2. The breathtaking after the battle

Ron could hardly process what had just happened right in front of his eyes. In the one moment she had cringed before she could have been hit by the Cruciatus and then in the next moment he had heard her whisper those words herself. The Killing Curse. She had killed someone. She had done it for him. She had saved him. And the he saw her fall, fall...

It was this last thought that tore him out of his wild doubts and his shock. Instantly, he tried to lurch forward, but his body was still too weak to walk and he fell back to the ground. He ignored the pain in his knees that followed and began to crawl towards her, never noticing the battle around him that still continued. When he finally reached her body, he was shocked by the coldness of her skin, the limpness of her limbs. Was she dead? That question made his guts contradict in a cold pain, but it was nothing compared to the sharp pain tearing through his heart.

"'Mione..." he whispered with a voice, sounding as broken as it had never been before. He hardly noticed the tears that burnt on his cheeks, blurring his vision. His large, dirty hands cupped her face, caressing her porcelain skin, praying that his touch would bring her back. But her body didn't respond to him. She remained lifeless.

"Ronald!", he barely heard the scream, he whimpered in his own pain, not realising what happened around him. He didn't notice the outcome of the battle, didn't see that his family defeated the Snatchers or that they ran to him. He only realised that his whole family surrounded him when his mother appeared on the ground next to him and pushed his shivering hands away. She placed her hands on Hermiones face, softly, carefully. Her fingers twitching to the girl's throat, searching for any sign of life.

"Is she...dead...?".

"NO! She is not! She can't be!" Ron snapped back at his younger sister's terrified whisper, but somewhere in the back of his head he didn't even believe his own passionate words. Petrified by the situation and his own ignorance he turned to his mother with a heart-wrenching plea in his usually bright blue eyes.

"Mum..." he begged her, begging her for any hint of good news, but Molly didn't answer him. She simply put her right hand on the girl's forehand, the other one over Hermiones heart, before she started to whisper something in a voice too quiet and too rushed as if anyone could have understood what she said. The seconds passed them in silence and an almost infinite atmosphere of fear and horror, before the light came back to them.

Hermione came back to life under the hand of the elderly witch, she took a deep, rattling breath, desperately choking for air. Her deep brown eyes, now filled with an unusual expression of sheer panic, opened only for a glimpse of a second before she started to cry and to stutter in a pace, almost too quick to follow.

"Mum...Dad...please...please..." she whimpered again and again through agonised sobs and burning tears, possibly not even aware of where she was and what had just happened. Although Ron felt deeply terrified by her condition, he was yet glad that she was at least still alive. She was still Hermione. When his mother demanded to get her inside, Ron was already trying to pick her up into his arms, he started to walk a few feet, but his still weak legs swayed under her weight and her continuous desperate panic.

"I'll take her son." Arthur Weasley insisted when he noticed his son's struggling.

"No, I will carry her." The glance he shot back at his father, filled with a desperate determination, was final enough and so it was him who carried her gently into the house. He followed his mother's instructions and brought her into the living room, carefully placing her onto the sofa. Again, his mother pushed her way past him, marking this as the first time in all their lives that Molly Weasley cared more about someone else than her own family.

She examined the girl's body more carefully now, she noticed how weak and lifeless she felt under her touch, thick dark shadows were under her eyes and her breathing was still shallow and weak. A lightly blueish bruise covered the spot over her heart and within that instant Molly Weasley knew that the young witch had been hexed and the dark magic still coursed within her weak body.

She turned around to her husband and was about to say something when, from one moment to another, the Burrow was filled with an eardrum shredding scream that left them all in a heavy shivering panic. Hermione struggled on the sofa, she twitched helplessly and cried, blinded by her own tears and fears. Again she sobbed her parent's names, voicing her pleas with a tone she'd never had before in her usual strong, determined voice.

"Arthur..." said his wife and in a glimpse of a second, after exchanging a secret look with her, Arthur Weasley vanished into thin air, disapparating to the Grangers' House. Mrs. Weasley looked around for a moment, undecided, as if she needed her whole willpower for the next things to do.

"All of you, get out. NOW!" she snapped at her children who were for a moment too shocked at this unfamiliar tone, before they rushed to leave the room. Ron took a last look at Hermione, before he attempted to follow his siblings out of the room.

"No. Not you, Ron, come here..." she said with a voice so weak it scared him more than anything else he'd seen and experienced in this night. Slowly, he followed her command and positioned himself at her side. He was almost too afraid to even touch Hermione. She looked pale and weak, as if she could shatter caused by every too rough touch.

"She's been cursed. I need you to hold her down so I can work properly without causing further damage." Molly Weasley said quietly, as if she was only speaking to herself. However when she realised that her son barely listened to her, her head flung up and she grabbed him by the shoulders. "Now look at me, this is going to be painful for her and she'll try to fight you. Can you bear that? Can you take that, Ronald?".

He nodded dully, still petrified by the stern, emotionless look of his mother. He would do what he had to. Whatever would save her life. Ron strictly avoided his mother's eyes, he didn't want to see the helplessness in them, or the recognition that it was pointless to hope. He leant over Hermione and kept a firm grasp on her shivering upper body. He didn't need any signal by his mother to know that she had started the procedure. Immediately Hermione started to scream and kick around, struggling against him with all her force, but his hands held her mercilessly down. He could feel the battle that continued within her body, he could literally feel her pain almost as his own, but he didn't loosened his grip on her. His will only wavered when she started to sob his name, she begged him with a voice that made him feel sick, she begged him to stop, begged him to kill her.

Ron took his eyes off of her, he couldn't look into her eyes, the pure terror he saw in them tore his heart to bits, even more because he knew that he was causing her this pain- and his mother. For the first time in his life, Ron couldn't look at his mother, he felt something he'd never felt before for her. He hated her. He shivered even by the very thought of this feeling. He knew it was nonsense, she wasn't doing this on purpose, he knew his mother saved her life. Yet he couldn't look at her when she caused her so much pain.

Finally, with a last rebellious convulsion, her body fell onto the sofa again. All three of them breathed heavily, they were covered with cold sweat and felt a great fatigue, but they had won the battle. Hermione, still looking pale and weak, clung to him desperately, she shivered heavily, whimpering in the echo of that pain. Ron held her flush against his chest, not even daring to let go of her for even one second. He whispered calming words and phrases into her ear, trying to console her, before he looked up to his mother who appeared just as tired as Hermione herself.

"Don't ever ask that of me again, Mum, okay?".