AN: Thank you to my two reviewers; Guest and IanAlphaAxel for letting me know your thoughts. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much.
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Chapter Fifty Eight: A Sight To Behold.
"Draco!" Hermione screamed, excruciating hot pain suddenly radiating across her mutilated eyes.
Crumbling to the ground, she cried out, as her hands pawed blindly at her face. Her eye sockets burned like lava; bubbling, scorching, and agonising. Hot liquid spilled across her fingers and palms, but she couldn't say if it was tears, blood, or fire in fluid form. Desperately, she tried to smother the pain with her hands.
Unadulterated screams erupted from her lips as she fell to her knees. The pain radiated through her corneas and into the depths of her mind, leaving deafening, blinding, all consuming pain. It circulated her skull with its penetrating thorns and bled back out of her eye sockets again. Even the pain of the cruciatus curse inflicted over and over again by Bellatrix Lestrange was nothing compared to this torture. Hermione hoped desperately that it would quickly overwhelm her until she passed out and escaped this misery. With her face pressed into the forest mud and dead twigs, she continued to scream and writhe, unaware of anything else. Not even the battle frozen only a few feet away.
Then there was silence.
Not a sound.
Not the sizzle of a spell whizzing through the air.
No longer did painful shrieks fill the leaves clinging onto their trees.
There was only silence and sharp breaths to be heard, with the exception of the echoes of the battle being waged up in the Hogwarts castle.
Not a movement or a noise.
Blood seeped onto the ground, dripping slowly off her cheeks, her nose, and her chin. Her fingernails scratched at her skin idly. In quick, impulsive movements her limbs jerked in the aftershock. The pain dulled and surrendered Hermione's eyes back to her, leaving a lingering ache. In choked, stuttering gasps her lungs inhaled and exhaled air, almost too exhausted to continue to support her life any longer.
An hour-a minute-a second passed. It felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye. Slowly, awareness came back to her, the sound of the wind brushing through the leaves and the squelch of churned mud being squished under her palms as she cautiously raised herself onto her hands and knees. Raising a shaking hand to her cheeks, she felt the blood beginning to dry there, as she sat back on her throbbing knees. Her eyelids twitched, once, twice, and then they did something they had not done in so long.
She blinked.
A look of delighted, incredulous wonderment crossed her face, bringing stunned joy into the erratic war zone around her. Her pale fingertips passed across her darkly blurred vision. Hermione had once tried on Harry's glasses and even those would not have cleared her distorted view. She could barely see, as if looking through a puddle on a riverbank. Flexing her hands, just to see the vague image waver before her eyes, she could feel the sticky mud and slick blood drying between her fingers and in the creases on her palm.
The sound of a heavy object thumping to the ground made her head turn suddenly, fear gripping her throat tight, as she felt along the floor frantically for her dropped wand. Squinting and straining her new eyesight, she could barely make out the lump of back on the ground near two other standing figures. She couldn't decipher the image before her. And then her memory returned; she remembered the sounds of battle and Malfoy telling her to stay hidden and safe. The rising sun caught the familiar white blond of Draco's hair, just as the other figure raised their hand with their wand poised.
With her heart leaping sharply in her chest, her own wand shot up. Draco dropped clumsily to the ground as a jet of green light struck him. The other figure loomed smugly over Draco's prone form. A spell crossed her lips without a thought, causing a stream of green sparks to erupt from the tip of her wand. They struck true and deadly. The figure flew backwards, tumbling through the air until it hit one of the towering, cold, grey stones surrounding their personal battlefield. She exhaled as the air grew still and silent once more.
Keeping a tight hold on her wand, she crawled army style across the short distance to where the three bodies lay unmoving. The pain that had been residing all these months in her legs was beginning to build once more, every move causing a heavy ache deep within her bones. Inch by inch she ploughed through the dewy grass, feeling it to stick to her clothes. By the time she reached the closest body, her legs were heavy with pain and her eyes watered under the restraint of trying not to cry.
However, soon the tears were not only from the pain, as she stretched her hand out to brush the limp blonde hair strewn across a cold, damp forehead. Her fingers trembled, a tear dripped from her cheek, and a whimper hummed against her lips. Everything was white. Her vision was filled with white; white skin, white blonde hair, and a white hand stroking an angular cheekbone. In her mind, all she could hear was white noise and her mind's eye was filled with nothing but white. Simple, deadly, white. Moving her lips, there was so much she wished she could say, but nothing came out but the soft empty shapes of words with no meaning. There was nothing more she could say and nothing more she could do.
Despair filled her lungs and she found herself sobbing out his name. Just once. It was sorrowful two syllable word. A word that had become so much more-so much hope-in such a short time. A name she had only heard once and never knew nor would know another with it. As unique and complexing as the individual it belonged to. And now she felt helpless. A new form of crushing agony split her heart.
Until…
Until she heard it…
So familiar and yet so strange...
"Granger?"