Falling For

As soon as we were free from the Great Hall, Noël pulled me towards the hospital wing. His hands were cold and smooth, not at all how I was coping with my sweaty palms and shaking fingers. Watching Fred and George volunteer to protect the front line turned my insides inside out, and feeling my lunch in my throat was not helping at all.

We reached the room, Noël rushing up to Madam Pomfrey, dumping his trunk at her feet. Her face relaxed instantly, patting him on the shoulder. "Always so prepared." she muttered and he grinned, muttering something at her before coming back over to me.

"How are you so close with our school nurse..?" I asked cheekily, trying to brighten my mood. He shrugged, adjusting the hem of his tailored shirt.

"When I was in third year some girl jinxed me because I didn't want to be her boyfriend. Got sent here, and I was so enthralled by the medicinal magic part of things that I went here in my free time instead of studying. Poppy actually was my reference and got me the job at St. Mungo's." He slipped his coat off of his shoulders and I smiled at him. He always managed to find friends in the strangest places. "Because you don't want to leave here, I want you to stay with Madam until I get back."

"Where are you going?" I asked him, my brows meshing together in confusion. His face fell, obviously dreading telling me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and patted it softly, holding my gaze uneasily.

"Well, I was going outside to help people fight. You need a person out there with the ability to stop whatever ails them, or at least get them to the hospital wing."

"But that's even more dangerous that fighting. If you've got your back turned helping someone else, you can easily get snuck up on--"

"It's just something you have to do," his words came out in a tired sigh. Whatever was sitting in my throat threw itself back down into my stomach in a somewhat suicide attempt. Whatever hope I had had left about my friends and family being safe had abandoned itself. If Noël was out there risking his life, I knew that it was my duty to be out there too.

"Then I'll be out there with you." I told him sternly, taking his hand off of my shoulder and pulling my hair into a ponytail. "Don't give me that look, Noël. I know the basics. If anything happens to me, I will send you a patronus. Do you know how to do them?"

"Yes." He mumbled glumly. "I was sort of hoping that you would stay here and be safe."

"I am not a child, George!" I snapped and shook my head quickly. I realised what I said and I snapped my gaze back to his "Noël, sorry. You sounded so much like him when you said that." his brows rose and I huffed at him. He let out a strangled groan and shook his head.

"I suppose I can't stop you." He sighed and I nodded at him, pulling out my wand. There was a loud scream in the hallway, causing Madam Pomfrey to jump and me to cringe. Noël reached over into his trunk and pulled out two small bags, handing one to me and keeping the other for himself. He filled them with vials and bandages and whatever else he had pulled into that trunk from his bathroom cupboard. And then he grabbed my arm.

"Whatever happens today, I want you to know that you are an amazing girl. If anything happens to me, please, don't be upset, it was just my time. I'm really glad that you're in my life, Mignon." His eyes burnt into mine and my heart clenched like it was in a vice. And for the second time that day all I wanted to do was take him by the roots of his hair and kiss him.

But I didn't, all I could do was smile and acknowledge him. "Thank you." his smile lit up my brain.

We headed to the door and he took my hand one last time.

"You have to be quick, you have to be sneaky. Find a group that you know can protect you and stick with them. If you run into trouble and you're by yourself, scream as loud as you can." and he looked at me one last time before flinging my hand away, heading towards the second floor staircases. I went the other way.




The screams that pelted down the halls around me ran shivers all over my entire body. The explosions and the curses turned me into a machine that powered without a fright. I passed a few people who had just taken down a death eater or two, handing them pep-up potions and cleaning and wrapping whatever damage they had taken. They recognised me from school. I was pleased.

I had already passed Professor Sprout and Neville Longbottom, of who were throwing potted plants out of the windows. While I had Neville in a good, still place, I cleaned whatever wounds he had sustained prior (probably before the battle, because they were starting to get old and festering) and bandaged him up to the best of my ability. They thanked me, and let me be on my way. My heart was racing like I had swum the French Canal.

Within half an hour of leaving the hospital wing, I found a silvery badger swimming through my ankles. I didn't know what I had been staring at for a second before it clicked – Noël! Pattering down the halls at top speed, I was lead to a small corner of a corridor. A few feet down was the entrance to the History of Magic classroom. A figure, long in length but skinny in width, was curled up in a mass of rubble. His longing brown hair, that usually was pushed back off of his pale forehead, hung low in his eyes – those blue eyes… staring right back at me.

“He’s gone. I managed to knock him out. He’s over there. Disarm him, and then come help me please.” Noël shoved his arm out to his right, leading my eyes to a crumpled man lying in the middle of the corridor. I dropped to my knees, crawling past him quietly, trying not to wake him. I reached his wand, a short but thick mahogany, and grasped it in my hands. They were shaking, I didn’t realise, because my heart was ready to throw itself out of my mouth.

It took all my strength to snap it, ditching the bits on separate sides of the walkway. Turning around, I crawled back to Noël, coming to terms with the blood pooling in his lap.

“Oh, what did you do?” I cooed at the man, pulling myself to his legs. He reached up and put his hand on my head, running his bloody fingers through my hair.

“I was snuck up on. He managed to throw a spell at me, I don’t know what it was but it hurts like hell. I’d never even heard the words come out of someone’s mouth before. I think it was dark magic.”

“Can you be healed?” I reached up to unbutton his shirt, pulling the cloth lightly back. “Oh… Oh Noël, no…”

“I will be fine, Mignon.” He ran his fingers through my hair still, his strokes getting shorter and shorter. “I’ll tell you what to do. Just be careful with your listening, because if you make a mistake, you know you could--- Mignon!”

An unknown force had seized the ponytail that had half come out thanks to Noël’s fingers. The look on his face told me it was the Death Eater. Wandless and probably horribly angered, the man wrenched me back with such force that I was pulled off of my knees.

My legs were kicking as he dragged me back to where he lay, back from Noël and away from whatever destruction he had. He was taking me away from the noise, and away from the battles, into the empty hallway.

“Mignon!” I could hear him calling me from the end of the way. “Mignon! No!”

“Don’t worry about your boyfriend.” The man’s voice was almost syrupy. “I’ll come back for him later. You’ve still got the fight in you, almost the best idea to get rid of you first. And, if I don’t make it back in time, or if my buddies don’t end up getting him, he’ll bleed out anyway. It’s a win, win situation.” He stopped, falling to kneel, obviously tired. He pulled my hair, laying my head on his propped up knee and looking down into my face.

I had never seen that man in my life. I was going to die, and he would be the last person I would have ever seen - a stranger… a seething, dirty stranger. “Look at your pretty eyes. Just like my daughters. She’s probably your age, maybe younger. But she isn’t a blood traitor, like you.” He spit in my face, the warm goo sliding into the dips of my eye sockets. I tried to blink through it, the tears slipping from the crooks of my eyes to fall down past my temples into my hair. It was all going so well, I shrieked at my innards, what went wrong?! My roots were on fire and my eyes were stinging. He was breathing all over my face, his pathetic laughs pulling goose pimples from my arms.

He stood to his feet, pulling me up with a swift tug. The tips of my hair yanked me up, my feet struggling to hold my weight. I could feel the hair pulling out of their roots. I screamed, and I screamed louder than I had ever thought possible. I was gagging, and he was reaching for my wand. I barely whispered out a ‘please…’ before he turned me to the windowsill. I was watching the stars beam down on me, my pulse throbbing against the tip of my wand. It was time, I knew it, and all I wished for was one last chance to see everyone once more…

And then I fell, the ground rushing up to my face and catching my head with its tough cobblestone. The world went white and I gasped for air, rolling as much as I could. It felt like he still had me in his grasp, but he didn’t. I could see him screaming in pain beside me. My ears rang and I sobbed, watching the ground reform in front of me. I was reefed from the ground and thrown over someone’s shoulder.

I mumbled nonsense down those corridors, spluttering out little nothings and worried shrieks. I was dumped at what appeared to be Noël’s shoes. I reached for them, throwing myself onto his shins. He grabbed my face and tugged me towards him.

“Mignon, Mignon! Say something! What did he do? Did he hurt you!”

“Oh Noël, Noël are you okay? What just happened? How am I here?”

“That’s all the thanks I get for saving my sister’s life?”

The voice made me whip around. I staggered to my feet, my hair feeling heavy and dangerous. Noël’s breath withdrew heavily and I reached around to grab whatever was trying to pull me down. My fingers felt around the dull object, taking in the soft feel and the bloody stump. I shrieked again, jumping about and loosing whatever sanity I had left that day.

“Get it off, please get it off me, Fred, please!” I sobbed. “Please!”

He grabbed my by the shoulders and pulled me to him, reaching around to grab the hand of the death eater that had been holding me. The finger’s plied off easily enough, the hand falling and bouncing between the angles of the uneasy floor. Then he hugged me, holding me to his skinny body as I wept for the moment, unsure of what had just happened. Fred Weasley had saved my life, that’s all I knew.

“I thought you were with Noël in the hospital wing. What are you doing out here, you’re so isolated from the rest of the battle! That was such a close call-- you could have died! George would have had my head!” He patted my hair, his hands that were coated in blood picked up whatever hair had been pulled out beforehand.

“… Fred?” I recognised Percy’s voice behind me. I broke away and looked down to where Percy was gesturing. Noël sat where I had left him, hunched over what appeared to be a cut that was still leaking blood. A small portion of my stomach hurled into my mouth and I gagged again, having to swallow it back down to avoid any more sanitation breaches. I sniffed, falling to my knees and pulling up my bag.

“Fred, can you get me my wand. That death eater had it.” I pulled myself closer to the boy. Noël beamed at me.

“So prepared.” He reached out to pat my shoulder. I ignored him and pulled back his shirt, sifting through the bag before taking my now offered wand to sift of the blood. Noël mumbled small spells to me, making sure I put the bandages on appropriately, congratulating me on my memory the whole way through. Fred cleared his throat.

“We’ll get you back to the hospital wing, then we’ll split from there.” He spoke down to me and I turned around.

“No. No, I’m fine. Go find George and tell him I’m okay. Tell him we’re okay. Tell him that his gallant brother just saved his girlfriend and her best friend’s life, okay? I can take Noël from here.” I stood back up, rubbing the blood from Noël’s stomach onto my jeans. I reached up and gave him a hug, kissing him on the cheek before doing the same to Percy. “Thank you. I owe you my life.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure I can handle myself. Besides, if we get into any trouble I know I can count on you, right?” I grinned at him and he scoffed at me.

“The things you do for family, hey?” He patted me on the lower back. “Be safe out there. I mean it.”

“Same goes for you.” I pointed at him, stooping low to a crouch to help Noël up. “And please tell George that I love him for me.”

“I’m sure he knows.” He rolled his eyes before catching my stare. He laughed, took one last look at his brother and raced off back to the main battle.