Twenty-Seven
Day: 1456; Hour: 20
"Something is wrong."
"What is?" Angelina whispers, though they have already cleared the cabin.
"I don't know," Harry mutters, his eyes tracking something only he can see in the light of their wands. "There's dust all over the place."
"I doubt they clean without their servants to do it for them." Seamus pokes at an old cloth on the table, covered in dust with black splotches of stains.
"No, I think you're right, Harry. They wouldn't be using magic for fear we could trace them in the Muggle world - so where are their light bulbs?" Hermione asks, the stream of light from her wand trained at the empty socket above their heads.
"Maybe they don't get electricity out here. Torches, candles-" Fitz starts.
"Then where are the torches and the candles? There is one mattress in all the rooms, and a chair in here. It's practically empty." Harry puts his light out suddenly. "Put out your wands."
"Harry-" Ginny starts.
"This place is a setup."
"There's no one here though-" Simon starts.
"Shut up," Hermione whispers, putting out her wand as well. "Sorry."
She didn't mean to snap at him, but the bad feeling that had started tingling at the bottom of her spine has now become The Very Bad Feeling. Fear raised the hair along her arms, it sent her hearing to every squeak of the house, it waited anxiously for the others to plunge them into darkness. Simon is the last to extinguish his light, and it takes her eyes a couple seconds to adjust to the lighter shade of darkness out the window. A rush of panic hits the room, and whispers climb one another to form too much sound.
"Where's the map?"
"Can't see it without light."
"Find our location."
"No one is in here."
"Outside? We're surrounded by woods."
"Easy enough for them to hide."
"Where are the exits?"
"To wait, you mean."
"Do we...what are we doing?"
"Harry?"
"Portkey out?'
"Call for backup."
"We don't retreat."
"They won't know the plan."
"They will Apparate right in."
"We don't know the plan."
"We have a plan?"
"They can't Apparate, they have never been here."
"Open for attack."
"Harry?"
"Be quiet," Harry hisses, and she can hear the denim of his jeans as he moves.
"We can't stand here like fools. If they are waiting they would have seen the lights go out and they will know we're on to them." Fitz whispers this harshly, but Hermione had known before this that the man didn't agree with putting Harry in charge. She would like to tell him that Harry killed what was possibly the most powerful wizard alive, after Dumbledore's death. She would like to ask Fitz if he knew what that meant, what that made Harry now.
"They would have been waiting in here-" Harry tries.
"So you've got us all freaked out over nothing?" Seamus says this in a way that reminds her too much of Draco. The redhead would probably strangle her if she said this out loud.
"I mean they are on their way if they aren't here already!" Harry snaps.
"So we take the exits? Windows, doors, we-" Hermione cuts herself off when someone brushes against her arm. Footsteps, quick and decisive.
"No, they will set the whole thing on fire. We're going to have to round the house- Who is that?" Harry's voice became closer, and that is how she knows it's him that bangs shoulders with her as he runs by.
Hermione can see a flash of red in the moonlight as Ginny opens the front door, and then the orange of Harry's Phoenix band as he grabs her. A blue ball of magic tears across the darkness outside the window, lighting up Harry and Ginny as he kicks the door shut and slams both of them to the ground. The curse shatters the entire door, chunks and splinters of wood blowing into and over the couple on the floor.
"Shit!" someone screams behind her, but her adrenaline has already clogged her ears too much for her to distinguish the voice. She sprints toward the door, but Harry has already rolled the two of them out of the doorway before she's halfway there. The Killing Curse colors them all green before tearing a hole through the wall.
"Everyone out!" Harry screams, jumping to his feet. "Fitz, take the back, Seamus and Angelina, West. Hermione, Simon, East. Find the closest exit there, circle the house!"
Hermione turns for the right of the house as Harry pulls the coin out of his pocket. She can feel the heat roar to life in her packet as she throws open a window in the living room. She pushes herself up, Simon's hands slamming into the back of her thighs hard enough for her knees to hit the wall as he shoves her out the window. She hits the ground, her breath leaving with a grunt as a curse flies over her and shatters the glass. It rains down on top of her as she rolls to her feet, shards slicing her palm, unaware if Simon is alive until he drops down next to her.
They are completely exposed. The Death Eaters blend into the woods around them, having a clear sight to them while remaining hidden. There is no cover, no protection, and Hermione feels like she might have just started running through a land mine - she might be okay for a couple of seconds, but something is going to blow her to pieces any moment now.
Disillusionment charms were useless, considering that the Death Eaters already knew where they were and would see them through it. She wishes she still had a Safe Kit. A small pack that contained some choice potions, including one that created invisibility for one minute and twenty-two seconds. But then the war started costing too much money, and Safe Kits were phased out after two months to compensate for the scarcity of hospital beds, potions, food, or even parchment. Aurors were also paid. Phoenixes died pro bono.
Hermione throws a blocking spell up as a yellow stream of light darts at them. The force of it hitting the shield sends her and Simon smashing back into the side of the house. "I thought Lupin said they would cast to kill?"
"They know they have us trapped. They want to play with us," Hermione rushes out. Simon stands stunned as she yells the Killing Curse, her wand aimed in the direction the spell had come from. "We're the trapped ones - we're casting to kill."
Simon still only yells out stunning and binding spells, and his wand shakes the entire time. Hermione does not blame him, despite that it is both their lives, because she remembers and she remembers too well. She would do it for the both of them, because Simon didn't have to remember. He didn't have to know what it felt like at all.
A ball of purple hits the house behind her almost an arms length from her shoulder. She mutters her thanks on her breath, because judging by the shot at least one of the Death Eaters is inexperienced. "Simon, I need you to Lumos them-"
She catches a flash of light from the corner of her eye just as Simon screams out. He hits his knees, but she doesn't have time to look over, throwing up another block as two ink-black spells come toward them. She almost misses them in the night, and if she still thought about such things in a duel, she would know that they would have hit had she moved a second later.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine," and she knows he's tearing the words out through clenched teeth.
She sends out a string of spells meant to bind or injure them if they hit, but all she hears are trees cracking or falling, and she knows she's not hitting any of the Death Eaters. She tries desperately to remember what side of the woods they had came out of when they first arrived, because she can rationalize forgiving herself for killing the enemy, but she could never forgive herself if she killed an ally. Then, through the panic-driven fog of her memory comes something else. Hermione gasps as she remembers, yanking Simon's shirt as the Killing Curse flashes by so close to him it ruffles his hair.
He vomits under her arm as she casts the charm, grabbing his arm as he stumbles to his feet and running from the line of green blasts that follow them, just missing by fingers or hair width. Her heart is hammering out that tortured, mad beat that will always remind her of this war, and Simon throws them both to the ground when she trips over her feet.
"Don't breathe," and the compact sound of his voice suggests he's not. "Smoke."
"I put it there, breathe!" Hermione whispers, and realizes that she sounds too scared. She pushes herself up but remains crouching, looking at the thick dark grey smoke all around them.
"What?"
"Sh. They can't see us now, they are going to have to come out. Don't speak, just listen. Be quick." Hermione whispers this so low that she's not even sure if he can hear her.
She knows she has caused a situation she always hated to find herself in. In those, the smoke was there from so many spells used in the thickness of a big battle. Now she had created it herself, along with the inability to know if the sounds are friend or foe. With Simon shaking against her arm, she can remember a fear more wild in her than the one now, and had it been a different situation she might have found herself apologetic.
The Killing Curse jets through the smoke and into the house, far from where they are now. Hermione yells it back, her hand white-knuckled on her wand, and her grip remains tight even after the clunk of a body falling. She can't look at Simon, afraid of the accusation she might find in his eyes, the same look she had given Draco years ago. She grabs him instead but he yanks his arm away, both of them running to dodge the spells that come soaring at them. Both of them cast Stunning spells in the right directions.
She can hear the rocks and twigs under their feet, but doesn't know if anyone else can. There are screams coming from all around the house, and then the popping of a flare, though she can't see through the smoke to know the color. Another begins popping somewhere else, and Hermione grunts loudly as she runs into something hard. A tree, judging by the bark that scratches her forehead. The collision brings her down, rocks crunching under her knees.
Simon tries to grab her but pulls back, letting out a low whine. Hermione just pulls a foot under her when something collides with the tree in front of her. She can feel chips of wood fly into her and branches smacking against branches as the top half of the tree begins to fall. She hurries to her feet, unaware of which way it's coming down, when something tears itself into her side.
Perhaps there were fighters out there who never made a sound. In the face of pain they bit it back, detached themselves, and stayed silent because silence meant they didn't give away their location. Hermione is not one of these fighters, and so she screams, jerking sideways as if she were yanking herself away from a hot burner. Because it is hot, it's fire hot, and it feels like it's tearing its way through all that precious, sensitive tissue that made up her insides. Her shoulder slams into the tree as she cradles her side, clenching her lips together so her scream turns into a whine. Simon is firing off Binding spells, his fingers wrapping themselves in her shirt as he jerks her away this time.
"Hermione?" Someone yells her name from far away, a woman's voice, high with fear. Green lights slice through in that direction and Hermione raises her wand toward one of the sources, but she coughs on her own spit when she tries to speak.
She doesn't know who would be stupid enough to call out, but she is praying they aren't dead from the choice. Simon continues yanking her further out of the world of grey until the smoke begins to thin. "Alright?"
Hermione's fear has turned to anger, which she grabs and cradles. Emotions create mistakes in a fight, but she had never learned to shut them out. Fear is common for her, but it made a person weaker. Anger makes her stronger, though reckless, but Hermione has had enough. "Get ready."
She ends the charm for the smoke, dropping her hand from her side and keeping her wand raised to the area in front of them. The moment she even thinks she can make out darker shapes, she begins hurling out Stunning spells, and Simon follows the example. Her aim is shaky from the pain, but this is something Hermione has learned to control. She will not miss, because if she can see them, they can see her.
She casts over a dozen times, and Simon as well, but when the smoke has diminished to a light fog, there are only three bodies on the ground. Two are Death Eaters, the other marked by Ginny's long red hair. Ginny must have heard her scream, and Hermione starts forward with wide-eyes, remembering the Killing Curses that had chased the voice. Her leg locks though and she falls to her knee with a whimper. The top of her leg feels numb, and when she forces it to move despite the protesting muscles, pain seizes her whole body.
She pushes herself up and sits, using her arms to position her body toward the house, gaining a clear view to the left and the right. She could only hope no one else was going to show up from the woods. "Bind the-"
"They're dead."
"What?"
"Weasley is fine," he rushes, and revives her from the Stunning spell, looking at Hermione as if she might attack him. "The Death Eaters."
"Hermione! Hermione, are you alright?" Ginny gasps, rolling to her feet and running toward her.
"Gin, were you and Harry clear?" Hermione is speaking through her teeth, her insides raw.
"Yes, we were fine. Backup showed, there are Death Eaters at the other side of the house but-"
"We should go over there." She doesn't know if she can move.
"Hermione, you don't look well... They have it under control, trust me, or I wouldn't still be standing here. Malfoy even left with two of them we captured to take them in, and you know he wouldn't have gone had-" Ginny explains, but Hermione only stays where she is because she can hear someone laughing and another yell out that the area is cleared.
"These Death Eaters were firing up until you cleared the smoke, and we were casting Stunning spells, so we weren't the ones who killed them." Simon points as Ginny tries to grab Hermione's arms. Hermione pushes her away as softly as possible, giving her a weak smile.
"Do you work for the Department of Mysteries?" Ginny snaps the question, looking too much like her mother for it not to be comforting. "They probably killed one another, because they knew we had them and they didn't want to give up information!"
"Why wouldn't they app-"
"Harry warded the area so no one could Apparate out. Hermione, you-"
"I think I need to Portkey to hospital." Hermione can't help but sound alarmed. The tearing sensation was now gone at her side, replaced by numbness. She is thankful for this despite that it can't be a good sign, especially since the tearing sensation remains along the outside of the numbed area, like it is...spreading. "I think something is wrong."
"Okay, yes, I'll tell everyone. Simon-"
"We have healing potions back at the safe shelter, don't we? I'll be fine with those, it's just a cut."
Hermione notices the blood on Simon's shirt for the first time as she reaches into her pocket. "You're sure."
"I'm fine." He's giving her a careful look that she doesn't understand until she sees him surveying her. She's not bleeding anywhere but her hands from the glass, and she knows what he's thinking and is instantly angry despite the lightness of her head that had been making her eerily calm. She wouldn't be the first to plead injury in order to get out of a mission, but she would never be among that number.
She doesn't say anything though, wrapping her fist around the Portkey. She yanks it out of her pocket, breathing in quick at the pull. Whatever curse she was hit with is spreading inside her, and she has no time for anything else.
"Love you."
Hermione's head jerks up toward Ginny at her words, blue eyes brimming with tears and Hermione breathes a laugh, but it hurts. "I'll be fine. I'm always fine."
Day: 1456: Hour: 23
Hermione Granger was not fine.
She didn't know how long she spent drifting in and out of consciousness, how long she spent screaming, how many potions they force fed her, spells they cast on her, or how close it actually came to death. Her mind was a blur of useless, half-formed thoughts. Healers busied themselves over her, keeping her awake for higher accuracy of effect on whatever they did. The faces changed, so did the colors; the pain remained the same.
She had grown increasingly incoherent, but there was a point she reached the edge. Where she felt as if something was sucking her through the bed, where the tearing inside her grew duller with her senses. She no longer noticed the pain, the people, the potion layered and sticky on her face from where it had been gurgled out from the force of a scream. Her hearing had shot down the yelling around her to a whisper, silence closing in, and she had known.
This is death, she had thought. This is dying. It felt as if something was stealing every part of her that formed who she was. It was robbing her of her mind, of her emotions, of the memories of her life. It was a greyness that was closing in, and there was no one there. Not Neville, Fred, Dumbledore to lead her somewhere. And there, at the end of her life, there wasn't a single face above hers to plead for her return. There was no voice inside her head, no flashback of her life, no staircase of angels who told her to climb.
There was nothing but the promise of losing everything. She had never felt so very alone, had never understood what alone was until she was dying in such a state. In the end it was not her friends or her family who hovered over her begging her to fight - it was herself.
Day: 1457; Hour: 20
She wakes up to the darkness of the hospital room. There is only silence.
Day: 1458; Hour: 14
There is a picture and a note on the table beside her bed. She, Lavender, and Neville are sitting on a couch laughing. Draco stands behind her, giving a horrified look toward the television. Dean, Seamus, and Colin are lying on the floor, pretending to gag. They had been watching a romantic movie at the time, and the reaction was after a serious love confession scene that had only come across as corny.
Malfoy told me to give this to you. I have better ones at my house, but I couldn't go back. Don't know why you would want it anyway, but... Sorry we couldn't stay. Orders. I don't want to know how close this was. I love you. See you soon, Harry, then attached in a different script, and Us.
Draco knew how it felt to come close to death. She wonders if he felt the same thing that only allowed her to sleep when dosed up with heavy pain potions. That overwhelming feeling of loneliness. Why else would he give her the picture, this moment of time frozen in laughter and friendship? Why else would he want her to remember?
She pushes the photograph to her chest.
Day: 1460; Hour: 10
There had been a storm last night. The world outside her window is wet, all deeper colors. Yesterday, there had been a set of four leaves hanging just outside her window, and now only one is left - somehow, the smallest one.
Hermione drops her eyes to the mattress, drags them slowly to the calendar, and then back out to the single leaf. Four years, she thinks, running her fingers over the hospital sheet. Her other hand is still clutching the photograph, still pressing it to her. Four years of her life, four years of a war. It's just time, Draco had told her days ago. It feels like a decade. Numbers don't matter. It's just time. But time is everything - time is their existence.
Four years, and it swells against her back like the impossible weight of an ocean.
Day: 1461; Hour: 15
She checks out on the fifth day. No matter how long she has lived in this world, magic still amazes her - she doesn't want there to be a time when it doesn't. The Dark curse she was hit with was burning her insides, shutting down her organs when it spread there. It took four specialists and five healers to stop it from reaching her heart, to force it away from her other organs and repair them. They stopped it from spreading that first night, but it took them two days to get it out, and another three to heal her completely. If she were in a Muggle hospital, she would have died no more than ten minutes after she showed up.
Hermione had come close to dying so many times she doesn't even know the number. The bad injuries, the bad situations, how often the Killing Curse just missed her. But a person never got used to almost dying. Some of the people she fought beside had accepted the fact of their death - that they would likely never see the end of war. Draco was one of them. Hermione never could though, not even when she had known that first night. She still hadn't given up. When she thinks about it, she guesses that Draco couldn't either when it came down to it.
Draco had accepted his death, or at least the likelihood of his death, but he never accepted giving up on himself. That's why he still fought, even after he left behind his family and friends, even after Pansy died. He was fighting for himself. Hermione had killed people to stop herself from being killed, but she always fought for other people. The innocents, the future generation, her friends, her family, the dead.
That moment, that terrifying moment when she was sure of what was coming, she had fought for herself. It had not been her will to save others but the will to save herself that pulled her back from that ledge. She had abandoned the memory of her friends and family when she needed it the most. She didn't know if she would ever understand why. Perhaps, at the end of all things, it was the love of yourself and your own strength that forced you to keep pushing for life. When life, and what it was made of, begins to leave, you are only left with yourself.
She can't help but imagine the people she has lost. She can't help but still hope that at the end, when they found only themselves but didn't have a choice, that they might have remembered anyway. That in their heads they remembered the life that made them who they found themselves to be before death, and that they weren't so lonely. That they had memories to cradle them into the darkness of death, and that it was like the lull of a mother's constant heartbeat as they were rocked to sleep.
Day: 1461; Hour: 19
McGonagall makes her stay at Headquarters for a night - literally makes her stay, taking her wand and locking all Portkeys within her office. Hermione walks around the Manor until her feet are sloppy and her eyes are dragging down. Draco's bed smells like him, and she wonders how long it has been since he laid in it.
She can't sleep for an hour after she lies down, so she stares at his shelf instead. The frame that had been turned down is now gone. In its place is a new frame, facing the bed. She stares at the picture of them inside of it, the one she had left, until sleep finally claims her.
Day: 1462; Hour: 8
She wakes up to crying, and it's when her eyes clear enough to see Draco kneeling on the bed that she realizes it's coming from her. She brings her hands up so fast that she smacks herself, quickly wiping the tears away. Draco continues staring down at her, stoic as ever.
"Sorry. I must have been dreaming." She is slightly horrified that she had been crying in her sleep. Also that he caught her in his bedroom, where there were several other places she was supposed to sleep.
He looks hesitant and then looks at the clock, the time making his decision for him. "Finnigan is in hospital, Simon is dead, Tim died the night you were injured, nearly as soon as we got there. Rogers is back. Do you want to visit Finnigan for the night or return to the mission tonight?"
Hermione takes several seconds to blink at him, trying to digest the information he just threw at her. "Simon," she whispers, and shakes her head sadly. "Is Seamus alright?"
"He should be able to return tomorrow."
"Since when do we get off to visit friends? Especially ones who aren't dying?"
"Well, I was trying to gloss over my questioning of your mental health, but since my doing so isn't anything new and since you only take subtlety as a brick to the head - are you stable enough to return tonight?"
"Yes," she snaps back, matching his glare.
"Then get up." He does as he says, sliding off the bed and to his feet.
She pauses, only as a childish way of showing him it's her own choice to get up when she does. Her eyes fall on the picture across the room again, but she looks away quickly so he doesn't notice. She doesn't want him to feel awkward about it, or to know how much it means to her that he not only kept it up, but also put it in a frame. It means more to her than it probably should.
"You might be the only person I know who can improve so much in fighting and still almost die nine out of ten times." He says this in such a quiet tone of voice, she almost forgets it's an insult.
"For such a serious person, you like to exaggerate a lot." She huffs and tries to pull the wrinkles out of her shirt, like it matters that they are there. She hates these clothes. She came a breath from dying in these clothes.
"If I exaggerate a lot - which is a lie - I don't exaggerate by a lot. And what does being serious have to do with exag-"
"How does that even make sense? It's the same thing."
"I didn't say it wasn't." He's still glaring at her when she looks up at him.
"What is that thing? People lie in conversation every ten sentences or something?"
"That wasn't a lie."
"I didn't say it was, it just made me think of that thing, so I thought to ask."
He's giving her a very hard look when she looks at him again, and he is slow to speak. "You should take another night, Gran-"
"I'm not taking a night."
"You-"
"I need this." Her voice is pleading, but he gets it. She knows he gets it, and maybe he's been there before, but he knows what she's saying.
"Alright." He pauses, studying his hand before he throws a box at her, a phoenix stamped on the front to tell her it was a Portkey inside. "I'm surprised it let you walk away."
"What?"
"Death. It's had it out for you pretty bad since the beginning of the war, especially with... I'm surprised it let you walk away."
"It didn't have a choice," Hermione sniffs.
"Against Hermione Granger? Nose in the air, finger jabs and all? No, it didn't. I guess I'm not that surprised after all." He grins lopsided at her, and that well of loneliness and fear recedes to some place too deep for her to find now.
Day: 1462; Hour: 10
Ginny hugs her, mumbling apologies for the way she acted before, but how she just didn't want to talk about It - her family. Harry smiles like a fool, and doesn't pull away even after Lavender and Angelina crush her. Then he keeps holding on when he feels her shoulders shake, because he knows she needs him for comfort and to make sure no one can see her until her eyes stop being red.
She takes a shower at the safe house, scrubbing too hard, like the clothes might have left a taint on her since her last shower, even after they were washed as well. She leaves them in the bathroom, heading to Draco's room when Ginny raises an eyebrow and tells her that her trunk was moved there by the blond the morning after Hermione went to St. Mungo's. She doesn't answer the unspoken question, rushing to the bedroom on the pretense of standing like a fool in her towel.
"He's burning your clothes..." Harry trails off as she walks out of the room, his hand moving in a vague gesture toward the kitchen.
"What? My clothes are in my trunk."
"The other ones."
She walks to the kitchen, stopping in front of the open glass doors to watch Draco move around a pit of fire. There are three garbage bags burning, and on top of one she can see the clothes she left in the bathroom. His eyes meet hers, matching the twilight settling down on them. They are both silent, a passing of mutual understanding that they don't have to admit to.
"I'm surprised you aren't yelling about now." Harry sounds amused behind her.
"She wouldn't have been able to get the blood out." Draco answers for her, maybe knowing that she can't. She watches the clothes burn instead. There hadn't been any blood on them.