Hello!
You can't imagine how happy and excited I am to finally publish this new story!
I started writing it at the end of June and have been working on it all summer. It is a project that is very close to my heart and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I would like to thank all the people who are supporting me on this project, as a beta but also as a moral support: Lyra, BBTea, Damelith, Kat', Genny, Choixpeau de Fic, VMarsTrek, MissKatieLyn313, miss_mary_mac8212, Shreya, and all the people who gave me their support by message!
Now, a little important point about this story. I want to make it very clear that this fic will focus on mental health, depression and especially Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There will obviously be romance (though I'm incapable of not writing it!), though it won't be front and centre throughout the story. It's a slow burn, a slow, slow burn. The story is long and is based on the emotions and experiences of the characters, I wanted to make it as realistic as possible, so don't be surprised that it's long.
This story has many Trigger Warnings: depression, suicidal thoughts, suicides, death, psychological and physical violence, drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. These are the only ones that will be in this fic, but I want to warn you that they will be present.
Finally, this story is very important to me, as it deals with mental health, which to me is a very important subject. If you are experiencing any of these behaviours, or need to talk about any of them, my PMs are wide open. Please do not face this alone.
I sincerely hope you will enjoy this story. Chapters will be posted every Sunday, for now. When I finish writing the story (which is not yet the case), I will accelerate the pace of publication.
Happy reading and thanks for stopping by!
Inside the small cell, everything was damp and cold and the air was thick with silence. Everything was dark as no light was able to pierce through the room's door, so much so that Draco sometimes wondered if he had gone blind.
Every five hours –or so he estimated– a jug of water, a cup, and a tray of food appeared to his right. The meal was dull, tasteless and dried out most of the time. He knew it was barely enough to sustain him properly; he didn't need to run his hands over his ribs to know that they were showing under his skin.
Once a day, an auror would enter his cell and cast a few diagnostic spells on him –that was what he had come to understand over the days– and then force Draco to follow him. He always took him to the same place: the wardroom. At least, that's what Draco had named it.
It had taken him a while to recognize the path and his surroundings as it took about ten minutes for his eyes to adjust to the magical light of the corridors. In the meantime, he walked blindly, guided only by the Auror's wand, pointed between his shoulder blades. They turned right twice, then left once, and then walked for three minutes to the wardroom.
It was at this point that Draco regained his sight, the glare becoming less harsh so he could make out some shapes through the blur of light around him.
Once they arrived, the guard pinned him down on a chair and a cacophony of voices and laughter reached Draco's ears from the shadows. His body cowered at the sound of it.
From there, his daily hell began.
He had never been able to distinguish whose voices they were, or at least he was sure he didn't know them. But there were always five of them. Despite his poor eyesight, he managed to make out their silhouettes. Two of them were rather tall and thin. Another was of medium height, with a chunky build. The last two were smaller, with no other distinguishing characteristics that he could make out.
Draco sat bound in the chair for an hour, counting every second in his head, to try to escape what he was experiencing. He didn't even hear them insulting and mocking him anymore. He was elsewhere. He was counting.
1, 2, 3, 4...
516, 517, 518, 519...
867, 868, 869...
He wished he could do the same with the days. To be able to count them, to list them and to find his way through time. However, he had quickly lost count and without a light to see what he was doing, nor any object to help him, he had been unable to do anything.
He had thought of writing it down somewhere on his body, scratching or hurting himself, but he had not found a place to do so.
When he returned to his cell, he would lie down on the bone-chilling, sticky stone floor, and fall asleep almost immediately. The nightmares that assailed him afterwards prevented him from sleeping for long so he was never sufficiently rested.
Once awake, he would plunge into the corridors of his mind, struggling to make sure that they would never deteriorate, not like his body. Draco categorised his memories endlessly. The faces of his loved ones, the places he knew, the moments he cherished from his youth... He was afraid to forget. Time didn't exist in Azkaban, but he was determined to remain active every waking hour. He wouldn't let this place take any more of him. He didn't know how many days had passed, or exactly how many he had left.
The one thing he did know was that he would be here for fifteen years.
oOo
The portkey terminal was full of people when Hermione appeared. She stood motionless in the middle of the hall for several moments, trying to control her breathing, before finally moving. She already felt like she was suffocating.
Wizards and witches were scrambling, running, shouting at their children and struggling with their baggage. The announcements for the next portkeys echoed through the hall, voices and footsteps blended together.
Hermione's fingers twitched as she wove headlong through the crowd. Her breathing was ragged and she flinched violently every time she made contact with another person.
She glanced up quickly at regular intervals to check that she was headed in the right direction and to confirm that her destination was getting closer and closer.
Her hearing muffled as she was metres away from the key; the background noise of the great French hall finally started to fade away.
She narrowly avoided a benign spell that came across the room and thought she would faint. She stopped dead in her tracks and struggled to keep from darting for cover. It was a nightmare. There were too many people, and, no matter how much she tried, she couldn't make her racing heart understand that the danger had passed.
She knew she could die at any moment, crushed under the feet of passers-by, or taken over by terrorists. Hermione was vulnerable and she was panicking.
This was a mistake. She was certain of it. She shouldn't have left her house. She should have stayed in Scotland, in her parents' old house. Tucked into her bed, startling at the slightest suspicious noise, but otherwise safe.
Her pulse reverberated throughout her body as the muffled hum in her ears was replaced by a shrill ringing. She clenched her fist around her wand so hard she thought it would snap. She struggled not to hex passers-by who dared to touch her, who might hurt her.
She started as a hand came to rest on her shoulder. Her gaze was contorted with terror when she met the eyes of an elderly woman with a worried look on her face. Hermione stepped back immediately. The woman's lips moved, but Hermione couldn't understand a word she was saying.
She couldn't hear anything. Her head was spinning.
Before she could think of what to do, her feet moved of their own volition and she broke into a run towards the nearest apparition point.
Cries of protest broke through her haze as she carelessly shoved travellers aside, but she didn't stop once to apologise. She was so close. Only a few more steps. A few steps and she would be safe; a few steps and she'd be alone again.
She stretched out her hand and, the moment her fingers passed through the apparition point, she disapparated without waiting for the rest of her.
As soon as her feet hit solid ground, she expelled the entire contents of her stomach onto the stone floor beneath her feet. There wasn't much to begin with, except for bile. If she'd managed not to splinch herself, her anxiety, combined with her fatigue over the last few months, she still wasn't spared the side effects.
Hermione leaned against a wall to avoid collapsing to her knees. The world around her seemed to tilt and spin any time she moved her head. She knew it had to be from a lack of nutrition, keeping herself fed hadn't been her top priority for a long time. She didn't need to look in a mirror to know that she looked like a corpse.
She stumbled along the wall to the nearest seat. She nearly fell twice on the way, but managed to reach the chair and promptly collapsed into it.
Her vision blurred, but she knew she had reached her destination. The large farmhouse had once belonged to her grandparents and was situated in the Pyrenees mountains. Maintaining the property would finally give her something to do.
Hermione didn't have to wait long before exhaustion took her and she fell asleep in front of the dead fireplace.
Thanks for reading! See you next Sunday for the rest!
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