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“Granger!”
His feet pounded, crunching the carpet of leaves, eclipsing every other sound. He came to a ragged halt, his breath puffing out in front of him in the night air. He listened hard.
Moonlight filtered through the branches of the trees, casting fractured beams of light on the forest floor.
It was freezing, hoarfrost coating the landscape.
“Granger!” he whispered-yelled.
Nothing, only the distant chaos reverberating from the horror they just escaped. He lost her in the scramble. Casting a silencing spell on his feet, he moved deliberately from trunk to trunk. Stopping occasionally, he cocked his head, concentrating.
There. He heard it. An imperceptible mewl.
“Draco.” It was pitiful. Injured.
“I hear you, love. Where are you?”
“Walk straight ahead.” The tiny voice said.
The faintest shimmer of disillusion swam at the base of the massive hardwood in front of him. He shot forward, skidding to her hidden form on his knees.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes.” She gritted.
“Is it bad? Uncloak, let me see.” He worked to keep the panic from his voice.
“He got Ron. Ron is dead. I think they are all gone." She started to cry.
“Granger, I need to look at you."
Silently ending the spell, her mirage melted away. “It’s not all mine.”
She was soaked in blood. So much that he couldn’t discern where it was all coming from. Her face was downturned in agony, striped in dark red, almost black in the low light.
“I can’t see what I need to heal. Can you tell me? Lumos is out of the question.”
“Some sort of necrotic spell. It burns. I don’t know the counter.” She shifted, offering her arm. “My arm.”
Draco slowly peeled back the sleeve of her robe. Her school jumper was in tatters. Pulling her limb into a patch of moonlight, he examined the streaky, burning flesh that marked her forearm. The curse was slowly crawling to her elbow, like singeing paper.
“The good news is it’s eating your mudblood scar.” He said grimly.
She laughed with a cough, her head lolling to the side. “My collarbone is broken, I think. Head wound, obviously. Twisted ankle.”
“Merlin, Granger. We need to get you out of here.”
“Good luck. Anti-apparition is still covering the grounds. And Harry…” She trailed off. Her body shivered, wracked with sobbing she labored to stifle.
Draco stroked her hair, chaotic and sticky. “Yes.”
“I didn’t know. How could we have known?”
“No one could. Hold still, let me heal what I can.” Draco worked over her scalp, looking for the leaking gash on her head. Muttering a knitting incantation, he turned his attentions to the break in her clavicle, then to her ankle. Shifting eyes back to her burning flesh, he cast stasis to try and contain it. It had crept to her bicep but seemed to stall from his words. She hissed as he turned her arm over, speaking a cooling spell into existence.
“That’s a little better,” she groaned.
“Can you stand?”
“I can try.” She gathered her legs under her. He rose, helping her with him. Transfiguring his tie into a sling, he secured her arm to her stomach.
“Let’s walk now, love. We have to go.” He took her uninjured hand.
As if remembering herself and her mission, she yanked him to face her. “Do you still have it? Is it still yours?”
Draco whipped the elder wand in front of his face, grinning. “It’s still mine.”
Gasping with relief, she rose on her toes to kiss him on the mouth. “Thank Godric."
He pulled her along, picking through the forest as quietly as possible.
“Mioneeeeeee,” a menacing voice echoed on the air, slithering through the trees. Inhuman, but still familiar in timbre.
Harry. He was coming for her.
Granger froze.
“None of that; we have to keep going." He tugged at her, ignoring the gooseflesh sweeping his own skin.
“We are trapped. Everyone is dead. I don’t know what happens next."
His swotty, resourceful girl, always with the answers. She had endeavored in secret to help him over the last year when he had begged her, extricating him from his own terrible decisions.
It was the one thing Potter had not seen coming.
Now it was his turn to save her.
“We run until we can’t anymore; we fight if we have to. We will survive this. Together.”
Her gaze shone with adoration, dare he even say pride, as she allowed him to lead her deeper into the woods in search of a way out.