Recovering Granger

Recovering Draco

He avoided any and all publicity about her. Never found it in him to dispose of their Daily Prophet clippings. Couldn't open the drawer either. Just let them sit there, weighing him down in a way he knew was a refusal to move forward.

A year after their break up she was pictured in The Prophet with Dean Thomas. He fed her a strawberry across a small, intimate table while laughing. She looked happy. It was featured on page four, the photo no bigger than a square of parchment. He stared at it for five minutes.

He continued to try and replicate what they had, but no girl ever met the high bar she'd set. Either their arguments were weak, or their intelligence not high enough, or they grew tired of his constant need to fight.

Most girls thought too highly of themselves to stay with him. He'd gained a reputation since Hermione. It didn't stop them from continuing to come to him. He wasn't sure if they were trying to change him or if they wanted to see for themselves but either way— it never ended well. They left broken and more used than before and he always felt empty.

His drinking rapidly increased directly after their break up, but it began in earnest—for over three months of straight inebriation— after the picture of her and Thomas. He took a leave of absence from work.

He'd wake up and drink. Choose alcohol over food. Drink until he eventually passed out, letting himself land wherever his body lost control. Sometimes it was the couch. Sometimes it was with his head drooping into his toilet bowl. He'd woken up in the hallway outside of his bedroom more than once.

Potter always carried him to bed when he found him in an uncomfortable position. Turned him on his side in case he was sick in the night. Checked on him in the mornings before he left for work.

Theo cried one night as he carried him up the stairs. Potter was on the other side of Draco and they each threw an arm over their shoulder. They must have thought Draco completely unconscious because they spoke freely. Things they would never say to him if he was conscious.

"This is exactly what I feared after he got out of Azkaban. But he didn't give in. He didn't surrender."

"We just need to be here for him," Potter soothed. "Hermione's like a shock to the soul. He wasn't ready for all that. It was good for him, though. Shook him out of whatever false pretenses he'd been operating under. This is just a rough patch."

Theo sniffled and a cracked sob escaped his throat.

Draco felt well and truly ruined after that.

Ginny was the one that pushed him away from the alcohol.

"You don't get to act like this." She was screaming at him after he'd thrown a whiskey bottle at another feature of Granger and Dean. This one was a photo of them walking through Diagon Alley, holding hands. She'd laid his head on his chest, for only a moment. It was intimate to watch. He hated it.

Theo was behind her, picking up the pieces but Ginny's magic ran wild with her fury.

"You had her! You had Hermione and you nearly ruined her because you weren't ready to grow up. You don't get to do this," she stressed the last words desperately. "You don't get to feel bad for yourself and hate her because she's healing. She deserves it."

Her chest was heaving and Draco felt properly cowed. After a moment, she came and sat down next to him, voice more steady but anger still evident.

"You didn't see her after. You weren't around to pick up the pieces. Harry and Theo begged me not to tell you so I didn't. But I'm tired of this. You toyed with her for nine months, tore her apart because she was coping in a way you weren't ready to. You did that. You pushed her away, so you don't get to do this."