Anonymous as cherubs over the crib of God,
White seeds are floating,
Out of my burst pod,
What power had I,
Before I learned yield?
Shatter me great wind…
I shall posess the field…
-"The Milkweed"
She clutched her chest and collapsed against the wall, taking deep, shuddering breaths…
This was NOT happening.
Yet, fate has an odd way of brutally thrusting your worst fear at you…
"OH…BLOODY…EFFING…MERLIN!"
Hermione supported herself against the moldy old wall as she gaspingly took in the terrifyingly bizarre scene before her…
Draco Malfoy was slumped over, unconscious, in a painful position, scarlet blood flowing torrentially from various wounds all over his body. His silver-blonde hair was sweaty and encrusted with dirt and dried blood, a dark trickle running down his blue-tinged cheek and seeping into the shredded fabric of his grimy, black robes. He was dying.
He was dying.
Hermione Granger was watching one of the people she had loathed for years wasting away right in front of her.
It took Hermione a while, brilliant as she was, to realize the situation and then do the most sensible, intelligent thing she could possibly think of.
She screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!"
Ear-splitting. Deafening. Piercing through the dismal chill of the dank room, Hermione screamed louder than she had…ever!
"Harry! Ron!! AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGHH!"
CRACK!
"What's wrong! Hermione, are you all right?" Harry had just apparated to her side, wand pointed at the dark.
"Bloody Hell!"
Harry had just seen Draco.
CRACK!
Ron, obviously rudely awoken from a deep sleep appeared, swaying lazily and bleary eyed where he stood.
"Hermione,” he whined, “What was that for?" He asked. "Screaming like a banshee who’d just seen Malfoy’s ugly face..."
Here Ron stopped to snicker at his pathetic joke, but it wasn’t too long before…
“Is that…no that can't be…but…BLOODY MORGANA! It's… MALFOY!"
Ron had just seen Malfoy.
THUD!
Ron fainted dead to the floor with a sickeningly ear-splitting noise.
The few moments after Ron’s unceremonious collapse were crucial, one of the trio lying unconscious on the floor, a dying death eater bleeding his guts out, and his two arch rivals debating whether or not to try and save him.
Hermione was gasping for breath, and came only to her senses when she heard-
"AVADA-!"
"NOOO! HARRY! YOU CAN'T!"
Hermione knocked the wand out of his hand, and shrunk back as she looked up at his eyes, for a moment they were scarlet with fury, before quickly receding to vivid emerald.
"S-s-sorry…I don't know what came over me," Harry whispered, seemingly astounded by his own actions.
Hermione glanced apprehensively at her friend before she uncomfortably made her way over to Draco, and aimed her wand at him.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Hermione levitated the nearly lifeless body on to a magically conjured stretcher and moved him into the open parlor.
Harry followed Hermione’s example and followed her, balancing Ron’s body in mid air. Hermione and Harry made there way to the parlor where Harry abruptly dropped Ron onto the sofa, and stood back, amazed and incredulous, to watch Hermione at work.
"Accio first-aid kit!" she cried, wand pointed to the door.
A miniature white trunk, emblazoned with a gleaming white fairy clutching a golden caduceus zoomed from the opening to the hallway and into Harry's well trained hands.
He wordlessly handed it to Hermione, before stepping back and collapsing faintly on to the couch.
Hermione muttered the Revitalizing Spell.
"Ennervate!"
Draco's red rimmed eyes blinked up at the figure before him and began to pull his weary body out of the stretcher, but gasped with pain as he fell back on to the stretcher, and closed his eyes falsely assuring himself that this was all just a dream.
Hermione stoically tended his wounds, binding the deeper gashes in his chest the "muggle" way, wrapping them with Madam Sretuiopia’s Special Unicorn Hair Gauze and and soon clapped her hands together and (for lack of a better expression) stood back to admire her handiwork. She noticed the grime encrusted wand still clutched in his hands and wrenched it free hastily,
Harry had fallen asleep on the couch, and Hermione dropped down next to him, too exhausted to make her way back to her room.
"Oh Dear Lord, please let me wake up to find that this is all a horrible, awful nightmare," she muttered, hopefully, as she drifted off next to the three least likely people in the world, The Boy Who Lived, Gryffindor’s Keeper King and the Slytherin Prince.
Draco Malfoy was in excruciating pain, but suddenly he felt a pair of strong, warm hands tending his wounds with gentle concern. The pain was nearly gone, he glanced at his torso and discovered that his entire chest was covered in bandages, his shirt and robes now conspicuously missing.
Among the billions of questions bombarding his thoughts, he found salvation in the hands of someone he chose not to believe was worthy of living.
Hermione Granger was saving him.
No…it couldn't be. He was hallucinating and yet he watched her save his life.
Draco dropped back onto a soft warm pillow, praying that he his brains hadn’t been addled when he was tortured. He didn’t want to end up like those Longbottom fools. He closed his eyes and was lost in dreams filled with the same beautiful chocolate eyes.
Golden sunlight streamed through the moth-eaten curtains adorning the old windows of Godric's Hollow. The lanky gray material trembled in the non existent breeze. Though no wind, nor even the slightest morning breeze, was blowing, the trees around the idyllic cottage seemed to shiver with anticipation of change, or perhaps with something larger…
Perhaps magic?
Inside the house, four pairs of eyes simultaneously blinked open; a pair that was vivid emerald green, a pair that was sapphire blue, a pair was chocolate brown, and the last was red rimmed and steely silvery gray.
A thousand miles away, in the gloomy dark of a chilled cave, a pair of scarlet, snake-like eyes blinked open as well....
To Be Continued...
A/N: I am SO SO SO SO sorry for the DREADFULLY LONG wait I submitted a while ago, but what with the MODs being so EXTREMELY busy, and my idiocy when it came to submitting (and resubmitting) chapters that were too short.
Thanx to my beta SilverQuill92 (a.k.a Mrs. George Weasley), and my great reviewers!!
--Mrs. Roonil Wazlib (aka Won Won's Lill Lill)
BETA NOTES:
Great Chapter! ^_^
-Steph- a.k.a Mrs.George Weasley
~*::*~