The acid curse had struck Hermione squarely in the sternum. It had been powerfully cast. The boils were already burning deep into her bones and across her chest up to her collarbones.
Padma rapidly cast the countercurse. Hermione lay on the floor and tried not to sob as Padma summoned potions from across the room.
She was burning. The agony from being cursed in the wrist was nothing compared to this. It was in the middle of her. She was barely aware of anything but the corrosive pain in the centre of herself. She couldn't make out sounds. She couldn't feel the rest of her body. All she could feel was that she was burning. Inside her chest. In her bones. Her skin. Like there was acid in her throat.
Surely someone would stun her. She was on the verge of pleading.
She closed her eyes tightly and waited for everything to stop.
“Hermione.”
“Hermione.” Padma's voice broke through the blur of agony.
Hermione forced herself to open her eyes and look up at Padma.
“I can't remove your bones now,” Padma said. Her voice was trembling as she poured the analgesic across Hermione's chest. “There are too many people dying — and I need you. There are too many curses here I don't know how to analyse. Besides the pain potions and the analgesic, what should I give you?”
Hermione stared at Padma in blank horror for several seconds, struggling to make sense of the words.
She closed her eyes and tried to breathe shallowly before she forced herself to answer. Everything was burning. Even with the analgesic potion, the burning wasn't stopping. If she hadn't felt certain that screaming would have hurt more, she would have screamed until her voice gave out.
She swallowed repeatedly before she forced herself to speak. “Strengthener. A drop of Felix Felicis. And a Draught of Peace,” she said in as low voice as she could manage. She could feel vibrations of her vocal chords in all the pockets of burned flesh.
Padma carefully poured the potions into Hermione's mouth and lightly massaged the analgesic into the skin before dripping small drops of Essence of Dittany into each of the boils. Hermione lay on the floor for several minutes, waiting for the moment when the potions kicked in, in the hopes that somehow things would become somewhat bearable.
She could feel the damage in her bones. It inched toward her lungs as she struggled to breathe. She forced herself to stand and shakily flicked her wand to repair her shirt as she made her way across the foyer.
She was dying.
It felt like she was dying.
She forced herself to mentally separate from the pain and set to work, immediately moving to the most difficult injuries while Padma and the other healers tended to everything else.
Every movement was painful. Breathing was agonising. Hermione couldn't so much as twitch her arm without feeling every bit of damage in her chest. She bit down on her lip and forced herself not to cry; if her chest heaved from weeping, she was afraid she'd black out.
Her lungs kept agitating her with the urge to cough. Her esophagus contracting, and her chest jerking slightly as she fought against it. If she coughed, she would probably fracture her sternum.
She nearly cast a diagnostic, but she didn't think she could handle knowing how much bone damage she was ignoring.
She downed a cough suppressing potion and forced herself to breathe shallowly.
Recovering would be slow. Just repairing it would likely take hours.
She turned slowly, taking in the seemingly endless number of hospital stretchers she was surrounded by.
There were so many injuries. Hag disembowelments and vampire bites. Werewolf maulings. Dozens of curses that Hermione had never seen before. Sussex was a death chamber, slowly wiping out the Resistance. She recognised some of them as curses Severus and Draco had warned her about and provided counter-curses to. Deep cuts that wouldn't close; non-serious looking boils that suddenly swelled and burst, causing the individuals to begin hemorrhaging. She pulled conjured scorpions, vipers, and even a lobster out of stomachs and chests.
The air stank of internal organs and blood and Dark Magic.
She healed and healed, and the bodies brought to her never seemed to stop. She thought she saw Harry and Ron arrive, but they were gone again before she could look away from the injured Muggle boy she was healing.
As she performed a complicated spell to repair a shredded large intestine, she gradually became aware of someone standing beside her.
She glanced over and found Kreacher looking up at her.
“Is Potter's Mudblood alright?”
She stared at him blankly but didn't reply as she moved on to the next injury with a wince, downing another cough suppressing potion as she went.
“Potter's Mudblood is hurt.” Kreacher said in a tone that was as conclusive as it was derisive.
“Kreacher, get out of here.” Padma said, her eyes narrowed and furious. “I need someone with basic healing over here.”
“How hurt is Potter's Mudblood?”