So this is my collection of Harry Potter challenges from the challenge forum! Yayyy! Hope you like them all. :)

Title: Frozen

Challenge: Suicide Challenge

Character/Pairings: Draco/Hermione

Rating: T

xxx

It's snowing.

Draco Malfoy killed himself today. In the woods, by a tree. He was alone. Maybe there was a flash of green light from his wand, something strange in the forest. Maybe birds flew away at the sound, or snow cascaded down from the top of a pine tree. Maybe.

No one saw.

The snowflakes fall from the sky like teardrops, some in clumps, some alone, collecting in a powder at her feet.

Hermione is frozen.

The sky is crying for her.

A piece of paper is clutched in her hand, thin translucent paper, damp in spots, and torn. She grips it tightly, she will not let it go.

She breathes in short gasps, anger and pain, barely registering the frigid air flooding her lungs, not seeing the puff of steam as her warm breath mingles with the cold.

She can't make herself take a step forward. She can't make herself move. She can't make herself do anything.

The tops of her cheeks are turning red from the wind, the tip of her nose too. The wind whistles achingly, sadly.

Whistling for her? Maybe.

Her hands are chapped. Her knuckles split, blood running the same color as her nose. Her hair is wild. The tips of her toes are numb.

Her whole body is numb, but she likes it that way.

She stands at the edge of the woods. Skinny birch trees with stripes like zebras popping from the earth. Great pines with dark green needles and sweet sap frozen on its path down the trunk.

She is not alone.

People surround her, but she can't see them.

Her eyes close in a slow blink, and she can't open them again.

"Draco... Malfoy..." she hears someone say, or maybe it was in her head.

Her frozen lips move of their own accord. "Don't say his name," she tells her boots. By now they're buried in snow, covering her, pulling her down.

Her socks are damp. These boots aren't water proof.

The sudden logicality of this thought stuns her into an awareness, her eyes opening, a shiver wracking her body.

How long has she been out here?

But now her brain has retreated back into a frozen cave of chaotic thoughts and conversations and the past and the future are merging into a nightmare. What happened? Where is she? What is this?

There are memories of pale yellow hair on pale skin and brilliant blue eyes. Soft kisses, holding hands. Warmth. Wholeness.

Whispered "I-love-you's" and "I-miss-you's." Hours of talking, about nothing important. The thought of being together is there, the words are not.

But their last conversation is stuck, something that's been on repeat for hours it seems, but no matter how many times she tries to press the stop button it keeps going. It kills her every time.

"I visited my father, Hermione."

It was snowing then, too. Only last week.

"He was happy to see me. Even with the dementor hovering over him and sucking out every happy thing he could imagine, he was still happy to see me. And then I told him about you. And he spit in my face." He turned away from her.

And she laughed. She laughed! She had the audacity to laugh at him. She placed a hand on his back. "It's okay, Draco. It doesn't matter."

Suddenly he turned back, eyes flashing, the blue cutting through her like a sapphire. Like in the ring on her finger. "It doesn't matter?" he hissed. "He is my father, Hermione. Of course it matters!"

Her fingers jumped back like they were caught in a mouse trap. She burned. "I know, I know... I didn't think..."

He didn't say anything.

"But your mother approves..."

"My mother is barely sane. She doesn't know anything, Hermione. She doesn't care. She's gone into a shell or something, she isn't how she was before."

She tried to hug him, but he shoved her away like she is nothing, a doll, something meaningless.

"I'm not how I was before." He said this quietly, hands shoved in his pockets. His eyes were cast down.

This statement surprised her, though it really shouldn't have. She knew he wasn't the same.

"None of us are, Draco." She tried to soothe him then. "Since the war, we are not the same."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, right. Your family is safe, Granger."

She blinked. Granger, it was something negative from their school days, something synonymous with "mudblood."

"My dad is in Azkaban. My mom is a goddamn nutcase. I saw my friends die in front of me! And you think everyone is this different?"

Hermione's eyes flashed. "You think you're the only one who lost something?" She would not take this. "Fred Weasley died! Remus and Tonks and Sirius and Dumbledore and Snape and Moody and Colin Creevey, for christ's sake! Dobby the house elf! And so many more. I lost my friends." She paused, as if holding something in, but it spilled over her lips. "I lose myself, and that scares me."

"Me too," he replied, and it seemed like he'd relaxed. "But you seem to be dealing with it just fine," he said nastily.

She didn't know why he was determined to be the victim. But it irritated her.

"Well, I'm not! Just because I'm not whining about it doesn't mean I don't feel something!"

"You think I'm whining?" He scoffed, rolled his eyes, but she could see she'd hurt him. "I just need you to be here for me, Hermione."

"I need you to stop only thinking about yourself."

He sighed tiredly.

She took a good look at his face- sunken, paler than usually. Dark circles like bruises beneath this eyes.

"Sometimes I think it would be easier if..." he trailed off.

"If what? You weren't here?" She closed her eyes. "Everyone thinks that. And you know what? Everyone's right! It would be a hell of a lot easier! But life's about dealing with things. When you get past something, it makes you stronger."

He didn't respond. He simply leaned against her and took a deep breath.

"You smell so good," he mumbled into her shoulder.

She blinked, surprised.

But before she could say anything, he stood up and walked away.

And now it was this. She'd given him a break, she didn't want to be clingy, she'd thought he'd needed space, she hadn't pressured him.

She should have.

She should have told someone.

She should have been there for him.

They've taken him out of the woods, she doesn't know where, only that it is away from her. She blinks and she is the only one standing at the edge of the forest, the snow is up past her ankles.

She isn't wearing a jacket.

Again, she is surprised by how the thought makes sense.

But it leads her to more realizations, and she recognizes she can't stay out here.

Her body is stiff, frozen, but she turns, slowly, the snow falls from her air as she moves. She walks home.

Her fingers loosen their grip on the ball of paper, and it drifts into the snow, and before long it is buried in snow on the frozen earth.

Hermione,

There are some things I just couldn't deal with.

I'm sorry, it has to be this way.

Draco

xxx

Review, please!