Lee Jordan was lying in one bed. There was brain matter still oozing from his ears, drop by drop. Hermione had figured out a way to cancel the curse but the counter-charm was slow-acting. She could only hope the dripping would stop within the next hour. It was doubtful his mental function would recover. The brain damage was severe and irreparable. She wasn't sure of the precise extent of it. She had to wait until he woke up.
If he woke up.
Most likely, assuming he wasn't completely brain dead by the time the dripping ceased, the Order would have to make a run to drop him at St Mungo's when they could spare someone.
George Weasley was seated in a bed beside his friend. He was pale with pain and despair. He had been hit in the right thigh with a fast acting necrosis curse. By the time he had been able to overcome the pain and apparate back, the rot had spread all the way up to his hip. There was no countercurse for necrosis. Hermione had barely managed to avoid his vital organs as she'd had to cut it off of him. She hadn't even had a spare second to stop and knock him out. His hands were still shaking, no matter how many calming draughts and pain potions Hermione administered to him.
Katie Bell lay in a bed in the far corner. Sleeping. She would hopefully be released soon. Some nastily creative Death Eater had conjured a porcupine inside her chest. The quills had shredded and mangled the girl's lungs and stomach and only miraculously not stopped her heart. She had nearly drowned in blood before Hermione and Madam Pomfrey had managed to banish the creature and stabilise her. Katie had been there for three weeks. While mostly recovered, her entire torso was still covered in a multitude of tiny round scars. Her breathing made a faint rattling sound when she moved.
Hermione went over and poured an antivenin potion down Seamus Finnegan's throat. He'd fallen into a pit of vipers and gotten bitten thirty-six times before he managed to apparate out. It was only because of wizarding folk's immunity to non-magical injuries that he had managed to make it back to them before he had died.
There were a dozen other bodies in the hospital ward, but Hermione didn't know the names of those Resistance fighters, and they were too injured to tell her.
Standing in the room looking over the silent, injured bodies, Hermione felt lost.
She had just come from another meeting in which she'd urged the Order to start using more effective curses when fighting. She'd been shot down. Yet again.
There was a bizarre sort of optimism among many of the Order members that they could somehow win the War without utilising the dark arts. Most of the Resistance fighters still defaulted to stunning or petrifying when cornered, as though the Death Eaters couldn't cancel those hexes in a few seconds and then appear at the next skirmish to horribly kill or maim someone.
There were a few who had begun using more vicious spells. Mostly the ones who had been on the receiving end of a curse that nearly killed them. It was like a poorly kept secret within the Resistance ranks; everyone turned a blind eye to it, pretending that it weren't the case.
Every time Hermione appeared at a high level Order meeting, she laid out the case for why all the fighters needed to be taught more effective magic to duel with. Every time she found herself being given disbelieving looks.
Apparently being on “the Light” side required that they fight against completely stacked odds. Never mind that their enemies wanted to kill them all, and then murder and enslave all Muggles in Europe. Apparently that was still an insufficient reason to kill Death Eaters in self-defence.
The response she got each time was the same. She was a healer, didn't she know how using dark curses eventually corrupted a person? If Order and Resistance members made the personal choice to use those kinds of spells it was their decision. The Order would never require it of anyone. Never teach it to anyone.
Besides, someone would always blandly point out to Hermione, she hardly even knew what it was like to be out there in a battlefield facing the choice of ending someone else's life. She was always back at Grimmauld Place acting as a healer, Potion Mistress, and researcher for the Order. That was where they needed her. She needed to let the people specialised in combat be the ones to make decisions about the war strategies.
It was enough to make Hermione want to scream.
As she stood beside Lee Jordan, seething, she heard a grating tap of wood on the ground and turned to find Mad-Eye Moody entering the room. He looked straight at her.
“Granger, a word,” he said.
Steeling herself she turned to follow him down the hall. She hoped she wasn't about to be scolded yet again for having the audacity to question the Order's war strategy. She didn't imagine Mad-Eye would; he was one of the few Order members who didn't disagree.