Forty-Six
Day: 1568; Hour: 1
"Left!" Harry orders, and they flip sideways, two green jets nearly skimming their shoes.
"Lumos!" Hermione yells, pointing her wand over the line of Harry and Ginny's shoulders, and the two of them cast quick Stunning spells.
"Right," Harry directs, and they pull upright again, Harry bringing the broom to the ground.
Hermione binds both the Death Eaters before she's off the broom, and looks at three other bodies on the ground. All three are dead, one of them with their arm and half their face charred. Panic, and she shoves it back.
"I don't think we were the only safe house to wake up with the place on fire."
"This was their plan. That's why they only put the anti-Apparition wards up before setting the place on fire. They didn't have time to come in and kill us, because they had to get here. They're all going to be here. From the new leaders to the new recruits. It's the bloody fucking Graveyard all over again." Harry has gone as white as the moon, but there's a brilliant spark of hunger in his eyes that scares her.
She looks up toward the manor, her body urging her to run in that direction. Draco is supposed to be there. McGonagall, Lupin, Anthony... Hermione stops the list of names in her head at the pop, jerking her wand up as she turns to face behind her. Three men stare back at her as they get their footing, and then lift shocked eyes above her head. A string of curses, and then four more people appear. This is a team, she thinks automatically.
"Hermione," Harry calls, and hits her arm. She looks down at his shirt, clutched in his hand. "Put this on. Give me yours. Hurry."
She gives him a look like he's crazy, but he moves past her, rushing whispers at the people who just came. "The orange," Ginny tells her, her wand trained on the gates, and Hermione turns her back toward the people, yanking her shirt off. She pulls Harry's on quickly, smelling sweat, smoke, and him, and uses her wand to cut to ribbons the shirt she's slept in since she was a child.
"If you can't Apparate here, go as far into the woods as it takes. The wards have to end somewhere. When you bring them to Mungo's, I want the two of you to come back. You're the transporters, alright? Anyone coming in injured, bring them out. Got it?" Harry sounds frantic but in control, and the two men nod.
Hermione quickly passes out the strips of orange, and by the time she's done, there's nineteen of them wearing them. "Give one to anyone else going in," she tells one of the appointed transporters, shoving the strips into his hand before bending to tie her boots.
"There's seventeen of us going in. Five of us will break to the left, five to the right, and seven, straight. At the willow tree-" Harry starts laying out the plan.
"What willow tree?" a man asks, double knotting the jagged strip of orange.
"The gigantic tree in the middle of the lawn. It's about seven meters from the porch," another man hisses, and he looks at all of them like they're idiots.
"No one moves forward until all three are there," Harry continues, his words punctuated by the looks he keeps throwing toward the manor. "We can't know the situation this far away, so we will go on one of two plans when we're there. Plan one, we attack as an entire unit, spreading out only as far as the scope of Death Eaters in the front. Plan two, we split up into teams again, taking the left and right, and straight into the house. Clear?"
No one questions him, though she doesn't expect them to. Harry quickly splits them up, pushing her and Ginny to the left, and joining them a moment later. They take off past the gates in a line, spread out enough to be of assistance but also not leaving any space unchecked to the left of the grounds. She can make out the flash of red in the moonlight to her left, and the shine of Harry's skin on her right, but they are far enough away that she almost feels alone. But this is okay, because she knows how to stand on her own. Her wand swings from side to side with every fall of her foot, her eyes scanning through the deep blue of darkness. It's hard to see in the depth of night, under the mass of tree foliage, but it also means it's harder for them to see her.
There's a lump in the grass to her right, and she can make out the white shirt before she sees skin. Harry pauses, flipping the person onto their back and immediately recoiling. He continues without checking for a pulse, whatever he saw being enough proof. Hermione can make out the two slumped figures of the guards, one across the stairs and the other in front of the door. She can see seven, ten, eleven other bodies now, six black hoods rising from the grass, all motionless.
The screams and explosions are so loud now, they sound as if they are just a space in front of her. The entire manor sounds like it's about to crumble to its dungeon floor at any moment, and smoke billows up into the sky from the back lawn. Colors soar past the windows, bodies running forward or flying back. A chunk of the wall on the third floor blows out, a hundred pieces against a cloud of dark purple light. A Death Eater follows a moment later, tumbling through the air and hitting the ground with a sound that makes her stomach turn. Another, and then a third.
She turns for the willow tree, and three steps to her right gives her a new angle. She can see the back of Lupin now, feet planted on top of a desk. Color streams arc out around him as he spins his arm above his head, then thrusts his wand out in front of him toward an enemy she can't see. The force of his magic billows his robes out behind him, a ball of fire shoots across the sky in the back, and an explosion from the first floor breaks the porch in half.
There's a woman crawling up the path to the porch, and Hermione doesn't know if she is friend or foe. There is nothing they can do for her anyway. They have no Portkeys and they can't Apparate. If the Healers are still alive, they are no doubt watching for the red sparks that would beckon them. But in a fight like this...there's only so much anyone could do. There won't be enough Healers or time. The healing squad was usually posted at the outskirts of a battle, and while it was dangerous, they had distance and protection. Here, they have none, and while it will not stop them, it'll severely limit the amount of people they can save.
They stand in a thick, tense silence at the willow, calming their breathing, and waiting for the team on the right to join them. Hermione feels as if she is standing neck deep in water, a current threatening to take her, and doing her best to not move. It's maddening, and she wants to scream, run, and fight. Her heart is pounding erratically, because she is terrified of what she is about to face, but far more afraid that she is not getting there quick enough.
"Where are you going?" Ginny asks this in a breath, so low it could pass for wind five people away.
"Sky," Harry whispers back. "Need layout. Only one with broom. Hit them from above."
Hermione looks over at him, his bare toes just touching the blades of grass as he hovers on his broom. He's staring off at the top of the house, and his face is set in a determination she's seen too many times. She had been wondering if he would do this, but she hadn't decided if it was a good idea or not. He would be flying alone, and while his skills are impressive, birds fly all their lives and still get shot from the sky.
"Let me ride in back. Backup."
Harry's jaw clenches, and he shakes his head once. She knows what he's thinking. It's the fucking Graveyard all over again, he had said – a battle that she and Ginny had been kept away from. He probably wants to take them somewhere else and make them stay there. He doesn't have that choice, though. No one had a choice, yells Draco in her head, and she agrees. No one has a choice in this.
"Too dangerous. Fly better, faster, alone. I-" He is cut off by Ginny's lips on his, and Hermione blinks to the ground, to the manor, and back again.
"Go to the gates," he says, and though it is barely words, she can taste his desperation on the air around her. "Take Hermione and go back to-"
Ginny shakes her head at him, kisses him again. The team from the right joins them, and Harry digs holes into Ginny's eyes and then hers. "Be safe," he mouths.
"Be safe," Hermione whispers back.
The pleading is gone from his eyes when he grabs one of the men from the middle team and pulls him over. He points five fingers to the left, five to the right, and six to the door. There can be no other plans now. They can only fight the best they can, and hopefully, just maybe, they will survive. Harry gives a solid nod, and doesn't turn to look at them again as he kicks off into the sky.
Ginny's eyes are watery when she turns them toward Hermione, so she squeezes her arm before falling in line with the rest of their team. A sort of anticipation begins to build in her chest. Harry had said they will all be here, and while the thought makes her hands shake, she can't help the swell that blisters her insides. That cautioned, unavoidable, impossible hope that is the restitution of the human soul. The salvation in their darkest moments, and at times, the malicious storm that sends them there. Hope is a beautiful cruelty, and it rages on, and on, through wars, humanity, and inside her now.
Maybe this is it. Maybe if they can survive this, and win this... Maybe this is it. She remembers what Draco said, after the Graveyard. The Death Eaters would rebuild, collect information, form a plan, and then fight to the death. This has to be it, their last stand. If light can emerge from the dark, if dawn proves them victorious, then maybe, maybe. In her head, it is if all the battles and these long years have merged into a single, burning moment. The blinding force had taken her over four years ago, or from the real beginning, twelve years, when a little girl met two boys, a world, and a war that was her destiny. That force took her, blowing her through masses of time of the things she has gained and loved, and what she has lost bitterly, and it has led her here. As if there could have never been another ending. This is the one that counts. This is the one where all of it really matters.
Yellow, red, and green darts at them not a second after they round the corner of the house. Hermione throws up a shield, the yellow bursting into grey smoke in front of Ginny's face. The two men next to her return their own curses, the four Death Eaters blocking and casting, one falling Stunned or dead. Past them, she can see the figures through wisps of smoke, a mix of hoods and heads of hair, a single flash of orange.
A jet of blue and then a crowd of arrows fly at them, and Hermione hits them into the side of the house with a wave of her wand. She fires back Binding, Blinding, and Stunning spells in rapid succession, careful not to cast anything too difficult to preserve her energy. Liquid splashes across her left side, and she doesn't dare turn toward the roaring screams or the red that explodes in her peripheral.
Ginny's shoulder hits hers on her right, and the redhead spins to press her back to Hermione's. She rolls back a second later, and colors jet around and over them as a herd of footfalls and heavy breathing reach the back of her ears. The Death Eaters are powerless against the tide of spells, and they fall almost simultaneously as a large group of people rush forward around her team.
Hermione just begins to run forward when there is a rumble from the house, and then an explosion of sound covers all other noise as all the windows on the second floor blow out. Glass glitters in the sky, the moon catching them like stars, and everything is still for half a breath. The shattering sound is vacuumed to silence, and then there's a roaring in her ears as the glass rains down on them in a billion little shards. It covers their skin like faerie dust, making them shine in the darkness.
Draco, she thinks suddenly, shaking off the glass and the stings, a fierce need boiling hotly up her belly. She tries to shove it away, this angry yearning, because she knows there isn't anything she can do about it. She has to defend herself, look out for the people around her, and that's all she can do. She can't afford to worry about people she can't possibly protect – lack of focus in battle meant a lack of survival, Moody had said from day one. Constant- Her heart skips at least two beats when she sees a head of white hair, but the smoke clears, and it was never him.
Any semblance of order or control they had managed to obtain once they had arrived at the gates is now completely gone. The battle is new, but the situation is so familiar it rips at the same internal scars of fear. The cloud of smoke, the chaos, the small groups of teams and the individuals fighting what might be the wrong side or the right, but they don't likely know for sure. She trips over bodies, the spells flying all around, and if she were to tilt the world onto its side, it would look like it was raining rainbows. There are screams, the spontaneous bursts of crying, and the stench.
Sulfur, gasoline, the bite of blood, sweat, earth, crisp cold, and smoke. It fuses into a scent only labeled war in her mind, but that forms a dozen sprawling emotions. This is the scent she can't seem to wash from her clothes, that steals peace from her sleep. That she sometimes convinces herself is really there, in the dark, when she is alone, and cannot cloud her senses with soap, aftershave, man, him.
She spots a line of blue heading for Ginny, and quickly tries to pull the girl forward just as Ginny tries to pull her back. The tiny fragments of glass on Ginny's arm bite into her palm, scraping skin and digging in. Neither one moves more than an inch in the second it takes for Hermione to grunt in surprise, something hitting her between her shoulder blades. A freezing cold sensation travels faster than the blood through her veins, along her bones, and spiderwebs out across every bit of her.
She is paralyzed, the air around her turning to a fog of vapor from her coldness, and it only takes her a second to recognize the curse. She had seen it twice on a battlefield; the way it froze the entire body in ice for two seconds, just long enough for another spell to hit, and shatter them like ice cubes between her father's teeth. One never saw a person seem to turn to glass and break to pieces without remembering it.
She has just another second for the horror to come down like a blizzard through the winter inside of her, and then she is unfrozen. Her body pumps back into life, searing heat into all that coldness, and the agony of it sends her to her knees. Everything feels razor sharp, like her bones were just ground into points and disconnected to stab through all that sensitive tissue and human makeup. Her heartbeat trips over itself, cramping her chest, then pounds hard and quick. Ginny is grabbing her arm, and likely the reason why the second spell that always followed did not do so this time. Likely the reason she wasn't in a couple dozen pieces on the ground.
She stumbles to her feet, trying to concentrate and break through the haze of pain, when something hits her with the force of a Bludger in her gut. There isn't a physical impact, just an extreme amount of pressure, ripping all the oxygen up and out of her mouth. She flies backwards, her feet leaving the ground as she is hurled through the air. Her legs, head, and arms whip forward, hunching over the pressure against her gut, until her body is led backwards through the air by only the curve of her back.
Wind rushes past her, bodies and duels flashing by, as Ginny's scream of her name disappears into a new cacophony of sound. This must be the second part, she thinks, and then she is ripped to the ground by her leg. Her bum hits the earth with a jolt, and she hisses pain through her teeth, the ache from the first curse still slow to fade. She swings her arm up, wand out, but there's already one pressing into the corner of her eye.
She blinks, wondering briefly if she is dead. If she were to meet up with him in Heaven, Hell, or wherever it is that souls go or they should find themselves, she would absolutely not put it past Fred to greet her in such a manner. And then cackle at her for getting scared. But then she knows it is George who stares down at her, a flash of recognition and then fear burning in his eyes. He lowers his wand and grabs her arm, pulling her up carefully.
"Alright, Hermione?"
"Yes," she whispers, and repeats it louder so he can hear her. She has not seen him in so long, but somehow it makes sense to see him here before she saw him across his family's table. Somehow it makes perfect sense.
There is a circle of protection around them, the backs she does not recognize, and then flashes of orange hair. Charlie, Molly, and Arthur. Molly sends her a frazzled look over her shoulder, a shield of lavender bursting forth from her wand. Hermione reaches forward to squeeze George's arm in the few moments of reprieve. There is no time for emotions or the things that should be said.
"I have to get back to my team." She doesn't think she should tell him about Ginny, because she isn't sure how well he's handling this.
"We're all the same team now. It's not safe."
"I have to."
George looks torn, but he's known her since she was a child, and there's no denying what her stance means. "I'll go with you."
Day: 1568; Hour: 2
Hermione breathes raggedly, the oxygen rasping into her lungs as she presses her back to the wall. She edges to the corner, her eyes scanning quickly, back and forth. There is hardly any smoke here, but she can still see the wisps of it out in front of her, and knows the denseness that lies beyond. At times the thickness blots out the moonlight, and there is nothing but complete darkness. Running through it is almost like a strobe light to her eyes - faint light and then back to consuming black, like light blinking around her soaring body. She can hear loud crying behind her, and guesses that someone recognized one of the bodies lying at the bottom of the drained out swimming pool. Two of the walls are blown out on the pool house, and the East side of the top floor has collapsed to the first. The top floor is sitting at a slant, and it will only take a couple strong, wayward spells until the whole thing levels.
George and an Auror he called Higs had come with her to find her team. By the time they fought their way back to the spot, they were gone. It was an hour later before they found Ginny, and fifteen minutes after, Hermione had lost all of them. She had caught sight of McGonagall twice, a flash that could have been Ron, and had seen a glimpse of Harry with a look so vicious she almost didn't recognize him.
The pinky and ring finger of her left hand are badly broken, but the Crushing curse had been a breath from her neck, so she considers herself lucky. There is a constant throbbing pain beneath her arm, and a gash across her thigh staining her leg red. There had been a few minor hexes she strongly believed came from her own side – the most damaging had blinded her for a terrifying four seconds before she remembered the counter-spell.
Her head jerks back as someone screams from above her. She glances up at the wall of the top floor, spotting the red spark through the window. She flies around the corner, her wand scanning over bodies in the flickering torchlight, before landing on the staircase. Two Death Eaters are running up to the top floor, and she Binds one of them, their body freezing before falling backwards and knocking down the steps. The other Death Eater yells the Killing Curse at her, and she waves her wand quickly, turning the stairs into a slide. His spell shoots into the ground a foot in front of her as he falls forward. She Binds him through the haze of green in her vision, and runs forward as someone screams again.
She turns the slide back into stairs, vaulting the bound bodies and flying up the staircase. She's halfway up when her foot gets stuck on something and she falls forward. Her knees collide with the steps and the side of her face bangs off the edge of a stair. Heat suffuses her face, and then pain, blood rolling to her lips as she unlocks her teeth from her tongue.
She's whipped up into the air with a moan before she can even notice the hard, jagged pieces of her shattered teeth. Her back hits the ceiling, her skull rattling and the floor groaning uneasily with the force. She gasps in a breath, and laughter starts up behind her as she falls forward, hanging upside down. Blood, saliva, and shards of her teeth drip from the bed of her tongue to the roof of her mouth, sliding out over her upper lip. She's dangling in the air by her feet, some invisible force holding them together and flinging her around like a doll.
"Release us from the binds, you idiot!"
"In a minute."
She brings her eyes up to the Death Eater across from her, reaching up to shove her hair from her vision. There's a pressure against her ankles and sore knees, and she's sent plummeting toward the stairs before she can even see him.
She thrusts her arms out above her head, her elbows buckling and then straightening as her palms hit a step hard enough to sent jolts of pain to her temples. She clenches her teeth on a groan of determination, her arms wobbling from her effort and the pressure shoving her down, when the laughter starts again. She closes her eyes, her sight useless from her hair, and concentrates on the sound. She's done it before, and she can do it again. Her sight is not everything, and she takes the chance of smashing her skull by yanking a hand away to take aim.
She knows she's hit her target when the force stops trying to shove her through the staircase. Her legs fall, cracking off the steps, and she slides on her back, head first down the stairs. She flings her hand out, latching onto one of the spindles and tightening her upper body. Her lower half curves to a jerky halt, and she only allows herself a breath before getting to her feet. She shakes out her strained arm, Stunning the three Death Eaters to silence them and still their movements. Quickly, she Levitates them to lie face down at the bottom of the drained pool, and they match the appearance of the dead they join there.
She scans behind her and then runs back up the stairs, not knowing if the man had screamed again while her blood had been rushing in her ears. She spits the blood and tooth shards from her mouth, sweeping her tongue back to find two jagged teeth, half of one completely gone. The floor groans two steps onto the landing, and she casts a Lumos into the dark corners to make sure it's clear. The only movement besides herself is a frog hopping over the bodies on the ground. Hermione casts quickly between its hops, making sure it's not someone in Animagus form, before scoping the room one more time.
She steps carefully, avoiding the corpses, and trying to feel out the floor under her foot. Her breath is rushing, lights firing past the windows, and the air is a little more clear from the smoke this high up. She has to walk at a slant toward the window she had first spotted the red sparks in, keeping her light low in case someone notices it from the ground and decides to make it a target. She feels like she just stepped into a horror film; the sprawl of bodies, the dark, the way the sound is just a little duller up here.
"Medical," she rasps, and clears her throat, straining her ears for any grunt or whine of noise.
If there is one, she can't hear it over the sounds of the battle. She doesn't even know where the medical team is to bring the person there, but she can't ignore a call for help. Her light lands on a man by the window, his frozen eyes shining at her through the dark, his stomach ripped open. She feels her own heave at the tangle of intestines protruding from his wound, red cords jumbled in a mess of raw tissue and blood. She slaps her hand over her mouth and flashes her eyes up to the window.
Rapid successions. Her life is a scramble of rapid successions. She's not sure if she is imagining the sight that greets her from the window, but she is nearly positive it is Ron and Harry, their wands trained on each other in the light of spells. She gasps back against her gag reflex, choking, and the floor gives a crack as she lurches forward. The memory of the dungeon, of dull green eyes, slams out of her brain with all the power of the spell that hits the side of the structure. The pool house lurches to the side, groaning loudly, and her heart doesn't even hit a beat before another force hits.
The groan turns into a growl, and then it's screaming as she runs forward. The floor is cracking, straining, falling through, and the walls begin crumbling down on the first floor. Pound, pound, pound, her heart, her feet. The ground slides, angling down under her feet as she runs to a destination she gives no thought to, her mind on an autopilot the war created. The nearest exit, the closest escape, survival, survival, and then she's sailing through a window. Her body rams through the glass, her arms over her face and head, and the shatter disappears into the shrieking of the collapsing house.
She throws her arms out, rotating them twice in an attempt to fly or keep her body straight. Her toes hit the ground with such a force she can feel several cracks shoot up from her feet to her head. Her angle sends her to her knees, and her palms catch her before her face can slam into the ground. A heavy cloud of debris rushes over her, choking her breath when she gasps, and she coughs it all back out. She smothers her mouth against her arm, squeezing her eyes, as wood and plaster smack against her body and the dust coats her lungs.
Harry and Ron, she remembers, coughing so hard it feels like her brain is trying to squeeze out of the pores on her forehead. She feels heat sear past her shoulder, and she chokes back her breath, jerking to her left. She opens her eyes, the dust beginning to settle, but she still can't see anything with the way it's blocking out the moonlight. She crawls quickly to her left, using the momentum to get her feet under her, and whines at the shocks of pain in her feet and her right ankle.
There's a crack behind her at the noise, and she whips toward it, staggering with her wand up. She can just make out a hood through the smoke, and she has to drop to her knees to avoid the spell flying at her head. She opens her mouth to cast her own, but the dust is thick along her tongue and throat, and no word breaks the barrier.
She flings herself to the side at the next streak of black, swallowing, swallowing, coughing past the desert of her vocal chords. She rasps out a spell, twice, before a weak stream of water comes out of her wand, and she shoves it into her mouth. She swallows it down, the water and dust, and it scrapes along her throat. The Death Eater clears the smoke that hid him, stepping close enough for her to make out his cocked head and grin.
"Killing yourself just takes the fun out for m-" She cuts him off by turning her wand on him, and he's just choking over the beginning of the Curse when she finishes hers.
She pulls in ragged breaths, bracing for the pain as she forces herself to her feet again. She scans the smoke, carefully revolving her ankle to work out the sprain, and sends another Curse at the flash of a mask to her left. She gives herself a second more and then takes off, awkward-footed, toward where she last saw Harry and Ron.
She kills two more Death Eaters, and an Auror she vaguely knows kills a third in assistance, before she's made it more than three meters. The Curse is at the back of her tongue at the staggering runners breaking through the smoke, but they aren't her enemies. Instead it is Toad and Sam bursting through, Sam's arm shaking so badly there isn't a single way he could hit a target.
Toad looks at her without even seeing her, or at least she's guessing, judging by the Binding spell he throws her way. She blocks it quickly, and it is through the glimmer of her Shielding charm that it registers. Both their faces are pale white, eyes wide, and she's not sure if they're going to faint or vomit first.
She doesn't have time to be sorry. "Gr..Gran-"
She shakes her head, shoving a finger against her lips as she rushes toward them. "Are you injured?"
"It's not bad," Sam whispers, pressing his hand to his side, but she can see the blood still flowing out between and over his fingers.
Hermione almost keeps running. The image of her friends is burning in her mind and shouting out priorities. But she knows these are kids in front of her, that they are scared and alone, and she knows that kind of fear. She remembers Sam's easy smile, and then Justin. Justin in her head, staring up at her from the ground while she stood on a roof, not knowing it was goodbye.
She tears his hand away, ordering Toad to scan the area around them. She has to tell him twice before it sinks in, and he circles the area. Sam keeps his wand aimed behind her back, and she jerks his shirt up. He falls limply into her shoulder and she pushes him back, wiping her hand over the wound to clear the blood.
He screams and she jerks forward in panic. "Shut up, shut up," she hisses into his ear, and then gets a hold of herself when green light doesn't consume her vision. "You're going to be alright, Sam. Just fine. Now bite this."
She pushes a wad of his shirt against his mouth, and shoves it in when he opens, his fingers digging into her shoulder. He bites down and she lowers her head to squint through the faint moonlight, wiping the blood away again, and quickly stitching his wound. It's a rough line, and she pulls the skin too tight, but it will have to do.
"If you're not okay to fight, you two need to head into the woods." She jerks her head to where the fire is crawling across the top of the smoke, across the sky. The leaves and branches are burning brightly, aided by wayward spells. The trees crack, groan, and thud as they fall, wrapping the battle in a burning circle.
"We're okay." Sam nods, shakes his head, and nods again.
"If you change your mind, keep running until you can Apparate out. Go somewhere safe...anywhere but here."
"We'll go back to the safe house." Sam keeps talking but she doesn't hear him.
"Be safe." She nods at him and pulls away, nodding to Toad as she begins running again. Harry, Ron, Harry, Ron.
The two of them follow her, a rush of footsteps and then their arms brushing against hers. She's surprised, but she doesn't know why. The two of them cast mostly Stunning and Binding spells, but she can't find it within herself to tell them to try differently. She won't tell them what they are supposed to do. She won't tell them why they have to. This is their first battle, it might be the last, and if they don't have to know...
Heave, coldness, sulfur. The Death Eater drops, and she kills the second one as they try to break their bindings. Toad tries it after that, but it just turns to a ring of green smoke in front of him. There's a pain in her chest that beats anything else from her body, and in her mind, it is just one word: go, go, go, go.
They fight their way through the smoke and dark figures, and she tries to remember the direction the fountain will be. She can't stop her eyes from dropping to the ground at every body they come across. She scans the black cloaks, the shine of masks, the pajama pants, the orange bands, and doesn't find anyone she knows. It only makes her fight harder, faster, as if it will all change if she doesn't go, go, go.
The smoke is only getting thicker, a body hurtling across her line of vision. There's a running body of fire to her left, the screams blending into a mountain of sound. Colors fly all around them, sparks light the sky, and then she is there.
"Harry!" Sam gasps at the side of her head, and this is how she knows.
She turns sharply, waving at the smoke, her eyes falling on the destroyed fountain she had spotted next to them through the window. Her heart is on a rampage, fear blistering and swelling her up. There are five people dueling to the left of the fountain, and to the right is where she finds them. She freezes, Ron's back to her as he kneels on the ground, his shirt a mess of red. Harry stands in front of him, facing her, and though his face is twisted with fury, his hand is shaking.
She can't see his eyes, but she knows anyway. "Harry!" she screams, her voice tearing out of her throat, uncaring to the enemies that find her.
She breaks into motion, gogogogogo, her blood throbbing, her head spinning, and her body shaking. She digs harder, yelling out a Stunning spell at Harry, her voice coming out in a shriek. Harry falls, Ron jerks forward, and then a bolt of green tears the world in half. Tears it right in half in front of her, and takes her heart with it.
Ron's head whips to the side, orange hair blowing up in the wind of the movement, and Hermione stumbles to her knees the second Ron's shoulder hits the ground. She sucks in a breath, and a scream rips itself from her gut. Rips like a hook from the bottom of her stomach, shredding up through her insides, through her heart, and wrenches it out of her mouth. It feels exactly like that. It feels like the world just exploded from inside her.
No. Nonononononono. Her body is heaving, her vision is all a mass blur, and she's on her feet. She doesn't even feel her body. There is just a terrible coldness spreading inside of her, so cold it burns, and she can't believe it. She shoots across the field, some spell hitting her in her back, but she can not feel it.
It's just the blob of red in her vision, the one she is rapidly approaching, and no other thoughts exist. Not until she proves it wrong. Not until she laughs in its face for being so incredibly wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! It was a different spell, it didn't touch him, he's fine, he-
"No!" she screams brokenly, sobs, something colliding into her side, slamming into her stomach.
She elbows, punches, scratches, and kicks blindly. She can't take her eyes off the red, the red, the green, the red. There is screaming in her ear, blood on her hands, and fingers wrap around her flailing wrists. Her body is thrown back and forth, her head snapping. She loses her footing under the violent shaking as she tries to twist, spin, thrust away. She kicks out a foot, meeting something solid, and kicks again, but the shaking just gets harder.
She is spun away from the red, away from where she needs to be. "Hermione!"
Her head snaps back, and it's white in her vision now. Pure white, and pale white, and then red again. Red, but not the kind she wantsneedsnow. "Let go of me!"
"It's not him! It isn't him! It's not fucking Weasley!" This is repeated, over and over again, but she doesn't understand. "Stop! Stop! It's not him! Polyjuice, fucking Christ!"
Polyjuice? Polyjuice. The world swims around her. She is deaf for several seconds, and then a distant rumble, climbing, climbing. Her nails retract from the depth of his skin, her foot colliding with the ground instead of his leg. Her body sags, her vision sways, and her shoulders jerk with a heavy sob. "What?"
"I promise. I swear to God." Draco. Draco, Draco, Draco. "It's not Weasley."
"How..." He lifts her up, but she can't feel her feet. She can't get past the shock, the eruption of emotions that had torn her open. "How..."
"I'll tell you how when we're not in the middle of a battle, Granger. Suck it up." She would be on the ground if he wasn't holding her so tightly to him. His jaw is pressed against her temple, and she can feel his arm moving, his wand scanning.
She tries to breathe, to break through the dense cloud of anguish that had stolen her mind. "Hermione."
She looks up, her watery eyes peeking over Draco's shoulder, and to bright green. Bright, shiny green, unowned by any Curse. She can't read Harry's face. There are too many things there, and too many in her head. "Harry..."
"It wasn't him. It was never him." Bitterness, despair, anger. "I'll tell you- Don't look. You know they keep form."
"Right." She swallows, shakes her head, shakes it again. "You... You're sure?"
"Positive," Draco bites OUT, and her forehead hits his shoulder.
One breath, two, three and she pushes away. Her hand is shaking when she runs it over her face, and she winces at the pull of wounds, the sticky thickness of dust and blood. It wasn't him. It Isn't him. She shoves a hand against her chest, rubbing at an ache that shouldn't be there. She has just watched one of her best friends die, even if it isn't him. She had still felt it like it was. Still has the image in her head.
"Wait, it was never him, did you-"
"Weasley is alive, Granger. I can't say the same for us if you don't shut up and move."
Right. Right, this is war. Ron is alive, the Death Eater pretending to be him is dead, and that's all it is. That's all it's allowed to be, because she can't lose her mind right now. If she were to look over, it would look like him. It would look like him, feel like him, but it isn't him. Ron is fine, wherever he is on this forsaken field, and it is time to move.
Day: 1568; Hour: 3
It looks like a shooting star for a moment, the yellow-white ball with the gleaming, tangling line of color following after it. It smashes into something ahead of her, a groaning sound following it. Hermione casts over her shoulder, and turns her head back in time to see the smoke blow away. The air is clear only for a second, before the space in front of her is lit with fire. She casts to repel the flames as she launches herself into the air, pain crackling up her legs as she vaults over the fallen tree.
She had lost them in the smoke, Harry's blood-smeared back the last thing she saw before two Death Eaters took up her vision. The more she fought them, weaving herself into the thick of the battle, the more she separated herself from the team. She had won, temporarily, more enemies at her back the moment she turned to go the way she had come. She doesn't know if she should turn to face them or keep looking for a hint of Draco and Harry, but it feels as if the enemies are on all sides of her, and if she stays still for a heartbeat, they will all find her.
The air is filled with the heaviness of magical energy, and the ground is loose from all the trampling of running feet. The adrenaline is making her dizzy, but it's overriding the pain, thrumming through her blood. Draco and Harry are probably looking for her, and she keeps waiting to see the static of Harry's hair or Draco's tall frame with his face in hard lines. She wants so badly to see them.
Her feet slip, and her arms shoot out for balance, spinning wildly as her heart jumps up into her throat. She finds it, thumb pushing up along the length of her wand as she dodges a bolt of murky orange and fires a spell back. Her breath is burning down her throat, and she's not sure if it's from how long she's been gasping without water, or from the Dark magic permeating the air she runs through. She just has to ge-