A Pound of Flesh

Chapter Twenty-Six: Tomorrow

Hermione opened her eyes to the morning.

She closed them again, not wanting to see the thin slice of sun cutting across the far wall that meant tomorrow had come for her at last. For some time, she willed herself to go back to sleep, just to delay the inevitable for a few more hours, but she was wound too tightly to relax.

Without moving or opening her eyes, she concentrated on the world around her. Draco filled all of her senses. She could hear his deep, slumbering breaths, feel the heat radiating from his body where he was pressed close to her, smell his sweet, musky aroma, and if she thought very hard, she imagined she could still taste his full lips.

She rolled onto her side to look at Draco. He slept on next to her, sprawled on his back with an arm flung over his head. The silver sheet tangled around his waist, and one foot had kicked free to rest on top of the duvet. His hair fanned around him on the pillow like a halo, and he looked almost angelic.

She caught herself before she could whisper on the irony. It was too much like Déjà vu.

Her eyes burned and she rubbed them with her hands, feeling the grit of dried tears clinging to her lashes. She pushed up and rested on her elbow.

She could do it right now, while he was still asleep, and sneak out before he awoke, but she was not that much of a coward. He’d earned the right to lash out at her, to tell her he hated her for what she’d done, and she wasn’t going to take that away from him. Not after she’d taken so much else.

Instead, she slipped out of bed and dressed. She checked that her wand was secure in her boot holster, Draco’s wand next to it, and then bent to kiss his forehead. He stirred but did not wake.

Once she was ready to face the day, Hermione retreated to the kitchen, where she started a kettle of tea on the stove, and then went to stand before Draco’s bookshelves, looking for a particular novel, one she had read once when she was younger and had been surprised to see in his collection of books. She saw it on a high shelf, sandwiched between a cookbook and a Dean Koontz novel. She retrieved the book and went to sit on his sofa, and made a futile attempt to read while she waited for him.

She didn’t have to wait long.

She heard Draco moving around in his bedroom, getting dressed. When he came out of his bedroom, she marked the page she’d been reading over and over again with a scrap of paper and set the book on his coffee table, then drew her knees up to her chin and hugged herself. He came down the hallway in slow, shuffling steps. When he emerged from the dark passage, some of the shadows remained on his face and haunted his eyes. He stared at her for a long moment, wordless, and then turned and went into the kitchen, emerging with two cups of tea.

When he sat next to her on the sofa, he handed her one of the cups, and without taking a sip from it, she placed on the table next to the book. She waited for him to speak.

He stared straight ahead, and she might have thought he was simply still half-asleep but for the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and the way his jaw was working. Then he reached for her and pulled her onto his lap so that she straddled him. He placed his hands on her hips, and for another long moment, his troubled gaze bored into her eyes. The grey there was swimming with confusion and dread.

He took a deep breath, appearing to steel himself, and then said, “Alright, tell me.”

With a halting nod, Hermione leaned forward and kissed him, feeling tears trembling at the corners of her eyes.

How to start, she wondered. With an apology? No, she decided, apologies could come later. This time was precious, and she didn’t want to squander it with useless apologies. Draco squeezed her hips in encouragement, and her breath caught in her throat. Here she was, about to destroy his life all over again, and he was encouraging her. She did not deserve such a man. A brief swell of gratitude crested against the rising tide of her misery, and the words – the right words – came to her.

“Thank you…for…” Hermione choked, the words getting tangled up in her sorrow.

He shushed her and kissed her again, and this time, she felt it reflected in his lips: the dreadful, awful taste of finality. He brushed his thumb against her cheek, and the motion made her throat grow even tighter.

When the pressure of Draco’s lips left her mouth for the last time, she steadied herself. “Thank you,” she whispered brokenly. “Thank you for loving me. It’s meant so much to me to know you love me as much as I love you. Remember that, please, that I do love you. So much more than I ever thought possible.”

“Jane, what is this?” he asked as tears began to stream down her face.

She shook her head and looked to the ceiling, willing herself to have the strength for this. “Not Jane,” she said.

“Not Jane?” he repeated. She lowered her eyes to his face as he blinked in realization. “Your name isn’t Jane.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s Hermione, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You lied to me.”

She nodded, her voice failing her.

“You’ve been lying to me all along. Why would you do that?” Before she could answer, Draco’s eyes widened. “The girl in my dreams. You are the girl in my dreams,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she gasped.

“You knew me from before.” It wasn’t a question.

She nodded again. “I did.”

“You know who I am. Who I was – before.”

With another nod, she attempted to slide off his lap. He held her in place, his fingers tight and almost painful against her flesh.

“Last night… you called me…” He exhaled in one long, shaky release, and when he took another breath, the gasp of air rattled in his throat. “My name isn’t Damien, is it?”

“No,” she whispered in a broken exhalation.

“What is my name?”

Please, please let him remember, she prayed, before answering, “Draco Malfoy.”

She saw the flicker in his eyes as his brain dutifully tried to expel that knowledge, and she grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

“No,” she said urgently. “Don’t you forget. Fight it, remember it! Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy! Say it!”

He looked startled by her outburst, and then complied. “Draco Malfoy,” he said, then stared at her in horrified comprehension. “Like the beggar on the street said. When you said he was just some nutter.”

“Yes.”

His eyes fluttered closed and he curled into himself as though he’d been punched in the gut. “This is why you said I’d hate you,” he whispered to himself. Then, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you do that? Why would you lie to me? Why?”

There were so many answers she could have given him, the explanation of the war, his supposed death and her promise to hide and protect him, or of her original intention to reinforce the Memory Charm and leave him where he was better off, but instead, when she opened her mouth, what she said was, “I’ve tried to tell you before, but you didn’t remember. You can’t remember. You won’t remember. Your brain won’t let you.”

At last, he looked at her, grey eyes simmering with hurt and confusion. “That seems like a rather convenient and implausible excuse.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Trying to protect me from what?” he demanded.

Hermione braced herself. “Close your eyes, and I’ll explain everything, I promise,” she commanded shakily, not wanting to see the light of realization in his eyes when she reversed her spell. “I won’t be able to do this if I see you looking at me like you hate me.”

Draco just looked at her for a moment, distrust growing on his face, and then he obeyed.

The pressure in her chest grew. She took one last look at his handsome, sharply contoured face. She traced her fingertips along his high cheekbones and back to his hair. She slid her fingers through the silky blond locks for the final time, and noted with bitter acceptance that he flinched away from her touch.

She reached into her boot, finding both of their wands in her holster.

Hermione pulled his right hand free from behind her back and brought it between them. She placed his wand in his hand, and he jerked as though he’d been burned. But he kept his eyes shut as his hand closed around the worn wood. “What’s this?”

“Your wand,” she gasped as she raised her own wand to his temple and rested it there.

“My what?” he exclaimed.

But Hermione was already whispering, “Meminisse Recordatio.”

The brilliant glow of blue light sank into his temple. She dropped her wand hand to her side and prayed.

***

Draco’s first memory was of flying. He remembered the delightful lightness of it, the wicked speed of the wind rushing through his ears drowning out all sound, the way his eyes stung with the air and grew blurry with moisture. The sensation filled him; the plunging descent that left his head swimming, the rapid ascent that left his stomach by his feet. Of finding a current of air and barreling through clouds. Of being more than human. Of being something special.

But his first memory was not like that, though he felt all these sensations as he remembered. No, this memory found him hovering on his first broom in the back garden, his father standing beside the broom with his hands at the ready to catch him if he fell – for a moment, his father’s proud face was obscured by a strange white mask – and his mother off to the side with a wide smile that was meant for him – but his mother’s hair was bloody.

No, that’s not how the memory went. His father hadn’t worn a mask like that when Draco was five, and his mother’s hair had never been bloody…

But he was still flying, and the garden was sunny and warm. He could smell the fragrant jonquils that grew in clusters around the babbling fountain.

“Ready, son?” Lucius asked, and Draco nodded. He’d been waiting for this ever since the moment he’d discovered the broom – a birthday present – at the foot of his bed that morning.

“Ready,” Draco exclaimed, and his father let go of the broom. He bobbled a bit, then righted the nose of the broom and rose until he was level with his father’s face.

“See, Narcissa?” his father laughed. “He’s a natural, just like I said he would be.”

“He’ll be playing for the Falcons one day,” Narcissa agreed, and Draco basked in his parents’ praise.

The broom drifted higher, higher, until Draco was staring at the treetops of the Forbidden Forest. His robes billowed around him as he bulleted away from the castle with Neville Longbottom’s Remembrall clutched in his hand. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Harry Potter pursuing him – already trying to play hero, Potter? – and wanted to laugh.

He’d dreamt of this so many times. He knew the feel of the broom thrumming between his legs, of the crackle of his robes as they snapped in the gusting air. He even knew what Potter would say before he shouted it. He remembered drawing his hand back and hurling the Remembrall as hard as he could, and as it shot away from him, Potter hurtled after it.

Draco meant to land, but then he realized it wasn’t a Remembrall that Potter was streaking across the sky to catch, but the Golden Snitch. Aghast, Draco stretched out flat against his broom and struggled to catch up, not wanting to be outdone yet again by Harry bloody Potter. The wind sliced at his cheeks and he cursed the distance that meant Potter would get to the Snitch first. Far below him, the crowd had noticed the race to the golden ball and was cheering loudly. The roar of sound filled his ears as he sped hopelessly toward where Potter was reaching out for the Snitch.

But then Potter pivoted on his broom and shouted something, and the golden ball abruptly changed courses and shot toward Draco. He reached up to intercept the Snitch as it passed him, full of disbelief.

Except it wasn’t a Snitch any longer. It was the vibrant bolt of a hideous curse, and while his attempt at spell-casting died on his lips, Potter’s aim was true, and a giant invisible blade tried to bisect him from navel to nose. He collapsed on his back in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, hands scrabbling at his chest, and when he tried to gasp in a breath of air, he wheezed and gurgled. His hands came away from his chest covered in blood.

– His mother’s hair was bloody.

Harry – Voldemort – stood over him. Harry looked horrified – Voldemort laughed and raised his wand again.

But then the pain faded, and the ceiling above Draco dissolved into a brilliant, sunny day. Above him, the budding branches of a tree waved in the wind, and the sound filled his ears with a pleasant roar. He pillowed his head with his arms and smiled up to the sky, satisfied with his lot in life.

The wind died down and he heard birds chirping, and laughter. He turned his head on his arms and saw Pansy stretched out next to him on the blanket, giggles bubbling from her mouth as she smoothed her skirt down from her hips and started to button her rumpled blouse. Hogwarts in the springtime was almost as lovely as the back gardens at Malfoy Manor, made lovelier today in their secluded spot by the lake with the clump of convenient boulders that shielded them from the castle’s view.

“You’ll never forget that, will you?” Pansy asked.

No, Draco knew he would remember this one afternoon for the rest of his life. It wasn’t every day, after all, that one lost their virginity. “How could I forget this? It’s the most perfect day of my life,” he told her.

Pansy rolled onto her side and kissed him, and then she swung up to straddle him again, but this time she was buttoning his pants instead of undoing them. Her hair hung down in his face as she bent to kiss him again.

His mother’s hair –

“I don’t want to remember that one yet,” he said aloud. Pansy didn’t hear him; Pansy was gone. The world around him had gone dark.

***

With a shaky gasp of air, Draco opened his eyes and looked at Hermione.

For a long moment, he just stared at her, a myriad of emotions swirling in his grey eyes. Hermione felt like she was looking into the depths of a stormy ocean. She felt him shaking between her legs, the fingers on her back flexing convulsively.

“I remember…” he gasped. “I’m Draco Malfoy!” The look of joy on his face was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. “How did you –”

He drew in another ragged breath as he recognized her, betrayal replacing the unadulterated glee on his face.

“Hermione Granger. You did this to me…” he breathed. “And you knew where I was, and you… you just left me…” With a cry of anger, he jerked his hands away from her and shoved her off his lap. She landed on the floor in a heap, not attempting to catch herself. He jumped to his feet and towered over her.

“You did this to me!” he shouted. “You knew where I was and who I was, and… and you – then you just decide to show up after three bloody years and… Oh, God!” Sparks showered from the end of his wand, and for an instant, she wondered at her folly, arming someone who had every right to hex her into oblivion. “All this time! All this time, you’ve just been shagging me, pretending you love me!”

“No…” Hermione moaned.

“Don’t LIE!” Draco screamed, his eyes blazing. “Over three years I’ve been living this miserable existence, not knowing who I was or how I ended up here, and you just waltz back into my life after all this time, thinking yourself so sodding clever, and start shagging me! Why now? Why wait three years? You could have been screwing me all along!” He reached down and grabbed her arm, pulling her up roughly. “I bet you’ve been having a good laugh with Potter and Weasley, telling them how you’re fucking poor, pitiful Draco; fucking him when he has no idea who you are!” He tightened his grip on her shoulders and shook her, and she let him.

“It wasn’t like that!” she protested, too ashamed to look up at his indignant face.

“What was it like, then, Hermione? If not revenge, then WHY?” He shoved her away, and she stumbled against the wall, where she sagged in resignation. “You were supposed to hide me, to protect me. And then you left me with Dearborn…” Draco’s voice trailed off as fresh betrayal registered on his face. “Fucking Dearborn. That sodding bastard.”

“Please, just let me explain,” she pled.

Draco’s angry eyes focused on her again and he gave a dark, humorless laugh. “Explain what, Granger? Explain why you Obliviated me and stole my whole life from me? Why you abandoned me at a strip joint and left me there to rot for three fucking years? Or how about when you finally decided to show up again, you fucking took advantage of me –”

“Yes, all of it. I can explain. I had to Obliviate you. I had nowhere else for you to go, and Dearborn would only keep you if you could pay rent. And I’m so sorry, Draco, so sorry about that first time at the club, but you invited me backstage and – ”

Draco stalked towards her, and she was reminded of the first time she’d seen him on the stage, lithe and panther-like, his eyes dark and predatory. He closed his hand around her throat.

“I didn’t know who you were!” he roared. “YOU KNEW!”

Gagging, she reached up, trying to pry his fingers from her throat, completely forgetting the wand in her hand. “Just let me explain, please!” she choked. “I Obliviated myself to protect you! I didn’t know I was the one – ”

He propelled her towards the door, and it exploded open on its own. “GET OUT!” he bellowed, shoving her into the hallway. She slammed against the wall, gasping for air, and tears streamed unchecked down her face.

For a brief moment, he stood in the doorway, wand pointed at her. He glared at her, chest heaving.

“Is he dead?” Draco demanded, his voice hard and cold.

“Who? Is who dead?”

“You-Know-Who. Is he dead?”

She swallowed a sob and nodded. “Over three years ago.”

He shut his eyes and shook his head, visibly trembling. His wand wavered, then dropped to his side. “Go home, Granger,” he spat.

“Draco, Draco, please,” she begged. “Just let me explain!”

“GO AWAY!” he shouted. Then he slammed the door in her face.

With a sob, she slid to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, staring at the worn wooden door. She heard a crash from within, and the sound of breaking glass. The door shook as something heavy slammed into it, and then there was silence.

Choking back her sobs, she crawled across the hallway, ignoring the grimy carpet, and pressed her hand against the door. Just on the other side, she heard a muffled moan. She rested her forehead against the door. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, caressing the door, imaging Draco slumped against it, just on the other side.

***

No… no… no… no!

– Red eyes, gleaming – and a high-pitched laugh –

Unbearable pain… Jeers and screams filled his ears….

Draco tried to fend off the memories he never wanted to remember, but to no avail. They would not stay forgotten. A rushing blur of images streamed through his vision and he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, unable to catch his breath.

He staggered backward and fell against the door. He clutched his head and sobbed breathlessly.

Voldemort’s pinched face swam against his closed eyelids and he cried out. He opened his eyes wide, but could not escape the phantom of Voldemort as he hovered over him, a sadistic smile on his lipless mouth. Draco thrust his hands out, trying to ward off the image of something that couldn’t be there.

He slid down the door, his legs useless.

Voldemort raised his wand – “Coward…” – and Draco tried to scramble back. The first curse exploded from the end of the gnarled, twisted wand and a jolt like a thousand stinging blades ripped through him. He convulsed and fell back against the door, panting. No, that wasn’t happening now – that happened then.

Hermione’s voice echoed through his head. “Don’t you ever think maybe it’s a good thing you can’t remember your past? Like maybe something so terrible happened that you don’t want to remember?”

Yes, yes, he did.

“He’s dead.” His mother’s voice filled his ears. “Dead… dead… dead…” Draco shook his head in disbelief. His father could not be dead. His father could not be killed, not be a mere Weasley, not by anyone. His mother had to be mistaken.

No… no… no….

A thin, reedy scream echoed in his ears, and he was curled around himself in the hidden space behind his closet in his bedroom, tasting the silent tears streaming down his face as he rocked back and forth, and Voldemort murdered his mother. The door would not open; his mother had locked him inside, helpless, wandless, trapped.

“Stay in here until it’s safe, darling…”

The screams had stopped, though the laughter continued. The lock on the closet clicked open. He pressed himself against the back wall, groping blindly on the floor for a weapon, something – anything – to throw. But the door did not open. The laughter and sounds of destruction faded as the Death Eaters left the room beneath him. As the silence stretched on, far more dreadful than the screams had been, Draco began to understand.

He pushed open the closet door and crawled out into the darkness, blind. His hand connected with his wand, and he snatched it up, casting a silent Lumos. Outside, something green and horrible shot into the air and hovered there, casting a ghostly pall through his window. One glance up confirmed the presence of the screaming Dark Mark, and as he looked down, he watched all the black-robed figures disappear. None of them looked back to see him watching them.

He was alive.

Mother…

Her blonde hair was bloody; she was sprawled out on the floor of the sitting room. Her glassy eyes stared through him at the ceiling and he collapsed on the floor next to her. Her dress hung in tatters, and the long marks carved into her skin were glaringly red against her bloodless skin. He panted; his heart racing in his chest made it impossible for him to take a deep breath. With shaking hands, he closed her eyes.

The air smelled of copper, smoke, and magic.

Why, why had she locked him in the closet, in the dark, when he could have fought beside her and protected her? Why had she let herself be killed? She was all he had left. She was the only one who knew he was alive.

Downstairs, someone was pushing aside the destroyed front doors of the Manor. Draco reeled backwards; his hand landed in the puddle of blood with a hot squelching noise and he sobbed without making a sound. He pushed himself off the floor, leaving behind a clearly defined bloody handprint on the carpet, and rushed for his hiding spot on the second floor.

Draco shook his head, trying to drag himself out of the grasp of the memory – no, no… she was right… it was better to not remember. She’d known. Granger had known he wouldn’t want these memories, and yet she’d given them back…

They’d almost caught him unawares, disabling the alarm wards he’d put in place for protection after Bellatrix had come back in search of something. But he’d heard their voices drifting up the stairs and through the cavernous, echoing corridors. Potter, Weasley, Granger, in his house.

Granger…

Granger is in my house…

She came so close to his hiding spot, her wand held aloft as she walked through slashes of bluish-white moonlight –

She stared up at him, her mouth open in surprise as he danced for her on stage –

– And he waited for her to find him. Waited for her to turn and see him in the shadows. Waited for her – she’d be the one to save him – but she turned away and started for the stairs.

Desperation forced him forward, and he stole up behind her. He wrapped one arm around her and pressed his other hand to her mouth. “Don’t scream,” he whispered into her ear as she went rigid against him. Her lips moved against his palm, and he was at once aware of the warmth of her body pressed back into his. A thrilling shock of need raced through him, and it startled him so much that he let her go.

“…maybe it’s a good thing you can’t remember…”

He stood at the window that overlooked the front gardens, and the drive that led up to the house. Granger, flanked by Potter and Weasley, walked away from the Manor. He thought about throwing open the casement and screaming down at them, anything to stop them from leaving him alone to wander through his massive tomb and wait for someone to come and kill him again. But before he could unlatch the window, they were gone.

“…something so terrible happened…”

He felt the bed dip as Hermione sat next to him. Then, incredibly, she hugged him. At first he stiffened, caught off guard by her unexpected comfort, but her touch seemed to loosen the knot of emotions in his chest. He leaned into her hug and clung to her in desperation, unable to stop crying. She stroked his hair in silence while he struggled to regain control of himself. And then he was aware of her close proximity again, and how warm she felt against him, and how good she smelled, and how long it had been since someone had just held him.

“…that you don’t want to remember?”

She pointed her wand at him, her expressive eyes wide, her face tense and determined. The wand shook, but then she flexed her grip on the wand and steadied her hand.

“I will come back for you, I swear it.”

“NO!” Draco shouted, propelling himself away from the door, reaching for the apparition of his memory. His arms passed through the vision and he skidded across the floor on his stomach.

This – this was what he’d so desperately wanted to remember? Torture, death, despair? A coward in his death, a pawn in Voldemort’s game, meant to be sacrificed – everything he’d believed in – everything – falling down around his ears. A prisoner in his name, in the expectations of his birth, of his house – all of the remembrances that would have filled him with comfort and joy could not fight their way through the churning black mass of horrible, dark memories.

He remained unmoving on the floor; his body heaved with wracking sobs. He wrapped his arms around his head and twisted his hands in his hair.

And Hermione had known. She’d known everything all along. He hated her – he wanted to hate her – fiercely. She’d stolen his life from him; she must have thought herself so clever, dumping him at a strip club with nary a backward glance.

“I will come back for you, I swear it.”

Draco pounded his forehead against the floor, a hysterical laugh mixing with his sobs. She’d come back, just as she’d promised. Just three years later than he’d anticipated…

“…temporary… for your own good…”

“Temporary,” he groaned.

Three years of his life, gone. Three years of living in the dark, of feeling adrift in a world where he did not belong.

Why now, he wondered, after all this time, did she decide to wander back into his life and play with him in such a cruel way? He never would have imagined her capable of such deception, of such betrayal. He had trusted her. He had believed that she loved him, just like he’d believed himself to be in love with her.

Draco rolled onto his back, limbs limp and flopping, and stared at the ceiling. His chest heaved as he wept, and tears pooled in his eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked and turned his head to the side. Three years… His hands balled into fists and he pounded on the floor.

He was a living, breathing corpse. The world thought he was dead, and had gone on without him. His hands tingled painfully. He couldn’t go back; he knew what waited for him in the wizarding world. He’d known it three years ago – all he had to look forward to was a life in Azkaban with each and every one of his vivid memories.

“Oh God,” Draco moaned, rolling onto his side. He curled upon himself and slapped his hand against the unyielding wooden floor. He remembered longing – longing – for this moment, his mind inventing endless amounts of idyllic memories that might be his. Meanwhile, the hallucinations and dreams he’d dismissed as overactive imagination or madness were his actual memories fighting through the charm.

His hand curved into a fist again and he beat at the floor in impotent rage. He wanted to hate Hermione. She’d never loved him; it had all been a game to her. As if it wasn’t enough that she’d taken away his wretched life, she’d come back to toy with his heart.

“Please don’t be mad at me for not telling you sooner. I didn’t want to lose you.”

Hermione’s anguished voice filled his ears. He’d thought it a dream at the time, a wonderful, lovely dream, because after she’d told him the truth about himself, she’d told him that she loved him.

It was all bullshit.

Rage surged through him again, propelling him to his feet, and he grabbed his teacup from the coffee table and flung it at the door. It exploded with a satisfying crash, bits of glass raining down and mingling with the tea that dripped to the floor.

He heard a sniffle outside his door and realized that Hermione was still in the hallway. He stormed toward the door, intent on opening it and strangling the life out of her.

“Thank you for loving me. It’s meant so much to me to know you love me as much as I love you. Remember that, please, that I do love you. So much more than I ever thought possible.”

Draco faltered as the memory of those words hit him like a punch to his gut. “Go the fuck away, Granger!” he shouted from the center of the room, daring not go to the door out of fear that he would physically harm her.

He heard her sob a shuddering breath, and then she said, “I love you.” Then he heard her stagger to her feet, and without another word, she rushed down the creaky stairs. He went to the window to wait.

In a few moments, he saw her stumbling down the walk, hugging herself. She did not look back as she ran down the street, away from him.

“Bitch,” he breathed. She’d done this to him. Her and Dearborn, both. She was lucky he hadn’t killed her. The wand was still emitting angry red sparks, and he looked down at it, rendered almost breathless by the sensation of having an outlet for channeling his magic.

Magic. He had magic.

“Lumos,” he said, and three years of pent-up magic flowed down his arm and out his wand. The light was so blinding he shielded his eyes and turned his face away. “Nox,” he muttered, and the beam of light shooting from the end of his wand faded, leaving the room seeming darker than it had been before. He laughed, and in a detached way, he noted how deranged and hysterical it sounded.

What was he supposed to do now?

Sniffling, he turned in a slow circle, observing his flat. This was what he’d accomplished living three years as a Muggle. Bookshelves crammed with novels and movies and music, paintings and portraits on the walls that had felt ‘right’ to him, a handful of friends, a partially completed Muggle education, and a lucrative career as a stripper. As a stripper! He lashed out, punching the nearest wall, then immediately regretted it as a searing pain shot through his knuckles and up his arm.

As he sat on the sofa and attempted to heal his injuries, he noticed the book on the table, one Hermione must have been reading while she waited for him to wake up. He picked it up and flipped it over to read the title. She’d been reading The End of the Affair. Draco wanted to hurl the book away from him, the bitter hurt swelling up and wrapping around his heart so that it was hard to breathe. But then he noticed the small scrap of paper marking her place, and opened it to where she’d stopped reading.

The previous owner of the book, likely a university student, had highlighted important passages in this novel, and so Draco’s eyes were at once drawn to the passage halfway down the page on the left. He read, I love him and I'll do anything if you'll make him alive... I'll give him up forever, only let him be alive with a chance... People can love each other without seeing each other, can't they, they love You all their lives without seeing You.*

The book slipped from Draco’s trembling fingers and fell to the floor. With a sob, he buried his face in his hands and grieved for all the things he’d forgotten, and for all of the things that were lost to him forever.

---

(*From The End of the Affair, by Graham Green)

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Author's Notes: I know I've been leading you up to this point for a very long time, so I hope it was all you wanted, and more. When I first decided to continue this story from a one-shot, the scene where Hermione reverses the Memory Charm was the first thing I wrote. So, this one has been two years in the making, for me.

As always, reviews = love. I had more reviews last chapter than any other chapter, so I appreciate the many of you who took the time to leave a comment.

Finally, if you haven't already, consider joining my yahoo! group. I post story updates, outtakes, and cookies there.