New Romantics | Hermione Granger Book IV

|78| Chapter Seventy-Eight

S E V E N T Y  E I G H T 

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"Wait what happened? Why am I --- what is he doing here?"

When Saffron woke up in the hospital wing, as she so frequently did, she was very used to have some combination of Maya, Rachel and Rowan around her, usually with Hermione too. Therefore, seeing Rowan at her bedside didn't come as a surprise to her, but when she turned to her side, anticipating seeing Maya and Rachel, or at least one of them on the other side. Seeing Olly Jowett, however, was an even bigger shock than finding herself in the hospital bed in the first place.

Rowan grimaced at her in frustration and Saffron could tell that he was mad at her.

As from his perspective, he was gearing up to watch the second task when he had Locklan Jowett, Olly's younger brother, tugging at his jumper saying that Olly was at the bottom of the sands with Saffron who had passed out onto some of the seats. When Rowan arrived on the scene, to see that Saffron was wearing next to nothing, that being her school shirt and skirt, in the freezing cold, he felt that she was practically asking the Grey to make use of her how cold her body was and how much shock it could be in, to consume her. And that was what happened and he missed the second task because of it.

"Wait, am I 'he' to you now?" Olly arched an eyebrow at her, looking rather disheartened at her words. "Okay..."

"He's the one that got me to you, completely out of it down on the first set of seats. His brother found you," snapped Rowan, throwing Olly an apologetic look.

Saffron blinked and wriggled around in her bed uncomfortably. She understood that talking about Olly like that right in front of him was plain rude but she hadn't expected to be confronted by him in such a vulnerable position. What was worse was seeing him and knowing that he was the one who got her out of whatever the mess she had gotten herself into was.

"I'm sorry," Saffron said directly to Olly. "I just didn't expect to see you, not like this,"

"No, that's okay," Olly offered her a small smile. "I would have reacted the exact same way if I woke up after being out cold and saw this face hovering over me,"

Saffron laughed feebly, thinking that it was the exact opposite. His face was the face she wanted to see. Sadly, the face didn't belong to the person or people she would have chosen to see.

"So what happened to you?" Rowan asked Saffron, knowing they were going to have to be delicate about the specifics seeing as Olly was in their company. So Saffron had to fabricate the truth, leaving enough in there for Rowan to figure out what actually happened.

"I -- okay so I slept with Harry in the library--" began Harry but Olly cut her off.

"Wait, you slept with Harry?" Olly asked her confusedly, looking over to Rowan who was laughing. "I thought you were seeing Dean,"

"No, no, you know what I mean," Saffron groaned in frustration. "I was trying to help Harry figure out what to do and we fell asleep in the library. I never got changed yesterday so I'm still in my uniform and I guess the cold mixed with the exhaustion was too much for me to handle so I blacked out, I saw nothing afterwards, just black, it was weird,"

That was enough to make Olly understand in one way and Rowan understands in another. The emphasis Saffron placed on 'blacked' was subtle so that only Rowan would pick up on what actually happened. That she was likely supposed to go to the Grey but to her knowledge, she didn't. This meant that either she did go but was forced to forget about it or she didn't go at all. Neither was an ideal scenario because they weren't normal.