Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART TWENTY-ONE.

August 1; 8:03am

Her arguments hadn't lasted long last night. She had still been tired, despite all the sleep she had got, and she was too weak and blurry-headed to fight long. He seemed to know it wasn't the end of it, though, considering the looks he kept sending her every time she took a deep breath. She did it a couple times just to watch him get annoyed at what he thought was the prelude to some speech. She was still mapping out said speech, though, so he had a little longer. She took a deep breath, watching him look up at her from the corner of her eye, and bit back a smile.

She had slept like a rock last night, which left a new stiffness to the pain in her shoulder. She knew that moving as little as possible was the best option, but she also knew it was one she didn't have for long. They would have to move on soon, away from where Bill might be - just because he had taken off after he attacked her, didn't mean he wasn't around somewhere. He could have been watching them right then, thinking about-- Hermione shook her head.

She folded the poultice again, starting her third attempt at getting it onto the right spot of her back. Trying to put it down the neck of her shirt hadn't worked, no matter how far she stretched, bent, or poked at it. When the arm from her bad shoulder had swung around to try stopping the poultice from falling, which blistered pain up into her skull, she decided a new tactic was in order.

She turned away from Malfoy, sweaty and red-faced from her effort, and reached up with her good arm to pull the back of her shirt up. She bit her lips as the fabric rubbed against her injury, wiggling to push her shoulder in the spots where the material was drawn up from her skin. She pressed her other hand to the herb-filled cloth over her puncture wound as it threatened to fall, pulling the back of her shirt over her head as she leaned forward.

She paused to breathe, grabbing the stick next to her leg. She didn't know why she thought the stick was a good idea, but if she could just...over just a little...and...higher, higher. She gasped at the ache from all her stretching at the wound and the rest of her upper torso, since she was certain no one was supposed to stretch that way. Except for maybe gymnasts and people without bones. Her ribs were going to pop, and her good shoulder was going to split, and then her elbow would break. She would just be able to swing her arm around like a noodle or a ribbon. Like those people who danced with ribbons, except she would be dancing with her disjointed, freak arm twirling about her head.

Calm down, Hermione. She took a deep breath and blew it out, but the curls fell right back into her eyes, and her face was still hot. Blood pressure went up when a person became anxious, and that's when hotness and sweating happened. She just had to keep calm and collected, and then coolness would come.

It worked for just a second, for one more push of the stick-speared cloth up her back, and her attempt at calmness went the way of free love. Without the diseases bit, though if she got any dirt in her wound, she would end up with another infection. Malfoy's clothing brushed together as he moved, and she shot her head up to glare at him, like sound had been created to annoy her and that's why he was making it. Everything just had to be quiet, and she had to stop sweating, and it would be fine.

The poultice hovered over her wound, but she couldn't get it off the frigging stick. She tried to stab it up into the air to make the cloth fly off, but only with enough strength that it would somehow conveniently land exactly where she needed it. She tried to wiggle it around next, careful not to thwack herself, and she growled impatiently. What, was it stuck on there with hot glue and thirty layers of duct tape? Was the world really conspiring against her this much?

She blew three quick breaths up into her face, and then another to get the hair away from its attempt at wrapping around her eyeball. She moved the stick over towards the middle of her back, bending her hand up and over as her wrist creaked and tensed. She tried to roll it, hoping the cloth would unroll from the stick. She held her breath as the fabric pressed against her injury, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of her ear and her arm threatening to noodle itself again.