Forty-Two
Day: 1542; Hour: 16
It feels like a blink. Like she had just blinked her eyes right after Draco began to crumble down and the numbness took her, and then she just opened her eyes to a completely different scene. There are no memories, no long dark void, just a blink.
She cocks her head at the tight concern on Draco's face. Why is this strange again? Why is she here, where is here, and why is he looking at her like that? There is a deep pain in her body, and her heart is a jackhammer, and she doesn't know why.
"Hermione," Draco whispers harshly, gritting his teeth as he shakes her.
"Dray?" She shakes her head, clearing out the fuzz around her vision. "Co?"
Okay. Alright. The ruins, the coin, the manor, Draco, the team, compromised. The yellow streaks, numb, but there's a ceiling over his shoulder and not a forest with enemies and spells. Where- "We have to go. Carrying you is one thing, but you have to stop screaming."
"What?" She shakes her head, pushing to sit up as her body shakes, and he stands, lifting her to her feet instead. Her body protests, pain flaring up, and a whimper strangles in her throat. She can't see properly out of her left eye. Her face feels like it's tight and filled with air.
Draco's bare chest is covered in blood. There's a gash still oozing blood a finger's length below his left collarbone, running from the middle of his chest to the crease of his armpit. There's another, a large Z, at the right side of his stomach, and his wrists are bleeding. His left eye is swollen shut under a bruise of purple that travels down his nose and around his other eye. There's a welt of a bruise on his jaw, and a split in his mouth. It's full blown panic on his face, and it only increases her own fear.
"Can you walk?" The question comes from the man over his shoulder, a face she recognizes as one that Harry had thrown into the shadows a couple...seconds ago?
"Of course."
Draco grabs her arm, spinning them out into a...hall? Torches line the wall, but only a few are lit, flickering against the thick shadows. As soon as her foot jolts down in a run, she has to bite back the vocal exclamation of her pain, her knees wobbling out. There's a tearing sensation across her left ribs, a blinding pain in her right, and burning, burningburning in her entire back.
Her body automatically pulls to a halt, as if knowing she can't go on before her mind does, and Draco is lifting her into his arms like he was expecting it the entire time. Like he was already bending to do it before she even stopped. She hisses as he jostles her, the arm under her knees fine, but the arm against her back intensifying the burn. She throws her arm around his neck, lifting herself against him, but his arm only follows. With a start she notices that she's wearing his shirt, and she can't tell which seeping maroon stain is hers or his.
"Draco," she tries to whisper, but it comes out like a grunted growl.
"Don't even breathe." His voice is so low that it takes her mind several seconds to make out what he says through the jumble of breathy noises that were supposed to be words.
She doesn't know what's going on. She doesn't know why she's in such pain, what happened to her or Draco. She doesn't know how much time has passed since the last thing she remembers, or what happened in that time. What she does know is that they are obviously trying to escape, they don't have their wands, and if they had Portkeys, they would already be gone. She knows that Draco's chest is trembling against her, that there are rigid lines of pain with the panic on his face, and the last thing he needs to be doing is carrying her.
She knows the rules. If she's too injured to make it out on her own, and her team members are too injured to help her, they are to leave her behind, secure backup, and inform them of her location. Draco is putting up an effort, but she's a liability, and she knows it.
"Put-"
"If you even say it, I'll shove my fingers into the whip marks in your back, Granger, I fucking swear."
Whip marks?
"You-"
"This is where I lost Potter and Amery." She looks up from the grimace she was shoving into Draco's neck, her mind halting in the search for a solid argument, meeting the eyes of the man behind them.
Lost? Lost? What the hell does he mean, lost? 'What?' she mouths.
"They were grabbed," he whispers, bending his head to hers to do so, and almost trips on the stairs Draco starts up.
The pain becomes an angry beast, and she squeezes her eyes and bites her lips against the jumping motion and Draco's own pained groan from his throat. There is a yell of surprise, and then it is dark again.
Day: 1543; Hour: 2
There's a coldness against her side, and she blinks out into the darkness. She thinks she must be on a carousel, with the way she is tilting and spinning, before she focuses enough to find herself lying on the ground. There's a metallic bitterness to the air, and sulfur, and she's afraid of what that means. There isn't a sound around her beside the dripping of water next to her head. No breath, no movement, and she is alone.
She thinks she should get up, find a way out and find the others, but she's so tired, and with her awareness, the pain flares back again. She clenches her fingers, tries to find something to lift herself up from, but she can't feel them. She can hardly breathe, let alone move, and though there is something screaming inside of her, the darkness snuffs it out.
Day: 1543; Hour: 13
Groaning. Low, raspy, crack of a groan. She blinks until the world is in focus, staring down at orange light over stones, sparkling from the wetness. There's a soft laugh in front of her, but it's harsh at the same time...bitter and cruel. The orange light blinks out, and then it's back, and she can make out the trail of bloody saliva dripping from mouth.
There's footsteps, panting to her left, and she's slow to raise her head. A clinking and scraping of metal meets her movements, and she peers out into the faint light in the chamber. She's in chains, tight metal cutting into her wrists high above her head, her body hunched forward. She straightens, the toes of her boots coming down a little more onto the floor, and a sob of pain accompanies the burning and tearing sensation in her back. Fabric – Draco's shirt, she remembers – clings and pulls at her skin, caught in dried blood, open wounds, and the yellow gook that eventually forms scabs.
The wall, and then the hall and staircase, and now the dungeon. Her mind is swimming in its struggle to piece everything together with all the missing spaces. It feels like a movie, the disc scratched, that just kept skipping scenes until nothing really makes much sense. Her arms are numb, her hands tingling, and she's so confused, it hurts her head. The pain in her body is dull compared to when she was last conscious, but the whole of her still aches.
There's a dark, hooded figure in the shadows, pressed against the farthest wall. A mask gleams back at her, just as brightly as the teeth in the grin below it. They had obviously failed in their escape. The whole mission was blown to hell. This is the third time, she thinks. The third time she has been captured. Apparently, it's the charm for them and not her. Apparently, Lady Luck had had enough. Her only hope is that the Order has realized they are taking too long, and they will send in more people.
Until then...wing and a prayer, her mum would say. But Hermione is pretty sure they don't have a wing – they might not even have a prayer.
"Two Mudbloods and a blood traitor." The Death Eater is smug from his shadows.
She looks to her right, some small surprise clicking through in the back of her head when she spots the woman chained next to her. She has no idea who she is, but her entire face is covered in a patchwork of bleeding slashes. The woman is crying, silently, her chin to her chest. Hermione rolls her head to the panting from her left, and hates that he is there at the same time that it calms her. The calm lasts only a moment, a second before natural reactions turns to realization, and then she is more afraid with his presence than if she were alone.
His head is sagging, sweat-dampened strands of blond obscuring his face from her. He's still bleeding, but by the prevalent darker shade of dried blood, she is guessing his wounds just reopened. His breathing is ragged, cackling in his chest, and his body jerks spontaneously through the shaking. She knows the Curse by effect alone, and she wonders just how long Draco had been screaming before the punch to her mouth awoke her.
"Dra-" she tries, a crack of letters, and he shakes his head.
"Isn't two days of torture enough for you people?" the woman next to her sobs.
Hermione gives a jerk, wincing at the movements, as her head snaps back to the girl. Two days? Two days? Had this woman been a part of the team? Havethey been here for two days? Where is the Order?
"Tsk. Not when we bought ourselves three, Mudblood. It's amazing how breakable some of you are. Just a half hour of pain, and he was going on, and on, and on. Didn't take much for him to operate that coin and let them know the mission was complete. Said they give three days for reports to be filed, and that's when they'll start getting suspicious if he doesn't turn up. So, we still have some time together, don't we?" The Death Eater was practically purring, gloved hands clenched in some sick form of excitement as he grinned at them.
Mission leaders carry two coins. One the same as they all carry, alerting them for backup. The other is one only connected to mission leaders, Lupin and McGonagall, and the Ministry heads. It informs them when a mission is complete, and after that, the leader has three days to get to Headquarters or the Ministry and file the mission reports. They have never had a problem come out of that method, but the Death Eaters have never captured an entire team, or were brazen enough to keep them where they caught them.
God, they have epically failed this mission, and they might all die because of it. She is struggling to think how she could have been here for two days, when all she remembers is a span of about ten minutes in total. They must have done something to her mind. Or perhaps she had been sleeping. Or they erased part of her memories, though she can't know why. She's confused, and there's a part of her mind that keeps trying to convince her that this isn't real. This can't be it. And she knows that she thinks that every time it comes close to being it, but please, God, this can't be it.
She doesn't know how they found out about the coins. She doesn't know how the coin activated and told them to come here for backup. It's like Draco said – they had been compromised. There's a traitor among them, but one thing she knows for sure, is that it isn't Harry. And Harry, the mission leader, had definitely not given up information – at least, not correct information – no matter what he endured in a half hour.
"You're lying." It was spit from her mouth before she could even think to censor it, her anger blowing the weariness and fear from her bones like an explosion of dynamite.
Draco hisses beside her, and then she is blown against the wall, the toe of her boots scraping and her head cracking. Pain rips in a wave from her shoulders and down, and she screams shortly past the gasp of air rushing out from the impact. An unseen force tightens its grip around her throat, the woman's crying stops, and she can hear the heavy clanking of Draco's chains. It's joined by her own as she struggles to reach for her throat, the metal rubbing her skin raw around her wrists. The blood begins pounding through her head and under the skin of her face, but she can't breathe at all.
She kicks her feet back, gripping the chains in her palms and yanking up, lifting her legs. The bottom of her boots meet the wall behind her, and she tries to scramble up using the faint purchase she finds there and what's left in the strength of her arms. The black webbing around her sight begins creeping in, like a spider spinning across her vision. Her feet slip on the wetness of the wall, and she tries again, thrusting up, like air could be had if she just got a little higher.
She can hear screamed words, Draco and then a girl, but it's distant and secondary to her situation. Laughter echoes out, but then it morphs, forming a voice that's booming in its anger. The force gets even tighter against her, violently clamping down on the passageway for continued life. She is not afraid. Instead, there is a reckless anger, a shaking of rage. She is too tired of being afraid. And if it's here, right now, that this war takes her, this coward who can only beat her defenseless, she will not be afraid. She will not give him the satisfaction of her fear. She's too angry at him, at her life, at herself, to give into the painful squeezing of panic in her chest.
She blinks hard, trying to focus, trying to will her body to squeeze the oxygen from her blood. The ache in her lungs turns to pain, a savage scream from her instincts to breathe or die, and... And then it's gone.
She inhales sharply, coughing and choking, and her feet drop from the wall. Another inhale, another, another, the oxygen sweet and still too weak, still not enough. Again, again, again, until she is more dizzy from the surplus than the lack of it.
Hot tears of anger slip to her cheeks as she releases her grip from the chains, dropping down the inch with a horrible jerk that pumps a wave of fire along her bones. She meets the maniacal glinting eyes across the room, the sweeping grin, the smug stance.
"Liar, liar, liar, liar," she rages.
She is cut off by Draco, in a voice so heavy with anger that she doesn't recognize it. "Granger!"
"Oh, it's going to be so much fun to break you," the masked man seethes, halting in the three steps he took forward.
"You'll have to kill me first," Hermione says, spitting the blood from her mouth, and feeling the wetness slide down her chin.
"Me? I believe I'm bestowing that particular honor upon someone else." He turns toward his left with a great billow of robes, and Hermione chokes at the figure emerging from the shadows, coldness dropping to her stomach.
But they are not Harry's eyes that look at her, or his hands that clench the roll of a whip, or his feet that take him in front of her. It is not Harry at all. The sheen over his eyes, the blank expression, his presence like this in front of her, tell her all she needs to know.
"Shit," Draco breathes, but she can't seem to drag her eyes away to look at him.
No, no, no.
The anger is caught between receding for preparation of what is to come, or growing into a bigger beast at what they have forced. She wants to cry and strangle someone at the same time. She wants to hug Harry, because she knows if they make it out of this, or if he does, he won't forgive himself. And she wants to scream at him, too, for not putting up enough of a fight to break through it. Surely, even under such a Curse, Harry couldn't kill her. Surely, this was one of the biggest injustices of them all, that they could do this to them, of all things.
Because in all the ways she imagined her death in the muted light of a room barred up from the sun, it was never this. There was quickness, there was torture, there was rape and her guts hanging from gaping wounds. But this had been too beyond the knowledge of her cruelty for her to grasp the idea of it in all her preparations for her own end.
She'd rather them cut her piece by piece. She could die knowing it as the face of her friend but the mind of an enemy, but she could not die knowing what he'd live with.
"No," she found herself whispering, shaking her head at the crooked glasses, the wild hair. Not this. Not. Like. This. Of all possible ways, not this. "Harry-"
And with a resounding crack, the whip lashes out from his hands. It is a millisecond of shock before her body recognizes the pain searing across her stomach, and she screams. Head back, fingers grasping, body seizing, screams. She can hear the high whoosh as all that dizzy oxygen runs out.
"Legs up! Legs fucking up!" Draco yells, and they buckle and seize before she can pull her knees up, wrapping her fingers around the chains to keep her whole weight off her wrists.
She screams again, feeling the leather rip into her flesh, right below her knees. She can feel wetness sliding down her stomach, pooling against the waist of her jeans, and now down her legs. She keeps her head back, not wanting to look, until Draco screams at her to keep her head down and she pins her chin to her chest. She is on fire.
"We're not going for the throat yet, blood traitor." There's a laugh from the shadows, and Hermione really wishes she hadn't started to cry.
Another crack against her legs, and the scream still forces its way out from her clenched teeth. Her shoulders heave in a sob directly after, and she can't believe this. It's Harry. And she knows that he's not in control, but it still hurts in a way it's not allowed to. Hurts in the way they wanted it to, because it's still his body, and she knows he's somewhere inside of it. Because he is the only one with a chance to stop it, and she doesn't know if he's strong enough, and what that will cost the both of them.
Wasn't love supposed to be the greatest thing of all? Wasn't it supposed to be enough to save them?
It is revenge, to have Harry Potter kill his best friend. And, oh, God, she can't even think of what they're going to do to Ron, or what they have. Is that Harry's blood on his shirt, or is that Ron's?
She can't even think of it. She can't even conceive- She throws her body to the side on instinct at the next crack, and it might have taken the entire skin of her upper arm back with it. The end flicks around to her back, reopening wounds and duller pains, and the chains jerk her forward again with a gurgled cry. Maybe true evil does exist. Maybe Voldemort hadn't ever loved anything but the pain of others, and maybe it's the same for the Death Eater at the end of the room. Maybe she had been wrong in even thinking they weren't pure. Their pure blood, their hatred, their evil. They were-
She turns again as the whip twists and arcs in the air like a giant snake, striking out at her. The leather slices into her ribs, on the side she strongly believes is broken. "Harry!" she screams, spinning back around, and her eyes open on their own accord. She's sobbing, and gasping, and pleading. "Harry, please, please, no. I know you're in there, and if you can do... I know you can do this. Fight harder, Harry!"
The whip hesitates, and she stills her breath, her eyes digging into his and pleading. She stares so hard, like if she just concentrated a little more, she could see right through his eyeballs and into brain matter. Brain matter, or his chest cavity, or wherever it is that houses the spirit, the human soul, the Harry she knows. But it's not good enough, or her silence goes on too long, because his arm rears back, his wrist flicking as she spins herself again.
She screams herself hoarse as it tears into her back, and her legs drop, her fingers falling away from the chains. The metal cuffs nearly break her wrists under the pressure of her weight again, and she sags with what little slack she has. Draco is yelling at her, the woman is screaming at the Death Eater, but it's not where Hermione's mind is.
She raises her eyes, meeting Harry's, and blinking the tears away to see him clearly. "Hey? I love you. And if you can hear-"
"What's wrong, Potter? Not man enough to throw off a little curse? Your being held like a Hufflepuff first year under that bumbling fucking idiot?" Draco snaps, thrusting his chin toward the back room. "It can't be that strong. What are you thinking about in there? Prancing around in a field of fucking daisies while you torture your best friend? How did you even kill Volde-"
Draco is flung back, screaming with the yelled Cruciatus Curse across the room. His head is thrown back, mouth open in a terrible scream that resounds through her head. It makes her lose her breath, burning itself to her memory, like the image of his tendons and veins bulging as his body convulses. Another wave of tears covers her eyes at the agony mutating Draco's face, but she is also shaking at the pause of the whip and the tremble in Harry's jaw. It almost hurts to say it, just in case this is the last time. Just in case she'll never get the chance to tell him she didn't mean it, but she has to, just in case this is the only chance to make it past this at all.
"I'm surprised you didn't need me at the Graveyard, if this is how weak of a fighter you turned out to be, Harry Potter! What, did Voldemort just concede? Roll over and let you kill him? He must have, you coward! You Slytherin! Here you are, following the orders of a Death Eater! He'll have you kill me next! Is that what you want to be? A Death Eater slave? A-"
"Why don't you bend over, Potter? Let him-" She can't hear the rest of Draco's words, her body flung back at the force of the Curse, and then the pain. Oh, the pain. That blinding, all-encompassing pain.
No matter how often she thought of it – despite trying not to – she could never remember how horrible it is until it happens again. Until that raw, vicious fury of it consumed her. That's it, she would think, before the pain took complete control over all her senses, thoughts, and feeling. There are no words to describe it. It is beyond the very worst of what one could imagine – there is nothing else that could make her wish for death before it breaks.
It recedes slowly. Like a giant boulder thrown on top of you, replaced by a slightly lighter one crashing down, just a little lighter still, and on. On until her thoughts come back, and she can taste blood and smell it, and her body is throbbing and shaking with pain when she was sure it was broken beyond a chance to breathe again. She can hear the cracks of a whip, and has no idea why she can't seem to feel them on her skin.
She's going to go now. Her body will concede to war before her mind ever could, and she'll go on to the places they send soldiers after the darkness. But all she wants is to open her eyes to light. She wants to feel the sun on her face and her friends at her back, and she wants that light to crawl through her irises and explode into her chest. She wants so badly to survive.
There is a murmuring to her side, until a word breaks through and forces her to open her eyes. "Potter!"
The cracking stops, and she lifts the mountain weight of her head, waiting for her vision to clear. It isn't much use, her body wracked with a heave and forcing her head back down. She gags, and heaves, and chokes, until the acidic taste of her stomach bile is wretched up. It splatters between the toes of her boots, and she stares in a dazed wonder at the bit hanging from her lip before she finally spits it off. She spits again, trying to clear out her mouth.
"Grab her first." Draco's voice is lower now, but she can hear the panic, and it reminds her of why she has to be strong still.
She looks up, and her eyes settle on Harry. She blinks slowly at him, taking him in from boots to hair. The whip is at his feet, and he's covered in slashes of blood. It almost looks like he's been whipped himself, but he moves toward her too fluidly, and...
"I'm F.M," he gasps out when she flinches away from his hand, and two identical tears track down his red-covered cheeks.
"Hurry up! Before someone comes!" the woman hisses next to her.
"It's alright, Herm-" Harry starts, and his voice is too choked, his skin too pale, and he's shaking too.
"I know," she whispers, her voice so hoarse that she isn't sure he hears her. "I know."
She feels like crying now. Sobbing, actually. Really, really, crying. Like those breakdowns she sometimes has, where she rocks, and sobs so hard her throat is raw. Where she's alone, and loud, and gives in. Just for a little while. Just enough to be able to move later, when all the weight of her grief isn't suffocating her so much.
God. She will never erase the image from her head, and she feels so guilty about it. She feels so terrible, because it's not his fault, and because this will haunt him far more than her. He was the one to do it, to see every moment, to not be able to stop himself beforehand. But she will never blame him, or hold it against him, and if he ever spoke about it, she will pretend that this doesn't matter. It doesn't. She can't let it.
Harry's eyes are wide, sparkling green under the heavy tears coating his eyeballs. They shimmer at her, and she doesn't know what she can possibly say, and her vocal chords feel like they are sagging down into her chest. She pushes forward on her toes, just enough to brush her lips against the rough hair on his chin, and his arm is around her before she can swing back.
"I'm sorry," he grinds out over her cry with his arm pressured onto her torn back, pointing hi- a wand at the chains.
A wand. Her eyes flick over his shoulder, to the fallen body near the far wall, and there is red everywhere. Pools on the floor, slashed up on the wall in wide arcs. Had that been why Draco screamed his name? Had it been to stop him from his vengeance, from the loss of his control? The Death Eater is either knocked unconscious or dead, but by the blood...all that blood.
"It's not your fault. I don't know if I would have been able to stop." It's all she can get out before her voice collapses under a cough, ragged and wet. Her hands fall from the cuffs, and she yells out again at the pain that shoots through them.
"Got you, got you," Harry repeats in her ear, swaying her like a father against his chest for a moment. She closes her eyes, hurting everywhere, as she swims in and out of a fog of blackness.
She must have given into the pull of unconsciousness for a moment, because she had not heard the sounds that must have accompanied Harry freeing Draco and the woman. For a moment there had been no pain, and it had been blissful. There is too much to do to give in, though, and as she contemplates the attempt at walking, she feels Harry's arms slip away. Her eyes snap open, her vision swimming, but a new set of arms wrap around her, and she doesn't have to see to know.
His hand pushes her hair away from her face, and one grey eye stares intensely back at her. He's still tremulous from the Curse, and he swallows hard enough for her to hear it. He leans back, sending a purposeful look over her head, and the muscle in his jaw twitches.
She's in too much pain. The pain, the fact that she must not have eaten in the past two days, and the sheer volume of blood she has lost is enough. She is useless, and she knows it. She can be of no help to them, and she has never felt more useless in all her life. She is just beginning to contemplate what she can possibly do to get them out of there when she is off the ground, the pain increases, and the darkness wins.
Day: 1544; Hour: 20
Minerva, to the right at the edge of her bed, in shadows. Her face is pulled tight, sour and grief-heavy, and Hermione thinks they must be safe before she is asleep again.
Day: 1555; Hour: 6
Ron, a piece of chocolate sticking out of his bruised mouth, jumps when she opens her eyes and sighs when she closes them again.
Day: 1555; Hour: 19
Draco, his thighs pressed against the edge of her bed, his arms crossed and his mouth scowling.
Day: 1556; Hour: 8
She thinks it's Draco at first, but it feels all wrong, and she opens her eyes to black hair and clenched eyes. Harry's forehead is pressed against hers, his arm wrapped around her, and his cheeks look wet. Her body feels heavy, her mind cloudy, but she is awake, and alive, and alive, and alive.
He's in the middle of speaking, "-seeing you like that. If I could change it, I would, but I was so tired, and in pain, and the magic was so strong." His voice is a rise and fall of emotions, thick and low.
"It wasn't you." He jumps at her rusty voice, and he doesn't open his eyes like she thought he would. His arm squeezes her tighter, and his fingers curl into the shirt she's wearing.
His face is bruised, and the arm resting above their heads is completely wrapped in bandages. He raises his hand to his face, wiping at it, and his hand is nearly black. From the wrist to the tips of his fingers is a huge bruise, puffy and grotesque.
"I-"
"It wasn't you."
"But I-"
"It wasn't you."
"It's like he was back in my head again. Like all the evil was inside of me, and like I couldn't fight it this time. I became it. No matter-"
"You'll never become it, Ha—"
"What I did to you! I just keep seeing-"
"It wasn't you."
"Stop!" he yells suddenly, eyes flying open, bright, haunted green. "Stop saying that, Hermione! I-"
"No. Not until you get it, Harry. It wasn't you at all. It was just your body, but it wasn't you."
"I should have tried har-"
"I know you well enough, Harry Potter. I know you tried as hard as you could, and you ended up break-"
"It was too-"
"I love you. I don't blame you, because it wasn't your fault. It wasn't you who did it, it was him. The Imp-"
"I was there, inside-"
"It doesn't matter!" she snaps, coughs hard enough for her torso to jolt back and forth with it. He flings his hand back to his face, rubbing like he might be crying, but he isn't. "Harry, if you had a single bit of control, there might be a bit of myself that blamed you. But what happened...we both know that is not something you would ever do. That Death Eater did that to me. I don't care if it was by way of your body – it wasn't you. If you weren't so strong, and if you didn't try so hard to break through it, we would all be dead right now. So if you feel guilt, or anything stupid like that, you just need to think about this logically and stop being...Ron thick."
Harry pauses, taking three even breaths before meeting her eyes. "Ron thick?"
She clears her throat twice, trying to get rid of the scratch. "I just woke up, you have to give me a couple minutes."
He lets out a long huff of air and covers his eyes again. "I can't stop seeing it."
Neither can I. "It's the same as if you were chained to the wall right with us and had to watch i-"
"It's not. You know it's not."
Hermione wraps him into a hug, and pushes her forehead against his again. She wants to ask him a lot of questions, but it's not the time. She doesn't really know how to be there for him properly right now. She keeps seeing it too. She can't stop herself. It had felt like a nightmare in front of her, and she wants to vomit every time she thinks of it. But it hadn't been Harry. It hadn't been her Harry at all.
She knew his guilt would come, but she hopes that it passes quickly. Maybe if she ignores it, and goes on pretending like it never happened. Then maybe she would forget to see it too. They can be strong together. They have always been strong when together.
Day: 1556; Hour: 12
Hermione has been in the infirmary at Headquarters for three days. Harry had left her a few hours ago, less shaken and pale, and it's progress. There hadn't been anything left to say to one another about it, and for an hour they had just sat there in silence, and waited for the moment they would start feeling better about it. He dropped her wand on the side table when he left, without an explanation, and she clung to it so hard her fingers began to burn.
Her body feels normal. A little sluggish, but well rested and healed. Bruises spot her skin, but she barely pays them any attention. So many situations she had come out of during the war thinking her body would never be the same again. There are scars, but if it had been the Muggle world, she would have been dead by now. Many times over. Despite that she's spent over half her life in the Wizarding world now, every time she awakes after something like this feeling normal, she can't help but look with awe at the Healer who took care of her.
"Where are my boots?" She looks up from the empty sides of the bed, to the Healer marking off something on a roll of parchment.
"Ah..." The man puts a finger to his temple, as if to conjure the memory, and Hermione tries to take calming breaths. "Malfoy. I told him to leave your belongings, but he...very adamantly insisted upon returning them to your trunk. He took your clothes as well."
Adamantly insisted. Yes, that's Draco. She can only hope he is still here somewhere. She hadn't felt right asking Harry just what had happened, and she remembers Draco the most from the gaping memories. There are a lot of empty spaces she needs to be filled in on or she's going to go crazy.
"Oh. Um... Can you, er..." The Healer gives her a quizzical look, and she gathers her resolve. "There are some scars I-"
"Of course," he interrupts, walking briskly toward the cabinets along the wall. "I'll need you to put on a gown and then lie back on the bed."
"Oh. Right. I..." She flushes, feeling awkward, because it doesn't make much sense. "I only want certain ones taken care of."
He hands her the gown and gives her a nod, too professional to make her feel weird. He closes the sheet around the bed with a flick of his wand, and she changes quickly, cataloging the angry, welted scars from the whip.