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Rowan was sat on a seat, asleep, next to Saffron, with his head resting on a pillow (which was being held up by his head) against the wall. He, alongside two others, were gathered around her bed and had been doing so for the past twelve hours or so. All three of the people who remained, precisely a day after Saffron had been crushed by the debris as a result of Lockhart's backfired Charm.

Once the three Mitchell siblings heard what had happened to their sister the morning after the ordeal at the Chamber of Secrets, they made their way briskly to the hospital wing and hadn't left her side in the time that passed

Saffron hadn't been breathing ever since Ron had uncovered her from the debris. She had been carried by the phoenix Fawkes through the Chamber of Secrets and all the way to the foot of the hospital wing. The phoenix had cried on her but to no avail. Saffron's eyes didn't open and her lungs didn't gain a new lease of life. Fawkes made quite the fuss to garner attention from the hospital wing, and when Amanda Endacott opened the doors to the wing she was horror-stricken by what she had born witness to. The sight of a rigid, seemingly dead Saffron terrified her. Yet, when she checked to see if she was dead, her wand told her that she wasn't, despite showing all the signs that a Muggle doctor would state to be as dead.

The girl was supposed to be dead, but she wasn't. At that moment, Amanda knew that the Grey had had something to do with it. That some semblance of ancient magic had provided Saffron Mitchell with a new lease of life. The lack of physical injuries made sense, any wizard would be able to shield themselves in a moment of desperation. That was common, particularly in adolescence. But the fact that she hadn't died of suffocation was miraculous.

However, just because she was alive didn't mean she would remain so. After trying numerous times by both Madam Pomfrey and Amanda alike to resuscitate her, to no avail, the nurses made sure to tell the likes of the Mitchells, Harry, Ron, Lavender, Parvati and others who visited to see if she was okay, that there was no guarantee that she would ever wake up. Quite simply because they didn't have any other explanation than magic being the cause of her states, and oftentimes that magic was going to be the very thing that woke her up.

Little did they know, as Saffron opened her eyes slowly and gazed around at the blurry surroundings of the hospital wing, that that was the case.

The first person that Saffron noticed was Rowan seeing as he was so close to her. Saffron's heart fluttered at the sight of him and she did her utmost to call out to him. The entirety of her body seemed to be on shut down. The one word that she uttered upon waking up seemed to suck all of the energy out of her. Her body felt tense and delicate like she didn't know how to move it. Any time she opened her mouth to say something, all that came out was a wheeze. So all she did was flicker her eyes in numerous directions, trying desperately to get someones attention.

Amanda, unlike the sleeping Mitchells, however, did notice her. Whilst working through the night on the mandrake solution, she saw that there was the slightest of movements coming from Saffron's bed. She saw that Saffron was breathing. With a faint shriek and sigh of relief, she rushed over to the bed. Saffron's lungs were functioning meaning quite simply that she was alive.

"She's awake!" said Amanda loudly, which signalled to Madam Pomfrey to come rushing out of her office. "She's awake, oh thank Merlin, she's awake!"

Maya awoke with a start from the bed Amanda had insisted she stay in beside Saffron. The older girl jolted upright and was instantly alert and desperately hoping that she was going to hear good news.

"She's breathing," Amanda informed Maya quickly, shaking Rowan from beside Saffron in order to get him to move so she would have more room to examine Saffron more closely.

"She's breathing? Saffron's breathing!?" Rachel practically exclaimed groggily, who too was in another bed on the opposite side of Saffron. She hopped out of her bed and instantly took her twin brother into a hug, who too had woken up and had moved off to the side to give Amanda and Madam Pomfrey the room to access the situation.

Maya joined her younger siblings in the hug and the three of them watched on, more hopefully than they had done when awake a few hours ago. There was a chance that their sister was going to make it, a good chance, it seemed like. For that, they were appreciative and felt incredibly lucky. The loss of their parents had followed them everywhere, but it never would have compared to losing their sister, as they had never really known their parents. They didn't know who they were as people, but they knew Saffron. They knew her better than anyone and vice versa. Losing her would have destroyed them, but now it seemed like it wouldn't and that everything was going to be okay.

Resting her head on top of Rowan's, Maya watched and was bold enough to give her siblings assurance.

"It's going to be okay, we're okay, she -- she's okay,"

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Luckily, Maya was correct as three hours later, Saffron was fully awake and had regained the ability to speak properly again, to an extent. It still pained her to speak, as her throat felt hoarse and raw, but she did so anyway, as she needed to know what happened.

The night beforehand turned out to be a long-winded story excluding Saffron's involvement in it. After she had been crushed, Ron and Harry were separated. Ron worked on getting her out from under the debris whilst Harry went off in pursuit of Ginny. As it turned out, Ginny had been responsible for the attacks all along, well in a sense. She hadn't knowingly orchestrated them but had been possessed to do so. Saffron was shocked to hear that she was alive. But the fact that she too was alive seemed to be equally as shocking to Amanda and Madam Pomfrey alike, both of whom had never seen anything like it. Anyway, Harry managed to kill the Basilisk and set Ginny free from being possessed. They made their way back to Ron, Lockhart and the unconscious Saffron, where a phoenix that Dumbledore had sent rescued them and took her to the hospital wing, where Amanda found her.

"So no one died?" croaked Saffron, her voice aching as she said the words.

Maya laughed through tears. "No, no one died. Oh, Saffron, I still can't believe this happened to you. If I wasn't so relieved right now, I'd be furious at you,"

"I think that's a conversation for another day," Amanda said bracingly before turning to Saffron brightly. "What's even better is that we gave out the antidote to the victims of the petrification, they're all back to normal now,"

"Hermione's okay?" Saffron asked, her eyes bugling in a mixture of excitement and disbelief.

"Yeah," Rowan nodded. "I've spoken to her, she said she'd come visit you first thing in the morning. Which is precisely three hours, twenty minutes and forty-nine seconds away, so you have that to look forward too. Also, Emilia wanted to thank you, remember the girl from the duelling club in my house, she said you were really helpful with her that night, even if it did end up getting her petrified,"

"Well, I'm glad she's okay now," mumbled Saffron with a small smile. "What about Ginny? Oh, I hope she doesn't feel bad,"

"She feels terrible," Rachel informed her. "Everyone's been talking about it, some people seem to think that she did it on purpose,"

"Which isn't true, of course," added Amanda. "Madam Pomfrey has done all the necessary checks on her, and she's still in a state of shock, but she'll be okay. The year of being under the influence of someone else takes its toll on you. By next year, I'm sure you'll get to see the real version of her, under her own influence,"

"That's good," said Saffron, again with a small smile. It seemed as though the good news kept on coming. However, one piece of bad news did manage to seep its way into the conversation. "Wait, where's my ribbon?"

"We were talking about that," said Maya slowly. "Well, it must have come off during the explosion,"

Saffron pouted. She had always had that ribbon and it had been her mothers before her. The prospect of not having it anymore was a strange one. But, maybe it was a good thing. As when she started to think about her mother, she started to remember fragments of the Grey. She started to remember that a new beginning was underway when it came to the Grey. Maybe losing the ribbon was representative of that new beginning. Representative of Saffron finding what she had been made forget about in the Grey.

"That's too bad," remarked Saffron sadly, before yawning.

Upon noticing this yawn, Amanda turned to the other three Mitchells one by one to see they too were all physically and mentally spent.

"As much as I would love for the four of you to keep on catching up, you'll have time soon, because I'm legally obligated as an adult to make sure you all get a decent nights sleep,"

Rachel and Rowan wanted to keep on talking, but Maya noticed how tired Saffron looked and told the pair of them that it could wait until morning.

And so Saffron slept, with the Grey on her mind and how she was going to find what it had left for her. She had to find it, the curiosity of gaining something within her overruled any hesitations about it. She was linked to the Grey whether she liked it or not and she figured that working with it rather than against it was going to benefit her and, more importantly, her siblings, going forward.