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Inspirational music: No life without you by Joseph Loduca
Chap. 10 Flasks
It burned. Hermione's body burned with unrelenting intensity.
She had trouble breathing. She could feel something restricting the air in many places and it hurt. She could not open her eyes. Her nose was stuffed with goo that smelled metallic. Her throat seemed to have the same problem and out of instinct she clenched the muscles in the throat in a feeble attempt to clear her respiratory ways from what she assumed was blood. Her small cough brought on pain she had never experienced, as her chest stung when the unexpectedly expanded lungs pressed against the broken ribs.
A sharp pain exploded in her neck after the coughing, as she could not prevent her head from lifting when her body prepared for the cough. She had at least cleared her throat, but the cost was high. Her head lolled back again to the soft surface under her and she let out a cry of agony. She was barely aware of the warm hand touching her face and a scent of apples before she drifted again into unconsciousness.
Scabior carried Granger in his arms with greatest care and yet at the fastest pace possible, trying to get her to the camp within a few minutes. Apparation never was a good choice for a wounded human, so he had decided to apparate to the outskirt of the familiar forest and walk the rest of the way. He marched alone, having sent his three snatchers in advance to prepare what they could to help the wounded woman.
His worried gaze drifted to her red face once again and he thought he saw her swollen lips twitch for a moment but otherwise she showed no sign of life. Before fear and ice sieged his heart, she lifted her head a couple of inches from his supporting arm and coughed up blood with gargling sounds. He stopped immediately and sank to his knees, keeping her body on his thighs rather than laying her down on the cool, moist ground. A scream of torture escaped her and Scabior freed his arm under her knees to relieve her of pain for a while. He wiped the blood off her nose and mouth to allow her unrestricted air and reached for the wand in his pocket. She seemed unconscious again but he wanted to make sure she could breathe and slipped the wand slowly into her mouth.
"Evanesco sanguis,"
He was filled with relief when Granger began to breath easier as the blood disappeared from her throat. He wanted to comfort her and kiss her so bad in that moment and lowered his head to hers.
A voice in his head scolded, 'She's a dirty mudblood!'
He hesitated, resting his lips mere inches above hers and gazed upon her beaten face. The blood was not muddy brown, but of course he knew that; he had snatched mudbloods before who bled red blood just like any purebloods. But there was something bad running in the veins of the mudbloods, he had always heard that and was certain of it himself. It was surely just the silly sex drive messing with his head that tempted him to kiss such filth.
He slipped the arms under the woman again and lifted her promptly to resume his walk. After a while he remembered that his fine boots still bore specks of her blood. Luckily that could be fixed with a wave of his wand once he had been relieved from his burden. A groan went passed her lips and she turned her head to lean it against his warm chest. Scabior rolled his eyes; clearly someone had cursed him with trouble. Was it too much to ask for a silent and ugly mudblood woman? No, now he had to endure this fragile siren who had already managed to crumble his resolve many times over. He decided to not kill her; what would be the point of that, if he planned to waste his expensive potions on healing her only to get rid of her afterwards?
Even though she had been given to him by the Dark Lord himself, it was nevertheless problematic with her staying in his snatcher camp. A lot of brutal, lonely men lived there and they might try to have a go with her. Scabior understood their frustration but was all the same opposed to lend out the woman. He suspected he did not want to her to get harmed that way, whether by him or his men. So what to do with her, then? Keep her locked in his tent until a better idea arose? Scabior clicked his tongue. He enjoyed his privacy when he could relax from everything. Was it really worth it to surrender his private life for this woman? He doubted it but decided to deal with those problems after she was saved from wandering between the land of the living and the land of the dead. That would be his top priority for now.
He reached the camp slightly flushed from carrying an unconscious body for so long and was met by all his snatchers.
"Hey, boss! It's true that the Dark Lord's got Potter, yeah? Wanted to hear it from you yourself before we believe Lackie."
Of course! That was the most important thing happening in the wizarding world at the moment and here he had been distracted with what to do with a simple mudblood. Scabior looked up completely composed as if he did not carry a woman drenched in her own blood.
"Yeah, it's true, alright. Potter is as good as dead and the Dark Lord has won," he informed and shifted his grasp of the woman a little which caused her to moan out loud. The snatchers seemed to just now acknowledge her, apparently more distracted by the news about the downfall of the Boy who Lived. Rusty leaned his head sideways.
"Is that the bird we caught earlier? Looks like a bleedin' deer now. Whatcha gonna do with 'er, boss?"
Scabior lifted his eyebrows and said, "Well, I guess the most important thing now is to stop the bleedings and heal whatever other injuries she has. Have you prepared my tent?" Rusty nodded eagerly and Scabior headed for his tent, grateful for the obedience of his snatchers. They were in a good mood after the hunt but waited for some reward from someone, may it be the Ministry or the Dark Lord himself.
Scabior entered his Spartan home and discovered his big table had been placed in the middle of it. His own pillow was placed at the end of the table, along with his many bottles with different potions and some pots with creme. The gang had brought up the whole emergency kit, even the potion that prevented mosquito bites. 'My, my. They really have exerted themselves.' Scabior couldn't stop the small smile at the men's helpfulness.
He walked to the side of the stable furniture and lay down Granger on it, making sure her head rested on the pillow. He stretched his arms a little and took off his black coat. It was likely he would get blood on his jacket and pants too, but he wanted to be able to work unrestrained of a heavy leather coat. Then he set to work. He aimed his wand towards her still body and mumbled a diagnostic spell to find out where she was most seriously hurt. Many spots on her body began to glimmer, indicating several broken ribs; one broken in two places, concussion, a damaged kidney, an injured neck, bleedings in her womb and swollen eyes. Apart from that, Scabior could of course see the bruises on her face and suspected to find more on her body once she was undressed.
Impatiently, he made her clothes disappear; leaving her only in light blue knickers and a matching non-transparent lace bra. He had to turn away and take deep gulps of air to calm down. Granger's pale, smooth body covered with blood and bruises had upset him far too much for his liking even if he had seen worse. But if he wanted to save her he had to get a grip on himself and just heal her already. He turned back to her and whispered a charm while he pointed his wand at her abdomen to stop the internal bleeding.
Then he proceeded to heal her ribs, hating himself for having to lift her bra a little to get better access to her ribs with only her skin in between the bones and his wand. It was not possible for him to resist a quick look at the round undersides of her breasts before he reined himself in and continued with his work. She began to breathe deeper once the ribs were fixed but was still in a state between sleep and unconsciousness.
Scabior did not know how to heal her kidney with spell work and decided to give her a rare potion that was able to heal injured organs within a day; a very useful potion if you got into a serious fight. He fetched the small flask and poured a spoonful of the liquid into her mouth. Granger stirred suddenly from the sour taste and gasped with split lips. Her movement obviously hurt her untreated neck and she whimpered. Scabior hurried to lay a hand on her forehead and keep her head still.
Tears managed to pass through her swollen eyes as she moaned, "Mum, it hurts! Please make it stop. I'm in the laundry room, Mum. Help me, please." Scabior was not sure what he should do but began to softly hush the hallucinating woman and caressed her forehead. When she had quiet down he kept his hand on her forehead and let the other with the wand heal her neck. He then reached for her hand and fixed her broken wrist but wrapped a bandage around it to keep it stable for a couple of days.
After having given her a mouthful of another potion that would heal her concussion, smeared paste on her beaten face and, although decently, on her black and blue stomach; Scabior considered his most prominent work to be over.
A Scouring charm cleaned his jacket and trousers and after a quick wave at his abandoned coat, it too returned to its usual state. Very carefully he levitated the woman to his bed, letting her down slowly onto his simple but soft bed. He brought the pillow to her and managed to lift her head without interrupting her sleep.
Felling exhausted physically and emotionally after the long day, he cast Accio on his only chair and sat down right beside the bed. He wanted to keep an eye on the woman through the night and eventually help her if she woke up and was in pain. He lifted his arms to let them rest on the back of his neck and crossed his long outstretched legs.
Here he was with the bird his body desired, in his bed, being all his. He thought about his own pureblood values, what the world would look like now that the Dark Lord had conquered it and whether his snatchers would get paid for their work from the Ministry. 'So many fucking problems,' Scabior thought and rubbed his face with a rough hand before he glanced at the sleeping woman beside him. She really was a beauty even with half her face crushed by a psycho-witch. And he was far too tired to occupy his thoughts with such thinking. He switched off the light in the tent and fetched a sandwich to chew on while he sat by her side, waiting for whatever the morning might bring.
Hermione flew, she could feel it. She fluttered high up in the air but surprisingly it did not bother her. The fear of heights seemed to have disappeared and she could enjoy floating on soft clouds forever.
Suddenly there was something in the clouds disturbing her mirth. Voices, and a scent of metal and apples. She squinted to see two misty figures standing on a cloud in front of her. Harry and Ron! She tried to call out to them but was unable to tell if words were coming out of her mouth. They must have seen her; she was just standing a bit away from them. She attempted to wave, and why had her arms begun to feel utterly heavy? She lost her footing and fell from the safe cloud, losingt of her two friends. Plunging towards the ground far beneath her, she desperately tried to wave her arms but pain seethed in her whole body. She heard a woman's vicious laugh and screamed of fear and pain as she fell.
With a gasp she awoke but saw nothing but darkness around her. Despite her inability to open her eyes, she guessed that she was in a bed and realized that she had had a nightmare. And yet the pain stayed with her. Hermione felt a little dizzy but was quite sure she was awake. The pain caused her to moan out loud and immediately a hand was placed on her forehead pressing her down into the mattress.
Someone probed a thumb between her teeth, forcing her to open her mouth while a sweet tasting liquid was poured down her throat from a small flask. She coughed a little but the pain already began to leave her.
Still, her body demanded more of it but nothing came so she settled for eagerly closing her lips around the drenched thumb and suck on it while her tongue quickly licked the fingertip. A sharp intake of air was heard in the darkness before the digit bend and made her mouth open once more. A new liquid was poured into her mouth. This time she began to feel very sleepy and closed her unseeing eyes, not feeling the thumb carefully being withdrawn from the inside of her mouth.