Lily

Chapter Thirty Four:

When they got close to the edge of the forest, Lily stopped.

"Stay quiet, okay?" She whispered.

"Why do I have to-" Draco broke off his sentence when she shot him a look, "Okay."

She handed him the supplies and turned on the forest. Slowly, Lily approached the bush where she had hid the box with the fawn. She pushed back the branches and dragged the box out of the shrubbery. Draco watched on curiously.

"It's a deer... right?" He said unsurely.

"A fawn." Lily nodded, "She's just a baby, and she's hurt."

"Oh." Draco said in a small voice.

Lily took the supplies from him and began to set about her task of cleaning the wound on the deer's leg and wrapping it with the bandages.

Draco crouched down next to her, and watched her while she worked.

"You're really incredible, you know that?" He asked.

Lily blushed, but didn't look up.

"I would've forgiven you." She said.

"Huh?"

"The day after the ball." She clarified, "If you had apologized to me then, I would've forgiven you. Everyone has bad moments, but when you avoided me, you made me feel... alone."

He looked down.

"I really am sorry. It was selfish of me to avoid you just because I feared how you would react. I-... I'm not good at this type of thing."

"What thing?" Lily asked, looking up at him.

"Being a good friend." Draco said, "Especially to someone like you."

"What's so different about me?"

"You're such a good person. You're kind and selfless, and you don't have ulterior motives surrounding everything you do."

"That you know of." Lily joked.

Draco chuckled.

"But seriously, Lily." He said, "I've never been friends with someone like you before and I don't want to mess it up."

"Just be yourself, Draco." Lily said, "I want to you your friend- the Draco that's human and makes mistakes sometimes, not the Draco who's a perfect robot of a person."

Draco cracked a smile. Lily stood up, gently lifiting up the fawn in her arms and heading towards the woods.

"Wait, we can't go in there. It's getting dark, and it's forbidden-" Draco began.

"You don't have to come." Lily said, "But I'll be quick. I have to find her mum, so that they can be reunited."

"But it's not safe!"

"I'll be quick." She repeated, heading deeper into the trees.

Draco followed her and she seemed to notice his presence as she tried to hold the deer and struggled to try and get her wand out of her pocket.

"We need an animal tracking spell." Lily explained.

"I'll do it." Draco said, allowing Lily's sole focus to remain on her task of carrying the small deer.

He said the spell and a golden trail of deer tracks lit up the way. The two students followed the trail, until the saw a doe across a small clearing.

"There she is!" Lily whispered in excitement.

Carefully, she lowered the fawn down to the ground, and gave her a slight nudge in the right direction. The mother deer looked over at them and froze for a moment.