May 3rd, 1944
Hermione could feel the calculating eyes of the Doctor behind her as she clipped the end of her stitch and handed him the bloodied instruments. He accepted the tools and passed her back a bundle of open bandages without a word.
Hermione accepted them and returned to her patient, sending a disinfecting and epidermis numbing charm along the edge of his broken skin with a narrowing of her eyes. She finished her procedure with a secure wrapping of the bandages and then took a step back, swinging around to face the Doctor watching her. As soon as her heels clicked together on the cement floor, her instructor clicked the pocket watch between his fingers to a stop.
His eyes flicked to the numbers once before climbing back to hers. He nodded shallowly, the permanent frown etched into the fine wrinkles of his skin deepening. She had passed.
Hermione discreetly let out a breath of relief while the pit of anxiety in her stomach unfurled. Spring was quickly coming to an end and Hermione had about a month left to master everything within the current medical practices of 1944 before she would be shipped out to Normandy, France.
Hermione nodded her thanks demurely to the salt and pepper haired Doctor as he documented the success of her final test and accreditation as a 'specialized' surgical nurse for the US Army and SSR (ie: meaning she could now legitimately do things in whatever unit she'd be assigned to outside of the SSR that would allow her to only report to her direct commanding officer: Colonel Phillips. Mainly in case she had an emergency and magical interference was needed.)
After the release of the disastrous actions from the Battle of Finow, Colonel Phillips cleared Hermione's current absence from the SSR as a weapons scientist. He'd taken one look at her red rimmed eyes, the sunken skin above her cheeks, and then her submitted transfer papers, and signed for them without a word. The only parting comment he'd made before she caught the next plane out was to come back to work when her, "head was screwed back on straight."
That had been two weeks ago.
The nameless Doctor ordered to proctor her examination led the both of them out of the field hospital and into the administration wing next to the Mess Hall. He handed her paperwork off to a nurse and dug into his desk, reaching for a secure envelope with red letters across the front that typed "CLASSIFIED".
"Someone clearly thought you'd ace that exam," the gruff voice of the Doctor said, passing her the envelope with objection written across his face. "You'll find your qualifications and your new assigned unit inside. You're scheduled to leave in four hours."
Hermione's fingers had barely wrapped around the envelope before the older doctor dropped his arm and brushed past her, frown sinking deeper over his face. Hermione ignored the implied insult and opened the envelope to reveal the packet of papers within.
Paperclipped to the top of several folders was two scraps of small pieces of paper that said:
"The Colonel and you must be in cahoots, I've never seen the man so tight lipped about personnel location. Come back when you can, please. I don't know how to apologize, much less to broads with your level of moxie. -Your friend, Howard S."
The next scrap of letter was much shorter, that said:
"He begged me to pass it on, come back when you're ready - Peggy"
It was attached to a single sheet letter with handwriting so familiar, Hermione knew who it was from in the opening address.
April 20th, 1944
Dear HG,
I found your goodbye letter.
I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't. So I checked your cabin first, but nothing was left except for the stripped sheets at the end of your bed, and a lost button on the floor from your uniform. Then I checked your office, your second home, and it was then that I knew your words were real. You would never have boxed everything up so meticulously, records in alphabetical order even, if you knew for a fact you were coming back.
I've asked the Colonel every day, but he's only said that you're away on a mission. As my handler in the SSR I have the access to check that information, and I know now for a fact that isn't true. You weren't sanctioned to leave by anyone higher than Phillips, which means you've volunteered for everything - for whatever you're doing right now. Peggy won't tell me either, she says it's yours to communicate about, and Howard's so mad that you are gone he won't even meet with me unless it's for a debrief.
It's killing me, doll. I've no idea how to find you, and I know you well enough by now that until you want to be found, there's no way I could.
Where did you go, Hermione? Why did you disappear?
If it's for what I think it's for, I can only guess how you must be feeling. What you must be thinking. But I want you to know that I love you, Hermione. What happened, happened, and you did everything right. It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known that Stark Laboratories hadn't destroyed it like they said they would and that it would get stolen.
This isn't your fault. None of it. Please know that.
If I can't hear your voice, or see your face - If I can't feel the heartbeat beneath your lips today, will you at least let me know you're safe?
I love you darling,
SR
Hermione swallowed, her fingers brushing over the familiar stokes of his lettering.
Guilt crawled up her throat at the tone of his worry, and the anxious approach of his words, but Hermione pushed down the feeling of immediately turning around and heading back to the SSR base she'd come to know as home. She couldn't face him - honestly she wasn't ready to face herself back on that base. Not yet. She couldn't just throw herself back into her research, her weapons, when she had already done so much damage.
She had to find something - anything really - to fill this hole in her sternum she was now living witThe need to help was strong, but was it necessarily with her mind? Was the best that she was available to offer in this War mass destruction and pain?
Hermione put Steve's letter at the back of her packet of information and scanned her new orders. Her eyes narrowed in on the names in her unit, and then widened at the location and her mission. She mentally checked the date, and then checked the clock against the far wall of the office. The Doctor had been right, she had a little less than four hours to get her things together before she would be shipping out.
Hermione turned on her heel, shoulders back while the 'click' of her pumps echoed down the cement walls. Excitement, anxiety, and unease rolled through her stomach. She held her orders close to her chest, the beating of her heart thumping in her clenched fingers.
She had been tasked to the Fourth Auxiliary Surgical Group currently stationed in Dartmouth, Great Britain.
In a little over a day, Hermione would be assigned and living with a small surgical team that would support the UTAH front line on the shores of the French beaches after 'Operation Neptune', more commonly known as 'Operation Overlord', or 'D-Day' to Hermione and her history books.
She'd get that medical experience she had been so anticipating for the last several months. Right on the front lines.
June 6th, 1944: D-Day
A loss of all sense of contact with the world filled Hermione's little team, and they passed the 10 days on their boat across the English Channel with sleep - and then more sleep - feeding, and griping, and joking, and pondering.
Hermione had penned a return letter to Steve after her initial introduction to her team, simply saying:
"I'm as safe as I can be. I love you as well - HG" , but hadn't said more since. She had received a letter from Steve for every week that they were separated, and had yet the heart to answer his many questions back.
Why was she gone? Why not come back - they'd all be more careful next time. Steve missed her. Bucky missed her. Merlin, Steve made it sound as if the whole base did, but Hermione felt as if some impossible weight had been placed on her shoulders now that she knew she'd had a hand in creating something that had caused so much death - and it couldn't be easily removed or replaced with hollow promises and fanciful assurances.
Hermione had helped kill nearly 250 people. That was more than all of the students at Hogwarts combined. What she'd had her hands in was different from just casting dark magic, because Hermione had studied and knew what the outcomes would be if magic was done incorrectly. Her job as an Unspeakable for years had been research and lawmaking, never modification or development.
Now the influence of her actions had real consequences. Bloody, horrible, gruesome consequences.
The only letters she composed now were crossed out and then started again, and again, and again. She didn't know when she'd come back, though the hole in her chest was different from the weight of her remorse, it hurt nearly more. She missed Steve, and Peggy, and Howard, and even the Colonel - but she knew in her bones and in the tingle of her magic that her conscience needed restitution before she could do more.
She needed some form of atonement.
On the day that marked the turn of the tide for the control maintained by Nazi Germany in the Second War War, Hermione Granger sat on a boat in suspended expectancy mixed with boredom and frustration. She and the 8 other members of their small surgical team sat close together, reading and playing cards - stuck in a tedium of dreamlike tension that floated in and out of existence.
They clutched at their radio, suspense and concern in every exchange of hands. They traded softly shared stories of home and their families. They prayed and stared at metal walls for forgiveness and guidance.
The magnitude of what was coming sat on their nerves, like an itch that begged to be scratched.
For how would they respond to the test ahead? The total test and the thousands of personal ones as well. Hermione may have been born and trained a fierce witch, but she was one person out of the hundreds of thousands surrounding her. One soul in the black hole that was coming.
June 7th, 1944
The next morning, Hermione sailed toward their landing area on the right wing of the American won beach out along the French peninsula.
She had a birds-eye view of the entire length of the landing operations – thousands and thousands of boats, navy vessels, and battleships - E boats, LSTs, LSI's, and all sorts of landing crafts filled the water. Not all of them were afloat, and the noise of the naval barrages was deafening as they got closer to shore.
Hermione's eyes scanned the stretch of her new home for the foreseeable future. The beaches had been hard won, it was evident in the pools of bloody water, floating artillery shells, abandoned equipment, and pieces of severed body parts among the sand and slapping waves. The front line was only secured up to a half mile ahead of where they'd hole themselves in, and Hermione wordlessly layered protection spells over her fellow team members as they waited for the cover of darkness to move in.
When they did later that night, Hermione and Dr. Swan, the youngest of the two surgeons on their unit, waded out into the cold and unforgiving water to the beach front. They all dug their foxholes into the sand, wet and cold, and then began their setup.
On the first morning, gun fire erupted just outside of their makeshift hospital, feet away from an open operation, neat little holes ripping through the canvas. Hermione and Dr. Swan hit the dirt, slivers of unfiltered sunshine cleaving the air like deadly lasers, but when Hermione saw their patient lying on the table with shaking hands over his face, just sweating it out, she resolved that she would never again leave a patient with the feeling of helplessness and desertion.
Nor had she since.
For the next three days Hermione worked faster and harder than she ever had before in her life. They continued to stay about a half mile from the flank of the US Army inching forwards, and in Hermione's every waking moment - sometimes even in her sleep - she was in the middle of revolving bloody bodies. Her 20+ hour first couple of days were filled by sanitizing, clotting, bandaging, cutting, stitching, and moving with her team. It never seemed to end, and as surgeons yelled for her help, as relieved and living soldiers passed through her hands and silent magical remedies, bits of Hermione's soul seemed to heal.
After her first two weeks in Normandy, her shifts had cemented for 8 hours on, 8 hours off, but she was continuously dog tired. All but 360 out of 3,200 patients treated through Hermione's surgical and the 128th Evacuation team (who had landed three days after their arrival) required surgery.
Her time out of the makeshift O.R. with Dr. Swan was filled with magical help around their camp. All equipment was sanitized, blood and plasma donations were doubled, protection charms around their camps were reinforced, and a never ending list of little projects always seemed to need to be complete.
It left her exhausted, but feeling deeply satisfied and accomplished. Not a single soul that passed through her team's O.R. tent died. Not a single soul.
By July, over a month after D-Day, Hermione wrote a letter back to Steve:
July 12th, 1944
My love,
A very late Happy Birthday, darling.
I wish I could say this into your eyes, but I know that you must be busy on your side of the War as well. I am alive, and still loving you, but oh - so tired. In a good way, I must admit.
I'm sure all have heard the news by now, but the beaches have been taken and we move slowly forwards. I am currently stationed with the 128th Evac. team in Normandy, France working with an auxiliary surgical team that cares for the wounded - both Allied and not.
The last seven days have felt unending, they've had us back onto 12-16 hour shifts. "Casualties are lighter than expected" - except those that come through our tent. The wounded and dying.
I can't complain too heavily, as the last couple of cases have been very interesting! I have been assisting Dr. Swan, the assistant surgeon (who I think will be promoted rather soon) in our unit. We recently worked on several prolonged and major dissections, with tricky vascular complications - all very intense, but oh, so fatiguing as well. We stumble from O.R. to Mess tent, back to O.R., to Wards, to O.R., to bed, to O.R. ect. I'd hate to tell you how many cases have come through our O.R. in the past six days. It is more than enough for one lifetime.
… I miss you. And Bucky, the team.
I don't have a time frame on my return. I like the work I do here. I liked my research as well, and it is a constant thought in my mind as I struggle back and forth on my next move. Do I stay and continue to try and save lives with my stitches and charms? Do I return and try to save lives through my research and Howard's improvements? It is not a question I have been able to answer yet, and for that, I am sorry.
I love you, and will write again soon.
Yours, always,
HG
By the end of July, Hermione, Dr. Swan, and the rest of their team were thirty miles inland and passing the city of Saint-Lô, France. Mail came far and in-between their rapidly moving unit, but when the town was won and the dust settled, a bundle of papers were handed to Hermione during mail call.
After shuffling the many items in her hand, she began to recognize the handwriting of several Howling Commandos, all individually addressed to her.
Her eyes widened at the sizable stack left to her, and she immediately went to her personal tent to read through their words.
Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, and James Montgomery Falsworth left her updates on their progress through Austria enclosed with interesting little souvenirs (pieces of parachutes or bullet casings) they had found in their missions.
Gabe Jones and Jacques Dernier left her tips on learning French, and had split the bill and sent her a 'Victory Red' lipstick from a blown out cosmetics store they'd found. It actually did wonderful things for her complexion, and Hermione had received several compliments from the men in her unit when she started wearing it the next day.
The Beastly twins sent a postcard from Belgium (which was far more than she was expecting from them).
Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton, and Junior Juniper, also sent her updates of the mission but also included photographs in their letters. (Apparently Junior was great with a camera, and documented most of the team shenanigans when PR teams couldn't get Steve or the Commandos to sit still long enough for a shot.) Hermione was able to flip through several black and white images with Steve and the Commandos either on mission, or relaxing in the middle of the wilderness.
Hermione's heart swelled as she read their words, knowing that all of her boys were healthy and hadn't been killed in the time she was gone.
The last two letters were from Bucky and surprisingly, headquarters instead of Steve, the only letter writer missing among the bunch. Bucky said that he missed her, understood what she was going through, and told her to be safe. He also updated her on his dog tag protection, that was apparently holding up well, and announced that he had yet to come out of fight with more than some scratches or a bruise. Her protection was working wonders.
She smiled at Bucky's letter as she put it to the side, her attention then focusing on the thick envelope from Headquarters. Inside, a single sheet of Steve's familiar handwriting covered the documents behind it. Hermione's head tipped to the side as she held the packet of papers beneath his words, confused.
July 20th, 1944
Hi darling,
Thank you for your letter. If you haven't received them by now, let me warn you that I told the Commando's where you were stationed, and they have been determined to write you. The stack of letters you will no doubt receive will either amuse or exasperate the post man stationed - but I hope you enjoy them all none the same. Your friends and teammates here at base miss you.
I'm sure you must also be wondering why I haven't written to you back personally, and why this letter is issued from the command post. In short, Hermione, I wish to be frank with you:
I love you. I miss you. And every day that I don't see you makes me realize further how much I want to start our future after the mess of this War. (This is not a proposal, I wouldn't do that to you- and frankly I fear what you would do to me if I even insinuated that.) This is only the chance to tell you that I want that future, you and I. It is my hope in the length of my days and the fortitude in my return home.
That being said, I hope it isn't too forwards if I ask you to sign as my beneficiary in the documents attached. Should something happen to me, you will receive everything I own (and don't) from the Army.
I understand now what you must feel like as your own soldier in France. Bucky sat me down the night I received your last letter, (I gotta confess, I did not take it well), and had to spell it out for me. I don't take your decision lightly, I know now that this is what you need. I might not like the idea of you sitting on the front lines, but I understand the call for justice. Whatever your conscious demands, let me only help you towards that end.
I would like to be able to know that if something (God forbid) should happen to me, like Bucky, you would be okay. Taken care of. (I'm sorry if this is a gruesome topic amid the blood you wash your hands of everyday.)
I look forwards to hearing from you again, my dear,
SR
Hermione put down the letter with blinking eyes, tears gathering at the edges of her lashes. Perhaps it was the honesty of his intention, or the empathetic comprehension of his words, but Hermione felt struck to her core. She knew she loved him, and that he loved her, but the future- the after in this war hadn't been a reality for Hermione in months.
What was she going to do after all of this? What would they do- Steve and Hermione? Get a home, have children?
Hermione swallowed. She had no idea. But Steve was also right. She flipped through the package of documents and signed the Change of Beneficiary with a flourish of a conjured quill. As the ink seeped into the paper, she embraced the reality that was becoming more clear.
Her guilt, her remorse in the Midnight Oil would never truly go away, but it was muted after several long months of constant battle-hardened work. Her love for Steve had only burned brighter during their time away from each other, and she was sure that her destiny, her future, laid with the man she'd come to adore.
The war would be coming to a close soon - her history had taught her that. And she could still do good. Perhaps as a surgeon's assistant, perhaps a weapons researcher, or perhaps something else entirely.
She was a Witch of Hogwarts, the greatest mind of her generation: Agent, scientist, friend, lover to those in this different world.
No matter the title or hats she wore, she would do better for this dimension- she had already vowed that, and she would do it with Steve. Together, they would fight, heal, and win to get home.
To create a family.
She had never had that before, in the last War, and no one in this world would take that away from her now. Not Hitler, not Nazis, not Hydra or Johann. They would win this, Steve, and Bucky, and Peggy, and Howard, and Dr. Swan - all of them. She was in thick of it and it was time to bring them all home.
Archive Of Our Own does have some of the images that I've included in this chapter on that site If you would like to take a peek :)
Also, thank you all so much for your wonderful comments!
~Missmusicluver