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From where he sat on the floor, quietly playing with his Chudley Cannons action figures, Teddy looked up at his uncle. The little boy had never seen his uncle unwell before; Uncle Harry was always there, always ready to play whatever game Teddy wanted, always ready to read Teddy’s favourite books to him, always ready to just be Uncle Harry, but now he sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, rocking back and forth. Uncle Harry had hardly spoken to him since they left storytime at the library, but now he whispered to himself so softly Teddy couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Grannie was sometimes unwell—not often, but sometimes. But then, Grannie was old. Uncle Harry was old, too, of course—all big people were old, after all—but not the same kind of old that Grannie was. Uncle Harry was young-old; Grannie was old-old. Uncle Harry had just turned twenty-two, Teddy knew—he was a big boy now, big enough to help Aunt Molly make Uncle Harry’s birthday cake and count the twenty-two candles for the top of the cake all by himself.
Sometimes, when Grannie was unwell, Teddy would give her Daggy to hold. Daggy was Teddy’s favourite toy, a stuffed dragon he’d had his whole life. Teddy knew Mummy had given him Daggy when he was still just a baby. Sometimes Daggy made Grannie cry, but sometimes he made her smile. Teddy couldn’t understand old people.
Daggy sat beside him on the floor, watching the little orange clad figures fly around the Quidditch pitch Uncle Harry had helped him set up before moving to sit on the couch by himself. Uncle Harry always played with his Chudley Canons with him, but Teddy knew sometimes even he himself didn’t feel good and didn’t want to play. Picking up Daggy, Teddy stood up and walked over to Uncle Harry.
“You can hold Daggy if you want to, Uncle Hawwy.”
~~~~~~~
Harry ran his hand over the child’s head, across his shoulder, down his arm. His breathing was steadier than it had been a moment ago; he no longer felt like he was on the verge of hyperventilating, but his grasp on himself was still tenuous at best.
“Don’t you feel good, Uncle Hawwy?”
Don’t I feel good? Harry had no idea how to answer that question. He had no idea how he felt: overwhelmed, overjoyed, destroyed, torn apart, made whole.
Overwhelmed.
Harry’s mouth had gone dry, and he had to struggle to get the words past the painful lump that had formed in his throat. “My head hurts, is all.” He swallowed twice and turned his head towards the window; it was dark, and the rain was coming down in sheets. Forcing a smile on his face, Harry returned his attention to his godson, letting his fingertips trace down the child’s arm. “It’s getting late. How about we get you into the bath?”
Unlike most little boys, Teddy loved bath time. He loved the bubbles and splashing in the water. Harry would be soaked through, there would be puddles on the floor and the water would have long gone cold before he’d be able to coax the child out of the bath and into his pyjamas.
Harry got through the rest of the evening with Teddy by rote. While the boy lived with his grandmother, Harry had his godson with him enough that their evening routine was firmly set: playtime after dinner, bath after playtime, story time after bath time, bedtime after story time.
There were variations on the norm, of course. Like today. Today had been anything but the norm.
They’d arrived in Ilfracombe on holiday yesterday and gone on a day trip to Lundy Island, visiting the Marine Nature Reserve. A wizarding family had set up a diving company, and thanks to Bubble Head Charms and an assortment of other magical enchantments to both screen them from the eyes of surrounding Muggles and safe guards to protect young ones, even wizards as young as Teddy could explore the array of marine life below the water’s surface.
But today the forecast had called for rain for the afternoon and evening.
As the morning had been clear, they’d ventured out to explore the Tunnels Beaches, and while Harry had watched on, Teddy had played with other children in a seawater bathing pool, which, formed by the tides, existed for only six hours at a time. Then the promised clouds had rolled in, turning the bright afternoon sky dark grey with the promise of heavy rain.
Not long after the rain had begun to fall, the Earth itself had fallen from under Harry’s feet, and he felt like he’d been in a free-fall ever since.
The book he’d read to Teddy lay open to the last page of the story on Harry’s lap. His breath shuddered, and his hands trembled. He felt ill. Needing something to do with his hands, Harry closed the book and set it on the small table beside his godson’s bed before straightening the blankets over the sleeping child.
Not sure his legs would support his weight, Harry sat there for he didn’t know how long, listening to Teddy’s slow, steady breathing, trying to match his own to Teddy’s.
Sometime later, Harry stood, swallowing hard, his hand gripping the back of the chair for support. Feeling almost entirely numb, he was only aware of the pounding in his chest and the churning in his stomach as he made his way through the cottage towards the fireplace that had been hooked up to the Floo Network and heavily warded for the duration of his stay.
Grabbing Floo Powder and dropping to his knees, unable to feel the slate hearth beneath him, Harry lit the fire and threw the powder into the flames, watching them turn green, feeling oddly detached, as if he was an observer rather than a participant.
Falling forward onto his hands, he lowered his face into the green flames and called out. When a soft voice answered his tiredly, he spoke the words he’d almost given up hope of ever saying.
“I saw him. Draco. I saw Draco.”
~~~~~~~
“Don’t be daft.” Draco sighed, his eyes downcast as he absently toyed with his empty pint, tracing the bottom of the glass through the small puddle of condensation on the table. The local band they’d come to hear was playing in the back room, but the music barely registered in his consciousness. The only thing his mind seemed able to focus on was a mop of unruly black hair and a pair of preternaturally green eyes.
“Daft, indeed. A fit young bloke like him unable to take his eyes off you? Really, Draco, the poor boy looked beside himself when he left. Did you not see the way he kept looking back over his shoulder at you? I half expected him to run back in, grab you by the arm and drag you off. It was almost cruel of you to make him leave empty handed.” His companion’s words were followed by a dramatic sigh before she continued wistfully, leaving her voice trail off. “If a fit young thing like him were to look at me like that. . . .”
“Maybe I am cruel. Maybe I’m a cruel person.” Draco’s words were spoken so softly that had the band not been between songs, they never would’ve been audible to anyone, not even himself. Maybe that’s why no one’s ever come looking for me, he added silently.
Sitting across the table from Draco was his boss at the library, a very formidable woman in her early fifties called Joanne Hollingberry. Draco had been in Ilfracombe on the north coast of Devon for three years, and he had known Jo nearly that entire time, which effectively meant that he had known her nearly as long as he could remember. Draco had no memory of his life before waking up in hospital three years ago, in a place that had meant nothing to him, with a man whose face he hadn’t known and whose words had made no sense leaning over him. Jo was not only his boss; she was his friend. For the last three years, she’d been the one who had kept him from losing what little of his mind he possessed. She could cut through the waves of despair and melancholy that sometimes washed over him, fight her way through the current when it felt strong enough to drag him under before it could wipe him off his feet and carry him away.
He wouldn’t have lasted this long without her, and if, one day, she got tired of him and left him to fend for himself, he didn’t know what he would do.
“Hey, now,” Jo soothed. “Where’d that load of tripe come from all of a sudden, then?”
Spinach and liver and tripe . . . chocolate, peppermint and marmalade . . . but also grass, dirt, vomit, earwax, paper and bogeys. . . .
If Jo had said anything more, Draco hadn’t heard it. As sometimes happened, he’d just . . . drifted away somewhere. While he had no concrete memory of his life before arriving in Ilfracombe, he sometimes had flashes of something else, something very different—so different as to be almost foreign, alien even. Things that made no sense, things he couldn’t reconcile with reality. There was never anything he could quite grab hold of; the flashes he had were nothing but ephemeral wisps of smoke that dissipated before he could focus his mind on them.
Sometimes, what he saw in his mind during those brief flashes was so bizarre, it left him feeling certain he was going mad. He never told anyone of what he saw during the flashbacks. He was odd enough not knowing anything about himself other than his name; if people knew what he saw in his head sometimes, he was afraid to think what might happen. If he himself feared he was going mad, what might others think?
Anything could set off one of his odd flashes. Last month, while trying to make some kind of headway organizing the library’s small storeroom—it shouldn’t be possible for so much rubbish to accumulate in such a small area, surely—an old box had tipped over, and out had scurried a small, brown spider. Rather than seeing the spider in front of him, the image of another spider flashed through his mind—a spider the size of his hand, crawling on his face. He’d had nightmares for two weeks.
Just as troubling as the spider he’d seen in his mind was Draco’s certainty that he’d been wearing robes. Long black robes with some type of emblem embroidered beside a green collar.
Truly unsettling was the fact that the robes from his flashback had been very like those shoved in a pile on the top shelf his cupboard at home—the robes he’d been wearing when he’d been found unconscious on the beach, the robes with the name Draco Malfoy sewn inside them.
Draco Malfoy, the name that, although he couldn’t remember it and as odd as it was, he knew with absolute certainty was his name.
Across from him, Jo gave him a concerned look. He felt all out of sorts, like a fish out of water. He often felt that way, like he wasn’t where he belonged, but tonight the feeling was particularly strong. Draco shook himself. Enough. He and his friends had come out tonight to the Bunch of Grapes for dinner and drinks and to hear this band play, and he hadn’t heard a single song yet. One of his coworkers at the library had recently got engaged to the band’s drummer, and they’d all come out after closing to celebrate the engagement and support the band. He would not allow one of his fits of melancholy to bring down everyone’s evening.
The band had kicked back up and, forcing a smile on his face, Draco pushed his empty pint away and turned his attention to his friends. “There’s a table open. Who’s up for a game of skittle? Jo? I’ll let you beat me.”
“I always beat you. You’re dreadful at any type of pool. And worse at darts.”
“Then I’ll pretend I let you beat me.”
Taking the last chip from her plate, Jo rose to join Draco in a game, and, laughing, she popped the chip in her mouth.
In an instant, the good-humoured expression on her face changed. Her eyes opened wide, filled with fear. Her hand went to her throat. Her mouth moved as if trying to form words, but no sound came out. All around her, her friends began calling her name, their voices rising, drawing the attention of the patrons closest to them as Jo’s panicked face quickly turned red.
Shouting now and jumping to their feet almost as one, Draco and his friends were gripped with fear. He was powerless. His good friend was choking, and he could do nothing but stand and watch helplessly. His right hand, hanging uselessly at his side, twitched. His fingers flexed and clenched, desperate to do something, but he had no idea what. He had no idea how to help a choking person. His mind raced—Do something! Do something! Do something! He felt certain there was something he could do, something that could help; he felt it down to the very marrow of his bones, but along with the first twenty or so years of his life, it simply wasn’t there.
A chair was knocked over. Jo’s face turned purple; her eyes bulged. How long had passed since she had taunted him over his abysmal skill at a pool table? Seconds? Twenty? Thirty? Had it been a full minute?
From across the room, a waiter ran to Jo. With the heel of his hand, he delivered five sharp blows to her back, directly between her shoulder blades. When the blows produced no result, he wrapped his arms around her middle, balling his right hand in a fist against her abdomen and covering it with his left. He spoke calmly and soothingly to her, reassuring her everything would be fine, she would be fine, but the look on his face—which Jo, fortunately, couldn’t see as he stood behind her—did not match the calm confidence of his voice. He was as scared as they all were.
Beside Draco, Chloe Southway, another coworker of his at the library, jabbed nine-nine-nine into her mobile with a trembling finger.
Draco’s stomach churned as the man wrapped his arms around Jo’s middle and delivered hard thrusts to her abdomen, pressing forcefully upward. It appeared that he lifted Jo off her feet with each thrust, but just as the back blows had been, the abdominal thrusts proved ineffective. The obstruction remained lodged in Jo’s throat.
Jo’s eyes met Draco’s, seeming to beg for help before rolling back into her head.
There was no conscious thought, his body reacted without need of direction from his brain. He moved purposefully towards his friend, his eyes locked directly on her throat. There wasn’t time to think. From the moment Jo’s eyes met his, Draco’s body had begun to thrum with energy. He tingled with it from his head to his feet. His skin, his blood, his bones—he felt as if a current had begun building deep within him and was ready to burst forth.
His right hand raised towards Jo as if to point to her. With his mind focused on the thought of the chip stuck in his friend’s throat, blocking her airway, one word shot through his head like lightning across the sky—ACCIO!
The waiter had delivered a blow between Jo’s shoulder blades and had drawn his arm back in growing desperation to strike again, but before he brought his hand down a second time, the chip that had lodged itself in her throat shot back out, flying towards Draco and hitting him in the chest.
Immediately, Jo drew a sharp breath, then another. She sank heavily into a chair, one hand supporting her as she slumped forward against the table, the other still clutching at her throat. Her face had gone dark purple but was now returning to normal. No one spoke. Other than Jo’s desperate, gulping breaths and the muffled sobs of someone behind him, there was no sound for at least five very long seconds until applause broke out all around them as the room erupted in cheers. Draco’s friends were hugging, a few crying tears of relief. He didn’t join in—couldn’t join in. An arm wrapped around him low across his back, briefly squeezing him, withdrawing before he could force his body to respond, move to return the embrace. He felt paralyzed. His body had turned to lead where he stood.
Hands grabbed him by the shoulder, forcing him into a chair. A glass was pressed into his hand.
“Drink this, mate. You look like you could use it.”
Draco obediently swallowed, unable to taste what he was drinking. He downed half the glass in one draught. Setting the glass down heavily, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Better?”
Draco nodded his head twice before he could force the single syllable through his lips. “Yeah.” Inhaling deeply and slowly, he lowered his head, closing his eyes, his forehead pressed into his palm. “Yeah. Yeah, better. Thanks.” Opening his eyes, Draco saw Julian Phillips sitting beside him. He nodded his head at Draco before turning his attention back to his fiancée, Kathleen, who was leaning against him heavily as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. As soon as they’d realised what was happening, the band had stopped playing, and Julian had rushed from behind his drum kit to Kat’s side the moment he’d seen who it was who had been choking. His own arms feeling very empty, Draco watched as Julian pressed a long kiss into Kat’s hair, holding her tight.
~~~~~~~
Draco Malfoy. After three years, Harry believed he’d seen Draco Malfoy, working in a public library in a Muggle seaside village, of all places.
“I’m sorry I woke you, Dromeda. I was just so shocked, I didn’t know what to do.”
Andromeda took his hand in hers where it lay on the table, squeezing it tightly.
Four years ago, she had been alone, reeling with grief over her husband’s and daughter’s deaths and with an infant to raise by herself. She’d barely known the young man her daughter and son-in-law had named as the baby’s godfather, but as the months after the Battle of Hogwarts had passed, Harry Potter had become increasingly dear to her. He’d been, at the same time, both far older than his seventeen years and little more than a child himself, and she’d grown to love the young man sitting across from her now—his head lying pillowed on his left forearm, muffling his voice, his right arm wrapped around himself—as if he was her own.
“Harry . . . I’m sorry, I just . . . I don’t mean to discourage you, but . . . Dear, there have been so many leads that came to nothing, so many false sightings. It’s been three years. Are you sure you weren’t mistaken? Perhaps you saw someone who bore a strong resemblance to Draco.” The hand not holding Harry’s lay on Andromeda’s lap, her fingers twisting in the silk of the robe she’d thrown on before stepping into the Floo, rushing to Ilfracombe. Like almost everyone else, Andromeda had believed Draco Malfoy to be dead all this time. “I know you and Narcissa have never given up hope, but you’ve both had your hopes raised and dashed so many times. I don’t want to see you disappointed again.”
“We were lovers for ten months. Yes, I’m sure it was him.” Harry breathed deeply; when he exhaled, his breath shook with emotion. “He had no idea who I was. There was no recognition at all—not my face, not my voice, not my name, nothing. It was as if he’d never seen me before.”
When Andromeda had learnt of the relationship that had grown between Harry and Draco Malfoy, only two short months after the end of the war, she’d been dreadfully worried. For all his experience fighting dark magic, Harry was as naïve as a babe in other matters—he was far too trusting. No one knew better than Andromeda how little a family like the Malfoys was to be trusted. After all, her own sister—the sister to whom she had once been so close and loved so dearly, the sister who had turned her back on Andromeda without so much as an I’m sorry—was Draco Malfoy’s mother, Narcissa.
Learning that Harry preferred his own sex over the opposite had been a surprise, certainly; however, after her own family’s denunciation and disowning of her after her marriage to Ted, Andromeda had refused to judge him. Let the boy love whom he loved. He’d certainly deserved that much—the right to build his own happiness. All those who’d fought deserved no less than that.
Only, did it have to be the Malfoy boy? If Harry preferred men, Merlin knew there were plenty of them out there—nice ones, kind ones, ones who could make Harry happy, ones who had been on the right side of the war.
Andromeda had been certain the Malfoy boy had somehow learnt of Harry’s predilection and had taken advantage of him; she’d never believed he cared a knut for Harry. Harry was too kind-hearted for his own good; he was exactly the type of young man an unscrupulous person could prey upon. She’d heard it said of Harry that he had a “saving people thing,” and Draco Malfoy had been both in desperate need of saving and very good looking—even she’d admitted that much. There was no denying the boy had been handsome.
She’d been sure no good could come of Harry’s involving himself with a Malfoy, that it could only lead to his being hurt. The few others who’d known of the relationship, those closest to Harry, those who had his best interests at heart and wanted what was best for him, were sure his dalliance with Malfoy was nothing more than him taking comfort anywhere he could find it after the hell he’d been through. They’d been certain it ran no deeper than that, that there was nothing that would last, and they were afraid of speaking out against the relationship, that that would only serve to drive Harry deeper into the Malfoy boy’s grip. Andromeda alone had argued for doing whatever needed to be done to nip the budding relationship before it had had a chance to take root.
Andromeda was a Tonks by marriage, but she was a Black by blood, and she was Slytherin to the core. She alone had fully understood what lengths a family like the Malfoys would go to in order to save themselves, because the Malfoys and the Blacks were two of a kind. Feigning emotions he didn’t feel, worming his way into Harry’s heart, manipulating him for his and his mother’s benefit had not been beyond what she’d known a Malfoy to be capable of. The Weasleys were good, honest people. They simply hadn’t seen the terrible betrayals people were capable of, not as Andromeda had. Regarding the war, yes, of course they had, but not in such a personal way as seducing someone for one’s own personal gain. They’d been sure the relationship couldn’t last, that it could only be a matter of time until the Malfoy boy showed his true colours, and Harry came to his senses and found someone better—a hard lesson learnt but no true harm done.
But it had lasted. It had lasted for ten months, and it had gone deeper than any of them had realised. It had lasted until the day Draco Malfoy had disappeared, leaving no trace behind, and leaving Harry utterly broken. Harry had fallen in love in front of their eyes, and they’d not seen it. She, Andromeda, had not seen it. She’d been so sure Harry could never have loved someone like Draco Malfoy, but he had. He truly had.
Harry raised his head and scrubbed at his face with his hands, his fingers pressing deeply into his eyes as he rubbed at them. He explained that, before leaving the library, he’d put tracking and monitoring charms on Draco without anyone seeing him, and once outside, he’d hidden out of sight of passers-by and cast every protective spell and charm he knew on him. He’d lost him once; he had no intention of losing him again.
“I need to file a formal report with the ministry. Draco’s case has gone cold, but it’s not been officially closed. The Auror in charge—Moore, it is now Oldfield has. . . .”
Harry was no longer the naïve young man he’d once been; he was now a fully trained Auror, and she could see the Auror inside him taking charge as the shock he’d had began to wear off. She could sometimes see much of her own Dora in Harry, and right now was one of those times. She could see his sharp, calculating mind working behind those famous green eyes, reanalysing evidence she knew he’d pored over possibly hundreds of times.
“No. No. No, Andromeda,” he said, taking her hand in his, “say nothing. Not yet. Not to anyone. I need you to promise me you won’t say a word about Draco being in Ilfracombe to anyone.”
“Harry, Narcissa—”
“No, not even Narcissa. Especially not Narcissa.”
Andromeda’s heart ached; her scars had been torn open again and the pain of losing Dora was as fresh as it had been four years ago. “Harry, she’s his mother, and she’s not known whether he was alive for three years.” As children, Andromeda and Narcissa had been thick as thieves—they were barely more than a year apart in age, practically twins—and it had been the loss of her younger sister that had cut her most deeply all those years ago, more so even than losing her mother and father. Wrong as it was, that Narcissa’s son had survived the war, but her Dora had not had torn open that old wound, deepened it. Andromeda’s stomach rolled with guilt. Cissy’s son . . . How could she have. . . .
“Exactly. She’s his mother—that’s the problem. She could never know he’s been found and go on as if nothing had changed, not go to him immediately.” Harry’s voice was thick with emotion. “He wasn’t pretending not to recognise me today. He truly didn’t. He didn’t remember.” Harry’s hands clenched into fists where they lay on the table. His voice was as hard as nails. “He didn’t remember me. Merlin—he’s been Obliviated.”
Andromeda remained silent as Harry spoke; in spite of having addressed her, he was no longer speaking to her, she knew. He was speaking to himself as he added the evidence of his own eyes to what little was known regarding Draco’s disappearance immediately after the ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. Thinking out loud, as he called it, was a habit of Harry’s.
Neither Harry nor Draco had wanted to attend the ceremony. Both had preferred to mark the day privately, just themselves, remembering those they’d lost. It had been only Kingsley Shacklebolt’s personal request that not only Harry but Draco as well attend in an attempt to show that the war was truly over, to demonstrate that the wounds inflicted on their world could be healed, that former enemies could build new ties, rebuild their world together.
Of course, the true nature of Harry and Draco’s relationship had not been revealed, only that the two once bitter enemies had mutually chosen to look towards the future, put the future of their world ahead of the past, that the two had become friends.
As Andromeda remembered that dreadful day three years ago, Harry continued speaking. “Not many people are capable of casting a memory charm successfully.”
Draco had not spoken at the ceremony, but he’d been visible throughout the night, both with Harry and others—Ron, Hermione and Andromeda herself, amongst others, mainly ministry employees. Andromeda saw Harry’s reasoning for being unwilling to report Draco’s whereabouts to the Aurors one moment before he verbalised it.
“There were ministry employees everywhere—Aurors, all of whom were capable of casting a memory charm. Draco was attacked by someone from within the ministry. Whoever that someone is, they can’t be allowed to learn we’ve found him. Until I find out who that someone is, it has to go on appearing to them as if they’ve got away with it.””
~~~~~~~
Something had happened tonight. Jo had been choking. She’d been unable to breathe, and there had been nothing Draco had been able to do to help his friend—not until he’d felt that indescribable energy begin to build inside him. He couldn’t explain what the energy had felt like other than that it had felt right like nothing he could remember ever had. It had pulsed inside him, seeming to originate from the very blood flowing inside him. It had grown and expanded inside him; his body had hummed with it, tingled with it, and then it had burst from him, surging forward, like a mighty river breaking free of the dam holding it back.
He was sure whatever that energy was, it had been in response to the fear he’d felt for Jo. It sounded crazy even to his own ears, but Draco was certain that, as it burst from him, the energy he’d felt was what had somehow forced the chip Jo had been choking on from her throat. It had appeared to everyone else that the blows the waiter had been delivering to her back had forced it free, but they hadn’t—the man’s arm had been drawn back.
Breathing in deeply and releasing the breath slowly through his nose, he focused his mind on the slip of paper, repeating the word he’d heard in his mind earlier. Accio.
It didn’t move. Draco dropped his head on the table in frustration. It was the middle of the night; he was exhausted, and he was frustrated. Logically, he knew the idea that he’d somehow forced the chip from Jo’s throat without ever touching her was ridiculous—
This class is ridiculous.
Draco froze. His heart hammered in his chest. His breath came in great gasping gulps. Normally, his flashbacks occurred sporadically. He might have one and then not have another for several weeks. He’d never had two flashbacks within hours of each other before, and this time the flashback had lasted as long as four seconds—four seconds of himself, much younger and standing in a room with stone walls and large windows. On either side of him stood two hulking boys. The taller of the two had a flat nose and black hair that looked like someone had cut by putting a bowl over his head. The other had brown hair, cut short and bristly. Both were taller and looked twice as wide as his younger self; both laughed at his younger self’s comment.
“This class is ridiculous,” Draco mumbled the words he’d heard his younger self say, thinking, picturing the scene in his mind. This class is ridiculous . . . This class. I look to be in my mid-teens. Presumably, if we’re in a class, the other two must be the same age, though as big as they are, they could be older. I went to school with those two.
In his most recent flashback, his right arm was wrapped in bandages and in a sling. He was again wearing the same black robes he’d worn in the flashback—and subsequent nightmares—of the spider, but while still inexplicable, it no longer seemed as odd as it had. It thrilled Draco to finally have some kind of link to his past—the faces of two of his classmates, were they friends?—even if it was only four seconds worth and left him with even more questions.
The slip of paper he’d been so been so focused on before his flashback forgotten, Draco concentrated on his surroundings in the image he’d seen. There were several other students in the room, all were wearing the same long, black robes, but not all had green collars. There were also red. The faces of the two boys next to him were the only other faces he could make out; the rest were blurred and undistinguishable. There was a man standing facing the group—the teacher, presumably. However, the man’s clothing—robes, again—were shabby. The room itself was quite large, the stone walls rising in gothic arches up to a ceiling so high it rose above the perimeter of his vision. Not far from the man facing the class stood a wardrobe, which looked very old and rather worse for wear. It rocked and thrashed about on its carved legs, as if some large and powerful animal was locked inside and fighting to get out, which no one seemed to think odd. It was nothing like any class or classroom he could have imagined, but again, just as with the odd energy that had flooded through him earlier, it felt right.
Draco ran his hand through his pale blond hair and breathed deeply, his eyes falling closed. This latest flashback was every bit as bizarre as his others, but rather than leaving him feeling confused and alone—and occasionally somewhat terrified—something about it comforted him.
He turned his head and looked over his shoulder towards the flat’s one small cupboard. Shoved away on the top shelf, the robes he’d been wearing when he’d been found lay rolled up in a ball and shoved in a box. He’d not worn them since being released from hospital, not even looked at them again since hiding them up there immediately after moving into the flat; he’d not wanted to. All he wanted was to be normal, to not stand out any more than he already did, and wearing robes was the opposite of normal.
Normal or not, he had been wearing robes when he’d been found three years ago, and like it or not, those robes were the only physical connection he had to the first twenty-odd years of his life. Draco rose and pulled one of the mismatched chairs from his table over to the cupboard—taking care to not use the one with the wobbly leg by mistake—using it to reach the back of the top shelf where he’d shoved the robes he’d not wanted to see. Positioning the chair beside the door, standing on his toes and stretching his arm—the cupboard was not deep, but it was taller than he could reach easily, even standing on the chair—Draco’s fingertips brushed the side of the small cardboard box in which he’d hidden the robes. He stretched further, but only succeeded in pushing the box further back on the shelf.
Exhaling in frustration, Draco got off his toes and stood flat on the chair. He’d been able to shove the box onto the shelf by standing on a chair, but in order to grab hold of it and bring it down, he needed something taller. Looking around the flat, his eyes settled on the books piled on the small side table next to his chair, and he smiled. As much as the librarian-in-training inside him was revolted by the idea, desperate times called for desperate measures—and Draco found he was desperate to reach the robes he’d previously wanted to pretend didn’t exist.
Grabbing the pile of books, he stacked them carefully—largest on the bottom for stability—on the chair and swore to himself Jo would never know he was using library books as a stepping stool. Cautiously, Draco climbed back onto the chair and, bracing himself with one hand against the door jamb, he placed one foot on top of the pile of books and stretched once again, trying to reach the box. This time, with the extra inches he was able to wrap his fingertips over the top of the box and pull it down from the shelf.
What happened next happened so fast, Draco didn’t have time to do more than suck in a breath of surprise. In pulling the box down, he had shifted his weight—not much, but enough to cause the books to slide under his foot, causing him to overbalance. Reflexively, he tried to grab hold of the door jamb but his fingers could not find purchase, and as he fell backwards off the chair, time seemed to slow down.
Only it wasn’t an illusion. Time truly did slow down. As Draco fell over, he felt the same energy surge through him in an instant, and somehow either time itself had slowed down or he had—neither of which should be possible. Rather than falling, he felt as if something had grabbed hold of him and lowered him to the ground gently.
Lying on his floor bewildered, staring up at the ceiling and breathing hard, Draco tried to make sense of what had just happened but couldn’t. Had he had the presence of mind to do so, he was sure he could’ve counted to three between the moment he felt himself overbalance and the moment he’d landed on the floor. He’d overbalanced, and he should’ve fallen to the ground, landing hard on his back, but he hadn’t. He’d landed as softly as if he’d stepped off the chair, lowered himself and lain down on the floor—which rather than being hard and unforgiving was as soft under him as a dozen pillows.
Slowly, he sat up. The box he’d been trying to reach had fallen as well, landing half a metre away from him, tipping over and spilling the long, black robes onto the floor. The pile of carelessly wadded up black fabric was what he’d been trying to reach when he fell, but now that the robes were within arm’s reach, he was hesitant to touch them. Steeling his nerves, Draco took a deep breath and skimmed his fingers across the material. He’d never touched anything so luxurious.
Pressing his palm against the floor, which was once again as hard as usual, he rose to his feet, picking the robes up and holding them in front of himself to get a good look at them. They’d spent over two years shoved in a box, but when he shook them out, they hung as clean and crisp as if they’d just been laundered and pressed. There was not a wrinkle to be found, not a speck of dust or lint visible anywhere. He’d remembered them as black, and they were, but they were also trimmed with a subtle but intricate embroidery in silver and dark red.
The robes were lined with a dark red that matched the embroidery perfectly. Inside, Draco saw the label bearing his name, and he touched it gently. Draco Malfoy was stitched into the fabric in the same silver thread as the trim, and beneath that was stitched what he presumed were the makers. Beginning to feel giddy, he read out loud, “Twilfitt & Tatting's, Makers of Fine Robes, Diagon Alley, London.”
His arms and legs felt as if they’d been transfigured into rubber bands, and he sat down in the chair, balling the robes up on his lap.
How had he fallen so slowly?
Not only that, but how had he forced the chip from Jo’s throat—because after what had just happened, he was more sure than ever that he had, in fact, done just that.
Draco dropped his head into his hands, burying his face in the silky black robes.
What the fuck is happening? What kind of school has the students wear bloody robes? How the hell does a person fall in slow motion? Force an obstruction from another person’s throat without touching them? What the fuckis happening?
~~~~~~~
The Auror department file room always gave Harry the uncomfortable feeling he was in the paper version of the Hall of Prophecy in the Department of Ministries, with its rows of towering shelves that appeared to stretch on indefinitely. The only difference between the two rooms was that in one the shelves were covered with glass orbs and in the other with boxes containing files that went back Harry had no idea how far. Donald Claywell knew the exact location of each and every file.
A wizard of about fifty, Claywell had worked in the Auror department file room for over thirty years and had taken and failed the Auror exam multiple times. While on holiday at the seaside in the West Country at the age of sixteen, his twin brother had been caught in an undertow and had drowned, despite his desperate efforts to save him. He came from a highly respected family, a number of whom had been granted the Order of Merlin, First Class for saving a group of holidaymaking Muggles from a rouge dragon, and he never let up going on about his Aunt Tilly, whose portrait hung on the first floor at Hogwarts in commemoration of her and the family’s actions that day. He now ran the file room with an almost military devotion—or a maniacal devotion, depending on whom you asked—and could be found there at all hours. It was sometimes joked amongst the Aurors that the man thought he was Head Auror rather then Head File Clerk.
As harmless as Claywell was to Draco’s safety, Harry had told the man that he had wanted to see Draco’s file one last time, wanting to put it behind him once and for all, to say goodbye to his friend. There was no reason to suspect Claywell had any idea Harry was on holiday or would mention to anyone that he had checked out Draco’s file. Why would he? The man was much more interested in himself and all the ways he’d been wronged during his life than keeping up with where which Auror was holidaying that year, and Draco’s case had been considered cold for too long for it to be a topic of discussion or of interest to anyone but himself. Whoever had attacked Draco had got away with it for three years, and Harry was counting on him or her being confident they would never be found out.
Harry yawned; he’d been poring over Draco’s file all night. The only break he’d taken had been when Andromeda had threatened to hex him if he didn’t step away for a breather and to eat something. She had stayed up with him, helping him organise the mountains of reported sightings that had come in shortly after Draco had disappeared, until no matter how hard she tried to deny it, she’d had to admit she’d barely been able to keep her eyes open and had reluctantly gone to bed. Draco was her nephew after all, she’d protested when Harry had encouraged her to go to bed earlier. She wanted to help however she could.
In the days shortly after his disappearance, reported sightings of Draco not only all over Britain, but also all over the continent and as far away as Australia had poured in. However, it was only those sightings reported in England that interested in Harry right now. England was where Draco had been found, and England was where he would start looking to see why he’d not been found sooner.
Having no physical evidence, the boxes making up Draco’s file were filled with stacks of reports filled in by the various Aurors who had investigated the reported sightings that had poured in over the first months after Draco’s disappearance. Now, those reports were shrunk and arranged all over a map of England Harry had charmed onto the dining table according to where the report claimed Draco had been seen.
The reports were spread around the country. Devon had more reports than other areas, but one would expect that. The area had one of the largest wizard populations in England. It was also a popular holiday destination for wizards and home to a number of Quidditch teams.
As would be expected, there were considerably more reports early on, then, as Draco’s disappearance had faded from the public’s mind, the reports had dwindled until stopping completely. There had been no discernible pattern to the reported sightings.
Not until now. Not until Harry had known exactly where to look—Devon and the surrounding area.
The filling out of the mountains of paperwork that came with the job was, undoubtedly, every Auror’s most hated task, Harry’s included. It was a tedious but necessary part of the job. There were endless forms, and all had specific instructions on how they were to be filled in. None were more specific than the reports that documented witness interviews. It was drilled into every Auror’s head during their training that they must document everyone they spoke to, where and when they spoke to the person, and record detailed notes on what was said.
Report after report followed this standard procedure, from the interview of Mr. Alistair Allsopp of Aldershot to Mrs. Winifred Wragge of Wymondham. All except those reports from in and around Devon. Harry looked at report after report—Exeter, Kingsbridge, Plymouth, Exmouth, Great Torrington . . . Every report from Devon and the surrounding area was written in the same barely legible scrawl and read the same: “There is no evidence to substantiate presence of subject in ______.” Only the name of the town filled in on the blank differed from one report to the next. There was no reference to who had made the report or when, and the signature of the Auror was the same indistinguishable scribble on each.
Sloppy record keeping could get an Auror written up, but the presence of a limited number of such reports seemingly scattered amongst so many others would not have set off red flags, particularly so soon after the war when the department had been stretched so thin and had had so many new recruits being trained.
Harry had already been sure someone from within the Ministry was responsible for the attack on Draco, and now he had proof. The investigation into Draco’s disappearance had been sabotaged from day one. Every report from anywhere near Ilfracombe had been doctored.
He was going to need help; he knew that. Whoever had attacked Draco was skilled not only at spellwork but also at not being found out. He or she had struck quickly and had covered their tracks perfectly for three years. There were only three people Harry trusted enough to share what he’d learnt with: His best friends, Ron and Hermione, and Kingsley Shacklebolt.
Ron was his partner on the force, and excelled at strategy. As young as they were, Ron was one of the go-to guys in the department at both planning their own ruses and unravelling the seemingly unbreakable schemes others had worked out.
Hermione had just completed her training at St. Mungo’s, to no one’s surprise at the top of her class. She was now a Healer. Partially because of the damage she’d seen to victims of dark magic after the war, she’d chosen that as her specialty. While memory charms were not dark magic, she had studied them thoroughly. And of course, she’d cast them herself when needed during the war, both on her own parents for their own protection and on Death Eaters to protect the three of them from being caught.
Kingsley Shacklebolt had Harry’s trust because he’d had Dumbledore’s. That alone would be enough of a recommendation for Harry, but he also knew from his own experience that no one was more incorruptible. Kingsley had a strong personal moral code and had worked tirelessly for the last four years to weed out the corruption so deeply embedded in the ministry. He had also been one of only two Aurors to join the Order of the Phoenix to work against Voldemort and had been part of the guard that had come to help him escape from No. 4 Privet Drive. The other Auror had been Tonks herself. Between Tonks and Dumbledore, Harry felt Kingsley was in pretty good company. Also, Harry had seen Kingsley non-verbally cast a memory charm during his fifth year at Hogwarts.
The problem of asking Kingsley for help was also what would make his help so invaluable. Kingsley Shacklebolt was now the Minister of Magic.
The problem with asking Ron and Hermione for help was that as partners, Ron and Harry had both taken their holiday at the same time. Harry had come to Ilfracombe with Teddy. Ron had taken Hermione to France. For their honeymoon.
~~~~~~~
Next to Jo, it was Kat to whom Draco was the closest. Of all his coworkers at the library, she was the one closest to his age—whatever his true age might be.
Exhausted and distracted, remembering the night he’d spent, he forced a normal expression onto his face and responded, “Nothing as enjoyable as I’m sure you did,” with a smirk of his own as soon as he was able. “Just couldn’t sleep.”
Kat’s expression turned serious. “No, nor could I,” she whispered, her eyes downcast, adding, “It was awful.”
Draco never knew quite what to say or do to comfort someone, but he turned from his morning duties—sorting through the books he’d just fetched from the night return box—and placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. Kat was a petite redhead with freckles and bright blue eyes. She had the uncanny ability to make anyone smile, no matter their mood—including him, which was quite a feat sometimes. It was quite a change for him to be cast in the position of comforting her. “She’s fine. Sore, but fine.” Jo had rung him up that morning, saying she was too sore to come to work and asking would he mind terribly coming in on his Saturday off. Being the youngest and newest, Draco rarely had a Saturday off, but there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Jo. Besides, he was always willing to take on extra hours for a few extra pounds in his pay check. Her throat hurt after he ordeal last night, she’d said, her voice so hoarse as to be unrecognisable. She’d told him she was having trouble swallowing, her eyes were bloodshot and her ribs ached. Bruises were forming on her abdomen.
Kat shivered. “I hope I never see anything like that again.”
“Let’s hope none of us ever do.”
By unspoken agreement both worked in silence, neither speaking of what had happened last night again.
If library members wanted a book which was not in their inventory in Ilfracombe but was available at another library in Devon, it could be requested for them. As an apprentice, ordering such books and notifying the borrower when it arrived was one of the jobs that fell to Draco. A number of these books were stacked off to the left. He’d already run the spines along the scanner which entered them into the library’s computer system, but it was the library’s policy to not ring up their members until after nine, so the newly arrived books would have to wait—he glanced at the clock in the lower right hand corner of the computer screen—another ten minutes.
Setting another stack of books on the counter, Draco tried to focus his attention on his job, but processing the dozen or so books he’d just fetched from the night return box was mindless work, and his thoughts drifted to his flashbacks. He’d had two more since last night—making four since yesterday evening. He’d never had four in one month before; now he’d had four in less than eighteen hours. Not only were they suddenly coming more frequently, but they were also clearer and lasted longer, and he had no idea why. Draco had never had any desire to discuss his flashbacks with anyone, not that they’d ever given him much information to share. Just the opposite, he’d always felt some deep-seated, instinctual certainty that he needed to guard them with secrecy. Now that they were changing, though, giving him more and longer glimpses into his forgotten past, he found he dearly wished there was someone he could talk to about them. What he had seen made no sense, what he had experienced was impossible, and he wished there was someone he could ask for help to make sense of it all. He’d never felt as lonely in the last three years as he did this morning.
“Nine o’clock, time to open up. It’s such a lovely morning; I’ll leave the door open. Let a little fresh air in the place.”
“Right,” he said, Kat’s voice having pulled him back to what he should be thinking about—namely, the job he was incredibly lucky to have got and which paid his bills. There had been an unusually high number of books in the night return box this morning—the rain yesterday likely having kept people indoors until after the library had closed at six—and having just run the last of the returned books over the scanner, he held it up, saying, “Just going to reshelve these. I’ll call on those,” he indicated the pile off to the left, “once I’m done.” Placing the book on the small trolley, he began reshelving books in the children’s section first.
With his back to the library as he hunted along the shelf, looking for the appropriate spot for “Andreae, G.,” Draco heard Kat greet someone who must’ve been waiting at the door for them to open.
“Morning,” the customer responded.
Having just slid The Lion Who Wanted to Love into its proper place, he heard the same voice directly behind him.
“Hello.”
Looking up as he picked up the next book, Draco had to tighten his grip to keep it from slipping from his fingers. The man standing in front of him was the same one who had been in the library yesterday, the man with the mop of just-shagged jet black hair and green eyes that Draco was sure he could drown in if he let himself. The man Jo had teased him about. The man who, until Jo had popped that chip in her mouth, he had not been able to stop thinking about in spite of his insistence to his friends that he’d not been interested.
Draco cleared his throat. “Good morning,” he replied, forcing a formal, professional tone into his voice while mentally scolding himself, reminding himself he was a librarian apprentice and this man was a library patron and not some random bloke at the pub he could chat up. “May I help you?”
“Hello,” the man repeated. He sounded anxious and breathless, as if he’d just run a mile. Those green eyes were open wide and looking directly into Draco’s. He licked his lips, which spread into a smile that made his already handsome face light up. “Hello,” he said for a third time.
Draco couldn’t help it; he grinned. “Hello,” he said.
The man looked embarrassed but not enough to wipe the smile off his face or divert his eyes. “Hi, I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m Harry,” he held out his hand, “Harry Potter.”
Draco’s eyes dropped to Harry’s hand. It was perfectly masculine, strong, and his skin was lightly tanned; it felt good in his own. The back of his hand, which lingered in Draco’s own longer than necessary, was covered with thin, spidery scars. It was brief, so brief he might have mistaken it or it might’ve been a case of wishful thinking, but as Harry withdrew his hand, Draco felt his thumb stoke his own. It was pathetic how such a simple touch aroused him.
When Draco’s eyes returned to Harry’s, there could be no mistaking the deep longing held in those impossibly green pools. His mind filled with images of Harry’s hand gripping him, bringing him off, but the intensity of Harry’s gaze was not that of one looking for a quick one off with a stranger. The emotion held in the other man’s eyes left Draco feeling both breathless and overwhelmed. He had been chatted up before, but he’d always been reluctant—and of course, by always, he meant the last three years—to attempt to form a serious relationship with another man. It was hard to tell someone about yourself when you knew nothing about yourself. His coworkers were his friends, and they all knew about his past—or his lack thereof—but as far as a sexual relationship, casual one offs were just easier. Draco knew just in the few moments of standing in front of him that Harry Potter would never be a one off.
The telephone rang, reminding Draco he was at work and he needed to remain professional.
“Yes, I remember. You were here yesterday with your son for the Bookstart Bear Club.”
“Godson. Teddy’s my godson.”
“I hope he enjoyed the stories.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, he did. He loves being read to. Actually, I’ve only just arrived in Ilfracombe, and I was hoping I could sign us both up for library cards.”
This was ridiculous. Just talking to Harry, Draco’s hands were sweating. He wanted to reach out and pull Harry toward him, run his fingers through his hair, see how messy he could make it. He could see himself doing just that, visualise it perfectly in his mind. Reluctantly, he said, “I’m sorry. Only a parent or guardian can sign for a library card for a child.” To himself he thought, Don’t leave, don’t leave, please don’t leave. “Can one of your godson’s parents come in to sign for him?”
The glow in Harry’s expression dimmed. “I am his legal guardian, or one of them, at least. Teddy’s parents were killed four years ago, 2 May 1998. He was only a month old. He resides primarily with his grandmother, Andromeda Tonks, but she and I have shared custody.”
Draco felt his jaw slacken at such horrible news. “I’m so sorry.” Harry’s gaze had seemed to deepen for a moment, as if he’d been hoping for something more than a simple “I’m sorry,” but what more could he offer?
Harry bowed his head, and Draco thought he shook it minutely, as if answering a question he’d mentally asked himself, or possible berating himself for saying something so terrible so bluntly. He inhaled deeply before looking back at Draco, seeming to struggle to find something to say.
Trying to spare him from feeling he needed to explain something that had to be very difficult to talk about to a perfect stranger, Draco stepped away from the trolley containing the books he’d been supposed to be reshelving and said, “If you’ll step over here, we’ll get those cards for you.”
As Harry followed him, Draco asked, “How do you like Combe so far?”
Harry grinned mischievously. “I like what I’ve seen so far very much.” He added, “More so than I could’ve hoped.”
Draco’s stomach did flip flops. What am I, twelve years old with pixies in my stomach? His steps faltered. Pixies? Where the bloody fuck did pixies come from?
“Are you alright?” Harry asked with genuine concern in his voice.
“Oh, yes. Quite, thank you. I just . . . It was nothing." As he stepped behind the counter, Draco said, “Kathleen normally handles new members—”
Kat cut him off. “Oh, Draco, luv, could you be a dear and take care of him, please? I’ve all these calls to make still.” She pulled the stack of interlibrary loans toward herself, winking at him conspiratorially.
God, he loved that girl.
Platonically, of course.
Typing his user name and password into appropriate spots, Draco’s fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. They just wouldn’t cooperate. He misspelled his name three times, and he’d typed in his password wrong so many times he was afraid the system would lock him out—it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. It would be embarrassing to have to have Kat unlock it for him in front of Harry. He was pants at typing, but knowing Harry was watching him was making him nervous. He so wanted to seem normal, and he struggled to find the right keys even more so than normal. Any typing or computer skills he’d once had were lost along with everything else. That had surprised his doctors. They’d explained to him that typically with amnesiacs like himself, general knowledge—such as how objects like computers worked—was retained while personal events and knowledge specific to that patient were lost. But Draco had lost practically everything. While he could read and write perfectly well, not only could he not type, he’d had no idea of even how a keyboard worked, or a computer for that matter. He didn’t know how to drive a car, not even where to put the key to start the engine. He couldn’t do even the simplest things like turn on the telly or work a light switch. He’d had to relearn everything.
Once his doctors had been satisfied that he was capable of living on his own, it had been they who had helped him find a job through the government’s apprenticeship scheme. Without any identification papers or even any idea when his birthday was or where he’d been born, he’d never have managed to find a job without their help.
Draco told himself it would be a rather poor way to repay them for everything they’d done for him to lose that job by dragging the man in front of him back into non-fiction section and snogging him senseless between the shelves.
At the thought of snogging Harry between the shelves, Draco’s mind filled with the image of just that. But although the man whose mouth was attached to his neck in the picture his mind had conjured had the same wild, inky black hair as Harry, it wasn’t Harry, and although he and his partner were in a library, it was certainly not his library. Tall, heavy shelves of dark wood stood at least eight rows high, towering easily three times his height. The books covering those shelves looked ancient. Leather bound, gold gilded volumes stood lined up side by side, possibly as many as fifty or more on each of the eight shelves.
At the outermost edge of his vision stood a wall of the same stone with the same gothic arches and large windows as he’d seen in the vision of himself in some type of bizarre class where the teacher was showing him and his robe-clad classmates a possessed wardrobe. Except, making this vision disturbing, a large part of the stone wall had been blown away and most of the glass was missing from the window, chunks and shards of which, along with still more books and pieces of wood from shelves, lay scattered about like debris after a storm.
Another difference was that in this vision, his dark haired partner was not wearing a robe. He was simply dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, much like Harry was. As the vision ended, Draco’s hand had slithered under that t-shirt and up his partner’s back.
“Draco? Are you sure you’re alright?”
Draco cleared his throat, and shook himself. His flashbacks were becoming troublesome, interfering with his work and interactions with the people around him.
Tame as it had been, what that particular vision had consisted of wasn’t helping matters any. He’d never had a flashback of himself with someone like that before.
“Draco?” Harry repeated.
Fingers lightly stroked the back of his hand, and Draco nearly gasped at the sensation as goose pimples ran up his arm. He didn’t sleep around by any means, but he was no blushing virgin either. Why did such a simple touch from this man affect him so much?
“I’m fine. Please, forgive me. I’m just . . . rather out of sorts this morning.”
Harry slowly exhaled. “I have to admit, I’m rather out of sorts myself as well.” His lips lifted into a smile, and just like that, Draco felt tension ease from his back and shoulders. Harry had a beautiful smile. Lit up and transformed his already handsome face, it did.
“Right, well . . . ,” Draco began as he looked around for a pen. “Let me just take down your address and phone number.” He gave up on trying to type; no way would his fingers cooperate now. He wrote Harry’s information down.
“And we can reach you at this number? Is there a time that is better for you?”
Harry’s smile widened. “You can reach me at that number at any time.”
There was no mistaking the welcoming tone of Harry’s voice. He was inviting Draco to ring him up anytime.
Draco returned Harry’s smile as he ran the magnetic strip of two new library cards through the slot on the scanner, activating them before handing them to Harry. “If you could sign the back of these?” When Harry took the pen he’d offered and signed the cards, Draco studied his face. He’d run his hand through his hair a moment earlier, pushing his fringe back from his forehead, exposing a faint zigzagged scar over his right eye. It resembled a lightning bolt, and he wondered how Harry had got it.
“All done,” Harry said.
Or maybe just beginning, Draco dared to hope.
~~~~~~~
He’d got no sleep at all the night before, and he was only able to function with a clear head now thanks to the Invigorating Draught Andromeda had gone to get for him the moment the apothecary in Diagon Alley opened. His wand sat on the table next to a cup of tea—again, thanks to Andromeda—which had sat untouched for so long, the heating charm had worn off and it had gone cold.
Harry continued to rub his eyes—Invigorating Draught or not, it had been over twenty-eight hours since he’d slept. While it was hardly the first time he’d missed a night’s sleep, it had been drilled into him during Auror training that no potion, spell or charm was a substitute for getting enough sleep. Adequate rest was crucial for being prepared to face whatever they might find themselves up against. If he was to protect Draco, he needed to rest. But how could he sleep until he knew Draco would be safe? The tracking and monitoring charms he’d discreetly cast on Draco yesterday while he’d sat reading to a group of preschool children were the only reason Harry’d been able to walk out of the library and leave him there alone both yesterday and again this morning. Draco was as well protected as Harry knew how to make him. But he had already been attacked once when they’d all believed he was as well protected as possible. He hadn’t been there when Draco had needed him. If anything were to happen to him a second time while Harry was curled up, fast asleep, safe in his bed. . . .
The floo roared behind him; emerald green flames sprung to life seven feet tall. Harry jumped to his feet, wand drawn, the first syllable of the stunning spell on his lips, a binding spell ready to go immediately after, but the incantations died on his tongue the moment he saw the tall red-haired wizard step out of the flames. Harry’s wand dipped but didn’t lower entirely. A second later, the flames roared to life once again, a witch with brown hair done up in a messy bun emerging as they died down. Her hair looked as if it had been pulled back hurriedly and was fighting to break free; rebellious strands hung damply down her shoulder.
Part of his mind told him he was being ridiculous, but the other part had conjured the image of Mad Eye Moody barking “Constant Vigilance!” at him. Harry held his wand at the ready, eyeing the pair with caution. Both had stepped toward him eagerly the moment they’d entered the room but were now watching him—and his still raised wand—with trepidation.
Ron began, “Harry, what’s going on? We got your message saying—”
“What did Ron Weasley tell Harry Potter he did not like they day they met on the Hogwarts Express?”
“What the . . . ? Bloody hell, Harry, I don’t remember every word we—”
“What did you say you didn’t like the day we met?” Harry’s voice was hard; it left no room for argument or debate. His wand raised three inches.
Ron raised his hands in front of himself. “Alright, alright. Let me think. Merlin, Harry, we were eleven . . . Alright, the twins were there but they took off. I asked if you were really Harry Potter—thought they were taking the piss—sorry, Hermione,” Ron added at his wife’s look of disapproval. “We talked, no idea what about. I showed you Scabbers. I do remember that, couldn’t likely forget that,” Ron said, his voice filled with disgust. “You mentioned Voldemort by name, said you’d never known no one used his name. You bought half the bleedin’ sweets trolley, and we about ate ourselves sick. I had sandwiches mum had . . .” Comprehension showed in Ron’s face. “I had corned beef sandwiches. I said I didn’t like corned beef. Mum always forgot I don’t like corned beef.”
Harry’s legs felt weak, and he nearly collapsed with relief. But he couldn’t let his guard down yet.
“What were the first words Hermione Granger ever spoke to Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley.”
Unperturbed, Hermione replied that she’d asked them if they’d seen a toad.
At that, Harry’s legs did buckle beneath him, and he lowered himself into the chair he’d jumped out of when he’d heard the floo activate. He was utterly exhausted, both emotionally and physically. “I am so glad to see you,” he sighed, letting his head fall into his hands.
Hermione rushed forward, throwing her arms around him as he buried his face in her shoulder. “Oh, Harry! We got here as quickly as we could.” He could smell her Sleekeazy’s hair potion.
“Mind telling us what all that was about, then?” That his voice held no trace of irritation after having his honeymoon interrupted only to be greeted by the point of a wand the moment he stepped out of the Floo spoke of his respect and trust in his best friend. He took a seat beside Harry, his eyes taking in the reports arranged all over the map of England covering the table’s surface.
“I’m sorry. I just had to be sure . . .” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Whoever it was who attacked Draco, it was someone from inside the ministry. It had to be. The reports of sightings from anywhere near Devon have been altered. Every single one of them. Only someone from inside the ministry would have been able to do that.”
“How did you get this?” Ron asked, picking up the report Harry had been reading before they’d arrived—an alleged sighting of Draco from Exeter, about one hundred kilometres southeast of Ilfracombe. Just like all the others, there was no reference as to when the report had been made or the identity of the person who’d made it.
“Floo’d into the ministry late last night. Hardly anyone was around, but Claywell was still there. He gave it to me.”
Ron cocked his head. “Just like that? No questions asked? It’s not your case. He shouldn’t have given it to you without authorization.”
Harry arched his eyebrow at Ron. Even four years after the war, he was seldom, if ever, denied anything he asked for. If Harry Potter wanted something, it was given to him. It wasn’t right, but in this case, he’d use any advantage he had to the fullest. His name had meant Draco’s file was his for the asking; he wasn’t about to complain.
“It’s no wonder that man never made Auror,” Ron said with an exasperated sigh. Donald Claywell was famous in the department for blaming everything and everyone other than himself for failing the test to become an Auror. His arrogance was his own worst enemy, reminding both Harry and Ron of Cormac McLaggen when he tried out for and failed to make the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Of course, McLaggen had had a legitimate beef, although he never knew it. Hermione had hit him with a Confundus charm, causing him to miss the Quaffle the Chaser had thrown at him. Immature and spiteful, Claywell’s failures were all of his own doing. “Makes one wonder who else he’d have handed the file over to. Opens things up.” As he thought, Ron rubbed his hand along his jaw, which was covered with flame red stubble.
“What do you mean? Opens things up?” asked Hermione. It was the first she’d spoken up since entering the room.
“Normally, only someone from within the department would have access to Auror files. It’s policy. But if the file room hands them out to anyone for the asking . . . Anyone in the ministry might’ve got their hands on Malfoy’s file.” Ron’s use of Draco’s last name held no malice, and Harry took no offense to it. While they’d been civil to each other for his sake, Draco had stayed Malfoy to Ron, just as Ron had stayed Weasley to Draco. Those were simply their names as far as they’d both been concerned.
Ron sat quietly, his full attention turned to studying Draco’s file. His face was serious, his eyes intent as they moved from one report to the next. Harry had known he could count on him.
Hermione set her hand on Harry’s arm and motioned for him to follow her. Ron was the Auror—Draco’s file was his job. She was a Healer—Harry was hers. She stood and walked toward the kitchen. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked.
Harry yawned loud and long.
“Or slept, for that matter?”
While Harry leaned against the counter, Hermione set about making bacon butties. She knew Harry better than just about anyone. She knew he’d probably not eaten since seeing Draco, and she knew he couldn’t resist bacon sandwiches. They weren’t the healthiest of foods, but they’d fill his stomach.
“Slept, yesterday. Ate . . .” His voice trailed off as he glanced at the clock. “I ate breakfast with Andromeda and Teddy at about eight.” That he’d sat at the table with them with reports piled on his lap while they’d eaten would have been a more accurate statement. “I sent the Patronus to you and Kingsley shortly after that.”
“Where is Teddy?”
“Andromeda took him to the harbour to see the boats and the aquarium. She’s going to take him home tomorrow morning. We’ve not told him yet. Right now, he just thinks she’s joined us on holiday.”
Hermione cooked the Muggle way. Once the pan was good and hot, she added the bacon. The moment the rashers hit the pan, they sizzled, filling the kitchen with the irresistible sound and scent of frying bacon. She knew enough from living with Ron not to hound Harry with questions. He would talk when he was ready, and sure enough, as she was taking the bacon from the pan—crispy, just like Harry liked it—and layering it on slices of toasted white bread slathered with butter and drizzled with HP sauce, Harry whispered, “What if he can’t forgive me?”
He had just opened his mouth to speak again when the Floo burst to life once more, and a tall black wizard dressed in deep plum-coloured robes embroidered with gold and silver and wearing a gold earring in one ear stepped out of the flames. His wand was drawn, but not at the ready. If he was surprised to find one of his Auror’s holding him at wandpoint, it did not show on his face.
As he had with Ron and Hermione, the moment Harry heard the Floo activate, he’d had his wand in hand, ready to stun anyone stepping out of the flames. The fact that the man in front of him was not only a friend whose help he’d requested but also the Minister of Magic didn’t matter. In the Wizarding world a person might not be who they appeared, and he would not risk anyone other than those three people he had contacted learning that Draco had been found. Kingsley Shacklebolt was the Minister of Magic, but he had been an Auror and a member of the Order of the Phoenix first. He understood the need for precaution as well as anyone.
“When Kingsley Shacklebolt arrived at Number Four Privet Drive to help Harry Potter escape to an Order of the Phoenix safe house before his seventeenth birthday, who was it he flew by thestral with as a decoy?”
Kingsley dipped his head in acknowledgement and calmly responded. “Miss Hermione Granger.”
Harry exhaled with relief. “Forgive me, Minister—”
Taking a seat at the table next to Ron, Kingsley raised his hand, halting Harry’s apology. “No need. Mad Eye taught you well. You said you’ve located Draco Malfoy and have proof someone from within the Ministry was responsible for his disappearance?”
“Yes, sir.” Harry repeated as he sat down. Hermione, who entered the room only moments behind Harry after placing stasis and warming spells charms on the bacon butties, sat beside her husband. “There were people from every department within the ministry around all day.” It had disgusted Harry. The ceremony had been held in the ministry atrium, which had been magically transformed for the occasion. Witches and wizards employed in every capacity throughout the ministry, from department heads and other high ranking officials to secretaries and the most junior assistants, men and women who had walked through that very same space when a Death Eater had sat as minister, now sat only feet from where the nightmarish Magic is Might monument once stood, patting each other on the back as if they had somehow been responsible for vanquishing Voldemort. “He could have been attacked by any one of them.”
Harry handed Kingsley the reports from Devon and the surrounding area. “Every single one of them has been altered. Only someone from within the Auror department could have done that. Either he was attacked by an Auror or by someone who has had the help of an Auror to cover it up.”
Kingsley was silent as he reviewed the reports Harry had handed him, comparing them to a sampling of the remaining reports from around England, before asking, “Weasley, what’s your impression?”
Ron rubbed his jaw; he ran his hand through his hair and exhaled slowly. “At first look, it appears the file has been tampered with—every report from Devon and the immediately surrounding area is identical and all are in the same hand—but upon closer inspection, it hasn’t been. I’ve run every diagnostic spell I know of. The reports haven’t been altered in any way. They are exactly as they were originally filled in.
“The writing is hard to read, and it appears only on the reports from in and around Devon. I don’t recognise it. It could be the writer attempted to disguise his handwriting. The signature is completely illegible. It’s little more than a scribble. The first letter of the first name appears to be a D. The last name could begin with an A. But I can’t be sure of either; the last name in particular. In some places it looks like one letter, and in others it looks like two written bunched up together. There are no Aurors with the initials of D.A.
“See here?” Using his wand as a pointer, Ron indicated the end of both the first and last names. “It appears both names end in tall letters: b, d, h, k, l, for example. Also here, it appears a letter drops down below the others— possibly either j, g or y. That could help in narrowing down the identity of the writer, but that assumes he—”
“Or she,” Hermione interjected.
“Or she,” he acknowledged, “signed their own name, which the fact that there are no Aurors with those initials would seem to overrule and which would also contradict the theory that he—or she—disguised their handwriting. Not to mention that to sign their own name to falsified reports, our suspect would have to be the slowest broom in the shed.”
Harry marvelled at his friend. When they were eleven, Ron had talked of the pressure of being overshadowed by so many accomplished older brothers, but in his work as an Auror, Ron was overshadowed by no one. With his analytical mind, he was entirely in his element. Harry had read and reread those same reports at least a dozen times since retrieving Draco’s file last night, but he’d not seen any of what Ron had in just minutes.
Before continuing, Ron paused, clearly deep in thought. He rubbed his jaw again. “I can’t believe an Auror wrote those reports. Procedure was not followed at all—there are no notes, no names, no dates—which made them stand out. An Auror would’ve taken care that there was nothing that might make anyone look twice at the Devon area. I can’t believe whoever filled in those reports sat through the same lectures on proper paperwork procedures with Professor Pritchard as I did. But only an Auror would have had access to the reports.”
“But Harry was given the file when he shouldn’t have been.” Hermione objected. “Mightn’t someone else have got it as well?”
A little uncomfortable, Harry squirmed. Claywell might be a pompous ass who sometimes seemed to forget he was the head file clerk and not Head Auror, but Harry hoped he hadn’t caused any trouble for the man by asking for Draco’s file. While he’d never struck Harry as the type who would do such a thing, the man had once risked his own life trying to save his drowning twin brother. A pretentious bore or not, one had to respect him for that.
“Yes, but Harry is Harry Potter,” Ron said matter-of-factly. “And he is an Auror. No, he shouldn’t have been given Malfoy’s file without authorization from the Auror in charge of the investigation, but his getting the file is a far cry from anyone else getting it, especially someone from outside the department. And there a several reports,” he flipped through the reports for emphasis, “which, while they have no dates on them, would have had to come in over at least a two year period. Likely over two years, as it was that long until reports of Malfoy being seen somewhere really trickled off. Harry only got the file once. These reports weren’t filled in properly and then altered—that much I’m dead sure of. They are exactly as they were originally written. All of the reported sightings of Malfoy from this area were interfered with from the very beginning. It wasn’t the written report of the investigation that was tampered with, it was the investigation itself. To manage that, the person we’re looking for would’ve had to have virtually unlimited access not just after a sighting had been investigated and a report written up, but from the very moment someone filed a report claiming they’d seen Malfoy. That brings us back to the suspect having to be an Auror. No one outside the department could ever have that kind of access to a case. I don’t understand it. Everything both indicates it had to have been but couldn’t have been an Auror. Everything contradicts what everything else indicates. The work is thorough but sloppy and poorly planned out. For example, another thing I don’t understand is why anyone wanting to prevent Malfoy from being found—which the reports clearly indicated was the case—would ever pick Devon, of all places, to dump him in.”
Harry flinched.
“Sorry, Mate,” Ron offered softly as Hermione placed her hand on his thigh.
Harry inhaled and shook his head as his hands closed into fists at his sides. “No. Don’t. Don’t apologise, and don’t hold back or sugar coat anything. We’re Aurors, and it’s time I started thinking like one,” he said, chastising himself. He had been thinking like a lover, not an Auror, but a lover wasn’t going to find whoever had done this. The Auror in him was going to find the culprit and then turn away so the lover in him could eviscerate the bastard. “You’re right. This was a foolish choice of places to try to hide Draco. Not only is it very close to Wiltshire, but there are too many wizards about. There are parts of Britain—not to mention on the continent, where he’d’ve been much less likely to be recognised—where there is virtually no wizarding presence and where he could’ve been hidden with much less risk of being found.”
Ron nodded his head in agreement. “Something, again, that an Auror would’ve taken into consideration.” He sighed. “It both had to have been and couldn’t have been an Auror.”
Kingsley had been silent while Ron spoke, but now he added gently and with audible remorse in his voice, “I think we have to consider the likely possibility that whoever attacked Mr. Malfoy did not expect him to be found because he did not expect him to survive the attack.”
Calm, Harry knew he had to remain calm; it was the only way he was going to be of any help to Draco. Breathing deeply and slowly to maintain his composure, he forced himself to think as an Auror, dispassionate and objective. If an attacker intended to kill his victim, why wouldn’t he have, then? What would stop him? Sudden remorse? Compassion for his victim? Not likely. And why bother to Obliviate someone you intended to kill? It made no sense.
Ron voiced Harry’s first question rhetorically.
“Potter, how did you come to discover Mr. Malfoy’s whereabouts?” Kingsley asked.
Remembering, Harry drew a long, slow breath. “I just literally looked up, and there he was. I had no idea he was in Ilfracombe when I chose it for holiday. Andromeda recommended it because there’s loads for Wizards, but it’s mostly Muggle. She and her husband used to come here with Tonks when she was little. Plus, Ron’s family in Ottery St. Catchpole are nearby. I thought maybe Molly and Arthur could pop over for a day or two, and I got tickets for Teddy and me to see the Chudley Cannons play. I planned to take him to the Exmoor National Park and take him flying.
“It rained yesterday, later in the day. We’d spent the morning at the beach. Then, when it started to rain, we went to the library—I’d seen an advert the day before about storytime for children Teddy’s age at the local library. I just literally looked up, and Draco was standing in front of me holding Muggle children’s books in his hand. Could’ve knocked me over with a touch.”
Ron whistled. Hermione ran a hand over her face.
Harry recalled his first thought had been to grab hold of Draco and apparate the three of them away from there right then and there. Let the Obliviators sort out the Muggles.
“How did he react to seeing you?” Kingsley asked.
Harry lowered his head, shaking it. “He didn’t. He didn’t react at all. He didn’t remember me at all.” He sounded exhausted as he spoke, but he picked his head up, and meeting Kingsley’s eyes, he continued, his voice hardening. “I believe he’s been Obliviated. I spoke to him yesterday and again this morning. He not only didn’t show any recognition of me, but neither did he show any reaction to Andromeda or Teddy’s names or my telling him Teddy’s parents were killed on 2 May 1998.” Harry didn’t need to explain that there was no way Draco, or any other wizard who had been there that day, could hear that date and of someone who’d been killed and show no reaction of any kind. “It makes no sense to Obliviate someone you don’t expect to survive. It’s pointless.”
Hermione had remained mostly silent during the exchange, but at Harry’s words, she interjected, “Perhaps he hasn’t been. A person may lose their memory for other reasons than memory charms. For example, a traumatic event or head injury could certainly have affected his memory. Draco could be suffering from amnesia and not a spell at all.”
Her voice was sympathetic as she spoke, and she slid her hand into Harry’s. His mouth had gone dry, and his fingers tightened around hers, his stomach clenching at the thought of Draco having been seriously injured, alone and unable to remember anything. What he knew of amnesia was limited to the few Muggle progammes he’d seen on the telly while living with the Dursleys, but he had the image in his head of someone lying in a hospital bed, waking up and staring at the people around him, asking, “Who am I?”
“He knows his name,” he said. That would disprove the amnesia theory, Harry hoped. The thought of what Draco might’ve suffered to cause amnesia was more than he could bear. “He wore a name tag pinned to his shirt, and his coworker addressed him as ‘Draco.’”
“Amnesia can vary from patient to patient. Memory can be either wholly or partially lost, depending upon the extent of damage to the brain. The memory loss may extend back only a few months, or decades could be lost—retrograde amnesia. It’s not impossible he could have remembered his name but nothing else. Moreover, depending upon the part of the brain injured, a person’s long-term memory may remain intact, but they may be unable to form short-term memories, have trouble learning new things, remembering new things for long periods of time—anterograde amnesia.”
“He can operate a computer. So far as I know, he’d never even heard the word before in his life.” Although, he did seem to have trouble typing, Harry recalled.
“That would certainly seem to safely rule out damage to his short-term memory. But with retrograde amnesia, one may be perfectly capable of learning new skills.”
In a low voice, such as one might use in a sick room, Ron said, “Minister, do I have your permission to make inquiries at local Muggle hospitals?”
Aurors needed ministry permission before conducting any type of investigation involving Muggles in which magic might be required, and Kingsley gave his. “I’m sure I don’t need to stress the need for discretion, Mr. Weasley. Whoever the responsible party is, he or she has somehow been in a position to interfere with every reported sighting of Mr. Malfoy in this region of the country without anyone cottoning on. We have to assume the suspect must have some way of monitoring any information that is reported to the Auror department. He or she has got away with a very high profile abduction for three years and likely feels safe after all this time, but if he were to learn Mr. Malfoy had been found, he could become dangerous. Potter, how many people know where you were taking your holiday?”
Harry thought to himself for some time before answering, “My immediate supervisor and Robards. A few others, but not many. Maybe half a dozen all told, maybe more if they mentioned it to someone. Not that there’d be any reason why they would’ve.”
“But they may’ve done. You being who you are, they may’ve bragged to others of their friendship with you and let slip you’d discussed your holiday plans with them.”
Harry had to admit what Kingsley said was true. He didn’t like to think any of the people he’d talked to about his plans would exploit their relationship with him, but he’d been proved wrong on that score in the past.
Worse, he himself may’ve told Draco’s attacker where he would be holidaying. Harry felt cold as the understanding that whoever had attacked Draco was someone he knew, someone he trusted, really hit home. He’d known it before, but in that moment, he truly felt it. His mere presence in Ilfracombe could lead Draco’s attacker to strike again. One of the people he’d casually shared his holiday plans with could be lying in wait, ready to strike the moment the opportunity arose. He was unspeakably grateful he’d cast all the spells he had on Draco. “I put the strongest protective, tracking and monitoring spells and charms I can cast on him,” he said, listing the spells he’d used—Cave Inimicum, Salvio Hexia, Repello Veneficus, among others. One could not cast the Fidelius charm on a person or make a person unplottable, but Draco was as close as it was possible to come. “The library is on the first floor of a five story building, but it’s built on a hill, so the library entrance is at street level. The ground floor, which is partially underground, is a garage. The second through fourth floors appear to be flats. He must live in one of those. He left the building after the library closed last night and travelled about half a mile to a local restaurant before returning nearly two hours later. He remained there all night.” Harry’s wand had emitted a warning signal the moment Draco travelled more than twenty meters from the spot where the tracking spell had been cast. A correlating spell had allowed him to follow Draco’s movement on a map of Ilfracombe charmed in a similar way to the Marauder’s Map.
Kingsley stood, excusing himself. He had a meeting scheduled with various heads of department which was to begin shortly, and it wouldn’t do to be late. If he was late, questions might be asked as to why he’d left his office. It was unlikely he would be questioned—it was for the Minister of Magic to question those beneath him as to why they were late to a meeting, not the other way around—but it wasn’t impossible. More likely, and more dangerous, questions might be asked between others, questions that might be asked to or overheard by the wrong person. Before leaving, he recapped, “Weasley, find out everything you can about the last three years of Mr. Malfoy’s life. Start with the local Muggle hospital and branch out if necessary. It may be that Ilfracombe is not where his attacker took him, but I think we can safely assume he was taken somewhere within Devon. Check Muggle law enforcement as well, and report directly back to me. Tell no one outside this room.
“Potter, who else have you told of Mr. Malfoy’s whereabouts?”
“I fire-called Andromeda last night, after Teddy’d gone to bed. Just her, you, Ron and Hermione.”
“And Mrs. Malfoy, I presume?”
Harry shook his head. “No. I thought it best to tell as few people as absolutely necessary” Andromeda had pleaded with him to be allowed to tell her sister Draco had been found alive and safe, but in the end she had accepted Harry’s judgment, albeit grudgingly. “Andromeda isn’t happy about that.”
“I’m sure she’s not, but it was a wise decision. Right now, the fewer people who know, the better. The suspect has some way of monitoring the investigation and has been a step ahead of us for three years. Whoever he or she is, they have connections. It is in Mr. Malfoy’s best interest that Mrs. Malfoy remain unaware for just a little while longer.”
“That’s what I explained to her.” Harry only hoped he would have the opportunity to explain it to Mrs. Malfoy before she hexed him inside out for keeping her in the dark. Preferably, Draco would be standing next to him, but Harry couldn’t let himself think along those lines. Three years was a long time. Draco would be a different person now then he had been when they’d been together. He could have found someone new. He might not want Harry anymore.
He might blame Harry.
Kingsley was just about to take a handful of Floo powder from the bowl on the mantel but paused when Hermione began, “You don’t think . . .” Her voice trailed off. Her eyebrows were pinched together as she stared across the room at nothing in particular.
When she didn’t finish her sentence, Ron prompted her, “What don’t we think?”
Shaking her head, Hermione said, “I’m sorry. It’s nothing, I’m sure. It’s just . . . I was just thinking. The name on the reports, you can’t read the signature, but the first letters look like D.A., but you said there are no Aurors with those initials.”
“Go on,” Ron encouraged her.
“Well, I’m mean, it’s just those particular initials: D. A. It could be just a coincidence, I’m sure it is, but you don’t think—”
Harry interrupted her. “The D.A. Dumbledore’s Army.”
It was difficult enough knowing that someone he interacted with casually everyday was behind the attack on Draco, but to think that someone from the D. A. could’ve . . . Harry felt cold. And sick. His stomach had dropped to his feet. Faces flew through his mind so fast he felt giddy. Which of them could’ve. . . .
Zacharias Smith? Could he have . . . Zacharias was haughty, an arse and a coward—there was no arguing that. Harry would never forget the sight of him pushing terrified, crying first years out of the way in his rush to get out before the Battle of Hogwarts. He’d criticised and disapproved of everything Harry had done during the D.A. Could he have continued to disapproved of Harry—of his friendship with Draco in particular? Harry was sure he could’ve done, but could he have attacked Draco in cold blood? Could he have waited for and seized the opportunity to strike? Why? Could he’ve done it out of spite, out of sheer malice? Harry pushed Zacharias Smith to the “Unlikely” column in the mental list he was creating. Smith was a talker, a loudmouth—not a doer, and thinking back, Harry couldn’t remember seeing the other wizard at the ceremony. Fleeing as he had, Harry thought it was unlikely he’d have shown his face.
Marietta? Marietta Edgecombe had betrayed the D. A. and had suffered from Hermione’s jinx as a result, having to live with the word SNEAK spelt out across her face in boils for the remained of the year, a number of which had left scars when they had finally faded. Could she have attacked Draco out of revenge on Harry, creating a false name with the initials D.A. as a taunt? Again, Harry didn’t think so. While she had betrayed the D.A., she’d acted out of fear—not a hallmark of someone capable of pulling off Draco’s abduction and sabotaging the investigation. Additionally, as with Zacharias, Harry had not seen her at all that evening and doubted she’d have attended.
But who then. . . .
“Harry!”
Harry startled when Ron grabbed him by the shoulder, giving him a hard shake. “I’ve been calling you, mate.”
“Oh. Oh, er, sorry. I was just—”
“Going through every member of the D.A. trying to think which of them might’ve been capable of attacking Malfoy. Yeah, I know. It was written all over your face. As Hermione said, the suspect choosing names—if we’re correct and he did sign a false name—beginning with those letters is likely just a coincidence. Don’t let yourself get side-tracked. If the letters D and A were intended to refer to Dumbledore’s Army, which is highly questionable, it’s more likely it was intended as a distraction to mislead us than as a genuine tie to anyone who belonged to the D.A. Our suspect would not have taken steps to hide his identity and then given us a clue to identifying him. Focus on what we know. We know where and when Malfoy was attacked. That much we’ve known all along. Focus on who either knew he was in that spot at that moment and alone or who might’ve stumbled upon him by chance and who would be in a position to sabotage the investigation over a three year period. That last bit is how we’re going to find the bastard; three years is a long time not to slip up. If you go looking for suspects outside of those perimeters, you’ll end up with the whole of Wizarding Britain in your line up.”
“Right. You’re right,” Harry had to admit. There had been a tremendous outcry throughout all of Britain when Draco and his mother had been acquitted of the charges brought against them due to Harry’s testimony. Although the furore in had died down once the details of that testimony had been made public and their world had learned what Narcissa and Draco Malfoy had done, and not done, there had still been demands for justice from those who wanted anyone and everyone who had supported Voldemort in any way thrown into Azkaban for life, if not Kissed, regardless of any consideration such as their age or whether they may’ve been acting against their will. Additionally, there had still been a large number of Voldemort’s supporters in hiding and on the run at the time, all of whom would’ve seen Draco and his mother as traitors to their Lord. It would’ve been foolish to believe that there hadn’t been a great many people who wished harm to the Malfoys, but wishing someone harm—or even rejoicing in it when it happened—were not enough to suspect someone. The focus had to be on opportunity.
Hermione looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. It was just an idea that occurred to me.” Ron and Harry both knew they were possibly only alive today due to ideas that had occurred to Hermione, and Kingsley knew that as well. None of them could fault her for wanting to contribute. It had been the three of them as a team for so long, it was sometimes hard for one of them to remember the other two shared something that he or she did not. With Hermione, it was that Ron and Harry were Aurors and she was not.
With Harry, it was that Hermione and Ron were a couple—a married couple now—and while they still often spent time together the three of the them, three was, occasionally, a crowd.
Taking a handful of Floo powder, Kingsley said, “I’m off, then. Weasley, this is your investigation. You know what you have to do.” Turning to Harry, he continued sternly, “Potter, we’ll find the person responsible. As Weasley said, with this new bit of information, we’ll get him, and when we do, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you not to do anything foolish. I will not have you taking the law into your own hands. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Harry answered while mentally planning what he was going to do to the bastard when he got his hands on him.
Kingsley turned and dipped his head at Hermione by way of parting, and a moment later, he departed in a blaze of green flames.
~~~~~~~
“Have you called him yet?” Kat asked as she came up behind him.
Speaking of incurable matchmakers . . . Exasperated, Draco tried to ignore her, but she was like a persistent little gnat bussing around his head and driving him mental.
At least he could’ve swatted the gnat.
“Well? Have you?” Kat was not one to be ignored.
Sighing Draco answered, turning only partially toward her, “No.”
“Well, why in blazes not?”
“Kat, please.” Normally, Draco would not have been bothered by Kat’s interest and teasing; without his coworkers, he’d be alone, and it was comforting knowing his friends took an interest in him and wanted to see him happy. But the way Harry Potter had looked at him yesterday and again this morning was different from the way other men had looked at him. There was an intensity behind those green eyes that struck Draco, made him feel both protected and exposed. Remembering the way the other man had looked at him made Draco’s heart race and chills spread up his back.
And the constant pictures his brain kept providing of Harry Potter and himself in bed together— their arms around each other, their legs twisted together, the sheets kicked to the floor as they moved together—were causing other reactions in his body.
Pressing his fingers to his temples, Draco tried to massage away the headache building inside his skull.
“Well, I think you should call him,” Kat said.
“Yes, I know. You’ve only said so about a hundred times.”
“A hundred, really. Two or three at most.”
Draco turned to her, a look of disbelief across his features.
“Okay, maybe five or six.”
Draco’s eyebrow arched.
“Five or six is as high as I’m going. But, really, Draco—you should call him. He clearly wanted to you to. The way he looked at you! . . . It was like . . . like, like he’d been adrift at sea for years, and seeing you was like catching sight of land.”
Draco startled. “You noticed that too?”
Laughing, Kat responded, “Luv, you’d have to be blind to not notice it.”
Silent, not knowing what to say, Draco returned to his work.
Next to him, Kat refused to let it go. “So, if we’re agreed he’s interested, and it’s obvious you’re interested, why the bloody hell haven’t you called him yet?” Moving to stand beside him, leaning against the enquiries counter, her arms folded in front of her chest, she returned the arched eyebrow he’d given her a moment ago and said, “Scared, Malfoy?”
You wish.
The two words that resonated through his head were so unexpected, Draco dropped the book he’d had in his hands. Not only were the words themselves unexpected, but the voice he’d heard speak them was doubly so. It was Harry Potter’s voice. The voice that spoke the words was younger than the voice of the man he’d spoken to yesterday and again this morning, but while he’d only heard it twice, and only briefly those two times, he knew he’d recognise that voice out of thousands of others.
Draco rubbed his forehead with shaking fingers. Not only were impossible things suddenly seeming to happen around him and had his flashbacks begun growing more and more frequent and bizarre, but now his mind was conjuring up other people’s voices speaking in his head. Hearing voices in one’s head—wasn’t that a sign of going mad? Was that what was happening to him? Had he only imagined he’d fallen in slow motion last night?
Draco drew a breath, calming the anxiety growing inside him. A person simply could not fall in slow motion; logically, he knew that. But he had; he was sure he’d not imagined it. It had truly happened. Just as the chip had been freed from Jo’s throat by the energy that had surged threw him. He was not imagining things.
In the next moments, a welcome distraction arrived as a delivery man entered, pushing a cardboard box on a dolly toward the enquiries desk. Draco had been looking forward to this delivery all week, and now that it had finally arrived, it gave his mind something normal, something safe to focus on. The relief of something to root him firmly in the everyday and familiar was palpable.
The Ilfracombe library had as ample a stock of all the latest bestselling fiction and non-fiction works, along with all the standard reference materials and periodicals, as any library of the same size in the country. It was their collection of rare and out-of-print books, Jo’s pride and joy, that set them apart. Their library had amassed an array of titles and authors not often found in a library of their size thanks to her extensive efforts. One could go to any library anywhere and find Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, but if that person was to also ask for her mother, Mary Sewell’s, Mother’s Last Words, he or she would likely as not be met by a blank stare, even in a library much larger than theirs. It had been the reproduction of a late 19th century edition of that very book—its scanned pages perfect replicas of the imperfect, yellowed, stained and torn century-plus old originals—which had begun Draco’s love of old books and spurred his interest in preserving such works before they were lost for good.
While sometimes reproduction were all that were available—such as with Mother’s Last Words—they preferred to buy the original book whenever possible, providing it was in sturdy enough condition to be given out on loan to members. They were a library, not a museum.
Now thoroughly devoted to Jo’s cause, Draco was thrilled at the chance to get his hands on old books—the older the better. He loved the scent of old books, the old ink and leather covers, and could lose himself in the pursuit of antique books, searching online or scouring estate sales, used book stores, and auctions. He could see himself one day with an enviable collection of his own: tall built in bookcases, shelves covered with original publications already old long before he was born. He could see himself sitting in a tall wingback chair in dark brown leather beside a roaring fire, two large dogs laying loyally at his feet, a glass of either port or sherry in one hand and. . . .
Draco squeezed his eyes shut; his breathing felt erratic, and he gripped the edge of the enquiries counter tightly. What had started out as a distraction had ended as anything but. In his mind, he had the perfect image of the scene he’d just imagined, but it wasn’t his imagination—it was another flashback. It was a memory.
He could see the tall, dark brown leather wingback chair sitting beside an enormous fireplace—tall enough for a grown man to both stand up and lie down in—surrounded by an elaborately carved mantel of light-coloured stone. Beside the chair sat an ornate occasional table, and behind both the chair and table stood a large sideboard even more lavishly carved than the table. On a wall covered with dark green silk hung a painting of a great manor home in a gilt frame. Atop the occasional table stood a carved crystal decanter half-filled with amber liquid and the most enormous and ugliest golden candelabra imaginable—the arms of which were snakes upon the heads of which stood tall taper candles.
A man sat in the chair; a young boy in blue pyjamas lay sprawled on a thick carpet petting one of two large, long-haired dogs lying at their master’s feet. The man held a brandy snifter in one hand and an ancient-looking, small, leather bound book in the other. He was wearing elaborate, heavily embroidered robes of black and dark green and had long hair, the shade of blond almost exactly like Draco’s own, secured at the nape of his neck by a black ribbon tied in a bow. The man bore a notable resemblance to Draco, and he knew with absolute certainty he was seeing—remembering—his father.
“Draco!” Kat’s hand gripped his shoulder. “What is it? Are you ill?” she asked as she guided him to a chair.
Overwhelmed, Draco opened his mouth, about to tell his friend he’d just remembered his father, seen him sitting beside a fire, reading to a small boy—himself as a child!—but he refrained at the last moment. He felt very protective of the brief glimpse he’d had of himself with his father, as if something deeply rooted inside of himself cautioned him from sharing the moment of his childhood he’d suddenly recalled. He didn’t want to share it. With what he hoped was an normal expression on his face, he lied, unable to meet Kat’s eyes, “It’s nothing.” Pain had blossomed inside his skull, and he said, “I’ve a sudden headache, is all. It’ll pass. I’ll just go take an aspirin or two.”
“I’ve Anadin,” Kat said as she retrieved her purse from a small cupboard behind the enquiries desk. Sparing a brief glance to the delivery man waiting with a clipboard in his hand, she said to him, “If you’ll wait for just a moment, I’ll be right with you,” before turning her attention back to Draco. Handing the tablets to Draco, she said, “Go take a break. Take these with a glass of water and put your head down for a little while.”
Feeling something like the young boy he’d just seen in his mind, Draco did as directed.
In the small kitchenette for staff, Draco sat at the faux wood grained laminate table, a paper cup held in his hand, trying to remember as many details of his father’s face as he could. His father had the same pale blond hair, fair skin and light eyes Draco himself had, that much was certain, but Draco could make out so little of the man’s features, he was unsure whether he’d be able to identify him if he were to be shown photographs of a number of blond haired, fair skinned and light eyed men. The entire scene had the air of formality, but that, Draco felt, was more due to the ostentatious grandeur of the room than to its inhabitants. Take away all the trappings and what was left was the scene of a father reading to his son as the child petted a dog.
His headache was fading as quickly has it had come, and Draco steepled his hands in front of his face, resting his head against his fingers. The scene was one of a family with great wealth; there could be no doubt about that. Had he come from money, then? He’d had no money on him when he’d been found, but that could hardly be surprising. He’d had no wallet or any type of identification other than the name sewn into his robes. In spite of the formality of the scene he’d recalled, Draco was certain there was affection between the father and son.
Why, then, had his father never come looking for him? With all the money the décor of the room implied, and the power that went along with money, why had his father never come looking for him?
Draco feared the answer. Had his father never found him because he himself had been a victim of the same attack? Draco had been found on the beach unconscious, and it had been nothing but luck that he’d not drowned. Because it had been a neap tide, the high tide mark was lower than it would’ve been a week before or after. As it was, his clothing had still been damp from when the tide had come in, reaching him only enough to lap harmlessly at his unconscious form. Had he been only a few feet closer to the sea, he’d have been lost to the high tide. Had his father been left on the beach as well, just those few feet closer to the sea? The thought turned Draco’s stomach, leaving him feeling distinctly ill.
And where was his mother? His mother had not been in the scene he’d recalled, nor had there been other children. Had his mother been left widowed and childless? Was there anyone to take care of her? Was she alone? Had she never come looking for him because she believed him to be dead? Was she even still alive herself?
Draco sat in the kitchenette for longer than he realised, and a concerned Kat eventually stuck her head in the door checking on him. “Draco? Luv, you okay? Thought maybe you’d fallen asleep.”
“No, I’m awake.”
“Oh, luv. What is it?” she asked, twisting to look back over her shoulder at the library, keeping an eye on the patrons. He knew Kat well enough to know that she wanted to draw up a chair next to him and pull him into a hug, but they were the only two on today, and someone needed to ensure no one took advantage of a few moments free from the watchful eye of a librarian to run amok through the library, tearing pages from the books or speaking above a whisper.
Pushing himself away from the table, Draco forced the morbid thoughts from his mind. “It’s nothing, Kat. Really.”
As he stepped passed her, her hand placed gently on his arm stopped him. “It’s not nothing, Draco. Something is wrong. It’s all written all over your face plain as day, it is. You can talk to me, you know.”
Giving her hand a light squeeze in appreciation, Draco replied. “I know. And I appreciate it. I do, truly. But not now, okay?”
“Later, then?”
“Later.”
Stepping aside, Kat let him pass. “I will hold you to that, you know.”
Closing the door to the kitchenette behind him, Draco told himself the delivery was just what he needed to give his mind a rest from thoughts he did not want to dwell on.
~~~~~~~
Apologetically, Ron answered, “I’d just got out of the bath when your message arrived, so first, I’m going to have a shave, and you are going to eat—as I’ve no doubt you’ve not eaten since yesterday. Then, I’m going to the hospital and to look into Malfoy’s life here in Ilfracombe, and you’re going to bed.”
An indignant look passed over Harry’s face, and he was silent for at least five seconds before opening his mouth, about to explode at being cut out of the investigation.
Ron cut off the tirade he knew was coming before it could begin. “You are too close to the investigation to work it, and you know it.”
“I can separate my emotions from my job.”
“No. You can’t. You’re human, Harry. Someone you loved was abducted and has been missing for three years. You can’t just turn that off like a Muggle light switch. No one could. I’m sorry, but you have to step aside this time and let me do my job.”
“It’s my job, too!”
“Not this time. Not this case. I promise, I will get whoever did this,” Ron knew that, regardless of Kingsley’s warning, Harry wanted to have Draco’s attacker to himself for five minutes, and he finished sternly, “and hand him over to Kingsley.” The dark look that filled Harry’s eyes confirmed what Ron already knew—that he wanted the guilty party to himself. In Harry’s place, he would, too. He warned his friend, “You won’t do Malfoy any good if you are facing charges yourself.”
“Ron, you don’t understand,” Harry begged, his voice shaking with emotion. “I have to find the bastard who attacked him. I have to. It was my fault. It was all my fault. It never would’ve happened had it not been for me. Draco wouldn’t even have been there that night had it been up to him. He didn’t want to go to the ceremony.
“We were all there honouring the dead--our dead, but his father died that day, too, and sitting in an atrium filled with people reviling his father’s memory was the last thing Draco wanted to do. All he wanted to do was stay home with his mother. Kingsley specifically asked him to attend to show that the survivors from both sides could live together, but the real reason he went was because I asked him to.”
Able to hear the desperation in Harry’s voice and knowing his friend as well as he did, Ron feared Harry would somehow involve himself in the investigation behind Ron’s back if he was not given the opportunity to be involved. Reluctantly, he compromised. “Alright, how about this,” Ron offered as he began to put Draco’s file back together. “We need to get this returned to the Ministry before it’s missed. We cannot allow word of anyone taking an extra look into Malfoy’s disappearance reach our suspect. Like Kingsley said, he’s got away with it for so long, by now he’s likely confident he’ll never be caught. There hasn’t been a new sighting reported in several months; his guard will be down, and we do not want anything to put him back on his guard.” Handing a stack of reports to Harry, Ron finished, “So, what I need you to do is make a copy of the file, put the original back together again, and return it to the Ministry.”
“I’m an Auror, not a bleedin’ file clerk!” Harry all but shouted, his frustration growing.
Using an argument he’d rather not have had to use but one that was nonetheless true, Ron asked, remaining calm in the face of Harry’s growing infuriation. “If Malfoy’s attacker were to somehow learn he’d been found, what do you think he’d do?”
“I don’t—”
“Yes you do. You just said you’re an Auror—so, calm down and think like one. Why did you put all those protective spells on Malfoy? His attacker has already struck once—”
“He could come after Draco again,” Harry said, his voice low and laced with fear. He’d put every protective spell he knew of on Draco yesterday, but his attacker would have spells of his own, spells that could counteract Harry’s.
“Yes, he could,” Ron said, once again handing a pile of reports to Harry. “So, the sooner we get all this back in the file room where it belongs, the less chance there is that anyone will notice it was ever gone and the safer Malfoy will be.”
Without speaking, Harry sat down and set about making a perfect replica of Draco’s file, duly chastised.
Hermione had reentered the room, a plate of bacon butties in her hand, remaining silently in the distance while Ron and Harry spoke, not wanting to interrupt. Now that Ron had left the room to shave before heading to the hospital, she stepped forward. “You need to eat, Harry,” she said, placing the sandwiches in front of him, careful not to disturb any of the parchments covering the majority of the table. Hoping to encourage him, she took a sandwich herself as she sat down. “They really are good. You know you love bacon sandwiches,” she said, licking melted butter and bacon grease off her fingertips—it wasn’t often she indulged in such greasy foods. “And I’ve read Muggle researchers have determined that bacon butties are actually good for you,” she said, as if to justify the indulgence.
The corners of Harry’s mouth twitched in spite of the anxiety he felt for Draco’s safety. Hermione’s parents were Muggle dentists and had regularly sent her healthy, sugar-free treats whilst she’d been at Hogwarts. Now, as a Healer, she was as zealous as her parents in eating healthy. He asked, “Is that so?”
Very primly, she answered, “Yes, it is. Has to do with the carbohydrates in the bread and the protein in the bacon, which breaks down into amino acids in your body. Amino acids increase your neurotransmitters, giving you a clearer head. So, eat,” she instructed in her best I-am-a-Healer-so-do-what-I-say tone of voice.
Grinning now at the absurdity of Hermione, of all people, touting the health benefits of bacon sandwiches, Harry asked, “Healer’s orders, then?”
“Yes, Healer’s orders.” Pushing the plate of sandwiches closer to him, Hermione wiped her hands on a napkin and pulled her wand from her pocket. “I can help with this while you eat,” she offered, waving her wand at a report.
His momentary good humour faded quickly, and Harry turned serious as he ate.
Picking up the perfect replica of the original report she’d just created, Hermione studied it. She set it down and repeated the spell on another report, once again studying the resulting copy. Harry watched her as she worked, and when she cocked her head to the side after a third report, he could no longer keep from asking, “What? Hermione, what?” It made no difference whether Hermione was a Healer or an Auror, she was still Hermione, and Harry would listen to any idea or opinion she had on any subject.
Setting down a fourth report, Hermione sighed and shook her head. “No one in the world has worse penmanship in the world than Healers. They’re worse than Muggle doctors. Quite dangerous, really, when one stops to think what could happen . . . I’ve become used to deciphering really quite indecipherable writing. I though perhaps I’d have a go at that signature. Maybe I could see something in it.”
Hopeful, Harry asked, “And?”
“I think whoever signed these held the quill between their toes rather than in their hand.”
Harry deflated. It was unlikely the signature was important anyway. It would be the height of stupidity for Draco’s attacker to sign his own name to the incriminating reports.
Squeezing his arm, Hermione reassured him, “Ron will get him you know.”
Harry nodded his head.
“Harry . . . I know we’ve said this before, but we’re all so sorry we didn’t understand how much you’d come to love him until he was gone.”
“I know.”
Unsure whether she should push Harry to talk, but remembering what he’d started to say earlier in the kitchen and what she’d heard him say to Ron, Hermione prodded gently, “What happened was not your fault, Harry. You don’t truly believe it was, do you?”
Finishing a second sandwich, Harry answered, “I believe it because it’s true.”
“Oh, Harry. That’s what you meant earlier, in the kitchen just before Kingsley arrived, about him not being able to forgive you.”
Letting his hands fall to the table, Harry kept his eyes averted as he said, “How could he?” Raising his hands and using them to cover his face, Harry was quiet for several seconds before going on. “I asked him to go, Hermione. He didn’t want to. He was only there because I asked him to go. Why the fuck couldn’t I have just let him stay the hell home with his mother like he’d wanted?”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione attempted to console him, but she didn’t know what to say that might help. Any words of encouragement she could offer would only sound patronizing to his ears, she feared.
There were still a couple sandwiches on the plate, but he pushed them away. “As soon as I get this back to the ministry, I’m going back to the library. I have to make sure he’s safe.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Harry,” she warned. “You don’t want to come across as too heavy handed or stalker-like. Wait a bit,” she shrugged, her voice slightly teasing, “I bet he’ll come to you.”
“It’s been three years, Hermione,” Harry said, sounding despondent. “It’d be foolish to expect that in all that time he hasn’t found someone. He’s built himself a new life. He has a job and seemed very friendly with his coworkers. Or even if he isn’t seeing anyone, that’s not to say he’d be interested in getting back together, even if he can forgive me.”
Crestfallen, she offered, “If it will make you feel better, I’ll go to the library myself and keep an eye on him.” She could see a small amount of the tension visible in Harry’s eyes ease.
“You wouldn’t mind?” Harry asked.
“Are you seriously asking me if I’d mind spending some time in a library? Hullo, have we met? Besides, like Ron said, you really need to sleep. Let’s finish getting all this copied, and then I’ll go and just dry my hair quickly before I head off. I’d just got out of the bath when your message came, and I just threw it up in a bun still wet.”
“I thought Ron said he’d just got out of the bath.”
“Yes, well, we were on our honeymoon, you see.”
~~~~~~~
She startled and jumped up at the sight of him. Smoothing her fuchsia robes and tucking her hair behind her ears, she hurried to the counter apologising and attempting to explain she’d been on her lunch break, but fearing a long and unwanted narrative, Harry cut her off, wanting nothing more than to extricate himself and get back to Ilfracombe as quickly as possible. “Please don’t let me interrupt. I just need to get this returned, and I’ll leave you get back to you lunch.”
Upon seeing the name on the file Harry had returned, the young witch opened her mouth to speak again, but Harry had already turned to leave.
He made it no farther than two steps down the corridor when Anthony Moore, the Auror currently in charge of Draco’s case, stepped out from a cubicle, blocking Harry’s path. One of the oldest Aurors in the department, he seemed surprised to see Harry, although he’d certainly been expecting someone.
“A word, Auror Potter,” he requested. His tone leaving no room to refuse, Harry acquiesced, following the older wizard into a room used for the interrogation of suspects.
~~~~~~~
As she continued her climb up the street, she approached one of the numerous small hotels that dotted the street. A square sign painted pale green and dangling from a wrought iron bracket advertised “The Olive Branch.” That, Hermione thought to herself, was exactly what would be needed from all of them once Draco’s attacker was apprehended and Harry and he had a chance to try to rebuild what they’d had three years ago—an olive branch. Or possibly the entire olive tree, given their history. She did not share Harry’s pessimism that there was no hope for them to begin again. They’d overcome too much to be together three years ago to lose everything, and this time around, all of Harry’s friends would be much more welcoming of their relationship than they had been the first time—Merlin help them if they weren’t. Draco had helped Harry heal after the war in ways none of them had been able to. They’d given him the love of a family—Draco had given him the love of a lover, and as whole as Harry had been for those months with Draco, that was how broken he’d been these three years without him.
Winded and feeling the muscles in her legs burn after her climb, Hermione reached Sommers’ Crescent, a narrow, windy road leading down toward Ilfracombe Bay and the Tunnels Beaches, and turned left—grateful to be headed downhill. On one side of the street stood a row of neat and tidy looking homes and a block of flats all painted in cheerful, appropriately British-seaside-resort pastels or cream with white and black trim, on the other were the sides of the business she’d passed on the corner of Fore Street and the Arlington Hotel. It was the Arlington, which stood adjacent to the building housing the library, to which Hermione was headed, and upon reaching it, she turned into the car park in front of the hotel. Both the Arlington and the building in which the library was located faced the sea, and had Hermione not felt such growing apprehension at seeing Draco Malfoy for the first time since that wretched day three years ago, she would’ve been awed by the view the location offered.
Crossing the Arlington’s car park, she got the uncomfortable feeling she’d forgotten to do something important and felt a strong desire to turn and hurry off, back the way she’d come. That would be the Repello Veneficus spell Harry had cast to repel any wizards or witches who might approach the building where Draco worked and lived. Moving to stand between two parked cars and glancing around to make sure she wouldn’t be seen, Hermione withdrew her wand and, bending over as if to tie her shoe to further conceal her action, she pointed it at herself and mumbled Permittas Mihi Ostium. The feeling subsided.
One of Harry’s protective spells countered, she continued on. She could feel the hum of the remaining enchantments as she walked, but as she came as a friend, they allowed her to pass unhindered. With as strong a wizard as Harry was, had she any ill intentions toward Draco, she knew she’d not have got this close to him easily.
The building housing the library was a five story brick building, the ground floor of which, an enclosed car park, was partially underground due to steep incline of the site. The car park was accessed through entry bays that were enclosed by iron gates in a decorative geometric pattern and painted a bright cobalt blue. The ironwork continued to the first floor, framing four large semi-circular windows and was repeated in railings around the lower half of windows on the upper floors, creating the illusion of small balconies where there were none.
The entrance to the library was just around the corner, sitting at street level. Hermione paused before entering, trying to think of what she would say to Draco when she saw him. She’d been in countless libraries and dealt with enough librarians that it should be second nature to her, but she admitted she was out of her depth in this situation.
Entering the building, Hermione glanced around. Draco was nowhere to be seen.
Just inside the doors, chairs and tables were set up beside one of the large semi-circle windows she’d seen from the outside. Feeling a brief reprieve, Hermione took a moment to admire the view she’d barely noticed whilst outside. The windows went from the floor to nearly the ceiling, both providing a stunning view of the sea and flooding the library with natural light. It would be a lovely spot to sit with a book, but whilst the view of the sea was spectacular, the same could not be said the for the view the location offered of the rest of the library.
Beyond the seating area was the enquiries desk, at which a young woman sat working on a computer. Upon Hermione’s approach, the woman raised her head and smiled. “Hello,” she greeted as Hermione neared the stand. “May I help you?”
“Just looking around,” Hermione answered.
To her right were two computers beneath a sign reading Self Service, and she walked to them. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see that the librarian had gone back to her work. Hermione tapped a few random keys on the keyboard and took a piece of the provided paper and a pencil, as if jotting down the information on a book she wanted.
She wandered around, hoping she looked like a casual customer on her first visit rather than someone secretly planning to spend the afternoon spying on another person. Auror work was definitely Ron and Harry’s forte, no hers.
The library was a bright, open space divided into sections for various topics and ages without sacrificing the open flow by the use of seating arrangements, racks of books on casters which could be moved around as need, and pillars covered with shelves of books and magazines and various fliers and circulars in clear plastic stands.
The fiction section was closest to the enquiries desk while still offering a good view of the rest of the library, and Hermione scanned the shelves before selecting a book and settling down in a chair facing the librarian going about her work. By the spells Harry had cast on Draco, they knew he was still in the building, but whether he was in his flat or at work, they had no idea. All she could do was sit, wait, and hope he’d show up.
She opened the book to the midway point, and though she flipped the pages at regular intervals, her eyes scanned the library. There was a good number of patrons here and there—too many for one single librarian? After only a few minutes, the librarian stepped out from behind the counter and passed Hermione on her way to the children’s section just beyond.
“You’ve got quite a lovely library here.” Hermione commented, cringing inwardly, hoping she’d not sounded patronising. “The view is spectacular.” Afraid it might seem strange she’d not chosen one of the chairs by the windows offering the view she’d just remarked on, she added, “I’d not get any work done with a distraction like that.” She smiled, hoping the smile looked friendly rather than awkward.
Returning her smile and not seeming to think anything about her behaviour was odd, the woman thanked her and said, “I think the view is the reason they set up the enquiries desk how they did—our backs are to it.”
Hoping she sounded casual Hermione looked around and asked, “It seems well used. You’ve got a nice sized crowd. You’re not the only one working, surely?”
“Oh, no. There are two of us on. My coworker is busy at present, but he should be back any moment.”
Hermione felt herself tense—he should be back any moment. She knew from personal experience how few male librarians there were. The chances that a library of this size would have two were remote.
“I’ve not seen you here before. On holiday?” The woman—Kat, Hermione saw from her name tag—asked conversationally.
“Oh, er . . . yes. With my husband.” She almost forgot to call Ron her husband rather than fiancé. “He’s . . .” Think, Hermione! Think! What would a man due whilst on vacation that his wife would likely not join him for! She felt stupid as she remembered her father’s favourite sport. “ . . . golfing. He’s golfing.”
“I’m not much of a golfer myself. Tried it once. Kept missing the ball and hitting the ground. I’ll let you get back to your reading.” Kat said before returning to her work.
Hermione exhaled and sat back in her chair.
At the sound of a door being opened only a moment later, Hermione looked up. Entering the library through a door marked “Staff Only” walked Draco Malfoy. She gasped, her mouth falling open.
Draco looked in her direction, and his footsteps faltered. She saw him flinch and heard him suck in a ragged breath a moment before he looked abruptly away. He paled and even at a distance of at least three metres, Hermione’s Healer eyes noted that he swallowed hard twice, as if fighting a wave of nausea. In one hand he carried a small stack of rather old looking books; his free hand went to his head as if he either had a sudden headache or felt faint.
Hermione was not an Auror; she was a Healer, and Draco had gone in an instant from looking perfectly well to terribly ill. She was on her feet just as quickly; any worry on what she would say to him evaporated as she went into Healer-mode. “Draco? Are you ill? Come, sit down a moment,” she said, guiding him to the chair she’d just vacated.
“You know my name? How do you know my name?” Draco asked her, his voice trembling.
Ready to kick herself for making such a stupid mistake, Hermione told herself to calm down. “It’s on your name tag,” she answered in her calm-under-pressure Healer voice.
“Draco? Oh, luv! What is it?” Kat had hurried over to them before she had got him seated. Hermione felt her stomach plummet. Draco worked with this woman—a very pretty young woman, who’d just called him Luv and who wore a small diamond on her third finger. Was Harry right? Had he found someone else to love during the last three years?
A woman?
“My head,” Draco groaned. “Headache. It’s just a headache.”
Hermione wanted to draw her wand and cast a pain relieving charm on him, but they were drawing attention from other library patrons. She would be seen.
“It’s alright. Really, Kat. Don’t fret so. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look alright, and I’ll fret all I want. After last night, you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a bit on edge.”
“What happened last night?” Hermione asked, her mouth speaking the words before her brain could stop it. Not only was it a highly inappropriate question, but it was also one she worried she truly did not want the answer to.
With the briefest of glances, Kat answered in a much more abrupt tone of voice than what she’d spoken to Hermione in only moments ago, “A friend of ours choked.” Softer, she added. “It was horrible.”
“I’m sure it was. I’m sorry, I realise that question sounded impertinent. Only, I feared your friend may’ve hit his head or something along those lines. I’m a . . . medical student.” She’d almost said Healer by mistake.
Hermione’s explanation satisfied Kat, and any trace of irritation at her question disappeared as her attention returned to Draco.
“Do you get sudden headaches often? ” Hermione asked Draco. A poorly cast memory charm could fracture over time—particularly if given a strong enough catalyst—and the mind could begin to fight the charm, much the way Harry could fight off the Imperius curse. Sudden headaches were a symptom of such an occurrence. The headaches would increase in severity the more the charm fractured and the victim began to remember.
“Not usually, no.”
“Have you been tested for migraines?”
He shook his head.
“Is it a sharp, stabbing pain?”
“It’s passing already,” he said, not answering her question. He turned to Kat and squeezed her hand. “I’m fine. Really.”
Hermione observed him. His voice sounded stronger, and the tension in his face had eased considerably.
The headaches caused by a memory charm fracturing were very short in duration, the pain fading as rapidly as it had escalated.
Tilting his head toward Hermione but not looking at her, he thanked her for her help and returned to his work, talking to Kat about the books in his hand—an Ann Radcliffe and a Dorothy L. Sayers, both printed during the late 1930’s and a copy of Eric Ambler’s Journey into Fear printed just after the end of World War II.
Over the next several minutes, neither Draco nor Kat looked back at her, but Hermione watched them over the top of her book carefully. That Draco seemed to have fully recovered from his sudden headache so quickly was exactly what one would expect were the headache caused by the fracturing of a poorly cast memory charm. If her suspicion was correct, more headaches would follow. The spell to relieve the pain from the headaches was not a complicated one, and, her wand hidden behind her book, Hermione cast it discreetly now that no eyes were on her. That would temporarily protect Draco from more headaches, which was all she could do for him at the moment. Hermione worried. If her suspicion was correct, the headaches would become more intense as the memory spell continued to fracture. Although she knew a good deal about memory charms, she was by no means an expert. If her theory was correct, Draco needed to be seen by someone with far more experience than she had. And the sooner, the better.
While the seat Hermione had chosen offered a good view of the enquiries desk where both Draco and his coworker—she hoped the woman was nothing to him but a coworker and friend—sat, it was too far away to hear what was being said. Fortunately, she knew any number of spells designed to help one overhear others’ conversations.
Draco was speaking, his head barely turned an inch from the monitor in front of him. “ . . . finally shipped the new lit crit journals Jo ordered three weeks ago.”
“Oh, good. It’s about time.” The woman glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, smirking. “But no changing the subject. What else did he say?”
“There’s a hold on one of the books that couple returned earlier. I’ll ring up—”
Kat interrupted him. “It can wait.” She propped her head up on her palm, her fingertips strumming along her cheekbone and her smirk widening. “We can either talk about Harry Potter or your sudden headache. Pick one.”
Hermione had to restrain herself. She wanted to jump from the chair and pump her fist in the air.
Draco sighed. “There’s nothing to say on either score, Kat.”
Employing a tactic Hermione herself had used on both Ron and Harry when she wanted information they’d not wanted to give her, Kat remained silent as she stared Draco down. Though he refused to look in her direction, she held her stare, and sure enough, just like with Ron and Harry, Draco broke.
He sighed again. “He said he’d only arrived in Combe two days ago.”
“And what else?”
Draco may’ve known he’d been defeated, but he was not going to give in easily. It was odd to see Draco Malfoy interacting with a Muggle woman in such an easy, friendly way. In Hermione’s mind, Draco Malfoy was still very much the Pure-blood snob he’d been at Hogwarts, but—
No, Hermione scolded herself. It was just that kind of thinking they all had to get over. While they’d not come right out three years ago and told Harry he was making a mistake mixing himself up with the likes of Malfoy, they’d been none too welcoming of the relationship, making their feelings known in every way but words. That had to stop—for Harry’s sake.
“I asked him if he liked it so far, and he . . . he . . .” Draco’s voice faded off, and he cleared his throat. He was clearly very reluctant to go on. Hermione’s ears perked up.
“He?” Kat questioned, encouragingly.
“He said he liked it so far.” Draco said matter-of-factly.
He was holding out; Hermione was sure of it.
By the look on Kat’s face, she was sure of it too. Hermione thought Kat was someone she could grow to be friends with.
Draco rubbed the back of his neck and risked a glance at Kat. That was as big a mistake as looking into the eyes of a basilisk. He blurted out the rest as if she’d Imperiused him. “He looked at me like . . .” The expression Draco’s face implied he couldn’t find the words to describe the way Harry had looked at him and was trying to will Kat to visualise it. “He said he liked what he’d seen so far very much. More than he could’ve hoped.”
Hermione couldn’t help it, she squealed.
Kat and Draco looked at her reproachfully, and she hid her face behind her book before meekly apologising, “Sorry. Sorry, this is just . . . a really good book.” Keeping her face hidden behind her book, Hermione smiled so widely, her face hurt.
Turning her attention away from Hermione and back to Draco, Kat whispered enthusiastically, “Draco! How much plainer can he make it! The man wants you! If you don’t ring him up and ask him out, I will!”
Draco gave her a cheeky grin, clearly pleased at thinking about Harry’s words and their obvious meaning. “I don’t think you’re his type, Kat. Besides, what would Julian say?”
“Bastard,” Kat laughed. “I’ll ring him up and ask him out for you, darling, and just for that, I might let slip you want him to bend you over the back of the sofa and—”
“Kat!” Draco admonished anxiously, his eyes darting in Hermione’s direction, as if afraid she’d overheard. There were other patrons in the library, but she was the closest to them.
“Ring him up, Draco,” Kat said in a lower voice. “You saw how he looked at you both yesterday and this morning—and he seems like a decent sort of bloke, stepping up and helping care for his godson after the poor little tot’s parents died. He is definitely something to look at. Bet he’s something to look at naked, too.” She winked at him. “You’ll have to let me know.”
“You’re incorrigible. Does Julian know you picture other men naked?”
“So long as it’s only the gay ones, I doubt he’d be too bothered. Especially as he’s the one who reaps the benefits.” She retrieved a mobile phone and a rectangular card of the type that one fills in when requesting a new library card, handing them to Draco. “Now call.”
Hermione’s heart was pounding with excitement as she kept her face hidden behind the screen of her book. She was glad she’d chosen a nice, large hardcover rather than a small, pocket-sized paperback. She felt like she had when Ron and her relationship had been in its infancy, overjoyed and breathlessly anticipating everything that was to come. She wanted to join in Kat’s urging that he ring Harry up. The old, prejudiced opinion she’d held of Draco even after his disappearance was rapidly being laid to rest at this unprecedented view of him.
~~~~~~~
Without looking directly at her, Draco’s eyes darted in the direction of the woman sitting in the fiction section reading. She was awfully close, and once again, he hoped she couldn’t hear. At least Kat had lowered her voice. His mind kept returning to the horrible scene he’d witnessed a moment ago, and he was grateful for the distraction of Kat’s teasing, but he would be mortified should she be overheard. While he’d not caught her in the act, he had the gut feeling the woman was watching them from behind her book. She did appear to glance in their direction quite often, but every time he looked, she seemed to be absorbed in her reading.
He couldn’t for the life of him imagine what had brought such a nightmarish scene to his mind, but it had been awful. It had been as soon as he’d seen her that his mind had briefly been filled by the image of a young woman sprawled on the floor, thrashing about, her screams of pain unlike any sound he could imagine a human being making. A small number of people stood around her, looking on eagerly, gawking at her and taunting the poor woman. Another woman stood above her, laughing an evil cackling laugh. She might have once been beautiful, the horrible cackling woman, but her face was twisted and made ugly by evil and hatred. The scene left Draco feeling sick and with a horrible sense of guilt and remorse settled in his gut. He felt filled with shame and was reluctant to look directly at the woman sitting and reading, as if what he’d just seen in his mind had been real, had happened to her and he’d been one of those witnessing her torture and had done nothing to stop it. Had it been part of a film he’d seen and forgotten? Had the woman sitting in the fiction section somehow reminded him of it? He’d not been able to see the poor woman’s face—it had been mostly covered by her long brown hair as she flailed about—but the woman he’d seen laying on the floor, writhing in agony, did bear a resemblance to the woman sitting in the fiction section. They had the same shade of hair and the same slim build. Had she not told them she was a medical student, he might’ve wondered if she was an actress.
A medical student. Draco breathed a silent sigh of relief. If the woman was sneaking glances at them from behind her book, she was most likely keeping an eye out should his headache return, not because she was listening in to their conversation. But his headache had gone as suddenly as it had come. He felt loads better now—both in regards to his head and no longer worrying quite so much as to whether Kat’s voice had carried too far.
Taking the card on which Harry had filled in his contact information that morning, Draco remembered the sound of Harry’s voice and the look on his face as he’d said, “You can reach me at that number at any time.” He knew it was an invitation to ring him up, but Draco still felt apprehensive about making the call. He wanted to, there was no doubt about that. If anything, Draco worried he might want to ring the other man up too much.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he punched the numbers into his mobile and waited, holding his breath, as he heard the phone ring on the other end.
One ring, two rings. Three. Should he hang up? The phone had begun to ring a fourth time, but the sound was interrupted as Harry Potter’s voice came on the line. He said hello breathlessly, as if he’d had to run to answer the phone. Sounding hopeful in an endearing way that left Draco grinning from ear to ear, Harry asked, “Draco? Is that you?”
“Er, yeah. Yeah. It is, but . . . how did you know?”
“I . . . er, I guess I just hoped. I’m glad you called.”
Kat cleared her throat, and when Draco looked at her, she held up a slip of paper on which she’d written “Tell him you want to have wild kinky sex with him.” Draco shook his head fondly—there was no one else quite like Kat. At least she’d held the paper up so that what she’d written couldn’t be seen by anyone in the library.
~~~~~~~
A smile slowly spread across his face. Draco always had loved a little flattery, a little flirting. . . .
Harry sat down at the table, setting his phone down. He’d almost missed the call; it had been ringing when he’d exited the Floo. He’d been just in time. Draco had asked how he’d known it was him on the line, the truth was that no one else who might want to talk to him would use a telephone. Harry allowed himself this small moment to just be happy that the only man he’d ever loved had invited him out to dinner, but all too soon he had to turn his attention back to his interview with Auror Moore. When Ron returned, they had much to discuss.
~~~~~~~
“Kat!”
“What? You’re young, good-looking and single. He’s young, good-looking and single. You’re going on a date. Seems a normal question to me.”
Reluctantly, Draco grinned. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Hopefully, he added mentally.
“Can I watch?”
“Kat!” Draco hissed, his eyes returning to the woman reading in the fiction section. He’d been sure she’d just glanced their way, but he told himself he was mistaken. Her attention was solely on her book.
“What?” Kat asked, the picture of pure innocence.
“I can’t believe you asked me that!” he spluttered out between his teeth.
“Why? As I’ve already pointed out, you’re both young and good looking. It’d be hot. I could never understand why men got so worked up over watching girl-on-girl. Then I saw two men snogging and groping each other in an alleyway. Yeah, I get why men got so worked up over watching girl-on-girl now.”
“You are absolutely incorrigible. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do, but you love me anyway. Platonically, of course. You didn’t answer my question, though. Can I watch? Will there be groping along with the kissing, d’you think?”
Draco groaned.
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
He had glanced at the clock at least one hundred times. As always happened when one was looking forward to something, the hours between now and the anticipated moment seemed to lengthen, with each hour dragging on longer than the one before.
Finally, after the longest afternoon Draco could remember, six o’clock approached. There were very few people left milling about, and his eyes were just about to dart to the clock once more when two women, whom Draco took to be mother and daughter, entered the library. Glad for the chance to distract himself from his relentless clock watching, Draco smiled and offered his assistance as the two stepped up to the counter.
That the two were American was evident the moment they spoke a word. The older of the two—who, as Draco had guessed, was in fact the younger woman’s mother—explained that her own mother had been born in Ilfracombe in 1925, and her family had moved to London when she’d been nine or ten years old. As a young woman, her mother had left England at the end of the Second World War, the war bride of an American airman. The two were tracing their family roots. It was a common occurrence.
His smile faltered, but Draco forced it back in place as he directed the two women to the library’s local studies materials, showing them how to find what they were looking for before informing them the library would be closing in half an hour and suggesting as briefly as he politely could that they also enquire at Holy Trinity, the parish church, and excusing himself.
Not feeling equal to Kat’s good-natured teasing, Draco busied himself in the non-fiction section—the farthest point from the enquiries counter where Kat was helping a mother with two small children. A few books had been left lying about on a table, and he returned them to their proper place, but there was nothing else that needed doing.
In the computer area, he tidied up—picking up a stray piece of wadded up paper which had missed the bin and throwing it away, straightening chairs.
“Now, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were hiding,” Kat said as she came up behind him, the teasing gone from her voice to be replaced by concern.
He answered without looking at her. “Don’t be silly. We’ll be closing soon, and I’m just straightening up a bit.”
“Mhm. Nothing’s bothering you, then.”
“Nothing at all.”
“Only, I’ve never known you to voluntarily pick up.” She hesitated a moment before going on, “I saw the smile you’ve had on your face all afternoon fall a moment ago when you were helping those two women, Draco, and knowing you, I was afraid you were developing a case of cold feet.”
It was no good lying to Kat. Like Jo, she could see through him. His hands braced on the back of one of the office chairs pushed up in front of the computer monitors and his eyes trained on the floor, he whispered, “Maybe I should cancel.” Running a hand over his face, he repeated himself. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I should cancel. I can probably still reach him before he sets off. It’s just gone half five.”
Sternly, Kat responded, “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“I don’t even know the man, not really.”
“You’ll get to know him.”
“And what am I supposed to say when he asks me about myself? Tell him his guess is as good as mine?”
Her tone softening, Kat laid her hand on Draco’s arm. “You’ll tell him the truth. You have amnesia and can’t remember anything prior to three years ago, and you’re working very hard to build a life for yourself. You’ve accomplished so much, Draco. You’ve so much to be proud of. Any man worth knowing won’t care about anything else. If he does, fuck him.” As an afterthought, she added, “Then dump him. But definitely fuck him first.”
Draco laughed, but the thread of anxiety that had woven its way through him when the two American women talked about researching their family refused to go away fully.
“Besides, it’s too late to cancel.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s just walked in. I came to tell you. Impatient little admirer you’ve got there.”
Spinning around on his heels, Draco saw that Kat was right. Harry Potter was standing just inside the door, his hands in his jeans pockets and a shy expression on his face. He wore a black pullover with faded jeans—both of which fitted him perfectly, showing off the toned body beneath. His inky black hair looked as if he’d attempted to tame it, but had lost the fight. He looked sexy as hell. He smiled somewhat sheepishly at him as he approached them, as if he had no idea of how good he looked. “I know I’m early. Thought I’d pick up a book or two for Teddy before you close.”
Kat excused herself with a knowing glint in her eye. “Right, well, I’ll just go see a man about a dog then, shall I?”
Making their way to the children’s section, Draco and Harry smiled at each other like a couple of eleven-year-olds with their first crush.
Draco asked, “What sort of books does he like?”
“He’s not particular, really,” Harry responded. “He likes books about adventures and animals. Space creatures and dinosaurs. Like most little boys, I reckon.” Looking at Draco out of the corner of his eye, he added, “He loves dragons. And magic.”
Recommending books he’d read to children during the Bookstart Bear Club, Draco pulled Room on the Broom from the shelf. The front cover showed a witch wearing a pointy black hat and a black cape riding on a broom, flying across a starry, moonlit sky over the countryside. A grinning orange and black tabby cat sat at the end of the broom, and in her hands, the witch carried a cauldron and a magic wand.
A series of flashbacks raced through Draco’s mind. They were mere flashes, nothing he could distinctly make out, but there were brooms. Glimpses, easily a dozen or more, each only a few seconds long, of people whizzing about on brooms. And flames. Horrendous flames taking the shape of monstrous creachers roared to life inside his head. He sucked in a breath.
“Draco? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Several seconds passed before he could speak. Regaining himself, Draco shook his head, saying that he was quite alright.
He was not going mad, Draco insisted to himself. He was muddled; that was all. He was confusing the strange, inexplicable happenings of the past twenty-four hours, mixing up things he’d seen on the telly or in films or read in books with things that had actually happened. Just like earlier, when catching sight of that woman sitting and reading had brought to mind a scene from a film he didn’t remember seeing. This was that same thing. The things he’d experienced over the past day were so bizarre, it was no wonder he was linking them to films and the telly.
He told himself that, and he almost believed it. Might’ve done, had it not been for the long black robes now hanging neatly in his cupboard and the cover of the children’s book he held in his hands.
~~~~~~~
A moment later, Hermione stood and returned her book to the shelf. She moved to the Self Service computers a short distance away and tapped a few keys. Taking a slip of paper and a pencil from beside the keyboard, she jotted something down. She repeated this two more times, tap keys and jot down, tap and jot. As she stepped away from the computer screen, she allowed her eyes to meet Harry’s before she returned to the fiction section. Browsing the shelves, she selected a book and flipped through it. Meeting Harry’s eyes once more, she slipped the piece of notepaper in the book before returning it to the shelf.
Draco’s coworker finished helping her customer and turned a wide grin on Harry, pulling his attention back from Hermione’s surreptitious note passing as she introduced herself and held her hand out. “I’m Kat. And you’re Harry, of course.”
“Er, yes. Pleased to meet you,” he responded, shaking her hand.
“I trust you and Draco will have a lovely time. Maybe my girlfriends and I will run into you,” Turning her smile on Draco, she asked, “Where did you say you were going?”
“I didn’t.” Knowing Draco and his expressions as well as he did, Harry suspected the other man was refusing to rise to some sort of bait.
“Combe Cottage is lovely,” Kat purred, living up to her name.
Harry excused himself once Draco handed him Teddy’s library books and browsed around while Draco finished up. He wandered about the library briefly before drifting to the fiction section and pulling a book from the shelf. He read the cover and returned it to the shelf, choosing another book at random. He repeated the process of selecting a book, reading the cover and returning it to the shelf another two times before reaching his goal. He pulled the book in which Hermione had hidden her note from the shelf. He stepped to the chairs and sat down, flipping through the pages and allowing Hermione’s note to fall into his hand.
He has no memories prior to three years ago and believes he has amnesia. I heard him discussing it with his coworker; she seems like a good friend. He’s been smiling all afternoon, until two women came in to research their family history. That seemed to unnerve him—understandably—so tread gently asking him about himself. That was a specific concern he had. He asked her what he was supposed to say when you asked him about himself.
As I said, he believes he has amnesia, but I’m not so sure. Sudden and intense but brief headaches are a symptom of a poorly cast memory charm fracturing. He experienced just such an episode earlier right when he saw me. I cast a charm on him to prevent further headaches, and I’ll review his Muggle medical records. I’ll be able to tell you more when you get back to the cottage. Be on the lookout for any type of behaviour that might indicated he’s remembering—distraction, distress, appearing unfocused or diverted.
As I’ve been sitting here, I’ve been thinking about what you and Ron said about why he would’ve been brought here. I’m sure there was something I read once that connected Ilfracombe to memory charms. I may have the book at home. When I get back to the cottage, I’ll Floo home quickly to have a look, just in case. It probably means nothing, but it’s been nagging at me.
Speaking of getting back to the cottage, there was some talk earlier about wild and kinky sex and you bending him over the back of the sofa. Send a Patronus, and we’ll clear out.
Harry remembered once when they’d been first years, Ron commenting that they’d had a bad influence on Hermione. He reckoned they had at that, but personally, Harry blamed the corruption of Hermione on the elder Weasley brothers more than Ron and himself. Being the youngest of the brothers, Ron had had more of his fair share of ribbing from his brothers when he and Hermione had become a couple, but no one got into a battle of the wits with Hermione and won, regardless whether the topic was ancient runes or sex.
Memories of Draco and himself together assailed him, and Harry could feel his face heat up. His body reacted to the thoughts he was having about the other man, but it was short lived. Those were memories that he and Draco had made together but that only he still had. He clutched Hermione’s note tightly in his hand. Someone had taken Draco’s life from him, whether by causing him to develop amnesia or by Obliviating him, and Harry would see that that person paid dearly.
Draco stepped from behind the counter, drawing Harry’s attention. He said, “I’ll just be a moment, and then we can leave.”
“I hope my being early didn’t cause you any trouble.”
“Not at all.” Draco’s face was open and earnest; his smile was genuine. Harry remembered the first time he’d seen Draco’s face stripped of the masks he wore to protect himself. He was just as beautiful now as he’d been then.
Excusing himself to the Gents, Harry dropped Hermione’s note in the basin, and with a wave of his wand, the slip of paper vanished.
~~~~~~~
“Sounds perfect. I’m entirely yours,” Harry said suggestively, his green eyes looking directly into Draco’s.
Chills ran up Draco’s spine. Harry was looking at him in a way that made Draco want forget about dinner and drag him into the nearest alleyway—or maybe up the stairs to his flat, and that look combined with saying things like I’m entirely yours in that silky seductive tone of voice . . . It wasn’t playing fair. Draco wasn’t sure he’d make it through dinner without dragging the other man into the Gents.
Draco had been about to ask what had brought him to Ilfracombe, but Harry’s words drove the question from his mind before he could voice it.
“And, of course,” Harry said casually, “with your name being Draco, having dragon in the name, it’s perfect. Draco being Latin for dragon.”
Draco was stunned. “You know that?” he asked. Who knows that?
Harry just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s a constellation,” Draco offered. After about the hundredth person to comment on his having such an unusual name, he’d looked it up online. He’d often wondered what had inspired his parents to choose it.
“I think it’s a brilliant name,” Harry said earnestly, making Draco smile in return. He knew his name was unusual, but when your name is the only thing you know about yourself, you become very attached to it. He was pleased Harry liked it; unusual or not, he was quite fond of it himself.
“Actually, Andromeda, Teddy’s grandmother, is named after a constellation as well. It was . . . It was a tradition in her family.” Harry’s confident tone had faltered. For the first time since he’d met the other man, he sounded hesitant, unsure of himself.
“Any Dracos?” Draco asked, hoping to drive away whatever had caused Harry’s smile to fall. A shadow passed across Harry’s face, and his eyes dropped to look at the ground as he hesitated before answering, “One.”
“Really?” Draco asked, surprised. He had never met anyone else with his name, never expected to. He wanted to ask about the other Draco, but everything about Harry’s demeanour stopped him.
Instead he changed the subject, asking what he’d been about to a moment ago. “What brings you to Combe?”
Grinning radiantly, Harry answered, “Initially, holiday. But . . . I’m working now. So, I’ll be staying on.”
Draco had never heard someone sound happy their holiday had been interrupted, and if it meant Harry would be staying in Combe, he was glad for it himself.
“Something wonderful’s happened. Something brilliant,” Harry continued, his green eyes shining as he looked at Draco. “Something I’ve been hoping for for three years. I still can’t quite believe it’s really true. I feel as if I’m in a dream. I’m afraid of waking up and finding it wasn’t real.”
“Well, that’s good, then.” Draco said, sure his own smile matched the radiant one Harry was giving him. “I’m glad. What type of work do you do?”
“Very tedious. Endless paperwork,” Harry said without further elaboration.
Their destination was less than a quarter mile from the library, and after only a few minutes, they reached the bottom of Fore Street. Coming around a bend in the road, their destination was in front of them.
The George and Dragon was a wide, two story, white building nestled at almost the very end of Fore St. with black trim around the six long rectangular windows—three on both the ground and first floors, a slate roof with a single dormer window on the far side of the building, and the name of the pub in large, black letters over the door. Baskets filled with bright yellow and purple pansies hung from decorative wrought iron brackets mounted between the windows on the upper floor. Beneath the name of the pub was painted “Ilfracombe’s Oldest Pub” in an old English style font, and to the right, between the windows on the ground and first floors, was painted “Circa 1360” in an elegant script. It was the perfect example of the quintessential English pub.
Harry comment, “Thirteen-sixty? Been around a while, eh?”
“A little while, yeah,” Draco laughed.
“It’s charming,” Harry said as they approached the door.
“It’s one of my favourite places in Combe. It gets quite busy, but I rung up earlier to book us a table.”
Inside, the floor was made from ancient black flagstones worn smooth over countless years; the walls and ceiling were painted white with heavy black timber beams. A group of local men stood beside a long, wooden bar, at the end of which was a stone fireplace large enough to take up most of the wall. As the men talked and laughed over a pint, their voices carried so that louder bits and pieces of their conversations could be heard from where Harry and Draco stood inside the door.
Harry and he were seated at a corner table—far enough from the bar so that the men’s voices were reduced to the occasional burst of laughter—by a woman called Clover, whom Draco knew from the library’s reading group and whose hair was dyed a shocking shade of deep purple-pink at the ends. Draco had noticed that Harry’s eyes widened for the briefest of moments when she’d walked up to them. If Clover had noticed, she didn’t let on—or maybe she was accustomed to people’s eyes widening when they took in her purple-pink ends. Handing Draco his menu, her eyes glittered knowingly and she smiled, winking at him. Draco was reminded of Kat’s words. Bloody hell, he thought to himself, wondering when straight women had developed this secret interest in gay men.
Over the top of his menu, Draco noticed Harry’s eyes dart towards Clover, an odd look in them. “Don’t let the hair fool you. She’s really very nice, comes in to our once-monthly book club, brings brilliant chocolate biscuits.”
Harry swallowed and shook his head. “No, it’s . . . She looks like Teddy’s mother.” He smiled a sad smile of remembrance, a serene yet mournful look on his face as he recalled his godson’s late mother. “Tonks was always colouring her hair pink or purple or blue or some other wild colour.”
“Tonks? Her name was Tonks?”
“Nymphadora, actually. She hated it though. Made everyone call her Tonks. It was her surname, you see. Only her parents called her by her name, and they shortened it to Dora.”
“Another constellation?”
“Mythology, actually.” He added, hesitantly, “I wish you could’ve known her.”
A particularly loud guffaw reached them as the men at the bar roared with laughter. A small number of them had begun a game of darts.
“Great pub,” Harry commented, in an apparent attempt to steer the conversation in a more first date direction. “Do you come here often?”
“Fairly often, yeah,” Draco answered. “They host a weekly quiz night every Tuesday for charity and have music on Saturday nights. Bit early for that, though. Usually starts up around nine.”
His foot brushing softly against Draco’s, Harry said, “Another time, maybe.”
That Harry wanted to see him again thrilled Draco, and the light pressure of his foot beside his own made him want to reach across the table and pull the other man to him right there, and let anyone watch who cared to. He forced himself to remain in his seat. “I thought, since it’s early still, perhaps after dinner we could walk along Capstone Parade, if you’d like?” he suggested. Walking Capstone Parade had been popular since Victorian times; the half-mile long path offered stunning views of the sea to one side and the rugged beauty of Capstone Hill to the other. “It’s not far, maybe a five minute walk.”
Clover came up to them and asked if they were ready to order. Harry ordered a Guinness, and Draco ordered a pint of Carling. Neither had given their menu more than a passing glance.
“Sounds perfect,” Harry said in response to Draco’s suggestion once she’d left to get their pints.
As he looked over his menu, Draco asked, “Any idea what you want?”
“I know exactly what I want,” Harry responded, his husky voice leaving no room for doubt he was not talking about dinner.
The image of himself on top of Harry, moving inside him, filled Draco’s mind. He had to suppress the moan that fought to escape him at the sight of their bodies moving perfectly together, as if it was an act they’d shared a hundred times before, but their eyes showing the wonder of the first time as they gazed at each other.
Draco could see not only themselves and the bed they shared, but the room around them. They were in an elegant, large four poster bed covered with pale green bedclothes trimmed with a boarder of darker green. Bed curtains hung open, drawn back with heavy cords in the same green as the trim on the sheets. Blankets and a half dozen pillows lay scattered over the bed and fallen onto the floor. The walls were green. The curtains on the French windows were green. The floor was covered by a rug in multiple shades of green entwined with silvery grey. The furniture was heavy, ornate and painted black. The room was dark, but rather than feeling oppressive, it had a comfortable feel that made Draco wish it was real and not just something his imagination had dreamt up. Across from the bed, a large fireplace containing a blazing fire cast a warm glow about the room. Outside, snow fell in fluffy white puffs, building up on the horizontal mouldings on the French windows—which Draco realised were not windows but doors—and laying inches deep on the balcony beyond the glass. Mounted on the wall to the left of the bed, not far from the French door, was a broom.
“Here you are,” Clover said cheerfully as she set Draco’s pint in front of him. The image inside his head fell away abruptly, and he raised his glass, taking a deep draught. It was hardly surprising that he would fantasise about Harry—especially with the way the other man kept saying things like “I know exactly what I want,” in that irresistible tone of voice of his—but why would he envision a non-existent room with such clarity?
And why the bloody fuck would his imagination stick a broom on the wall—and not just your average sweeping up broom but a sleek, streamlined, highly polished broom with something resembling very small handlebars at the end, just above twigs that were cut and shaped into a perfectly smooth tear-drop-like shape?
“Need a few minutes?” Clover asked.
Harry responded, “Please.”
Draco set his pint down and wiped his mouth. It wouldn’t do to drain it in one go, although he was sure he could.
“Boozy beef,” Harry read aloud once she’d gone. “Diced beef, onion, celery, swede and carrot braised in real ale Guinness. Now that sounds good. Think I’ll have that.” He continued, “Sweet potato chips with garlic mayonnaise dip.”
Draco tried to focus his attention on his menu, but the library books Harry had checked out for his godson were sitting on the table beside his own untouched pint—Room on the Broom, its cover adorned with the illustration of a witch riding through the night sky on a broom, on top of the pile and visible through the thin plastic of the shopping bag he’d given Harry to carry the books in.
Suddenly, the image of a little golden ball, hovering in mid-air as two silvery wings batted wildly, filled Draco’s head.
“Draco?” Harry asked, alarmed, as if he knew his dinner partner was beginning to fear he really was going completely barking mad. “Are you alright? You’re looking rather peaky.”
The little golden ball with its silvery wings darted away, flying away at lightning speed as if eluding unseen pursuers.
Draco resisted the urge to drain his pint. Getting pissed would not help retain the sanity he feared was fading. “I’m fine,” he responded, glad he’d managed to sound much surer than he felt. Casting his eyes toward Harry, he was touched by the genuine concern he saw reflected back at him.
Heedless of anyone who might see and disapprove, Harry’s hand reached out and covered his own, his thumb gently stroking Draco’s. “What is it? Is anything . . . wrong? Is something . . . troubling you?” Harry asked, seeming to have trouble choosing his words.
The feeling of Harry’s hand against his own both settled Draco and excited him. His eyes drifted shut as he let himself enjoy the simple touch of hand against hand. When he opened his eyes, Harry was looking at him as if nothing else mattered but him. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, the warmth of Harry’s hand cupping his making him believe his words. He turned his hand over, wrapping his fingers around Harry’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. Nothing’s wrong, he repeated to himself.
A loud chorus of shouts from the men at the bar welcoming newcomers reminded the couple they were not alone. Harry returned the gentle pressure before withdrawing his hand, an irresistible smile lighting up his face. Draco, feeling more settled than he could ever remember, returned his attention to his menu.
He grimaced internally. His finances were very limited, and he didn’t often go out twice in a week, even just paying his own way. He’d had to nip upstairs to his flat to fetch some cash from the empty coffee tin he kept at the back of a cupboard. Harry’s choices would be about twelve pounds. Plus their beers. Harry had not mentioned a starter, but he might want pudding. The least expensive item on the menu was a plain, American-style burger, but Draco worried ordering just that might be too obviously cost conscious. He debated,Onion rings are the least expensive side, two pounds twenty pence . . . seven pounds fifteen pence together. The breaded fillet of plaice would be sixty pence more, but it comes with chips and peas.
Before he could make up his mind whether to order the fish, which he’d rather, Harry said, “Dinner is on me.”
Draco attempted to protest that he’d been the one to invite Harry, and Harry was his guest, but Harry insisted, explaining simply that he had cause to celebrate.
“Because of what you mentioned earlier? That something you’d been hoping for at work had happened?”
Harry grinned. Reaching out, he let the tips of his fingers brush against Draco’s. “That, but mostly just because I’m seated across from the most handsome man I’ve seen in years.”
Draco loved being flattered, but he hated insincerity. He loved being flirted with, but he hated trite come-ons. Harry flattered and flirted like an artist wielded a brush. He was a master; every word he said was perfect.
“Besides, I’d have asked you first, but I was afraid you might be seeing someone already.” Harry raised his pint. “Here’s to being in the right spot at the right time.”
Draco raised his glass, and they drank. He wished he could think of something to say in response, but he didn’t have Harry’s way with words.
It was early still, but there was already a good crowd building. Tables around them were filling up. A man was seated at the table behind them; he was alone. Draco thought he saw the man look in his direction over Harry’s shoulder, but when he looked properly, the man’s attention was fully on the menu held in his hand. Draco was not ashamed of being gay, but he did not like being gawked at when out with a man as if he and his date were animals in a zoo. Draco’s eyes drifted around, taking in the other diners. A couple was seated beside them: a tall, lanky ginger haired man and a blonde woman. While something about the woman looked familiar, Draco was sure he’d not seen her before. Ignoring the man dining alone, who may or may not have been looking at him, Draco turned his attention to his menu.
Clover returned to take their order. Harry placed his order first, and after Draco ordered the burger and onion rings, Harry added the prawn cocktail and blanchebait with dipping sauce—both of which Draco loved—as starters.
Once the starters were brought out and they shared them, Draco thought how glad he was that it had rained yesterday, driving Harry indoors with his godson for storytime.
That, and that Kat had been right—he was going to have to thank her on Monday.
~~~~~~~
Harry remembered the conversation he’d had with Ron earlier that afternoon. He had managed to get a little sleep after Draco had telephoned to make their date, and Ron had already returned to the cottage by the time he’d awoken. Before Ron had been able to tell him what he’d found, Harry had told him what he’d learnt from Auror Moore—namely that thanks to a spell taught to Aurors fifty years ago but that had since been replaced with other, supposedly better, security spells, he had known someone unauthorised to have Draco’s file had it in their possession from the moment Harry had opened it, although he’d not known who until he’d caught Harry returning it to the file room. The previous Auror to be in charge of Draco’s file, Darragh Oldfield—who, while he had not officially been a member of the Order of the Phoenix during either war, had bravely worked against Voldemort privately from inside the ministry at great personal risk and had been honoured for his actions at the anniversary ceremony—was from the same era as Auror Moore and had used the same spell. Had anyone unauthorised to have Draco’s file opened it at any time, both of the Aurors who had been in charge of the investigation would’ve known right away. Whoever had interfered with every investigation from Devon and the surrounding area since the day of Draco’s abduction, he or she had been authorised to have the file in their possession—irrefutable evidence that Draco’s attacker worked in the Auror department and had for at least the last three years.
Ron had had his own information to share as well. He’d obtained not only Draco’s Muggle medical records but also the police report detailing how he’d been found unconscious, lying on a beach. Had Draco been left only a few feet closer to the water, the tide would’ve taken him, sweeping him out to sea. At its highest point, the tide had reached him, barely lapping at his unconscious form—his clothing had still been damp when he’d been found—and even just leaving him lying in a different position might’ve resulted in his drowning. Ron had tried to tell Harry what the police report contained as gently as possible, but Harry had been so incensed, so enraged his magic had spiked uncontrollably—something that hadn’t happened since the time he’d blown up his Aunt Marge at the age of thirteen—and every Muggle light bulb in the cottage had exploded simultaneously.
Draco had not had a mark on him when he’d been found, not a single injury, and the police had originally suspected he’d been either drunk, high or both, but every test they’d run had come back negative for alcohol or drugs.
The Muggle police had been very thorough in their investigation. Draco had not had any identification or money on him when he’d been found, and he had awoken several hours after being discovered with no memory of who he was, where he’d come from, or how he’d come to be lying on the beach unconscious—something which had surprised his doctors greatly. He only knew his name because it had been sewn into the lining of the robes he’d been wearing—which had, of course, seemed bizarre to the Muggle authorities. Not having any physical injuries, his doctors had not expected the total amnesia he was apparently suffering from. The only opinion they’d been able to offer had been that Draco had suffered some acute mental or emotional trauma, severe enough to leave him both unconscious and suffering total memory loss. They’d hoped his memory would return in time. It had not.
Not until now, if Hermione was correct and the memory charm Draco had undoubtedly had cast upon him was beginning to fracture, possibly as the result of some type of catalyst or stimulus.
He’d vanished Hermione’s note, but the words on it were as clear in his mind as if he had the slip of paper in front of him now.
He has no memories prior to three years ago and believes he has amnesia . . . but I’m not so sure . . . Be on the lookout for any type of behaviour that might indicated he’s remembering—distraction, distress, appearing unfocused or diverted.
There was no question that Draco had displayed exactly what Hermione had warned Harry to look for. Just before they’d been served their pints, Draco’s expression had changed; his eyes had lost their focus. He’d had the look of shock on his face Harry had seen numerous times on the faces of people to whom he’d had to give bad news in the course of his work as an Auror. Whatever memories had suddenly filled Draco’s mind, Harry feared they’d been unpleasant ones; he’d looked deeply disturbed. He’d taken his pint of Carling the moment the waitress set it in front of him and taken a long draught—something Harry knew from experience Draco only ever did when troubled.
There had only been that one time during dinner he had appeared distressed—although Harry recalled two incidents, barely minutes apart, that morning when he’d gone to see him on the pretence of getting library cards for himself and Teddy. The rest of the time he’d seemed as happy to be there with Harry as Harry was to be there with him. As he’d used to, Harry’d flirted and flattered him, and as always, Draco had loved it, practically glowing when Harry’d told him he was the most handsome man he’d seen in years. Which he was—in three years, to be exact, since the last time Harry had seen him.
“There’s a little ice cream parlour just along here, if you’d like to stop,” Draco suggested as they reached the end of Broad Street.
Harry grinned. Draco had surprised him during dinner, ordering an American-style burger and onion rings—the least expensive two items on the menu, Harry had noted—when there’d been seafood available, but his wicked sweet tooth was the same. “Sure,” he readily agreed.
“My treat this time,” Draco insisted as he steered them away from Capstone Road and down The Quay, alongside the harbour.
In addition to Draco’s medical and police records, Ron had also obtained Draco’s financial records and had learnt how he had managed to obtain a skilled position in the Muggle world having no Muggle background, education or identification. His doctors and nurses at Ilfracombe Tyrrell Hospital had gone above and beyond for Draco, as had the police. It had been largely thanks to their efforts on his behalf that Draco had achieved what he had. They’d assisted him in a number of ways, from obtaining job training to housing. He didn’t have a lot of money, but he did have a small, studio flat of his own. Draco was independent, thanks not only to his own inner strength and resilience, but to the help he’d received. Harry was tremendously proud of him, and the hospital and police would both be receiving very sizable donations for the assistance they had rendered Draco, as would the library.
Turning down The Quay, they stopped at West Country Ice Cream, where Draco bought a chocolate orange cone for Harry and a toffee fudge—always his favourite—for himself.
There were several people about, and Harry and Draco made small talk as they ate their ice cream and retraced their short walk down The Quay as Draco led him onto Capstone Road, a narrow one-lane road lined with stately, well-kept Georgian-era attached homes on one side and, incongruously, a decidedly modern, vinyl-clad, two story block of flats on the other.
It was only a short walk of no more than one hundred metres till the road ended, and as they arrived at the end, they disposed of the paper serviettes from their ice creams in a bin in front of the last house on the road.
In front of them stood Capstone Hill: on one side, a gently sloping green expanse, on the other, a rugged, steep rise covered with wild vegetation. Ivy clung to exposed grey rock—tall, feathery tan-coloured stalks, which reminded Harry somewhat of stalks of wheat, swayed gracefully in the light breeze—breaking up the green were yellow and white wildflowers, which were quite possibly weeds and not flowers at all, but they were pretty, so Harry called them flowers in his mind—and various types of greenery in an array of shades of green. About forty metres ahead, the sea could be seen—at this distance, just a thin sliver of pale grey-blue beyond the stone wall edging the parade, hardly any darker at the horizon than the mostly cloud covered sky above.
It was a beautiful sight.
Four possible paths faced them: two leading around Capstone Hill in opposite directions—one being the parade and the other a path leading behind the back gardens of several guest houses before continuing across the base of Capstone Hill—one leading directly up the hill and the last, which would take them back to the centre of town.
Capstone Parade was a paved walkway, scarcely any more narrow than Capstone Road had been. As they walked, their conversation flowed easily. There were certain subjects that Harry needed to avoid, such as Draco’s past or anything that might lead him to ask again about Harry’s line of work, but it was easy to keep the conversation in safe waters, particularly as Draco himself, according to what Hermione had heard him say to his friend, would be as reluctant as Harry was to bring up anything that might result in questions he was unable to answer.
“What have you seen of Combe, so far?” Draco asked him.
“The day we arrived, I took Teddy on an excursion to Lundy Island. Then yesterday, we went to Tunnels Beaches, and he played in the tidal pool.”
“That would be the ladies’ beach,” Draco explained. He continued, “Sea bathing was segregated when the tunnels were carved in the 1820’s. There were originally three tidal pools—two for the ladies and one for the men. Mixed bathing wasn’t allowed until over eighty years later.”
Harry beamed with pride at Draco’s knowledge of the place he’d called home for the last three years.
“We have a lot of information on local history at the library. I can tell you anything you want to know about Ilfracombe,” Draco explained. “Plus, my friend Kat—you met her at the library—is newly engaged, and she’s planning to have the ceremony at Tunnels Beaches next August, at the gents’ beach.” Draco laughed. “She’s got this uncle who insists that when he was a boy, a great flying lizard poked a hole in his lilo at the Tunnels Beaches. He’s pushing eighty now, but to this day, give him a pint or two, and he’ll tell you all about it—whether you want to hear it or not. So, when she begins to stress out with wedding planning, we remind her that she not only has to worry about rain—the ceremony and reception are both to be outdoors on this terrace they have that overlooks the beach—but Great Uncle Dirk’s famous great flying lizard trying to steal her bouquet. That usually puts a smile on her face and calms her down. What’s pink flowers on the tables versus white compared to a great flying lizard swooping down over the wedding?”
“Great flying lizard?” Harry asked with a sense of unease.
“Mad, eh?”
“Yeah . . . mad. Maybe . . . maybe he’d had a touch too much sun, or nodded off and had nightmare,” Harry suggested weakly.
“Maybe. Gotta give it to him though, he’s stuck to the story his whole life. He’s quite well known locally for it, actually.”
Not liking talk about great flying lizards, Harry was glad Draco changed the subject.
Though overcast, the weather was warm, and there was a light breeze. It was a perfect evening for a walk. Their identities concealed by a glamour, Ron and Hermione were following a short distance behind them. Harry had not seen them since leaving the pub, but he knew they were there, sticking close by but remaining out of sight. Although he’d not yet seen him, Auror Moore had arrived in Ilfracombe as well, Harry knew, and was also keeping watch. It had been decided between them that anytime Draco left the building in which he lived and worked—and the protective spells cast upon it—it would be best to have as many eyes on him as possible until their small group was able to determine the identity of his attacker.
While their presence was reassuring, Harry wanted nothing more than to grab Draco and Apparate him away, away from all these people—anyone of whom could be his attacker under a glamour—away from Ilfracombe, away from anywhere his attacker might find him before they found his attacker.
He also wanted to talk to Hermione. The only person Harry knew of who’d lost all of their memories to a memory charm was Gilderoy Lockhart, which, as Lockhart was a permanent resident of the Janus Thickey Ward in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, was less than comforting. Harry knew nothing about the fracturing of a memory charm—it sounded like a good thing, but who knew? How might a person knowing nothing about the Wizarding world react when suddenly confronted with memories of some of the things Harry knew Draco had witnessed during the war?
They needed to plan. Draco needed to be seen by a Healer specialising in Memory Charms as soon as possible, but what risk would bringing him home before his attacker was apprehended pose to him? Could he be kept safer in the Muggle world or in the Wizarding one? Harry didn’t like the story Draco had told about his friend’s uncle and his great flying lizard. It had reminded him of the large wizarding population in the West Country and of all the wizards on holiday to the area. The child had likely overheard a couple careless wizards discussing dragons, and his imagination had dreamt up the story—possibly as an excuse for a ruined lilo, hoping to avoid punishment. Any of the people walking around them could be wizards on holiday. If a wizard was to see him, and recognise the man with him as the missing Draco Malfoy, they might bypass the ministry altogether and go to the Daily Prophet instead. There was only so long he, Ron, and Auror Moore could devote to keeping watch over Draco and apprehending his assailant without drawing attention to themselves. They were racing against time, and soon they would have no choice but to bring Draco home.
How would he react to being brought home, to learning of their world and the war they’d fought in after living in the Muggle world for three years? Whatever course of action they took, there were risks. How could they know which risk was greater—waiting or acting?
Secondary to Draco’s safety, but still present in Harry’s mind, was how Draco would react to him when he knew the truth.
All of these things were running through his head on a never ending loop as he walked along beside Draco, trying to not let any of it show in his face or actions.
As they continued their walk, an alternate path split from the parade and climbed the side of Capstone Hill, leading up and out of sight. Draco cleared his throat. “There are a number of these little paths that depart from the parade and climb to the top of the hill. The view from the top is brilliant, but the climb can be quite steep in spots.” He sounded hopeful, and the suggestion spelled out clearly in those liquid silver eyes was unmistakable as he continued, saying, “The hill paths are much less crowded than the parade proper. They can be . . . really quite deserted.”
Hoping his expression and tone answered the hidden proposition, Harry responded, “I could go for a bit of a climb.” Draco grinned, and Harry had to resist the urge to grab him by the hand and drag him up the hill to where they might find a little privacy.
Draco had been right on both counts—the hill paths were both deserted and steep. As they climbed upward, there was not another soul to be seen. Harry knew they were being followed, and he knew that just because he couldn’t see anyone didn’t mean there was no one there. Like Dumbledore, Harry and his friends no longer needed his invisibility cloak to become invisible.
Harry didn’t care that they weren’t as alone as they appeared. He had been missing Draco for three years, and as they walked, Harry took Draco’s hand in his, smiling as Draco linked their fingers together. Unable to wait any longer, Harry stopped and pulled Draco toward him, and looking directly into Draco’s eyes, he closed the space between them. Their eyes falling shut, Draco gasped just as Harry’s lips closed over his. Burying his hand in the silky blond hair he’d missed so much, Harry smiled against Draco’s lips, relishing the sound of that little intake of breath, remembering the countless times he’d heard it before.
Draco’s hands came up to Harry’s neck, holding him gently as he became more aggressive, taking control of their kiss, his lips covering Harry’s in small closed-mouth kisses.
The carrier bag containing Teddy’s library books hung from Harry’s other wrist, and he let it fall to the ground to free his arm to wrap low around Draco’s waist, pressing them together.
Draco moaned, and his tongue swiped a path along Harry’s lower lip. “Been wanting to kiss you since the moment I saw you yesterday,” he whispered as he alternated short kisses and teasing Harry’s lips with his tongue, hinting at what more was to come.
Harry grinned and pressed his forehead against Draco’s, one hand still buried in his hair, the other against the small of Draco’s back and drifting lower. He’d been wanting to kiss Draco much longer than that.
Draco’s hand slid to the back of Harry’s neck, his thumb stroking Harry’s jaw in front of his ear tenderly as his fingers tangled themselves in his hair. The other hand drifted down Harry’s chest.
They dove back in, lips parting and tongues meeting for the first time in far too long.
Kissing Draco was everything Harry remembered it to be. He’d been afraid that, over time, he’d forgot the feel of his lover’s kiss, that longing for him, he’d been remembering it as more than it had been. But he hadn’t. Draco’s kiss, the feel of his body in Harry’s arms, the way Draco’s hands moved over him possessively were everything Harry had remembered, and the long absence had made them feel even better.
Their kissing became more heated; their hands gripped and groped each other aggressively. Harry knew they were putting on quite a show, and that when he next saw Ron, his best friend would be scarlet to the tips of his ears, but he was too lost in the feel of Draco to care. They were pressed together so closely, holding each other too tightly for either to not know just how much the other was enjoying their kissing and the traveling of the other man’s hands on his body.
Harry moved his attentions to Draco’s neck, biting and sucking, then soothing the skin with his tongue. His hand had moved to Draco’s arse, and as he pressed his lover against himself, he pushed his own hips forward.
Breaking apart for air and moaning in pleasure, Harry nuzzled Draco’s neck; he could feel Draco’s heavy breathing, his breath in his hair. “Want you. . . .”
“Come back to mine,” Draco said, in between planting kisses in Harry’s hair.
“Yes . . . ,” Harry responded, his hand caressing Draco’s chest, pinching a nipple through the cotton.
“Mmm . . . I don’t live far.”
“Lead the way,” he whispered in to Draco’s ear before running his tongue along the shell and pulling the lobe into his mouth, sucking and nibbling on it, his fingers tracing the bulge in the front of Draco’s jeans.
“Oh, fuck . . . mmm,” Draco hummed as Harry’s fingers continued teasing him through the denim, his forehead dropping to Harry’s shoulder, his own fingers seeking out the matching bulge in Harry’s jeans, making him moan and showing him how it felt to be teased before taking Harry by the hand and almost pulling him back down the hill path.
The walk to Draco’s flat felt longer than it actually was, Harry was so desperate to get his lover alone. After their snogging on Capstone Hill minutes ago, it was torture to keep his hands to himself. He was as hard as a rock with want for the man hurrying beside him; both his body and heart ached with need to be with Draco.
Soon, although not soon enough for either man, they were nearing Sommers’ Crescent, and Harry could see the building where Draco worked and lived with its distinctive cobalt blue railings near the top of the winding road.
Though a narrow, one-way street, Sommers’ Crescent came to an end at a main road which led to both the harbour to the east and both the bay and the Tunnels Beaches to the west, and there was a good deal of traffic—both in cars and on foot.
Cutting once more through the car park in front of the Arlington Hotel, Draco and Harry hurried toward his building, and once they’d turned from the road into the brick pavement which led between his building and its neighbour, they were finally alone.
Draco hurried to unlock the front door, but Harry had already waited too long to touch the other man and could wait no longer. As Draco struggled with his key to unlock the door, Harry attacked him from behind, his arms wrapping around him, one hand pushing his shirt up to fondle his chest and play with his nipples, the other hand cupping him through his jeans, his fingers toying with the zip teasingly, his mouth attaching to Draco’s neck.
Dropping his head to give Harry better access to his neck, Draco slapped his hand against the brick exterior of his building, crying out, “Oh, fuck, yes. . . .”
Once Draco had won his fight with the front door, the couple tumbled into the entryway, nearly falling as they tried to walk while twisted together and unwilling to separate. Pressed against the wall beside the lift, Draco felt blindly for the up button while Harry’s mouth continued to work against his neck and his hands rediscovered they body they knew by heart.
Stumbling into the lift, Draco pressed the button for his floor. His hands went to the sides of Harry’s face, pulling their mouths together, before rediscovering the body they’d once known but had forgotten through no fault of their own. “Need to touch you,” he breathed into Harry’s mouth as his hands unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.
They were in a lift, and the doors could open at any time. Any of Draco’s neighbours in the building could catch them at any moment, and neither of them cared a whit.
Draco’s fingers curled around him as the lift door opened at his floor, and Harry cried out, “OhMerlinfuckyes!”
Breaking their kiss to laugh, Draco asked, “Did you just say ‘Merlin?’” but he forgot the question a moment later as Harry’s hands opened his jeans and his fingers slid into his pants.
Somehow managing to unlock the door to his flat, Draco let his keys fall from his hand as he slammed the door shut behind them.
The moment the door closed, Harry pushed Draco against it. “Need you,” were the only words he was able to speak as he dropped to his knees and pulled Draco’s jeans down his narrow hips. The moment Draco was exposed to him, Harry took him deep in his mouth, humming as he nuzzled his face into the coarse blond hair at the base of his lover’s cock. Draco cried out; his hands buried themselves in Harry’s hair, his nails scratching Harry’s scalp. Harry loved the sounds he was drawing from Draco, every gasp, every moan, every mumbled oath he uttered as Harry made love to him with his mouth.
Letting his lover slide from his mouth, Harry took him in his hand and, looking up at him and meeting his wide, storm cloud grey eyes, Harry kissed the tip and swirled his tongue around it; he closed his lips around the head and let it slide free from his mouth once more, pressing his tongue into the slit as his hand slid from base to tip. He licked and kissed Draco’s length, blew on the sensitive, wet skin, making his lover shiver, and slid his cock over his face, all the while keeping eye contact with Draco, knowing how much watching Harry go down on him made him loose control.
Knowing exactly what drove his lover most wild, Harry had him coming hard in no time, his body shaking with the strength of his orgasm.
Draco slid down the door, breathing heavy. “That was . . . bloody . . . fucking . . . brilliant.”
Thrilled at being with Draco like this, Harry sat on the floor, scooting back to make room for them to lie together, and invited his lover to join him.
On his hands and knees, Draco crawled toward him, catching his breath and grinning predatorily. Harry lay down, taking the hem of Draco’s shirt and pulled it over his head, sliding it down his arms as Draco crawled on top of him. Draco kicked off his shoes and socks, and they pushed his jeans off his legs together.
“You are so beautiful, Draco,” Harry sighed, running his hand up and down Draco’s chest, circling his navel and nipples with his fingertips.
Draco brought Harry’s hand to his mouth, running his tongue along each finger one at a time before taking it into his mouth; he pressed kisses to Harry’s palm, his wrist. Harry grinned widely; Draco had always had a thing for his hands. Before Draco could notice the faint scars across the back of his hand, Harry pulled his hand away and pulled his shirt off. Once the shirt had been tossed to the side, he pushed his jeans and pants down his legs, kicking them off along with his trainers.
Never taking his eyes from Harry’s, Draco began stroking him—slowly, his fingers just barely touching him at first, the pressure and speed gradually growing until he replaced his hand with his mouth.
Crying out, Harry thrust his hips forward, fucking his lover’s willing mouth. Draco rolled his balls in his hand as he sucked Harry to the base. Releasing him, he licked the bottom of Harry’s length as his hand worked the shaft, slick and wet now with saliva.
Draco covered every inch of Harry with his tongue before taking him into his mouth again and sucking.
Harry was falling apart. Feeling Draco’s mouth on him, seeing his blond head bobbing up and down on him . . . The sheer physical pleasure building inside him, the love he felt for this man even after all this time apart . . . In that moment, nothing else mattered. Everything else was forgotten as Harry surrendered himself fully to the pleasure his lover was creating in him, and faster than he had since he’d been a teenager, Harry was on the brink of coming.
“Draco . . . I’m. . . .”
At the warning Draco let him slide from his mouth, his hand keeping his pace without missing a beat, and Harry spilled himself over his lovers hand and chest, Draco’s name and a string of profanities falling from his lips. Harry had always come loudly, which had always amused Draco to no end, asking what the Wizarding world would say if they knew their Golden Boy swore like a jarvey during sex.
Harry grinned at the memory—he’d always ask Draco how, and why, he knew what jarveys sounded like during sex.
Raised on his elbow, Draco lay beside him, the fingers of his clean hand tracing Harry’s lips. “You have a beautiful smile.”
Harry kissed the tips of his fingers. “You were,” kiss “brilliant.” As always, love. he added silently before pushing Draco onto his back and kissing him deeply. Moving to his neck, Harry whispered in between kisses, “At least we made it through the door, if no further.”
“Good thing, that. We’d have given old Mrs. Jenkins next door a heart attack if she’d happened upon us on the floor in the corridor.” His fingers trailing lazily up and down Harry’s arm, Draco added in his seductive, velvet voice, “We’re rather sticky. Let me wash your back?”
Harry growled, covering Draco’s mouth with his own. He loved showering with Draco. He loved soaking in the bath with Draco. He loved swimming with Draco in the nude—once, they’d gone on holiday together to a Muggle resort in Brazil, and their suite boasted a small, private swimming pool, which they’d warded with every privacy spell they could find. Harry loved anything that involved Draco naked and wet.
“I have to warn you, though, my shower is quite small,” Draco warned as Harry sucked on the spot right in front of his ear.
Harry whispered, “We’ll have to stand close, then.”
It was hours before Harry left Draco’s flat, smiling and feeling lighter than he had in years—three years to be exact. Good thing my hair’s dry, he thought to himself. If I had to explain to Ron that my hair was damp because I’d just got out of the bath, the tips of his ears would be red for a week.
In such a good mood was Harry, that he wasn’t paying as close attention as he otherwise might have been, and he never noticed the wizard hiding in the darkness of the night at the outermost edge of his protective spells, his wand drawn and a scowl of disgust and loathing on his face.
~~~~~~~
They’d made plans to see each other again tomorrow. The library was closed on Sunday, but Draco would be there for a short while working on a shipment of old books he’d told Harry about, registering them in their catalogue. Harry smiled wider, remembering how excited Draco had been telling him about the library’s collection of old and rare books and offering to show them to him, his eyes shining hopefully. When they got him home, Harry wanted to be there the first time Draco saw the Manor’s library—he just hoped Draco would want him there.
After the short walk, Harry arrived at his cottage, and as expected, he found Ron and Hermione waiting up for him—Hermione nearly bouncing with excitement, Ron red to the roots of his hair and unable to meet his eyes. Ron had been the first person in whom Harry had confided his attraction to another man, not yet mentioning who the man in question was, and although surprised, Ron had supported him from the first moment. His only response had been the same as the one Harry had made and they had agreed upon not long before, when Ron and Hermione had finally become a couple—I support you, I’m happy for you, I do not want details. Hermione was like a sister to Harry, and he did not want to hear about the wild monkey sex his best friends had had the night before any more than Ron wanted to hear details about Harry’s relationships with other men.
Hermione, however, had made no such agreement, and she squealed with excitement and ran to Harry, embracing him tightly. Were she strong enough, Harry suspected she’d have lifted him from his feet and spun him around.
“Oh, Harry! I am so happy for you! I’m so happy, I’m not even going to tell you I told you so!”
A soft whimper was heard from the couch, and for the first time Harry noticed Teddy, all curled up in his favourite blanket and stirring from his sleep, rubbing his eyes with his tiny fists, disturbed by Hermione’s excitement.
“Oh, Teddy, I’m sorry, sweetie,” Hermione soothed the child, going to him and gently brushing his hair back from his face. “Shhh.”
Andromeda entered the room in her night robe and slippers and with her long hair in a plait down her back, saying to Harry, “We told him you’d be back past his bedtime, but he insisted on waiting up for you.”
Harry sat on the couch beside the child, who, still half asleep, climbed into Harry’s lap.
“Hey there, little man. Waited up for me, I see.”
Teddy didn’t respond, already fully asleep once more.
“I told him I was going to take him home in the morning,” Andromeda said. “He wasn’t happy.”
Harry caressed his godson’s cheek. “No, I’m sure he wasn’t.” They’d both been looking forward to this holiday for weeks. Softly, he pressed a kiss into Teddy’s hair, whispering to him, “It’ll be worth it, little man. You’re going to have a new cousin to spoil you.”
Ron picked up one of the library books Harry had borrowed for Teddy from the dining table, speaking for the first time. “You, er . . . dropped these. . . .”
Having been . . . somewhat distracted, Harry had forgotten about the books completely after he’d dropped them on Capstone Hill, and he could feel the heat in his checks as he thanked his friends for retrieving them for him.
Proudly, Hermione said, “Ron read them to him. He was a natural.”
Ron shrugged. “Mum read to us a lot as children.”
“Come on, mate,” Harry whispered to the sleeping child as he lifted him in his arms. “Let’s get you into bed.”
After wishing Ron and Hermione good night, Andromeda followed Harry from the room and watched from the doorway as he tucked Teddy into bed. As he stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut behind him, she placed her hand on his arm, “You will be careful, Harry, won’t you?”
Harry was touched by Andromeda’s concern; worry was etched into her dark eyes. “I always am,” he assured her, patting her hand.
Her grip tightened, and her eyes and voice hardened. “And you’ll bring my nephew home to his mother?”
His tone matched hers. “I will.”
It was obvious there was more she wanted to say, and Harry waited, but he could see in her eyes the moment she decided against saying it. She wished him good night, and without another word, she retired to her bedroom.
Harry remained in the corridor a few moments longer, his eyes on the closed door. Whatever Andromeda had debated saying to him, he was sure it was something important. Upon first acquaintance, Andromeda bore a striking resemblance her elder sister, Bellatrix, but once one looked deeper, the differences—most notably the soft warmth of her eyes, so very like Draco’s—erased the superficial likeness. Andromeda’s eyes were dark where Draco’s were grey, but the expressiveness in them was the same in the aunt as in the nephew, and Harry had become an expert in reading Draco’s eyes in the time they’d been together. Draco’s eyes had been able to tell him things Draco himself had not yet been able to put into words.
Harry returned to the dining room-turned-command centre to find Ron and Hermione seated at the table, their heads bowed as they talked quietly between themselves while waiting for him. As he pulled out the chair beside Hermione, she raised her head and turned towards him, about to say something, but she was interrupted by the Floo roaring to life. Auror Moore entered the room, followed moments later by Kingsley Shacklebolt.
Being from the same school as Mad Eye Moody, Auror Moore understood the need for extraordinary precaution under the circumstances and why he’d not been informed immediately that Draco had been found, but now that the older Auror knew he had been, the investigation into finding his abductor was his show. Harry greatly respected the older, more experienced Aurors on the force and had learnt much from them during his short career, Auror Moore being no exception, and he knew the more help they had the better they could both protect Draco and discover his attacker.
Once Kingsley and Auror Moore were seated, Ron began, “Hermione’s been reviewing Malfoy’s medical file from the Muggle hospital.”
Auror Moore was aware Hermione had recently completed her Healer’s training at the top of her class—thanks to Ron, the entire department was aware of it.
The copy of Draco’s Muggle medical records in front of her, Hermione began explaining Draco’s diagnosis of retrograde amnesia. “. . . which was a complete surprise to his Muggle doctors, as he had no physical injuries whatsoever.” She continued, giving the same information on amnesia she’d given to Ron and Harry earlier. “Of course, being Muggles, they had no other possible diagnosis. But after reviewing his records and observing Draco personally, I’m as certain as I can be, without actually being able to interview him or run any diagnostic spells, that he is the victim of a memory charm. It is unusual, though. When a memory charm is cast on someone, memories are typically replaced with new, false ones. Draco, from what I heard him say to a friend, has no memories at all prior to waking up in hospital.”
“Perhaps not unusual at all,” suggest Ron regretfully, pushing the Muggle police report regarding Draco forward.
“Not if his attacker expected him to be dead by morning,” Harry responded in a voice as cold as ice, his eyes fixed on his hands resting on the table in front of him, curled tightly into fists.
Ron slid the Muggle police report to Auror Moore, explaining how and where Draco had been found, and that it had been nothing but a stroke of pure luck that he’d not drowned.
His jaw clenched as tightly as his hands, Harry remained silent as the older man reviewed both Draco’s medical and police records.
Auror Moore whistled as he closed the police file.
Harry felt his nails digging into the palms of his hands, and he focused on the sharp pain, trying to keep control of his magic, reminding himself that his godson lay sleeping in his bed nearby. He felt a soft, warm pressure on his knee—Hermione’s hand, offering her silent support.
Tapping his fingers on Draco’s Muggle police file, Auror Moore sat quietly for several seconds before saying, “The expectation that his victim would be dead within hours accounts for our suspect not bothering to replace the memories he removed with false ones, but with that expectation, we need to ask ourselves why our suspect bothered to Obliviate his victim at all, and so completely at that.”
Harry gritted his teeth.
“Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, Auror Potter, but beating about the bush would be of no use to Mr. Malfoy,” Auror Moore said, his voice matter-of-fact rather than apologetic.
Harry nodded his head twice. Hermione squeezed his knee. He drew more comfort from Auror Moore’s frankness than from Hermione’s sympathy, something she seemed to understand as she withdrew her hand.
Auror Moore continued, “Mr. Malfoy’s attacker didn’t just remove some of his memories—namely incriminating ones in the event that his victim survived and might identify him—but all of them. To cast a memory charm of that intensity and strength is no small matter.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I believe it speaks to the character of our suspect,” Ron contributed. This was one of the areas were Ron excelled, profiling the suspect, getting inside his mind. “There’s a . . . particular cruelness in it. It’s effectively taking Malfoy’s life twice. We also need to take into account that our suspect is fully aware Malfoy did not drown. He or she could have come back at any time and attacked him again—but did not, choosing rather to play this cat and mouse game of sabotaging the investigation. Why? If a person attacks another in the heat of the moment, he or she may feel remorse once the moment has passed and a cooler head prevails, but I think we can safely rule out sudden sympathy for his or her victim in this case. Is our suspect getting some kind of enjoyment from keeping his victim hidden?”
“Mr. Malfoy needs to be got away from Devon straight away, I believe. Remove the mouse from the cat, so to speak. One can focus on setting a trap to catch the cat when one does not need to worry about the mouse being harmed in the process,” Auror Moore stated. “There will be difficulty, of course. Arrangements need to be made to ensure Mr. Malfoy’s safety.”
“My house is unplottable and protected by the Fidelus charm,” Harry offered immediately. He wanted Draco home with him, where he belonged, but he knew it was too soon to think like that. He could not allow the evening they’d spent together to blind him to reality. They could not just pick up where they’d been three years ago. They would need to start again, from square one. Harry just hoped Draco would give them that chance. “And the Manor is protected by ancient, familial wards.”
“We must act cautiously. Mr. Malfoy knows nothing of our world, and there will be considerable shock in learning what he is. We do not want to add to the trauma he has already experienced any more than can be helped. We need to tread gently in confronting him and acquainting him with what he is and what was done to him,” Auror Moore said, going on to recognise the benefit of having both Harry’s and Hermione’s experience in learning of the Wizarding World in this regard.
“There’s more you need to know, Auror Moore, Minister,” Hermione stated. “I’m not an expert in memory charms, but it appears the memory charm cast on Draco is fracturing. I think he is beginning to remember.” Hermione described the symptoms of a memory charm fracturing, the sudden, severe headaches and appearance of disorientation or confusion as a forgotten memory resurfaces.
“The mind is meant to remember, whether the memories are true or false doesn’t matter. Think of the memory charm on Draco as a dam holding back a river—his memories being the river. His mind wants to remember; it’s what it’s naturally meant to do, just like the river wants to flow along its natural course. A memory charm doesn’t truly erase memories, it suppresses them, lays false ones over them, like a mask. Draco’s memories are still there, a constant pressure pushing against the memory charm, and like a fissure opening up in a dam weakens it and can allow water to trickle through, the force of which will further damage the integrity of the dam, allowing the fissure to spread and more water to escape, a single fracture in a memory charm can allow one memory to surface, then another, then another. In the normal case of a memory charm being used, the false memories provide a sort of reinforcement for the charm. Rather than a dam with the pressure of the water only on one side, the charm acts as a wall between the real memories and the false. There being no false memories to . . . balance the pressure, so to speak, Draco’s mind, his own memories, will be exhibiting tremendous pressure on the memory charm. And just like a structurally weakened dam will inevitably fail without intervention, so will the memory charm cast on Draco.”
“The result being?” asked Auror Moore.
“Suddenly being inundated with a lifetime’s worth of forgotten memories would be incredibly stressful to the mind of a person with normal memories and who at least knew of our world. With Draco’s experiences during the war, the memories he would suddenly be confronted with could hardly be called normal, and he has no idea that a world other than the Muggle one exists. I can consult with specialists without mentioning Draco by name, at least initially, but he is going to need to be seen by experts.”
While nothing Hermione had just said came as a surprise, Harry felt ill. He knew what the memories suppressed by the charm held—everything from their sixth year through the end of the war . . . Dumbledore, Professor Burbage . . . , Lucius. Harry knew what was in the nightmares that had awoken Draco, shaking and sweating, in the middle of the night as often as Harry’s own had awoken him. What might the sudden onslaught of Draco’s worst nightmares do to his mind? Draco needed to be seen by a Healer specialising in memory charms as soon as possible. How had he ever thought there was any debate in whether to bring Draco home straight away or keep him in Ilfracombe under guard while they worked to identify his attacker? This is why, Harry scolded himself, Aurors were never permitted to investigate cases involving loves ones. When emotions became involved, one couldn’t think clearly, rationally.
“Can you offer any time frame, Hermione?” Kinsgley asked, speaking for the first time. “Are we looking at the memory charm failing next week, next month, or tomorrow?”
“I can’t say. Without actually interviewing Draco, I don’t think a specialist could offer a timeframe either. One doesn’t know how long he’s been remembering things. Has it been going on long or has it only just begun?” Hermione recounted the symptoms of a fracturing memory charm. “I observed him this afternoon for a few hours. He did suffer a moment of apparent disorientation along with a sudden, intense headache which lasted only minutes, exactly what I would expect for someone under a memory charm which had begun to fracture. I cast a charm on him to prevent further headaches—but the spell only prevents the headaches, not the fracturing.”
“I saw three—not the headaches, just the momentary disorientation. Two this morning and one at dinner.” Harry said, worry filling him as he thought back to that morning “I’m just . . . rather out of sorts this morning,” Draco had said. Then again at dinner, just after they’d been seated, he’d seemed so distressed, draining half his pint in one go.
While Hermione cautioned Harry that not every momentary distraction was a cause for concern—“Not everything he suddenly remembers has to be a suppressed memory, he may’ve suddenly remembered something he’d forgotten to do, or worried whether he’d turned off the oven or locked his door”—Harry could see she was troubled that there had been four apparent episodes in one day. And that was just what they’d observed. For all they knew, there could’ve been twice that number that they hadn’t witnessed.
“How soon can he be seen by a Healer specializing in memory charms, Hermione?” Harry asked. He had no idea how he’d tell Draco everything, how even to begin, but he knew it had to be him, and he knew he didn’t have long to think of how to do it. “I want him to have the best.”
“I’ll put a Floo call in to St. Mungo’s,” Kingsley said.
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled. A call from the Minister of Magic, and Draco would have the Healer-in-Charge as his Healer by this time tomorrow.
~~~~~~~
“I don’t wanna go home,” the child pouted.
“Teddy!” Andromeda scolded, entering Harry’s bedroom to retrieve the child. “I told you not to disturb Uncle Harry.”
“It’s okay, Andromeda,” Harry said, rubbing his eyes. “I know, mate. I’m sorry. But I’ve got to work, and it wouldn’t be any fun for you here while I’m working.”
“But you pwomised to take me fwying.”
“And I will. It just can’t be right now. But I do promise that you and I will go flying.”
“Why do you hafta work?”
Harry and Andromeda shared a brief glance—they’d become very adept at silent conversations. Sitting up and folding his legs, Harry held Teddy on his lap as Andromeda transfigured something—Harry didn’t notice what—into a chair, pulling it up to his bed.
“You know that there are bad people out there, right?” Harry asked. “And that Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron catch the bad people and send them away so they can’t hurt anyone anymore?”
Teddy nodded solemnly, his arms still folded in front of him.
“Do you remember Mr. Draco? The nice man who read to you in the library after it started to rain the other day?”
Teddy smiled and nodded again, his arms falling to his sides and his hair turning the palest blond, making Harry’s breath catch in his throat. “He makes voices,” Teddy said happily, referring to the different voices Draco had used as he read to the children.
Taking Teddy’s hands in his own, Harry said, slowly and softly, “He’s a wizard, just like us. But a long time ago, a bad person hurt him, and now he doesn’t remember he’s really a wizard.”
“Awe you gonna find the bad man and make him go away?” Teddy asked, looking up at Harry.
“I’m going to find him and make him go away,” Harry confirmed, wrapping his arms around Teddy.
~~~~~~~
Smiling widely, Teddy answered, “He makes voices almost as good as you and Gwannie. And Mistew Dwaco.” Teddy brought one of his books over to Harry, holding it out to him and looking hopeful. “I liked this one best.”
Opening his arms to Teddy, Harry said, “Hop up, then.”
They’d read the book twice when Hermione emerged from the bedroom she’d transfigured from a linen cupboard, the cottage only having three bedrooms. Touching the tip of Teddy’s nose, she said, “Beep,” making the little boy laugh. Turning serious, she passed on a message from Ron as she sat down and fixed herself a plate of the eggs, sausage and grilled tomatoes Andromeda had prepared. “Auror Moore is at the ministry, doing some quiet digging into who all had authorization to access Draco’s file for the entire time since his disappearance, and Ron’s meeting with the head of security at St. Mungo’s.”
Harry closed Teddy’s book. “Put your book in the bag with the others, and go make sure your grandmother doesn’t need any help, please,” Harry said to the child. “There’s a good boy,” he said as Teddy hurried off to his grandmother.
“Harry, I’ve been thinking about something,” Hermione began once Teddy was out of the room. “When I was doing my internship at St. Mungo’s, we had a case where everything except one symptom pointed to one diagnosis, that one symptom lead the Healer treating the patient to make a different diagnosis. Once diagnosed, the patient was treated but her symptoms didn’t improve. It was determined that that one single symptom which had led to a different diagnosis had nothing to do with the patient’s illness. It was simply a coincidence. Disregarding that symptom, the patient was diagnosed a second time and, once treated for the second diagnosis, she improved rapidly.”
Harry had no idea where Hermione was going with this, but he trusted she had a point.
A moment later, she proved his trust justified. “Last night, Ron asked why Draco’s attacker, knowing Draco hadn’t drown, never came after him again to . . .” She let her voice trail off, her sentence unfinished. “What if . . . ,” She hesitated before continuing, “What if killing Draco was never his attacker’s intention? What if the fact that he might’ve drown was a coincidence? Auror Moore asked why Obliviate someone you plan to kill. What if what we should be asking is why try to kill someone you’ve Obliviated? Draco was left on the beach in a seaside resort. His attacker may’ve intended for him to be found all along. Maybe the person who’s sabotaged the investigation and the person who abducted Draco are two different people.”
Harry rubbed his temples.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I know I shouldn’t interfere, I was just thinking—”
“No, Hermione. Don’t apologise. Everything you’ve said is entirely possible.”
“Is Auror work always this complicated?”
“Most criminals aren’t nearly as clever as they think they are. They usually give themselves away.” But this one hasn’t. In three years, he hasn’t given himself away, Harry thought to himself.
“We’re off, Harry.” Andromeda said, entering the room with Teddy by her side, her and Teddy’s things shrunken and in the pockets of her robes.
Teddy’s eyes were on the floor, Daggy, his stuffed dragon, in one hand, his other hand in his grandmother’s until she stepped aside to talk to Hermione.
Kneeling down, Harry soothed him, tapping his finger under the child’s chin, “Chin up, mate. When Uncle Ron and I get Mr. Draco home with his mum, maybe he can come flying with us. Would you like that?”
Teddy raised his head, considering this. “Do you think he would?”
“You can ask him.”
Teddy nodded. “Okay.” He turned sad, asking, “Do you think Mistew Dwaco misses his mummy?”
“I’m sure he does, and I know his mother misses him very much.”
“I miss my mummy and daddy.”
Harry felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a hippogriff. “I know, mate. I miss mine, too, and I’m old.”
“Do you think our mummies and daddies miss us?”
Harry had to bite down hard to keep his emotions at bay. Teddy had the frankness that only children had. “They’re watching us all the time, mate. I know they are.”
Andromeda and Hermione were talking quietly when Harry stood up, ruffling his godson’s hair. By the pained look on Andromeda’s face, Harry knew she’d heard Teddy mention his mother.
Hermione cleared her throat. “Fleur and Bill are visiting Molly and Arthur with little Victoire. I was just suggesting to Andromeda that maybe she and Teddy could drop by. You know how Teddy and Victoire like to play together.”
“Could we, Gwannie?” Teddy asked hopefully.
Andromeda said that, yes, they could, and after saying their good-byes, Teddy was still talking about Victoire when his grandmother lifted him in her arms and Apparated away.
~~~~~~~
Did Hermione’s theory have any merit? A beach in a seaside resort was hardly the spot to hide a victim the perpetrator did not want found. But it had been at night, and the tide had been on its way in. One could reasonably suppose the coast would be clear.
Closed on Sunday, the library was in darkness except for half of one of the large, semi-circular windows, an office from what Harry could see. He had his Muggle mobile phone in his pocket; he’d been issued it by the Ministry and trained on its use for the times when the Auror department needed to work with Muggle law enforcement. Answering an incoming call was easy, but finding the numbers of those who had rung him was trickier. Harry talked himself through the steps he’d been taught, and after a few tries, he managed to find the list of his recent calls. Draco’s was the only number, and Harry grinned when he pressed a few buttons and heard ringing.
His grin spread when the ringing stopped, and Draco’s voice came over the line the same moment he appeared in the window. “Come ‘round to the side, and I’ll open the door,” he said, motioning from the window, pointing to his left.
When Harry turned the corner, Draco was already standing in the open door waiting for him.
“Hi,” Draco said, pressing a soft kiss to Harry’s lips.
“Hullo to you too,” Harry responded. “Teddy’s grandmother and I decided with me working, it would be best if she took him home, so I brought these back,” he said, holding up the bag of library books, and setting them down on the enquiries counter. “Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the librarian for overdue books.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I’ve heard he bites.”
“Does he promise?”
Draco kissed him, taking his bottom lip between his teeth and nibbling it. “Yes, he does.”
“You know, there’s something rather hot about snogging a librarian in a darkened library.”
“Is that so?”
“Mhmm,” Harry hummed against Draco’s lips. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of sexy librarian fantasies.”
“I think they’re usually about women librarians.”
“Fools.”
~~~~~~~
In the early days of their relationship, before it could even be called a proper relationship, there had been no kissing. There had been no caressing, no tenderness of any kind—such a thing would’ve been opening themselves up too much to the other man, exposing a vulnerability, a potential weakness, and there had been no trust between them to allow for anything that might be exploited or ridiculed. For two months, they’d fucked. It had been nothing more than that. They’d not talked before or during, and certainly not after. It had been as impersonal and unemotional as the act could possibly be between two consenting adults.
Then had come the trial.
Harry had testified for Draco and Narcissa, and his testimony had spared both mother and son from Azkaban. The relief Draco had felt had been so intense, so overpowering he’d forgot himself and grabbed Harry, cupping his face in his hands and kissing him square on the mouth the moment they were alone. The look in Draco’s eyes when he pulled back was something Harry would never forget—the realisation that he’d left himself open, exposed, that he’d not just crossed a line they’d never even dared approach, but that he’d obliterated it completely. Harry remembered how that look in those silvery eyes had taken his breath away; he remembered how Draco’s lips had felt, how he’d tasted when Harry had kissed him back.
That night was when they’d gone from fucking to having sex.
Going from having sex to making love had come later.
Harry kissed Draco’s jaw. “Am I keeping you from getting your work done?” he asked.
“Not at all. There was an auction from an estate up north, and we were able to bid online. We got twelve books,” Draco answered as he led Harry into the office where he’d been working before Harry had arrived, showing him their collection of old and rare books, pulling out several of his favourites and telling him all about the story and author and even where and when they’d got the book. “We don’t have anything particularly valuable, of course. A new hardcover costs about the same as we paid for any of these, if not more.” Returning to the topic of the auction, he said, “We were lucky; they went rather cheaply compared to what they’d have fetched in a more specialised sale. We’d not expected to be able to buy as many as we did. There were more we’d have liked to buy, but our budget is limited. I’d actually already finished entering them into our catalogue before you arrived. I was just picking a book to take out.” He held up A Picture of Dorian Gray. “I think Oscar Wilde would have approved,” Draco said, running his hand down Harry’s chest, referring to snogging a handsome man.
Setting the book down, Draco ran his hands down Harry’s back to his arse. “Have dinner with me tonight? My place? I’ll cook for you.”
Harry’s eyes wanted to widen with surprise, his facial muscles wanted to slacken with shock, but he fought the urge and forced his face into what he hoped was a neutral expression. Draco had always been as helpless in a kitchen as Neville Longbottom had been in a potions lab.
Of course, he hadn’t had the benefit of the Malfoy family’s house-elves for the past three years. He’d have had to learn to cook.
“I’ll bring wine and pudding,” Harry offered. “White or red?”
“I was thinking fish, so white? Or do you not like seafood? If not, I can make something else—”
Harry grinned and kissed him, cutting him off. Draco loved all kinds of seafood, from Lobster Thermidor to fish and chips wrapped in an old newspaper. “I like seafood just fine.”
Reluctantly, Harry knew he had to pull himself away. He wanted nothing more than to stay exactly where he was, but Auror Moore and Ron would likely be back by now. Harry needed to know if Auror Moore had had any luck at the Ministry, and how Ron’s meeting at St. Mungo’s had gone. He kissed Draco once more. “I’m afraid I really do have to be off, though. I’ve got a meeting. After that, I’m all yours.”
“On a Sunday?”
“It’s a very special circumstance.”
“You never did tell me what it is you do.”
Very soon Harry would have to give Draco the whole truth in answer to his question, but now was not that time. Looking into Draco’s eyes, Harry tried to think of something that would be truthful . . . but not too truthful. “I’m . . . an investigator . . . of sorts.”
“And something you’ve been investigating turned up in Combe?”
Holding Draco close, Harry said, “Yeah, something turned up in Combe.”
~~~~~~~
His mind pictured himself waking up next to Harry, sound asleep and naked beside him, but rather than his bed in his flat, they were once again in the green room he’d pictured them making love in yesterday. Draco pushed the daydream aside. Maybe by this time tomorrow, he wouldn’t have to imagine waking up next to Harry.
There were four books in the bag Harry had brought, but Draco was sure Harry had only taken out three. He had completely forgotten about the books Harry had borrowed for Teddy until he’d returned them, and thinking back, he couldn’t remember Harry having them at his flat last night. He remembered Harry dropping them on Capstone Hill last night as they’d kissed, but he couldn’t remember them being picked back up.
Pushing the thought aside—because Harry obviously had the books with him last night since he had just returned them—Draco scanned the first book, which pulled up Harry’s account, and Draco saw that he was at least right regarding the number of books. Harry had only borrowed three books for his godson, not four. Looking closer at the books Harry had returned, Draco saw that only three had a library stamp on the page ends and a bar code sticker on the cover. One of his godson’s own books must’ve got mixed in by mistake, he thought to himself as he looked at the cover of the fourth book, reading the title. Muggles Who Notice was written in a scrolling script across the top. The words Blenheim Stalk were written across the bottom by the picture of a small quill and inkwell. Draco had never heard of the book or author—he supposed Blenheim Stalk was the name of the author. Published by Obscurus Books. He’d never heard of Obscurus Books either; they must a small publishing house, he thought. The cover of the book showed a number of people flying around on brooms. Three rings stood atop tall poles to one side, and a ball was heading towards one of the rings, which was being blocked by someone who appeared to be a sort of goalie. A group of people on the ground stood, staring and pointing, with looks ranging from shock to horror on their faces.
Odd looking book for a small child, Draco thought to himself.
The three library books scanned and on the trolley to be reshelved in the morning, Draco checked to make sure the library was locked up and went up to his flat, taking A Picture of Dorian Gray and Harry’s book with him.
~~~~~~~
Harry nodded his head. A Floo call from the Minister for Magic got things done; there was no arguing that. He sat down heavily at the table.
“Harry, what is it?” Hermione asked soothingly.
“I have to tell him tonight. Everything. I have to tell him everything tonight,” He looked back and forth between his closest friends, despondent. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? What am I going to say to him?”
“Tell him the truth. It’s the only thing you can do,” Hermione said softly.
Harry ran his hands through his hair, causing it to stick up in every direction. “Sorry, but you see, I made you go somewhere you didn’t want to go, and then I left you alone there and some lunatic attacked you and cast a spell on you, which is why you can’t remember anything—oh, did I not mention we’re wizards and magic is real? The lunatic then cast another spell on you, which is why you were unconscious, and left you on a beach with the tide on its way in. Why would anyone do that? Well, you see, there was a war, and well, the side your family had fought for lost, and so a whole lot of people wanted to see you locked up for the rest of your life, and when that didn’t happen, someone decided to take matters into their own hands.”
“Harry, you’ve given victim’s families terrible news before and you handled it. You’ll handle this,” Ron said confidently and business-like.
“Not the same thing. What had happened to their loved one wasn’t my fault. What happened to Draco was.”
“Harry, stop it,” Hermione scolded. “What. Happened. Was. Not. Your. Fault. No one but you thinks it was.”
Harry had always believed Mrs. Malfoy held him responsible, and who could blame her? She’d never said she did, but then, she so rarely said anything. Narcissa Malfoy seldom spoke. Losing her son one year to the day after losing her husband had left her shattered.
Andromeda had gone above and beyond trying to take care of her sister after Draco had been taken. She’d wanted nothing to do with making peace with Narcissa after the war—the old wound of being cast off so completely by the sister she’d loved ran too deep—but once she’d been told Draco had been abducted, Andromeda had put the past behind her and gone to her sister’s side, the shared pain of a mother losing her child overriding the old pain. In the early days after Draco’s abduction, Andromeda had been so confident he would be found, thinking positively and refusing to give up hope, but when that hadn’t happened, she’d taken care of Narcissa the way . . . the way a mother would take care of her child. She’d got her to eat and drink when no one else could, even to just get out of bed and face the day. But she’d been unable to make her sister talk. Narcissa Malfoy had withdrawn into herself, and no one had been able to draw her out. Harry had done everything and anything he could. Even Molly Weasley had tried to help, putting aside years of animosity and bitterness—if not outright hatred—but although Andromeda and Molly both knew the pain of losing a child, they at least knew what had happened to their child. They had answers. Narcissa Malfoy had no answers. Nor did she have a body. Andromeda and Molly both knew how their children had died and had whatever comfort knowing their children died bravely might bring them. They also had their children’s bodies, and while no parent should ever have to see their child buried, not knowing what happened, whether her child was alive or dead, not being able to have a burial if the worst was true was even more unthinkable.
“You’ve been looking for him for three years, Harry. I know you have. You’ve been on both Oldfield’s and Moore’s backs, hounding them for news. You’ve never lost hope. You never stopped loving him. Tell him that.” The conviction in Ron’s words and the confidence with which he spoke of Harry’s love for Draco surprised Harry. While Ron’s support had been unwavering from the moment Harry had confessed his attraction to another man to him, it had always been more on the order of strong, steadfast—and silent.
The fear that Draco would never want to see him again after he knew the truth was still present in the back of Harry’s mind, but fretting about what might happen wouldn’t help stop it from happening. All Harry could do was tell Draco everything and hope he could forgive him.
Harry breathed deeply. “Any ideas on exactly how I’m to tell him he’s a wizard?”
“Well, how did you find out? How’s it normally done?” Ron asked, being the only one of the three to grow up in the Wizarding world.
“I don’t think Hagrid knocking down his front door is the way to go.”
Hermione had begun to speak, but the words died on her tongue. She looked at Harry in amazement. He’d never told his friends of the Dursleys' attempts at preventing him from receiving his Hogwarts letters and learning what he was.
“No, I reckon not,” Ron agreed after several seconds.
“He’s already remembering things, Harry. Honestly, I’m quite surprised he’s not remembered you. The episode I witnessed happened the moment he saw me, as if seeing me triggered it. Maybe . . .” her voice trailed off as her eyes settled on a random spot across the room and lines creased her forehead.
Recognizing the look on her face, Harry and Ron exchanged a glance before Harry anxiously asked what she was thinking.
“Maybe he has,” she stated. “Maybe he is remembering you.”
“I don’t think if he remembered us duelling in the corridors at Hogwarts—or worse—that he’d have invited me back to his flat for dinner, Hermione.”
Her head lowered and smirk on her face, her eyebrow arched while her eyes looked up at him mischievously, Hermione responded, “Who says what he’s remembering about you is negative? I understood you two made some much more . . . enjoyable memories.”
From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron squirm in his seat and look around the room as if hoping to find some hole he could crawl into.
“He could think he’s fantasizing when he’s actually remembering,” Hermione said plainly. “He’s seeing you in a positive, romantic light. It makes sense that those memories of you would be the ones that would surface first. He has no reason to think negatively of you, nothing to remind him of negative memories of you. If seeing me really did make him remember something—which I’m not saying it did, just that it may’ve done—just think what seeing you show up in his library, in his nice and tidy little Muggle world, might set off.”
“You think seeing me started the memory charm fracturing? But that’s brilliant news! That means the spell has only just begun fracturing.”
“Or you may’ve been a spike driven into an existing fracture, making it spread much more quickly that it had been previously. There’s just no way to know without talking to him and asking him directly.”
Harry deflated, the momentary hope he’d felt that Draco’s condition might not have been as urgent as they’d feared burst like a balloon pricked by a pin.
“You want to begin gently, Harry. Maybe if you tried beginning by telling him you know what happened to him?” she suggested. “Some of the memories he’s recovered are likely positive, especially those pertaining to you if his attitude toward you is anything to go by, but others likely are not. You know what atrocities he witnessed during the war.”
“His nightmares . . . He had such horrible nightmares, as bad as mine,” Harry said. “He’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and trembling from head to foot.”
“Once I had an answer, a reason why odd things kept happening around me . . . It was a tremendous relief to know I wasn’t going mad,” Hermione said, thinking back to the day she learned she wasn’t mental but a witch.
The day Harry had learned he was a wizard had been the happiest of his life until that moment—not that it had had any competition for the title—and remained one of his happiest days still. He only hoped Draco would welcome the news.
Harry thought of something. “Hermione, you mentioned remembering something connecting Ilfracombe to memory charms.”
“It was nothing.” Hermione waved it off. “Memory charms cast on a bunch of Muggles who saw something they shouldn’t have. Happened ages ago. Couldn’t have anything to do with why Draco’s attacker chose this place above any other.”
Ilfracombe was an odd place for Draco to have been hidden—It’s home to far too many wizards, plus all those on holiday, Harry thought to himself briefly before pushing the thought aside. The thing most on his mind right now was telling Draco everything he needed to tell him and getting him away from Ilfracombe. This is his home now. What if he doesn’t want to leave? The focus could be directed on finding his attacker after Draco was safe.
But the fact that Ilfracombe was a poor choice of hiding place remained in the back of Harry’s head. Facts that didn’t make sense could often be the most important to solving the crime, he knew. Poor choice or not, Ilfracombe was the place their suspect had chosen. Why? Answer that question, and they’d be much closer to identifying Draco’s attacker, Harry knew.
“I had the book around here somewhere if you want to see it,” Hermione said distractedly as she stood up and looked around the table. There were piles of paper—the copied reports from Draco’s file—but there were no books. “It was on the table. I’m sure it was.”
“I saw it there after I read to Teddy last night,” Ron confirmed.
“I only saw Teddy’s library books on the table this morning,” Harry said. “What’s it called?”
“Muggles Who Notice,” Hermione answered, distracted. “It’s a collection of accounts of Muggles witnessing elements of the Wizarding world. Where could it have got to?” she asked as she pulled her wand from her pocket. “Accio Muggles Who Notice.”
Nothing happened.
“It’s not here,” she said, nonplussed.
A heavy weight settled in Harry stomach. Teddy, will you put your library books back into this bag, so I can return them? The colour drained from his face as his words echoed through his head. He’d watched Teddy collect his books, but he’d been watching Teddy, thinking how proud he was of the little boy. He’d not been paying the least attention to the books being put into the bag.
As he’d figured out how to ring Draco on his mobile, he’d thought the bag had seemed heavier than it had last night, but he’d been too focused on seeing Draco again to think on it.
Harry swore.
“Harry? What is it?” Hermione asked.
“Mate, you’ve gone as white as a ghost.”
“I know where it is. It’s at the library. I gave it to Draco with Teddy’s books.”
~~~~~~~
Standing beside his bed, Draco debated whether there was time to launder his duvet. They’d not set a time, but surely Harry could not be expected too soon. He had his own work to attend to, although he’d not said how long his meeting was likely to take. Was there time, he wondered? It was a Sunday afternoon, and the machines would likely be all engaged—Draco typically did his laundry on weekdays when there was a greater chance of the machines being free. Glancing at his watch, he decided it was best not to risk a full wash cycle, but he could at least freshen the duvet up a bit. He pulled it from his bed, fetched a dryer sheet, tossed both into his laundry bag and hurried down to the basement laundry room. A dryer was free, which he quickly claimed, and after setting the machine to air-fluff and inserting a few coins, he returned to his flat.
Standing just inside his door, Draco scanned his flat. Harry had seen the place yesterday, but there had been other things occupying their attention then. Tonight while they ate dinner would be a different story. Draco didn’t have much, but he wanted what little he did have to look as good as it could. His eyes settled on the small table in his kitchenette area with its two mismatched chairs, the one with the wobbly leg in particular. He fetched the glue, attempting yet another repair. He’d been told when he’d bought the chair from a car boot sale that with a little glue, the leg would be good as new. Draco would like to give the bloke who’d sold him the chair a piece of his mind. He’d glued the blasted thing a dozen times—it never held.
With the chair leg re-glued yet again, Draco turned his mind to dinner, going through possible ways to prepare the cod filets he had in the refrigerator. Baked with a crust of lemon pepper, garlic, and parsley was what he decided on, with jacket potatoes and salad.
He’d left his and Harry’d books on the counter. Harry’s book was laid atop the library’s copy of A Picture of Dorian Gray, but for a moment, Draco thought he had the wrong book. The cover was different that it had been earlier. Rather, the picture on the cover was different; the title, Muggles Who Notice, was still scrawled along the top. The cover, which had previously featured people flying on booms above a crowd of frightened onlookers, now showed the close up image of a frightened woman, her eyes wide with shock. Had anyone seen Draco at that moment, they’d have seen the expression depicted on the woman’s face mirrored on his. The only other image on the cover was of a man’s hand holding a magic wand over the woman’s head.
As Draco stared at the book, the image changed in front of his disbelieving eyes. The cover now showed a large green dragon flying above a beach while dozens of beachgoers in bathing costumes from the first half of the 20th century ran, husbands clutching wives, mothers clutching children, strangers trampling strangers, all attempting to escape the winged creature soaring above them.
Staring wide eyed and slack jawed at the new image, Draco recognised the scene he was looking at. The dragon wasn’t just flying above a beach, it was above the Tunnel Beaches, the ladies’ beach to be specific. He could see the familiar cliffs and tidal pool in the background.
Kat’s Great Uncle Dirk . . . his great flying lizard.
It was brown, not green like the one on the cover, but in his mind, Draco could see a large dragon chained inside a stone pit; a crowd of onlookers gathered in some sort of arena or stadium surrounded the pit. From behind a large rock, a black-clad figure on a broom soared into the sky, narrowly missing a blast of fire from the chained creature. Draco’s heart jumped in his chest. It wasn’t real, of course, but how narrowly the person on the broom had escaped the ball of fire shook him. The broom and its rider rocketed into the sky away from the monster, but the winged beast struggled against its bonds and broke free, giving chase high into the sky. Draco could see nothing of either the broom and its rider or the creature, and, he didn’t know why, but his heart was racing with worry for the safety of the one on the broom. For several long moments as both rider and dragon were out of site, the stadium had fallen silent, and Draco was filled with dread.
Until suddenly the rider reappeared and the dragon did not. The stadium erupted into wild applause, and Draco nearly sank to the floor with relief. His heart was pounding ridiculously hard in his chest. He felt silly—none of what he had just seen in his head was real, after all.
But it had felt real.
His attention returning to the book, the cover changed once more.
The cover of the book now showed the image of a large and busy train station. People were standing, pointing and screaming, at the stone archway between two platforms marked nine and ten. Shopping bags, briefcases and overnight bags lay on the floor at their feet, dropped and forgotten. In the archway between the two platforms a family stood, staring back at the others with nearly the same looks of horror on their faces. A mother and father stood side by side, drawing their children close to them as if they feared attack from the crowd. Alongside the family were trollies laden with heavy looking trunks such as a person might’ve taken on a transatlantic voyage a hundred years ago. Atop one of the trunks stood a large bird cage containing an owl.
Draco took all of this in, but what had captured his attention most was what the family were wearing. Mother, father, and children were all wearing robes, and the black robes worn by the children, with their coloured collars and coloured breast patches—insignias of some sort—were robes that Draco recognised. They were the same as the ones he’d seen himself and his classmates wearing in the flashback he’d had of the teacher with the possessed wardrobe.
Snatching up the book, Draco turned it over in his hands. He opened it and looked inside the front and back covers. He could see no sale price; he did however see something about sickles and knuts, whatever those might be. Publishing information identified the publishing house—Obscurus Books, which Draco still could not recall every having heard off—and the date of original publication—1972. A foreword printed opposite a flyleaf identified the book as a compilation of occasions during which Muggles had observed elements of the Wizarding World whether by accident or by malicious design.
“Muggles . . . Wizarding World . . . ,” Draco murmured to himself.
In his mind he could see a scene very similar to the one on the cover of the book, except that the child in the black robes standing with his parents was himself. Draco thought he looked to be about ten or eleven—much older than he had been in the memory of his father reading to him. Beside him stood his parents—he could see them so clearly now, both his father and his mother!—but their aristocratic faces bore sneers of disgust rather than the look of what could only be described as rapture on his own face. A luggage trolley stood beside him, covered in trunks and a cage containing a large brown eagle. The trunks and his parents’ robes looked far more expensive than those of the frightened family on the cover of the book. His own black robe was plain, lacking the green collar and insignia he’d seen on it in a vision of himself older.
Draco could see his father place his hands on his younger self’s shoulders and nod once, the scorn on his face being replaced with pride as he looked at his son, at Draco. His mother touched his face gently, smiling beautifully at him.
And then Draco turned and pushed his trolley, running straight at the brick archway between two train platforms marked nine and ten.
Draco gasped, bracing for the collision with the brick wall as if what he was seeing in his mind was something that was really happening at that moment. But the collision never came, and Draco opened his eyes—he’d not realised he’d closed them. The memory—this incredible scene was real, as impossible as it seemed, it was a real memory—continued as Draco’s younger self passed through the wall as if it wasn’t even there to emerge onto a platform even more crowded than the one he’d just left. All around him swarmed people, parents and children, all of whom were dressed in robes. A shining scarlet steam engine stood proudly next to the platform, puffs of white steam billowing from gleaming smoke stack, children leaning from windows and calling to others still on the platform.
Amazed at what he was seeing, remembering, Draco flipped through the book. He returned to the forward, reading it again before turning to the table of contents, scanning titles, some incredible, others surprisingly unextraordinary.
He stopped when he came to one particular chapter. Reading aloud, he said, “The Ilfracombe Incident of 1932.” He turned to the page indicated and read, devouring every word.
When he’d finished the chapter, he continued reading. The chapters were arranged chronologically, so that The Ilfracombe Incident of 1932 was followed by incidents in later years. When Draco came to references to a man called Gellert Grindelwald, who the book identified as one of the most dangerous dark wizards of all time, and his killings of Muggles and the increasingly desperate efforts taken by the International Confederation of Wizards to keep their world hidden from the Muggle population, Draco felt a sinking fear in the pit of his stomach.
The book stated that Grindelwald was defeated in 1945 by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
Draco’s mind filled with another memory, this one worse by far than anything he could’ve imagined, and Draco was held paralysed until the scene came to an end.
It was like watching a horror film in which he played the lead role; except, it wasn’t a film—it was real. Just like all his other flashbacks were, what he’d just seen was real.
Shaking and his legs trembling beneath him, Draco made his way to his bed and sat down. He felt out of breath, and he struggled to calm himself.
His hand rose to his chest, laying directly over a long, thin scar that ran the width of his torso. He’d always wondered how he’d got it, and now he knew. The scar was in the exact location he’d just seen blood spurt from his chest moments before he’d collapsed to the floor.
In the flashback he’d just experienced, he’d been standing in front of a sink, his head bowed, in tears and shaking. Beside him hovered—hovered!—a girl. He could see through the girl floating beside him to the wall behind her. The girl had no colour—not her hair, not her robes, not anywhere. She was nothing but transparent shades of grey, as if she consisted of nothing but wisps of smoke.
Draco put his hand on the wall to brace himself, trying to stop his body from shaking. The girl he’d seen floating next to him in his flashback was a ghost.
His younger self was nearly hysterical with fear, crying that no one could help him. The ghostly girl was trying to comfort him, soothe him, crooning to him that if he told her what was wrong, she could help him. He had only replied that he couldn’t do it, that something didn’t work, that unless he did it soon, he said he’d kill him.
A moment later he’d raised his head—perhaps his younger self had heard the door open—and saw someone standing behind him reflected in the mirror in front of him. Harry. He’d seen Harry. Harry had been there, had been part of his flashback.
In an instant, Draco’s younger self had whirled around and pulled a long stick from inside his robes. He’d waved it through the air, shouting something in a language Draco didn’t understand but must have once. A burst of light had shot from the stick held tightly in his hand, missing Harry by only a matter of inches and shattering a lamp on the wall near where he stood. Harry had dove to the side, waving his arm through the air and shouting another word Draco couldn’t understand. The light that jetted out of the stick Harry held headed directly at Draco, but with a wave of his arm and another one of those words he couldn’t understand, it had been deflected.
The ghostly girl had screamed, her nasal voice echoing loudly, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Both Harry and Draco had continued to shout unintelligible words at each other and waive their arms around like wild, sometimes sending different coloured rays of light at each other, but other times there was no light. Whether the word they’d shouted produced a light or not, it always produced an effect. This was unlike any fight Draco had ever seen or could ever have imagined. While neither of them had yet managed to hit the other, the room around them was heavily damaged. The bin behind Harry exploded with a loud bang, sending papers and various bits of rubbish around the wrecked room. Something Harry did caused the sink beneath the ghostly girl to explode. She shrieked. Water poured all over the floor.
Harry had slipped on the wet tile floor, and Draco advanced on him; his face so twisted with fury that had he not seen the moments leading up to it, Draco wasn’t sure he’d have recognised himself.
At the same moment Draco had shouted something Harry shouted something else, and a white light shot from the stick in his hand, hitting Draco. Blood poured from Draco’s face and chest as if he’d been slashed by a sword. His younger self collapsed to the floor.
Harry had tried to kill him. He couldn’t imagine how Harry hadn’t killed him, how he could’ve survived it. There had been so much blood. . . .
Was Harry—the same Harry who could be knocking on his door at any time—the he his younger self had been afraid would kill him if he couldn’t do whatever it was he’d been supposed to be doing?
Shaking badly, Draco felt sick with fear.
Before he could think of anything beside the fact that Harry had tried to kill him, there was a loud crack in the corridor directly outside his flat followed by a knock at the door. Harry’s voice called out to him.
Draco’s breathing was shallow and erratic; he began to feel giddy.
Long seconds passed, and Harry knocked again as he called out to Draco again.
Desperate for something—anything—with which to defend himself, Draco reached behind himself, feeling for the small table beside his bed. His fingers found the base of his lamp and searched out the cord. With a quick tug, he pulled it free from the wall. Outdated and out of style, the lamp had been cheap in a second-hand store, but it was heavy and solid—brass with a marble base. It would make a formidable weapon swung into an unsuspecting man’s ribcage.
Grabbing hold of the lamp once again, he stood, hiding behind the half wall that partially divided his bedroom area from the rest of the flat. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could truly defend himself against Harry—Harry would be armed, Draco was sure, he’d have one of those sticks—but Draco had the element of surprise on his side. Harry would not be expecting Draco to be aware he was in any danger. If he could just disarm Harry, get that stick away from him . . . If he could get that damn stick away from him, he could defend himself.
~~~~~~~
He’d knocked on Draco’s door twice and had called out, but had got no response. Harry was dying a little more inside with every second that passed. He knew Draco was in—the spells he’d cast would’ve alerted him had he left the building. If he’d not yet seen the book, he’d have answered the door on Harry’s first knock.
Harry tried to moisten his dry lips, but his mouth had gone dry as well. He called out a third time, “Draco? It’s Harry. Are you there?” He pleaded, “Please, answer the door.”
There was no answer.
Perhaps he’s just dozed off? Harry thought to himself hopefully, trying not to think about what a light sleeper Draco had been.
Draco had seen the book; there was no other explanation Harry could see. He’d seen and read the book, and Harry could only imagine the state he would be in. What would the shock of learning of the existence of their world in such a way do to the already fracturing memory charm?
In his pocket, Harry’s wand vibrated an alarm, and every other thought in his head fell to the side. The alarm had been triggered by someone attempting to counter the protective spells he’d cast.
There was no longer time to tread gently; he had to get to Draco, and get to him immediately.
Harry pounded on the door, shouting to Draco, begging him to open the door.
He still got no answer, and Harry drew his wand, casting a charm to check his spells, making sure they were holding strong.
But they weren’t.
Two of them had been countered without the warning alarm being triggered, but thank Merlin, the most important—the charm that prevented anyone but Harry himself from apparating into the building—wasn’t one of the two. Harry was a very powerful wizard. It would have taken Draco’s attacker both time and skill to counter his spells. Whoever it was must’ve known Draco had been found almost immediately and been working on getting passed his spells ever since.
Harry called out loudly, “Draco? It’s Harry. Please open the door.” Still, there was no answer from inside the flat. There was nothing else Harry could do; he needed to get Draco out of the building before his Anti-Apparition spell was countered. He placed the tip of his wand against the doorknob, unlocking it. “Draco, I’m coming in.”
~~~~~~~
He could hear his front door open slowly, followed by cautious footfalls. Now inside his flat, Harry spoke to him. “Draco, I know you’re in here. Please, come out. I’m sorry. Please believe me, I wouldn’t have entered your flat like this if it weren’t necessary.” On the surface, Harry’s voice sounded calm, but Draco was sure he could hear genuine anxiety laced through the forced calm. For whatever reason, Harry was very afraid. Of what, Draco had no idea. “I know what happened. I know you were attacked three years ago, and I know you don’t remember anything before that. We’re trying to find who—”
Harry never completed his sentence because at just that moment, he stepped around the half wall separating Draco’s bedroom area from the rest of his flat. The moment Draco saw the tip of a long wooden stick from where he was hidden behind that wall, he steeled his nerves, tightened his grip on the lamp, inhaled and swung.
He caught Harry right in his midsection, and the other man went down, doubled over and groaning in pain. Caught by surprise, Harry dropped the stick he’d held, and it clattered on the ground. Draco grabbed it and pointed it at Harry. He could remember only one of the foreign words he’d heard Harry and himself shout at each other in his memory clearly enough to repeat it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not in cold blood, not with Harry unarmed and on the ground.
“You tried to kill me!” Draco shouted instead.
“What are you . . . Kill you?” Harry tried to speak, but the wind had been knocked from his lungs, and all he could manage were two or three words between gasping breaths.
“I may not remember much, but that much I do remember. You . . .” Draco’s voice trailed off as he waved the stick around in imitation of the motions he’d remembered himself and Harry using. “You tried to kill me! You . . . you did . . . something and I . . . I . . . there was so much blood . . .” Suddenly, Draco felt as if he’d run out of energy. “You tried to kill me,” he said softly.
Harry had regained his feet and held his hands up in front of himself defensively—Draco may no longer be shouting, but he maintained a firm grip on the stick he’d taken from him. “You tried to kill me,” he repeated. “We were in a toilet and, and, and there was this girl, I think she was a ghost, she was . . . all grey, and I could see through her, and . . . I was afraid of someone, someone who’d said he’d kill me if I didn’t do something and I couldn’t do it . . . and you came in . . . and we were . . . shouting at each other and . . . you shouted something and I . . . fell over . . . and there was so much blood.” Draco went from rambling, his words coming out rushed together, to stammering, words failing him.
Harry sighed, his hands going to his face, hiding it from view, before running roughly through his hair. “That’s what you remember,” he said, his voice sounding as exhausted as Draco felt. He looked disappointed. “Out of everything . . . that’s what you remember.”
“I remember other things,” Draco said defiantly, defensively. “I’m remembering loads.”
Harry looked at him, apprehension clearly visible in his green eyes. His next words were not what Draco expected; rather than demanding to know what else Draco had remembered, Harry asked, the apprehension in his eyes multiplied in his voice, “How long?”
Surprised by the question, Draco didn’t respond right away.
“Draco, please. This is important. How long have you been remembering?" Harry asked, the apprehension replaced by desperation.
Draco was confused by what sounded like genuine concern in Harry’s voice. After what he’d just remembered, how could they possibly be standing here talking, Harry sounding like he cared? He answered almost in spite of himself. “I . . . A couple days. No. Longer, really. All along. But only . . . a few seconds here and there . . . once every few months. Two or three times a year. Maybe four. But just . . .” Draco didn’t know why he was telling Harry any of this. “What’s it to you?” he asked, angry at himself for being taken in by Harry’s false concern. “Why should I tell you anything? What do you care?”
“I care, Draco. Very much. I—”
“You tried to kill me!” Draco shouted, raising the stick in his hand, which had lowered a few inches as Harry had tried to talk to him.
“No, Draco, I swear—”
“I remember it!”
Harry pleaded, “I didn’t know what that spell did. I swear it. You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know what it would do. I never would’ve . . . Draco?”
Draco could see himself lying on the floor in a puddle of blood—his own blood, mixing with the water on the floor pouring from the ruined sink.
“No . . .” Draco could hear Harry gasp. But not the Harry standing in front of him. The Harry standing in front of him had fallen silent, his face covered with alarm that increased with every second. The Harry whose voice had whispered that single word with such emotion, such remorse and guilt was the same Harry who had almost killed him only a moment earlier. It was the voice of someone in horrified shock, someone who hadn’t expected what had happened.
Draco remember Harry had rushed forward, falling to his knees next to him, looking as white with horror as Draco did from blood loss. “No . . . I didn’t . . .” he’d stammered.
“Draco, what is it?” Harry asked—the Harry here and now—pulling Draco from the memory.
“You . . .” Draco sat down on his bed. He was overwhelmed. He couldn’t explain the bizarre things he was remembering. He didn’t know what to think, but there was one thing he did believe. “You really didn’t know what that . . .” Shivers ran up Draco’s back. “You said ‘spell.’ You called it a ‘spell.’”
Harry approached him tentatively, slowly, as if he was unsure the closeness would be welcomed. Kneeling in front of him and looking directly in his eyes, Harry said, “You’re a wizard, Draco. We’re wizards.”
The flat was deadly quiet. Draco stared back at Harry, holding his gaze, neither man looking away. After he didn’t know how long, Draco said, exasperated, “You’re barking mad.”
“Am I?” Harry asked. “Anything ever happened around you that you couldn’t explain? Maybe when you were really happy or angry, or maybe when you were scared?”
Draco blinked in surprise several times. He couldn’t be a . . . a wizard. There was no such thing. This wasn’t some child’s book; it was real.
But, yes, things he’d not been able to explain had happened.
“I take it that’s a yes?” Harry asked.
“I . . .” Draco began, nodding. “We were . . . out to eat the other night. A group of us. Friday night. After you were at the library. Jo, my friend . . . choked on a chip.” He told Harry how afraid he been and how helpless he’d felt, about the word that had echoed through his mind a second before the chip had flown from Jo’s throat, hitting him.
“Summoning charm. There’s a spell to clear a blocked airway, but I reckon Accio would work as well in that situation,” Harry responded rationally in the same tone of voice Draco would’ve answered a library patron’s question about a book, as if nothing about the story he’d just been told had surprised him. Draco could only imagine how great the look of incredulity on his face was.
“Don’t believe me?” Harry asked.
Draco shook his head. He didn’t believe him, not a word. Everything Harry said was ludicrous.
Wasn’t it?
“Got another explanation, have you?”
When Draco didn’t answer, Harry turned deadly serious. “We can talk about this later, but right now, I’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Why?” Draco asked, suspicious. The tone of voice Harry had spoken in only a moment ago had changed completely. His voice now held fear. What could possibly make someone who could do the things he’d remembered Harry doing afraid?
“I don’t want you to be afraid,” Harry said as he joined him, sitting next to Draco on the bed and taking his hands in his own. “You’ve got to trust me, Draco. You’re in danger. I know you were attacked three years ago. I’ve been looking for you since you went missing.”
Emotions swarmed inside Draco like a hurricane. He had been looked for. The way Harry had looked at him when they’d first met, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Something wonderful’s happened. Something brilliant,” Harry had said as they’d walked to dinner last night. “Something I’ve been hoping for for three years. I still can’t quite believe it’s really true. I feel as if I’m in a dream. I’m afraid of waking up and finding it wasn’t real.” The look on Harry’s face when they’d met, the words he’d spoke and the tone of voice he’d spoken them in . . . Harry had said he worked in investigations and that something he’d been investigating had turned up in Combe. Had it been him that had turned up in Combe? Had finding him been the wonderful, brilliant thing that had happened?
Harry continued, “I’ll answer any questions you’ve got, I promise. You must have loads. But right now, we’ve got to get out of here. The person who attacked you knows you’ve been found. He’s in Ilfracombe.”
Draco was suddenly terrified, so much more so than when he’d believed Harry had tried to kill him. “He’s in Combe?”
Harry took his face in his hands. The look in his eyes made Draco believe every word he said; that much intensity could not be faked. Besides, knowing what Harry could do, Draco realised that if Harry had wanted to harm him, he could have done so any number of times over the past couple of days. “I won’t let him hurt you again,” Harry vowed. “He’s outside. He’s trying to get in. I cast protective spells on the building so that no one intending to harm you could enter, but he’s countered two of them already.” Draco’s heart was pounding in his chest, but while the urgency of his words was obvious, the fear laced through Harry’s voice was now gone. His tone was calm, as if he was used to being in dangerous situations. “When I was in the corridor my wand—”
Before Harry could finish his sentence, the stick Draco held in his hand—a wand, Harry had just called it—tremored and emitted a shrill buzz.
Harry swore and ripped the wand from Draco’s hand, holding it in his right hand and grabbing hold of Draco with his left.
Draco felt his arm twist forcefully where Harry held it firm in his grasp. For a fraction of second everything went black, and Draco felt tremendous pressure on all sides, as if the walls had closed in suddenly and were crushing him. He couldn’t draw a breath, and he panicked. The pressure felt as if it might crush him.
But then it was gone as fast as it had appeared.
Draco felt so giddy and disoriented that had he not been sitting down, he’d have fallen over. He looked around for Harry but couldn’t see him at first until a pain-filled moan drew Draco’s attention to the floor.
Draco gasped in horror; he felt ill and thought he might be sick. Harry lay on the floor beside Draco’s bed. Whereas Draco’s arm had felt as if it might have been ripped from his body, Harry’s looked as if it nearly had been. His lower arm lay at a horrible angle; the bone—not just broken but shattered—was visible through the mangled flesh. Draco’s stomach rolled threateningly. Harry’s lower arm was all but shredded—blood vessels, muscle, bone fragments, nerves, flesh all twisted together.
His face rapidly turning a horrid shade of grey-white and developing a sheen of sweat, Harry gritted his teeth through what had to be unbearable pain and pointed his wand at his injured left arm, muttering words Draco couldn’t understand.
The words—a spell, Draco realised—had the effect Harry had clearly intended because the flow of blood stopped immediately. Letting his head fall to the floor, Harry swallowed twice. Weakly, he said, “Draco . . . hide . . . help . . . will come . . .” His eyes fell shut.
“No . . .” Draco dropped to the floor at Harry’s side, the scene terribly reminiscent of the one he remembered of Harry kneeling next to him on the toilet floor as Draco bled and bled. Where could Harry possibly have hoped Draco could hide them? He had a studio flat barely larger than a postage stamp. The only possible concealment from the front door was exactly where they were, behind the partial wall that partitioned off his bed from the rest of the flat.
Draco thought he might be able to drag Harry into the loo, but before he could even attempt it a loud crack sounded from inside his flat. A second later, the partition wall screening them from the rest of the flat exploded, bits of wood and plaster board raining down upon Harry and himself.
Draco threw himself over Harry, trying to keep the debris from falling onto his injured arm, but a force pushed him backward into the side of his bed.
As badly injured as Harry was, Draco saw his eyes fix on the intruder; a look of disbelief covering his face. “You?” he gasped incredulously through the pain.
An evil grin covered the intruder’s face, the wand clutched in his hand pointed directly at them. “I’ve enjoyed our little game of hide and seek, Potter, but I’m afraid, as they say . . .” The cruel voice paused as a look of vindictive delight covered the man’s features. “All good things must come to an end.” His head shook in disgust. “You call yourself an Auror—dirtying yourself with scum like this one.” He flicked his wand in Draco’s direction. “Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon you and your filthy little secret. Darling Golden Boy of the Wizarding World. Hero of the Battle of Hogwarts. Vanquisher of the Dark Lord. Youngest Auror in History. Nothing but a filthy pillow biter.” He spat, repulsed. “A fuck toy to death eater scum. Not bad enough to get up to that disgusting behaviour in private, you had to defile the Ministry of Magic with your sick perversion.”
Draco’s heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his ears. His eyes flickered between the man who had attacked him three years ago and now held both Harry and him captive and Harry’s injured arm. How much blood had he lost? Harry had said help would come, but how? And how soon? How was anyone to even know they needed help?
A memory flashed through Draco’s mind. He and Harry were alone in a small alcove off a grand corridor. The buzz of a number of voices could be heard faintly, as if the crowd was some distance away. He was facing the opening of the alcove onto the corridor, only a small portion of which was visible from their secluded little niche, but Draco could see a floor of polished dark wood and a row of huge gilded fireplaces, each large enough for a grown man to stand up in. Harry and he were kissing softly and whispering to each other.
Seeing himself kissing Harry, Draco understood that all of the times he’d pictured himself and Harry together intimately, he’d not been fantasising but remembering. He and Harry had been lovers. But what then had caused them to fight so violently that Harry had used an unknown spell which had nearly killed him?
In his memory of himself and Harry in their alcove, Draco had leaned into Harry, who held him and whispered soothing words to him. Their kissing hadn’t been passionate but tender, speaking to a relationship that ran deeper than merely the physical.
There had been somewhere Harry had said he’d needed to go, but Draco had not wanted to face someone or something again, saying he’d wait for Harry there. Harry had said he’d been wrong, that he wished they’d never come and had promised they would leave as soon as he returned.
After one last kiss, Harry had left, and Draco had been alone in the alcove.
Only moments after Harry had gone, the man now holding them both at wandpoint had come, his face a cold, cruel mask. He had aimed his wand at Draco, who had reached into his robe pocket—the same robes now hanging in his cupboard—for his own wand to defend himself, but he’d not been in time. His attacker had had his wand aimed before he’d ever entered the alcove, and almost the very moment Draco had seen him, a jet of scarlet light erupted from the tip of his wand. After that, everything was black.
“Disgusting that you be made an Auror when other, much more skilled wizards get rejected. Standards lowered for the likes of you when greater wizards than you are kept out unfairly. The Great Harry Potter—I took down the spells you cast to protect your Death Eater whore. I took him from under your very nose! I kept him hidden when you had the entire Ministry, nearly every witch or wizard in Britain, out looking for him! Child’s play intercepting new reports of sightings. Almost too easy. Aurors! What are Aurors but a bunch of puffed up, self-important fools strutting around like bleedin’ peacocks! Keep out superior wizards out of jealousy, they do! Afraid of being shown up, that’s what it is! I’ve had a tracking charm on you since you left the Ministry on Friday, been following you, and you didn’t even know it. How’s that for Concealment and Disguise and Stealth and Tracking?”
His attacker seemed content to ramble on, taunting them; Draco only hoped the man would keep talking long enough for whatever help Harry had expected to arrive. Harry’s eyes were open but unfocused. He seemed to be drifting on the edge of consciousness from the pain of his mutilated arm; his chest rose and fell with irregular breaths; his skin was a sickly shade and clammy looking.
The man turned his attention to Draco, shaking his head in disgust, a malicious sneer on his face. “Bit of bad luck, that tide. How was I to know the high tide would be so low? I’d have stuck around, but I wanted to be there when they all realised someone’d snatched you. My big moment, if you will.” He laughed sadistically. “Still, it all worked out in the end. Great fun it’s been these three years outwitting the entire Auror department—so terribly clever they think themselves, you know.” He gloated, “No, I suppose you don’t, do you? I’m quite skilled at memory charms. Terribly sorry to see our little game come to an end, I am. But I’ve learnt my lesson. If one wants a job done properly, one’s got to do it oneself. If you want to drown a man, you’ve got to hold him under. Bit of a bother, really, but he stops fighting soon enough.” The darkness of the man’s features deepened as he grinned with evil pride. “Follow up with a few well cast memory spells and any witnesses will tell everyone they meet how wonderfully brave you were, fighting the undertow to save your brother. Call you a hero, they will.
“But now, I’m afraid our little reunion has gone on long enough. Celestina Warbeck is on the Witching Hour tonight on the WWN, and I don’t want to miss it on account of the likes of you. So, I’m afraid it’s time to wrap this up. But first. . . .”
He aimed his wand purposefully at Harry, and before Draco could react, he had shouted “Crucio!” Harry’s body twisted in agony. His face contorted. He breathed roughly through tightly gritted teeth. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth—he’d bit through his tongue.
Draco did the only thing he could. He didn’t think; he just acted. He grabbed Harry’s wand from the floor and waved it wildly at their attacker, shouting the word he remembered Harry shouting during their duel before Draco had fallen.
“Sectumsempra!”
Two things happened almost simultaneously.
Their attacker fell to the floor, blood spurting from all over his body. He didn’t cry out; the only sound he made was a strangled gurgle as he fell with a dull thud. Draco’s spell had hit him with such force he was sliced nearly to pieces, and he was dead before he hit the floor, a horrible, sadistic look of enjoyment at causing his victim pain frozen on his face forever.
Semi-conscious, Harry groaned. His breathing was weak, and he lay limply on the ground.
A series of cracks sounded around Draco’s flat, and suddenly, where there had been no one a second ago, several people now stood—men and women, some in robes, some not. All with wands drawn.
Eyes wide with disbelief and shock, Draco knelt at Harry’s side protectively, still clutching Harry’s wand and fighting to keep his hand from shaking. He was hoping against hope this was the help Harry had promised would come.
“Harry!” a woman screamed—the woman who had sat reading in the library yesterday afternoon, Draco recognised. She rushed forward, falling to the floor beside Harry, across from Draco. She called to the others, “His arm’s splinched badly,” and immediately began waving her wand over Harry with urgency, a string of Latin-sounding words falling rapidly from her lips.
An older man barked a series of orders, which the others followed immediately.
A man and woman rushed from his flat out into the corridor.
Two men—one of them being the ginger-haired man who’d sat at the table next to his and Harry’s at the George and Dragon with a blonde woman last night—stepped toward the bloody pile that moments ago had been a man, and after identifying the body as being that of a wizard called Donald Claywell in tones of astonishment and disbelief, the other man and the body vanished with a crack into thin air. The ginger-haired man waved his wand over the blood covering the floor, and Draco watched, eyes wide in amazement in amazement, as the blood vanished.
Draco couldn’t speak. His eyes bulged and his jaw fell, but his mind was racing far too frantically to form coherent thoughts, let alone give voice to those thoughts. He forced his eyes away from the spot and tried to focus on calming his breathing.
Beside him, the woman was focused on her work. Draco watched her, fascinated in spite of how completely overwhelmed he felt.
After several seconds, she spared Draco a brief glance and a friendly smile. “It’ll be alright, Draco. You’re safe now, and Harry’s arm will be just fine,” she assured him, and placing her hand over Draco’s, she added, “Hermione Weasley. It’s good to see you again.”
From the corner of his eye, Draco saw a bright white, translucent form streak around the feet of the ginger-haired man before shooting towards the wall and vanishing. The man cast a last hateful glare at the spot where the dead man had laid before crossing the room to kneel beside the woman who’d said her name was Hermione. He grimaced when he saw Harry’s arm. “Nasty splinch, mate,” he said to Harry.
“Malfoy,” the ginger-haired man continued, turning to Draco. “Ron Weasley,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand, which Draco took mechanically.
To Draco’s amazement, Harry grinned weakly. “Lucky I’ve got . . . th’bes Healer,” he stammered. “Top’a . . . her class, I hear.”
From the pocket of her robe, Hermione withdrew a miniature chest and tapped it twice with her wand, making it expand to several times its original size. From inside she withdrew a small phial, from which she poured a few drops of a brown liquid onto Harry’s arm, which miraculously looked remarkably healed. The shattered bone fragments had been reassembled, and the muscle and tissue were weaving themselves back together in front of Draco’s eyes. Replacing the phial, she this time retrieved a stoppered glass bottle filled with red liquid, which she handed to Harry with a sympathetic, “You know what to do.”
With a sigh, Harry unstoppered the bottle and drank the liquid in one go, grimacing, apparently, at the taste.
“The worst of its mended, but you’ve lost a lot of blood Harry. It’ll take time for that potion to work and for the bone and muscle to mend properly. You’ll need to take it easy. Just because it looks healed doesn’t mean it is.”
Draco watched in amazement as the skin reformed around Harry’s arm. “It’s like magic,” he whispered.
Harry made a sound crossed between a chuckle and a moan. “Now do you believe me?” he asked.
“Got here as soon as we got the alarm you’d been injured, Harry. He’d cast his own protective spells, or we’d’ve been in sooner,” said the ginger-haired man.
“All Aurors have spells placed on them that automatically summon help if they’re injured and unable to do so themselves,” Hermione explained to him in a whisper.
“Snape’s Spell?” Ron asked.
Harry nodded grimly. “No choice.”
“Nearly sliced the bastard to ribbons. Must’ve been augmented by the Salvio Hexia you’d cast; damned foolish of him to not counter it.”
Draco looked from the woman to the man. His head was spinning. He felt overcome and in shock at seeing people materialise in front of his very eyes, of seeing Harry’s arm ripped open and shattered and now being magically healed with astounding speed. Of having just seen Harry tortured.
Of having just killed a man.
It had all happened so fast. Only a short while ago, he’d been deciding what to make for dinner for Harry’s and his date.
The older man—the leader, apparently—spoke next. “Reckon you must’ve got caught in an Anti-Disapparition spell. He could come and go, but no one else could.”
“Mr. Malfoy,” the leader addressed him, introducing himself, “Auror Anthony Moore. We’ve been looking for you for quite some time, young man.”
The man and woman who’d raced from his flat earlier returned. “All clear, sir.”
“Very good.”
“Obliviators,” someone, Draco wasn’t sure who, explained. “They make sure our world stays secret.”
The man and woman—Obliviators, as he’d just been told—disappeared into thin air with two faint popping noises.
“It’s called Apparition. It’s one of the ways we travel,” Hermione explained to him, her voice soft and her tone soothing. Draco felt himself nodding his head as if her explanation had made sense. He’d heard the expression of one feeling as if they’d been put through the wringer, and that was exactly how he felt, thoroughly wrung out.
“Draco? Are you alright?” Harry asked. The genuine concern in Harry’s voice helped greatly in calming him. His voice hadn’t just held concern, it had held love. He and Harry had been lovers, and Harry had been looking for him for three years.
Harry’s fingertips touched his arm.
“Yeah . . . I think so . . . Yeah.” He had no idea how Harry and he had had gone from the fight he remembered to being lovers, but they had. “Alright?” Draco asked him.
Harry grinned radiantly, “Never better.”
Auror Moore spoke. “Cause of death of the suspect appears to be the curse known as Snape’s Spell, augmented by the Salvio Hexia previously cast by Auror Potter. There’ll be questions that’ll need to be answered, but later. Our first priority is to get Mr. Malfoy to St. Mungo’s. The Healers’ll be waiting to see him. Is Auror Potter fit for travel, Healer Weasley?”
Hermione answered that Apparating was out of the question until his arm was fully healed, but she had an emergency portkey—Draco had no idea what that was.
Draco looked at Harry. All the questions swimming in his head must’ve been visible in his face because Harry promised to answer them all once he’d been seen by the Healers, who he explained were like Muggle doctors. Doctors, Draco knew. But he had no idea what Muggles were.
“He put a memory charm on you, Draco. That’s why you can’t remember anything. Not amnesia,” Harry explained. “There are Healers, like Hermione, who can help you.”
“There are others who can explain far better than I, Draco,” Hermione said. “But it is vital you be seen right away by Healers specialising in memory charms.”
Draco heard the urgency in her voice. He remembered the worry in Harry’s voice when he’d asked how long he’d been remembering things. “How . . . how do I get to this St. Mungo’s?”
Pulling an old crisp packet from the chest she’d enlarged and handing it to him, she answered, “Hold on to this.”
“Harry?” she said, looking at Harry, who reached out his uninjured arm to touch the opposite side of the packet.
Draco didn’t understand what holding a bit of rubbish had to do with getting to a hospital. He felt foolish and looked at Harry sceptically, but Harry just grinned at him and said seeing was believing, just to enjoy the ride. “Not to worry. It’ll feel like a giant hook’s got you right behind your navel and is pulling you.” He compared it to the wildest rollercoaster Draco could imagine—times a hundred.
Draco suspected the crushing sensation he’d felt earlier had been Harry’s attempt to—Apparate was the word, he thought—them out before his attacker got in. He’d heard Auror—what was an Auror anyway?—Moore refer to Harry’s injury being caused by getting caught in an Anti-Disapparition spell. If what he and Harry were going to do was anything like that, he wasn’t sure he’d like it at all.
“Ready then?” Hermione asked.
Harry looked at him, and Draco swallowed hard. He thought about asking if they could go by car or by train instead but resisted. “Ready.”
“On three then,” Hermione said before counting, “ One, two, three.” On three, she touched her wand to the old crisp packet.
The next thing Draco knew he felt as if something grabbed him from behind his navel—just as Harry had said. It was instant; the moment Hermione’s wand had touched the crisp packet, Draco felt himself pulled forward by an incredible force. He felt himself speeding through . . . he didn’t know what he was speeding through. The walls of his flat had been no obstacle. Wind whipped around them. Colours swirled around them. They were moving at an incredible rate of speed, and he had no idea what was propelling them—or more importantly, what was guiding them. Just as he felt panic begin to build up in him, he was slammed as abruptly into the ground as he’d been swept from it only seconds ago.
Seconds. It had taken only seconds.
Sitting on the floor, Draco looked around, winded and dishevelled and utterly bewildered. He absently thought that at some point in the near future, he was going to have some sort of complete breakdown after everything that had happened, but right now, he was too amazed by the fact that he was no longer in his flat.
As Harry helped him to his feet—how had Harry stayed on his feet and not ended up on his backside?—Draco looked around at his surroundings. However, before he could form much of an impression—that they were rather simple after such an extraordinary ride (on a crisp packet!) was all he’d had time to observe before he heard a strangled cry and something slammed into him as hard as the invisible force had pulled him moments ago.
Except this force was solid.
And it had arms. Arms that clutched him so tightly he once again felt crushed to the point of being unable to draw breath.
It also had blonde hair, the same shade as his own.
A woman with hair the same pale colour as his was holding him so tightly her nails had scratched him through his shirt. She was weeping into his chest fiercely, repeating his name between great gasping sobs.
Draco’s own arms surrounded her; he whispered into her hair, “Mum. . . .”
~~~~~~~
Pulling the door shut behind him and running his hand across his face, Harry thought about how very easily this afternoon could have turned out horribly different. If Hermione had not fetched that book . . . Had Teddy not mistakenly put it with his library books to be returned . . . If Harry had not realised he’d given Draco a book detailing Muggles witnessing proof of the Wizarding World and gone to his building, hoping to fetch it back before Draco could see it, when he did. . . .
He’d been able to Apparate into the building, but had he not tried until his wand had sounded the alarm that the spells he’d cast were under attack, he might not have been able to. Claywell may’ve already cast his own Anti-Apparition spell by then.
Harry’d initially been heartbroken that out of all the memories he and Draco had made together that last year, their duel in sixth year in Moaning Myrtle’s toilet was what he’d remembered. But had Draco remembered any or all of the times they’d made love, he’d not have known a spell to use to defend them against Claywell. Had Draco not remembered that spell—and kept his presence of mind in a horrifying situation enough to be able to cast it—that Harry had been able to Apparate to the flat wouldn’t have made a difference.
Ron had been right. It had been foolish of Claywell to not take down the Salvio Hexia spell Harry had cast. Harry suspected the Salvio Hexia had been the reason he’d been able to Apparate enough to splinch himself. The spell strengthened any subsequent spells cast by his wand within its boundaries. It hadn’t just been foolish to not counter it; it had been arrogant.
Just as it had been foolish of him to not ensure he’d left Draco where the high tide would take him—for which Harry would be forever grateful even if the Auror in him also recognised the poor planning.
It had also been foolish to not make sure the falsified reports he’d filed were filled in according to procedure. Ron had commented that he couldn’t believe the person who’d filled them in had sat through the same lectures on proper paperwork procedures they had. He hadn’t.
Harry suspected he knew what had kept Claywell from becoming an Auror. It certainly hadn’t been his spellwork, at which he’d demonstrated his skill.
There was also the fact that the man had to have been a complete nutter, but of course, no one had known he was mad or he’d never have got work even in the file room in the Auror department.
From the limited interaction he’d had with Claywell, Harry had never thought he’d seemed the type who’d risk his life to save another person, but he’d never thought much on it. Everyone knew that as a teenager Claywell had tried to save his drowning brother, and who was Harry to question what a man might be capable of if his brother’s life was in danger. But all the while Claywell had been guilty of his brother’s cold-blooded murder and taking credit for heroically trying to save him. Rather than trying to keep his brother above water, he’d been forcing him under.
Claywell . . . C. l. . . . They’d never been sure the last name signed on the falsified reports began with an A. Cl in that cramped, scribbled script had looked like one letter when it had been two pushed too closely together. It was hard to believe, but in his arrogance, Claywell had signed his own name to those reports. He’d literally signed his name to his crime in front of the entire Auror department. He’d just done so completely illegibly.
Harry passed from one room to another in the suite of rooms Draco had been given in St. Mungo’s. He found Andromeda sitting quietly by herself. Her face was buried in her hands, and she was rocking back and forth. So distraught was she that she didn’t know Harry had entered the room until he touched her shoulder, making her jump.
“Andromeda? What is it? What’s wrong? Draco’s fine. His mother is with him now. He’s . . . overwhelmed, of course, but. . . .”
At Draco’s name Andromeda once again buried her face in her hands.
“Andromeda? What’s wrong? Please, tell me what’s wrong.” Since the end of the war Andromeda had become to Harry something of what he suspected a favourite aunt might be like, and he hated seeing her in such an obvious state of extreme distress.
Lowering her hands, Andromeda looked straight ahead, her eyes heavy lidded and filled with guilt.
“I’m so terribly sorry. I don’t know how I ever considered . . . how I ever thought, even for a second. . . .”
Whatever was weighing so heavily on Andromeda now was the same thing that had troubled her so badly the night before, Harry was sure. Whatever it was, he hoped she would confide in him. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as she felt it was.
She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief clutched in a ball in her hand.
She spoke slowly, hesitantly. “Harry . . . you have to understand. I loved Narcissa when we were girls. It was always she and I. Bellatrix . . . even then Bella was . . . unstable.” Andromeda lowered her eyes to the floor. “You have to understand how completely love can change to hate.”
Harry could speak to the opposite. As much as he’d hated Draco when they were children, he’d loved him even more as an adult.
“When my family disowned me. . . .
“Mother and Father were never terribly fond of me, nor I of them. I was never quite the . . . proper Pure-blood daughter, and they never troubled to hide their partiality to Narcissa and Bellatrix. That Mother and Father and Bellatrix disowned me came as no surprise. But Narcissa . . . I’d known, of course, that Cissy would have to give the appearance of casting me off, but never did I suspect she would truly disown me. I’d thought she would keep in contact with me in secret. But she didn’t. I was as dead to her as I was to our parents and Bellatrix.”
Andromeda’s eyes drifted around the room, never settling on any one object for longer than a few passing seconds. She never looked towards Harry.
“In time, she became as dead to me as I was to her. Not long after Ted and I were married, we had our Dora. We were very happy and complete in our own little family. Eventually, of course, Cissy married and had her Draco.
“Then the war came.”
Andromeda voice shook with emotion. Harry wanted to reach out and take her hand but resisted. He was afraid any interruption might leave her unable to continue.
“And I lost my Ted. Then . . . then . . . I lost my Dora . . . my darling girl . . . . and poor Remus. My Dora loved that man as I’d loved my Ted.
“People throw about the expression ‘die of a broken heart’ carelessly, as if it means nothing. They don’t understand that when you . . . lose a child . . . the pain is so . . . complete, it feels as if your heart literally does break, as if it has been physically ripped into pieces. The pain is so unbearable you can’t understand how an organ can hurt like that and still be in one piece, beating as regularly in your chest as it always has. You don’t understand how you can continue to draw breath when you hurt that badly, when the tremendous weight of your loss is pressing upon you. How are you not being crushed under such a weight? You don’t understand how your body doesn’t just give in to the pain shut down.
“Then you took up with Draco so soon after the war.
“Seeing him . . . I can’t tell you how much I hated that boy. But it wasn’t him I hated. I think I knew that even then deep down. It was his mother. My sister. I had lost my darling girl. But Cissy still had her son.
“I hated her for that, Harry . . . so much. . . .
“I wanted her to know what it felt like . . . to lose a child. I wanted her to know what it felt like to have every single breath you take hurt like razor blades slicing you apart inside . . . because you still breathe . . . but your child does not.
“And then . . . and then she did. Cissy did know what that pain felt like. Draco was gone. She’d lost him, and she knew what that horrible pain felt like.
“And I was glad for it. God forgive me, but I was so glad for it. . . .”
For the first time, she turned to Harry—her eyes, her expression, her posture, her tone . . . everything imploring him to believe her. “I swear to you Harry, I swear to you, as unforgivable as it was for me to feel happiness at my sister’s pain for even a second, it was no longer than that. I berated myself for rejoicing that anyone feel that pain almost as soon as the thought, the emotion hit me.”
Harry knew better than anyone how much Andromeda had done to try to keep Draco’s mother going these past three years. Andromeda had a good soul, a compassionate soul, but she was only human. She was a Black and shared the Black temperament. Harry didn’t think that after the tremendous loss Andromeda had suffered her feelings were so very shocking. He was no expert on human nature, but he thought what she’d felt was normal enough. But it was clear that while the feelings had been momentary, Andromeda had felt the guilt they’d left behind for these three years.
“And then seeing her . . . seeing Cissy in that pain. . . .”
“Oh, Dromeda,” came a voice both soft with sympathy and scratchy from tears.
Harry and Andromeda looked up. Mrs. Malfoy stood in the doorway beside Draco, empathy written all over her tear-stained features.
But the emotions on Draco’s countenance were the polar opposite of his mother’s. He pushed his mother behind himself as if to screen her from danger. His eyes were wide with fright, but they were steadfast. Never taking his eyes from Andromeda, Draco raised his hand toward Harry, reaching for him. “Harry . . . move away from her . . .” His voice was laced with fear, but like his eyes, it was steady, determined.
Both his mother and Harry tried to talk to him, to calm him, but Draco cut them off.
“You don’t understand. She was there. Harry, she was there. It was her.” Draco swallowed hard. He was afraid and rambling, but he was resolute. “I saw her. I remember her. She was pointing her wand at her and she was screaming. It was horrible. She was on the floor and screaming and screaming and she was laughing, this horrible, cackling laugh and we were . . . we were . . . we were . . . oh, God . . . we were there . . .” His voice had drifted off, and his body sagged as if it suddenly weighed twice as much as normal and he was not strong enough to support the additional weight. “We were there,” he repeated, horror-struck. “I was there. I . . . just watched.”
Draco had been guided to a chair by his mother, who looked to Harry helplessly. Harry had a sickening feeling he knew what Draco was remembering as he stared at nothing. Just as Harry had the first time he’d seen her, Draco was confusing Andromeda for Bellatrix. Harry knew how many times nightmares of Bellatrix torturing Hermione had awoken him in a cold sweat and left him retching and trembling with guilt and shame.
“That woman . . . the one who fixed up your arm, she was on the floor, she was screaming. She was on the ground and she,” Draco’s eyes fell on Andromeda, hard and accusing, “she was . . . she was. . . .”
Going to Draco, Harry did now what he’d done dozens of times before. He took Draco’s face in his hands, and keeping his voice calm and strong, he said slowly and firmly, “It’s over, Draco. It’s been over for years, and we’re all safe now. What you’re remembering happened, yes, but now how you’re remembering it. It wasn’t Andromeda. It wasn’t. It was someone else. Someone named Bellatrix. Andromeda and Bellatrix were sisters. Bellatrix is dead. She’s been dead for four years.”
“But that woman . . . Hermione, she said her name was. . . .”
“There was a war, Draco. A terrible war, but it’s over.” Harry explained as briefly as possible about the war and that they’d fought on different sides. He explained how young they’d been, how their world’s history had shaped their lives and their beliefs. He explained that Draco had believed in the cause he’d fought for as much as Harry had believed in his, but as time had passed and Draco had seen more, he’d begun to think differently. He told Draco how he, Ron, and Hermione had been captured and how they’d escaped. He told Draco what he’d done during the war and what he’d refused to do.
Narcissa told him about his father.
Andromeda told him about Tonks.
As they spoke, Draco listened in rapt attention, occasionally nodding as if something he’d remembered now made sense. A range of emotions passed over his face, everything from pride to shame and joy to grief.
Harry told him about Teddy, about how unhappy he’d been at having their holiday cut short and Harry’s promise to the little boy that he could ask Mr. Draco from the library to come flying with them sometime.
“On brooms. We fly on brooms,” Draco said, more to himself than to the others. To Harry he said, “I remember a broom. I thought I was going mad. It was mounted on the wall of a huge green bedroom, and we were—” Draco blushed, the red spreading down his neck.
A smile spread across Harry’s face, knowing what Draco was remembering them doing in his bedroom.
Narcissa cleared her throat and looked away.
Andromeda dropped her eyes, the corners of her lips twitching.
It shouldn’t have mattered—it wasn’t as if Draco had forgotten him because what they’d shared hadn’t mattered to him—but Harry was inordinately happy to know that their duel hadn’t been the only thing he’d remembered them doing.
Holding her son close, Narcissa pressed a kiss in his hair. She’d not stopped touching him in some manner since they’d appeared in the doorway minutes ago, Harry had noticed.
There was still a long road ahead of them. Draco would have long sessions with the Healers as they both stabilised the memory charm Claywell had cast on him and peeled it away in a controlled, safe manner. Who knew how long that would take or even if they would be fully successful. There would be decisions Draco would have to make. He had a life in Ilfracombe he’d worked very hard to build and good friends there. He had a job there he enjoyed.
Living in Combe might be nice, Harry thought—finding himself thinking of Ilfracombe by the shortened “Combe” as Draco did.
And, he knew he was getting well ahead of himself, but they did weddings at Tunnels Beaches, Draco had told him.
One must not forget that tomorrow was as filled with just as many memories as yesterday.
They simply hadn’t been made yet.
The End