Not Quite Dark Magic

Flashback

Four years ago:

"We're losing her."

"Don't you think I can see that?" Hermione hissed, blood soaking through her jumper from the wound on Cho's chest.

It had seemed like a simple cut before; they hadn't paid it any mind. The mission was a complete and utter failure and there was no time to stop and dote on someone when half their forces had already been decimated. Making it out with anyone alive would be nothing short of a miracle at that point.

The apparition had been where it had all gone wrong. One moment Cho was standing beside Ron, hand on his elbow as he apparated them back, and the next she was on the floor, blood spurting from the wound that hadn't been deeper than a half inch previously.

Hermione was on her knees and applying pressure before anyone else had moved. It was different back then. People were so ill trained with standard healing spells and the Order was falling apart so drastically that most people fell into shock before knowing how to act. Trauma was weird like that. It wasn't like how she'd thought it would be.

When the first dregs of war had made themselves known, it seemed like adrenaline hit first, and hard. The Order went around for months acting purely on instinct and without second thought. For a while Hermione thought she wouldn't start to see the true effects of watching her comrades bleed out and pass horrifically until the war was long over.

She was wrong. She was so, so wrong she realized as she sat there with Cho's innards in her hands while the others stood over her, frozen and pale. Unmoving, unthinking with looks of horror marring their faces. It wasn't that they weren't willing to help, but they couldn't. Hermione called Harry's name ten times before she gave up. He wasn't there. His mind had retreated to some far off corner to try and hide what little humanity there was left.

It was similar for all the others as well. It wasn't always the same people. When she stood frozen watching Colin Creevey choke on his own blood, Ron was able to burst into action and save his life. It seemed there would always be at least one person that was able to push back their initial horror and spring into leadership.

Cho died not long after she'd collapsed to the ground. A new spell the Death eaters had created that she wasn't able to get identification on in time to save her life. Hermione stood a few minutes after Cho's labored breathing had stopped, shoes squelching on the obscene amount of blood that puddled the entryway to Grimmauld Place. Blood that would never be scrubbed away completely. A rug would appear to cover the spot the next day, but Hermione would always know what it was hiding; she would always remember that her own insolence and inability had caused a fellow schoolmate their life.

It wasn't survivor's guilt, Hermione told herself later on that night, after her screams had faded and the tears had long dried. If Hermione had kept her cool long enough, she could have figured the spell to save her. She looked down at the scrap of paper Snape had written the counter spell on.

It was simple. It was so, so much easier than it should have been. Had she not been panicked, she could have figured it out in five minutes, tops.

But all the schooling in the world couldn't prepare her for the expectations of war. There was no time to think, only to act. Dodge the spells. Fire back and don't look to see if it hit. Keep moving. Cover your comrades.

And don't fucking panic when you're confronted with a dying body.

But how could she not? When someone's life was in her hands, how was she expected to keep her mind in one piece? Her hands shook on a regular basis; she had been declared too unsteady for healer work months ago.

"I'm not cut out to heal people," she told Harry, who was sitting on the couch next to her, her feet in his lap. He was staring blankly at the wall in front of him. Hermione peeled the label on her beer bottle absentmindedly. She wasn't sure if the events had truly sunk in with him.