Aurora was sprawled on a rock panting heavily, she didn't realize how out of shape she was until this very moment. When Malvina had suggested they go hiking before the semester began Aurora couldn't help but jump at the chance, but now she regretted ever agreeing to this trip. Her muscled ached and her chest burned, the sun was beating down on her as she continued to lay on the rock completely immobilized.

"Oh come on! Quit being a baby!" Malvina chided as she sat down next to her.

"Easy for you to say-"Aurora panted. "-you go to gym every day."

"Only because I'm not blessed with a metabolism like yours." Malvina reached for her draw string bag and pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her friend.

Aurora sat up and accepted the bottle, both women sat in silence looking out at the view below them. It had taken them about an hour and a half to reach the summit but even Aurora had to admit that it was well worth it. There were many lush green hills that stretched out as far as the eye can see, at the base of the mountain sat the Hudson River. Birds were chirping and the leaves of the trees rustled as a light breeze blew past them.

"Are you ready?" Malvina asked as she hoisted herself up.

"Beg pardon?" Aurora asked looked up at her.

"Well we made it to the summit now let's go back down, unless you want to camp out here for the rest of the day."

"I'm good, besides-"Aurora slapped her right arm killing a mosquito, "I'm being eaten alive here." Aurora stood stretching her sore legs. "The climb back down should be a piece of cake!" She rushed past Malvina. As much as she liked being outdoors she couldn't stand to be out in this heat any longer, also the fact that it was incredibly humid made her feel as if she was drowning on dry land, it was a bit difficult to breathe and her clothes were sticking to her like a second skin. Beads of sweat were rolling down her forehead and neck.

Aurora looked down at the trail which was made of nothing but steep rocks, she placed herself in a sitting position and proceed to slide her way down the side of the mountain with Malvina in tow. Once they reached steady ground, the two continued to make their way down on foot occasionally tripping over a hidden tree root.

"Slowdown will you?!" Malvina reproved.

"What?" Aurora looked back at her friend.

"These rocks are unsteady, it rained yesterday remember? So some of them are bound to be loose."

"Oh be quiet, I don't need a lecture on loose rocks." Aurora retorted.

She continued her slow and steady climb down when she lost her footing on a wobbly rock and fell down the side of the mountain tumbling until she came to a halt when her back hit a tree.

"AURORA!" Malvina shouted as she hurried to reach her friend.

Aurora groaned as Malvina turned her over so she was laying on her back. Her shirt and pants were torn and there was blood seeping out from her right leg.

"Are you alright?" Malvina asked frantically trying to assess the situation. Aurora's eyes were unfocused and hazy, the poor girl was disoriented. Malvina rolled up Aurora's pant leg and Aurora gasped in pain. There was a deep gash running up her leg, and it was bleeding profusely.

"Don't touch it!" Aurora cried.

"Listen, you cut your leg pretty badly-"

"Just leave it!" Aurora screamed when Malvina poured water over the wound to clean it; it stung.

"Rory I can't leave it! I need to clean it and we need to get you to a hospital. The cut is too deep-"

"NO!"

"What do you mean 'no'?"

"No hospitals!" Aurora groaned once more.

Malvina shook her head and ignored her friend, she cleaned the wound as best as she could and tour a piece of her shirt to use as a bandage. Aurora protested furiously every time she mentioned going to see a healer, why does this stubborn cow hate healers so much?! Wasn't she friends with one? Regardless, Malvina shook her head and had no choice but to take Aurora home.

Malvina stumbled up the stairs, she had one arm wrapped around Aurora's waist and her arm was placed around her shoulders. The majority of Aurora's weight was on Malvina for support since she couldn't walk. It had taken a while but Malvina was able to get Aurora up the stairs and into bed.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" Malvina asked earnestly.

"Yes." Aurora said as she slowly eased herself to lay on her back. She was in a great deal of pain. Her back ached, possibly due to the fact that when she fell she made direct contact with a tree. Also her right leg felt as if it was on fire, but despite Malvina's pleads to go see a healer she refused. Aurora personally didn't like them, she didn't like being poked and prodded at, and the injuries she had sustained couldn't have possibly been that bad right? Yes, yes the gash was pretty deep, but it will heal up in no time. And so what if her knee was swelling at a rapid rate, nothing that an icepack can't fix. She'll be up in walking in no time!

"You're crazy you know that?" Malvina stared up at the ceiling. "If I were you, I would have gone straight to the hospital."

"Well it's a good thing you're not." Aurora gritted her teeth, the pain was not subsiding in the least.

"Is there anything I could get for you?"

"No, I'm fine." Aurora lied. "I'll see you tomorrow- classes start tomorrow right?"

"Yes." Malvina nodded, but she had a strong feeling that Aurora would not be making an appearance tomorrow. The woman was crazy, she practically bled out her whole body weight and she thinks she's going to be able to sleep this whole thing off-ph! As if! The fool is lucky she didn't die!

XXXX

Malvina tried to look interested as the professor drawled on about the theory of relativity and the laws of motion, what could possibly more boring than this?! She yawned, Malvina couldn't care less about the theory of relativity, or Albert Einstein or even Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion for that matter. The first law of motion states that in order for the motion of an object to change, a force must act upon it, inertia. Second law of motion; the relationship between acceleration, force and mass. Third law any time a force acts from one object to another, there is an equal force acting back on the original object, in short for every action there is an equal reaction and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! WHO CARES?! He's just some dead Muggle, who cares about actions and reactions! In fact, she was going to have a major reaction if she didn't get the hell out of here soon.

She looked down at her watch, it was only 1:40pm, and they still had another 2 hours of class to go. Oh lord have mercy! What did she do to deserve this? In fact, why did she even agree to take this physics course in the first place? Oh yeah, it was "little Miss Perfect's" idea, speaking of Aurora she wasn't in class, in fact she had been missing for that past two days. She knew that the cut was bad, but wasn't it bad enough to cause Aurora to miss classes two consecutive days in a row? Malvina pushed her worries aside and tried her best to focus on what the professor was saying, there's really nothing she could do about Aurora's absence right now.

Finally after 3 agonizing hours of talking about the laws of motion and other things she could care less about Malvina decided to grab some food at the dining hall, before trying to find out what happened to Aurora. She crossed through the court yard trying to decide whether or not she should go to Aurora's apartment to check on her, just then through the corner of her eye she saw a flash of platinum blonde hair. She stopped and eyed the young blonde haired man, he looked familiar. He was wearing a white lab coat and was surrounded by a number of his colleagues. It took Malvina a moment and then she remembered, that's right, he was the same stud that accompanied Rory to the airport, what was his name again? Dr-Dra, bah! She couldn't remember but she did know that he was a close friend of Aurora's and probably would know where she is or how she's doing.

Malvina sucked in a breath and made her way to the group of medical students, she may was well make herself look as thin as possible, these men were soon to be healers, it wouldn't hurt if she could possibly snag one of them. Who knows, if she's lucky she might convince one of them to marry her and then she'll never have to work a day in her life ever again…yeah right! As if that would ever happen, oh well, a girl can dream right?

"Um, hello." Malvina greeted sheepishly catching the attention of the young men before her.

"Hello there." A man with dark hair and green eyes greeted with a wolfish smile.

"Um,yeah hi." Malvina shifted uncomfortably, she didn't know who this guy was but she didn't need to, she didn't like him already, he was creepy. She looked to the blonde. "Hey, you don't know me but I'm a friend of Aurora's." This seemed to catch his attention. "Is it okay if I speak to you for a moment?"

"Yeah sure, no problem."

'Oh my God! He's British!' Malvina bit her lip to stop herself from smiling like a fool. They both moved away from the group, the first time she saw this man it was from a distance and she wasn't able to get a real good look at him, but now she couldn't stop from musing about how handsome he truly was. 'Shit, if that deluded girl Rory doesn't want him I'll have him!'

"So, what's up?" The blonde asked.

"Aurora has been missing for the past two days, she hasn't been in class and I know that you two are really close friends so I was wondering if you had any idea of where she might be. Do you know if she had gone to the hospital or not?"

"Hospital?"

"Oh, you don't know?"

He shook his head.

"We went on a hike and well-to make a long story short she had a nasty fall which resulted in her injuring her leg pretty badly." Malvina watched the man's grave expression. "I told her that she should go to the hospital but she refused. I'm honestly a little worried, it's not like her to ditch class so it's probably serious."

"This is the first of heard of this, but I'll go check on her as soon as I can. If you'd like I'll send you an owl on how she's doing."

"Yeah that would be great, thanks!" Malvina beamed.

The man turned to walk away when he suddenly stopped and turned to face her. "My name is Draco by the way." He extended his hand and Malvina took it.

"Malvina, nice to officially meet you."

XXXX

Draco stood in front of Aurora's apartment still wearing his lab coat and had his medical tools on hand. He rushed to her place as soon as his rounds ended, that news that her redheaded friend had delivered disturbed him. Aurora was injured and she refused to seek medical help, what was that girl thinking?! Draco knew that she probably wouldn't answer but he still knocked any way for courtesy's sake. He waited for a moment and then pulled his wand.

"Alohomora." With a click the door unlocked and opened, Draco stepped inside closing it behind him. He looked around and just like he predicted, Aurora was nowhere in sight. He made is way up the stairs to the loft where Aurora's bedroom was.

There on the bed she seemed to be asleep, but something was amiss. This wasn't just some dreamless sleep she was in, Aurora was shivering and gasping in pain. She was as pale as the linin that she was lying on; her face had a few minor bruises and cuts. Draco stepped forward, and noticed a heap of cloth that sat on the floor next to the bed. He knelt down and picked it up, it was a bandage covered in blood, Draco looked up at her with eyes filled with worry. He walked up to her and rested his hand on her forehead, her skin was like an inferno under his fingertips; this was bad.

Draco withdrew the covers and propped Aurora's right leg on to a pillow, she drew in a sharp breath and began to whimper in pain. He carefully rolled up her pant leg to expose the wound. Draco's eyes grew wide at the sight before him, the gash that ran up her leg was irritated with yellow pus emerging from the opening. He pushed the material up further to expose her knee which was also swollen and bruised. Draco cursed under his breath, why didn't she go to the hospital, or at least write to him or something?!

After assessing the damaged Draco concluded that he would need to stitch the wound closed, a simple procedure he could accomplish in no time after he drained it out first. As for her knee, that was a more complicated matter, it turns out she tore her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament). She would need surgery, this wasn't something that could be fixed with just magic, the only thing he could do for her knee is stop the swelling but that wouldn't be any good. Without proper treatment it will swell right back up again within an hour, the ligament needs but be repaired.

Draco pulled out his wand and began to work on the injuries that were on her face. Once those were mended Draco quickly summoned some parchment and a quill and quickly wrote a note. If he was going to stitch up the wound he would need some help. He walked over to Socrates and attacked the note onto his leg.

"Send this to Wyatt." Draco told the owl as he opened the window. Socrates hooted in understanding and took off to deliver the message.

Not 30 minutes later Wyatt rushed into the apartment looking disheveled.

"What's wrong with Aurora?"

"She got injured, refused to go to a hospital-her ACL is torn and she has a festering wound."

"That fool! What was she thinking?!" Wyatt was angry, he loved Aurora like she was his own sister. Hell in his eyes she was no different from Eisley! He knew of her aversion towards hospitals but was it really worth all this?

"Come on, I need you to hold her down for me while I drain out the pus."

"Hold her down?"

"Yes. It's not exactly painless so she might struggle a bit." Without saying anymore Draco walked back up the loft with Wyatt right behind him.

Wyatt shuddered at the sight of the wound and positioned himself to hold her arms. Draco gently dabbed the wound with a warm compress, once he finished he placed a basin by her leg and began to apply pressure, Aurora cried out and attempted to sit up but was held down by Wyatt. She continued to whimper as Draco continued to drain the pus out and into the basin.

"Can't you give her something to put her to sleep?" Wyatt pleaded, he didn't like it when girls cried, and there was no way he would be able to handle Aurora whimpering in pain like this.

"I can't, if the medical board ever got wind that I administered narcotics to a civilian, not only will I get kicked out of the program but I'll never be able to sit for the licensing exam."

"What about I brew her a sleeping drought?"

"No, absolutely not." Draco said sternly and Aurora cried out once more.

"Why not?"

"Wyatt, you should know that giving her a sleeping drought is dangerous. In fact in her state it would probably kill her!"

Draco wanted to give Aurora something to ease the pain but he couldn't and a sleeping drought was too dangerous. Sleeping droughts put the body in a coma like state where the whole system slows down, this also halts cell regeneration. If he gave her the drought now Aurora would most likely bleed to death because of the open wound and there would be no mechanism to stop the bleeding.

Draco tried his best to ignore her cries and continued to drain the pus until it was all gone and blood started flowing. He mopped up any remaining blood and with a thread and needled he began to stitch the wound closed.

Aurora began to struggle even harder against Wyatt.

"Shh-shh-shh love, he's almost done." Wyatt's soothing words fell on deaf ears as Aurora continued to whimper and cry.

Draco cut the thread he bandaged up her leg. "Wyatt we need to get her to the hospital. She needs to have surgery done one her knee."

"Why can't you fix it?"

"Because this is beyond my ability to fix, we haven't even started dissecting cadavers yet. I can't operate on her. Also, you saw how much she was fighting against you when I was draining out the wound, imagine what will happen if I cut her knee open without any drugs to knock her out."

Wyatt nodded and helped Draco take Aurora to the hospital.

XXXX

There was a light knock on the door.

"Come in!" Aurora called.

Draco entered and found house elf changing the bandages on Aurora's leg, ever since he brought her home from the hospital he has come to check on her every day for the past week. However, he didn't remember ever seeing a house elf in her flat.

"How's my favorite patient doing?" He asked playfully he set down a pile of books on the coffee table.

"Oh you know, same old, same old. Just sitting here, watching paint dry. Lini could you go make us some tea please."

"Of course Miss Rory, whatever Miss Rory needs!" The brown eyed house elf squeaked and rushed to the kitchen.

Draco opened his mouth, but Aurora quickly answered his question.

"My aunt and uncle came to visit yesterday and they decided it would be best to leave Lini here with me since she is my personal servant after all."

"Ah, I see."

"Please tell me you're here to take me out somewhere." Aurora pleaded.

"Sorry, but I can't do that."

Draco chuckled, Aurora was on strict orders to stay in bed rest. Due to the condition of her leg and knee the healer said that she was not allowed to put any pressure on them, as a result she has been excused from all her classes but was making up the work from home. Draco took a seat across from her.

"What are you sitting all the way there for?" Aurora asked. "Come sit over here!"

Draco eyed her, she was sitting up with her back resting on the arm of the couch and her leg was propped up on a pillow, she was taking up a majority of the couch but there was still room for him to sit.

"I don't want to cause you any discomfort?"

"Discomfort? You're making me uncomfortable by sitting over there, a mile away! I'm injured, not a leper!" Aurora pouted.

Draco sighed and moved to sit next to Aurora, he couldn't resist that adorable face. Whenever she looked up at him with those big green eyes of hers it was like his brain turned to mush, he couldn't form a single thought and his heart began to race. He desperately tried to hold it together trying to conceal the effect she hand on him.

Draco cleared his throat. "I've brought you your work."

Aurora chuckled. "I can see that." She eyed the books that sat on the coffee table. "But to be honest, I have no taste to do any work now. You are the first human I have interacted with all day!"

"Really? Surly Wyatt or your friend-what was her name? Malvina? Stopped by."

"Yeah they actually came over a few days ago, as well as a few of my other classmates. I have to say I'm really liking the attention, but I just wish I wasn't in so much pain."

"Is your leg hurting you?" Draco sat up.

Aurora nodded.

"What happened to the pain killers that the healer gave you?"

Aurora blushed looking down and toying with the blanket that covered her lap.

"I-er-"

Just then Lini appeared with the tea, both Aurora and Draco took their cups.

"Thank you Lini, could you take these books up to my room for me?"

"Of course Miss Rory! Whatever Miss Rory needs!"

Lini grabbed the books and disappeared once more.

"So, how was your day?" Aurora asked trying to change the subject.

"Why aren't you taking your medicine?"

"It makes me drowsy, and I knew you were coming so I wanted to stay awake to see you." She murmured not looking at him.

"Aurora…" Draco sighed, as endearing as that was, she really shouldn't be doing that to herself. "Where are your pills?" Draco stood up.

"In the kitchen, but it doesn't hurt that much! I'm fine!"

"Rory, you are lying through your teeth."

"No I'm not!"

Draco chuckled. "Oh you most certainly are! Look just take your medicine, if not for your own sake do it for me. I promise I'll stay until you knock out." Draco found the canister that held Aurora's pain medication and summoned a glass of water, he held both the pill and glass out to her.

Aurora thought for a moment and accepted the medicine swallowing it with one gulp. Almost instantly she began to feel the effects, her head grew heave and her eyelids felt like lead. Draco helped her lie down on the couch, placed a pillow behind her head and drew the blanket up to her chin. When he moved away Aurora took hold of his wrist, he looked down at her ready to answer any command she had for him.

"Will you read to me?" She whispered.

Draco smiled at her adoringly, "Of course." He knelt down and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. "Do you have a preference?"

"Sappho."

Draco nodded in understanding and disappeared to the loft where Aurora kept all her books. The girl was a great enthusiast of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho and with good reason too; Sappho was able to touch the 5 senses with nothing but her words. Draco quickly grabbed the book and rushed down the stairs back to Aurora. He sat down next to her.

"Is there a specific poem you would like me to read?"

Aurora smiled. "Surprise me."

Draco flipped through a few pages and picked a poem at random.

"He is more than a hero he is a god in my eyes- the man who is allowed to sit beside you- he who listens intimately to the sweet murmur of your voice, the enticing laughter that makes my own heart beat fast. If I meet you suddenly, I can't speak- my tongue is broken; a thin flame runs under my skin; seeing nothing; hearing only my own ears drumming, I drip with sweat; trembling shakes my body and I turn paler than dry grass. At such times death isn't far from me."[1]

Draco sat for a moment taking in the words he just read 'a thin flame runs under my skin, at such times death isn't far from me.' Oh how he wished he could express his true feelings to her, but she would probably laugh or worse, reject him.

"That is my absolute favorite poem. It makes me wonder…" Aurora yawned, "It's amazing how one person can make you lose control of your own body. What is it about that one person that makes us humans fall apart?"

"I-I don't know-"Draco looked down at the book in his hands. 'What is it about you that makes me fall apart?' He wanted her so badly that it hurt.

"Will you read one more?" Aurora murmured struggling to stay awake.

"I will read to you until my voice runs out." Draco flipped a few more pages. "She was like that sweetest apple. That ripened highest on the tree. That the harvesters couldn't reach, and pretended they forgot."[2]

Aurora's breaths were soft and steady, Draco looked down at her; she had fallen asleep. Once more he looked down at the book in his hands and then looked back up at Aurora's sleeping form.

"Desire has shaken my mind as wind in the mountain forests roars through the trees."[3]

He leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. Draco stood up placed the book on the coffee table and opened the door to make his exit but stopped immediately. In front of him stood a tall man with dark hair and familiar green eyes, he was accompanied by a little boy. It was Nathaniel Pontellier.

[1]: 'He is More Than a Hero; by Sappho

[2]: Sappho Poems and Fragments; Translated by Guy Davenport

[3]: Sappho Poems and Fragments; Translated by Guy Davenport