The eagle found her in the Entrance hall. More smoke than liquid, yet solid enough to show distinguishable form, it circled five feet over her, uttering a soft howl. "Come to the infirmary", it whistled, diving down to block her way to the Great hall. Hermione knew it would disappear on her touch, but decided to comply with its message. Madam Pomfrey's patronus followed her on her way to the Hospital Wing, dissolving when she stepped over the threshold.
"Hurry, Miss Granger", the nurse huddled up the corridor between beds. Just when the heavy doors behind her had closed themselves, she heard muffled groaning. It was irregular and varied in volume, like craving for a response and ease to hardly bearable waves of pain. "You're on bed four, that's Miss Weasley – er – the one you've seen sleeping tonight. Turn her, give her some pain killer and sedative, then join me on Nine, I'll have to change the bandages first."
"Ok."
"You might want to leave your robes at my desk." Madam Pomfrey had phrased it like a polite recommendation, but the unimposing authority in her voice indicated some good advice. Hermione rushed to the nurse's office. Passing bed nine, she caught a glance of Ginny who did not have arms: The part of her blanket still on the bed were covered in thick and yellowish liquid, sparkling like phlegm, but over her tossing on the mattress, they slipped further and fell, revealing dark pools of blood or excrement, or both, between her legs. Hermione quickened her pace to pass the sight. Tossing her robes carelessly over the ancient wooden chair, Madam Pomfrey's suggestion seemed appropriate: A long garment and wide sleeves would be impractical. Several feet away from the desk, easy to watch from any academic activity, a figure in a familiar headscarf lay peacefully between cushions.
Four was occupied by the almost motionless figure of an equally bald, deeply sleeping Ginny. She had lost the remaining hair, and Hermione felt an urge of gratefulness that her eyes were closed. She wondered whether the healer from St. Mungo's had succeeded in proving blind Ginny with a set of fresh, grey eyes, since the recall of those dark and empty holes still made her shiver. When her fright had receded to a subtle uneasiness, she realized that sleeping Ginny was breathing – strangely.
Hermione stepped up to her side. From an arm's length, she realized that her face had changed, too. The flat cheeks had become hollow, posing a sharp contrast to the pointed nose and lined mouth. Her temples, usually unrecognizable beneath the long, fiery red hair, were all the more prominent on her smooth, naked head. While Hermione was watching, some of the few remaining eyebrow let got of its dry socket, only to get stuck in Ginny's eyelashes. Hermione pulled it carefully with her nails, only to find the lashes between them, too.
Her chest tied up fast and hard. She had never actually watched someone die. When her grandmother faced the end of her life, her parents had not permitted her to visit, whether upon her grandmother's wish or their own decision,she never knew. This was not an old woman, looking back upon a long and satisfying life,but a girl who should have had just as much opportunities. She had not come into existence, if it had not been for her naive and stupid mistake, Hermione chastised herself, and would depart this world all too soon, leaving nothing in it except a body and a faint memory. So the sum of her existence is pain, she thought, the result of my magic is her suffering.
Sleeping Ginny turned to her side several times before Hermione remembered that Madam Pomfrey had left her with instructions. Pain killer or sedative first? Rationality was immensely difficult to come by, Hermione realized silently. Painkiller first, she decided, and reached for the gauze and potion on the bedside table. Perhaps she can't swallow the liquid from the swaps when she's sedated, or doesn't perceive it on her lips at all. And I don't want her to wake again from pain.
Several drops ran down Ginny's chin, while Hermione carefully dipped the potions on her lips with shaking hands. Both their breathing slowed down. Hermione noted that every few instances Ginny left out an inhale, processing to snapping for air only once every minute by the time Hermione put down the tweezers. The infirmary was now immersed in fresh darkness.
She reached for her wand, but discovered to have it left in her robes, now dangling over Madam Pomfrey's chair. In the remotest corner of the bedside's drawer, she found a box of matches, and lit the candle at her friends site. The nurse was no where to be seen, but the moaning and whining had ceded. Hermione suddenly wished to have brought her robes, to tightly wrap herself inside them. Without a wand, she could not summon them. But leaving Ginny now, if only for a moment, felt irredeemably wrong. The first drops of way running down its slim, soft uprightness mirrored the salty moisture on her face.
The candle burnt down, indifferent to her guilt, to one third of its length, before Ginny turned, snatched for air in a huge and labored move. A sigh escaped her throat.
Then, she breathed no more.
Hermione gave away to the burning, choking feeling, pressed a hand to her mouth and collapsed into heavy, completely silent sobbing at her dead friends side.
"Here. You shouldn't be cold." Madam Pomfrey had appeared between the dressing screens, holding her robes. When she reached for them, the cloth felt unnaturally warm and soothing, like a wearable Patronus. Putting them on made her aware of how little she must have moved at Ginnys side, her limbs being stiff and ataxic.
"That's a brave thing you just did", the nurse said, voice low, but not whispering.
Hermione had never understood an assessment less.
"Staying at her side", Madam Pomfrey commented on her puzzled expression, "Facing what's, in the end, awaiting all of us."
"If it hadn't been for me -", the words burst from her lips, desperately searching solace – seeking absolution - "She'd never have to suffer like this -"
"It's not your fault. Are you listening to me?" The nurse stepped up from the lower end of the bed to an arms length in front of her. "It's not your fault. She was far beyond saving before you crossed the doorstep."
"But I – I -"
"Did not know what you were doing", Madam Pomfrey finished her sentence. Her expression was unreadable: A mixture of stern dismissal and pity. "As are most wizards who engage in Dark Magic. Difference is, you care about the consequences, Miss Granger. That's what sets you apart: You feel guilty for what you did - what you caused others to endure." She did not reach out to her, but Hermione felt strangely grateful for it: She had never cried in front of anyone whom she less wished to hug her. She tightened her robes, wand painfully poking into her ribs.
"You're excused for tonight. I will dress Miss Weasley, so you can say properly say goodbye to her in the morning." Was it her imagination, or had two grey eyes just blinked between the dressing screens?
"… If you don't wish to see her again, that's perfectly all right. But I'll need you at five thirty for our other patient's care."
"Ok."
"Try to sleep, Miss Granger. There's no use in you brooding over the finer points of alternative outcomes, which will stay nothing else but hypothetical."
Hermione had seldom longed to escape someone's company. The heavy doors of the Hospital Wing closed behind her, she found the corridor empty, scarcely lit by the torches on its walls. Remains of the summer storm hustled through the castle. The eagle accompanied her all the way back to Gryffindor tower. The Fat Lady did not ask where she had come from.
Up in the dormitory, Hermione did not bother to change. She crawled under the blankets, still wearing her robes, hoping against hope that the Gryffindor colors convinced her of Madam Pomfreys opinion. That the Gryffindor feeling of courage somehow diffused from the cloth and into her, as if by magic.
A/N: I do apolgize for removing the following chapter for re-editing. I won't make that a habit, promise.