The next few days were touch-and-go. Severus Snape had been found in the girl's bathroom on the 3rd floor with considerable blood loss. They had managed to initially save him, but it was as if his body was refusing to recover, as if he had had simply given up.
As the days passed by, the faces around his bed grew grimmer, and by the 20th of October, they believed him to be beyond help. They had done all they possibly could, and gave him an estimated 24 hours to live. This had been a blow to the entire Hogwarts medical staff, but none of their grief could compare with Serena's. She had followed him after the incident in the entrance hall, and was the one who had found him. But now, she was drowning in a tide of depression, and alone, had to face the fact that seemed almost branded into her mind: she just hadn't gotten to him in time.
The morning of the 21st arrived, and it was as if everything had been painted with a layer of frost. The birds were singing in the early mornings sky, but the sun hadn't yet escaped from the dark clouds that held it prisoner beyond the mountains and valleys. It was 6am on a Saturday morning, and nearly all of the students could be found in their dormitories snoring loudly, wrapped safely in their duvets. How Serena wished she could be one of the 'normal people' again. She hadn't smiled in weeks. Her friends couldn't help her, how could they even begin to imagine how horrific it was for her to walk in and find his deathly pale face staring up at her. She had screamed for help as loud as she could, but her legs were frozen to the spot. In the few seconds before the teachers had arrived and taken him away, she had prayed and wished and hoped that she would see his chest rise and fall, or for his eyelids to close then open. But he just lay there lifeless, and that image would not leave her until her dying day.
Exhaustion had managed to take a hold of her, and it required all her remaining strength to climb the stairs up to the hospital wing. She didn't care about the pain in her legs or the continuous headaches; she was going to spend the last day at his side, no matter what.
The room was just as she had remembered it from yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. Every bed was spotlessly white, and empty. At the very end of the room, a white curtain separated a few of the what you could call 'intensive care' patients. His was the only bed there. It was as if they were hiding him away, a threat to their perfect working school, full of happy faces and laughter. Why should a dark cloud be aloud to hover over their festivities and downpour suddenly? She couldn't stand him being left so isolated and alone. The tears had already started stinging the corners of her bloodshot eyelids as she drew back the curtain and stepped towards his bed.
Serena was an intelligent girl, and knew fully well that he couldn't hear her as he wasn't conscious, but that didn't stop her from talking to him.
"I brought you these Severus-," She placed a bouquet of white lily's in a vase on his bedside table.
"They remind me of you actually. You are both so fragile…" She brushed a hand over her eyes and continued to talk, all the while never taking her eyes off him. It was only as she succumbed to the temptation of resting her eyes, that his pale face drifted away from view, and was replaced by a dreamless sleep.
A/N: Sorry that was such a short chapter; the next will definitely be longer. Thank you so much to my reviewers, I really appreciated your comments. I will most likely update again tomorrow as we have mocks at school, and i don't have any exams on that day! Once again, please tell me what you thought.