Manacled by Senlinyu

chapter 22

Healers didn't use physical scalpels, but magically speaking the mental exactitude and wandwork was comparable.

Hermione had memorised diagram after diagram of human anatomy. Drilling herself on all the details she needed to train her eyes to pick up in a diagnostic; puzzle pieces of information that had to be assembled in order to identify what might be wrong.

Then in the evening she'd head to the dungeons to study potions with Snape.

When she had finished with healing and potions, she would sequester herself into a corner of the library, rifling through book after book in search of useful spellwork for Harry. Until she'd fall asleep there.

Slowly, she had drifted away from her friends.

They were all so righteously angry and yet optimistic following Dumbledore's death. There was a fire of certainty driving them that Hermione couldn't seem to spark within herself even at the very beginning. The more she learned, the more her confidence regarding the outcome of the war seemed to wane. No one else seemed to appreciate how hard it was to keep people alive.

When she failed to share the optimism it offended them. She was Harry's friend, why wouldn't she believe in him? Why was she so determined to make everyone feel scared? Did she think she was smarter than them? She couldn't even cast a patronus anymore. Maybe if she spent more time practicing her defense spells she'd stop being so morbid.

It wasn't that they weren't taking the war seriously, but that their perspective was narrowed. It was Light vs Darkness, Good vs Evil. Light always won. Look at the stories look at the history books. Yes, some people would die, but it would be for the cause; a worthy death. They weren't afraid to die for that.

Eventually Hermione had stopped talking and withdrew with her books. There was no point in noting that history books were written by the victors. Or that there were plenty of wars in the muggle world where lives were just another form of ammunition; where battles failed to mean anything, or produce more than a new list of casualties; a fresh row of graves.

Maybe they all needed to believe such things, but Hermione couldn't. She'd needed to prepare. She buried herself in healing, in potions, in books until the Ministry of Magic fell and the War officially began

Then she'd been rushed off to begin studying in France. Then Albania, when France became too dangerous. Then Denmark. Then—Austria? No.

Had there been somewhere else, before she went to Austria? It felt like there was a gap. A blur. Hermione pushed at the blank space in her memory. Somewhere, somewhere else she'd gone to study. Where could it have been? Why would she forget it? She forced her mind toward the blur and it was just dimness. A low golden light emanating from a lamp, dust, the scent of old paper, dry and green, and the thin chain of a necklace in her hands.

Nothing else. She pressed harder, but the memory faded into the back of her mind again. She couldn't remember anything more.

Just like she couldn't recall the spell for repairing mammary tissue.

She sighed to herself as her fingers fell away from the knotted tissue.

The faultiness of her memory was increasingly unnerving.

Sometimes she wasn't even sure she knew who she had been during the war. She remembered herself as a healer. Just a healer and a potion mistress.

At some point she had diverged from that person, and she didn't know how or when it had happened.

When had she become someone that Voldemort would describe as dangerous? A person who leveled half a prison. Who burned dementors, and stabbed Graham Montague with poisoned knives?