DRAGON'S HEARTSTRINGS || dramione | harry potter

Chapter Ten

Hermione popped up by the Great Lake – the same place where the High Reeve showed up when he brought Pansy for her to heal.

Before killing her himself.

Hermione threw the portkey – an empty can of sardines – on the ground and left it there, not that she was going back to the Manor ever again. She walked up the mounts, and down the courtyard, shivering – not from the cold, but because of what she knew awaited her at Hogwarts. Upon entering the castle Hermione didn't look around – her face dead with grief, her eyes empty, unseeing. She was caught off guard when Cho appeared around the corner, running towards her.

"Hermione!" Cho exclaimed. "What are you doing here! I saw you come down from the Lake..."

Cho got very close, but didn't lean in to hug her, looking at her left arm aghast instead.

"Cho, is everything alright?" Hermione blurted out. "Were you attacked?"

Cho frowned, looking at her as if she was mad, asking, "What happened to you?"

Hermione took a deep breath. "I need to see Harry, where is he?"

He probably didn't know about Pansy, he probably had no idea where she had gone, and Hermione will have to be the one to tell him the horrible news.

"Harry is fine, but you are not," Cho pointed out. She took Hermione by her good hand and started to drag her into the infirmary. "Your hand is covered in blood, and I will not tell you anything until I heal you properly while you explain to me what the hell happened to hurt you like that."

Hermione swallowed but allowed herself to be dragged, because she wasn't ready to face Harry, not with what she will be forced to tell him.

Cho made Hermione sit on one of the infirmary beds while she brought some things to clean up her wound and some potions to help it heal better. Cho took Hermione's left hand softly, pulled up the sleeve, and started cleaning the blood off her skin with cleaning charms.

"So, how did this happen?" she asked, looking at the bone-deep cut on the fourth finger.

Hermione huffed indignantly. "I tried to cut the finger off," she said. Out loud, this whole situation sounded ridiculous.

Cho raised her eyebrows. "Do I need to be worried about your mental health? Has the High Reeve driven you to insanity?"

Hermione sighed, "No, I understand how this sounds, but... I had my reasons."

"I'm all ears."

"He... didn't let me come back here."

Cho's facial expression turned comically horrified. "So you decided the best thing to do was... this? And yet they call you the Brightest Witch of Her Age. A bit of a stretch, I think."

Hermione groaned. "It doesn't matter now, I just need to talk to Harry."

Cho scoffed, "What you need is to get this wound treated."

Hermione smiled at her softly. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

Cho smiled back. "Don't get used to it." She looked down at Hermione's hand, now clean from all the blood. "I missed you. We didn't know how you were holding up back there. It was weird not having you by my side."

Hermione swallowed back her tears. "I didn't know you were the sentimental type."

Cho smiled softly. "Eh, I guess times like these make people change."

When she was finished with the wound, Hermione asked, "So, can I now go speak with Harry?"

"Yeah, yeah. He either in the Great Hall or in the Gryffindor common room, sulking."