It was so open. Nothing to hide behind but bodies.
She couldn't stop herself from calculating her injury, like a ticker running in the back of her mind. Non-lethal but severe. She'd scar, but she was not at risk of losing her hand. The spots where the acid had eaten away at the bones in her wrist would never recover until she removed and regrew them. She'd have to be careful not to fall on it; the bones were pocked with holes and highly fragile.
She cast a powerful confringo to force back the Death Eaters closing in on her. Where were the others?
Remus and Tonks were fighting back to back. Holding their own but nearly thirty feet away, pinned up against the wall of the house.
Harry was closest to her, furiously battling dozens of Death Eaters. His glasses appeared broken, and it looked like a slicing hex had hit him on the forehead. There was blood streaming down half of his face.
Fred, Charlie and Ron were fighting their way toward him.
Hermione tore her eyes away as the flash of a knife caught the corner of her eye.
She dodged instinctively and grabbed the wrist of her attacker, using their momentum to carry them on and bury the knife into the stomach of another approaching Death Eater.
The wielder snarled with rage and spun to attack her again.
Close proximity wand combat was difficult, trying to get the motion right when she hardly had room to move her wrist.
Simple.
Deadly.
With the tiniest flick, she cast upward. A tiny thread of scarlet bloomed beneath the jaw of the Death Eater before his head toppled off. Blood spurted across Hermione's face.
It was in her eyes, and she could taste it as she heard the knife clatter to the ground.
Hermione wiped the blood from her face, spitting, and watched as a huge, unmasked Death Eater grabbed hold of Ron and sank his teeth into Ron's shoulder.
Harry, Fred, and Charlie all shot stunners, but they bounced off the Death Eater. Werewolf.
Ron was screaming in agony as he tried to wrench himself free. The werewolf jerked his head up, tearing Ron's shoulder open.
The full moon was a day away. The spell power required to take down a werewolf at that point would be considerable. At least seven more stunners.
Too long for Ron.
Spells to bring down a werewolf; Hermione scrambled to think of one.
She reached deep inside of her magic and hissed, “
Something in her twisted.
The black curse shot from her wand. It was like a cloud of black smoke that zipped across the field and exploded around the Death Eater. The werewolf froze for a second and collapsed into dust. Ron dropped to the ground.
As Hermione stared, everything inside her went cold and dark.
She stumbled and gripped her chest.
As the world swam back into view, she noticed something moving toward her. She turned, jumping back.
It felt like being punched violently in the ribs.
Hermione gasped, trying to inhale and looked down. There was a knife driven to the hilt in the right side of her chest. If she had turned a split second later, it might have gone into her heart, but — as she studied it with surprise — she thought it had probably missed anything immediately vital.
Her healer mind couldn't turn itself off.
Her wand slipped from her fingers, and her hands darted down to close over those of the Death Eater who was still holding it. Stopping him before he could try to twist it, or pull it out and stab her again.
She felt the bones in her left hand crack as she gripped his hands in hers tightly and — without letting herself stop to think how much it might hurt to move with a blade still inside her — drove her knee viciously between his legs.
He crumpled to the ground, his hold on the hilt loosening. Hermione stumbled away, gasping raggedly.
Where had her wand fallen? There was blood in her eyes. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision.
She looked down at her chest again. Her right lung was punctured, and she suspected her liver had been nicked. From the angle she was looking down at it, it was hard to tell.
She saw her wand. She tried to reach for it without bending her torso. As her fingers closed around the handle, she felt someone dig their fingers into her braided hair and drag her up onto her feet until she was dangling in the air, her toes barely touching the ground.
“I remember you, Mudblood.” Rabastan Lestrange chuckled as he pulled off his Death Eater mask. His eyes dropped down, and he noticed the knife still buried in her chest. “Look at that. Someone already got started on you.”
She tried to curse him, but he batted her wand away. She heard it clatter onto the ground.
Her knife, she needed to reach it.
“How many times do you think I can stab you before the light goes out in your eyes?” he asked before he jerked the blade from her chest.
Hermione gave a ragged gasp as she tried to stop him. The right side of her body was suddenly slick with the blood sliding down her torso. Rabastan dragged the blade up her chest until it pressed over her heart.