TWISTED [D.M.]

It had been four days yet Eleanor still wasn't awake.

She still wasn't awake and Draco couldn't stop pacing around what had been her bed for the past four days.

Initially, Madam Pomfrey constantly scolded him, telling him that it's either past visiting hours or that he's making her other patients nervous with his erratic behavior. He was stubborn. Her threats didn't seem to go through to him, and so she left him alone with a haggard sigh.

Snape said she'd most likely be okay after he helped drop her off at the Hospital Wing. Most likely, he said. Most. It didn't help relieve the Slytherin, and so he stuck around.

He didn't know what to do. It was hard to breathe knowing that Eleanor was barely holding on . . . because of him. Fuck. It was like his lungs were being punctured with every undeserving breath that he took.

He felt many things but most of all, he felt guilty. He would gladly relive the scourging of the Dark Mark on his forearm once again if he had to, if that meant he could take her pain away. He would go back to the first few weeks where his father was taken, leaving his mum devastated . . . if that meant that Eleanor would be okay.

He felt lost. He never realized how fundamental Eleanor's existence was to him until then, until he couldn't see her smile anymore, until he couldn't bicker with her over the most pointless things.

Classes without her were unbearable, especially now that Pansy thought it was her job to fill that void. So he stopped going. No one, and especially not Pansy, could substitute for Eleanor Morgenstern. Eleanor and her stupid smart-ass attitude. Eleanor and her stupid smile and her stupid magnetic aura that could lure anyone in. It worked for scumbags like Theo or Potter, and unfortunately, it worked for Draco too.

Ever since his duel with Potter, Draco's train of thought was hard to make sense of. Everything went back to her, and he knew it shouldn't. Her injuries shouldn't stall him from completing his task, but he couldn't help it. It was as if he was glued to the bloody chair.

She had never looked so fragile before, reminding him of the porcelain that his mother had been so stern about, back to when that was what seemed to be most important. "Be careful with it," He recalled Narcissa Malfoy saying as they gathered to the table for dinner. "It's a family heirloom. Must cost half of our house." Now, it was ignorant to worry about things such as fine china, considering they had a war on their hands.

Draco sat in the hospital wing quietly, his jaw clenched as he watched over the girl, pretending he wasn't so fucking afraid. He couldn't lose Eleanor Morgenstern now that she was all he had.

Even then, she was never his to begin with.

Theo went to visit her every day, suddenly reminding Draco that many people loved her, cared for her. He had looked so fucking worried that Draco let go of all the doubts he's ever had about him. Maybe he really did care about Eleanor, and a part of Draco wanted him not to.

Theo, despite his stupidity, was a good man; at least, compared to Draco. He would always be the better choice. Draco, with all his baggage, could never make her happy.

For a moment, he wished that Eleanor wearing someone else's jacket would be the model of what their problems together would be like but alas, it wasn't. He couldn't give her the foolish teenage romances that she deserved.

A couple of minutes into Theo's first visit, came the rest. Pansy, Blaise, even Goyle and Crabbe.

Despite Pansy's crush, she didn't bug him in his time of grief. It hurt knowing how much he cared for her best friend. She was also scared to see how much he depended on her; it was more than she ever realized.

So did Theo. When Malfoy asked him to leave the girl alone, Theo thought it was just him wanting her as a conquest of his own. However, he could see it then, how much she actually meant to him.

Potter also came, much to Draco's disapproval. Yet he never left her side, he endured Potter's bullshit disguised as sympathy and regret. He stayed there even if there was the looming risk of Potter ratting him out. Selfishly, Draco didn't seem to care about anything else. Granger and Weasley came too.

Potter was a foul git, yet he left Malfoy alone. It was like his position in the Dark Lord's army didn't matter in that moment, because they both knew that they were at fault for the girl's current state.

Eleanor being wounded made Potter reconsider whether Malfoy was actually a Death Eater too. He had grown to trust the girl, especially considering she tried to help him out and left battered because of it. If Eleanor was so good, it didn't make sense for her to have Draco around when he's not. Draco might have some redeeming qualities that Potter wasn't aware of. 

It was after curfew, and Madame Pomfrey dimmed the lights in the wing. She didn't bother asking him to leave. She knew he wouldn't.

If it weren't for the alertness that naturally came with his dangerous occupation, he would have never heard the slight rustling of material, indicating that she was finally stirring awake.

Her dark eyelashes fluttered open – barely – as she attempted to push the covers aside, yet failed to do so. A raspy groan erupted from the girl.

"Morgenstern." Her name was a silent whisper on his chapped lips, almost resembling a prayer.

Draco quickly rushed to her side and pushed the heavy blankets off for her. He leaned over the girl, his figure dark against the sliver of moonlight that managed to escape a curtain-covered window.

"Morgenstern . . . how . . . how are you feeling?"

Eleanor attempted to clear her throat, a wince making its way to her delicate features. She smiled weakly at him.

He almost looked as terrible as she felt, Eleanor noticed.

He hadn't been taking care of himself in a while, especially now, that Eleanor has been kept in the Hospital wing.

"I-I'm okay." Her voice was coarse.

He was only glad she was finally talking.

The relief Draco felt was almost as crushing as the guilt he first felt when she dropped to the floor in excruciating pain, just so she could protect him. 

The constant change of emotions was physically exhausting. His train of thought was hard to make sense of, especially now that he stared into those brown orbs of hers. 

He tried to memorize the image then; the fractals of color in her eyes, and the crinkles at the corners whenever a ghost of a smile appeared on her face. Nothing made sense anymore,

So he thought it was okay to let his lips meet hers.