A Pound of Flesh

Chapter Twenty-Three: Lost Time



Damien’s head hurt. Hurt was actually an understatement, he decided with a grimace. His head felt like it was about to split into two. He rubbed at his temples and dropped onto the sofa in his dressing room. He closed his eyes and hoped the second dose of pain medicine he’d just taken would kick in before he had to go onstage.



Maybe he’d been on to something when he’d joked that he ought to try his hand at acting. He’d managed not to let on to Jane that his brain felt like it was about to implode, though he felt bad that he’d brushed off her when she’d offered to come hang out with him at the club. Especially given her recent aversion to spending any time there at all.



But she was worried and she’d want to talk about what had happened, and he did not feel like talking about it any more. He wondered how truthful she was being, since he remembered locking the door with a clarity that contradicted the blur of muddled impressions that followed. He could swear she’d said he’d let her in, and that she’d watched him trash his flat, but he didn’t know why he thought she’d said that. He didn’t remember her saying it. It was just the final bits of delusion wearing off, he supposed.



He snorted to himself. He was a fine one to wonder about her truthfulness, given the fact that he’d lied to her. But she did not need to know about the faint impressions he’d suffered during what could only be a delusion. It could be the truth, he ventured, that he didn’t remember anything between the time that Dearborn had gone and he’d found himself on the bedroom floor with her. It could be that the images and thoughts he’d experienced were something akin to a waking dream. Sort of like sleep-walking.



Jane did not need to be given any more reason to leave. She stayed in spite of his stripping, and even though he was insane enough to believe in magic, and that he was capable of it. And now she’d found him at the end of some sort of mental break with reality and had stuck around. Anything else might push her over the edge.



He didn’t know why he was so sure that Jane was going to leave. He just knew it. There was something in her manner, like she was in a constant state of saying goodbye, like every night she was steeling herself to walk away from him the next day, but never following through.



It was a contradiction. Up until her birthday, he’d been so sure of himself when it came to Jane. But something had changed after he’d told her he loved her, and he wasn’t sure what that was.



In spite of his certainty that she meant to leave, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been happier. He felt more aware, more alive. It was as though he’d been living life with a thin haze of fog clouding his vision, and now he could see things with a new clarity. He didn’t have to be a stripper for the rest of his life. How often did she tell him that? And he believed her. She encouraged his notions of attending university next fall, and he could see a different future than the one up until recently he’d been sure was his doomed fate. He wanted her in that different future.



It was like he was walking on the edge of a razor blade. One misstep and she’d be gone, taking all the hopes she’d brought with her



And this thinking was only making his head hurt worse. His first act was in less than fifteen minutes. If only he could harness whatever ability – magic or whatever it was – he had and use it to make his head feel better. Now that would be a useful trick. He kneaded his head with his fingertips and focused on the pain going away. He sighed when his head continued to throb with the same sickening intensity.



Perhaps tonight he would nap between acts instead of revising for his psychology course. Just go out there and do what he had to do, and then come back, curl up on his sofa, and sleep. The pain in his head eased at the thought.



He relaxed for another five minutes and then stood to dress in his first costume of the night. Louie called it his vampire look, with the cape and red waistcoat and puffy shirt that Jane hated, but Damien considered it his magician’s outfit. All that was missing was a magic wand and top hat.



The pounding in his head increased to the point where he had to stop dressing and lean against the arm of the sofa. When pain eased to where he could move again, he fastened the Velcro down the sides of his trousers and reminded himself he only had to be out there less than five minutes. He could endure five minutes, however much his head hurt.



But once he was actually standing on the stage with his back to the audience, he began to curse himself for not begging out of just this first act, just until his pounding head wasn’t making him want to vomit. There were just enough screaming women in the audience to hit that piercing note that made the insides of his ears vibrate.



He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. He could do this. He had to do this, because what else could he do?



With one final breath, he lifted his face to the lights and whispered, “Please dear God, please, let this be the last time. Please let me remember so I don’t have to do this any more.”



Then, praying he wouldn’t throw up in the middle of his act, he began the slow walk backwards towards the loud audience. After ten steps, he took a leisurely spin on his heel until he faced the half-full room.



The women screamed in delight, and the sound echoed off the inside of his skull. He reached out and grabbed onto a pole, bracing himself against it. Then, he put his finger to his lips and motioned the women to be quiet. It took several moments, but the last obnoxious shrieks died down until there was just a low murmur and the throb of his music.



He would do his routine slower than normal. He just had to make it look sensual, and not clumsy. It was just dancing. He could dance to anything. Even in the rain.



So instead of quick thrusts and spins, he undulated his hips and rotated in slow circles. The cries of delight began to grow in volume until Damien shushed them again. He pulled the cape off and spun it in a cloud of shimmering blackness above his head. There were a few yips of pleasure, but the crowd had learned quickly and whispered shushes erupted from the audience. He smiled. His girls were good to him.



The five minutes dragged on. But at last, down to a black thong, Damien blew a kiss to the audience and ripped the tiny garment off. The women roared in delight, and the sound of it went straight from his ears, down his throat, and into his churning stomach. He bolted off the stage and collided with Marlon the stagehand, who thrust a rubbish bin into his hands.



“Thanks,” Damien groaned, and then he retched into the bin.



After the roaring had faded in his ears and the spots in his eyes cleared, Damien shrugged into his dressing gown and stumbled back to his dressing room, giving the guards in the corridor instructions that he was not to be disturbed until his next act.



He stretched out on his sofa and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would come soon. But it did not come.



His mind took him back to that afternoon three years before when he’d found himself hiding in the closet under a pile of clothing. He’d been sobbing when he’d come back to reality, shaking with grief. But he couldn’t remember why he’d been so sad. He’d heard the tea kettle on his stove in the kitchen whistling shrilly, and it had horrified him. He had struggled out of the closet, trailing dirty socks and t-shirts on his way to the kitchen.



It was just a tea kettle. Why was the sound of a tea kettle’s whistle so terrifying?



Dr. Thomas thought perhaps he was suffering from some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the whistling sound had triggered a memory that he’d blocked out afterward. He’d spent a great deal of time after that trying to find sounds that were similar without much luck.



Had Cary inadvertently triggered a memory today?



And why did his head hurt so badly? He groaned and rolled his head toward the back of the sofa.



He pulled a pillow over his head to block out all sound and light. Then at last, he slept.



***



After wiping a sweaty, shaking hand off on her jeans, Hermione reached into the box and lifted one of the vials of memories free of the protective wrapping.



Memories. She’d been Obliviated to protect memories.



She felt violated. A sudden, new understanding of why her mother found it so hard to forgive her swept through her. How dare someone take something as valuable and treasured as her memories, no matter how good the reason?



With a deep breath, she paused to consider the fact that unlike her parents, apparently, she’d been a willing victim in whatever had happened. She’d taken the time to write a note and hide these memories – logically ones that had been taken from her – in a vault for safe keeping.



Still, it bothered her to not know what she was missing. And she would have known so much sooner if she’d just sorted out her school trunk instead of hiding from it for three years.



If these were her memories, whoever had Obliviated her must have been certain they would not live to see the other side of the war to reverse the charm. Or perhaps they had thought that her own chances of making it out alive weren’t good, and the memories – whatever they were – needed to be saved. The memories could be anything, and clearly they were of such importance that someone had deemed it necessary to remove them in case she fell into enemy hands. She would say it had to do with the Horcrux hunt, but she still remembered all of that clearly. No, whatever was in those vials, it was something she didn’t remember.



Her eyes fixed on the vial in her hand. The silvery substance within churned in languid swirls and gave off a faint shimmering glow. What was trapped in the vial?



Only one way to find out.



She replaced the vial and carried the box to her office, where she kept her Pensieve locked in a sturdy closet. Once the Pensieve was positioned on her desk, she sat down in her chair and stared at the box of memories.



Taking a deep breath, she once more plucked the first vial from the box. With careful fingers, she uncapped it and poured it into the Pensieve. At once, Mad-Eye Moody’s face swam to the surface.



Hermione’s throat constricted as she thought of the battle-worn old Auror. She remembered his glass eye, and his scarred face twisted in grim determination the night they’d all gone to retrieve Harry from Privet Drive.



All of this started with Moody. Somehow, that didn’t surprise her.



She prodded the surface of the Pensieve with her wand and watched as the shimmering liquid inside began to spin faster and faster. Then she lowered her face into the bowl.



Hermione found herself in the cramped kitchen of the Burrow. It was crowded with tense, silent people. All of the Weasleys were in attendance, as well as Tonks, Remus, Hagrid and Kingsley Shacklebolt. She spotted herself there as well, next to Ron. There was a knock at the door.



All of this she remembered. She knew the person at the door was Moody and that he was dragging Mundungus Fletcher along with him. Sure enough, after the procedural security questions, Moody pulled Dung into the kitchen with him, adding to the crowding.



As Moody went over the plan to rescue Harry from Privet Drive once again and warned of constant vigilance, Hermione listened intently. The faces surrounding her were focused and drawn. Dung shifted his weight from foot to foot, easing toward the door. Moody reached out and hauled him back.



After Moody finished outlining the plan, there were a few minutes of milling about as people paired up. Hermione watched as Moody sidled closer to where she had been standing with Ron. In a moment, he slipped out of the room, and amidst the chaos in the crowded space, her former self followed him.



Hermione did not remember this. But then again, she’d been so stressed and tense that most of the night blurred together.



She ducked into the sitting room in time to watch her younger counterpart approach Moody at the fireplace. The mantle was littered with the same photographs that had been there as long as she could remember. Moody was holding the one of the Prewett brothers, and as he put it back on the mantle, her former self came to a stop next to him.



“I expect Dumbledore prepared the lot of you for what’s to come,” the grizzled Auror said in a low, gravelly voice.



The girl beside him did not react.



Moody made a noise of approval and reached into his pocket. “There are a few things even Dumbledore didn’t know, though.” From his pocket he withdrew a slip of paper. Hermione peered over her younger self’s shoulder as he handed it to her. The memory version of herself unfolded the slip and read it.



“You’ll find help there, if you are in dire need of a place to hide.”



“In London? Will anywhere in London be safe?”



“For you three? I doubt anywhere will be safe for long.” Moody indicated the slip of paper. “Memorize that, and then burn it.”



The memory flickered and faded. Once more in her desk chair, Hermione took a deep, shuddering breath.



Her fingers shook so badly that she had to try more than once to retrieve the memory and return it to the vial. Without stopping to think, she lifted the second vial from the box and poured the memory into the waiting bowl. Then, as her entire body began to shake, she ventured into the Pensieve.



She landed with a muffled thud on the cool, grass-covered ground, too unsteady to land on her feet, and pushed her hair out of her face. She sat up in the tall, unkempt grass, looking around. It took a long moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, moonlit night.



As shaken as she was, she was unable to recognize where she had landed. The darkness did not help, either. Tall, overgrown shrubs grew along one side of a long, curved drive, and somewhere beyond the shrubs, a peacock was crowing.



She stood as she spotted three cloaked figures trudging slowly up the curved lane. They were silent, wands drawn as they crept closer to her. One turned their face her way and at once, she recognized Ron’s pale face, his red fringe visible beneath his hood.



And then Hermione knew where she was, and what she was about to see. She waited until the three figures grew nearer, and she fell in step behind herself, Ron and Harry as they cautiously made their way toward Malfoy Manor.



“You’re sure it’s – ” Ron began, looking over at the Hermione of the past, who was barely visible beneath her hood.



Her counterpart answered, sounding much more sure than she actually had been. “Peacocks, yes.”



At that moment, there was a large rustling behind the bushes, and all three turned together, wands poised. A large white peacock appeared on top of the hedge, shaking his tail feathers delicately.



“Merlin’s sweet balls,” Ron breathed out.



Hermione stepped ahead of the trio, glancing back at her past self. She looked tense, strung tightly like a taut wire, ready to snap. She recalled that she’d argued and argued with Harry over the folly of searching the abandoned Malfoy Manor, but Harry could not be dissuaded. He reasoned that Lucius had been in possession of one Horcrux, so there might be a slim chance that he’d come into ownership of a second.



They were scrambling for ideas, she remembered, grasping at threads for any place that Voldemort might have hidden a Horcrux. The search around Godric’s Hollow had thus far been fruitless, and they were all three running out of patience. But all the same, she had known full well that whatever Harry hoped to find at the manor would not be there. Voldemort would never keep two bits of his soul in one place. He was far too careful for that type of madness.



However, Harry had been persistent, and it was Harry’s quest, which was how they’d come to be trudging up the curved drive to Malfoy Manor under cover of the dead of night. They hadn’t found anything, of course, she knew, so she was confused as to why she’d stored this memory away in such an extreme manner with the others –



– Until a horrible suspicion gripped her, and she could see, with startling, brutal clarity, the final piece of the puzzle as it slipped into place. She shook her head in denial, feeling sick.



Desperate to deny what was right in front of her eyes, she walked further ahead of the phantoms of the past as they bickered quietly, and cast her gaze around. Hermione observed, as she had before, that the overgrown hedge lining the lane to the right side was becoming wilder and more tangled the closer they came to the heavy black gates that had been blasted apart by the Death Eaters when they came to call on the lady of the house. She passed through the gates a fair distance ahead of the trio, who paused to check for wards and traps.



They would find none, she knew. But they were cautious; even Harry had recognized that it would not be unlike Voldemort, or a Malfoy for that matter, to set up a trap for anyone foolhardy enough to wander in. At last, satisfied of their safety, they crossed through the gates, pulling their robes free from the reaching brambles.



Hermione turned back to gaze up the drive, where the manor rose imposingly out of the shadowy night, silhouetted by the half-moon, every window dark. She waited until Ron, Harry, and her past self drew ahead of her, and she followed once more, an impassive audience.



Harry’s voice drew her attention again as he whispered quietly to Ron. “Careful,” Harry cautioned Ron, who quickened his pace on his way to the front door, disregarding their system of checking for curses and traps before moving forward.



“The Aurors and MLE have already been through,” Ron sighed, pulling out his wand anyway. “They would have taken down all the curses.” Still, he scanned the area in front of the door, and his forehead furrowed as a faint red glow indicated a weak alarm ward. “That’s odd,” he noted.



Hermione had agreed with him on that, though at the time she’d figured the MLE had left it in place to alert them if anyone entered the manor, as they were about to do. She listened with half an ear as her past self shared that theory with Harry and Ron. She had a new theory now.



Once the spell was disabled, they forced their way through the doors, which hung drunkenly from their hinges, as though some massive force had blasted them inward. Hermione watched as Harry touched one of the doors lightly with his fingertips, leaving a trail in the scorch marks there.



Hermione followed behind the trio on stiff legs. Though she knew that she was in no danger, she was more frightened than she’d been during the memory she was witnessing. Somewhere ahead of her in this memory was something she did not want to see.



The trio paused just inside the destroyed front doors. The opulent entry hall was in shambles. The chandelier which had hung over the entry lay splintered on the floor, glass shards littering the floor in all directions. The walls, once covered in a silvery paper, were blackened by spell-fire.



“Wands out,” Harry whispered, sounding awestruck by the shadowy destruction. The others lit their wands, directing it around the entry hall as they stepped around the chandelier, glass crunching under their feet. As the trio examined one side of the entry hall, Hermione crossed to the other side, having noticed something she hadn’t seen before. The Malfoy family portrait hung empty on the wall, the occupants having fled to some other painting somewhere else in the massive house, whether from the destruction or from the apparent shame of having the words ‘Blood Traitors’ burned into the canvas.



Hermione’s teeth began to chatter.



When had it happened, then? Then she remembered what was to come, and her heart began to beat faster within her chest, almost as though she were anticipating the next words to be spoken.



“We should split up,” the past Hermione said, looking around with a critical eye.



She remembered suggesting it, knowing it was dangerous, but also knowing there was a lot of house to search, and not a lot of time in which to do it. It had happened sometime when she’d been away from Ron and Harry, then. Which meant neither of them had known.



Harry looked reluctant, but at last nodded his head, apparently coming to a similar conclusion. “Alright, but be careful,” he said in a hushed voice.



Hermione watched as the trio split up. Harry headed for the east wing of the house. Ron headed up the stairs, his wand held in front of him like a shield. The other Hermione strode with much more confidence than she’d actually been feeling into the west wing of the house.



Taking a deep breath, she followed the other Hermione, reminding herself that there had been nothing in the west wing of the house, nor in any other part of it, either. At least, not that she could remember. But that wasn’t saying much.



It was not easy to walk through the destruction the Death Eaters had wrought on the manor. The rest of the house had not fared any better than the entry. Prior to murdering Narcissa Malfoy, it appeared that Voldemort and his minions had entertained themselves by destroying everything in sight. Either that, or Narcissa had put up the fight of her life.



Even then, Hermione had preferred to believe that Narcissa had fought the Death Eaters with every ounce of grief and anger and fight that she’d had within her. She could almost imagine Narcissa darting down the corridors, fleeing her certain death but trying to take out as many Death Eaters as she could. But now, Hermione knew – she just knew – that there was more to Narcissa’s desperate fight.



The girl in front of her entered the sitting room on the first floor, and Hermione hung back a moment, remembering what she would see when she went in. She shook herself and stepped into the room, finding her younger self squatting over a dark red stain in the thick carpet. The bloodstain was enormous, so dark red it was nearly black in the glow of wand light. And nearby, in the carpet, was a clearly defined bloody handprint.



Hermione swallowed heavily. She’d assumed before she’d stumbled across this that Narcissa had been another recipient of the Killing Curse. After she’d discovered that stain, she shuddered to think of what had actually happened to the poor woman before she’d died.



Her doppelganger took a deep breath, and then cast the charm to search for an item imbued with Voldemort’s particular magic. But as she’d known it would be, no object stood out, and so the girl clamped her mouth shut, spun on her heel, and fled the room.



After searching all of the rooms on the ground floor and first floor of the west wing, Hermione followed herself as she headed up the curving staircase to the second floor. It was on this floor that things began to grow hazy. She blinked her eyes, wondering if it was a trick of the moonlight as things blurred slightly at the edges.



The destruction was absent on the second floor, she noted, not having noticed before. It was likely that the Death Eaters had not entered this part of the manor. She turned down a new corridor and froze.



The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was the corridor from her dreams. Not the endless, inky black one. The other corridor, the one with slices of bluish-white moonlight cutting across the plush carpet, bisecting the paintings and other opulent decorations. This was it, then – where it had happened.



Her counterpart continued on, indifferent to the moonlit path before her. If her memories held true, though, at any moment, Ron was going to call her name, startling the wits out of her, and tell her to come see the massive library. And she would go, and Harry, at last, would concede that there was nothing to be found, and then they would quickly leave Malfoy Manor and never come back.



Perhaps Hermione was mistaken. Perhaps she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe there was something else she was supposed to see that she’d missed. These weak reassurances to herself felt like lies, though.



The girl of her memory at last turned to make her way back to the stairwell, intending to go downstairs, when suddenly, something happened of which Hermione had no memory.



A black shape shifted and pulled away from the hazy shadows. Hermione started forward, wanting to warn the unaware girl.



“Look out!” she cried.



Her counterpart didn’t react; of course she wouldn’t, and before Hermione could cross the distance to herself, the black shape moved swiftly, wrapping an arm around the girl and pressing a hand to her mouth. “Don’t scream,” she heard a faint voice whisper.



The girl in the memory ripped herself free, panting with fright, and cried, "Expelliarmus!”



From the darkness, a worn wand came to her. Too rattled to catch it, she let it land with a clatter at her feet.



“Who’s there?” she demanded, her wand aimed at the shadows.



The dark shape stepped forward. Hermione spied a glint of silver-blond hair caught in the moonlight shining through a window, followed by a flash of an alabaster cheek, and an icy grey eye.



“Please,” Draco whispered, looking terrified. “Please, you must help me.”

---

Author's Notes: Most of the second half of this chapter has been written for literally over a year. I hope it meets with your approval. It was certainly fun to post. I eagerly await thoughts on this new development, and of course, reviews = love. To discuss your theories or just crow in victory, visit my yahoo group.