Twenty-Four
Day: 1449; Hour: 2
She finds him in silence in his bedroom, the lamplight dull on his desk, his back pressed into the corner as he sat on his bed. His door was cracked, and she wonders if he knew she would come. He doesn't look at her when the door clicks shut behind her, or when she stands there silently for too long. She doesn't know if he's thinking about Neville or if he's thinking about all of the friends he lost, on both sides of the war. She doubts the latter, because taking on that burden would leave anyone too deep to dig out.
She thinks she understands what he had meant about not wanting to tell her about his father. After the funeral, thinking of Neville, she knew she wouldn't tell those memories to someone who hated him. But as much as Hermione would never know more than the evil in Lucius Malfoy, she did know the power of death, and the sorrow it spread like disease.
"Do you think we will ever get back what we have lost?"
"No."
He looks down at the notebook in his lap, indecision marked by the ink spots on his fingers. He meets her eyes and she drops them to her toes, but she knows that he's still staring. She clears her throat, having to talk before it grows more uncomfortable -before she backs out.
"Can I just...maybe...lay on the other side of the bed for awhile?" Silence. She does not want to be alone tonight, and she might go so far as to say she can't be. "I mean, my bed is...is... I, well, nev-"
"Lay down, Granger."
Her heart gives an unwelcome jolt, and her breath hitches just the slightest bit. She had been rambling in her awkwardness, and would have regretted asking had the uncomfortable air not at least put a rest to her thoughts for a bit. She had been backing out when he responded, and if she didn't want it so badly, she still would. If it had been that uncomfortable just waiting for an answer, the event itself would be drowning in terrible.
But she had already asked, and he has now agreed. Besides, she does need this, or else she never would have found the courage to ask in the first place. Neville, and her guilt and worry over Lavender, and then it was everything. It was everything to the point she might be losing her mind a little. She could have gone to Justin perhaps, but she didn't think about it. She has grown too used to going to Draco. Justin wouldn't have been the same.
She walks around the bed and lays down, tense and staring at the ceiling. He knocks his pen against his notebook a couple times, and she blushes at the thought that he might be staring at her in all her awkward glory. There wasn't much of a reason for her to feel such a way anymore, but they had only lain in bed together after sex. Sex isn't what she came for, though she would give it to him if he wanted. She just wanted to...well, lay there. If she is honest with herself she would like to put her head on his chest maybe, and lose herself in the blankets perhaps, but she can settle sometimes.
"Did you take the potions?"
"Yes." Which is the reason she can lay on her back at the moment, since the pain potions made sure she couldn't feel a thing. She really doesn't understand why he hates them so much.
"Where's the balm?"
"Justin put it on for me."
He grunts, maybe because she needs to take her shirt off for someone to put it on her back and shoulder blade. She has, without a doubt, seen Draco a little possessive and jealous before. She still likes it. She almost tells him that Justin was a perfect gentleman, and that she views him like a little brother, but she doesn't know how he will react to that. It might overstep a boundary - him knowing he was jealous, and him knowing she knew he was jealous. She never knows what's crossing the line with him, so she keeps it to herself, like she does with a lot of things.
"You're closest."
"What?" She looks over at him as he pushes himself down the bed, tossing the notebook to the floor. She is distracted when he takes his shirt off, shoving his pants to his ankles and kicking them off. She has never seen him undress without real intentions. She thinks it's kind of sad that the simple things are still new to her.
"You're closest to the light."
Now she remembers saying it to him about things like turning the channel on the television when there was no remote, unlocking and opening the door of a meeting room when someone knocked, getting snacks from the kitchen,
"You never do it when you're closest."
"Point?" He stretches, palms pressed against the wall, muscles contracting and hips moving. She almost rethinks the whole sex thing.
"That is my point."
"Weak. I hope you can sleep with the light on th-"
"I can just fine. It's you who has to board up the windows when it's light out because you need it so dark."
He grabs her then, an odd look on his face like he's trying to be sure about this when he's not. He pulls her up against him and presses his face into her hair and the bed. He exhales against her neck, and she pretends she doesn't press closer at the feeling. "Pitch black."
She doesn't speak, no words within her head, but there is something warm at the pit of her stomach where the hollow pang had been. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and cradles his head like a child, closing her eyes against the light and falling into him to block the thoughts. Perhaps it should have been awkward. It really should have been. It wasn't.
Day: 1448; Hour: 8
Margarete smiles, sweeps her hair behind her shoulder, and brushes her finger across Draco's knuckles. Hermione glares for so long that her cereal overfills the bowl, skittering across the counter and the floor.
Day: 1449: Hour: 13
"Is that necessary?"
"Yes," Hermione snaps, adding tape to the side of the note.
"Someone might find it suspicious."
"No one comes here. I haven't been to this house once before this - hardly anyone has." Hermione knows she's being rather rude to the woman, but Margarete seems to be ignoring it anyway.
"This place was overtaken by rats and all the cabinets were filled with rotten food when we got here. It's why we picked the place." Justin explains more thoroughly.
"But if someone does show up you're going to be letting them know that we're the ones who are here."
"No one will show up," Hermione bites out the words, sending the woman a glare for her continuous need to judge Hermione's choices. Fine, choice, but really.
"I don't know. Did you ask Draco?" Hermione's fingers pause on their journey along the tape, and she can feel her jaw clench. "I'm going to ask him, just to be sure that-"
"There's no need for you to ask Draco, because I'm leaving the note up-" Hermione begins, slowly turning toward Margarete in a way that most know as danger, danger, danger.
"Malfoy doesn't make the decisions here. Hermione wants to leave a note to Harold in case he shows up, and that's what she will do. Period." Seamus, for once, is on her side.
Hermione comes very close to throwing her shoe at the woman when she walks by the open door to Draco's bedroom not five minutes later, finding Margarete sitting beside him on the bed and whispering. Draco looks up at her but she avoids his gaze, walking away quickly and glaring at the air.
Day: 1449; Hour: 16
They find four bodies and a Phoenix locked in what used to be a freezer. Hermione isn't sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that the freezer wasn't turned on - the Phoenix is alive, but the moment she and Justin open the door, they both vomit. She isn't sure how long the corpses have been rotting, but the stench is so thick she feels sure she will never get it off her skin.
Wrapping an arm around the woman's shoulders, shaking against her arm, Hermione is reminded of Lavender with stark clarity. She breathes in too deeply and gags, rotting flesh, urine, and feces sitting stagnant in her lungs. She keeps it down though, pulling the cap of the marker off with her teeth. She writes P E:CP D:?, for Prisoner Exposed:Corpses Days:Unknown. It is standard to send them to hospital with such information, and Hermione Portkeys the woman out when Justin returns.
"I got the tablecloths - I couldn't find anything else." His voice is mumbled from the arm over his mouth, and Hermione rushes out and away from the freezer to gulp in relatively clean air.
She is glad she hadn't eaten before she left; gagging again at the trail of feces she leaves from her boots. "Oh, God."
Justin knows enough to have looked away, swallowing hard and tossing her a pair of dish-washing gloves. "I don't know if I can do this."
"We have to. Just don't let anything on your skin and don't breathe in. Corpses are cesspools of bacteria."
Justin nods, turning his head away from the sight in front of them. Hermione had only been able to glance when they first opened the door, and that had been enough for her to know they were dead. Bodies bloated, skin rotting, dead. "One at a time? You take one side I take the other, tuck the thing around them, put the Portkey...wherever on them?"
"Yeah, yeah," Hermione agrees, but neither of them move.
"Shit, I can't do this."
"It's a matter of respect, not just for the body but the healers. We also can't send bodies this decomposed unwrapped because-"
"I know, I know. Count of three?" Justin asks, and she grabs the other side of the tablecloth, both of them breathing in deep before running into the room.
They're gasping for breath after the second when she hears retching behind her; Draco is vomiting into the sink, Margarete on her shoes, and Seamus's back disappears around the corner. Hermione watches Draco's shoulders heave for a moment, realizing that it's the first time she has ever seen him react to any death he sees.
There wasn't much in the way of avoiding the natural reaction to the stench though. It is blistering out in the room, filling up the cavities of air with a hot, rotting odor more vile than she can stand. Justin's eyes are pleading for them to finish, so she grabs her side of the cloth again, doing a strange cough/gasp and holding in the oxygen as they run back in.
The rats scatter again, and she avoids looking at the body as much as possible, laying the cloth over it and quickly tucking it from the ankle to the temple. The body squishes in some places and feels like a plastic ball of air in others, but she tries to ignore the feeling, running back out of the freezer.
"I would help, but you guys seem to have a good system going." Margarete ushers from the hall.
"Where are the Portkeys?" Draco's face is twisted up into a grimace but he's still in the room, doing far more than the worthless sack of an Auror named Margarete. Hermione officially does not like the woman.
"Pocket," Hermione pops her hip in his direction, not daring to look at her gloves and what might be on them.
Draco doesn't either, cramming four fingers into her pocket to pull out the bags of Portkeys. "Which one is for the hospital?"
"The first one you pulled out." The ones they need the most, the ones they need the most.
She waits for him to put the others bags back in her pocket but he doesn't, shoving them in his own and jerking his chin toward the freezer. "Do the last one."
The three of them suck in a breath and go in at the same time. The second Justin and Hermione stand from the last body, Draco is bending past her to lay the ribbon across the dead man's forehead, careful not to touch the skin. They break for the hallway this time, slamming the door shut on the freezer on their way out. Hermione is already ripping one glove off before she even breathes in again.
"It's not coming off." Justin, panicked at her side. Hermione finds herself with the same problem, the nervous sweat on her palms sticking the rubber to her skin.
"Relax. I saw a knife when I was washing my mouth out." Margarete squeezes Justin's shoulder and Hermione stops slapping and scraping her wrist against the frame of the door.
"A knife? You're not cutting this off, that-"
Hermione has a free hand, and there is no way she was trusting Margarete with a knife near her, so she gets it herself. Justin follows, and they cut the rubber from the wrist to the tip of their index fingers, spearing the glove and using pressure on the knife to propel it off their hands.
Draco slams the door firmly behind them, but the smell has lingered out in the hall. Hermione knows it's going to take a lot more than leaving this place to ever get the burn removed from her nostrils, and when she showers she might have to scrub two or three layers of skin off. She is also trying not to think of the bodies as more than corpses, because she knows if she thinks of how they were people once it will lead to thoughts that might send her to St. Mungo's herself.
"That was disgusting." Margarete scrunches her nose.
"You don't even know." Hermione's voice might sound harsh, but she doesn't care.
"We found something upstairs. Recently used dishes, clothes that didn't have the sitting-for-three-days smell in the washer, and a newspaper from yesterday." Seamus holds up the paper, tapping it against the wall with a smirk.
"So it's still occupied."
"Yup. What are we going to do?"
Hermione looks over at Draco to find him looking back at her. "Wait to see if they come back home?"
They waited out the night. No one sleeps. No one comes.
Day: 1450; Hour: 5
Rough, dotted, a bump that moves against her fingers. A soft, hollowed spot, two ridges, course hair, nipples that harden and bump under her palms. A heartbeat speeding up, the ridges of ribs, skin giving way over muscles that contract to mark her exploration, tendons that pull and bunch, the dip of a bellybutton. Hermione makes sure her skin remembers the feeling, muscle memory of the shape of him.
The roughness of new scars, the raised smoothness of old ones, his stomach that caves under her touch, the lines of his pelvic. These erase, for now, the memory of the bodies in the freezer. Another patch of course hair, the groan that rumbles under her cheek as she teases, half-circles her touch to the softness of his inner thighs. These take away her worries.
The hands, alternating rough and smooth skin, that grasp her arms and pull her up. Her skin pressed to his, the texture of his hair, the soft determination of his lips on her neck, jaw, ear, her cheek. His arms around her, muscles bunching for a tighter squeeze, his questing fingers sliding down her back. His breath on her ear, his mouth hot and wet on hers. These make her forget herself.
Day: 1450; Hour: 9
It wouldn't be cheating, not really, if Draco slept with Margarete. There are no rules that keep either one from doing it, and though she knows Draco doesn't currently sleep with anyone else, he still could if he wanted to. There is no reason for him not to, and Hermione isn't even sure if she's an adequate enough lover to keep him to herself. She thinks she is, judging by his reactions, by the fact that he always came back, but she wasn't sure.
He could go and sleep with anyone, any time. Hermione hates even the idea of it, and she hates it enough to treat Margarete like the woman might have sprung up from a pile of feces and constantly smells like it. There is this jealous anger toward her that intensifies whenever Margarete even looks at him too long. He's too beautiful. She should have started this with an ugly man, she thinks, but she also knows that it probably wouldn't have happened had it been anyone else but him.
Hermione doesn't think she has any real right to feel jealous, but it makes her feel better to know Draco gets jealous himself. Since the beginning, when he refused to kiss her if she was with anyone else. Then that rage that had taken over him when he thought she and Harold were warded up in her bedroom in the middle of the night. Neither one of them might have a right to feel such a way, but it didn't mean that it stopped them.
She doesn't know if she could keep sleeping with him if he did sleep with Margarete. At the thought of stopping, the ugly burn of jealousy turned to something else that made her sick to her stomach. But she really doesn't know if she could still look at him the same, knowing other women could see him like she does. It makes her feel angry and vicious, and these are dangerous because it makes her not feel like herself. Hermione had only-child-complex - that was all. She just doesn't know how to share, and that's really all it's about.
But he knows she's jealous, because she didn't even think to hide it. She simply reacted in the negative to nearly everything Margarete said or did, and Draco caught her glaring too often not to know. He never said anything, never reacted - he would just look at her. Until that morning.
They had made it a habit to leave any marks where they could be hidden by clothes, if they were going to leave any marks at all. Hermione blames the haze of her lust, and fine, the rush of her possessiveness, for the mark she left on his neck the night before. It is bold and red against his skin - her mouth had made sure it would stay - and his fingers are pressed against it when he walks out of the bathroom. He looks at her with an eyebrow raised, his shirt forgotten in his other hand.
"Oops." She was hoping her innocent smile was working but it didn't, judging by the way he smirks at her.
They have a potion in the medicine cabinet that would get rid of it in two minutes, and she knows that he knows it. He pulls his shirt on instead and walks over to her, grabbing her hand to pull her off the bed. His hands slide into her hair, pulling it back on her head, and she thinks he's going to kiss her until his lips go to her neck.
She moans into his shoulder when he sucks the skin into his mouth, hard. He bites down, sucks, and her hands wrinkle his shirt as she closes her eyes. He laves the spot with his tongue when he's done, his mouth leaving a wet trail up to her ear. "Primitive, Granger."
Day: 1450; Hour: 10
Seamus glares at her neck, Margarete stares, and Draco smirks when he catches her blushing. Justin is far too occupied complaining about his burnt pancakes to notice anything. Hermione wonders if Draco is testing her, if there is something she's supposed to get through his actions. If so, she doesn't know what it is.
Day: 1450; Hour: 15
My dearest Son. Hermione blinks, reads it again, and stares some more. She looks up at the date, noting the letter was written one month and three days ago. A flourish of perfect script, wide circles, a female's hand. She almost begins to read but slams the papers down on top of it instead, not daring to let curiosity win.
Narcissa, his mother. Hermione had thought she was dead. "You might shag me, but that doesn't grant you permission to my privacy."
Hermione closes her eyes, mouths a curse that just comes out on a breath. He sounds furious, and she knows that he knows what she found, or he wouldn't care as much. Granted, Draco has always been profoundly private, but if it had only been a stack of plans he wouldn't be so angry. Now, it is a breach of trust. How long had he been standing there? Had he been waiting to see if she read it?
"I was looking for plans, Draco, I swear." Hermione turns toward him, hands out in surrender.
"And you couldn't wait the five minutes it took for me to be done showering?" His body is stone still, and he's closed the door, which can't be good.
"I really didn't think it would matter."
"It wouldn't matter? To come into my bedroom, to go through my things?"
"Draco, it's a stack of old plans and building maps!"
"And the new plans would be at the bottom of those, would it?" he yells, the angry vein burning red, his knuckles white in their fists.
"I didn't know! How many times have I been in your bedroom with the opportunity to snoop through your things while you were sleeping, or in the shower, or on a mission? And I never have! I respect your privacy, it wasn't about that!" Because she needed this to not be the end of the trust he has given her, the trust she hadn't even really known she had until now.
It was such a battle for them to get to this point. This long, hard fight of steps forward and back, and she couldn't have this be a jump back to the beginning. She refuses to give up so much ground because an accidental find.
"Bullshit. Get out."
"What?"
"Get. Out."
"Draco, that isn't bullshit, if you think about this for a second-"
"I am going to-"
"It's not like I'm going to tell anyone! Have I ever told anyone anything that-"
"Damn right you're not going to tell anyone. You won't have to worry about your inadequacy in battle, Granger, I'll fucking kill you myself."
She stares at him, blinks, and it hurts. It hurts even though she knows he is only saying it because he is so livid, and not because he means it. She thinks, at least. But he's marching up to her, grabbing her arm, and her back hits the wall too hard. She cries out at the pain from the wounds on her back, but he just keeps staring, his face hot and red in front of her.
"Swear to God."
"Draco-"
"Swear. To. God. I have worked far too long and far too hard for my mother to die like the rest of them, do you understand?" She takes too long to answer and he pulls her up from the wall, maybe to throw her back again, but she slaps him across his head before he does anything else.
"Don't you dare. You can try to hurt me as much as you want, Draco Malfoy, and I still won't agree to anything I wouldn't agree to in the first place." She shoves him hard, but he hardly moves. "I'm sorry you don't trust me enough to know I didn't do this on purpose, and that I won't tell a soul about it. But you're hurting me-"
He lets go of her suddenly, stepping back like it took her saying it for him to realize. His hands hover over her shoulders and clench before dropping to his sides. She wonders if he was so angry that he really didn't notice. It is the possibility of his mother's death, at least in his eyes. She might have grown angry and determined enough to not notice either.
But still... "If you ever do that to me again, I will make sure there's no one left to protect your mother, Draco. Swear. To. God."
She practically marches out of the room. He lets her.
Day: 1450; Hour: 20
There are libraries full of perfect quotes; piles of literature that people read and recite from because it speaks the truth at the heart, no matter how dark, ugly, or beautiful that truth might be. They take the complexity of the human condition and phrase it into elegant lines that take on masterful significance.
Hermione has read many of these books. She has spoken many of these quotes. But for all her intelligence, her long hours of study, the parts of her life given to reading, she finds herself lacking in this moment. The very sky itself seemed to set on fire, and the moment it blazes the world to light and heat scorches her face:
"Oh, shit." That is all those piles of literature add up to in that moment.
The wizard stands far enough away from her that she can just make out the hood and his mask, his figure bent over. She throws up a blocking spell that seems to roar itself through her body and out of her wand, just as the man jerks upward from his bow and whips his wand in an arc around him. The storm of flames follows his direction, searing across the blue shimmer of the protective shield in front of her. She closes her eyes, grinds her teeth, forcing that power she learned was magic out into her wand.
The force of the wizard's spell is like a physical impact against her, and she has to dig her feet for purchase and ignore the sudden dead-weight feeling of her arm. She focuses her magic, shoving it through her wand, yelling her defiance through her teeth. Her muscles burn with the fury of having had enough, but she refuses, knowing what giving up means. Then it's over, the power of his magic blasting itself against her own suddenly gone.
She opens her eyes as he Apparates away, just in time to miss a jet of green. The fire he created has now engulfed the large building they had came to search, and her heart starts beating again, obnoxious pounds of fear.
"I had to step outside your barrier to get a shot at him, so I waited until the fire cleared us. Got away though." Justin breathes, and when he grabs her shoulder she notices that she is trembling from the aftershocks of using so much magic.
"He could have came back anywhere on the property." She hurriedly looks behind them.
"No, he knows it's over. Two against one, he would be sure to die. There's nothing in the building he can save now, obviously. He probably thinks we're here with the Order anyway, which means backup will be coming. He's outnumbered."
"They don't always do things that make sense," she snaps, but she doesn't mean to. "Are any of them in there?"
"One of them sent up the evacuation sparks the moment the sky lit up. Didn't you see?"
"I was a little occupied," she huffs, and thanks her adrenaline as the only thing carrying her. She is surprised she hasn't passed out with the amount of energy the protection spell robbed her of.
"Shit," Justin whispers, and she notices the green sparks close to the burning building. Orange for cleared, blue for evacuate, red for medical aid, purple for next plan, and green for backup.
They take off in a sprint toward the lights; already sweating from the run and the heat of the fire by the time they find Draco and Seamus. Hermione almost falls face first when she sees who they are fighting: Aurors. Three of them, dressed in standard issue Auror uniforms, and one she recognizes from a few missions.
Draco's wand jerks back and forth, and she can see chunks of wall and bricks flying from the building and in front of the Killing Curse, following the path of his wand. Seamus is yelling stunning spells that stop working after no more than five seconds. A pair of feet is showing from the lining of the trees, and Hermione is betting they belong to Margarete.
Seamus is sitting on the ground, and it takes the back of his blood-soaked shirt to know his red hair is darker than it should be. He sways gently, his spells sometimes missing. Draco's arm is hanging oddly, coated with blood, he's shooting from the wrong hand, and there is an odd bump in his shirt where is ribs are.
Justin begins firing off stunning spells and Hermione turns away from them and bolts, back across the front of the building and to the other side. There is only one spell that could cause Aurors to attack their own and move in such jolting, puppet fashion - Hermione knows they will either have to kill the Aurors to save their own lives, or kill the source.
She isn't really thinking; her mind focused with a steady determination that she acknowledges, distantly, is likely to get her killed. But all she can see is the dizzy, almost not-there look on Seamus's face, the fear turned vicious with the shadows of the fire on Justin's, and Draco. Draco's shoulder propped up against the bark of a tree, the mud under his feet causing him to run in place sideways just to keep his feet from sliding out from under him. Mostly, the defeated slump to his shoulders, the tremble in his hand that let her know he was done.
Draco never went into a single mission with the hope of getting out, but he always gave it everything to ensure he did. She has never seen him without that steadfast determination, but some time between when he took off into the building and when she and Justin arrived, Draco had lost that. It was as if he knew, without a doubt, they would be sure to die here. It terrified her to see that, and almost convinced her it was true. She trusted him more than she could say, and if he knew it was a lost cause, it was.
But Hermione Ganger did not give up. Not through all of Hogwarts, not through this whole war. She doesn't know how, because she is brave, she is a fighter. She might be Harry Potter and Ron Weasley's best friend and Draco Malfoy's lover, but what came first, what always comes first, is that she is Hermione Granger.
Her feet skid out in the mud and she has to catch herself on the ground, the fire so hot it heats the mud that scorches her hands, her feet when it engulfs her shoes and leaks in. The impact of her hands sends sparks of mud fire against her face, and she scrambles forward until her feet hit grass traction and she's off again. The air is thick to breathe in, smoke and heat, and she chokes back her cough as she rounds the building.
She does not scream at the cracking in her leg as she hits her knees. In a very distant thought she knows that her eyes have gone wide and burn with smoke, and that her jaw has dropped in pain. There is hardly any time to think of that though, as a brutal pain sends shock waves through her leg and a weight flings itself on top of her. It knocks her back into the ground and she blinks at the snarling face above her as a hand tightens at her throat.
Hermione attempts to point her wand at the young girl, but finds her arm weighed down by another hand on her wrist. The girl couldn't be any older than fourteen, but her eyes are screaming murder and her teeth are bared to prove her anger. Don't make me kill you, Hermione pleads as the girl slides her hand up Hermione's in a reach for the wand.
Hermione punches her, straight on and into the nose, feeling it crack against her knuckles. The girl wails, leaving Hermione's throat for her nose on instinct. Hermione jerks her wand hand away from the distracted girl, slamming her arm into the girl's neck and throwing her body up at the same time, rolling them. Hermione tries to scramble to her feet but just falls back on her bum as the pain shoots up her leg, the girl scratching skin off her arm and pulling out a chunk of Hermione's hair.
"Dad-!" The girl begins to scream, and Hermione stuns her.
She hears the crunch of feet running over rocks and Hermione curses, not knowing how many are coming. She needs a distraction - she needs something that will give her time. Survival, and then she's aiming her wand at the girl again and casting another Unforgivable she didn't know if she could forgive herself for. Get up. Hermione watches as she does, her heart hammering and her hand shaking in its aim, because she already knows what she's about to do. Start crying. Now run toward the footsteps, hug the person they belong to.
Hermione clenches her teeth so hard she fears they might actually give under the pressure, crumble in her mouth or pop out from her gums. The fear is nothing compared to the break in her leg, the shovel that was her downfall lying at her side. She staggers to her feet anyway, her arms whirling to catch balance. Run to him.
The man turns the corner before the girl makes it there, but he's too distracted by the sight of his crying daughter running toward him to look at her. It is a mistake that costs him his life as Hermione breaks the Imperius Curse and casts the Killing Curse. She struggles with her breath, the oxygen not wanting to feed her lungs, and it takes until the daughter is halfway back to her before Hermione can stun her again. Even the fire that has left her clothes soaked in sweat, her skin slick, and her hair dripping-wet, cannot kill the coldness inside her now.
Binding the girl, Hermione hops closer to the edge of the building. Even with bending her leg up, every jolt of her body sends a fresh wave of pain through her. She is exhausted with her spell work, the magic feeling gone from her body, but she can distantly hear Justin's screaming and knows there must be more Death Eaters behind the house.
Her hop lands her in thick mud and slides back. On instinct, her other foot drops to catch herself and she clamps her mouth shut on her scream. It's still loud, shrieking out of her throat and tears rush out from a blend of pain, and the sweat and smoke coating them. She bites her lips and breathes out little bursts of air from her nostrils, rolling over to cradle her leg.
"Oh, God. Oh, my God." She thinks maybe she can't do this after all, and she desperately wants to give in to the sweeping exhaustion.
But she knows the fire will eat her alive, that her friends will die, and so she rolls back over and crawls with one knee and two elbows. The fire feels as if it will set her on fire, like it's tearing her skin off in a heat she has never felt before. She tries to wipe the sweat from her eyes and forehead, but mud just smears all over her face instead. The girl begins screaming behind her.
She's gasping for breath now, and if the roar from the building wasn't so loud she would have been found out a long time ago. She spots three cloaks in the back yard, and one of the masks turn toward her just as she yells the Killing Curse again. The two others look in her direction and she shoves herself backward, rolling closer to the fire and hopefully out of their aim. She yells through her teeth and has to look down at her body to make sure she isn't on fire like it feels. She shoves herself forward again, wand aimed, to find the other two Death Eaters on the ground.
Hermione chokes and rolls onto her back, thrusting her wand up to the sky and red sparks explode like fireworks above her, again, again, and again. It's an Auror who finds her and she levels her wand at him before he raises his arms.
"They're dead, I'm a F. M." It is their code in case such a thing happened - Free Man. No Death Eater would know it to have them speak it.
Hermione drops her wand and feels the weightlessness of a levitating spell. "There's a girl bound back there-"
"We'll bring her in. Do you have Portkeys like that other guy on your team?"
"Yes - what's my team stats?" Hermione dug out the bag of Portkeys, frantic for information on her friends as the Auror cast a cooling charm on her.
"They're all alive. Malfoy, Ust, and the redhead are unconscious and sent to Mungo's. The other-" Hermione's relief is like a tidal wave inside of her, but there is one thing to take care of before she loses it to unconsciousness as well.
"I'm right here, right here." Justin laid a hand on her forehead and jerks it back, his face going pale.
"Obliviate that girl, Justin. She attacked me, I bound her, that was all."
"I won't forget!"
"Hermione, don't worry-"
"Obliviate her!" Hermione screams, then coughs over the drag in her throat.
"I'll never fucking forget what-" The rest of the girl's screams become lost in her sobbing.
"Okay. It's done." Justin nods, because children should never watch their parents die. Because there are some things war shouldn't take no matter what side you're on.
Hermione feels the call to sleep as she wraps her hand around a Portkey and lets her arm drop over her chest. The black edges in, the pull at her naval begins, and she is lost in a world of black before the pull even grows stronger.