They would have been invaluable members of the Resistance if the Order had been able to reach them in time.
Instead, the "terrorist organization" found themselves abruptly cut-off from the world, briefly leaving Poppy Pomfrey as their most experienced Healer. Any fighters in the Resistance were brought to a boarding school matron to be healed of battle injuries and dark curses. Kingsley managed to recruit two general practitioner healers to set up a semi-functional hospital. However Voldemort's tendency towards punishing entire families, most wizarding folk were reluctant to leave their entire lives behind and ally themselves with the Order if they didn't have to.
The war was concentrated in Britain at that point. After the British Ministry of Magic was seized European Magical hospitals sympathetic to the Resistance secretly reached out and offered specialised training in healing dark magic and curses. Hermione had been the only person with enough basic healing knowledge to qualify that the Order could spare.
It had hardly been a question. The Order needed a casualty healer, if they couldn't recruit one they needed to create one; Hermione had the aptitude. She was barely given time to say goodbye before Kingsley had her smuggled out of Britain. She hadn't known when she would come back.
She trained obsessively for almost two years. She was reaching the end of her training when the Order's hospital safehouse was compromised in the aftermath of a skirmish. A Death Eater had grabbed ahold of Ernie MacMillan when he was apparating there. Once the Death Eater was inside the protective wards he immediately left and brought back several more Death Eaters.
Beyond the Fidelius charm the hospital had not been well protected. There was no evacuation plan. No guards. It was a bloodbath before the Order managed to gather and send in a response. The Order lost the two healers they had recruited, their healer trainees, Horace Slughorn, and almost every injured fighter convalescing there.
The Death Eaters left Ernie alive out of spite.
The Order needed Hermione back immediately.
Voldemort had allowed Antonin Dolohov to set up a curse development division; new and deadly curses were used in battles that required advanced spell analysis to counter. Hermione's specialty. They also needed to replace their potion master and Hermione had qualified to do that too.
Within three days, Kingsley personally arrived at the Austrian magical hospital where she'd been studying and brought her back to England.
In her absence, Harry and Ron had reforged themselves into a duo. Upon her return the trio tried to resume their friendship but the two years had sent them in separate directions.
Hermione hadn't been able to share in the idealistic belief that Light, by its inherent quality of goodness, would eventually turn the tide of the war. In her eyes it seemed to be steadily turning further and further against the Order.
From the moment she returned to England she lived in the new hospital ward that had been set up on the second floor of Grimmauld Place. She spent her days and nights watching people die; watching them realise they were going to die. Trying to save them. She sat beside them and explained as gently as she could that they'd never speak, never eat, never see, never walk, never move again. That they'd never have children. That their partner, spouse, or parents or children had died while they were unconscious.
She lived every day in the aftermath of the battles; breathed in the devastation until she was drowning in it.
She wasn't allowed to fight. She wasn't allowed in the field. She was too valuable as a healer and potion mistress. The Order couldn't risk losing her.
She stood endlessly in the aftermath of battles she had no influence over.
So she used what she had, her voice and her position as an Order member. She used her seat in meetings to urge the Order to expand training beyond defensive magic. She wasn't advocating for torture or Unforgivables; she had just wanted Resistance fighters to actually be given explicit rather than merely tacit permission to kill Death Eaters in self-defense.
She hadn't thought it could be a particularly fraught or complicated position to hold three years into a war.
It was.
Harry was adamant: they would not use dark magic; they would not kill people. The majority of the Order had fallen in line with Harry's vision.
Hermione had been the outspoken odd-one-out. It had steadily eroded most of her friendships.
It wasn't entirely surprising that Ginny had concluded that Snape was the only person Hermione could have been in a relationship with. Ginny had been right. Hermione had been almost entirely alone.
Hermione sighed to herself and turned off the shower.
If she'd done something differently, could it have changed the outcome of the war? If she had devoted herself to defense? If she hadn't pursued healing or potions? If she hadn't left for two years?
Would it have made any difference? Saved anyone?
A lump formed in her throat as she replayed Malfoy's taunt from months before:
"You didn't even fight during the war, did you? I certainly never saw you. You weren't ever out there with Potter and Weasley. You just hid. Spending all your time in hospital wards. Waving your wand about futilely, saving people who ended up being better off dead."
She swallowed hard and pressed her lips together into a hard line as she stepped out of the shower and toweled off.
She paused a moment and stared at her reflection.
She hated her reflection. Hated seeing it. She tried to avert her eyes whenever she encountered a mirror. She barely recognized the person she found in the glass.
In her memories of herself, she'd been gaunt from stress and malnutrition. Pale from staying inside healing and brewing potions. Her skin had been pallid. Her unmanageable hair always carefully restrained in tight braids that she'd kept coiled at the back of her head. Bony and thin-limbed. Her eyes, large and dark, but with fire in them.
Now...
Her face was no longer gaunt. With adequate nutrition she had filled out so that her cheeks were no longer hollowed. Regular daily walks meant her color was improved with a faint natural blush to it. Without a comb or any hair ties she could only comb with her fingers and leave it to hang loose. It fell, in a riotous mass of waves and curls, down past her elbows. Her knees and elbows and hip bones and ribs no longer jutted out. She'd built up muscle mass exercising.
She looked healthy. Pretty even. Normal. Like a Hermione from a different life.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.
The spark that she regarded as most intrinsic to who she was had gone out.
She was a vibrant corpse.
She turned away from the mirror and dressed.
The fertility potion affected the fit of her robes. The buttons over her bust pulled and she could see her nipples through the fabric. She rolled her shoulders inward to try to conceal it and pulled her hair over her shoulders.
When she returned to her room she found a lunch laid out for her. She poked at a cucumber salad and stared out the window. The snow had melted. The estate was comprised of endless grey. Even the sky was grey.
She was still staring out the window when the door clicked. She glanced over and found Malfoy had entered. He was wearing his 'hunting' clothes. They were clean, so her guess was that he was heading out rather than returning.
She stared at him. Without robes he was noticeably tall and lithe. The clothing was all black but his forearms, chest and legs had a metallic silver protective gear strapped onto them. Ukrainian Ironbelly hide body-armor, Hermione concluded after studying him for a moment; for spell and weapon protection, unless he had a dragon taming hobby she didn't know about. He was gripping a pair of gloves in one hand.