Draco dropped everyone just outside the anti-apparition wards. She moved toward their bodies. She didn't know what resuscitation spell Draco had used. Before she could take a step, Draco's grip tightened and he apparated away with her.
They landed in the shack.
He immediately let go of her and ripped his mask and gloves off. She slumped against the door.
“You — you can't leave them there,” she rasped.
“They'll wake in less than a minute,” he said, his face twisting with fury.
Kneeling on the ground, he used the tip of his wand to draw a series of runes on the floor. The runes glowed for a moment, and a trapdoor appeared. Jerking it open, he reached down and pulled out what seemed to be an entire hospital worth of healing supplies.
Draco turned to look at her. His face was white with rage.
“Can you last long enough for me to get a healer for you?” he asked. His voice was shaking.
She shook her head.
“You'll have to tell me how to do it. I've never used complex healing charms,” he said, pulling supplies out.
She dragged herself up from the wall and gave a small gesture toward her right side with her broken wrist.
“My liver. It's — where the blood is coming from. I think. There's air in my chest cavity. It's collapsing my lung.”
He conjured a stretcher and helped her down onto it.
She gulped a Blood-Replenishing Potion before she had him cast a diagnostic, so she could confirm the injuries were what she thought.
He had all the necessary potions to help stabilise her and keep her from going into shock.
He was steady-handed. He cut off her clothes and performed the spells to staunch the bleeding and repair the blood vessels and biliary ducts in her liver as it started healing, following her instructions carefully. Then he handed her another vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion.
The spell to siphon out the air collapsing her lung was tricky. She had trouble showing him the wand movement. Her hands were still shaking despite the pain relief she'd taken.
“It's more subtle than that,” she tried to explain. “Just the faintest sideways shiver of the tip, or it will pull too hard and damage the tissue.”
Wincing, she put both hands around his and slowly moved his left hand in the necessary motion as she said the incantation in time with each movement.
He got it right on the third try.
“And then after you repair the lung tissue it's — just a regular healing charm to fix the diaphragmatic muscle and close the incision,” she instructed when she could finally breathe again.”
She slumped down to recover while he cleaned the blood off her. It was crusted on her face, in her eyelashes.
“What were you doing there?” he asked in a low, shaking voice as she turned and transfigured a piece of dressing into a shirt and started trying to pull it over her head.
“Harry asked me come,” she said with a small shrug. “I told you, we need Ron.”
“You aren't experienced in combat,” he said. He was pale, and his hands were trembling faintly as he helped her pull the shirt over her head, “Why are they bringing you out again without even giving you a partner?”
Hermione didn't look at him. She swallowed and slid her right hand down the sleeve. “They needed a healer. Our other healer lost her foot foraging. I was chosen because I could walk faster.”
He drew a sharp breath.
“You knew it was a trap,” he said. “You knew it. But you went anyway. Rabastan's prison ambush. No one actually thought the Order would be idiotic enough to fall for it. It was a training simulation for the rookies.”
“Harry was going to go.”
“So?”
“Harry is the point of this war. If he dies, it's over. I will always follow him. Strategically, I'm a casualty we can afford. Harry is not. If I improve his odds at all, it's worth it,” she replied in a steady voice as she twisted gingerly and lifted her broken wrist up to slide down the sleeve.
“You weren't saving Potter. You were saving Weasley.”
Hermione twitched her shoulder. “Ron is critical. Harry — needs Ron. If something happens to Ron, it'll break him. He needs Ron to want to win.”
“What about you? Doesn't Potter need you?” Draco said. His eyes glittered with rage.
Hermione looked away. “Not like he needs Ron. I'm — not like that to him.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“The Weasleys—,“ she started, and then she gave a short sigh. “They're his family. They're everything he wants. To win, he has to be able to see himself with them afterward. That — is what drives him. If he loses it — stops believing that he'll get it — he won't keep going. He won't be able to.”
“I thought you were part of the Trio. Won't Potter despair if he loses you?”
“No,” she said, glancing away. “He'd grieve, he'll be angry. But I'm — I'm not emotionally vital. I was never very good at—,” her lips twitched, “—Ron connects to Harry emotionally. Harry is driven by his emotions.”
“So — what? Potter drags you into a firefight you have no experience trying to survive because you're expendable enough?”