TW: MENATL HEALTH, SUICIDE AND ADDICTION THEMES

AN: Special thanks to my alpha Phoenixofslytherin and my beta 08adrelai1993 for helping me put my ideas into reality.

Draco

Fathers hand gripping his shoulder.

Mother clutching his hand.

"What else did you take, what else? ANSWER ME! CRUCIO!"

A blood curdling scream.

Bile rising in his throat.

His whole body was shaking.

Thinking of anything he can do to help without getting them all killed but coming up empty.

Another never ending scream even louder than the other.

Reaching for his wand only to have it snatched by his father.

His mother's pleading gaze.

"Build your walls my dragon. Use your occlumency. Any reaction from you will spur Bella on more."

Another scream. But this time he feels nothing, his walls slammed in place.

Draco woke with a jump, looking around him and realizing that he was safe in Nott manor and not back stuck in his horrible nightmare.

Except this wasn't just a nightmare. No, it was one of the memories he had been trying to avoid by using the MT. He was suddenly overcome with his shame. He had been such a coward that night, using his Occlumency to tune out from what was happening, all the while Granger had been getting tortured by his aunt, on his drawing room floor, in his house. How could she not despise him as much as he despised himself? How could she bring herself to even share the same air as him, never mind the fact that she was so adamant to help him.

The memory of last night hit him with the same force he would imagine the Hogwarts express would.

"If you fall, I fall because I won't let you down this time. Not again"

What did she mean by that? When had she ever let anybody down, least of all him? She was a war hero, she helped save the entire wizarding world from a maniac, for Salazar's sake. She did not owe him a damn thing, yet there she had stood last night begging him not to jump. He was just so sick of suffering. So sick of being a failure and constant disappointment and jumping had been the only was he could see out of his pain.

After all, the thing that he would be killing would not actually be himself. No, his pain had taken over so much of who he was, that he was sure that there was nothing left of him but the pain. Her words had made him realize that deep down somewhere, there was still a piece of him inside, buried under all the trauma and he wanted to regain control and bring that piece of him back.

As much as he wanted nothing more than to turn to the potions to avoid the feelings overwhelming him, he knew he could not keep living this way. It was time to face his problems head on and get himself sober.

A new determination set into his bones and he decided that it was time to stop lying in bed feeling sorry for himself, and contact Granger to tell her that he was ready to begin the long journey of ridding himself of his addiction once and for all.

His sheets stuck to him as he tried to move, and he decided that a shower that he needed to start by ridding himself of the sweat that had poured from his body from his early morning nightmare was probably the best place to start.

He peeled the sheets off, stepped out of the bed and began to move towards the bathroom attached to his room when he tripped over something large in the middle of the floor.

"What the fuc-?"

He looked to see what he had fallen over and that's when he noticed Theo and Blaise fast asleep wrapped in each other's arms on his bedroom floor. Thankfully his perfectly graceful (thank you very much) fall had only stirred them slightly and they remained asleep. He got back to his feet and stood looking at them. He had put them through so much, and yet here they were, lying on his floor just to be close to him. He did not deserve them. He had been pushing them away for years and even so, they never faltered, and they never left him. Tears began to sting his eyes and he quickly moved to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

It would only be a matter of time before the MT was completely out of his system and he would start to experience the full force of the withdrawals and he needed to see Granger before that happened as he knew that once they started, he would need the potion. He just hoped that she had some way to help him through it.

Hermione

The previous night had been the breakthrough Hermione had been waiting on. She knew that it was only a matter of time before Draco finally hit rock bottom and she was beyond grateful that she had been there to get him through it.

That didn't make the heartbreak of seeing him so low and vulnerable any easier. While she had been expecting him to have a breakdown, she did not expect to find him on the ledge of the roof ready to jump. He was more broken inside, more lost than she had originally thought, and it had made her more adamant to help him find his way back again. It would not be easy, and she was fully expecting him to fight her at every turn along the way. Accepting that one has a problem is the first hurdle and, in some cases, it can be the easiest to overcome. What comes after that realization, the withdrawals, the facing of one's demons and finding a way to accept them and move forward can be the hardest thing to face. They had all faced horrors during the war, but looking inside yourself and dealing with your own faults and the hurt you have caused others made anything the war had thrown at them pale in comparison. It is so much easier to forgive others than it is to forgive yourself.

Hermione grabbed her beaded bag that she had filled with some potions to help curb the withdrawals that Draco would be starting to experience, and all the relevant documentation on treatment plans offered by her departments and headed to the fireplace to floo to Nott manor. She wanted to be there when Draco woke so they could start treatment immediately.