It is two years after the defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort. While our side claimed the victory, it has not been accompanied by an end to all our troubles. Many Death Eaters remain unaccounted for. The survivors who eluded capture during the final battle fled – naturally – once it was over. Now they are suspected to be responsible for the unprovoked attacks on half-bloods and Muggle-borns which have plagued our world for the past twenty-four months. Many of the targeted population have consented to enter into protective custody, but some refuse. The Order of the Phoenix has been hunting down the rogue Death Eaters to the best of our ability, and all but three now rot in Azkaban.

Still, it is not over.

Severus walked down the streets of Muggle London late one evening, on his way home from an unsuccessful shopping trip in Diagon Alley. He had been hoping to find a copy of a rare Potions textbook he had read as a child and had since gone out of print; every week he checked Flourish & Blotts, and every week he was disappointed. It was raining, and he could easily have Apparated, but sometimes he preferred walking.

He was approaching a narrow alley to his left, and rainwater streamed from it into the street. Something caught his eye; a color out of place in the gray-blue hues of cloudy, rainy London. He looked down into the water and saw that it was accompanied by a rivulet of red.

He stopped in his tracks, his senses heightened, and swiftly withdrew his wand. He then stepped slowly and carefully closer. Placing his back against the wall of the building on the near side of the alley, he cautiously peered around the corner. He could see nothing and no one; it was too dark. "Homenum revelio," he murmured. Only one marker appeared in the alley, ten or so meters away, and it was flickering. Someone was badly hurt.

"Lumos." Using his wand to light his way, he entered the alley, stepping carefully over large pieces of refuse and softly splashing as he went. The closer he got to the dim marker, the more unbalanced the blood-to-water ratio became. By the time he reached the body on the ground, it looked disturbingly like the rain washing down the alley was all blood, all pouring from the person before him.

Long hair and a narrow waist told Severus it was a woman. She was on her side facing away from him, and she was not moving or making a sound. He knelt down and placed one hand gingerly on the back of her head and the other beneath her face, and slowly turned it towards him.

Hermione Granger.

Shock overcame him, and for an instant he was paralyzed. In that instant he took in her pale, colorless face – even her mouth was robbed of its normal rosy hue – as well as the neat cut on her lower lip, a fresh bruise on her cheek, and a two-inch long gash on her neck, which was still bleeding, though not profusely. Where, then, was all the blood coming from? Regaining control of his muscles, Severus frantically began searching for other wounds. When he took his hand from the back of her head, it came away entirely red.

Attempting to stay his impending panic with a deep breath, he began tracing the tip of his wand over her injuries and muttering the best healing spell he knew. While he did so, he lightly pressed two fingers beneath her jaw and felt a weak, fluttering pulse, then brought the palm of his hand to hover over her mouth and noted very small and sporadic puffs of warm air. A small measure of relief came with those discoveries, but he could tell that she was still very badly off.

"Miss Granger," he said, very gently shaking her shoulders, being careful not to jostle her head. He lightly squeezed her arms, hands, ribcage, hoping to elicit a response. "Miss Granger," he repeated, lightly slapping either side of her face. He leaned down next to her and pronounced, loudly this time, directly into her ear: "Hermione!" She did not stir.

He slid one arm under her legs and the other behind her back, groaning softly as he lifted her from the ground. Her arms hung lifelessly and her head lolled over the crook of his elbow in a way that served only to heighten his fear. "Hold on, Hermione," he said, hoping that some small part of her could hear him. "I've got you. Everything will be alright." Less than a second later, he turned on his heel and Disapparated.

Severus shouldered the door open and it hit the wall with a bang as his tired legs carried them into the reception area of St. Mungo's. The place was deserted. "Help!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the tile floors. "Help! We need help!" He stepped over to the desk and rang the bell rapidly several times with the hand under her knees. "Hello!" he bellowed into the empty halls. When she began to slip from his grasp, he readjusted her position with a grunt. "Someone, please help! Help!" When no one answered him, he slid down to the floor, still cradling her inert body in his arms, and began to cry. "Please," he continued in a whisper, sobbing over her motionless form, rocking back and forth. "God, please help me."

She was going to die there in his arms. He just knew it. She was going die, never knowing how much she had come to mean to him, never knowing how he felt about her. He had been too much a coward to tell her, or even to show her, and now she would never know. He would live out the remainder of his sad life having twice lost someone dear to him. He pressed his forehead to hers, spilling tears into her already rain-soaked hair.

A sound reached him over the rain outside and his own quiet sobs: light, quick footsteps. He looked up and saw a witch running down the hall towards him. "Hello?" he croaked, his voice hoarse from shouting.

"What's happened?" she asked, still running.

"She needs a healer!" he burst out, not caring about the eloquence of his response.

"What happened to her?" the witch repeated, now kneeling on the floor beside them and checking Hermione's body for signs of life.

"I don't know. I found her like this. She needs a healer," he said again, the desperate note of his voice sounding odd and unfamiliar to his ears. "I did what I could – stopped the bleeding – but she won't wake. Please... please do something."

"Can you lift her?"

"Yes," he replied with a nod, and struggled to his feet with the help of the witch. Her calm demeanor and the confidence with which she took control of the situation eased some of his panic.

"Follow me," she said, and took off at a brisk pace down the hall.

She led him to a room near the back of the hospital with a single bed, and he placed Hermione gently on it without being asked. "Lumos," she murmured, and opened each of Hermione's eyelids in turn, shining the light into them to test the response of her pupils.

"Are you a healer?" Severus asked.

"Apprentice," the witch replied, with a hint of apology in her tone. "I'll do what I can to stabilize her now, and then I'll call my superior. It looks like she's lost a lot of blood," she remarked, noting Hermione's pallor.

Severus' own face blanched at the memory of the stream of blood that had flowed down the alley. "Yes," he replied, his voice cracking.

She immediately began to set up a sort of IV, comprised of a long, narrow tube that tapered into a needlelike point and an upside-down bottle of a potion Severus did not recognize which she charmed to float in midair. When the potion started to flow, she firmly stuck the end of the tube in a vein in Hermione's left arm and secured it with medical grade Spello-tape.

"Where were her wounds?"

"One small gash on her neck," Severus quickly replied, drawing his finger gently across where the cut had been, "a split lip, and at the back of her head."

"Damn," the witch cursed under her breath.

"What is it?" he asked, a measure of his earlier panic returning to him.

"She may have suffered a concussion. If that's the case, and if she's been unconscious for a long time, she may be headed for a coma. I need to summon the healer right away."

Coma. The word seeped into his mind, bringing with it ice-cold fingers of dread that caressed the entire length of his spine. He had no attention to spare as the witch cast her Patronus and sent it with a message to her boss.

"I'm going to wait for him at the front desk," she told him. "Monitor her pulse and her breathing, and call me if anything changes."

Once she had left, Severus took the seat next to the bed, brought it as close as he could possibly get, took gentle hold of Hermione's wrist, and watched her chest rise and fall. Her pulse was weak but steady, her breaths slow and shallow. He placed his free hand lightly on her head, softly stroking her brow with his thumb and sinking his long fingers into her hair. "Everything will be alright," he said once more, wanting to believe it himself. "You are going to be fine, Hermione. It will be alright."

He gently placed his hand in hers, hoping for the twitch of a finger or a tiny squeeze, some small muscle contraction that would tell him she had heard him. When none arrived, he began to weep again.