Hello everyone,
Before reading this chapter, please take the time to read this short message.
I'd already like to apologise for the delay in publication, which was really wasn't planned. I've just had a very complicated few days and I wasn't in a position to post this chapter. I've now got the covid, so I have to say that I'm not in great shape! I'm not in great shape! But it was important for me to at least post this chapter.

In the meantime, World Suicide Prevention Day took place and I'd really like to take advantage of it, even if a little late, to remind those of you who are concerned that there are lots of solutions to help you and that you're not alone. If you're struggling with any of these issues, you should know that I'm always open to chat. You're not alone.

This story mentions suicide, suicidal thoughts and everything that revolves around this subject several times, and it's vital for me to try to inform the people who read me as much as possible.

You'll find more information on the instragram account feminist.

If you ever need to talk about anything because you're struggling, please feel free to contact me anywhere. You're not alone.

Now, please enjoy this chapter, I hope you'll like it 3


February was approaching and the mountains were covered in snow. Most of the animals and small creatures that usually populate the surrounding forests had been hidden away for weeks. One might have thought that the nature around Hermione's home was devoid of life.

But Draco knew that the reality was quite different. Beneath the snow and behind the trees played host to a colony of birds, hares and even foxes. He liked to look for them from the kitchen window when he was busy washing dishes or cooking.

He felt lucky to live in a house so close to the forest and the wildlife of the Pyrenees. It reminded him of the gardens of the manor where he had grown up. It reminded him of all the times he'd run out of his room at sunrise to go and explore the edge of the woods surrounding the house on the sly. It reminded him of the walks he'd taken with his mother around their grounds, where white peacocks and all kinds of other birds lived.

He could recognise the birds when they weren't too far away. He had even searched through the books in the library, hoping to find a picture book of all the species in the region. He had come across a small collection of handwritten notebooks, all signed by a certain Elisabeth Landry. They contained a wealth of information about the biodiverse region around the house. A real goldmine.

Draco had quickly become an expert on the flora and fauna around the house. In fact, he thought he was an idiot for having taken so long to understand that Albert was a dog and not a beast, when he was now able to distinguish a whole host of bird breeds.

He blamed it on fear, which was a good excuse, although no less humiliating.

Sometimes he would crack open the kitchen window just enough to allow him to leave a few seeds out, but then quickly close it to keep out the cold. Or at least that is what he told himself. But perhaps it was more that he didn't want to acknowledge any anxieties he had, he didn't really want to know. The fact of the matter was, the window was never open for long, and that suited him.

He often saw Tits and Robins, or even flocks of Starlings when the weather was right. His favourite were the Peony Bullfinches, which were so rare. They sometimes came to rest on the deserted clothesline over which Draco had an uninterrupted view.

That morning, while he was busy cleaning the plates that had been used for breakfast, Hermione showed up in the Bullfinches' usual place and shook the line to remove the few millimetres of snow that had accumulated on it.

Seeing her covered from head to toe, sent a quick shiver down his spine. He too was dressed warmly, he always wore Hermione's grandfather's clothes, but seeing her like this, with her feet in the snow, made him feel cold.

It had to be said that Draco had always been sensitive to cold. He remembered very well the two blankets and the warming spells he needed to fall asleep at Hogwarts in the winter.

Hermione's house was well heated, he'd never really cared or noticed until winter arrived. However, despite good insulation, he still needed to pile on the layers of clothing since the beginning of January. To be on the safe side, to make sure he wouldn't be cold.

When he had found himself in front of his wardrobe two hours earlier, he hadn't hesitated long before choosing one of his velvet trousers, a thick pair of socks, padded leather boots, a singlet, a thick shirt and his warmest jumper. That was the bare minimum. He had altered most of them himself, having practised many times on Blaise's clothes, which he no longer wore.

All to stay inside and make sure he didn't catch cold or let the slightest draught brush against him. He was terrified of catching cold; that would be far too much trouble. He had prepared himself for one of the coldest days of the year, as Hermione had said at dinner the night before.

He watched her as she knelt down by the vegetable garden. He wondered how it was possible for her to let her legs come into contact with the snow in such a temperature. It was inhuman.

She then seemed to try to remove the snow that had accumulated in the patch in front of her, but the grimace she made told Draco that her efforts were in vain. She had swept away enough snow with her gloved hand for some frozen and faded plants to appear, but not enough to really fix anything.

Draco thought that she might have done better to protect them from the start of winter with a spell, or one of those giant plastic umbrellas. A greenhouse, perhaps. He wasn't sure of the Muggle name.

The cold would weaken the plants in any case, but at least the soil would be less damaged and so would the roots.

An overwhelming and undeniable urge flushed over him. He had to tell her. He had to tell her now. She had to do something. He had to help her. He could do it, couldn't he?

He put the plate he'd just washed on the side of the sink, rinsed his hands quickly and then wiped them dry. He couldn't take his eyes off Hermione as he rehearsed the words he would say to her.

Maybe you should protect the vegetable garden with a greenhouse. Maybe you should protect the vegetable garden with a greenhouse. Maybe you should protect the vegetable garden with a greenhouse. Maybe you should protect your vegetable garden with a greenhouse. Maybe you should protect the vegetable garden with a greenhouse.

His hand made contact with the cold metal of the handle before he even saw it coming. He kept repeating that sentence to himself. It was all that mattered.

He pressed the handle and the glass door opened to the outside. The cold entered the room and brushed against the pores of his face, the skin of his hands and the skin protruding from his socks under his trousers.

Maybe you should protect the vegetable garden with a greenhouse.

He took his eyes off Hermione for a second and immediately realised what a terrible mistake he had made.

His gaze wandered to the horizon and he felt dizzy. The landscape was moving, and suddenly it was staggering as if it were rehearsing some strange choreography. Draco felt as if he were floating mid-air as the images before him drew nearer and then further away. Trees danced and mountains leapt. Nothing made sense anymore. Gravity was gone.

Everything was suddenly so big. So vast. Acres of emptiness stretched out before him, acres of freedom, acres of the unknown. His blood was pounding in his ears and that was all he could hear. He closed his eyes to get away from these moving images that were making him nauseous.

He blamed himself. He should have waited. How could he have thought he would be able to do it?

Granger's presence meant nothing, not anymore.

The world disappeared around him as his breath caught in his chest.

oOo

Hermione sighed for the umpteenth time as she discovered her frozen carrot plants. She had expected it, of course, she was realistic. Yet she had had the slightest hope that they would eventually come back to life.

She felt quite naive. How could such a thing have happened? She almost found it ironic to think that magic could have worked in the night. If only she was still able to use her wand, without risking blowing up the house.

The last time she had taken it out of her pocket to light the fire under her cauldron, the cauldron had broken. She had to throw it away and abandon the potion she had started to prepare in it. She hadn't tried it again since and ended up drinking the increasingly ineffective potions that allowed her to sleep. She had found a way to improve it, but without a cauldron, she wasn't likely to get very far.

She was even beginning to wonder why she kept her wand with her. It was so unlikely that she would be able to defend herself if attacked. She sometimes thought of burying it in a corner of the garden. This piece of wood had become a weight in her daily life, in her clothes. Hermione no longer wanted it, she was afraid of it. She couldn't use it and yet she was terrified of losing it.

She was still wary of every passer-by, every customer. She was startled when someone called out to her in the street. She couldn't bear any physical contact. She was afraid. She felt ridiculous, weak. And yet she couldn't escape the idea of losing her only defence, however questionable it might be.

She felt it against her thigh as she pushed the snow away from her thyme plants. She felt it vibrate with magic she could no longer control.

She had the sudden urge to throw it far away, not to look which way and lose it in the wild. And just as she was about to do so, every atom in her body screaming at her to get up and do it, Hermione heard a noise behind her.

She stood up and turned sharply towards the entrance of the house. She had expected to see Albert, that he had joined her outside to play in the snow or play with the horses.

What she hadn't expected was to be confronted by a trembling, haggard-looking Draco. She gasped.

His eyes were staring into space, his fists were clenched on either side of his body and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He looked so lost that Hermione's heartbeat stopped for a moment. It was staggering. She froze in place.

Draco was outside, standing in the snow, and yet he looked as if he might collapse at any moment. He was staring out at the horizon as if it were painful, as if it were hurting him. She wondered how he was still standing on his feet when his whole body seemed as rigid as it was fragile.

Time seemed to stand still as Hermione watched him. She waited for a movement, a word, a clue that would prove to her that he was alive and well. He looked like a marble statue dripping tears of rain. A sight that was both beautiful and desolate.

Then suddenly, she saw him close his eyes and fall to his knees, breathing heavily. She was petrified for a few moments, stunned to see such a thing. His body had failed him, abandoned him. He seemed to have laid down his arms, as if admitting defeat in a battle he had only just begun.

A second later, Hermione rushed to his side, her throat tight.

"Draco!" she shrieked as she knelt down beside him. She didn't know what to do. She was panicking.

Should she lift him? Shake him? Should she even touch him?

Her hands began to shudder uncontrollably. She didn't know what to do, she wasn't qualified to help him. Her muscles were stiff, her body wouldn't respond.

"Draco," she repeated in a less energetic voice. "Draco, get up."

What was she thinking? That he would suddenly listen to her and move, that it would be enough? Draco had collapsed on the floor, shaking and crying. And she was doing nothing.

He was only a few centimetres from the patio door. All she had to do was pull him inside and things would be a bit better.

Maybe then he wouldn't be shivering from the cold, kneeling in the snow. Maybe he'd calm down. Maybe he'd open his eyes and stop breathing so fast it was worrying. Maybe the worry that was twisting Hermione's stomach would subside.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. And Draco seemed to be sinking deeper into his terror, and into the snow. His body was shaking with both cold and panic.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it? Hermione recognised it. That panic, that fear that had haunted her for years. Those uncontrollable reactions that their bodies underwent at all hours of the day. Those sudden tremors that prevented them from doing anything. Those dark, negative thoughts that invaded their minds at the most inopportune moments. Panic, fear. Cowardice.

Hermione knew them all too well. And panic was her oldest enemy.

Draco was suffocating as he tried to recover. His shoulders were shaking with choked sobs and uncontrollable breathing. His cheeks were drenched with icy tears that must be burning his skin. His clothes and hair were soaked with snow. He seemed to be suffering.

So she decided to act. She would suffer the consequences if she had to, she would take his anger if he blamed her for touching him or even approaching him. She was prepared to do anything to help him. Because that's what she wanted someone to do for her, because that's what she wanted to do for him.

She grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him in as best she could. She was surprised by his weight, which she thought would be much lighter. He'd put on more weight than she'd expected, and her delight in that took her by surprise. He must have felt comfortable here.

Her shaky, not very muscular arms were of little use to her and she struggled to drag him to the back of the door. If he had recovered in a few months, she had done the opposite. She wasn't in good physical condition, she was well aware of that.

Pulling his body just a few short metres was exhausting. She was out of breath. It was as if he was completely 's heart clenched a little more when she remembered all the times she had experienced a similar episode which had led her to being woken up somewhere else without remembering having moved.

Exhausted by the effort she had just made, despite the short distance she had covered, Hermione let herself fall against the patio door once Draco was inside.

His head fell back onto her thighs, but Hermione didn't move. His blonde locks tickled the skin of her arms to the rhythm of Draco's ragged breathing, but she didn't move. He had frowned and seemed to be struggling to move a muscle, but she didn't move.

She remained seated against the door, her head back and her breathing rapid.

A rush of pride went through her body as she realised she had done it. She had saved him, in a way. She could feel him calming down against her and she had something to do with it. She had done it.

oOo

His mind was foggy, as if absent. Draco felt drained, exhausted.

It was as if he'd just stepped out of a black hole, he didn't know how long it had been since he'd taken his eyes off Hermione. It was the last lucid memory he had.

Why had he done such a thing? How could he have thought he could get out without any consequences?

He had deluded himself, that was all. He had remembered Hermione's comforting look in the basement and had convinced himself that her presence changed everything. It had changed nothing.

He was still just as weak, just as cowardly and just as incapable. He hated himself for it. He had made a fool of himself in front of her.

He remembered a few words whispered near him, without him really understanding them. Someone had spoken to him. Hermione had spoken to him.

And gradually, as he regained consciousness, he realised that it hadn't stopped. She was still talking to him. And above all, she was touching him.

He could feel her hand in his hair as she whispered a few words that he still found hard to understand. He was being touched and it felt good. He wondered how long it had been since this happened, but couldn't find the answer.

"Everything's fine," she whispered.

He froze. His heart was racing. She immediately stopped stroking his hair, without taking her hand away.

"Draco?" she whispered after a while.

His eyelids fluttered and his gaze met hers above him. She looked mortified, as if caught in the act. She said nothing and he thought he saw a spark of embarrassment in her eyes. As if she were afraid of what he might say.

"I'm sorry," he merely replied.

His mouth was pasty. He felt numb and that only fuelled his questions. How long had he been there?

He noticed that he was inside and realised that she had dragged him there. He felt even more guilty and ashamed. It was all his fault. He had disturbed her. He'd ruined everything. He–

"How do you feel?" she asked.

She resumed stroking his hair and he felt his heart miss a beat. He could have fallen asleep here, his head in her lap. The sensation was exquisite.

He wanted to apologise again, but she silenced him with a look when she realised what he was about to say. He swallowed and looked away, up at the ceiling. He felt his face heat up without really understanding why. It was just Hermione.

"Better," he replied in a low voice.

"Ron used to ask me to do that, to help with his anxiety," she then justified herself. "I think it calmed him down. After the war, when I was still in England, he was like that almost every day. I thought–I thought it might help."

Draco nodded slowly and closed his eyes. She was making excuses for something that seemed so natural, so pleasant. Pansy had also done it in their sixth year. He understood better than anyone how it helped to calm down. And it worked wonders.

"You don't see him anymore?" he asked to change the subject.

He didn't want to let the memories take over. Not yet. Not now. He preferred to concentrate on her hand in his hair.

"Ron?"

He nodded again and opened his eyes to look at her. She was staring pensively at an invisible point in front of her. She had frowned at his question and he saw her nibble the inside of her cheek. He closed his eyelids to give her privacy, to give her time.

"No," she eventually replied. "Not for years."

She took a long, shaky breath. She was struggling for words, he could feel it.

"He never came here," she confided, running her thumb over the top of his forehead. "I haven't seen him for… at least seven years. He used to send me letters to check up on me but eventually he stopped. Then nothing."

Draco frowned. The perfect trio broken up? He'd never thought about that, he'd just watched Potter and noticed the striking differences in his friendship with Hermione. He had never realised that Weasley was no longer part of his housemate's life.

He hadn't thought about it at all. Perhaps subconsciously he had thought that everything was fine, that they continued to see each other in some way, or to send each other letters. After all, he had no real reason to be interested in the redhead.

"Do you know what became of him?" he asked anyway.

He realised too late that his question was perhaps too intrusive. He opened one eyelid again to check that Hermione wasn't angry with him.

She hadn't moved. She was still staring at the wall in front of her with a look of concentration. She hadn't removed her hand from his overly long blonde locks.

The weeks were passing and he was thinking of cutting them shorter. His beard too, when he would dare to go near a razor again. He didn't ever want to look like he had during his years in Azkaban.

"He married Lavender Brown," she informed him in a flat tone.

She seemed so uninvolved in the conversation that he considered changing the subject. But she went on and he forgot about it.

"They had a son two or three years ago. Maurice Weasley. Harry didn't go to the wedding, he had a row with him a few years ago. Ron went down after the war. More than any of us, I think. After his brother Fred died, he lost his way and eventually didn't want to hear from us. I don't really know what happened to him after that, only that he ended up marrying Lavender and stopped– "

She fell silent and took another long breath. Draco clenched his fists. He could hear in her voice how difficult this subject was for her, and he was even more angry at himself for bringing it up. Once again, she continued before he could open his mouth.

"He's stopped doing drugs," she blurted out like a burden she'd kept inside her for too long. "I don't know how he got into it, or how he–how he got out of it. I just know that Harry tried to help him for years, until the day Ron exploded."

She fell silent again and her hand stopped in his hair for a moment.

"I think I would have liked to help him," she continued in a frail voice, resuming her stroking. "I would have liked to be there for him."

"But you couldn't," he finished for her.

She didn't answer and he imagined her nodding. He'd understood without her even explaining.

"That's why you left, why you came here, isn't it?"

"Yes," she admitted in a whisper.

He nodded and exhaled the air in his lungs without realising it. He felt at peace here, lying against her. He felt good despite the importance and harshness of their discussion. He felt confident.

He was rediscovering that special feeling he had felt in the basement a month earlier. That pleasant emotion that had run through him and had given him the strength to carry on. He felt invincible. He felt confident.

"What about you, Draco?" she whispered, running her index finger over his nose.

He shivered uncontrollably. His first name between her lips was still so strange. Yet he felt good, it felt right. He trusted her.

"What happened to you?"