"It was like she was a totally different person!" Charlie railed, pacing back and forth across Harry's living room.
"I know," Harry assured him. "Believe me, I know. She doesn't want help, though. Why do you think she moved out?"
"She needs help!" Charlie argued. "I know she's your best friend and all, but you didn't see her last night."
"No, I saw her every other night," Harry retorted. "You're not the first one to pick her up off an alley sidewalk Charlie. I spent a year doing it, and I'd still be doing it if she hadn't threatened to disappear altogether if I didn't piss off. I can't make her accept help."
"She's drowning!" Charlie insisted.
"I KNOW!" Harry roared. "But barring kidnapping her and locking her in the basement, there is nothing else I can do for her! So, thanks for helping her last night, and I'm sorry she was a right bitch to you, but there's nothing I can do to change that. My advice to you, is to forget all about it. She certainly will."
Charlie must have recognized by his tone that Harry was done talking about this, so instead of continuing to argue, he turned on his heel and stormed out.
Alone once again, Harry slumped defeatedly, resting his head in his hands and tugging anxiously at his hair. Charlie was right, he knew that, but it still didn't change the fact that there was nothing he could do about it.
It had been a year since Hermione had almost entirely pushed him out of her life, but time and space had done nothing to keep him from worrying.
When she'd started to spiral, he'd been by her side every night. He'd watch as she drank herself into unconsciousness and then he'd take her home and hold her hair while she threw up. He'd fought off the men that tried to take her home each night, using magic on more than one muggle when he had to. He'd watched as the alcohol stopped being enough to numb her, resulting in a switch to drugs of worse and worse degrees. He hadn't said a word, though, aside from pleading with her to let him help. He was all she had left, and he couldn't bring himself to be angry with her when she was so utterly broken.
He'd taken care of her when she had bad highs and he'd gotten her through three overdoses. It didn't matter how much he tried to help her, though, Hermione continually pushed him away. When she'd moved out, Harry had spent a week trying to find her. He'd staked out every bar and club that she liked to frequent, paid off every single dealer she'd ever bought from for information, but it was an article in Witch Weekly that had finally told him she was alive, at least.
Every time he'd seen her since then, Hermione had only told him to fuck off. Harry had respected that request, to a degree, keeping his distance and watching from afar as she fell further and further down the rabbit hole, but he had refused to let go completely. Using his fame on more than one occasion, he'd acquired spies in the offices of Witch Weekly, the Prophet and St. Mungo's, who contacted him when she got herself into trouble. He had paid more for stories about Hermione to disappear than he had for anything else in his entire life, but it was the only thing he could do now to help her. As it was, he was forced to look at all kinds of articles about her in the press to keep her believing that he was staying away. The only things he could make disappear were the ones that were so bad he knew she wouldn't remember them at all- the ones that he knew had taken place when she was too high to remember her own name.
When she'd been enveloped into Blaise Zabini's group of 'Professional Partiers', as he liked to call them, Harry had never imagined he could be so grateful for a Slytherin Pureblood. Even more miraculously, Zabini had reached out after witnessing Hermione suffer through a bad high, expressing concern. Blaise had agreed to keep Harry up to date on her from then on, promising to reach out any time she was really in trouble. While this had eased Harry's concerns slightly, he still couldn't help himself occasionally, which was how he ended up outside her potions lab an hour after Charlie's arrival.
Even though she seemed to have taken up a life of endless partying, Hermione still held onto some semblance of her old self, and amidst all the parties and drugs and boys, she had opened an Apothecary that specialized in incorporating muggle medicines into the magical world. She had passed the every day running of the business on almost as soon as she opened it, so that she could spend her time experimenting, which had become a sort of passion of hers after the war.
Standing outside the door to her lab, Harry had a silent argument with himself over whether or not he should knock. The decision was taken out of his hands, however, when Hermione threw the door open in a rage.
"Harry." She stopped short when she saw him, a shocked look overtaking the anger that had seemed to be propelling her a moment earlier. "Wh-what are you doing here?"
"Charlie came to see me," Harry dove right in.
And just like that, the wall that she had been keeping between them for the last year went up. Her face became guarded, showing nothing more than annoyance.
"He said you slept on his sofa last night," Harry prompted, trying his best not to sound judgemental. "That he found you in an alley?"
"What do you want, Harry?" She asked dismissively, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Nothing," he sighed. "I just... I was just worried about you."
"Well I'm fine," Hermione assured him sharply. "As you can see."
"Right," he nodded unhappily. "Look, Hermione, I know you don't want me butting in or trying to help-"
"-I don't need help," she interjected.
"I know," Harry tried not to get angry with her. "I know. That doesn't change the fact that you're still my best friend, and I worry about you. So, I'm just here to say hi, and see for myself that you're alright."
"Great, well, here I am." Hermione gestured to herself dramatically. "All in one piece."
"You told Charlie that Goyle spiked your drink." Harry said, not willing to leave just yet. "Are you really alright?"
"He didn't spike my drink, he made the drinks and they were disgusting," Hermione corrected. "Thank you for your concern, but I'm busy now. I'll see you around."
Harry's shoulders slumped in defeat and before he could even say 'bye', Hermione had closed the door in his face, leaving him alone in the back corridor of her shop once again.
Upon returning to Blaise's house, Draco had gone directly to bed, still functioning a few hours behind Greenwich time. When he woke up and headed down to the kitchen, he didn't expect to happen upon anyone- Blaise hadn't mentioned any other house guests, and the man in question was sure to still be sleeping. The last person Draco could have possibly imagined finding in Blaise Zabini's kitchen was Hermione Granger.
And yet, when he walked into the dining room, that was exactly who he found, her head bowed to the table in the middle of snorting a line of cocaine.
Draco stopped dead in his tracks, staring open mouthed at the sight in front of him. He knew that Blaise had become friendly with the Gryffindor witch in his absence, she'd been mentioned in his letters and they had been featured on the cover of Witch Weekly on more than one occasion. Draco was also aware of the fact that the Hermione Granger he had grown up with had changed drastically, no longer studious and private, but instead featured on the cover of gossip rags on a daily basis, usually drunk and snogging a random stranger. Gone were her days of fighting for House Elf rights and muggleborns, now she spent her days sleeping off hangovers and bad highs, her nights filled with as much debauchery as possible and regularly resulting in visits from Blaise's private healer. Draco knew all this, he had read about it in great detail through his letters from Blaise and Astoria, and she certainly hadn't hidden any of it from the public, but that didn't stop him from being absolutely shocked to see the witch in person.
In the past, she had at least tried to control the bushy mane on her head, but now her curls fell as wildly as his Aunt Bellatrix's had, haphazardly flying this way and that, sprouting from a pigtail at the nape of her neck. Her clothes, always so pristine in the past, fell loosely off her thin frame, exposing shoulder blades and collar bones that seemed far too prominent to be healthy. When she sat up, Draco saw how hollow her face had become- the bags under her eyes looked to be as old as she was, and her cheekbones were far too prominent. Looking at her now, Draco was reminded of the shell of a girl that had laid unconscious on the Manor floor three years previously, beaten and tortured, simply waiting for death to come. The thought made him wince, and it was at that moment that she noticed him.
"Three seconds and you're already disgusted by me," she drawled lazily. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, though. Leopards and spots."
"I'm not disgusted." Draco responded quickly, schooling his features into a look of interest rather than shock. "I just didn't expect to find anyone down here."
"If that's your story." She scoffed, releasing her hair from it's tie and running a hand through it to push it away from her face, before getting up from her seat. "Don't worry, I'm not staying."
"Don't leave on my account." Draco forced himself to sound bored. "I was just looking for a cup of tea."
"Good luck finding one," Hermione sniffed. "This is the only thing Blaise keeps in."
She gestured to the remaining powder in front of her, and Draco frowned.
"Picked up an affinity for Muggle drugs in my absence, has he?"
Hermione only nodded, obviously expecting Draco to revert to his former disdain for anything Muggle, but he only shrugged and continued towards the kitchen.
"I'm sure I'll be able to scrounge something. Can I get you a cup?"
"I'm not staying," Hermione repeated. "Just ran out of my own supplies."
Without another word, she turned and stepped into the floo, disappearing in a haze of green, leaving Draco very confused.
As soon as the drugs hit her, Hermione was back at work. She was currently developing a potion to make coming down off Ecstasy easier and so far, she hadn't had much success. The physical symptoms were easy enough to deal with- essence of ginger for the nausea, vitamins to boost the immune system, ashwaganda root to quell anxiety- it was the emotional symptoms that Hermione couldn't figure out how to counteract. It didn't matter how much artificial serotonin she manufactured, the days that followed her high were always the worst, forcing her to think about and remember all the things she worked so hard to forget each night- the loss of her parents, her break-up with Ron, the loss of the Weasley family, Harry's disappointment in her- they all came crashing down on her the moment the drugs left her system, suffocating and unescapable.
Today, though, she had a new potion to test, and what better place to do it than Draco Malfoy's welcome home party?
