The Girl Who Lived

An Heiress of the Fae

June 19th, 1996

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Draco Malfoy had been sitting in the chair beside Elena's hospital bed for fourteen hours since their return to Hogwarts.

For the last fourteen hours, Madam Pomfrey was trying to clean the open gash on Draco's forehead and every time, he waved her away. He knew the blood had dried already so it didn't matter much for Madam Pomfrey to tend to his wounds when Elena was in a hospital bed.

There were scratches running down her thigh and a large gash stitched up running down her neck. There was a large crack in her skull, which Madam Pomfrey already fixed. Bruises were all over her torso and shoulders. Her face was pale and she looked so sad in her sleep.

Elena had woken up an hour after they had left the Ministry, after everything that happened, and had a violent episode. When she had woken up, she was screaming and thrashing as if she was having a night terror in plain day. Her wrists were supposed to be tied to the railings of the bed but Draco had untied the cuffs and held her hands instead.

Luckily, Madam Pomfrey saw that Elena had no internal bleeding and hadn't broken her already fragile ribs. At least there was that sliver of good news.

The bad news was Elena could've died. Correction, she was supposed to be dead from the blast. Somehow, she was alive. The bad news was that when Elena woke up, she would remember everything that happened in the Ministry.

Sirius, Bellatrix, Voldemort, the bomb.

He covered his eyes with his hands. How could all of this happen? How had Sirius died?

They were all supposed to live. Nobody was supposed to die.

He sighed and rubbed his jaw, shutting his eyes for a second to fight off the incoming exhaustion. He had been awake for more than a day now and hadn't eaten since yesterday morning. His head rested against the chair as he yawned and waited for Elena to wake up. 

It was morning when Elena woke up. Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open and her vision returned gradually through the sunny windows. Colors blended in together and she had to blink a few times to adjust to the light.

Where was she?

The last thing she remembered was the blast. The numbers counted down slowly as she was sprinting to Draco. He had barely been breathing before the bomb and she could vaguely recall the way he held her face in his dirty hands after the blast and tear drops were spilling down her cheeks.

She didn't want to dig through her subconscious memories to find the moments before the blast. She would rather live in ignorance. Live in a dream rather than be told what happened again.

She had given enough.

"Elena?" His voice was half-awake. She turned her head slowly to the right, where Draco was leaning forward in a chair with a concerned look on his face. He had an open wound on his head with dried blood around it.

He was alive. He was alive and because he was alive, she smiled softly.

"You're alive." She murmured, reaching for his hand but he pulled it away slowly.

His eyes were burning with so many different emotions. "What the hell were you thinking?"

She blinked and sat up as best as she could without wincing. Elena already knew that Draco would be angry when she woke up. What she had done had been a death sentence but she still had done it for the slimmest chance of Draco's survival.