Hermia walks in on a house elf struggling to clean the [REDACTED] common room - it is obviously seriously ill beyond the visible sores and swellings.
Hermia knows of house elves, and even has friends and relatives who keep them. They are ugly little things, some as short as a toddler and some uncannily gangly. She's never spoken to one before—and really, what would she even say? But then again, she's never seen one so ill before.
She knows better than to interrupt an elf doing its job, but there's just something so... sad and pathetic about it. She doesn't mean it in an insulting way, but there's no better way to describe it. Its scrawny little arm, struggling to lift the cloth it's using to clean. Its ankles, so swollen and sore-covered. Its skin so pale it hardly looks like an elf at all.
There's a nagging feeling in the back of her head to do something. Take the cloth and quickly scrub the spot it can't read, call someone to grab the school nurse, try to summon another house elf with the hope that it knows what to do. Something. Anything. And yet, for a good while, all she can do is stare at it with a frown. It grunts, it groans, it whimpers, and Hermia feels such compassion.
Just not enough to make a definitive move.
"You don't have to clean anymore," she calls out instead, still keeping her distance. "We'll get some help. Have you seen a healer?"