“I was foraging in Hampshire. The forest went quiet so I cast detection spells but nothing showed up. I decided to leave anyway though. I was almost out when I got bitten by a Gytrash, then when I was driving it off a vampire attacked me. I killed it and apparated. I don't know why I came to Whitecroft. I didn't mean to. But I lost too much blood to apparate again and I don't — I used up all my Essence of Dittany. And without Dittany leaves I can't make blood replenishing potion either. So I had to come here to fix it manually.”
Hermione's voice was shaking as she finished speaking, and she was on the verge of tears. As she had related what had happened, it abruptly stopped being funny and started being traumatic and horrible and too close.
She started hyperventilating as she thought about how close she'd come to dying all alone in a forest. No one would have even known where to look for her, and by the time they'd thought to, she would have been long dead.
She clamped her mouth shut and hiccuped several times as she tried to breathe evenly.
“I think I'm going into shock,” she said.
Her voice sounded oddly small and childlike. She swallowed hard.
She wanted to cry, but she refused to allow herself to. She'd already cried in front of Malfoy several times. She didn't want him to think she was someone who just cried over everything.
She was so angry he was there. That of all the times he'd decided to show up, it had to be then. She wished she'd apparated anywhere else.
“I'm not dying. The Order is not in crisis. So you can just go. I'll clean up before I leave, you won't even know I was here,” she said.
It was not the strategic thing to say, but she didn't want to look at him. He'd kissed her and then called her a bitch. He'd let her spend weeks healing him and only thanked her when he was drunk and then told her he intended to go to a different healer the minute he was sober again.
He'd cut her off.
He'd made her miss him like an idiot while he'd probably gone and fucked as many high-breasted, curvaceous prostitutes as his heart desired.
She hated him. And she didn't want him to see her when she was covered in blood and hysterical and traumatised.
Why couldn't he ever leave her alone when she wanted him to?
After a minute she turned back to healing her shoulder in the mirror again. He kept standing and staring at her.
In a few minutes the gashes were closed and only faint cicatrices remained. They would fade once she had some dittany tincture to apply.
She summoned over the other chair and lifted her foot up and started unwrapping her leg. Then she cut off her jeans at the knee and dropped them alongside the remains of her shirt in the puddle of blood.
She surveyed the Gytrash bite. It was difficult to see all the punctures on the back of her calf. She shifted her hips to get a better view. Two long gashes and several punctures. She cast a cleansing charm over the area to clear the blood away. None of them were very deep. She didn't think any of it was likely to scar.
She had it all repaired in short order.
The room seemed to be rotating slowly. She sat back and closed her eyes for a minute. Then she reopened them and cast a new diagnostic charm on herself. She'd lost a little over a pint of blood, which should have been in an acceptable range of loss, but she was sufficiently underweight that it was over 15 % of her blood volume.
She blinked at the diagnostic for several moments and conjured a glass of water. Her lips were tingling faintly.
She rummaged through her bag trying to see if she had any food and found a muesli bar that she had no recollection of. She gulped down the water and set to eating, stubbornly ignoring Draco's continued presence. He was still just standing and staring at her.
When she finished her third glass of water and every crumb of muesli, she glanced up at him in irritation.
“I'm going to be here for a while before I'll be able to apparate,” she said as she glared at him.
“Why can't you apparate?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment and then gestured at the floor.
“Blood loss. I had to walk here from the bridge. There's probably a trail, actually. As I mentioned, I was out of dittany, so I have no blood replenishing potion on hand in my emergency kit. I'll have to wait until I feel stable enough to apparate. If I stand up now, l'll probably just faint.”
Draco appeared to be growing pale with rage. His jaw kept clenching and releasing the way Ron's did when he was on the verge of exploding. He kept staring at her as though he resented her mere existence.
He'd clearly managed to get entirely over whatever passing interest he'd had in her. She'd been pining, and he'd apparently spent the last six weeks remembering that he hated her, that he'd always hated her, and that her Mudblood existence in the world was an offense to him.
He
She'd have to admit to Moody that she'd misstepped and blown her assignment.