Purple Flame. She's the only one who's ever survived it. A true Polenitsa…a warrior woman...not afraid of anything. Little hellion silenced me before I could get a curse off at Potter and... well...my anger has never been good."

As he went scar by scar, healing as needed, he listed off the ones that he knew. Dolohov knew most of them as well. Stories of her were widely known, but not nearly accurate enough, Rabastan acknowledged. It wasn't until they reached her right side that Dolohov came up short.

"I don't know this one. Whatever it's from, it looks like it was a glancing blow. Still, it had to have slowed her down a bit."

Rabastan snorted but quickly went back to the task at hand. As the silence between them grew, Antonin turned to look at the other man. His eyes were cast to the side as he continued sealing up old wounds.

"Rab, what do you know? Who was it?"

With a sigh, he said, "It was me. The night we got into Hogwarts. She ran right through a duel I was in with Shacklebolt. A severing curse hit her right in the side and the harpy just kept running past like nothing had happened. I was so surprised, I got stunned before I knew what had happened."

Shaking his head, Rabastan sealed up the wound he had caused once upon a time and moved on. Steadily stitching her back together, he reached the final scar and let out a sigh.

"That fucking dagger," he muttered as he cast a complicated set of spells. "Bella was a right terror. I can't imagine how bad this scar has been hurting her, let alone how much of it is contributing to her current mental state. You know as well as I do that magic like this leaves it's mark."

As the other man continued working on her arm, Antonin saw a black substance begin to ooze from the wound. He was pleased to see that Rabastan was drawing the dark magic out of her arm. Rabastan had plenty of experience working on torture victims and healing battle wounds. He was the person everyone had called for when Bella got too overzealous in the training of new recruits and when skirmishes went wrong.

As the magical residue finally ceased to flow, he cast a final healing charm on her left arm and stepped back to take stock of his work. She looked pale and thin...too thin. Rabastan hadn't seen her in years and even he could tell that she was clearly not eating or sleeping. He could infer quite a bit from the fact that her eyes were bruised and her hair was dull and lifeless. 'She's not taking care of herself,' he thought to himself. With a flourish of his wand, Rabastan cast a final scan to see if there was anything else he needed to address.

With the results of the scan analyzed and found acceptable, Rab performed a complex spell to administer the blood replenishing potion and the calming draught to Hermione in her sedated state. He pulled the bowl and flannel over and handed them to Dolohov.

"I need to go sit down, Toshka. The healing took a toll on me. I haven't had to work on anything this severe since the War. Salazar willing, I'll never have to work on anything like it again. I recommend that you wipe her down with the flannel. Spells only do so much. If it were me, I know I'd prefer feeling clean to feeling as though I just took a dip in a pool of my own blood. After that, spread the dittany over the freshly healed wounds. Be generous with it so that we can try to diminish some of the scarring for her. When you're done, meet me in the study. We still need to discuss what to do with her."

"Tysyacha blagodarnostey, zvezda moya. It means much that you did this today. I'll be in when I have finished here."

As Rabastan walked off towards the back of the library, Antonin set to the task of cleaning off Hermione Granger. Softly wiping down each scar, he thought about his day and what he had seen, and heard, back at the restaurant. He pondered what had happened to her in the years since the War. Clearly she had distanced herself from her friends if the way she interacted with the female Weasley were to be taken at face value. Shaking his head, he finished up and wandlessly banished the bowl and flannel.

Pulling a blanket from the back of the settee down, he covered up the woman. Squatting down next to her, Antonin made sure she was breathing steadily and that she would be comfortable. Turning his attention to the fireplace, he made sure the fire was going strong in the grate. Once he was satisfied, he straightened up to go meet Rabastan in the next room. As he passed her, he ran his hand over her curls and said, "Spi sladko, Megeara. You're safe now."

Chert poberi - Dammit!

Fioletovoye plamya - violet flame

Tysyacha blagodarnostey, zvezda moya- a thousand thanks, my star

Spi sladko, Megeara - sleep well, vixen