Edited 10/15/15
19. The Battle, Part Three: Covered in All My Friends
If there's a place that I could be
Then I'd be another memory
Can I be the only hope for you?
Because you're the only hope for me
And if we can't find where we belong
We'll have to make it on our own
Face all the pain and take it on
Because the only hope for me is you alone
[The Only Hope For Me Is You, My Chemical Romance]
Hermione was bent over Draco on the ground, her fingers at his pulse, and relief turned her bones to water as she felt it flutter rapidly beneath her fingertips. They had successfully pushed back the enemy forces that had attacked them, Draco taking a repulso near the end of the fight that had thrown him back to crack his head so hard on the stone that Hermione had thought he'd been killed. And Draco had done it because he'd been too busy protecting her, a thought that made her teeth grind together. He infuriated her, and god she loved him so much it hurt.
Hermione's gaze lingered on Draco as his pulse thudded beneath her fingertips; he looked almost serene, his horribly battered features relaxed in his unconsciousness. She slapped his - mostly - unhurt cheek lightly, and he groaned and rolled his head, eyes fluttering.
"Draco! Wake up!" Hermione would rennervate him if she had to, but she preferred to bring him around naturally; it was easier on the system. "Draco, come on, we have to go. You have to get up now."
He gave a little moan and his fingers twitched and scrabbled on the ground, his eyelashes casting spiky shadows beneath his eyes in the weird light. Hermione shook him and this time grey eyes cracked open and he let out a raspy groan, his silver hand - wand still clutched in it - went to his head.
"I feel like shit," he grated, still dazed, his eyes unfocused as they drifted over Hermione's face. "What the fuck happened?"
She sat back on her heels and looked around. Ron was standing at a wobbly angle, his wand fixed on the doorway at the end of the bridge as Harry used magic to quickly stitch the gash on the redhead's thigh that was welling blood. Harry himself was relatively unscathed, but his face was grim and hard as he muttered apologies at Ron's winces and complaints. Hermione had, like Harry, also come out of that particular fight without further injury - mostly thanks to Draco's fierce over-protectiveness.
"Six of Voldemort's people." Her lips compressed as she looked around at the four of them they'd killed in varying ways, most of them gory. "Unfortunately for them, they were not the most skilled fighters we've come across tonight. But one of them caught you with a repulso when you bloody pushed me out of the way of it."
Draco laughed, the sound turning into a hacking cough, and struggled to sit up. She helped him carefully, still shaking a little with the adrenaline of the fight.
"You're really annoyed that I saved you?" Draco croaked with a smirk playing at his lips, and Hermione laughed and huffed and nodded, blinking down her tears. When Draco had taken the spell her world had stopped, her heart had stopped, terror rushing through her in an icy flood, and the world had blurred briefly before snapping into crystal clarity. She had not just killed but destroyed the man who had hit Draco with the repulso, anger and fear swelling beyond all bearable levels and bursting out of her in a deadly rage.
"Yes!" she snapped at him, wondering why all the men she loved turned out to be noble idiots. "I could have blocked it!" She sniffed and swiped at her tears with the back of her wand hand as she used the other hand to help pull him to his feet. "But then you went and got in the way, and - and - you could have died, Draco. What if that had been an-any other spell? God, I can handle myself, I don't need you to die for me!" Hermione felt her tears spill over and her cheeks go hot and she swore at herself. She needed to pull it together now.
Lavender dead, Fred on the brink of death, Tonks and Remus lost somewhere in the fray and Merlin knew if they were dead or alive, the Aurors she hadn't known well that had fallen, the students littering the halls that had been too young to die… So much fucking death, and it filled Hermione with an anger and grief that threatened to shake her apart.
She had to use it. Use that anger and that grief to help her fight, and survive. Hermione's fists clenched at her sides and she took a deep, long breath, shutting her eyes and taking a second to compose herself. "Hermione…I'm sorry…" Draco was whispering and his filthy thumb swiped over each of her cheeks, brushing away the tears there that mixed with dirt and clotted blood. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just didn't think."
"That doesn't make me feel any better," she retorted shortly, but twisted her head to kiss the base of his thumb, a smile trembling on her mouth as she lifted her head. His fingers pressed harder into her cheek and jaw and his head dipped to hers, his mouth met hers slowly and lightly, and a little humming moan slipped out of her. His lips were rough with scabbing and feverishly hot, and the quick, deft flick of his tongue was shockingly cool in contrast and left the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.
"Come on, lovebirds. This is a bloody war here, not a snog-fest," Ron interrupted with faux disgust even as Hermione and Draco were pulling away and moving toward Harry and Ron.
"Like you wouldn't be doing the same if Cho was down here, Weasley," Draco snarked back as he used both hands to shove his hair back off his face, the sticky blood - his own and others - in the white-blonde strands keeping it slicked back. Hermione felt a little sick at that. Ron laughed.
"Fair point, mate." Ron's red hair was turned darker with dirt and blood and his face was chalk white - Hermione worriedly suspected blood loss as the main culprit for that - but his grin was wide and lopsided. He clapped Draco on the back, and Draco winced and shifted away.
"Fucking careful, Weasley, 'm bloody injured, here." Draco's words were in fact slurred a little, and his eyes glazed over still; Hermione wouldn't be surprised if he had a concussion. There wasn't much she could do about it though. Harry eyed the pair of them, green gaze concerned behind his glasses. Of all of them he was in the best condition, but Hermione thought he'd certainly still draw worried glances from the Muggles on High Street.
"Have you two got any Pepper Up potion? Or Weasleys' Wake-Up?" Harry asked as he turned his attention back to the doorway he had been keeping his wand was trained on. Draco shook his head and grimaced at the pain the movement obviously sparked.
"It got smashed to shit when we were running from the fucking giants."
"I have some Wake-Up. I was going to save it though," Hermione said, although she wasn't sure what she was saving it for. They really could use it now. The pair of them were both far more banged up than Ron and Harry were, and she admitted to herself that if she was anyone else, she would have ordered herself up the Hospital Wing long ago. They needed it now, especially Draco. He had cracked his head far harder than she liked - she'd thought he was dead for a moment - and he was swaying on his feet slightly now, brow furrowed as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"For Christ's sake, Hermione - use it!" Harry ordered with clear exasperation and a hint of fondness, and Hermione caved and fumbled her small vial of the stuff off her belt, popping the stopper out with her thumbnail. She took a swig that drained half the potion and scrunched up her face and coughed. God, it tasted positively vile, what did they put in it?
She passed the glass vial to Draco and glared at him until he drank the rest of the potent potion, tossing the vial carelessly away as he made a face and cleared his throat rather emphatically several times. The aftertaste was nearly as awful as the initial flavour, but Hermione could feel it working its magic.
New energy surged through her easing the burn of her tired muscles and chasing the fog from her exhausted mind. She wished she had twice as much to drink but the potion was extremely difficult to make and took months to brew, so unfortunately that tiny vial had been it for her. Luckily it would last several hours at that concentration, and Hermione doubted the battle could go on much longer than that. The thought scared her; in just a few short hours, it would all be over. For better or worse, the war would be over.
She didn't quite know how she felt about that. It seemed an impossible concept to get her head around.
"Ready, 'Mione? Malfoy?" Ron asked and she nodded, Draco mumbling assent a second later, rubbing at his temples and blinking hard.
"Are you sure you're all right?" Hermione asked Draco as they followed close behind Harry and Ron at a fast walk, and he nodded and winced, and she shot him a look, demanding the truth.
"I'll manage," he insisted shortly. "You're not fucking sending me up to the infirmary, if that's what you're thinking. I'm not leaving you."
"What if I went with you?" She offered reluctantly, wondering what her chances of getting Draco sedated so that she could rejoin the fight would be, but his glance at her was scathing. He knew her too damn well.
"No." Draco's refusal was flat and final, and Hermione's features scrunched down into a frown, blood fizzing with the Wake-Up now, making everything…more.
"Fine," she threw sulkily, and then - oh shit, oh shit, she thought as she ducked a flying curse gracelessly and Draco yanked at her wrist snarling, 'fucking focus, Hermione' - they were in battle, and argument was the last thing on her mind.
The Entry Hall of Hogwarts was a pitched battle in too-close quarters, the huge room crowded with a surprising number of people all hurling curses and hexes at each other with wild, deadly abandon. There was no cover except the shadows that lingered in the darkest recesses of the room along the walls and in the corners where the smokeless torches had gone out, and the air resounded with screams - filled with pain and fury both, drilling into Hermione's ears. She flinched away from the sounds. She wanted to turn and run away.
She straightened and pushed Draco's hand off her wrist, eyes taking in the situation and body automatically shifting into a solid duelling stance, a list of curses flickering through her mind and falling to hover ready on her lips. She heaved in a breath in a futile attempt to steady her nerves - adrenaline was pouring through her in harmony with the Weasleys' Wake-Up and she felt like she was on Muggle uppers she was just that fucking wrecked - and then crashed into the chaos.
Draco stayed tightly glued at her right side, and she was aware of Ron's presence at her left, Harry beside him. They moved forward together into the madness, and Hermione's wand flashed and her mouth spat horrible curses in near unison with the others. It was strangely comforting and bolstering in a way, to know that she wasn't the only one who was busy killing. She didn't think she'd ever really get used to the killing. No matter how much she thought she had become inured to the reality of it, it always came back to sting her later.
A weedy, dirty-looking wizard busy battling an Auror just several feet ahead of them fell to Hermione's hand, his guts spilling from the gaping wound she'd opened in his belly. Her stomach turned as they stumbled past his body, moving further into the Hall - the stink of his insides hung in the air like a cloud around him, and his groans were utterly pitiful, but she couldn't bring herself to end him and it sickened her. She sickened herself. Her foot caught on a jagged hunk of stone on the floor; rubble gouged from the walls by the fighting was lying strewn everywhere, nearly invisible until one fell over it. Ron did fall shortly after Hermione did, but she and Harry caught him before he could hit the ground and hauled him up unceremoniously, while Draco flung a shield out to protect them all.
They worked as a team - seamlessly, taking turns shielding as needed, and using curses that worked in tandem and complemented each other in effect. Hermione kept her mouth in a tight, flat line, except when she was yelling to the others or snarling spells she couldn't summon the energy to cast non-verbally, which was most of them at this point. Her breath wrenched in through her nose and pushed out the words she dredged up from somewhere in ragged, hoarse bursts.
"Somebody shield me!"
"I've fucking got this! You help Harry, Ron, for god's sake!"
"To your right, Draco - the woman - Merlin, fucking - there!"
They worked so amazingly well together, pushing forward into the entry hall with a barrage of beautiful technicolour curses and carving a bloody foothold, creating defensible positions for the Order members who had been struggling when Hermione and the others had entered the fray. Just the four of them, but due to luck or good teamwork or perhaps both, they were tearing through the enemy - mowing them down like fucking puppets, cutting their strings and leaving them to flop. The thought was one that Hermione flinched from as soon as it entered her head, but it somehow seemed too awfully accurate.
It was amazing and wonderful and terrible all at once, how unstoppable the four of them were when they moved like this - all brutal attack, no caution or mercy dictating their actions, desperation driving them onward. It was an eerily heady sensation, and Hermione thought with the one vaguely coherent portion of her brain left to her, that it was probably thanks to the Wake-Up. She really had to wonder what Fred and George had put in it, and whether indeed they had added some sort of Muggle drug, because god was she ever buzzing.
She felt disgustingly, sickeningly powerful bracketed between red hair and broad shoulders, and red-streaked platinum hair and a murderous wiriness, with the Boy-Who-Lived off somewhere to the left, his eyes glaring emerald green beneath his sheaves of inky too-long, too-messy hair - she felt fucking invincible, and how could she not, with them around her?
Hermione had the creeping notion in the back of her mind that it was actually probably a dangerous feeling to be experiencing, and too easily abused, but she embraced it because it was strength and right now she needed strength more than she needed ethics. She could feel terrible about it all later, if they survived the chaos that whirled around her in a maelstrom.
It whirled around her, and then swept her up in it, and she was lost for a while, lost in the battle even as she held the line with the others. Hermione found herself laughing deliriously with the mad joy of that illusion of invincibility as she whipped her wand around above her head, summoning great billows of fire. The flames singed her hair and made her skin feel tight and hot as they burst to life in the air above her in roiling gouts, and sweat dripped down her face cutting runnels in the filth on her skin, and Draco yelled at her furiously -
"Let it go! Let it the fuck go before you lose control - fuck it - fuck - Hermione!"
The five men that had converged ahead of them to duel Hermione and the others' ragged little line blanched as she directed the fire at them with a vicious snap of her wand, and the flames roared as it went streaming hungrily toward the wizards. They went up in flame as though they were soaked in petrol, went up like human bloody torches, and Hermione's brief rush of battle-madness slipped away from her as soon as the first scream cut the air.
She felt like she'd been gut-punched as her wand hand fell to her side, the stick clutched tight and forgotten in her sweat-slick fist. She stuttered to a stop, staring wide-eyed and useless at the horror, and their little line broke - Harry and Ron moving to go back-to-back with her and Draco as the battle raged on and Hermione let out a whimper.
"I didn't mean…" she began to whisper past the cloying sickness that filled her belly and tried to push its way up her throat, and Harry's fingers found hers, their backs and bums bumping together as they huddled.
"Keep it together, 'Mione, this is war, you had to do it, you -" Harry yelled, the rest of his words lost to the roaring cacophony of battle, although Hermione strained to hear him. She lifted her wand to cut down the burning, screaming men staggering blind with agony in front of her, but her spell went awry and fizzled. Shit. She tried again, needing to end the wizards' misery, to give them some little mercy, but her concentration was completely bloody shot.
"Draco, k-kill them, please!" Hermione yelled over the men's screams, managing a flickering shield to shelter them both and throwing him a beseeching look.
Draco swore under his breath and nodded, slashed his wand viciously through the air, a horizontal jerk that spoke of death and made Hermione's insides shrivel up into a brittle, withered thing. The five men dropped - puppets with their strings cut, oh god - and their blood hissed and sputtered as it spurted out from their opened throats and into the fire that engulfed them and ate at them
"Oh god," Hermione gasped and retched, a thin spatter of bile onto the toes of her poor abused shoes as the wizards twitched and shuddered on the ground, one of them clawing at the air with fingers that had burnt dark and crackled like roast pig on a spit.
"It's over, it's done! It's done now, keep it together!" Draco was yelling at her, shaking her by the arm and making her teeth clack hard, her neck hurt where her head jostled. Indignation surged up in her - stop fucking manhandling me, she thought stupidly - and she wrenched away from him. She was fine, she just needed a moment to centre herself again, to get herself focused again.
"Stop that!" she shouted at him, bristling and indignant in the middle of a fucking war-ground, and sparks flew from the end of her wand like a child's sparkler on Guy Fawkes.
"They're dead now! Pull it together! They aren't the first people you've - you've killed, or even burnt, so pull it together!" Draco roared at her, shoving his face down close to hers, his grey eyes glaring fury, and Hermione sucked in a short, sharp breath.
"I'm fine! I just need a fucking moment, I just need -" she screamed at Draco over the noise, and then choked herself to a stop and nodded shortly - shame-facedly - at him. She did need to pull herself together, it seemed. Hermione squared her shoulders and refocused on the fight, settling her grip on her wand and flattening her mouth into grim determination as she recast a shining, shimmering protego; one of the easiest useful things to do while she was so stupidly rattled.
No, she would never get used to the killing. But that didn't mean she could fall apart, either. Not yet, anyway.
"Thank you," Hermione said quietly, her heart burning in her chest, all too aware of the charred corpses in her peripheral vision; ugly, twisted things. But she was steady. She didn't think Draco would hear her soft thanks but he did, saying 'you're welcome' in a quintessential smug-prat tone, and when her eyes darted to him for the smallest portion of a second she caught a glimpse of cold grey eyes crinkling into warmth, as he spared her a smirk.
And then they were immersed, drowning, swallowed up in the fighting again.
A terrible sound split the air moments later - a sound that had everyone covering their ears, fighting suspended as they shrank from the noise. It crawled inside Hermione's brain and went BANG, and she was deafened, tears of pain and shock streaming down her cheeks. She was just straightening and whirling to ask if anyone knew what the fuck that had been, and if it was the wards dropping as she suspected, when the Entry Hall filled with Death Eaters.
Oh Merlin. Oh Merlin, oh Christ, it had been the wards - the anti-apparation wards had been breached, and without them Hogwarts lay wide open and defenceless to attack. The knowledge lay like cold lead in Hermione's belly as she shielded and struck in a weaving kind of rhythm. Then, in between the shadows and flashing lights, Hermione began to make out faces, and other things crowded out her realisation about the wards.
Like, that was Bellatrix fucking Lestrange, and Rastaban, and there, that one Hermione didn't know the name of but she remembered him torturing her during captivity, and… God, they were everywhere. Her blood ran icy in her veins, her flesh all puckering up in tiny goosebumps as she stared around at the Death Eaters with wild, terrified eyes.
"They've breached the wards!" Harry cried - Hermione bit back a snarky comment about obvious observations - and he was barely audible over the deafness that still crowded the inside of her head and muffled her ears, even though Hermione could tell he was screaming the words. The wards going down had been like a Merlin-damned explosion in her head.
"I know! We have to set up some kind of…safe zone. Perimeter. Retreat, and regroup, and put up new wards!" Draco yelled in response, and Hermione knew what he meant. It was the best idea at this point, and no doubt the older, more experienced Order members would have already thought the same thing.
Hermione knew they would have the hospital wing locked down tightly - the Healers supported by Aurors, ready to repel any enemy forces who apparated inside. No doubt they were already putting up temporary anti-apparation wards in the infirmary, and some of the more senior Order members had to be doing so down here, somewhere.
"We need to find someone!" Hermione shouted. Someone like Tonks or Remus, or McGonagall, or Kingsley - someone who could organise the Order and pull them together. She didn't have to explain that though; Harry knew what she meant.
"I can't see anyone!" he shouted back, and Hermione couldn't see anyone senior either, just Aurors, some of the Durmstrang division, and random ex-students.
"There's you!" she told Harry fiercely, twisting to look at him, spells ricocheting off the shield she held up with every last bit of her strength - lights exploded like fireworks on the shimmering surface. He blanched, his eyes very green and filled up with a despairing emotion she couldn't spare the time to untangle.
"I -"
"Harry…" His name was all she had to say, bumping up against Draco and Harry and stumbling in the blinding flashes as she flinched in the wake of a particularly fierce barrage of hexes. It was an epileptic's nightmare in here, and it was giving her a thundering headache to match all her other wounds. Harry hissed through his teeth, and his hand squeezed her wrist in a blind seeking of comfort.
"Everybody!" Harry yelled, using magic to amplify his voice as Hermione, Draco, And Ron automatically moved to make a tight huddle around him, protecting him from the battle being waged fiercely around them with layers of shields. "Everybody! Listen - the anti-apparition wards are down! Fall back! To the Great Hall, now!"
Hermione winced as Harry's enhanced voice drilled into her ears and swelled inside her head - it seemed her temporary deafness was quickly wearing off. She bore the sensation with a clenched jaw - it was not unlike the feeling she had gotten the very few times her parents had had to fill her teeth - and concentrated on holding her shield against the Death Eaters. Until Harry had spoken up the four of them had gone briefly - blessedly - unnoticed, but everyone noticed the Boy-Who-Lived, especially when he was yelling orders at inhuman volume. All attention turned upon them, and Hermione swore viciously and shifted her stance on the dangerously uneven ground.
"It's Potter!" A hooded and cloaked figure screamed, pointing wildly, and then chaos truly descended upon them.
They were a little bubble of shielded safety in a maelstrom of curses, moving slowly toward the Great Hall, driven into a purely defensive mode under the hailstorm of spells being turned on them by the Death Eaters and Voldemort's lesser minions. They were the eye of a storm that comprised of Order members and the enemy, and a whirl of deadly spell-fire.
And then the worst happened - Ron's shield failed, and somehow in the panic of the moment, he and Harry went stumbling away from Hermione and Draco, and once apart - lost in the lights and the screams in the blink of an eye. Hermione screamed and searched for them with frantic eyes, spinning in circles, nearly losing Draco who stuck to her like a blood-drenched shadow.
The battle dissolved into moments, seconds, flashes, and Hermione breathed in short sharp gasps, her mind and body on overdrive. She ducked a hex, firing a reducto back, dodged a stunner and then twisted in a way that made her muscles scream to avoid a bolt of Dark magic. A wizard bore down on her, wand cracking out curse after curse, and she threw up a shield with a wordless cry. Exhaustion warred with the Weasleys' Wake-Up.
Her wand slashed and cut through the air in sharp, fierce movements as she and Draco pushed and fought their way for the Great Hall. Hannah Abbott fell in beside Hermione, and the exchanged tight, terrified grins. Hermione had seen far too many of her friends lying dead tonight, and it was buoying to see Hannah still alive and fighting, her aim steady and her round face dogged and determined.
Spells hissed sibilant from Hermione's lips in a furious stream of quiet sound. Her every muscle ached and she ignored the pain, pressing on. The room flashed and swirled around her, Draco, and Hannah like some nightmarish Muggle rave, and Hermione kept losing track of which direction they had to go in. In a space this hectic with all-out fighting and no real cover to be had, one misstep - one second's lapse of attention, one heartbeat of hesitation - was all it took to die.
Hermione thanked Merlin - and Fred and George, to be more accurate - for the Weasley's Wake-Up; the only thing keeping her upright at the moment. It made her mind a focused blaze and her reflexes lightning-quick, in comparison to what they would have been otherwise, at least. It couldn't last long though, surely. She hissed and ducked a curse, and her shoulders came up against Draco's back - pressed together for a brief second. Every few moments as they shifted and ducked, Hermione and Draco broke apart from each other, but they were drawn back like magnets, unerring.
They made a rhythm that thrummed in harmony with Hermione's ragged breaths, a counterpoint to her frantic heartbeat. Moving with Draco happened with a strangely desperate, exhausted ease. It just worked. It was somewhat harder to incorporate Hannah into the ducking and weaving they had going on, and oddly enough it was Draco who kept an eye - and a firm hold - on Hannah, the Slytherin working with the Hufflepuff surprisingly well.
Hermione's wand arm ached and her very magic was starting to feel strained, each spell seeming to take more and more effort to form. And the Death Eaters were fresh to the fight and god so fucking dangerous - Voldemort's elite, not at all like the expendable minions they'd been fighting up until now. Hermione gasped as she deflected a cutting curse just barely in time, her fingers stinging as she whipped her wand across and sent the bolt of light up toward the ceiling. Blood beaded at the tips of her fingers - she could feel it, viscous and slick, another little hurt to add to her list.
Hermione could easily fill a three foot long parchment with her injuries at this point, and she wouldn't be writing extra-large like Ron used to try to do to stretch his essays out.
With a pained hiss Hermione straightened her shoulders and killed the witch who'd attacked her, using a cutting curse of her own that sliced cleanly through the arteries in the witch's throat. Hermione swallowed down on the sickness the thick spurts of arterial blood aroused in her stomach, and threw up a shield that covered her and Hannah as two hexes flew at them from somewhere in the chaos.
Hannah took down one of the enemy casters - or so Hermione assumed from the little whoop of victory the girl made, and the sound of Draco snarling a killing curse seared itself into Hermione's brain. She was stumbling over her own feet as she, Hannah, and Draco slowly retreated toward the Great Hall; Draco yelled at Hermione to hurry because all of the Order members were pulling back and they were outnumbered. But Hermione's eyes darted over the large room of their own accord and took in snippets of the madness, heart thudding with the need to fight.
Hannah seized Hermione's left hand with her blood-tacky right, the Hufflepuff's grip tight and strong as she yanked at her insistently. "Come on, Hermione, hurry!"
She hurried, but not before a flick of her wand sent a bolt of light at the wizard duelling Neville, stunning him - Neville finished him off, his face grim. Her feet caught and tripped over the rubble littering the floor as they hurried toward the Great Hall; they would have to make it right across the whole damn Entry Hall. There was a flash of blinding light from a far corner that made them all stumble and flinch, accompanied by a deafening boom of explosion, shards and chunks of stone hurtling through the air. Tonks' pink hair caught Hermione's eye in the light, the witch's face smeared with dark blood and nearly unrecognisable, set as it was with furious, deadly purpose.
Hermione's feet propelled her clumsily and quickly backward, Draco's hand digging mercilessly into her upper right arm, her left hand twined deathly-tight with Hannah's right. Her chest burned with her pants for air, and the Death Eaters were everywhere - everywhere, and there was no cover, they could barely shield the curses and duck the Avadas, and covering their retreat made it painfully slow, and… Christ it was madness, and fear strummed tightly in her chest.
Neville backed up closer to them, and they covered him so he could make a runner for it at Draco's urging, and she caught a glimpse of what she thought was bright ginger hair in the shadows against a wall, and god the Great Hall was too far away, how the fuck were they supposed to get there without being mown down, where was their back up, their - her runaway train of panicked thought cut off as Hannah squeezed Hermione's hand hard.
She squeezed back wordlessly to reassure the witch as she busily tried to cut a chandelier from its ceiling fixtures. And then Hannah yanked at her - a sudden pull downward on Hermione's hand and she went swaying forward with a startled cry. Then just as suddenly the pull disappeared as Hannah's hand slithered from hers, and Hermione went tumbling back. Draco barely managed to keep her upright, swearing filthily under his breath as they staggered, his wand whirling up defensive spells.
Hermione stared down at the ground.
"Hannah," she said, shocky and breathless. She stared down at the blank-eyed girl sprawled awkwardly at her feet. "Hannah." The corpse didn't move - of course not, she was dead, Hermione reminded herself, and stared wide-eyed like an idiot who had never seen death before. But she'd just been holding her hand, and now…
"Hannah! Oh my god, no, oh god, Hannah!" Her voice scaled up and shrilled off to hoarse nothingness, and she wanted to stay and do something, but a spell flew past her head - green as death, and a laugh streaked the air. Hermione knew that laugh; it sent dread running ice-cold down her spine, and she had to get away. Bellatrix. She wasn't ready to face her, not now. She left Hannah lying there.
Hermione promised herself she would make sure the girl was okay after the battle. She would see her laid out neatly, with her blank eyes closed peacefully and a posy tucked in her hands. But now, now Hermione had to go.
"I'm sorry." Draco's voice in her ear, rough and ragged as they stumbled back, and Hermione nodded numbly. "So sorry. Come on. We have to move. Nearly everyone else has gone, and…" he rambled on, a stream of nonsense that was probably supposed to be distracting and comforting, pulling her around to his right side and getting her to twist her left hand in his belt - 'I'm not fucking losing you, Hermione'.
"…You all right?" Draco was asking when Hermione snapped out of her brief lapse into dazed shock, and nodded at him, hexing a large wizard as he loomed up out of the shadows with his wand at the ready. The wizard fell with a thump and Hermione grinned mirthlessly.
"It's okay, I'm okay -" Hermione began to say, which was stupid because it wasn't and she wasn't, but she barely got out 'It's -' before a force hit them. A repulso - otherwise known as 'having a fucking wall thrown at you' and the air whooshed out of her with a grunt, and they both went flying back through the smoke-muddled air. Hermione just had time to think, 'At least we're heading for the Great Hall' when there was a dull crack and a moan from Draco as he hit the ground, she striking it a split-second after him.
Hermione screamed; an anguished, piercing wail that was shocked out of her by the pain as she landed hard on a piece of stone that jammed up between her shoulder blades. The pain seized her whole back, eclipsing the pain from her earlier injuries, and the new ache in her neck from the whiplash, and the lump rising on the back of her head from striking it on another piece of stone. For a moment she couldn't even feel the shooting pains going down her legs from the jarring to her bum and hips - everything was just the web of red pain swallowing up her back.
Her hand was still tangled in Draco's belt and she wrenched it free and snarled with the pain the motion sent through her back, her face contorting and crumpling, tears springing to her eyes.
"Draco?" She rolled onto her face, eyes leaking tears of pain in a steady stream, pushing herself onto all fours and gasping in dust-filled air. "Draco?"
"I'm fine," he grated out, and then made a strange, sobbing little whimper that made Hermione cringe.
""What -?" She crawled over him, face above his, dragging the knuckles of her wand hand down his temple - trying to avoid any of his wounds. "What's wrong? Can - can you move?"
"I - I don't…" He trailed off panting, his hands made into fists as he tried to compose himself. She wondered with frantic terror, if he'd struck his head, and visions of brain damage and death swam behind her eyes.
Hexes flew through the air above them, but Hermione thought perhaps they were hidden from sight, thanks to the pile of fallen stones they had landed on the far side of. She shifted - the pain in her back reared up and she bit back a sob - squatting back on her haunches and examining Draco for new injuries; god, he didn't even look like him anymore, he looked like an extra in a horror film.
And there was the problem - and also the source of that crack she had heard just as Draco had struck the ground. She choked down vomit at the sight of his left leg - bent at a horrifically unnatural angle, giving him an extra joint halfway down his shin. Both bones must be broken for his lower leg and foot to twist out to the left like that. Christ. She bit down on the tip of her tongue hard, and stared helplessly at his leg for a brief second.
"My leg hurts," Draco said as she stared at it like an idiot, and his voice was rough and strained with the pain, little hisses escaping him.
"You've broken it," she told him, sounding hoarse and unfamiliar to her own ears as she scrambled back a bit - staying hunched down to keep behind the meagre cover the pile of rubble provided. "I need - I need - there!" She snatched up a long piece of pipe, slicing it into two shorter pieces and altering it slightly to make for more efficient splints.
"You need to get out, Hermione. You need to leave me and -" Draco started breathlessly, and she rolled her eyes as she pulled off one of her bracers and transfigured it into a long strip of cloth. She knew that theoretically, episkey should work to put a badly broken leg back in alignment, but there was a reason that Healers didn't use it. Unfortunately for Draco, she didn't have a choice except to hope it worked to some small degree. Hermione cast a numbing charm, and then took in a deep breath.
"This is going to hurt," she told Draco briskly, and thrust an empty leather belt pouch unceremoniously into his mouth. "Bite down on this."
"Wha?" He demanded through his mouthful of leather, eyes going very, very wide, and Hermione snapped out the spell before she could think better of it. Draco made an awful, awful noise as the bones wrenched into place, grinding together audibly and pulling a sob from behind the leather he bit down on. His hands flew out to the sides to scrabble at the ground, his head snapping back, the cords in his throat standing out in stark relief, his whole face going red and eyes rolling back in his head. Shit.
"I'm sorry!" Hermione said frantically, repeating it over and over as she strapped the splints tightly to Draco's now-straight leg with the bandage she'd made of her bracer. Her hands shook violently, and fresh sweat had sprung up on her forehead and under her arms. "I'm sorry!"
He blinked at her, coming back to himself, pushing the leather pouch out of his mouth with his tongue and panting hard for air. "Fuck, Hermione. Fuck. Merlin, that fucking…hurt." He wiped at the sweat on his brow with his wrist and pushed himself to his elbows with her help. "Did it work?"
"It straightened it," Hermione said shakily, flinching down closer to the ground as a curse flew nearer her head. "And the splint seems pretty secure. Do you think you can move?" She cast another numbing charm on the leg and a cooling charm just in case the cold helped, and looked to Draco for an answer. He shrugged weakly.
"The numbing charm helped. And I don't really have much choice, do I?"
"Not really, no."
They were near the corridor through to the Great Hall, and Hermione could see now that Order members were crouched at the corridor, providing covering fire for Hermione and Draco. She popped her head up above the pile of rubble to get a fix on the enemy, and hexes blossomed against her shield, making it waver like rippling water. Shit - there weren't many Death Eaters, only two now, if Hermione was counting right, but there were many of Voldemort's other followers.
It looked like they were the only ones left in the Entry Hall, all the other Order members either dead or having successfully retreated. If Draco was strong enough, they should be able to retreat for the corridor while keeping up shields, and the only spells they would have to dodge would be the Killing Curse. One of the silhouetted figures at the corridor motioned for Hermione and Draco to move toward them, and she gave them the thumbs up, her heart kicking it up a notch.
"We have to move now." She got Draco to his feet with stumbling heaves and grunts of effort, her shield falling at one point and nearly getting them both killed as curses flew. Her back was killing her. If they survived, it would be one big bruise tomorrow, she just knew. It felt like hell.
And Draco was fucking heavy to hold up, his chest rising and falling and little humming whines of pain rattling out of him. She got his arm around her shoulders, and then they were moving, shielding desperately as the Order members behind them lay down covering fire. Progress was slow and painful, Draco swearing in a constant low stream and leaning heavily on Hermione, his fingers biting into her shoulder as he half-hopped, half-limped. Her back felt as though it were set aflame, and she wished she had asked him to put a numbing charm on it as she had done for his leg.
Everything dissolved into a blur as Hermione made her body keep moving back. Draco's grey eyes were hazy with pain. His face was ashen, sweat beading up on his forehead. Her muscles ached and burnt, exhaustion like lead weighting her bones. Bellatrix's face across the room in the weird light was like a scene out of a nightmare. Draco was moving too slowly. She tried to haul him bodily along, and he slumped against her. His scent filled her nostrils; salt of sweat and coppery tang of blood, and fear drummed into her inexorably.
Then finally friendly hands were grabbing them both, pulling them apart from each other, but also pulling them to safety, down the corridor and into the Great Hall. The hands pressed painfully into Hermione's injuries as whoever they belonged to swept her along, and she stifled her cries of pain behind her flattened lips, her head whipping about as she tried to catch a glimpse of Draco.
She saw him as the people holding her up lowered her to sit on a cot - she slumped down hard, her legs like jelly. Draco was hanging limp between Viktor and another Durmstrang wizard, his skin a sickly greyed-out colour and wet with sweat. For a moment Hermione was frozen with her breath caught in her throat. But she saw the rise and fall of Draco's chest as they laid him down on the cot beside hers, and a thread of relief unravelled inside her. Her shoulders slumped, and her hand stiffly uncurled from around her wand.
"Hermione." Harry loomed up in front of her, his hand ghosting over her half-undone braid and settling to cradle the back of her neck. His lips pressed a kiss to her forehead, and he breathed her name again, full of bone-deep relief. Hermione half-sobbed Harry's name in answer and wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders, nearly pulling him down onto the cot on top of her. They clung together for a long moment, before breaking apart with faces full of worry at the boom of the huge doors slamming shut.
"We're barricaded and warded," a voice yelled, echoing through the crowded Hall, and Hermione felt some of the tension leave her.
"Draco," was the next thing out of her mouth as she craned her head around Harry to see him. He lay on the cot perfectly motionless, a young wizard that Hermione didn't know dripping a purplish liquid between his lips, at the orders of a Healer who was examining his leg. His eyes were shut and he looked dead, but he appeared to be swallowing down the potion the Healer's assistant was feeding him drop by careful drop.
"Is he…?" Hermione ventured, frightened by the grey tinge to Draco's skin, and the slack, limpness to him. The cot dipped as Harry sat down beside her and held her hand. She didn't think to wonder yet where Ron was, or what was happening now the wards had gone down. Her eyes were fixed on Draco, her heart in her throat.
"He'll be fine," the Healer professed brusquely, waving away her young assistant, and leaving the splint Hermione had put in place, having made a few slight adjustments to it. "Well, he'll be fine if we - any of us - survive this damned night."
Hermione blinked, processing that rather blunt truth. "His leg…?"
"Shaun gave him the Skele-Gro, and your splinting will do perfectly well for now," the Healer answered as she quickly healed a few of Draco's more minor wounds. "Do you know if he suffered any other serious injury?"
"I don't. I'm sorry, I -"
"That's perfectly all right," the Healer interrupted, lifting Draco's eyelid and flashing a light at her wand tip in his eyes, before casting a few complicated diagnostic spells. The older witch nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Diagnostic spells indicate he's in a stable condition. He's unconscious due to exhaustion and shock, nothing more dangerous than that." She drew a blanket up over his filthy body with her wand, and turned to Hermione.
"The more minor wounds he has, I'll leave to you to take care of. But first, what about you?"
"I'm - I'm fine," Hermione said numbly, automatically, and the Healer levelled a scathing expression on her.
"Don't waste my time, girl. If you need healing tell me and be quick about it - there are people dying who need me now."
"I'm - I'm pregnant -" She swallowed hard, afraid for the baby and hoping desperately that everything was all right. "- And my ribs - I think my ribs are broken," Hermione whispered, her hand interlocking with Harry's. She suddenly thought about everyone else. Everyone who had been hurt worse than her and Draco, or had died, or…she wanted to break down and scream at how unfair the world was.
Instead Hermione obediently submitted to the diagnostic spells the Healer used on her - immeasurably relieved to discover her pregnancy continued without issue - and drank the disgusting Skele-Gro she was given. The Healer moved on to other patients, leaving a pottle of all-purpose healing balm, some numbing cream, and fresh, white bandages. She scourgified Draco, and smeared his burns, bruises and bloodied wounds with the strong-smelling stuff with Harry's help, the questions about who was alive and who had died all tucked beneath the surface, waiting, stinging hot under her skin.
It wasn't until Hermione had peeled off all but her bra, boots, and trews, and sat on the bed while Harry helped tend to her that she managed to find the courage to ask.
"Where's Ron?" she asked first, small and choked, her fingers smoothing a self-sticking bandage over the ragged Inferi bites at her throat. Harry paused in smearing the healing balm across her back - which he had assured her was already bruising spectacularly - his hand pressed flat over her shoulder blade, warm and rough.
"Mr - Mr Weasley was killed," he got out in a thick voice, all clogged up with tears and horrified grief, and Hermione's fingers froze at her throat. "A-a giant killed him. Ron's with the rest of - of the family."
"Oh god." Hermione's face crumpled. It wasn't fucking fair. It broke her heart. They were like another family to her, and Mrs Weasley would be utterly lost without her husband, and the children, Ron included, loved Arthur so much, and… The tears flowed easily and heavy, saturating Hermione's cheeks and dripping down onto the thighs of her leather trews. "Oh god, Harry…"
"And - who else?" she asked him morbidly after a long silence, forcing herself to dip her fingers in the clear healing balm and dab it over a ragged gouge on her forearm. Harry cleared his throat and began moving his hand over her bruised back again.
"Remus -"
"Oh no, Harry. Oh no. No, he can't be dead. He can't be. Teddy…" She spun to face Harry and tensed and groaned at the pain that shot through her at the movement, her eyes pleading with him. He shook his head hard.
"No, no - he's not dead. He's…Christ. Bloody Merlin it's almost worse," he said brokenly, and still twisted to face him, Hermione pressed her wrist beneath Harry's chin - healing balm coating her fingers. Her forehead knocked forward against his cheek, and his arms went up around her neck. They clung again, the bitter medicinal scent of the balm hanging in the air around them, emanating off their skin.
"He - he was tortured. We don't' know who did it, but, but. Someone used the Cruciatus on him until he - well… He's just lying there, twitching. He keeps seizing and foaming at the mouth, every ten damn minutes or so. And when he's not, there's just nothing there…nothing. He's just…empty. The Healer says it's too early to tell if it's permanent, but…the Longbottoms…"
"He'll get better," Hermione said fiercely, not sure if she believed her own words, but knowing she had to make Harry believe them. "He'll get better, Harry. He has to."
"…Yeah."
She told him about Hannah, and Lavender. He gave her a short list of names that was far longer than it should have been. They compared notes, and injuries, and hugged some more, before the two of them went to see if any of the senior Order members were in here, so they could try to lay plans.
They found Kingsley, laid out on a cot with his eyes gently shut, and a great wound that had opened him from sternum to pelvis. Hermione covered him with a sheet, smoothing it over his shoulders with careful little sweeps of her bruised hands, while her tears left dark little spatters on the fabric. Harry took her hand and led her away, but tears streaked his own cheeks, and his hand on her was very tight.
In the end, there was only Tonks, who was dulled with grief and worry for Remus. The witch - her hair a mousy brown and her eyes faded hazel - forced a smile to her lips when she saw Hermione and Harry though, and hugged Hermione gently. It only took a brief conversation with Tonks to decide they would give everyone an hour to tend their wounds and grieve, before they made a sortie out of the Hall to find out what the situation was. They needed to regroup with the rest of their scattered forces, and make some kind of united stand; at this point, though, Hermione wasn't feeling very hopeful.
Harry stayed with Tonks and Remus, and Hermione sat by Draco for a while as he slept. She hoped he woke of his own accord soon; the Healer had implied a rennervate would not be good for him, but she wanted him awake. She needed him awake.
The barricades and wards that kept the enemy out held strong, and when Draco showed no sign of waking Hermione went to see Ron, Mrs Weasley, and Charlie, who were the only Weasleys in the Hall - the only ones who knew Arthur was dead. Neville sat with Dean on a cot nearby, and they waved a tired hello to Hermione. When the Weasleys' grief grew to be too much to bear Hermione drifted over to the two boys and sat with them silently for a time, her hand finding Neville's as if on instinct.
She watched Ron and Charlie cling to their mother as she sat tucked still and pale between Dean and Neville, and felt as though she were disconnected from everything. Her free hand crept over her abdomen, and her head sank to Neville's shoulder. He talked quietly to Dean, his voice a low thrum, and his hand was sweaty and hot around hers, and her aches were reduced to something bearable, and the swell of her belly was firm and real.
Hermione drifted in a half-doze against Neville, dreaming she felt firm flutters beneath her hand, smiling with bruised lips as she slept.