"Hermione, there are new ones!"
Matthew Madliner suddenly flicked on the light in the Healers' room at St. Mungo's Hospital. Hermione, jolted awake from her nap, sat up abruptly on the sofa.
"I'm not asleep," she muttered, squinting her tired eyes.
"Hurry up."
She didn't often allow herself the luxury of sleep during night shifts, believing it her duty as a Healer to remain vigilant and on guard.
Matthew disappeared into the corridor. Hermione stood slowly, glancing at her watch. It was nearly three in the morning.

A sudden crash echoed in the hallway. In the fireplace, designated for emergencies, materialized a bloodied and motionless man's body. Healers rushed to transfer him onto one of the beds. Hermione darted toward the barely-breathing wizard.
"Auror mission. The entire strike team was wiped out. There'll be more any second now," Matthew called over his shoulder. As he spoke, another figure tumbled out of the fireplace. This one, though battered and scorched, was less drenched in blood.
"What's your name?" Hermione asked, lifting the eyelid of the man who had just been laid onto a stretcher. His face was covered in scabs, and a torn flap of skin on his cheek exposed charred muscle beneath.
"John. John Stevens."
"We need heliotrope draught and a blood-staunching potion. Do you know what hit you, John?"
"Not exactly," the man rasped. "My legs… I can't feel my leg."
Hermione glanced down. His left leg ended abruptly at the knee.
"Matt!" she called toward her colleague. "We might be able to attempt a reconstruction!"
More healers and nurses appeared in the hallway. Five levitating stretchers hovered by the walls, and the chaos was interrupted only by another loud crash from the fireplace.
"Switch with me!" Matthew shouted.
"You're going to be fine, John" Hermione reassured him before weaving around another stretcher carrying an unconscious man. His clenched fist still gripped a wand, his expression frozen as though he had been petrified.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," a blonde woman sitting on one of the levitating stretchers insisted. "Really. Take care of the others."
Hermione hurried over, shining a beam of light from her wand into the woman's eyes. Her face bore several scratches, and her left arm hung limply at an unnatural angle.
"What's your name?"
"Jennifer Rose. Really, I'm fine. Help the others."
Ignoring her protest, Hermione touched Jennifer's left shoulder. The woman immediately hissed in pain.
"You said fine, right?" Hermione said skeptically.
"It's just a fracture. Others are in worse shape. You'll see in a second"
Another crash from the fireplace drew a scream from one of the nurses. A bloodied man, split in half at the torso, appeared amidst a pool of black sludge seeping from his skull.
"Get him out of here!" Matthew bellowed from down the corridor. He was steering a stretcher toward one of the treatment rooms.
"What happened?" Hermione asked, turning back to Jennifer.
"Have you heard of the 'Flying Scots'? The young and angry from the outskirts of Aberdeen?"
Hermione nodded.
"I need yarrow salve here" she said. "The fracture is so bad it could have severed vessels and veins."
"I'm fine." Jennifer repeated to a nurse who had come to assist her.
Another crash from the fireplace. A paramedic materialized alongside a stretcher with an unconscious patient.
"Three more are on the way" he called to Hermione. "This one's unresponsive, pupils non-reactive, but he's breathing."
Hermione raced toward the bloodied man. His leather jacket was riddled with burnt holes, and a massive wound on his chest oozed dark, dirty blood. Whoever had cast this curse had meant for it to deliver excruciating pain.
Hermione raised her wand, and the first beam of light made her freeze entirely.
"I tried to clean the wound, but it's no use" the paramedic said. "I don't recognize the curse."
Another crash.
"Doctor?"
Hermione turned to the paramedic, her voice hoarse.
"I heard you" she said, barely above a whisper. She touched the man's face, lifting his eyelid to reveal eyes she knew all too well. The pupils didn't respond.
"Passionflower extract, colloidal silver, and the golden cleansing fluid" she barked to a nearby nurse. "Take him to Room Three. Quickly, while he's still breathing."
"Please, help him!" Jennifer, the blonde woman with the broken arm, stood up from her stretcher, pleading. "I beg you, help him!" she cried toward the doctor.
Hermione vanished behind the doors of Room Three.

It was twenty minutes to seven am. She had been standing under the shower for fifteen minutes, staring blankly as the water disappeared down the drain. For several minutes now, dizziness gripped her, but she couldn't bring herself to move. The image of unresponsive pupils, surrounded by green irises, refused to leave her mind.
Harry Potter, youbloodybastard.
It had been over two years since she saw him. They had met in a Muggle café near Victoria Station. He said he needed to talk and asked her not to tell anyone about the meeting. She hadn't recognized his expression that day - tight-lipped, fists clenched, as though holding back an explosion. A mix of desperation and restraint. When he vanished, his son was three months old.
Ron questioned her her endlessly about Harry - whether she had been in contact with him, or not. She had kept her promise, never mentioning the meeting in that Muggle café.
"Better if he doesn't come back" Ron had growled a few weeks later, carrying Ginny's suitcase into their home. Ginny and little James had moved into the guest room on the ground floor.
"I won't throw her out, can't you see she's a wreck?" Ron insisted every time Hermione nudged him to confront his sister.
A year later, Ginny started working as a reporter forTheDaily Prophet, and the assignments made her blossom. Ron spent most of his time at the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes which he ran with George, while little James was passed from one pair of hands to another.
Harry Potter, you bloody bastard.

"Weasley?"
Matthew tossed a folder of medical records before her.
"Get out of here; your shift ended at six."
Hermione froze, her pen hovering over the medical report she'd been filling out.
"How's the leg reconstruction?"
"No luck."
Matthew sat down across from her, on the other side of the desk.
"I'm sorry," she said softly.
"So am I. We had to put him into a coma. The pain is going to be unbearable."
"I'd like you to take another look at the fracture—"
"Jennifer Rose? I saw it. She'll be using that arm for a while. Unless someone tries again... Are you all right?"
Hermione looked at him. Matthew had been working at the hospital for six months, and she had liked his company from the start. They always tried to align their shifts so they could work together.
"Yes..." she murmured. "I'll just check on the patient in Room Three."
"Sirius Black," Matthew said, handing her the file. "I've already been there to see him."
"Sirius...?"
"He's unconscious. His colleague gave us his name."
Hermione grabbed the file in one swift motion.Impossible.
"Thanks," she muttered, striding out into the hallway.
"I'd like to remind you, that your shift ended two hours ago!" Matthew called after her.

Sirius Black.
Hermione looked at Harry's unconscious body and her heart sank. They had bandaged his chest, but cleaning the bloodied wound hadn't been easy. The curse was potent, acting like poison within his body. She cast wandlight to his green eyes, but they remained emotionless and the pupils still didn't react.
Tentatively, she brushed his hair back from his forehead. The lightning bolt scar had faded into a thin, pale line. Once, it was his most defining feature.
His face was gaunt and a rough and covered with dark stubble. His body, emaciated and twisted, seemed to fold in on itself, as though it had been at war for far too long. Now he was wrapped in bandages and a pale hospital sheet.
He'll wake up.
Two years as a healer at St. Mungo's had taught Hermione patience and humility. She still believed in her skills, trusted in her knowledge and the books she studied. But on the other hand she witnessed the fragility of life and saw too much of people's pain. So far, she lost three patients. One had never woken from a coma. His body had functioned perfectly, but his soul had chosen never to return. He was seventeen, with pale blue eyes.
She remembered cutting Harry's hair once, in a tent. She remembered the countless hours they had spent together in the library and the way he had made her laugh when she cried after Ron left.
Of course, he'll wake up.
Why did you change your name?
That day, in the Muggle café, he was very silent. He told her, for the first time, that he couldn't cope anymore.
"Is it about Ginny? About James?" she asked. He had a home, a loving girlfriend, and a baby boy. They were planning a wedding.
"Harry..." she said. "You have everything."
She remembered his sad, bittersweet smile.
"Maybe I do" he replied. "You're right. Maybe I do..."
And then he disappeared. Could she have stopped him then?

"Good morning, love" Ron said when she appeared in the kitchen. He was holding a sandwich in one hand and the newThe Daily Prophetin the other.
Hermione glanced at the cover.
"Aurors Operation Fails Near Aberdeen" the headline screamed.
"Tough shift?"
Ron set the paper down, placing his coffee mug over the article.
"Tough. I need to sleep."
"Every time you take night shifts, we only meet in the kitchen" Ron said, taking her hand. His arm wrapped around her waist.
"Sometimes I have to."
"I know" he said, kissing her cheek. "Molly will be here in half an hour to look after James. Ginny's at work, and the little one's still asleep."
Hermione nodded.
"I have to go. Will you wait for Molly?"
Another nod.
She picked upThe Daily Prophet, her eyes settling on the moving photograph of the Head of the Auror Office. Kingsley, whom she had known for years, looked exhausted.
"Ron...?" she glanced up from the article, but Ron was already gone.
Hermione looked back at Kingsley's picture. The article explained that a Scottish unit had participated in the mission: three dead, seven injured, condolences to the families and loved ones.
A cry from the other room broke the silence. Hermione set the paper down.

"Hermione?"
Molly waved to her from the garden. Hermione noticed her through the doors that led to the terrace at the back of the house. James was running among the colorful, crisp leaves, while Molly oversaw the rakes, which were magically sweeping them into small piles.
Hermione stepped outside. She wrapped herself in her sweater, and although the sun bathed the garden in golden light, the crisp autumn air carried the unmistakable chill of the season.
"Did you manage to rest a little, dear?" Molly asked, walking over and removing her gardening gloves. She kissed Hermione on the cheek.
"A little" Hermione replied with a small smile, her gaze drifting toward the boy.
James was two and a half years old, and ever since Ginny had started working, Molly had taken on the role of looking after her grandson. He looked so much like Harry—thin, with the same unruly dark hair.
At home, no one spoke about Harry. Ron had forbidden any mention of him in conversations, and Ginny didn't even utter his name. It was as if Harry's disappearance had drawn a curtain across their lives, erasing him from memory. But the weight of the unexplained lingered heavily in the air.
Hermione had tried to find him. She had even reached out to Kingsley, an old friend from the Order of the Phoenix and now Head of the Auror Office. Kingsley had said Harry had resigned from the Auror Office abruptly and vanished.
She had been shocked that no one at work was looking for him. Even Ginny refused to conduct her own private investigation. "If he changes his mind, he knows where to find me," Ginny had once said in a rare moment of candor. For weeks, she had done nothing but cry, but when she finally got out of bed, her sorrow hardened into anger. She erased him, pouring all her energy into obliterating any trace of James's father.
"You'll always defend him," Ron had said once, two months after Harry left, when Hermione tried yet again to bring the subject up. "The guy abandoned his family and friends—what else can you expect from him?"
"But it's Harry," she had said repeatedly, week after week. "What if something happened to him?"
Eventually, she gave up. What only remained - were awkward Christmases spent with the Weasleys and James's birthday parties.
"James has a mother, an uncle, and an aunt," Ron had once said firmly when an old friend of Ginny's brought up Harry. "There is no one Harry in our family."
"It's like he's dead, even though no funeral was ever held," she had thought at the time.
"I need to get to the hospital," Hermione said, turning to Molly. "Can you stay with him?"
"Ginny should be back in a few hours. We'll be fine. Do you have another shift?"
"A lot of injured," Hermione replied evasively.
"I read about it in this morning'sDaily Prophet," Molly said. "Terrible tragedy. Do you know anything more?"
"I'm only treating the wounded," Hermione said, shrugging. "The next few days will be crucial."
James tripped and fell into a pile of dry leaves, bursting into tears. Molly approached him with grandmotherly tenderness.

He lay exactly as she had left him—limp arms, a face that seemed to be sleeping, and closed eyes.
"I think he's very far away right now," Matthew said, approaching the bed. "His brain is active, though. He just has to want to come back."
Hermione turned, startled by his presence.
"Have you even left the hospital today?"
"Not yet. I'll leave soon. And you… Do you have a home of yourown?"
"The patients wouldn't leave me alone."
Matthew nodded. She liked him because, in many ways, they were alike. They both loved their work and devoted themselves entirely to it. For months now, they had been keeping pace with one another.
"Well, since you're here, I'll head out… If anything happens…"
"Of course," she said with a faint smile.
As he left, Hermione reached for Harry's hand but stopped midway. Though she was a healer, she felt an inexplicable fear of touching him.
"I know you're in there," she whispered. "Come back."
For hours, she had wrestled with whether to tell Ron about her new patient.
"But it's Harry,"she repeated in her mind over and over, though the chart at his bedside bore a different name. How quickly could someone turn into someone else?
"Why?" she asked herself two hours ago, pacing her bedroom. "Why did you do it?"
She needed answers. She needed to understand why her best friend, someone she had known her entire life, had decided to completely abandon his life. The two-year-old mystery, buried beneath the weight of daily routines, had resurfaced with a vengeance. She hated silence, loathed secrets, and was infuriated by the Weasleys' willful ignorance.
"Ron will kill you," she said aloud to the empty room.
She felt a sudden urge to cry at the sight of his sunken face, but a strange numbness seemed to hold her emotions at bay.

Someone knocked on the office door. Hermione looked up from her paperwork to see a blonde woman—the one whose arm she had saved the day before—standing in the doorway.
"May I?"
"Of course," Hermione replied, offering a gentle smile and welcoming gesture for her to come in. "Is everything alright?"
"I wanted to ask about my colleagues. No one will tell me the truth."
"We can't."
"Sirius is unconscious. I know you're treating him."
"Sirius…" Hermione began slowly. "We can only discuss a patient's condition with family members. Maybe it would be a good idea to contact someone?"
"He doesn't have any family," the woman replied quickly. "He's alone."
"No wife, girlfriend, parents?" Hermione narrowed her eyes.
"Alone, an orphan… Sirius was very private."
Hermione stood from her desk. She decided to try a different approach.
"Would you like some coffee?"
"Well…"
A kettle swayed gently over a small flame on the counter. Hermione retrieved two mugs and poured the dark, warm liquid. The blonde woman sat down on the sofa.
"Sugar?"
"Jennifer," the woman interjected. "My name is Jennifer."
"Hermione."
They shook hands, and Hermione handed her the mug.
"Are you with the London unit?"
"Edinburgh," Jennifer corrected. "Small team, just ten Aurors, but it's always been enough for Scotland."
"I didn't know there was an office in Edinburgh…"
"Long story. Leftovers from the Death Eater Days. Back then, we stationed teams in every major city in the UK… and more."
Hermione nodded and sat beside her on the sofa.
"What happened in Aberdeen?"
Jennifer smiled faintly.
"We all have our professional secrets."
"Fair enough," Hermione replied. "A draw."
Both women fell silent.
"Serial Muggle murders, particularly brutal. It quickly became clear it was the work of our kind. An organized group of young outcasts claimed responsibility. No apparent connection to the Death Eaters, but you never really know. None of them went to Hogwarts, but they possess… magical abilities."
"From wizarding families?" Hermione asked.
"Mixed. No one's caught them in the act yet. We tracked them to their hideout, but as you can see… they put up a hell of a fight."
Hermione nodded and took a sip of her coffee.
"What about Sirius?"
"You know I can't—"
"Oh, come on," Jennifer interrupted. "I can't talk about the investigation either."
Hermione hesitated. Jennifer was good at playing her hand.
"He was hit with something we don't recognize. A particularly cruel curse that spread through his body like poison. His brain is active, but…"
"But he's still unconscious."
"He has to want to wake up. You know how it is."
Jennifer laughed softly.
"Sirius didn't want much of anything."
"What do you mean?"
"You know the type," Jennifer said with a slight smile. "Handsome, ridiculously smart, but carrying some dark secret. Supposedly lost his parents when he was young, but… he never talked about it."
"How long have you known him?"
"We've been working together for a year. I'm not from here, I was stationed in America. Sirius is a good man, just… lost. He kept to himself a lot, often with a drink in hand."
Jennifer fell silent.
"I hope he wakes up," she said at last.
"So do I," Hermione replied. "So do I."
"Doctor?" A nurse peeked into the healer's office. "You're needed in Room Eight."
"Excuse me" Hermione said to Jennifer.
"Thanks for the coffee," Jennifer replied, setting her mug down on the table.
"And thank you," Hermione said, donning her lab coat as she watched Jennifer leave.

"Hermione!"
Ginny Weasley was standing near the reception desk, shifting anxiously from foot to foot.
"They won't let me in, they won't tell me anything…" she began with her voice low and urgent. "Please, just a few words."
Hermione glanced at the nurse behind the enormous reception counter.
"I'll take care of her," she said, wrapping an arm around Ginny.
Ginny gave the nurse a triumphant smile and let Hermione guide her a few steps away, toward the medical office.
"Thank you," Ginny whispered. "Tell me something. Anything."
Ginny craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the patients' ward.
"I can't, Gin. Don't even try…"
"How many were brought in? How many casualties?"
"Only Kingsley—"
"Kingsley won't say a thing. And you're practically my sister."
"Ginny…" Hermione sighed, rubbing her face with both hands. "Let's just say it's bad. The patients are in critical condition, fighting for their lives."
"Names?"
"Not a chance. Kingsley will release an official…"
"Hermione!"
"Ginny. They've been here…" Hermione's voice dropped to a sharp whisper as she checked her watch. "…for thirteen hours. Three are in comas, one lost a leg, and one… didn't make it. It's bad. We haven't even contacted their families yet. Better they hear it from us than read it in The Prophet,don't you think?"
Ginny nodded.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
Hermione exhaled, shoving her hands into the pockets of her white coat.
"How are you holding up?" Ginny asked, studying her carefully. "You look exhausted."
"I'm still standing."
"Are you heading home?"
"In… a bit. You know how it is."
"Fine," Ginny said, shrugging. "And if anyone asks… you didn't tell me a thing."
"Not today…"
Ginny hugged her, then disappeared around the corner of the corridor. Most of the hospital was enchanted to prevent teleportation, leaving only the main hall accessible for visitors using Floo powder. Security was the foundation of their work.

Hermione retreated to the healer's office, closing the door firmly behind her. She leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, breathing heavily. She felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted, draining her of energy. She wanted to cry.
Once, she dreamed of becoming an Auror, but when Ron left the force, she decided to follow.
"I want a wife who stays alive," he told her, looking straight into her eyes. She nodded, and the next day she scheduled a meeting with the Head of St. Mungo's Hospital. Saving lives… She had always wanted to fix the world, and now, saving lives had become her mission.
Harry hadn't been at their wedding. The last time she saw him, in a Muggle café, she had talked endlessly about the wedding preparations. He disappeared exactly five weeks before the ceremony.
"Doctor?"
Hermione looked up. Greta, an older nurse, stood in the open doorway.
"Yes, sorry…"
Greta looked her over. She was an experienced nurse, just months away from retirement. With her slight plumpness, she floated through the hospital corridors, commanding respect from younger staff. There were even rumors she had the gift of second sight, and some of the nurses preferred to stay out of her way.
"What are you apologizing for?" Greta extended a hand to help her up. Hermione leaned on her arm and stood up. "You're not on duty today."
"No, but—"
"You're burnt out. You need to rest." Greta studied her closely, her gaze piercing.
She often said such things, claiming to see human auras and read energies. She was remarkably quick to diagnose others but had never aspired to be a healer herself.
Hermione didn't answer. In Greta's presence, she didn't always feel at ease—perhaps because the woman was like a walking lie detector.
"You won't help anyone if you're falling apart," Greta added, leaving the room and heading back into the corridor.
Hermione rubbed her tired face. Greta was right.