Your Grief is My Grief [DM] sequel to Beauty and the Beast

Chapter Twenty-Six

Lizzie's POV:

I was sitting in the chair beside Draco's bed with my head lying on the bed and his hands gripped softly in mine, when he began to stir. I hadn't noticed until he placed his hand upon my head and smoothed my hair.

"Lizzie," he croaked.

My head shot into the air so fast that the room spun. "You're awake," I breathed with a smile.

"Quite a keen observation," he gumbled.

"How do you feel?" His bleary eyes scanned the hospital wing around us, putting the puzzle pieces together in his mind.

"Like shit." He attempted to sit up, face contorting with pain, but I stood and placed my hands on him, forcing to lie back down.

"No, Draco," I said firmly. "Look, just moving that much caused fresh blood to seep into your bandages." It was true. Draco looked down at his chest, and sure enough, there were deep red lines of fresh blood soaking through his bandages. With a defeated huff, he gave up. "I'm going to get Madam Pomfrey. Don't do anything stupid." I gave him a pointed look and hurried towards Madam Pomfrey's office, which was at the back of the hospital wing.

When I knocked on the door, she was sitting at her desk sorting through a box phials filled with colorful potions. She looked up at me, and upon seeing who I was, placed the phial she was holding, which had been filled with a goopy orange substance, back into the box and motioned for me to enter. I pushed the door open and gave her a serious look. "He's awake."

"Already?" she asked with raised eyebrows. I replied with a short nod of my head. "Goodness me, those spells certainly did the job then, didn't they?" Together we made our way back to Draco's bed, where the boy had, thankfully, not done anything stupid in my absence. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," she greeted him.

"You know of muggle princesses?" I asked curiously as the woman began to peel Draco's bandages off of his chest. She started on one bandage that began just left of Draco's neck and ended below his left ribs.

"Why of course. My sister is a squib and moved into the muggle world. She taught me all about muggle fairy stories, and some of them are not so muggle, if I remember correctly." She peeled the bandage off completely, revealing the wound below. The tissue was mostly healed in some spots, due to all of the spells that had been cast upon him, but there were plenty of areas where the new skin had been torn back open from his attempt to it up. "Alright, Mr. Malfoy," she sighed. "The new skin tissue seems to be coming along in tip top shape, but whatever you did overnight, tore it open in some spots. You will most likely have some scars left over at the end of all of this."

"The new tissue," I began, "since it tore due to his movements, will he be bed bound until it's fully healed?"

"Oh no," she returned sweetly, beginning to peel off another bandage. This one started just under his right pectoral and stretched down to the hem of his trousers. Draco winced as she pulled it off. "You will be perfectly allowed to go about your everyday routine in a few days, but there is absolutely no strenuous activity until the wounds are well past healed. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Draco replied with a frown.

Once all of the bandages were removed, including the one the covered his right cheek, Madam Pomfrey cast a few spells on the gashes before covering them in new bandages.

"Alright, that should do it," she said when she was finished. "You stay in bed." Satisfied, Pomfrey walked back to her office.

"So did Potter get expelled?" Draco asked, running a finger along his bandages. He looked as if he wanted to tear them off of his body, like they were constricting him.