Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.
It went very quiet for a long time after that. As the days went past the ICW stopped pestering her about finding something in Grindelwald's belongings, seemingly coming to the conclusion that there was nothing. There were no more attacks and strangely, no sightings of the escaped death eaters either. The residents of Nurmengard didn't relax though, they were all war veterans that had been caught unawares before. None of them were willing to make the same mistake twice, so the duelling room saw almost as much use as it had in the lead up to the final battle.
Hermione buried herself into research on tracking spells, hoping to be able to find something that Gellert had discovered or developed. She'd considered creating her own but had quickly come to the conclusion that she most certainly didn't have the talent for it. Without Gellert to guide her, she really stood no chance.
It was painfully slow work; he must have made a specific effort to work in English when they were working on the horcrux ritual. Almost everything else that he had worked on was in German and Harry's neat little translation charm unfortunately didn't work on his handwriting. She had to go through each document with a German-English dictionary, translating enough words to get the gist of each page.
She just confirming that one particularly beefy leather bound book was about conjuring replacement body parts when a loud crack made her jump and knock the book to the floor. The binding split as it hit and the pages fluttered across the room in who knows what order. She spun, narrowly catching the chair as she knocked it over and stabilising the desk as the ink pot threatened to spill over her neat translations.
There was a person on the floor, crumpled in a heap and unmoving. She knew instinctually that it was Grindelwald, despite not being able to make out any features in the dim lighting. She waved her wand to brighten all the lights in the room and hurried over to him.
He looked terrible; dried blood crusted his unconscious face and dark bruises bloomed across his almost hairless scalp. Her hand came away from his shoulder sticky with blood and she tore his filthy shirt off without a second of hesitation. There was a large chunk missing from his shoulder with the rawness of a splinch, so she summoned dittany. A bottle zoomed out of his cabinet, and she tipped it generously over his skin. As the magic substance went to work she quickly checked for any other injuries – it would be stupid to treat the splinch and miss the knife sticking out of his back.
There wasn't a knife anywhere, although she noticed that he'd lost a lot of weight in a very short time. His ribs cast shadows across his skin and dark bruises mottled his chest. The bruises worried her because she knew they meant internal bleeding and they were clearly very severe and all in vital areas. She would have to research spells and potions for internal bleeding, fortunately she knew where to find those.
His hands were a different story all together. The manacles were gone but he must have pulled his hands through the locked metal bands to escape them. There were old sores from the chafing, overlaying scar tissue from many different arrests before they'd met but his skin below that was in tatters. His thumbs were both dislocated, the skin, muscles and tendons torn around them as he'd forced his wrists through a space far too small for them. There was similar damage to his little fingers and Hermione had to force herself not to be sick. This was damage far beyond what she could repair.
The question was who could she go to? The healers at St. Mungos were out of the question, Grindelwald was very much a fugitive at this time. Madam Pomfrey had returned to her cottage in Dorset at the end of the war but at least she trusted Hermione and hopefully wouldn't report them.
She sent a patronus to the nurse, hoping that she would respond to the plea for help. She left the message intentionally vague, just saying that someone was injured and needed her help. Once the silver animal had faded through the door, she quickly busied herself with levitating Gellert onto the bed. She scougified his trousers and fully removed his shirt, then conjured a bowl of warm water and began wiping the blood off his face.
A patronus appeared to let her know that Madam Pomfrey was in the infirmary and she sent a reply telling the medi-witch that she would meet her in the auditorium. She dabbed at Grindelwald's face until all the blood was removed, puzzled to not be able to find a source for it all, then she left to fetch Madam Pomfrey.
The medi-witch had thrown a pair of robes on over her nightdress and had a bag of tools and potions cradled in her arms. She was breathing hard, so she must have heard the urgency in Hermione's message. The two witches wasted no time with pleasantries, instead hurrying through to where Gellert lay unconscious on the bed.
Immediately the mediwitch got to work, to her credit not asking a single irrelevant question. Hermione pointed out the injuries she'd noticed and Madam Pomfrey agreed quickly that the internal bleeding was by far the worse injury. She noticed that there was blood on his face again, leaking from his closed eyes and nose.
The mediwitch noticed as well and pulled a dozen vials out of her bag. Hermione poured each one down his throat, spelling him to swallow each one. Meanwhile, Madam Pomfrey began to tend to his hands. She tutted fretfully as she worked despite only taking a couple of flicks of her wand to realign all the damaged bones. She added skelegrow to the line up of potions, then started work on the more intricate parts. It was grossly fascinating watching the muscles and tendons knit back together, then the skin. Once the new skin shone pink, Hermione began gently smoothing dittany over his hands and wrists to help with the scarring. Meanwhile, Madam Pomfrey began work on his other wrist.
The mediwitch finished with his second wrist, then made disapproving noises over the scarring from his previous imprisonments as the two witches finally sat back. There was no way to tell how late it was, or how long they'd been working but the wizard on the bed looked massively better. New skin gleamed pink across his wrists and hands, the bruises across his face and torso had faded and his ears, eyes and nose had finally stopped bleeding.
'Madam Pomfrey?' Hermione asked, 'What could have caused all that?' The mediwitch sighed, a troubled expression crossing her face.
'I've seen it as the result of several dark curses and some muggle viruses but he has none of the side effects common with those I know. Is he a strong occulumens?' She asked. Confused by the apparent change of topic, Hermione nodded.
'I thought so. I've seen similar symptoms once when someone attempted to modify the memories of an occulumens. I would assume it is an effect of extreme exertion and pressure on the brain.' She concluded. Hermione nodded, realising that until Gellert awoke, they would have no idea just how successful whoever had attempted to modify his memories had been.