My eyes burst open to see a number of things. Number one, a room lit way way way too brightly, number two, freezing water dripping down my cheeks and eyes from the damp cloth on my forehead, as well as the highly confused face of Drew, sitting beside my stretcher.
"You missed the Bulgarians Veela." he said simply, shining me his winning smile.
"The... Veela?" I said slowly, trying to ignore the throbbing in my head.
"Yeah, but getting caught mid-air by Viktor Krum makes up for it." he gushed, his eyes wandering in to the distance as he remembered one of the most terrifying memories of my life.
"Viktor... Krum?" I repeated, sounding like a speaking goldfish.
"Yeah and-" Drew began, before a deafening roar interrupted him.
I flinched and curled in to the fetal position as I waited for the death eaters to emerge and destroy us all, but this thought was disturbed by the fact that the Irish national anthem was playing, overlapped by small, merry Irish tunes that even I recognised.
"THE IRISH WON!" Drew roared, jumping up and completely ignoring my obvious terror.
Relaxing slightly, I allowed myself to lay flat and take some deep breaths. Across from me in the tent that, judging by the magnificent crimson cross embroidered in to it's white, canvas sides, was the medical tent, Drew was dancing and jumping for joy, like a small child.
I actually laughed, if you can believe me, at him. How could I not laugh at his light-hearted display? Soon, my sides were splitting with joy, and Drew turned over and hoisted me to my feet. On further inspection of his strawberry-blond hair, I sensed he had some Irish blood in him
Playing unimaginably loud was a particularly fast Irish song, a song that you couldn't help but tap your feet to. Suddenly, the egg on the back of my head was hidden by my hair that had fallen out of it's braid, and my concussion melted to allow Drew to dance me out of the tent.
Our hands felt like the flesh had been merged as we danced alongside the happy Irish supporters, and my feet that were so often uncoordinated, were now skipping weightlessly (a word that I now despised) to the rhythm of the song.
The music was so thick in the air, that I couldn't help but feel as though it was the blood of some divine being, being pulsed through the narrow stretched between enchanted tents and houses. It was so... perfect, so absolutely magical that I found myself laughing and dancing as if nothing else mattered in the world.
"ELL! I'M GOING TO COLLECT MY WINNINGS!" Drew yelled, directly in to my eardrum, so as to allow me to hear.
Nodding, I saw that the Weasley tent could be nothing short of half a yard away from me, so I mischievously ran to it quickly, and began rummaging through my trunk until I found it. It was probably the most beautiful item of clothing that I owned, a beautiful dress that I had salvaged from a muggle clothing store 'Sale'.
It was a strapless blue dress, with immaculate patterns punched into the upper layer of the soft material. It somehow, as if by Muggle Magic, fitted my body perfectly. Tonight was the perfect night to wear it, I knew that for sure. All worries were lifted form my mind I pulled the forget-me-not coloured dress over my pale body.
Discarding the idea of shoes and my wand, I decided to go completely vulnerable in to Drew's arms. Vulnerable was the right word for it, because as soon as I look a few steps away from it, I felt the more heart-wrenching anxiety overcome my limbs.
Ignoring this feeling, I ran over the long, green grass, with my bare feet pounding softly against the soft tufts of plant life. Instantly, my fears drained as I saw Drew's bewildered face searching for me amongst the sea of green, and that's where the colour of my dress came in handy.
Swivelling his head, he saw my instantly. My blue contrasted well with the overflowing green of the grass and the people, that it was hard not to see me. The music hummed loudly, buzzing like a swarm of bees rehearsing a beautiful melody.
Wordlessly, our hands came together, and our feet skipped along to the swift beat, driving us further in to the sea of celebrations. Men cooed at us, women giggled, but I couldn't take my eyes off of him. Thousands of butterflies pulsed through my stomach, threatening to escape and swarm him.
My worries, my fears, my torments fluttered away with these butterflies as I placed my full confidence in Drew, trusting him to lead me wherever he'd like. His head now navigated away from the path we were treading, and into my eyes, which were already searching his.
The music stopped, the world halted, holding it's breath for a brief moment.
We leaned into eachother in perfect unison, and the kiss that followed was like... Fire! It burned me, spreading across my skin, and we were torn apart. Looking around, I saw that the music had stopped for a reason, men robed in black, adorned in skull masks were casting spells of fire in all directions.
I tried desperately to clasp my hand within Drew's, but we were torn apart by the terrified people fleeing the scene. I looked to see that I was right beside the stadium, in the very centre of the wide expanse of tents that were being burned, burned, burned.
Alone, I leaned against the wooden poles that supported the enormous stadium, and watched in horror as every soul fled the campsite. My chest inhaled and exhaled at a rate that it rarely reached, and I considered running as fast as my legs could carry me, before I remembered something.
My wand.
I ran with such intent that I hardly noticed that hot coals burning my bare feet, or the embers that clung to my dress and threatened to spread. My hair loosened itself and flayed wildly behind me, no doubt as wild as the expression in my face.
I ran, I ran so fast that the Death Eater's behind me could scarcely keep up with my pounding legs and focused face. Smoke filled my lungs, steaming the delicate organs within me, roasting me alive. My eyes stung from the sheer thickness of that awful smog, but I persevered.
Scarcely. They were close behind me, threatening to catch me at any moment.
The Weasley's tent could hardly be told apart from any other tent, but I could almost feel this invisible connection between me and my wand, and I knew that it was guiding me through the darkness. I allowed my tortured eyes to stay closed as I ran, blind, through the debris.
The tent could scarcely be recognised, what with it's caved in entrance and burning edges, but I crawled my way in to it and searched the place for my trunk. The smoke was unbearably thick inside of the burning tent, with it's sources of fresh air very small.
In fact, they were only large enough to continue to fuel the fire.
The trunk, small and black was now within a few feet of me. Desperately, I lurched my body forward and dug my hand inside of it. My wand lay on top of all of my other worldly possessions, engulfed by the tiny tongues of flames that were threatening to ruin my possessions.
It was strangely beautiful, the change in my wand. The grey-white colour of the eucalyptus had been charred slightly by the flames, giving it magnificent black swirls over the previously bare coloured casing. Somehow, the destructive fire had made it even more immaculate.
I gasped out a bubble-head charm, and felt the air around my lungs clear instantly, and I could finally breathe fresh air. Pointing my wand at the trunk, I rasped out a word that I hope could transform in to a spell, as it so often did.
"Umbra!" I choked, remembering the Latin word for 'Guard'.
A shimmering white veil covered my trunk, and I felt my consciousness, for the second time tonight, ebb away slowly in the midst of black smoke and red flames.
~
"-She's not waking up today, just spoon in the stuff and leave her alone!" said the high-pitched voice of Madame Pomfrey.
Madam Pomfrey?
"I know... I know... But it's been nearly a week, surely she should have woken up by now?" said Dumbledore softly.
"Well, according to young Drew, she was prancing about with a severe concussion after a nasty fall, and then inhaled a tent full of smoke." sighed Pomfrey impatiently, her tone softening slightly.
"Mmm, indeed." he mused, and a warm weight was lifted off of the foot of the bed.
He was sitting on my bed?
"I must say, you have the most accident prone child in the entire school." she clucked, fiddling with various bottles.
"Oh yes, she is, isn't she?"
"I don't know why you're proud of it, most parents want their children to live a long life." snapped Madam Pomfrey in reply to my fathers smug tone.
When this statements exited her lips, I heard her swift intake of breath and the silence that followed. Opening my eye open the slightest bit, only wide enough to see a blurred vision of my father before me, I saw the most sorrowful look that I had ever witnessed.
If I were any good at art, I would try once more to depict this moment, as fragile as a tear drop hanging precariously from someone's eye lid. Not a word broke this look, only an action. Dumbledore blinked away what appeared to be tears, and nodded to Pomfrey before exiting the wing entirely.
Instantly, I closed my eye fully, and kept my face completely placid to present a sleeping face. Pomfrey leaned her head down, and whether she knew I was awake or not, I'd never know, but the words she said next perplexed me most of all.
"One day you'll understand."
She then left me to return to her various duties within the otherwise empty wing, frozen and shocked. What had I heard? What did it mean? There were only two possibilities that seemed to possibly grow from this statement and my fathers reaction.
Either, Dumbledore didn't want me to live a long life.
Or, Dumbledore knew I wouldn't live a long life.
I didn't know which I would prefer. That look and that tiny statement had sent my world spinning out of control. I was glad that I was securely tucked in to this bed, because I don't think my legs could carry me either way. I felt like the Earth was trying to pull me in to it, to crush me, and that the flimsy bed under my back was all that was stopping it.
The thought of being devoured by this Earth, and it inevitability, forced me to leap up and abandon the bed that I had inhabited for anything up to a week. My feet ached as I circumnavigated the freezing hallways, the bare skin pleading for warmth.
Completely miserable, that was how I felt. Neither outcome was desirable, and Dumbledore was so very wise that I knew that either was definite. What would life be if I was hated by all my relatives? What would death mean for me, if I were to be cast into another realm on my own.
As I reigned in my focus and saw that my feet had led me to Ravenclaw tower; home. The wall that blocked my entrance seemed to open up for my immediately, and I couldn't understand how i had gotten in to the fortress wordlessly, but it hardly mattered.
Shivering from my head to my toes (which were now blue), I gazed around the skeleton of a room with a manic feeling pressing it's way through my lungs and in to my brain. As I stood still, the pain in my body set in, and I gazed down at myself.
Madam Pomfrey must have worked miracles, because my entire body felt like silk, and it bore not a single scar from the burns that I had received that night. She didn't, however, possess enough magic to wash the disgusting feeling of soot in my lungs from me.
"Elle?" said one of the few voices that I wanted to hear, and a voice that had been ringing out more and more around me.
"Drew? What are you doing here?" I croaked, my voice as rough as sandpaper.
"I made my parents let me stay here for the rest of holidays... because of all of this... It's my fault, really." he said, his voice throbbing with tears.
"No, it really wasn't, I am just... bad luck." I sobbed, melting in to his arms.
"You're the best of luck." he whispered, his warm breath soothing my freezing scalp.
The next movements were so fluent, so graceful and natural, that I could scarcely recognise them, let alone remember them. However, we were soon curled up on an extravagant arm chair, sharing the most intimate moment of my life.
I ignored the burning deep in my heart, the cries for Neville in the back of my head as I embraced Drew. We drew the warmth from each others bodies, and I can genuinely say that he saved my life, whether it be warming my frozen body, or retrieving my soul form it's pit of indecision.
It could have been seconds, it could have been hours, but this blissful moment, which was all along the preparation for the next great event, ended. The transition faded, the problem was expected to be solved, and the world forced me onwards.
"ELYSIA DUMBLEDORE!" squawked the voice of Madam Pomfrey; it was over.
Lifting my chin to see Drew's face inches from my own, I craned my neck to plant a kiss on his lips, before standing up to greet the woman. By now, I was completely comfortable, my healing, in my own opinion, was complete. Finished. Over.
"Yes?" replied my own strangled voice.
Madam Pomfrey burst in to the room, followed closely by Dumbledore, her eyes incredulous. Stalking me like prey, she circled me, inspecting my limbs, my face, the rise and fall of my inhaling and exhaling. Finally, she turned to Drew and seemed to perform an entirely different inspection.
"Fine, fine... You stay here, young lady, and don't you dare get sick once more." hissed Madam Pomfrey, before pivoting and leaving the three of us alone.
"Elysia, you did quite an incredible job with the tent, in fact you saved it entirely." Dumbledore began, skipping the formalities of greetings.
"I... did?" I gasped, my eyebrows shooting up as I remembered the fuzzy night.
"You did. It's strange, because we inspected the spell you performed, and I have never heard of it before." he continued, his eyes sparkling mischievously.
However, his usual jovial sense of mischief and cheekiness had no effect on me. How did he expect me to look him in the eyes with the knowledge that I beheld? It was moments like this where I could almost feel Voldemort's cold breath on my shoulder, beckoning.
"Oh, you haven't?" I said, humouring him.
"Interesting, I thought." he concluded, before waving his goodbyes and leaving us alone.
"You made a spell!" cried out Drew, scooping me into his now lanky, long arms.
I hadn't noticed how much Drew had grown, infact, until now. His arms were longer and stronger, his freckles now hardly prominent at all, his inquisitive eyes gazing at me with this expression, that seemed the project the idea that he thought me beautiful.
Oh, if he knew, if he knew what was in me, he would never think of me as beautiful. If he knew that right now it was Neville that I wanted, I know that I would lose that expression for good. I am weak, I know, but I couldn't lose the only thing that loved me unconditionally.
Not even if the feeling was shared. I loved Drew, I knew it, but not nearly as I did Neville. However, Neville didn't have this... adoration that Drew had. I didn't desire attention, I didn't desire compliments and self-esteem, but who doesn't desire unending, unconditional love?
Anybody who felt the emotions inside of me right now would agree with my actions, and those who think me a fool for feigning a strong passion for Drew obviously haven't felt this way before, they haven't ever been caught in a web so intricate and unending.
"Stay with me." I whispered, looking up in to his own eyes with a pleading expression.
"Forever." he replied, sweeping me up.
And to anybody who has ever felt this intricate web of emotions, of love and it's complications, would also understand the feeling in my heart right now. This agonising, bitter torment, diluted somehow by the affection surrounding it.
Perhaps I could bear this love.
~