The Burden of Memory

Authors Note: Many thanks to my beta Shannon. Yay team awesome!

Chapter 18 Questions of an Unsettled Mind

Draco paced in front of the door to flat number three-sixteen.

It was his own place, the place he rented before he lost his memory, and only three blocks away from Harry’s flat, which made him wonder what made him rent this flat instead of something closer to the city center or even closer to London’s wizarding district.

The obvious answer was that he rented it to get close to Harry, though careful questioning of his boyfriend that morning revealed that Harry had only just moved into his own flat a few weeks prior to meeting Draco again, so that eliminated the first option.

It wasn’t until he watched the final memory that his father left him that everything was cleared up.

He had moved to this flat in order to be close to Lara.

As he paced in front of his own front door he thought about the conversation he got to overhear from his father. The man hadn’t even been talking to anyone, but rather created a memory message for Draco to watch.

When he fell into the pensieve all he could see was his father sitting at his study’s expansive desk, appearing to look right at him. Lucius gestured to the chair across from his desk and Draco took his seat.

“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” Lucius began,” and while I can only answer a few of them, I hope the information I can provide will help guide you.”

“At this point we have found you completely void of your memory. We’ve left you in the care of Harry Potter, which is more ironic than I care to comment on at the moment, and I wanted to talk to you about how you may have ended up this way.”

Draco sighed and settled in waiting for his father shed some light on his predicament.

“You were bound and determined to take down Potter. You talked of nothing else since the minute the war ended and long before that really. You claimed to hate him, but your mother and I could see that it was much more then that.”

“If only you knew,” Draco muttered to his memory father.

“At first we ignored it as a childhood obsession, something you would outgrow once you had a career and life filled with other things, but once you were given the task of eliminating him and the means with which to do so, you were an unstoppable force of nature. You ignored our pleas to call off the wizard hunt and you refused to listen to reason, so we gave you the only information we had that might help you, for above all else, you are our son, and a Malfoy.”

“I told you about Henry, Lara and Vane,” he admitted, and Draco nearly missed his next words from gasping in surprise.

“Yes, I knew of them, and as soon as I told you about them, you set out to stalk the girl, who was the closest in age and proximity to where Harry was presumed to be. You went so far as to move from the manor and into a muggle flat on her street in your pursuit and refused to believe me when I told you that Harry knew nothing of her existence.”

Lucius folded his hands over one another and sat quietly at his desk, looking right at Draco, and causing the boy to shiver.

“I’m sure you’ll want to know the how’s and the why’s just as you did the first time we had this discussion,” his father noted.

“I knew about her because I killed her mother, and I can only imagine how much more surprised you are by that statement now that you’re engaged to her,” he added without amusement.

Draco gaped, the fact that he was no longer engaged to her mattered little in lieu of things.

“I didn’t actually kill her, in that it was not my wand that delivered the killing curse, but I led the group of Death Eater’s to their home, so I am as much responsible for her death as any of them,” he added sadly.

“People assumed, as did we at the time, that Voldemort was killing muggle families at random, but he had actually devised a method to locate families that carried a magical signature in their blood and had the ability to produce magical children. Henry’s family was obviously one of these and chosen by the Dark Lord as a special vendetta against Potter,” Lucius explained.

“As soon as I realized who the people were, I halted the attack, though it was too late for Lara’s mother. We erased their memories and left, and I became disenchanted with the Dark Lord’s plan. I quickly realized that he didn’t care about magic at all, and his real purpose for taking over was to wipe out magic and muggle alike and to make himself the supreme ruler of all,” Lucius scoffed. “I could not stand for it, but there was little I could do to prevent Voldemort’s slaughter at the time so instead I focused on making sure you remained safe.”

Draco hung his head, wondering how he was going to keep yet another secret from his boyfriend. If Harry knew that Lucius played a role in the death of his Aunt, he wouldn’t ever speak to him again.

“Still to this day we know nothing of what happened to you the night you went missing. We only got a cryptic message from you to stay inside the manor until you contacted us and that everything went wrong. Perhaps you can devise some meaning from that. Obviously you were unsuccessful in your mission to eliminate Potter, as you are currently staying in his home. I desperately hope your memory loss wasn’t a final ruse to get close to Potter, and I hope you no longer carry the severe vendetta against him, but know that your mother and I are here for you no matter what,” his father finished and the memory expelled him back into Harry’s flat.

Even now Draco couldn’t say how his memory loss originated, but he recalled the violent night that Lucius told him of his betrayal of the Dark Lord, he even remembered thinking of it as a betrayal at the time, as if the fact that Lucius refused to kill Harry’s family allowed Harry to win the war, which was rubbish of course.

Draco took a deep breath and with a flick of his wand he unlocked the door to his flat, the place he rented in order to take down Harry Potter, his lover, his friend.

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Harry was trying to busy himself, trying to keep from thinking of why Draco ran out in such a hurry. He had made up some flimsy excuse of needing some air, but refused Harry’s company, making Harry more suspicious then he wanted to be of his boyfriend.

If it had only been that singular incident Harry might have been able to excuse it away, but coupled with the nightmares, the distant behavior and the fact that he had been using the pensieve without Harry made him nervous.

He knew that Draco was looking at the three post-war Malfoy memories too; because when he checked that morning all three were missing. Not that Draco didn’t have a right to look at those memories alone, they were his personal family memories after all, but Harry didn’t appreciate that Draco was keeping it a secret from him, he was not the biggest fan of secrets.

So Harry was dusting to keep himself from tailing the blonde.

Part of him still thought it would be wise to follow Draco and find out what he was up to, but he refused to sink to skulking around after his boyfriend, and instead opted to just confront him directly when he got back.

But until then, he dusted.

Once the dusting was finished he began reorganizing the icebox, and once that was done he started on the bookshelves.

He was halfway through cleaning off the towering bookshelf in the bedroom when he found a small scrap of paper with scrolling delicate handwriting he knew to be Draco’s. It was an ingredients list, and didn’t look like anything they had ever prepared in school. He recognized some of the ingredients from other potions, but never anything that combined them all together.

Thoughts of what it could be for flew through his mind and he wondered why it had been hidden in the bedroom bookshelves of all places. He didn’t want to think ill of Draco, but the evidence didn’t speak too kindly for a simple and clean explanation and certainly didn’t lean toward innocence.

If Draco was going to this extreme to hide things from Harry, he obviously either didn’t trust him, which hurt, or was betraying him in some way, which hurt even worse.

He took the list to the fireplace and floo called Hermione at once. She was in the back of the house and it took her a moment to get into Harry’s sight.

“Harry, where’s the fire?” she asked.

“Hopefully nowhere,” Harry muttered. “I’m probably being paranoid, but I think Draco’s keeping something from me. Scratch that, I know he’s keeping something from me, but I think it might be something bad.”

“It wouldn’t be terribly unusual for Draco to be having sinister intentions when it comes to you, Harry, but how do you know?” She asked.

“I can’t talk about it right now, but if I gave you a list of ingredients, could you tell me what potion they created?” Harry asked hurriedly. He had no idea when Draco would pop back up.

Hermione rolled her eyes and held out her hand. “Of course I can,” she huffed and Harry passed the parchment through the fireplace.

She scanned it quickly and looked up with wide eyes. “Harry, these ingredients are meant to mimic death.”

“Death?” Harry shouted. “He’s trying to kill himself?”

“Harry, calm down. I said they are meant to mimic death, as in pretend,” she soothed. “They are used most commonly in second sight potions, putting the drinker in a deep trance but this combination I’ve never quite seen before. I’ll do some research and locate the potion for you,” she affirmed and Harry knew that she would. “But when I do I expect a full account of what’s going on, understand?”

Harry nodded and smiled at her friends concern and hoped it was unwarranted. “I would expect nothing less,” he told her and with a wave he ended the floo call.

He leaned back to sit on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, wishing that Draco would come back so that he could talk to him about everything.

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Draco wandered around the studio flat, wondering how in Merlin’s name he could have lived in such an unappealing hole. There wasn’t much to it. A bed against the wall, a small stack of books, a row of cupboards that he imagined was supposed to constitute a kitchen.

In the middle of the room was a steel table, with a cauldron surrounded by vials and bags of ingredients.

As he walked over to it he spotted the black book that his mother had given to him, and he flipped it open to the marked page. His mother’s tight script surrounded the word ‘Echo Potion’ and went on to write her opinion on why Draco should use it.

The echo potion allows the drinker to see past events play out before their eyes like a ghostly play. Easiest to see are the places where an emotional event has taken place, and the stronger the emotion, the easier to revisit.

You can seek your charge with this potion, my son, but be careful, as you might not like what you find.

Draco’s eyes widened as the memories from his first time reading the potions book flowed over him. He had actually laughed at his mother’s note; he had the audacity to believe that he knew all there was to know about Potter, and that the potion would mean nothing to him.

At once he realized that he could use it to find Potter’s current whereabouts, and that must have been what his mother had intended. So he began gathering the needed ingredients from various sources and brewed his potion until it was perfect.

He could remember taking the potion to Hogwarts and standing in the Great Hall, the last place he had seen Harry before the chaos took over, but he couldn’t remember a single thing afterward.

Draco stared at the empty flat and slipped the potions journal into his coat pocket before leaving, hopefully, for the last time. He’d have to contact his mother to see if she knew who he was renting it from, no doubt she had arranged it for him, and have the owners rent it to someone else.

Even if everything went to hell with Harry, which was looking more and more probable by the second, he couldn’t fathom ever wanting to go back to that rat hole of a flat.

It took no imagination to see Harry’s eyes brimming with tears at the knowledge of Draco trying to set him up to fall before they met. That was how Draco saw it most of the time; that the first moment Harry saw him in Lara’s flat was their first meeting, not that scarring time on the train going to Hogwarts.

He was a different person now, someone who loved Harry not the spoiled brat that wanted only to ruin him, but how much would that matter to Harry?

Harry who already had past trust issues when it came to Draco, Harry who had been burned or left by nearly everyone he had ever loved, Harry who carried the entire world on his shoulder’s and wouldn’t put it down even to save his own skin. His Harry.

Draco hated lying to him, but he saw no other way. If Harry never knew the truth about what the old Draco had been up to, then perhaps his heart would never have to wonder if Draco was true to him now. He just couldn’t risk giving up the one person who stood by him against all odds, the person who gave him back his memory, the person who shared his life, his bed and his heart with a boy who had hardly anything to offer in return.

Couldn’t he at least give Harry the peace of mind to know that Draco loved him undeniably? Shouldn’t he do that one small thing in return for Harry’s many favors? Didn’t he owe him that much?

Authors Note: Thanks so much to all of you who have joined my yahoo group and voted for the most recent polls. I think, if all goes well, I might even avoid missing a post!! Earl Gray Tea flavored Draco's for all who review!