I awoke, head spinning from the rush of returning agony, to find my mother crying over my previously lifeless form. I was still at the foot of the grand stairs, body screaming in desperately painful anguish, but nonetheless able to breath with minimal hitches. I spluttered a small amount of blood as I looked at my now bare, heaving chest. A small tube was protruding from my injured side, blood dripping from the top. It had punctured my collapsed lung enabling me to breathe by draining the area of the red liquid now leaking from the tube. Mother had saved me ,yet again, from Lucius' beating.
She wept over my broken form, her silky blonde Malfoy hair sweeping over my bloodstained features. I inhaled her scent, the scent I had grown up with. This was the smell that had always been there to comfort me after father's indifferent treatment towards me. She seemed to become aware that I had regained consciousness as her head suddenly snapped up, her golden brown eyes meeting my grey ones.
"Oh Draco." She rasped, tears streaming down her porcelain face.
"Mo-uh-th-er" I faltered, my hoarse voice grating my throat.
"Shh Draco. D-don't speak. You're going to b-be alright. You're g-going to be a-alright."
She staggered to her feet and tentatively began to levitate me to my bedroom. As I floated through the still air my agonised body pulsated with sharp pain. Mother babbled anxiously as we made our way to my room.
"It's s-so lucky that I se-secretly took that muggle n-n-nursing course. H-how could I have kn-nown to use a ch-ch-chest tube otherwise?" She struggled to speak, her tears now flowing thick and fast.
It was true that my mother had attended a muggle nursing course. She had always held an interest in muggle healing, despite Lucius' forced beliefs.
As I was cautiously lowered onto the bed, I gasped in pain, my ribs were agony and I suspected I had injured my leg. I couldn't hold back the moan that escaped me. Mother's glassy eyes ached with sadness as she surveyed me. My swollen, ivory lips were caked with blood and my left eye was as black as the night sky beyond the room's velvet drapes. Shiny redness coated my chest and my shin was purpling by the second. In short, I looked scarcely alive.
I inhaled shakily and pain shot through my chest. Would it be better simply to die? To fade into the black abyss I had just been revived from? A silent tear crawled down my cheek as I realised the inevitable. I would have to leave the manor, leave my mother. I would have to leave her with this bastard, this monster, or I would surely die. I knew no amount of begging or pleading would suede her to leave Lucius, she was simply too devoted to the beast. As I gazed desperately at my mother, she seemed to understand my thoughts.
"I'll b-be fine Draco. Don't look back. Leave me."
I was unable to restrain the sob that ripped from my pained chest. Mother knelt at my bedside and kissed my bloodstained cheek. She seemed to have calmed herself in my distress.
She whispered softly in my ear "I love you Draco. Never, ever forget that."
As her solitary tear splashed onto my cheek, I broke for the second time that night, this time mentally. I cried like a child as my mother hugged me for the last time.
"I'll send you to a muggle hospital. St Mungo's cannot know about Lucius. You should heal just as well but perhaps slower. I love you so much Draco. Goodbye."
And in a whirl of colour my Mother disappeared as I was apparated away from the Manor. Away from her.