Draco would never have imagined that bathing would be so difficult for him. He remembered hating it as a child, but the reasons were far more childish then.

However, this time, as he undressed in the small bathroom, staring at the bathtub with a frightened look, he realised how distressing such a mundane act had become. The mere sight of his naked body repulsed him. Usually he did his best to remove only one item of clothing at a time, so as not to see too much.

The sound of water running into the tub gave him the shivers. A flash of memory appeared before his eyes as he ran his fingers under the water to test its temperature.

The bathroom at Azkaban. The blade. The white walls. The guards. The blade. The blood and dirt escaping through the drain. The blade. The rough, odourless soap. The colourless toothpaste with the disgusting taste of anise. The blade.

The bathtub was filled before he even realised it and he sat down inside it, the urge to drown washing over him.

He banished it from his mind with a long sigh and let his head fall back. The warm water was doing him a world of good. He felt the knotted muscles in his body relax and did the same, despite the fact that most of his still very sensitive scars were burning.

As he relaxed, he let his guard down for the first time since his arrival, deciding to forget for a moment who he was and what he was doing there. He saw his mother's eyes when he closed his own.

The water was beginning to cool when he opened them again. The sun had risen and its rays were reflected straight on his face, causing him to squint, blinded by the strong light.

The water had turned grey, without him even needing to wash his body, which made him wince. He never thought a bath would do him so much good, even though an hour earlier he had been prepared to face this as a test.

He straightened up into a sitting position and removed the drain plug. The water flowed out quickly as he grabbed the shower head and the soap pad to properly wash himself.

It felt strange. For the first time in years, the permanent smell of dirt and sweat was gone from his environment. Now that it was gone, the world seemed less dark, less scary. The underside of his fingernails was no longer black with grime. He felt lighter, cleaner. He was less hot.

It was liberating.

When he stepped out of the bath and brushed his bare feet against the cold tiles, Draco shivered. He looked around for something to warm himself and winced when he saw his dirty pyjamas on the floor. He had no desire to wrap himself in those clothes, especially when he had just scrubbed every part of his body thoroughly.

He looked up at the dresser in the room and hesitated. He knew some towels were there, he remembered them despite the disaster that had been his first visit to the bathroom.

However, he did not know what to do. He felt as if he was risking something by opening one of the drawers. Suddenly he thought Granger had set a trap for him. He had fallen into it without thinking.

He had taken her advice, bathed, and now found himself naked and clean in the middle of her bathroom. He was awfully vulnerable. Perhaps she was waiting for him behind the door, ready to cast a spell and make him pay for his intrusion into another room of her house? Perhaps she had been waiting all this time to finally find a valid reason to banish him from her home? Maybe the potions had been a way to lure him back here?

His heartbeat quickened and he leaned against the sink cabinet to catch his breath. He had been tricked. He was going to lose everything again. Perhaps they would even send him back to Azkaban.

He closed his eyes and clenched his fingers tightly on the wood.

He had to regain control. Regain control. He couldn't afford to let himself go. For his mother.

He breathed in deeply and turned to the sink to splash cold water on his face. Regain control.

He didn't stop until he was sure he was finally calm.

He used his pyjamas to dry the water remaining on his body, slipped them on quickly and retrieved vials of dreamless sleep potion from the cupboard. He avoided his reflection in the mirror and looked around the room one last time, promising himself to come back every day to take care of himself.

He opened the door slowly, still anxious that Granger was behind it. He peeked through the opening and let out a sigh of relief when he discovered a completely empty corridor.

He made his way down it and hurried to his bedroom.

Only, when he reached his room, he discovered a small pink plastic laundry basket, in which was a pile of clothes that he recognised as his own. On top of it, a piece of parchment folded in half was balanced.

"I do the laundry in the morning. If you want me to do yours, put the clothes in this basket in the evening and leave it by the door."

She had washed his clothes.

oOo

Draco had kept his promise to himself. In three days he had gone to the bathroom three times, washed his body three times and his hair three times.

On the second day, he had discovered a yellow toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste lying on the sink cabinet, covered by a piece of paper with the inscription: "Use it well."

So he had brushed his teeth twice.

And for the third morning in a row, Draco discovered that the pink basket, which he had filled the day before with his dirty laundry, was missing. And like every day, he would find it outside his door once Granger returned from work.

It had become a routine. He would get up, wait for her to bring his meals, eat quietly, feed Wynn some seeds, and then go to the door to check that his basket was gone. After that, he would go to the bathroom, take the time for his apprehension about the ordeal of the bath, wash up, and then return to his room all clean.

Once this was done, he could start his day.

He also took advantage of the new view from the bathroom to discover another part of the grounds surrounding Granger's house. If his bedroom window looked out on a forest, the mountains, and a piece of building that strongly resembled a barn, this one had shown him a large greenhouse, the clothesline on which their clothes were hung every day, and endless acres of nature, which stretched all the way to the mountains.

In the distance he could even see a river. It promised to be a nice walk, if he could ever get out. The very thought gave him the shivers. It was a long way to go before he could make it that far.

And that morning he had a very specific mission in mind. The day before, he had managed to sit down in the armchair facing his room, after having walked along the entire upstairs corridor, including around the bend in it. And this time he was about to enter a new room.

He had chosen the door past the one to the toilet. It was a way of telling himself that he was staying on familiar ground.

He had no idea what was in it and, truthfully, he didn't care. It was a way to move forward, to make progress. It didn't matter what was behind it, if he could get to know his surroundings a little better.

So, after checking that Granger had gone to work, Draco set off. He walked cautiously along the wall, trying to imagine what his housemate's job might be to distract himself.

Auror? Employee at the French Ministry of Magic? Professor at Beauxbatons?

Many suggestions came to mind. He searched for new ones until he could place his hand on the handle that would lead him to his goal for the day. Eventually, he took a long breath and opened the door.

He should have thought of this when he imagined the different rooms in the house. After all, how could Hermione Granger have moved into a house without a library?

The walls were covered with shelves full of books, so many that he wondered how some of them could still fit. Under one of the two large windows he discovered a desk, on which lay piles of particularly old magazines and newspapers. There was also a sofa, under a shelf of books on the wall. It looked quite comfortable, with its large, thick cushions and caramel-coloured velvet. A coffee table, with a few books and a cold, half-empty cup of tea, stood in the centre of the room.

Seventeen shelves. Eight window panes. Four sofa cushions. Thirteen strips of wallpaper.

He did not count the floorboards. He did not count the books.

The room wasn't particularly decorated any more than his bedroom was, and apart from all those books, there was nothing special to discover.

However, he couldn't help but enter the room and close the door behind him. The only things he had read since his imprisonment were his own words written feverishly on pieces of parchment, Blaise's letter announcing his release, Pansy's from the last few days, and the quick notes left by Granger.

He was suddenly eager to get back to a normal reading pace. When he was younger, he had never been much of a reader, and in fact, was more the type to push away any book that came into his sight. Yet, the lack of the written word he had felt over the years created in him an urgent need to read the words of authors who had shared their writing with the world. He wanted to know these people, to know their lives and their ideas.

It was something that had never occurred to him to want before.

He ran his fingers along the bindings and stopped after counting to ten, and pulled out the first book that came to him.

"Le malheur indifférent - Peter Handke"

He had no idea what it was about. He just read the French title, as if the language had never seemed different from his native tongue. He sat down on the sofa in the room without thinking. He didn't need to.

He opened the book, not caring about the cover, the summary or the author. He wanted to read words, understand sentences and interpret their meaning. The rest did not matter.

oOo

Hermione turned the key in the lock of her front door and let Albert in before following him. If the rain and the storm had calmed down for the past two days, that was not the case with the wind, which had been shaking the region for almost a week.

She therefore welcomed the gentle warmth of the house. She did not bother to take off her shoes, her jacket, or to rest for a few moments in an armchair. She crossed the living room to the glass doors leading to the opposite side of the house, intending to start her daily chores right away.

She collected the laundry that had spent the day drying on the lines she had installed a few years earlier between the greenhouse and the house. She filled the two different baskets she used: a blue one for her clothes and linens, a pink one for Malfoy's stuff. It was quite a system. But she liked it, it was simple, precise and it kept her from getting the slightest bit anxious or upset.

After that, she went back inside to drop them off at the bottom of the stairs and headed back to the garden to collect the day's vegetables. Her harvest was rather meagre: three carrots, a courgette and two medium-sized tomatoes. This would be enough to prepare dinner.

Once back home, with her precious vegetables in a wooden crate - which she collected from the market every week - she finally took the time to remove her shoes and jacket. She then went upstairs to place the laundry baskets in their usual spots: the pink one in front of Malfoy's room and the blue one in hers.

All she needed to do was cook the meal and her routine would be complete. She was doing well that day. She hadn't panicked and she had done everything in order, without error. She had been very friendly to the postman, even though he had been rather cold since she had told him she was married. She had even said hello to the butcher on the way home, despite the fact that it was not the day of the week when she did her shopping. She was almost proud of that.

Dinner would be simple that evening: the vegetables of the day, mixed with a homemade tomato sauce–which she found watery and bland after tasting it–and rice. She had improvised completely and had to hold back a grimace when she realised she had added too much pepper to the seasoning.

She then prepared a bowl for Albert, into which she added a large piece of beef, cut into pieces, and a raw egg yolk. He began to devour it as soon as she put it on the floor.

She placed a full plate on a wooden tray, a large glass of water, a piece of bread, cutlery and a yoghurt from a local artisan. When she passed through the living room to the floor, she saw Albert lying asleep in front of the fireplace.

She smiled slightly and climbed the few steps.

She frowned when she discovered that the pink laundry basket was still in its place. This had not been the case in the previous days, Malfoy always retrieved it before she brought him his meal. She knocked once on her housemate's room, but received no answer. A second time. Nothing. A third time. Still nothing.

"Malfoy?" she dared to voice before biting her lip anxiously.

She could feel a ball of anxiety forming in the pit of her stomach. Why wasn't he answering?

She didn't want to open the door. She had done it once, to collect his clothes three days earlier, and didn't want to do it again. This was his personal space, his room. She had no right to enter it at will. She didn't want to.

But he didn't answer. What if something had happened to him?

She grunted and stamped her foot, annoyed by her own decision. She opened the door.

The room was empty. Utterly and completely empty. Even his owl was absent, although she had seen it flying around the house once or twice.

The window was open, however, and that made Hermione panic.

She walked into the room, hurriedly put the tray of food on the bed and rushed to the window, leaning out until she could see the ground.

Nothing. What had she imagined?

Unable to help it, a sigh of relief escaped her lips. She tightened her fingers around the wooden frame of the window and inhaled several times.

Her anxiety was still there. And Malfoy wasn't.

She felt tears well up in her eyes as she hurried out of the room. She had to find him. She couldn't have lost him. She would be risking too much. And so would he.

She opened the bathroom door. It was empty. The bathtub too. The window was closed.

Her heart was pounding. Her vision was blurred by the tears that now flowed freely down her cheeks.

What if he had been kidnapped? What if he had died? What if he had escaped?

Hermione didn't even want to think about that. It would be destructive. She wouldn't be able to get up again. She couldn't let herself get caught up in her anguish and ruminations. No matter how easy it might seem.

She opened the doors to the other rooms. They too were empty. Empty, empty, empty. Everything was empty while her head was filled with dark, fatalistic thoughts.

Her hands were shaking now. She wondered how her body could still stand, as it began to feel dizzy. All the symptoms of her panic attacks were coming back.

She eventually decided to check the library. She froze.

He was there. He was there. He was there.

He was there, half lying on the sofa in the room, a book open on his chest, his eyes closed and his complexion pale. He was always pale. His body was shaking with very slight jolts. So slight that only someone who was used to them could see them. And Hermione could see them.

He was having a nightmare.

He had fallen asleep there and she realised that, once again, he had left his room. He had come in here and, from the other books around him, he had spent a lot of time reading.

She swallowed. If he'd managed to get here, where else had he gone?

The mere idea that he could have searched and wandered her house in her absence terrified her. She had no control over him, no way of knowing what he was doing, where he was or what rooms he was visiting. She didn't know anything and that panicked her.

And as she watched him moan incomprehensible words in his sleep, Hermione became frightened.

She realised once again what his presence represented, what it meant to her. She realised how much he had changed her life since he arrived and it made her more anxious than ever. She no longer had control over her environment. She had no way of knowing what was going on here while she was away.

But that wasn't what made her run out of the room. No.

It was when she realised the compassion that came over her as she watched him suffer like this in his sleep, that she decided that enough was enough. It was when the urge to cover him with a blanket so he wouldn't catch a cold came over her that she panicked even more. When she wondered if he had liked the books he had read. Would he agree to her offering him some herself?

It was too much. She didn't want to consider, she didn't want to think about all this. She wanted to get back to her quiet routine, where nothing strange happened, where she didn't need to use her brain, just her body, mechanically.

To repeat her days over and over again so that she could endure them better.

She opened the door of her room with a bang and rushed to her bed, on which she fell down and cried.

She would not eat that night. She swallowed a potion. Then a second. And she let sleep take her, as the anxiety disappeared.

I commissionned a fanart for this chapter, you'll find it on my instagram (NovaFrogster) or my Twitter! It had been made by iamrosetta on instagram!

And that's it! See you next Thursday for the next chapter!
Thanks to Acciobraincells and DontStopHerNow for their amazing work.
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