A Pound of Flesh

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Vault

“Losing your mind?”

Draco swallowed and looked away. He nodded. “I wasn’t robbed. I did this.”

“But you don’t remember doing it?”

He shook his head, misery and frustration warring on his features.

“And the last thing you remember is Dearborn leaving?”

With a nod, he bent forward and began to gather his scattered books into neat piles. He didn’t speak; his lips were pressed together in a thin line and his Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed repeatedly.

“What were you talking about with him before he left?”

Draco’s mouth wobbled, and Hermione realized that he was trying to hold back tears. She reached out and stilled his hands. He turned his head away and took a deep breath, and swiped a hand across his face.

“Damien,” she soothed, “we’ll figure this out. You’re going to be fine. I don’t think you’re losing your mind. You’ve lost your memories. That’s bound to cause some odd things to happen from time to time. Just tell me the last thing you remember and we’ll see if we can figure out what happened this time.”

He took another deep breath and nodded. He turned back to her, his eyes watery and haunted. “The last thing I remember… after you left… Cary came inside – he looked around a bit, poked around my AC unit. Asked about you, when I’d met you, if we were serious, what I knew about you… And then I –” He frowned and stared at the floor in concentration. “And then I… No. Then he walked back to the door… And as he was leaving, he said… What was it he said?” His eyes screwed shut and he held his breath. “He said… something about my mother. And you.”

Hermione felt something cold and icy slide down her throat into her stomach, and it settled there like a thousand pound weight.

Draco’s head jerked up and his eyes flew open. There was realization on his face, but also confusion. “He said he was sure you were charming, but that you were the kind of girl my mother always warned me about. Which I thought was an odd thing to say. And then… he left, I guess, and everything went all wonky.”

The strange way Dearborn had looked at her… all his questions about her… the odd comment about Draco’s mother…

Dearborn wasn’t Memory Charmed at all.

Dearborn remembered everything.

Including who Draco was. Who she was.

And now he knew that she knew about Draco.

Panic made a home in her chest, squeezing out all the air until she saw black spots dance before her eyes. Danger flashed red in her brain. It was no longer safe.

So Dearborn had taken Draco in knowing who he was. Had it been a chance occurrence, then, as he claimed? That he’d read about Draco in the paper, reckoned out who he was, and taken him in out of mercy? But if Dearborn knew who Draco was, why hadn’t he tried to alert someone that he was alive or restore his memories? Or had he tried after all, and been unsuccessful?

Or was it all engineered? Was Dearborn in cahoots with whoever had Obliviated Draco? Had the Obliviator stashed Draco at the strip club and then enlisted Dearborn to take Draco in? Was that why Dearborn had not attempted to tell Draco who he was when he took him in?

Or – and her throat closed up as a multitude of emotions washed through her – had Dearborn done the deed himself? But why would he have done so? And if Dearborn had Obliviated Draco to begin with, why would he attempt to trigger Draco’s memories with pointed comments instead of just reversing the charm? No, she could be sure, at least, that Dearborn had not been the one to erase Draco’s memories.

Draco was watching her as she reasoned this out in just the span of a few seconds. She realized he was waiting for her to say something.

“And then you don’t remember anything until we were in the bedroom?”

He nodded, and then his face grew determined. “You walked in on it, so you must have seen something. What did you see? Did I say anything? What did I do? Did you see me do this?” He gestured to the room.

She weighed the pros and cons of telling him the truth. Telling him what she’d seen might be enough to free his trapped memories. Or it might give him more reason to doubt his sanity. The decision to lie did not come easily. She shook her head. “No, I found you on the bedroom floor.”

The relief on his face was so apparent that it eased her guilt in the lie, but only a little.

“You said this happened once before. What happened then?”

He sighed. “I don’t really know. I was just… missing time, I guess. I was making some tea, and then I found myself in the closet in my bedroom, hiding underneath a pile of clothes, and the tea kettle was whistling. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.”

“When was this?”

“Nearly three years ago. I hadn’t been here long.” Draco picked up a pile of books and set them on the low table in front of the sofa. “It was something to do with the tea kettle, though. The whistling noise. I had to get a kettle that wouldn’t whistle.”

Hermione nodded in mute understanding. The shrill whistle of a tea kettle sounded just like the screaming of the Avada Kedavra curse as it split the air. Her kettle didn’t whistle either.

Do it. Do it now! Tell him! The voice inside which she had for two months so successfully ignored was screaming at the top of its lungs. It was impossible to ignore. It was right. She had to try again, when he wasn’t altered.

“I need to tell you something,” she began. “I’ve lied to you.” As soon as she said the words, the tight knot inside her chest began to loosen.

This was it.

His face paled even further, which she hadn’t thought possible. “You saw everything,” he guessed.

She nodded, but amended, “Not everything. The door was locked when I came back and when I knocked, you let me in. You’re right. You weren’t robbed. You did do this. I watched you do it.”

He shuddered and looked away.

“Please, look at me. There’s more.”

“I don’t know if I want to hear more.”

Hermione squeezed his hand, knowing that afterward, she might never get the chance to touch him again.

“You were scared, looking for your wand. You couldn’t find it.”

Draco’s forehead crinkled and his head tilted to the side.

“What?”

“You were looking for your wand, which is why you tore everything off the shelves. You said there were Death Eaters downstairs and that your mother was fighting them.”

Draco’s expression did not change.

Hermione plowed on. “I know who you are. I knew when we first saw each other at the strip club. Your name is Draco Malfoy. You’re a wizard. You can do magic. My name is Hermione Granger, and we went to Hogwarts together. I’ve lied to you all this time. But not about loving you. That isn’t a lie. I’m so sorry, Draco. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Through all of that, Draco did not move. She searched his expression for anger, for hurt, for forgiveness, but there was nothing in his eyes. Even the confused crinkle on his forehead had smoothed out. It was like he was staring through her.

She held her breath and waited. Silent Draco was more frightening than Raging Draco. Her hand in Draco’s hand grew clammy and tremors shook her body. The silence stretched on until she could no longer bear it.

“Say something,” she begged.

Still, Draco did not move. His fingers went lax in her grasp and the look in his eyes grew even more distant. Was he remembering everything? She didn’t think so; there was always a light in someone’s eyes when they were given back memories. His eyes were empty, almost as though he had gone somewhere else.

“Draco,” she persisted.

There was no reaction at all. A horrible suspicion grew in her mind, and something heavy and leaden settled in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t just as if he had gone somewhere else, it was as if he had shut down.

“Damien?”

Instantly, his eyes fixed on her face. “I’m sorry, what were you saying, Jane?”

She was thankful she was still sitting on the floor or she would have collapsed. Inside, she was screaming. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. She was supposed to tell him and it would fix everything. But it hadn’t, and disappointment and anger bubbled in her stomach. Whoever had Obliviated Draco had been thorough in ensuring that his memories could not be triggered. All this time, she had tortured herself, for nothing. And she had let him down.

She thought back to the night Draco had called her in the middle of the night and she had accidentally said his name. He hadn’t remembered it, but she had attributed that to his state of inebriation. And the night when they’d been in bed, when she’d confessed everything, but he’d appeared to be asleep. And again, in the morning, he hadn’t remembered.

All along, the truth had been right there, but she hadn’t seen it. Draco’s memories could not be triggered.

“Jane? You said you had something to tell me.”

Hermione tried to breathe, but it was as though she was caught in a vacuum. At last, she drew in a wheezing gasp of air and waved off Draco’s look of concern. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you alright?”

“It’s just a bit of dust,” she explained away as she took another strained breath. “I’m fine. How are you?”

He grunted, then stood and began to gather the books that he’d knocked from the shelves. Hermione helped him return his belongings to their proper homes. He was quiet during the procedure, and this suited her well, since she was in such deep thought that keeping up a conversation would have been impossible for her to accomplish.

She mulled over her failed attempt at triggering Draco’s memories. She realized the fault in her logic. All along she’d been operating on the belief that she could trigger Draco’s memories. But if it was a simple matter of telling an Obliviated person the facts that they’d forgotten, Voldemort would have been able to break through her charms easily, and Gilderoy Lockhart wouldn’t be wandering St. Mungo’s like a chipper ghost.

Very few Memory Charms could be reversed through a simple triggering of remembrances. In the back of her mind, she’d always known that it was probable that she could tell Draco everything she knew about his life as a wizard and still not trigger his memories, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

Which made her first priority getting to Dearborn and talking with him. If he knew who had Obliviated Draco, then it was a simple matter of tracking them down if they were alive, or, if the perpetrator was now dead, at least she could work on why they’d Obliviated him to begin with.

After she’d had a chat with Dearborn, she’d be able to assess the danger to Draco, and to herself. Did Dearborn think she was a threat to Draco? Is that why he’d attempted to trigger Draco’s memories? She chewed on her lip in distress. The man would have to be assured that she meant Draco no harm.

Very few options remained if Dearborn couldn’t assist her. The first was to keep trying to break through the charm by telling Draco everything. Perhaps sooner or later, even if the charm didn’t break, he’d be cognizant of her attempt and believe what she had to say. Another was to broaden her investigation and include the proper authorities. She was loathe to do so, though, because doing so would bring a very helpless Draco to the attention of the Ministry. How could he defend himself if he didn’t even remember committing the crimes he was accused of?

Once they’d returned Draco’s flat to order, they snuggled down on the sofa to watch a movie. He chose the movie Willow, which Hermione had loved as a child but could now not concentrate on. Everything about it was too similar to her all of a sudden. A baby born as one prophesized to put an end to a Dark witch – and thus facing certain death – an unwilling hero faced with a task far too large for him, and magic – magic everywhere. She shivered and rested her head against Draco’s chest.

Draco didn’t seem to be paying attention to the movie, either. From the corner of her eye, she watched as he looked around the flat, an increasingly perplexed look on his face. But then he reverted to staring unseeingly at the screen of his television. When the movie ended, he blinked a few times and then fumbled for the remote. The television clicked off.

For a few moments, the flat was filled with such a pressing silence that the quiet ticking of the clock in the kitchen was deafening. TICK-tock. TICK-tock. TICK-tock.

“I suppose I should get ready for work,” Draco said at last, startling Hermione.

“Are you sure that it’s wise for you to work tonight?” Hermione asked him, worried.

“No, but what else am I going to do? Sit around my flat and wait until I’ve gone completely mental?” Draco sighed. “I’ll be fine. I was fine afterward the other time this happened. I’ll be fine now.”

Still torn, Hermione chewed on her lip. She didn’t want him to be alone, and that outweighed her desire to never step foot in that strip club again. Reluctantly, she said, “Alright, but I’m coming with you.”

Draco looked vaguely injured. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’ll be fine.”

Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but seeing the look on his face, closed it again. Confused by his refusal, she gave him a questioning look. Any other time, he would have been delighted to have her there with him. “I’m just worried about you,” she admitted at last.

“I know, and I appreciate it.”

“So, why – ”

“Please, Jane. I would just rather be alone tonight.” He softened the blunt statement with a kiss and then stood to prepare for his evening.

She didn’t try to argue again.

***

Against her better judgment, Hermione walked with Draco to the strip club and watched him go inside. Still torn, she lingered in the alley for several minutes. Sneak inside in a disguise? Pop home for her Invisibility Cloak and tail him the entire night? Or honor his wishes and leave him alone?

There was still the matter of Dearborn. Before anything else happened, she needed to speak with him. He could be the key to unlocking everything. If he knew the Obliviator’s identity, she could have the charm reversed before the night was through, and then she wouldn’t need to worry about Draco any longer.

She ached at the thought.

It would all be over.

Everything.

With a frustrated cry, she whirled on her heel and purposefully strode back to Draco’s building. A light, misting rain began to fall from the chilly sky, but she just yanked up her hood and increased her pace. She came to a sudden stop before the stoop and looked up at Draco’s windows with their green curtains. She rocked on her heels as she remembered the first time she’d come here. How different the world looked to her now than it had just two months ago, before she grew attached, before she fell in love.

This building had looked sinister to her then with its worn, brick façade, faded carpet and peeling paint. Now it looked a bit like home. She swallowed against her nerves, reached deep inside for a bit of her lagging bravery, and let herself into the building.

She knocked on Dearborn’s door and waited. But nobody came to the door, and she knocked again. “Hello? Mr. Dearborn?” she called. There was no noise from inside the flat when she pressed her ear to the cold wood of the door. “Anybody home?”

When it became apparent that no one was going to answer the door, she reached into her jacket pocket for her wand. Homenum revelio, she thought. The spell revealed that nobody was inside the flat.

“Fuck,” Hermione spat. “Bleeding, sodding, buggering fuck.”

She paced outside the door, wand in hand, and considered her next move. There was the option of breaking into the landlord’s flat and seeing if there was anything useful to be found inside. But she didn’t know when he would be back, and she didn’t want to risk getting caught.

After completing one last pass in front of Dearborn’s door, Hermione swung wide and propelled herself out the front door and onto the stoop. Pacing in front of Dearborn’s door was accomplishing nothing. She would come back and wait for him, but for now, she had to plan accordingly if the landlord couldn’t help her.

With a shudder, she darted into the nearest narrow alley and Apparated home. If Dearborn couldn’t help her, and Draco’s Memory Charm was not the sort that could be ended by triggering, she had to face the possibility that Draco might never remember. She thought of Gilderoy Lockhart again, now eight years in St. Mungos and even with daily intensive therapy, only vaguely aware of who he was.

Hermione kicked off her shoes by the door and padded down the hallway to her bedroom. Crookshanks was stretched across the bed, and he opened one eye to examine her when she sat on the foot of her bed and fell back onto the duvet.

“I don’t know what to do,” she told him, reaching out to scratch behind his ears. “What should I do?”

But the cat had no answers. He closed his eye and rolled onto his side in a clear invitation to rub his belly. She obliged at once, grateful for his company, which was like an anchor that kept her from drifting into a whirlpool of misery.

The longer she rested on the bed, though, the more frenetic her thoughts became. Thinking was getting her nowhere. She jerked herself up, disturbing Crookshanks. He pulled himself to his feet with a massive stretch and then hopped down from the bed.

Now bereft of his company, Hermione watched as he paused in the middle of the floor and licked a paw, and then made a beeline for the window. He hopped onto her old school trunk, closed in the corner, and then pulled himself onto the deep windowsill.

Just then, she remembered that there was a book in her trunk that might be able to help her. After her sixth year, after Flitwick had noticed her exceptional proficiency with Memory Charms and encouraged her to continue to study them, she’d found a book at Flourish and Blotts that focused on the Lockhart case. It detailed the therapies the Healers used in their attempts to restore his memories. It wasn’t quite the same situation as the one Draco was in; Draco hadn’t accidentally blasted himself with a Memory Charm using a broken wand causing irreversible damage, but the techniques would still work.

It could take years and years of hard work, but perhaps there was hope yet. If she couldn’t restore his memories the easy way, and if she couldn’t trigger them either, she’d just have to keep at it until it started to come back to him.

Still, she paused as she knelt in front of the trunk, and skimmed her hands across the surface. The trunk had been in a miserable state when she’d opened it last month, full of wrinkled scrolls, bits and scraps of parchment, broken quills and empty ink bottles. But there was nothing in there to hurt her any longer. She’d finally managed to throw away the old battle robes without them returning from the rubbish bin to haunt her.

With a deep breath, she flipped back the lid.

The trunk looked just as it had before. Everything was jumbled together in a disorganized mess. And somewhere in the mess was the book she needed. She reached in and began to shift through the tangle of books, robes and miscellaneous things. On the carpet around the trunk, she started three piles, one for things she meant to keep in the trunk, one for things she would spread around her flat, and one for things she would throw away.

She found third year Potions essays, quills with their tips worn down to nubs, ink bottles with cracks down the side, the chain she’d kept her Time-Turner on, and her Herbology gloves. Most of that went into the pile of items she meant to throw away. But then there were photos and text books and gifts from Ron and Harry that she added with care to the pile of things she meant to spread around her flat. She even found an old and battered cat toy which she tossed onto the middle of the floor. Crookshanks looked down from the window sill with minimal interest before he turned his attention once more to the outside world.

When she reached into the trunk again, she dug her fingers down into the thick coating of scrolls and bits of parchment that lined the bottom. The book she was looking for still had not made an appearance. Frustrated, she rummaged through the detritus of parchment until her fingers came in contact with the spine of a worn book. She pulled it from the trunk and gave a cry of triumph. There it was, Who is He? by Sirona Spinks, with foreword by Gilderoy Lockhart.

She meant to flip directly to the section on the treatments the Healers had used on Lockhart, but there was something stuck between the pages toward the middle of the book. It was probably a scrap of parchment that had gotten stuck there over the years. She flipped to the offending pages and found not a bit of parchment torn from an essay or covered in scribbled notes, but an envelope.

The envelope read, “Do Not Open until Voldemort is dead.” The handwriting was definitely her own, but she had no idea when she had written it.

She set the book to the side, and then with hands that had begun to tremble, she slit the end of the envelope with her wand, and peered inside. A key and a single small slip of paper fell out into her awaiting hand. She examined the key, thinking it looked similar to her Gringotts key. She unfolded the slip of paper and turned it over, seeing a short note, again, written by her hand.

“To Whoever finds this:

If, and only if, the war is over and Voldemort is dead, there is something extremely important that needs to be recovered. Please visit Gringotts, Vault 318.

H.G.”

The horrible realization that she had been Obliviated sank into her limbs like heavy concrete. She sagged against the trunk and thought backwards. When and why had she been Obliviated? Clearly, she deduced as she read the note again, someone had performed a Memory Charm on her in order to hide this information.

Had it been Ron or Harry? Had they found something in their travels that required such extreme measures? What was hidden in Vault 318?

She dug through the remaining scraps of paper at the bottom of her trunk, but found no other clues to indicate what the cryptic note meant. Without replacing the contents of the trunk, she got to her feet at once, and headed for the door. The answer lay within Vault 318, so the quicker she got there, the sooner she’d understand what the note was all about.

***

The chill of the day seemed to have deepened as the evening had progressed. A stiff wind swirled damp leaves in eddies on the street outside the Leaky Cauldron. Over the doorway, the ancient sign creaked as it swayed back and forth in the breeze.

A sense of foreboding gripped Hermione as she pulled the collar of her jacket up to shield from the cold. She watched the sign swing, and the small figure of the witch bent over her cauldron seemed to be waving her away. She blinked and brushed a curl from in front of her eyes, and once more, the witch was bent over her cauldron, unmoving on the sign.

Inside, the pub was crowded. A large group was gathered around the wireless, listening to the Cannons versus the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch game.

The disembodied voice of the announcer boomed through the room. “And Keeper Ron Weasley makes another spectacular diving save!”

The crowd erupted in cheers and patted each other on the back. At once, Hermione’s mood grew even more morose. She’d meant to go to that game to cheer on her friends. It was too late now, however, and Hermione ducked her head and hurried to the courtyard exit, grateful at least that the game had distracted everyone from noticing her entrance.

Diagon Alley was crowded with weekend shoppers. A large group was gathered outside Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, exclaiming in delight over the obscenely colorful window display. Everywhere, she saw families, couples, laughter and smiles. It only fueled her ever increasing bleak mood.

The crowds seemed to part before her as she strode toward Gringotts, her head bent to the stiff wind that gusted through the street. The enormous stone building rose up before her and she paused for a moment at the base of the pristine white stairs to glance up at the goblin guarding the bronze double doors before she hurried up to the bank’s entrance.

The goblin’s upper lip curled at her approach, but she was spared the tedium of a lengthy search as he waved her through to the entrance hall. The pair of goblins guarding the inner doors did not acknowledge her at all as she stepped into the vast main hall and crossed the echoing marble room to the counters.

With a growing sense of dread, she gave the goblin behind the counter the number of the vault she sought and presented the key.

After the goblin scrutinized the key, he grunted, “This way.” Hermione followed him through one of the numerous doors off the main hall and entered the poorly lit passageway behind it.

She kept her eyes closed through the cart ride. Their speed at times felt as though it would send the cart careening off the tracks, but at last they rolled to a halt in a narrow, torch-lit corridor.

“Vault 318,” the goblin intoned.

Hermione stumbled out of the cart and held onto the frame for a moment as her legs steadied. She approached the small, round, metal door with the goblin, who inserted a key into one of the locks and gestured for her to do the same.

When the door swung open, for a moment, she felt like laughing. The vault was empty.

But then the torches in the circular vault flared to life, and she saw a small box in the middle of the floor. Uncertain, she paused in the doorway. The goblin cleared his throat noisily.

She crossed the threshold, stooped over to avoid knocking her head on the low ceiling. Before she scooped up the plain wooden box, she circled it once, wand out, and searched for enchantments. The goblin made a choking noise that might have been laughter.

When her scan revealed nothing threatening, Hermione crouched down and picked up the lightweight box, which was the size of loaf of bread. It was coated in a fine layer of dust and bore no information concerning its contents. She swept her eyes around the room to ensure that she wasn’t missing something, and then placed the box inside her jacket and returned to the cart.

During the ride back up to the surface, she fought to remember placing the box in the vault in the first place, but could not find a shred of memory. What could be inside the box that was of such importance that she had been Obliviated to protect it? For once, the cart ride wasn’t quick enough for her.

When she emerged from the bank, the sky was growing dark and the crowds in Diagon Alley had thinned. She hurried down the street, the box tucked with care under her arm, and decided that Dearborn could wait a little while, at least until she had sorted out whatever was in the box.

Once back in the privacy of her own flat, Hermione sat the box on the low table in front of her sofa and stared at it. She could not imagine what could be inside, and she puzzled on it for just a moment longer before she began to search the surface for a way to open the box.

There was no visible lid, nor hinge or any other indication that the box opened. It looked like one solid piece of wood. Something so important would not just open for anyone, she knew. With this thought in mind, she pulled her wand from her pocket. As she paused to consider which spell she should use first in her attempt to open the box, she let the tip of her wand rest on the top of it. There was a quiet click, and then the top of the box sat ajar on a hinge. Hermione held her breath and flipped back the lid.

Inside, in protective wrapping, were six vials with only numbers for labels. But Hermione did not need labels to recognize the swirling, ethereal substance in the clear vials.

The box contained memories.

---

Author's Notes: Things are going to get a little crazy for a while. I'd love to hear your thoughts and theories, so make sure you stop by my yahoo group. As always, reviews are love.