Signum Vitalis (a dramione story)

Signum Vitalis (Reprise)

"Dammit, Granger. I already told you to let go! Just let go! I'm down here," Draco replied, his voice amplified by a 'Sonorus'.

Hermione opened her eyes. Her vision immediately tunneled to the drop below her and it made everything in her freeze. She forced her fuzzy vision to focus. He was there. Made small by distance, but unmistakably Draco.

Her hands were already slowing opening on their own and she wouldn't have a choice whether she responded to his command or not. She squeezed her eyes shut to focus and whispered in the boy's ear. "It's going to be okay. Draco is down there. He'll catch you."

The boy nodded against her neck.

"I'm going to swing you away from the railings. Let go when I say so."

Hermione hunched over towards the edge, her leg muscles convulsing as they tried to keep her balanced. "Now."

All of the boy's weight dropped into her arms and she threw as much weight as she could into pulling him away from her. The boy's face clipped the edge of the landing but he seemed to move just far enough to miss the subsequent railings. Hermione didn't have much time to see anymore because pushing the boy had thrown off her balance. She frantically clawed at the railings as she tried to get back onto the landing. One of the broken railings caught and tore her right forearm just before she finally gained enough purchase to push herself to a safe distance. The height was still dizzying even though she was balanced now. Her body's aches were now distant compared to the sheer terror of death staring up at her in the form of hard concrete.

Get away. Get away! Any movement could possibly throw off her already fragile balance, she was sure. She didn't trust any of her muscles. She gently lowered herself so her back was pressed against the metal landing, then she squirmed backwards, inching along with her shoulders and pushing with her feet against the corner railing. The second all of her extremities were on the landing she just lay limply.

Then the flashbacks started. The dark, dank underground vaults of Gringotts. The doors whipping by at impossible speed. Being thrown from the tracks in a small cart, everything soaked through from the Thief's Downfall. The dreadful, stomach-dropping seconds as they were hurled through the air until she pulled her wits together enough to concentrate on the spell. The awful twisting feeling as she fought Yaxley off during the disapparation and the surety of falling as she reapparated the second she had jinxed him off. She had been so sure she was going to fall from too high a spot when she had apparated them the second time, so relieved to be standing on the ground and then... Ron. His arm was covered in blood. More blood continued to wash his arm as it spurted from his shoulder. His groaning. His pain overwhelming her thoughts as Harry rushed through her bag. She could feel it in her own arm, the pain a dull heavy ache. There was rain too. Had it been raining? She could feel it faintly on her skin, numb with cold.

"Granger."

No. She didn't want to be pulled into that memory. Her arm already hurt so much. As much as she fought it, the spells flashed and blinded her eyes. Bellatrix's high pitched laughter and deeper tones of Lucius Malfoy. She didn't know. Hadn't known. To be tortured for something she didn't know. Ironic, but mostly just painful. She whimpered.

"Granger."

"I told you I don't know!" The words were almost ripped out of her in her frustration. Couldn't the pain just stop?

"Granger, you need to tell me if you are okay."

What? Who was it? She slit her eyes open to see them but was distracted by blood. Her arm was bleeding, mixing with the rain into a bloody glove over the parts of her hand she could see. There was a spot where the blood was beating out in time with her heartbeat. That was bad. Very bad, but was she still imagining things? It seemed so much like Ron's splinching... the pain too familiar to when that word had been dug into her. But that wasn't now, was it? Someone was calling her name. That someone was...