A/N : I think Draco is an interesting character. Very dark in a way, but also very stupid and sometimes just plain annoying. So, yeah... that's how I see him.

In the dark

He was sitting in the meadow. Again. And Hermione could see him shiver all the way from here.

She bit her bottom lip and put the last clean plate in the cupboard, wiping her hands on her trousers. The others were all in the living room, remembering and drinking again.

They all drank a lot since the end of the war. Well, the "War", she corrected herself - with a capital "w" as it was written in the papers, the books, and all the rubbish which had been cluttering the shelves of Flourish and Blotts for weeks, now.

But Draco didn't.

Draco spent his nights alone, sitting on the cold and slightly wet grass, his fair hair looking like some kind of precious metal in the moonlight.

Nobody ever joined him. They didn't like him and they knew they weren't welcome anyway : Draco had been on their side in the end, which gave him a right to be here, in the big gloomy house where the War seemed to hover still over their heads, but he wasn't one of them. Not really. And he was as unpleasant as he always had been. So much so that they all wondered why he moved in in the first place.

After all, he had more than enough money to find a house of his own.

But Hermione never said anything about it, not even when Harry and Ron asked her to "talk to him ". Because somehow, she understood how unbearable it was to live in there with those walking reminders of what they all wanted to forget and at the same time how scary the idea of letting it all go was.

When Voldemort died, the Minister of Magic said that it was time to start anew, that the children who had been so cruelly deprived of their innocence could finally live their happy life, get a job, get married and become normal free people. But it was all a lie, of course : what they'd become couldn't be so easily erased - now they couldn't be children anymore, not when they had been nothing but a bunch of beasts hanging on life with nails on teeth and ready to anything, to bath in blood and death in order to survive for so long. They all let a part of themselves in that war and they couldn't just declare that it was over and get on with their lifes. Because most of them didn't have a life anymore.

But nobody seemed to understand - noboby wanted to. They were heroes, after all : they were supposed to be brave and everything.

Hermione was tired to be brave, and to hear old tales of battles slurred in front of the roaring fire. And that night, watching the lonely figure in the dark, she suddenly thought that maybe Draco Malfoy really was one of them : he knew what it was to be nothing more than bruised skin and a bleeding heart. So she threw a quick glance at the living room and put her coat on. After some hesitation, she took Draco's too and stepped outside of the house.

The air was chilly and she had no idea what she was going to do or even why she decided to join him in the first place.

She just kept thinking about the way everyone was whispering behind his back that it was such a shame that a young, rich and handsome man like him was so broken. She took a deep breath and resolutely plunged into the ink-like night.

He didn't turn around at her approach, not even when she was standing barely a foot behind him. But she knew he'd heard her : after all, he had survived a war, you coudn't do that without being extraordinary attuned with your surroundings.

When he didn't object to her presence, she carefully sat down next to him and held his coat out to him. He didn't take it, letting it slide on the ground. She suddenly felt awkward, questionning her own sanity for even being there.

He had been doing that for weeks, sitting outside, and she always assumed that he was watching the stars or something equally movie-like. But he wasn't. His eyes were trained on nothing in particular, staring at the dark in front of him.

And it was almost scary how motionless he was, how blank his pale slightly gaunt face and grey eyes were.

Because all of a sudden, he looked dead and Hermione didn't know how to bring him back. Did she even wanted to? After all, he had never been anything if not horrible to her, and his late change of heart considering the war didn't mean anything, did it?

"Malfoy?"

He didn't react at all and a sudden dread filled her stomach so fast she thought she was going to drown in it - what if he had finally lost it? What would they do with that shell of a man who was looking like some kind of beautiful and earie doll under the half moon?

Hermione grabbed his shoulders and shook him sharply, dimly aware that it was the first time she ever touched him.

She wondered if anyone had since that day when he left that battlefield made mass grave, covered in blood and looking like some terrifying ancient god of war. Last month, Draco Malfoy killed his own father with unmerciful grey eyes and Ron was always saying that he was already half-mad anyway.

"Do you remember how it felt when we came to Hogwarts for the first time? he suddenly asked. The moment when we were standing behind the closed doors of the Great Hall, just... waiting."

Hermione said nothing. Then, she nodded her head, relieved to know that he wasn't too far gone.

"We knew we'd have to open the doors eventually, but at the same time we were so bloody terrified of what was on the other side that we would have gladly stayed where we were forever."

"Yes", she croaked. She cleared her throat and stared at the dark. "Yes, I remember."

"That's how I feel like since... the end of the war."

She didn't know what to say to that, or even if there was a good answer to give. So she said the first thing that came to her mind :

"Aren't you cold?"

She winced at her own stupidity and he snorted.

"I told you what was wrong with me, and as you can see, I'm not dying. So you can go back in the house and look after the wrecks breathing firewhisky in the living room."

"No, she said, stubbornly. I am staying here. With you."

She didn't understand herself why she was so adamant about keeping him company when she would have given anything to be elsewhere only seconds before. But now it was to late to take it back, so she shifted a little and stayed where she was, trying to ignore the dampness of the grass under her, the coldness of the air and the unsettling way she could feel him so close and so far away at the same time.

For some reason, she wanted to reach for him. To bring him back to the shore where she wouldn't have to watch him drown in his bitterness and lost dreams.

In the dark.

With a jolt, she realized that she wanted to save him. It almost made her laugh aloud : she wasn't supposed to save anyone, it was Harry's job. But Harry was busy patching up the Weasleys, creating his own perfect family. There was no place for Draco Malfoy in Harry's life.

And in hers?

She shook her head to dispel those unwelcome thoughts.

"Why are you outside, anyway?" she whispered.

"None of your business."

She swallowed what she would have replied if the circumstances had been different.

"You made the right choice, you know? she went on after a long pause. You were on the good side."

He laughed, harsh and bitter, and she had troubles to refrain from recoiling in unease.

"The good side ? The winning side, you mean. I knew those fools who called themselves my family were going to lose and be slaughtered for ideas I couldn't care less about, so I fled like a scared rat. That's nothing to be proud of, Granger."

"You're lying : that's not true!"

Hermione didn't know why it was hurting her so to see him denigrating himself, but it did anyway.

"Stop trying to see good in everyone. That's stupid to kid yourself like that. There isn't a good side, Granger : you have as much blood on your hands as Father did. And that's quite a lot."

He was right, of course. But behind his harsh words, cold eyes and sneering lips there was a lost little boy begging her to take his hand and help him out of the darkness he put himself in. And maybe, just maybe doing just that could help her to find her way out too.

"I am going to save you, you know, she said, matter of factly. I don't care how long it will take or how many times you are going to push me away, because I will succeed in the end."

She sounded stupid, she was aware of it. But that finally shocked him enough to make him look at her. His too pretty face was like a painting of bewilderment and she thought that it was an improvement since it made him looked human for a change.

"You are going to save me?" he repeated. And his voice was so astonished that he wasn't even sounding sarcastic.

He frowned and seemed to ponder this for some quite unnerving seconds.

"How?" he asked.

"I don't know, she answered, truthfully. But I'll find a way. I promise."

"Why?"

His lack of protest or taunting was saying a lot more about his desperation than a long speech could have.

And it was breaking her heart.

"Because you need me to."

He sneered and she almost smiled at the familiar sight.

"Because I need to", she said, her eyes challenging.

He turned and really looked at her for the first time that night, maybe for the first time ever, his mercurial gaze boring into her eyes.

"I won't help you, Granger. I won't make you feel better about that whole war shit. There is no nice sweet guy hiding behind the harsh facade. I am a bastard and I have done awful things. For both sides."

She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself to try and warm up.

"I know", she said.

And it was true, she knew. But now that she'd seen him so broken and hopeless, he was stirring something in her that she couldn't understand for the life of her. And if it could have fooled someone else, she'd known him for far too long to be mistaken about what he really meant : he was surrending - he told her what he could give and she was free to take it or to leave it. He wouldn't change for her. But it was okay, for now.

And then, she was crying.

Hermione never cried, not when she saw her friends and classmates dying under beams of cold green light, not even when she stood on the edge of the holes where people who laughed, hoped and dreamed would rest for all eternity.

She didn't notice, at first. It was just the way Draco seemed so very uncomfortable and a little blurry, all of a sudden : the faint light was looking like a halo around his platinium hair. And the thought was ridiculous, really, because he was nothing like an angel. The absurdity of it all made her laugh so hard that tears were now pouring down her cheeks.

"Fuck", mumbled Draco.

His arms were cold, and so was his chest. She automatically grabbed his shirt, wondering if it was what being hugged by an ice sculpture felt like and if it was supposed to feel so right.

In a weird, insane, wonderful way.

He was holding her awkwardly, pressing her against him almost but not quite painfully. Like he had never hold anyone before, and she thought that maybe he hadn't.

But it was perfect, because she couldn't "get on" with her life on her own and he couldn't either. She needed him to fill the awful, frightening void the war had left in her and somehow, she knew that he needed her to help him to stand up and leave the lonely meadow.

They were silent, and in the dark night only the light hiccups shaking her shoulders could be heard.

When the tears stopped he didn't release her, and his body was warm, like a human body always should be.

"I hate this house", he finally said.

She didn't answer, didn't move, barely breathed in fright that he might realize what he was doing and push her off.

"That's why I'm always outside at night. Because I hate it - all of them living here as if we were still getting ready for an attack and drinking Firewhisky like it's butterbeer as if it was going to make it all go away when they know that nothing will make it better. We're doomed - we aren't even twenty and we are already ruined. And I can't stand to see them reminding me every single fucking day."

"Does the dark make it go away?" she asked despite herself.

"No, he answered after a silence. No, it doesn't : I am still fucked up, am I not?"

"Why are you staying with us if you hate it so much?"

She pulled away and looked at him, a little angry, a little hurt and confused by what he just admitted.

"Don't you know, Granger? After all, you hate it too." He raised a placating hand. "Don't deny it, it's written all over your face."

He stood up and stretched like a mesmerizing cat. He then hold his hand out for her. She stupidly looked at it, before watching his face closely. He raised an eyebrow.

"So? Aren't you going to take it?"

She did and stood up, blinking at him.

"Come on, we're going back", he said, taking hold of her arm.

"We are?"

Usually, he didn't came back until dawn.

"Yes. We need to sleep."

"Why?" she asked, bewildered.

"The sooner we go househunting, the sooner we're out of here."

"We?"

"Well, yeah. I told you : I can't open the door on my own."

He faced her and smirked in a way strangely reminiscent of his old ways. And she was devastated to find herself smiling in response, loving it even. It felt so good, so human to be exasperated by him once again.

"How do you expect to save me if you don't even live with me anymore?"

He was right, of course. There was no point in waiting anymore : two people wasn't enough to win a war, but it was certainly enough to forget about it and finally leave the darkness behind.

To get on with their lifes.

A/N : hope it wasn't too bad... (*hide under a rock*). Be (very) nice and review - thanks for reading !!!