Part Thirteen
I was stunned, unmoving, as I watched his figure walk away, slumped over in silent defeat. Tears slowly began to fill my blue eyes before running down my face. I was stricken that he would suddenly believe Draco over me, after he had seemed to completely forgive me only moments before. I suddenly felt alone, without anyone to care about me, and the memory of having no parents flooded over me, as it always seemed to do, coming back at the worst moments. This lonely feeling didn't last long, though, although I almost wished it had.
I felt someone grab my arm, rather roughly, I might add, and attempt to turn me around. It was Draco, and he had some nerve to try to comfort me at a time like this. After all, most of this was his fault: if he hadn't attacked me and George, we would probably still be together and happy. But now George hated me, and it was because of the prick that was grabbing me and sparking my anger.
"Get away from me, Draco!" I yelled, yanking my arm from his grasp. He should've known that now wasn't the best time to be messing with me, but he just couldn't keep his hands off.
"Come on, babe, I'll make you feel better," he said, in that obnoxiously arrogant voice of his. I suddenly realized how much I hated the sound of it.
"No, Malfoy, leave me alone." I pulled out my wand, prepared to hex him. Unfortunately, he already had his wand already and stopped me as I raised mine with a quick Expelliarmus spell. My dragon heartstring wand flew out of my hand and halfway across the clearing behind me as he stalked forward, not looking very happy.
"Don't 'no' me, Sparrah," he growled, glaring at me. He grabbed my arm again and pushed me to the ground. I wasn't sure what he was about to do, but from his tone of voice, I knew that I didn't want to find out.
I backed away from him, still on the ground, but there was no way I was fast enough. With a quick flick of his wand and a few sharp words, he hit me with a Full-Body Bind curse. I immediately froze, unable to move a single part of my body. It was extremely frightening, especially with Draco approaching me again, a cold glint in his eye. This certainly wasn't the same Draco that approached me in the Trophy Room; this one was seductive and controlling, a heart-breaker, someone that actually wanted to harm me.
He raised his wand again, about to do something awfully horrendous to me, when a bolt of blue light hit him in the chest, knocking him to the ground. The Full-Body Bind broke as he lost his concentration on me, and I turned to see who had come to my aid. Surely George hadn't come back to save me?
No, it was my best friends, Neville and Luna, accompanied by none other than the equally infamous Fred Weasley. While I had never gotten to be very close to him, I knew him enough and talked to him every now and then, and I was completely surprised to see him helping me. After all, I would assume that he would hate me as much as his brother did.
Without a moment's hesitation, I jumped up from where I was sitting and ran to where my wand was laying on the ground. It was undamaged, and I picked it up quickly before spinning around to see the opponents left to possibly duel with. Already, Neville and Luna were attempting to fight Crabbe and Goyle in a two-on-two duel, while Fred sent spell after spell at Draco, dodging the ones that were skillfully returned toward him. From where I stood to the side, I sent an Expelliarmus spell directly at Malfoy, which he just barely dodged.
Suddenly, I saw a jet of blue light hit Fred square in the chest, and he fell to the ground fairly hard. When he didn't get up straight away, I grew a bit worried, but that may have been because I could've pictured George lying there instead. Regardless, I wasn't about to let Malfoy hurt Fred because he was trying to save me. It wouldn't be right.
"Oi! Malfoy!" I yelled, waving my wand-less hand at him, simply to get his attention. It seemed to work. "You're fight isn't with him; it's with me, you cocky, lying, prudent little prick!"
A cold fire lit itself in his eyes, and he raised his wand. I did the same with mine at that exact moment, and our spells left their respective wands at the same time. I sent a simple Expelliarmus spell at him, but I didn't hear the curse he nearly silently uttered, and I wasn't prepared for what happened next.
The flash of bright light blinded me for a split second and knocked me on the ground in the next moment. Before I knew it, a fiery pain was searing through my abdomen, as if several coal-hot knives had sliced through my skin. I tried to scream, but my breath had left me, and I was left to make no sound at all, from what I could hear. Then again, I couldn't hear, or sense, much of anything, what with the roaring in my ears. The only thing in could feel was the unbearable pain, accompanied by the sensation of a cold liquid running down from the source of the pain to the grass beneath me. Somewhere, I knew it had to be my own blood, that this pain was from gashes in my stomach and chest, but it simply didn't register in my mind. I was almost too far gone.
My vision flickered, unsteady, as an unsourced darkness crept into the edges of my line of sight. Blinking a few times didn't help any, and as my eyelids grew heavier, I knew that I wouldn't be able to avoid the state of unconsciousness that was eating at me, pulling me into its dismal grasp. Everything had slowed down, moving at a rate so slow that I could pick apart every moment in my mind. Then, I saw face framed with messy red hair looking down at me just as I slipped into the unstoppable slumber.
~~~
My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself in a room that I wasn't all too familiar with, though I did know what it was. I was in the hospital wing for some reason, but I didn't know why. Perhaps I had come to visit someone and had ended up falling asleep? No, that couldn't be it; there wasn't anyone I knew that was sick or hurt. And then there was that strange, and extremely frightening, dream I had had: Draco ambushed me and George, George didn't trust me anymore, and then the blonde weasel had used some curse that had sliced across my abdomen. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering how, in the dream, the pain had seemed so real, so intense, that it had caused me to black out...
The realization slowly started to come to me, and when I tried to sit up, I could feel the tight bandages plastered around my middle. So all of that hadn't been a dream, it had actually happened. Then that meant...
Just as my mind crossed the memory of George walking away from me in the clearing, my two best friends walked in through the door, and, seeing that I was awake and functioning, Luna rushed over and pulled me into a rather painful hug.
"Oww," I moaned softly as she suddenly pulled away, remembering my injuries. Strange that they should hurt like that, I thought. Wouldn't magic be able to heal them with no problem?
Neville seemed to read my mind, as he always did, and spoke up, "Your wounds, they're, ah... not normal. Apparently, Malfoy used a Sectumsempra curse on you, and it's supposed to rip your flesh open if it's completed. Madame Pompfrey said it may take a day or so to heal because of the severity of it. But thank God Malfoy stopped before it finished, or you would be a lot worse than you actually are."
I didn't need him to say what he was actually thinking; I could tell from the look in his eyes that the spell could have possibly killed me. I shook my head, mostly to myself, and looked up at them again, but when it did, it was the person behind them who caught my attention.
"Hello, Nicole," Fred said, in a voice distinctly different from his twin brother's. I wasn't sure what it was that set them apart from each other, but I could see two different people when I looked at them, rather than simply a set of twins.
"Hi... Fred," I said, a little surprised to see him there at all. After all, his brother obviously hated me right now, or at least thought he did, so why was Fred being nice to me? It didn't really make sense in my mind, but I wasn't going to openly question him about it, especially in front of my friends.
Even more surprisingly, he was carrying a small bunch of bright flowers, blue forget-me-nots, which had always been my favorite. But how in the world did he know what flowers I liked the best? Then I realized that George probably had talked about it in front of his brother before, but I never imagined Fred would remember something as seemingly trivial as that. Nonetheless, I appreciated the extremely kind and unexpected gesture that almost seemed unnecessary.
"I just wanted to, ah, drop by and see that you were alright. After you blacked out, I was worried that Malfoy's spell had been a lot worse than it actually was. And I, uh, brought you these because, well, I thought someone ought to, since George won't." Without another word, he placed the vase of blue flowers on the stand at the end of the bed and began to walk back out of the hospital wing. But, before he was out of the door, I just heard him say, "And be sure to check the note in them." Then, he was gone.
I was still in complete shock at his appearance as Neville reached over to the flowers and gently pulled the note from them. It looked like a normal "get well soon" card, but I knew better than that from one of the twins. As Neville handed it to me, he said, in a bit of a whisper, "You should know that he carried you back to the castle after you blacked out. I'm not sure why, but I think he still likes you, despite what George feels right now."
As I opened the note and read what he had written, I knew that Neville had to be write because, there, scrawled in an unkempt handwriting, was one sentence. "He'll come round if I have to make him."
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Oh. Snap.
So much for one chapter, right? Well, Chapter Thirteen, plus it's Halloween today, so something super bad had to happen, right?
So, guys, enjoy this one, and be sure to leave some comments, hopefully votes, and if you haven't already, you should definitely become a fan of my page. I've got plans for a new story soon, and you don't want to miss it! (:
Deuces.
--Majic