“I remember you, Mudblood.” Rabastan Lestrange chuckled as he pulled off his Death Eater mask. His eyes dropped down, and he noticed the knife still buried in her chest. “Look at that. Someone already got started on you.”
She tried to curse him, but he batted her wand away. She heard it clatter onto the ground.
Her knife, she needed to reach it.
“How many times do you think I can stab you before the light goes out in your eyes?” he asked before he jerked the blade from her chest.
Hermione gave a ragged gasp as she tried to stop him. The right side of her body was suddenly slick with the blood sliding down her torso. Rabastan dragged the blade up her chest until it pressed over her heart.
Hermione tried to wrench her head free as she attempted to pull out her knife without drawing his attention.
He pressed the tip in and hit bone. He shifted the blade until it found a space between her ribs. Hermione's eyes widened as she stared up at him.
“Here? Or should l start lower?” His voice was taunting. He was unconcerned with the fighting around him.
Hermione didn't know whether to try to reach for her knife or stop him from stabbing her in the heart.
Was there even a point in making a choice? She could feel herself bleeding to death.
He started to push it in slowly.
As the tip of the knife began cutting into her skin, Rabastan stilled. His hold on her hair loosened, and his expression went slack as he dropped dead at her feet. Hermione collapsed with him and caught herself with one hand.
Behind Rabastan, just beyond the anti-apparition point, a masked Death Eater was standing alone in the field.
Several Death Eaters nearby froze and turned with surprise when Rabastan fell.
They were dead before they could raise their wands.
Hermione just stared. She suspected her punctured lung was collapsing. She pressed her hand against the wound to keep herself from haemorrhaging and to prevent air from seeping into her chest cavity.
She watched blankly as the Death Eater who had just appeared began making his way across the field.
It was Draco.
She'd never seen him fight, not really. But the style was still familiar.
He was as deadly as she'd imagined.
The influence of Bellatrix Lestrange's training was obvious. The fluidity of movement. The wake of bodies he left behind him as he stalked across the field. Bellatrix's unpredictable style had been driven by her sadism — her insanity.
Draco's style was brutal efficiency.
He wasn't concerned with maiming or causing pain. He didn't want prisoners. He killed everyone.
He showed no hesitation as he mowed through the panicking Death Eaters around him. The ways he could conceive of to rapidly kill people was terrifying. It was entirely a numbers game. Minimum effort, high return.
It was impossible that he had ever fought to full potential before. If a Death Eater had ever fought that way before, everyone would have known about it.
He cast a spell on the ground that turned the radius surrounding him into liquid. Fifteen Death Eaters immediately vanished beneath the surface. Screaming. He cancelled it, and left them behind to be suffocated by the earth around them.
He cast curse after curse after curse, most of them nonverbally. The Death Eaters steadily dropped.
He conjured a flock of dozens of silver hummingbirds. Several Death Eaters hesitated, visibly confused. Draco whipped his wand forward, and the tiny birds shot through the air like a hail of bullets, burying themselves into the throats and chests of anyone nearby without a powerful shield. He called the birds back, dripping blood, and shot them off again.
He was within a few feet of Hermione.
He reached out and grabbed her by the left wrist. She gave a low scream as she felt her damaged bones fracture in his grip. He pulled something out of his robes. Holding it high over his head, he activated it.
It was like all the air and sound in the area was suddenly sucked away. Deadly silent. Everyone around them dropped to the ground, gasping and clawing at their throats.
Hermione was screaming in pain and panic. She felt her wrist breaking as she tried to get free. The Death Eaters were gasping silently for air as they suffocated.
“Harry! Harry. Ron! Stop. Stop! You can't kill everyone! Stop, Draco!” she was screaming. Their faces were turning blue.
The struggling was coming to an end. The bodies went still.
“Draco, stop!” She renewed her struggles to tear herself free and felt the bones in her hand shatter. “Stop!”
“You idiot,” he snarled through his mask, releasing her wrist. “Wait here.”
He tossed the dark artifact onto the ground. It sizzled and twisted up into a heap of scrap metal. He stalked over to Harry, Ron, Fred, Charlie, Remus, and Tonks. He performed a reviving spell on each of them followed by a muttered “obliviate” before he levitated the unconscious bodies up behind him as he turned back. He summoned her wand up off the ground and dragged her up by the arm.
It was hard to breathe.
Moving was agonising. Her left wrist felt like it was being crucioed. Blood was streaming down her side.
It got harder and harder to breathe as Draco pulled her across the field.
She needed to seal the puncture. As soon as she could find someone — someone who could perform the spells to keep her from bleeding out. Who could remove the air from her chest cavity.
If she could apparate. If she could apparate to Grimmauld Place.
If she could.
She stumbled. Her head was feeling light, and it was hard to think straight. She tried to breathe but felt as though she couldn't.
Draco dropped everyone just outside the anti-apparition wards. She moved toward their bodies. She didn't know what resuscitation spell Draco had used. Before she could take a step, Draco's grip tightened and he apparated away with her.
They landed in the shack.
He immediately let go of her and ripped his mask and gloves off. She slumped against the door.
“You — you can't leave them there,” she rasped.
“They'll wake in less than a minute,” he said, his face twisting with fury.
Kneeling on the ground, he used the tip of his wand to draw a series of runes on the floor. The runes glowed for a moment, and a trapdoor appeared. Jerking it open, he reached down and pulled out what seemed to be an entire hospital worth of healing supplies.
Draco turned to look at her. His face was white with rage.
“Can you last long enough for me to get a healer for you?” he asked. His voice was shaking.
She shook her head.
“You'll have to tell me how to do it. I've never used complex healing charms,” he said, pulling supplies out.
She dragged herself up from the wall and gave a small gesture toward her right side with her broken wrist.
“My liver. It's — where the blood is coming from. I think. There's air in my chest cavity. It's collapsing my lung.”
He conjured a stretcher and helped her down onto it.
She gulped a Blood-Replenishing Potion before she had him cast a diagnostic, so she could confirm the injuries were what she thought.
He had all the necessary potions to help stabilise her and keep her from going into shock.
He was steady-handed. He cut off her clothes and performed the spells to staunch the bleeding and repair the blood vessels and biliary ducts in her liver as it started healing, following her instructions carefully. Then he handed her another vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion.
The spell to siphon out the air collapsing her lung was tricky. She had trouble showing him the wand movement. Her hands were still shaking despite the pain relief she'd taken.
“It's more subtle than that,” she tried to explain. “Just the faintest sideways shiver of the tip, or it will pull too hard and damage the tissue.”