"Stay in your seats, gentlemen!"

Curses started flying. Hermione stood hunching, the back of her chair stuck to her palms. She twisted and threw herself onto the floor, feeling the chair break under her. A pop as her shoulder dislocated, and she yelped with no sound. She sat up, looking for an exit, but blood dripped into her eyes from where she'd head-butted the guard.

Running footsteps, thundering from the stage, and the Death Eaters were there, casting stunning spells and kicking girls aside to beat through the crowd. She recognized Dolohov's boots.

She wobbled to her knees and crawled back, hugging the walls. She found a few scared girls there, but she pushed through, moving around the scrambling bodies.

She heard Macnair screaming orders, and Yaxley organizing the stunned bodies, yelling for them to get to her.

A pair of arms from behind her, wrapping around her waist, tugging her back. She kicked, and he dropped her, her elbow slamming into the ground. Arms around her again, and she wasn't sure if they were the same.

She was pulled up, held against a man's chest with his arms wrapped around her shoulders and wound against her hips. She screamed silently, kicking the air. He moved with her, dragging her away.

Was he stealing her or bringing her back?

The air smelled of blood and pine. And she wondered where the revolutionaries were.

She was concussed, she could tell.

She heard Yaxley's voice close by, and the man turned with her.

Yaxley was blurry with the blood in her eyes, but he held his wand out in front of him.

"Good work, Malfoy."

She had just enough time to wonder if it was Draco or Lucius before Yaxley stunned her.

~*~

Her head burst apart, and she gasped noiselessly against the pain.

Thunder rolling through her, rattling her head. She blinked her eyes open, and found herself backstage of the Palace Theatre again, the stage lights burning into her irises.

The sound of a gavel, and she knew where she was.

Raucous yelling. Cheering and jeering. She blinked against the lights, feeling the pounding in her forehead, and focused on the figure in white onstage standing next to Ludo Bagman.

Red hair and freckled skin. Ginny stuck her nose in the air, ignoring the taunting.

There were two guards on either side of Hermione, holding her up until she stood on her own. She'd been Rennervated by one of them. She turned to look at the girls, but all she found was broken chair legs and drying blood.

And a blonde wig and locket. A blue dress.

Twisting to look around pulled at her shoulder, recently reset. She found a backstage mirror, cracked down the middle, and saw that they had banished the blood from her face. She couldn't tell if the concussion had been healed. She was nauseous and spinning, but it might have been the symptom of a handful of other things.

Neither of the guards holding her was the one she'd seduced. She faintly remembered Ginny pressing a chair leg into his windpipe.