The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Thirty-One

Day: 1467; Hour: 6

She wakes up to Lupin beside her bed. He looks like he's contemplating something sinister, his face shadowed with the weak light of the candle at her bedside. When he finds her awake a dozen emotions pass across his features, though she doesn't know which ones are real and what the flickers of light have put there. Dawn is breaking through the high windows that mark the makeshift infirmary at Malfoy Manor. Her shoulder is sore and stiff when she tests it, but most of the pain is gone. She can feel the stickiness of potions on her hip and arm, the scratch of bandages, but she knows they are on their way to healing as well.

The memories are sharp, fast, and they hurt. "Where is Justin?"

She coughs through the dryness of her throat, and Lupin waits before answering. "I'm sorry."

Hermione lets her head fall back against the pillows, breathing out through her teeth and closing her eyes against the tears. "God."

"Brown has lost an arm. We would have grown it back, but she waited too long, and there's nothing we can do now. She refused to leave Harry and Ginny. They didn't know about Finnigan, so I'm guessing that you do."

She nods, the tears escaping the tightness of her eyelids, and she has to swallow five times to be able to speak through the thick, burning knot. "The rest are okay, though? Dean?"

"Everyone else is fine, recovering. Dean's going to have a bad scar on his face, and another across his stomach. Another five minutes and he would have died - the curse to his stomach nicked one of his organs. He--"

"But he's okay?" Justin, Seamus, Justin. Justin, oh God, he was going to be a father. He was nervous, and scared, and rambling with his stupid grin, and he was going to be a great dad.

"He's okay - I can't say how any of you are holding up mentally, though. It was very stupid, what you did. If Malfoy hadn't come to the Manor and then tracked me down in the middle of another mission, you would all be dead."

She almost can't grasp it through the dizzy spin of her head, through all that pressure of the war sitting on her chest, through the image of Justin in their youth, with his school tie and arms full of books. Would he have a son? Would his child know anything about the man, the great man his father was, and what he gave, and what it was supposed to mean? Ust had hardly even known him - how was his child supposed to? How was his child ever supposed to comprehend how deep the injustice of this war went? It stole him from that baby, from her, from them, from the world.

"Draco told you?" she chokes out, lifting her palm to her forehead, shaking under her thin hospital sheet.

Draco, don't be stupid, the nervous wringing of Justin's hands, Seamus all full of life to the brim of his skin and then gone.

"From what I understand, he stayed at the Manor for about twenty minutes, holding the coin in his hand. Minerva told me he seemed to be waiting for something, but refused to say anything. He caved when none of you activated the coin, I'm guessing. Minerva and Malfoy tracked me down to see if I knew where you had all went. As soon as I saw Malfoy across the street, I already knew. I should have known when I saw Harry after the interrogation. Should have known you two well enough."

"Is... Did we--"

"We found Ron. He's at Mungo's. He's alive."

The emotions become too much, and they take complete control over her. Suddenly, she is sobbing, shaking, a mess, and she doesn't care. She has waited too long to do this, holding off and burying it within her. It wins now, owning her, and she needs it to. But there is still some sort of strange, disgusting shame that makes the edges of her grief so much sharper. You weren't supposed to break down in war. You were supposed to be stronger than a human being could possibly be. You were supposed to get used to this, to take death and loss as naturally as breath, and it was supposed to get easier. It wasn't allowed to hurt. This. Badly.