Adverse Reactions

The dimly lit room was filled with healers dashing back and forth, trying to stop the bleeding. Harry watched through the window as one healer, the surgeon most likely, was working anxiously trying to stop the cause of the bleeding Harry had watched continue nonstop for the last hour. One of the healers, a young woman with red hair and freckles dashed across the room and vomited into a basin in the corner. Harry turned, wondering what had caused this reaction when he saw it.

The surgeon was holding the blood soaked lifeless body of Hermione’s unborn child.

Harry sank to his knees, sobbing inside of himself, but he didn’t let any of the tears show through. Ron’s son. Even from that distance Harry could tell it was going to be a boy. Harry’s stomach lurched slightly, but Harry refused to vomit. Unshed tears filled his olive green eyes as he reflected on the weeks he had just endured.

It was like the days after Voldemort had destroyed the ministry. Everyone was busy running about clearing up the debris, scrubbing the blood from the floor and trying to reconstruct the thousand year old architecture of the building. Harry was at the lead of the team taking down the names of who was responsible for what. And now that they had 18 Aurors missing from their team. Ron was one of them.

The attack had been sudden. One of the younger Aurors led a group of three men and a woman dressed in Muggle attire into the meeting hall. He said they didn’t have an appointment, but that they said it was an emergency. Harry and Ron had been the first to respond when they heard a woman shout and several curses start firing. Together they had seized their wands and darted into the room to find thirty or more Wizards and Witches, all dressed in hooded white cloaks firing killing curses left and right. They were standing in an odd formation. This was obviously a planned attack.

Harry remembered taking down six of them with miscellaneous curses. For every one he knocked out, two more came toward him throwing anything they could muster. After all that training after the war Harry was certain that he could handle anything that was thrown at him. That was until he saw the flash of green right next to him. It skimmed past him, but he could feel the collapse and the sudden thud of the man that had been fighting right beside him. Harry didn’t look at Ron. Harry just looked at the woman standing there with the curse she had just fired. It was Astoria Greengrass Malfoy.
The curse Harry threw at her he had only chosen to use once before. It was Snape’s curse. Sectumsempra. The blood that gushed from the woman’s body was not enough to satisfy Harry for the loss he had just felt, but it would have to do for now. Harry turned. Lying there, sprawled, wide eyed on the floor was his best friend, his wife’s brother. Ronald Weasley. Harry knew of only one place he had seen the look Ron held know in his lifeless eyes. The graveyard. Ron was now just like Cederic Diggory and so many others that had unknowingly been killed under the wrath of Voldemort.

Harry’s memory was gone on what had happened in that battle after he saw Ron’s body. Several Aurors were killed. Twelve injured. And lots of the Rebel Protesters had escaped. Only 27 were caught, Astoria Malfoy being one of them. Harry wondered if Draco were there. Surely where there is one Malfoy, there are many. Lucius and Narcissa were probably there too. After all the family had such a fondness for hooded cloaks and killing curses.

The sentencing was three days from now. Harry wondered if Hermione was going to be able to walk by then. He wondered if she were going to be ok after they had ripped the last gift Ron had given her from the inside of her body. Most of all, he wondered if she would be ok looking into the eyes of the woman who had killed her husband. All of this would soon be determined by the looming court date that hung over them like a curse.

Harry pushed his mind to the matter at hand which was the safety of Hermione. He remembered receiving the phone call on his new cellular phone that Hermione had helped get for everyone at the ministry. The man on the phone had a smooth voice that reminded him a lot of someone he knew at Hogwarts and had told to him to report to St. Mungo’s right away. He had told her that Hermione Granger was in critical condition and he needed to alert her family. The odd thing was, he called her by her maiden name. Granger, not Weasley. Harry wondered if that had any significance on who was behind her rescue.

Harry had arrived not six minutes later to find that Hermione had already been checked in and was undergoing emergency abdominal surgery so they could find out what was causing the bleeding. Ginny was waiting there for him with a letter, and Hermione’s sheet.

“She’s alive, but horribly beaten and she’s bleeding everywhere. They took her in the minute he came in with her. They told me I couldn’t help because she is my sister”

Ginny’s voice had been reassuring, especially since she had become an accomplished Healer, but what Harry didn’t know was where the man was. Ginny told him that he had checked Hermione in, made three phone calls, paid for everything she needed in full and disapparated all under a hooded green robe. This man had left only one thing. A letter, written on St. Mungo stationary that was addressed to Hermione Granger. Again with the Granger.

Harry rose to his feet, gazing around the deserted corridor and turned to gaze back into the room. They were carefully stitching Hermione back up and he saw the remains of what they had removed lying on a table beside her. How could someone do something this horrible. An innocent life had been taken. His nephew. Ron’s son. That was all Harry could bear to see as he walked back toward the waiting room. Everyone had been called just as the man had instructed. Molly and Arthur sat together at the front of the room, Molly stitching and sobbing to try and pretend like she was dealing with this news the best that she could. Bill and Charlie stood against the far wall and gazed intently at nothing in particular. Fleur was sitting farthest away, flushed with tears watching as Louis slept next to her. Parvati and Lavender wept openly while their husbands, Dean and Seamus, sat quietly watching as Harry entered the room. Ginny and the children, Lily, Hugo and Fred sat together facing away from the door and Ginny was reading to them softly from an old Muggle book of fairy tales. George, Teddy, Angelina and Percy sat together as well, watching Neville and Hannah attempt to get snacks from a very disturbed looking nurse. Luna sat alone on the floor underneath the check in counter reading this months issue of “The Quibbler” upside down.

When Harry entered Molly sprung to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around him and demanding rather loudly to know if Hermione was alright. Before Harry could answer her, the red haired nurse from the surgery room came out and addressed him. She was small and frail and looked frazzled as she pulled Hermione’s chart from under her robes.

“Nurse is she…”

Harry’s voice trembled as she gazed at him over her round glasses.

“Mrs. Weasley is doing well. She is in recovery at the moment, but we would prefer if only two of you would go to see her. During the surgery we found multiple internal bruises and several cracked ribs as well. Her appendix, which was the cause of her bleeding, was removed, but in so doing we had to deliver the baby premature. We did our best, but, I’m sorry to say, although Mrs. Weasley is stable, the baby did not survive.”

The words were almost too much for the room to hear. Molly collapsed sobbing over her lost grandchild that would never be so Ginny volunteered to accompany Harry. The nurse led Harry and Ginny into the recovery room and left them alone to view Hermione for the very first time.

Her eyes were swollen and the left one was black as if someone had punched her repeatedly. Her face was cut up and a shallow bruise covered her upper right cheek and got darker as it got closer to her jaw line. There were defensive bruises against her forearms and her pregnant stomach had deflated a great deal, leaving her thin, frail and pale as a ghost. Ginny hurried to the bed and sat beside her, caressing her hand gently as if to stir her from her sleep, but she did not react. Her heart rate was steady, but her breathing was slightly labored. She looked dead. Suddenly, a thought came to Harry.

“Ginny. When I arrived you had a letter for Hermione. May I see it?” The words escaped from Harry before he could even realize he had said them. Ginny nodded and reached into her robes and pulled the letter out. The ink was a delicate red and written in what would obviously be considered fancy Old English cursive with delicate strokes and curved letters. It read:

“Hermione,
Forgive me for not staying to make sure you were alright, but under the circumstances, being there when you awoke would not have been the wisest choice. I have notified Harry for you. I hope when you wake up that he will be there to comfort you like I wish I could have done. Hermione, I know about all the losses you have had to endure. I am more sorry than you could ever believe, would ever believe. Hopefully one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me and my family for all the heartache they have caused you over your lifetime. I do not expect your forgiveness. I pray you and your child recover. Please take this as my most sincere apology.

Take care Granger.”

The note was not signed, but regardless Ginny knew who it was. Although she had not seen his face, Ginny recognized that penmanship from anywhere, the smooth voice he had and the strong arms that held Hermione as though she were weightless. And she also knew the only person who still knew Mione as Granger. The only man who had loved her more than Ron. But noticing that Harry did not know left her with no option. She folded the note and didn’t speak another word about it for the rest of the night.