January 2006 - Around 5/6 Years after Dumbledore's Death
"Hermione. You're losing so much blood. You need to hold on. Please"
"You're stronger than this. We need you. I need you"
She could hear the desperation behind the voice. She wanted to pen her eyes, but they stayed glued shut. She felt him though. His hands on her waist and her head and the warmth from his torso, where she could feel his heart.
She would never forget this heartbeat.
"Hermione, please"
Her name. It sounded so familiar. The voice that said her name. The voice sounded familiar, yet so different. She could feel a hand grasping hers tightly, before it was pulled away. She tried to reach out, tried to hold on, but all she could feel was cold air on her palms. She tried to grab onto what ever she was holding before because now, she just felt bare.
There was nothing she could feel. Except for an emptiness, that enveloped her body yet leaving her heart with a pang of dread and separation. She could barely breathe, yet she knew. She knew she needed to get up. She needed to save him.
Her eyes fluttered but they remained shut. She tried to bring up her fingers to her face so she could physically pry them open, but her body refused to co-operate and her hand just fell beside her body. She knew she needed to save her energy.
She also knew that she needed to remember that voice. The voice that said her name like a prayer and a hymn.
But why could she not remember who said it. His name, it was like a section of her brain had been locked away. Why was she fighting for something she didn't remember much about.
And then she heard "Obliviate".
She knew this voice. Harry. This was Harry. Her best friend. She relaxed because he was here, her best friend, who knew what was good for her. She trusted him.
She decided to rest before she tried to remember the voice once more.
"Silencio" she heard Ron. Ron was with Harry. She knew she was safe. And at that moment, it was all that mattered. She decided to let go and give in to her sleep.
.
.
.
.
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Hermione woke up with a jolt. She fanned her face and realised she woke up with a heavy sweat again. She held her hand to the left side of chest and felt her heart beat furiously against her palms.
For a year she had been having this grand dream, where she would wake up with a sweaty face and a feeling of dread in her body. The same dream that always jolted her awake for every single day for the last year. Was it really a dream or was her mind playing tricks on her, she was always on the fence about this. She knew it was a memory, a memory she so desperately wanted to remember yet no matter how hard she tried, nothing seemed to come back to her or it could be an altered memory of something that had been locked away when she had been hit by a curse on her last ever raid on the battlefield.
She remembered as Harry told her after she woke up that she was never going to go into the field ever again unless it was absolutely necessary or when Harry himself was dead.
She got out of bed and wiped the sweat trickling down her face.
Ever since she got into the "big accident", that nobody actually ever spoke to her about, this dream, this memory, often frequented her. She didn't know what it meant, or what it was calling her to do, yet every time she saw the dream, she would get the same feeling. The desperation to tell herself, not to give up. To find those hands and grab onto them for as long as she could. To hold on to the voice. To embed it into her memory. Yet, it had become a distant dream for her.
The voice had now seemed so distorted because Hermione had payed it over and over in her head to try to identify where she had heard of it ever before. it had been played by her subconscious over and over again to the point where she no longer remembered what the original voice sounded.
Just the thought of never being able to remember made her wince and her heart ache.
"Hermoine"
Hermione turns around at the slightly panicked voice and Harry walks inside with a very pregnant Ginny by his side. There are tears in her eyes and Hermione gets a feeling in her abdomen, that had become a very casual and daily experience for her.
"We need your help. Ron found Bill injured and there is no here at the moment who could help him. Pomfrey and Slughorn are out foraging and Hannah and Nevile were too scared to do anything. He… He has been bitten. I… i really tried to stop -"
Ginny tried to talk to him, while trying to calm him down but running her hand up and down his arm in a soothing manner, like she always did, whenever they could feel him loose it, turning towards him softly before she tries to reason with him because they could see Harry getting hysteric, "Harry you need to breathe, let Hermione look at Bill. It was not your fault. You got separated when the death eaters attacked you at-"
But Harry cut her off, "Ginny I chose to go after the death eater and left Bill to fend for himself. I thought, I thought he's going to make it back to the house. I never, i never shoul-"
"YOU DIDN'T KNOW. SHUT UP. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY INJURY AN ORDER MEMBER SUSTAINS. WE ALL CHOSE TO DO THIS. WE ALL CHOSE TO FIGHT HIM HARRY, SO THAT SOME DAY WHEN OUR KIDS GROW UP, THEY DONT HAVE TO. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT IT ANYMORE. NOW SHUT UP AND TAKE MIONE TO BILL SO SHE CAN LOOK AT HIM."
With that, Ginny takes a deep breath and sits down on her bed. Ever since they had lost Hagrid and Dumbledore, Harry has been plagued by panic attacks, and Ginny is the only one who can calm him down. Dumbledore's death made him even more determined to find the Horcruxes, but Hagrid's loss broke him. Hermione doesn't remember much about how he died, but she remembers holding Harry, along with Ron, at his funeral that the Order had decided to hold in his honor.
She looks up and sees his face. Over the years he had lost all the fat on his cheeks, his jaw well-reformed, ever rugged she would say, his shoulders broad with muscles hidden underneath his armor. His scraggly hair, over the years, had never changed. And neither did his eyes. The only parts of Harry that Hermione really recognized anymore. Or, remembered at least.
Hermione smiles at them and then proceeds to take Harry's hand. She brings his palm towards her and writes down with her finger, ward and then points towards the direction of her door, signalling them to lead the way.
Harry looks at her face and sighs and then proceeds to glare at his toes. Hermione knows he feels guilty every time she does this, when she reminds him that she can't speak anymore. She looks down at her palms as well not knowing what to do. She never did.
After she woke up in the infirmary a year ago, she couldn't bring herself to speak anymore. She had tried and tried really hard to say something, but it seemed like someone had cursed her and her voice had been sealed away. She knew her voice was still there, but just locked away. If she was being honest, she lost the reason to do so anyway. She just didn't want to say anything even if she could. Her heart seemed to hurt with the prospect of talking because the one voice she wanted to hear had since been gone, sealed away somewhere, and she couldn't do anything about it.
Harry and Ron had both initially tried to forced her to get her to talk, by bringing up her parents, telling her they were going to hurt themselves and many other plain atrocious things, till McGonagall had decided it was enough and asked them to stop. They had then screamed at her till their throats were hoarse, just so she could shush them and when she hadn't they had resolved to begging her, to try for their sake, to say something, anything.
But she just couldn't anymore. It looked like her magic also didn't want her to talk as it followed all her incantations without her voice anyway. She somewhat knew her dream was a key factor in unlocking her voice as well as her memory maybe, but she couldn't be sure. She had tried to tell Harry and Ron about this, her dream, everything she saw, in hopes that they would be able to tell who this voice had belonged to and why was it so important to her. They had told her they remembered no such thing and that her body was found in the forbidden forest by the centaurs on their patrol. She tried to explain the importance through very lengthy notes she wrote to them but they never tried to understand what was going on in her mind, so over time she had let it go.
They never said anything about who it was they were cursing or even if they were cursing, but Hermione remembers them coming into her room after they thought she was asleep multiple nights after she had told them about her dream and repeat Finite Incantatum with their wands pointed towards her over and over again. She had let it go because she had always assumed it was because of their guilt somehow in her altered memory, maybe that they could not find her instead of the centaurs.
They had tried everything but nothing had worked and slowly, she could see them just avoiding her all together unless it had something to do with her being a healer for the Order. The accident they never spoke about seemed to have severed something in her, something beyond physical healing. She trusted them enough to not ask, but her mind seemed to just not let it go.
As Harry led her to Bill, she felt a mix of emotions. She wishes she had her Calming Draught on her. She kept those for when she had to heal a close friend. If only she had gathered her satchel that she carried everywhere. Her head does a rewind.
Friend. The word felt so foreign to her. She didn't know if she even had friends anymore, let alone close ones. Sure, there was Harry, and maybe Ron, and Ginny of course, not to forget Luna.
As Ginny tugged on her hand the urgency of the situation pulled her away from her thoughts, at least momentarily as she walked into the room.
Bill lay pale and sweating on a makeshift bed. He looked absolutely tattered. His face was all shades of blue and red, his torso covered in scratches and parts of his hands broken. The wound from the werewolf bite on his leg was dark and ominous. It was right at the ankle, which looked like it had given up on holding ona dn was not dripping onto the bed. The flesh looked chewed out, but it seemed like it had missed all his vital points and his nerves.
"Hermione, can you do something, please can you make him better?" Harry's eyes pleaded with her.
She couldn't say anything, yet her wand understood her. Sometimes, she felt like her wand was the only one listening to her really. She didn't need any words to communicate with it, just her magic and her soul. It always knew which spell she was casting. Magic flowed easily through her wand. It trusted her.
She quickly fished out vial of Wound Cleaning Potion and Wigglewend Potion from her Healer satchel and popped it into Bills Mouth and then cast Ferula over his ribs and tibia, where her diagnostic spell showed broken bones.
She then cast a more complex diagnostic spell, which showed that the bite was not malignant, but benign. She still had time before Bill fully transformed. She gestured Harry and Ginny over and nodded towards bill and then at them to hold Bill still as she cut out the chewed parts of his ankle and put them into a cauldron and set them on fire. Bill groaned a little but was mostly passed out from pain, which made it easier for Hermione to heal him.
She guessed it was to do with the fact that Bill was bitten on the day of a new moon, when the wolf would be at its weakest and at the bottom of his feet that he got this lucky.
Lupus Contra Septum and she flicked her wand over the remaining part of his foot. A black powder slowly started seeping out of his wound and moved towards the parts in the fire. She waited for all of it to come out before sealing the cauldron and shrinking it.
She could trap the wolf and hopefully, it would be at it's weakest so Bill wouldn't have to suffer much during full moons even if there were side effects.
Accio Blood Replenishing Potion, Accio Wolfsbane Potion she chanted and in a minute she had a few vials of the potion. Quickly she put 4 of both near Bills mouth and emptied them into it, which she then held shut and inched his nose shut. She also gave him a few Nutrition Potions to help maintain his strength.
This was the best she could do at the moment. This was the best anyone could do at the moment.
She quickly cast a flesh repairing charm after growing back his ankle bones, and then by applying the essence of Dittany on the open wound and bandaged it to the point where it looked like Bill had just crashed into a sharp object instead of being bitten by a werewolf.
This was the best she could do at the moment. This was the best anyone could do at the moment.
As she stood up, she couldn't help but notice the weight of the unspoken words in the room. Harry and Ginny exchanged glances, their eyes reflecting guilt and a shared burden. Ginny, still seated on the bed, then looked at Hermione with a mixture of concern and understanding. Hermione nodded at her, indicating she was fine.
"Thank you," Harry mouthed, and she nodded, offering a small, reassuring smile.
The incident a year ago had left her mute, and her friends had done everything in their power to reverse the curse, to restore her voice. Yet, despite their efforts, the enchantment seemed impenetrable. Hermione often caught them stealing sorrowful glances when they thought she wasn't looking. It just made it all worse and so she distanced herself from all the pity. She just stayed in her room, reading as many books she can find in the library.
With a gentle touch on Harry's arm, Hermione conveyed her gratitude for bringing her into the fold, for not treating her like a liability. She did this every time she was with him now. She wanted to let him know that she never blamed him for whatever happened. They exchanged glances and a moment of silence was shared as they awkwardly looked away after meeting eyes, before Ginny spoke up, breaking the heavy air in the room.
"Harry, give us a moment, will you?" Ginny's voice was firm but compassionate. She had grown up. Hermione couldn't remember when this change had taken place, but she still missed the warm and kind, but sassy Ginny from before.
Harry nodded and left the room, leaving Hermione and Ginny alone. Ginny walked over to Hermione and hugged her, a gesture of support that spoke volumes. Hermione felt a lump forming in her throat, the ache of unspoken words threatening to consume her. This is what she hated. Feeling vulnerable in Ginny's arms. Yet she wanted to be engulfed in warmth, for once and not miss the touch that she felt in her dreams.
Ginny pulled away and looked into Hermione's eyes. "We'll find a way to break whatever curse was placed on you. I promise."
Hermione managed a faint smile, appreciating Ginny's unwavering determination. Ginny reminded Hermione that she was not alone and that she could figure this out. They both knew that the war was far from over, and in the midst of battles, there were scars that ran deeper than any physical wound.
Ginny promised her this, every single time. Every single time she healed someone from her family, Ginny felt some kind of guilt toward Hermione. She couldn't really understand why Ginny blamed herself, but she let it go. Like she had done with most things that mattered to her. Her first and foremost priority so far had been trying to recall that fateful day for now.
The dream, the voice, and the silence—they were all threads in a tapestry of a destiny intertwined with magic, friendship, and an impending conflict that would demand more than just spoken words to overcome. And she didn't now if she was ready to discover the full picture.