The Anti-Heroine || A Harry Potter Fanfiction

Chapter XL

A/N: I made a video for this story- it's not a trailer, but if you want to check it out it's just above.

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CHAPTER XL:

Hermione's POV:

It didn't occur to Hermione what a full examination of her body would reveal until it was too late to stop it happening.

When they arrived at the hospital wing she'd insisted Madam Pomfrey look at Draco first, and had then been given a hospital gown to change into. After spending several minutes fiddling awkwardly with the strings on the back of the gown trying to tie them up, she first got a look at just how much the hospital gown exposed– the answer being far too much.

Tense and uncomfortable, she spent nearly twenty minutes laying on the cot dreading what was about to come. When Madam Pomfrey finally entered the curtained off area she was lying down in, McGonagall standing unobtrusively in the corner, and started to wave her wand up and down her body, murmuring diagnostic spells under her breath, Hermione closed her eyes in defeat.

The bruises around her neck had yet to start fading ,but they were mostly covered by her hair and were nowhere near as eye-catching as the dark as spilt ink bruises staining her pale skin from where she'd hit the stone floor.

Her whole body felt like a bruise, right now, except for her ankle, which consisted of a much sharper pain. Her whole foot was swollen, and she was fairly certain it was dislocated, though it could just be a bad sprain– either way, it hurt like buggery.

So no, at this point the neck bruises were the furthest thing from her mind. If she really had to, she'd think up some sort of excuse for them that didn't involve unplanned breath-play during sex– and they'd believe her, because they wouldn't want to believe that it could be anything else. What she was actually worrying about were the other marks on her body, the older and more permanent ones that couldn't be played off as anything other then what they were.

Madam Pomfrey's sharp inhale alerted her to the fact the woman had just located one such mark and Hermione let out a quiet sound of resignation escape her.

"Please roll over, Miss Granger." Pomfrey said, voice was strained. Hermione considered protesting, but in the end just did as the Healer had asked, closing her eyes as Pomfrey carefully pushed up the hospital until she revealed–

"What is that?" McGonagall asked, her Scottish accent thick in her horror. Hermione didn't say anything, just kept her eyes tightly closed.

She'd been five years old when Sister Bernedice had held that red-hot poker against the back of her thighs, under the excuse of 'exorcising the devil from her'. Obviously, it had left a scar, and a nasty one at that; thick and shiny pink, stretching across the backs of both of her thighs.

Hermione kept her eyes closed, even face down in the pillow as she was, as Madam Pomfrey carefully undid the fiddly ties on the back of the hospital gown, revealing her bare back, and all of the marks that were on it.

The nuns had always been very liberal with the use of the bamboo canes they carried everywhere, and the Mother Superior had always kept her heavy leather strap well-oiled.

With her unexplainable bouts of accidental magic, Hermione had always been a target for the caretakers of the orphanage. For three years she had suffered at the hands of the Sisters of Saint Agnes' Home for Orphaned Children, before escaping and fleeing the orphanage to live on the streets, never once looking back.