The Man Who Forgot

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings/Tropes/Etc: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Mpreg, Past/Referenced Child Abuse, Past/Referenced Character Death

Chapter Length: 5800 words

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

The more things change, the more Draco Malfoy is still up to something.

Chapter Two

A minute passed. Three minutes. Five. Upwards of five. 

The average response time of St Mungo's security was meant to be something in the range of three. So what it meant that no one had come for him yet, Harry didn't know. He didn't know much of anything. His head was spinning with being older, or appearing older; with not knowing if it was time that had changed on him, or if this might all still might be some kind of trick. With Draco Malfoy involved, it really could be: not the nefarious mindgame he'd assumed before, but something smaller and shabbier and altogether more irritating. 

He hadn't seen Malfoy in three years. If he'd thought of him at all since the trials, he'd have imagined Malfoy was as finished with childhood pranks as he. None of it should have mattered anymore, in the wake of everyone who had been lost. But perhaps he'd have been wrong, this theoretical Harry who'd have bothered to develop an opinion about Malfoy's thought processes.

Thirty-nine. Malfoy had said he was thirty-nine. This seemed to Harry unlikely to be true--yet equally unlikely, given his glimpse into the mirror, to be false. For long minutes it was true and false by turns as he sat on the side of the hospital bed, his wand lying next to him as he waited for the security team to arrive.

Eight minutes. Ten. It was now that Harry began to think nothing might happen until he himself acted. Perhaps they were reluctant to go up against "the Chosen One." Perhaps they were waiting for something else.

After fifteen minutes, Harry found he could bear to wait no longer. The other side of the door might hold answers. There were none to be had on his own side.

He reached for his wand and stood up again. Went to the door. Listened against it for a long moment, wishing he had a pair of Extendable Ears.

Closer to the door, it was quieter out in the hall than it had been. There were still voices, neither enough of them to create the prior buzzing sound, nor were they loud enough for him to make out what anyone was saying or have a chance at recognizing any of the speakers.

He opened the door, more than a crack but not wide enough for anyone to go in or out, and had a look out. Scattered around the hallway were a few Healers, but surprisingly no other onlookers. There were Aurors, though, a pair of them on either end of the hallway, and a fifth one who was standing about ten feet from the door. Draco was also about ten feet from the door. He and the Auror were huddled together. 

Harry couldn't make out what they were saying. Before he'd managed to try for longer than a moment, Draco had spotted him.

Familiar as the Auror he was speaking to was, taller than Harry and with a head of hair he ought to have recognized anywhere, it nonetheless took a moment for Harry to place him. By the time he had, Ron had seen him, too, and flashed him a smile.

"Oh, hey, Harry," he said, in a warm sort of way that was also careful, which did absolutely nothing to conceal the fact that he had almost certainly been conferring with Malfoy about Harry a moment before. "I'm to interview you next, if you'll give me a minute?"

Not quite what Harry had expected--not that he knew, really, what he had expected--but the flash of disappointment was immediately replaced by something else. After all, if Ron were here doing interviews, it meant he was here officially. It meant one of his two best friends in the world knew something wasn't right. It meant there was a procedure, and he could be sure it was being followed, and there was therefore no need for Harry to grasp around in the dark, with everything on his shoulders and no guarantees.

"Alright," he said, and stood there and waited--and, as he waited, he marked the changes that had happened in Ron. He, too, had broadened; there were new lines on his face, deeper than any he'd had before. His hair was all present and accounted for, but unlike Harry's, hadn't begun graying. In fact, it seemed a few shades darker than Harry remembered. But none of these seemed to be the most striking change. That was something in the way he held himself. There was a quality in him Harry couldn't quite put his finger on, not immediately.

Ron talked to Malfoy a minute or two more. Whatever they were saying, it was still in voices low enough that Harry couldn't make it out. Finally, Ron clapped Draco on the shoulder, and turned toward Harry. He had a sympathetic look on his face. Harry would have wondered if it were meant for him if it hadn't been for...Ron clapping Draco on the shoulder .

He remained stuck on this as Ron said, "In your room, then? It'll be privater." Remained stuck on it as he wordlessly backed back into his hospital room; remained stuck on it as the door closed behind them and Ron turned to him and said, with feeling, "What a day. How are you feeling?"

Harry stared at him, stuck on it still. "You," he said, and faltered, not so much because he didn't know how to ask why someone should have been so buddy-buddy with Malfoy, as that he didn't know how to ask it of Ron. Not if this truly was Ron. "First off, you've got to prove you're Ron."

There came a terrible pause as Ron regarded him with an unreadable expression. Harry was not accustomed to Ron having unreadable expressions. It was enough to make him begin to raise his wand--or to want to--he found quite suddenly that he wasn't any more certain of how to raise his wand against Ron in earnest than he had been to ask that of him.

"Hold on, Harry," said Ron. "I'm only thinking. You think you're twenty, yeah?"

"I am twenty," Harry said, though not as firmly as he'd meant to.

"Right. So nothing recent will do...alright. Ron Bilius Weasley. Son to Molly and Arthur Weasley. There were six Horcruxes. One was a locket. I smashed it with the Sword of Gryffindor, but not before it showed me...you and...uh, you and Hermione..."

However long it must have been, even if Ron was thirty-nine the way Harry was supposed to be thirty-nine, it was clear nothing about the intervening years had made this any easier on him. Clearer yet was the knowledge that no-one other than he and Ron and Hermione knew the details of the Horcruxes, how many they had been or what they had been or even that they had been at all. Harry had been asked for an explanation, sometimes, based on what people remembered him saying in that last duel with Voldemort; but it was an explanation he had never given. He'd never so much as confirmed to anyone that Voldemort had made a single Horcrux. The things that had happened in that terrible year were to remain between them permanently, no matter how much time went by.

"Alright," he said, for Ron was truly struggling, stammering out the words as his face grew redder and redder; and anyway, Harry didn't need to hear any more to know it was him. He also didn't want to hear any more, for this was something had been resolved between them since it had happened. "I believe you."

"Thanks. Now you, then."

"Er. Really?"

"I mean, I know you're Harry, but maybe you're confused about it," Ron said, grinning so that Harry couldn't help but grin back, a little.

"Harry James Potter," Harry said. "Son of Lily and James Potter. I, er, told you a while back that you and Hermione could have 12 Grimmauld Place as a wedding gift, if you wanted."

"That's not exactly a secret, considering we've been in the place since our honeymoon," said Ron amiably. "It's Plottable now, you know. Easier for Hermione's parents to find us, that way. You know what trouble they had with it before then, being Muggles and all. Or, you don't, I guess. But it is really is easier, all around."

"--Right," Harry said. It was very strange taking this in, or trying to. "I don't know what else? We snogged the first Christmas after the war. Er, you and me. Out back of the Burrow. It was an accident, or, sort of an accident, anyway."

Ron, who had been incredibly embarrassed over the snogging at the time, so that it had taken him several days to work up to telling Harry that he and Hermione were getting back together, actually, now lit up. "Oh, yeah! It was how we found out we shouldn't snog."

"Not that we really wanted to."

"Yeah. We were pretty soused. But, it was good to have proof of the thing, yeah?"

"Yeah," agreed Harry. It had been proof of something else, too; that though he hadn't wanted to snog Ron in particular, snogging other blokes in general might just be worth considering. He couldn't imagine he'd shared as much with Ron, though, not even if remembering it made Ron laugh, these days. Whatever days these were.

"What's today's date?" he asked, before he knew he meant to ask it. "The Healer wouldn't tell me, before."

And then, soon as he'd finished telling her what he'd wanted to know, she'd knocked him back out. And then, Malfoy had been there with him, but he was no one Harry would ask, not and expect right answers from. And now it was Ron who was here, and Harry hadn't the first idea what Ron would or wouldn't be willing to tell him.

He'd only a moment to wonder before Ron answered, "It's the third of October, 2019."

"Oh." Harry went toward the bed, sank down onto it. Last time, it had been so security might rethink Stunning him the moment they burst open the door. This time, it was more because his legs suddenly felt like things that might not hold him much longer.

Ron followed, pulled up a chair, the same Malfoy had been sat in before him. "I really do have to interview you. But I can tell you some things before we get started."

"I'm thirty-nine," Harry said. "Not twenty."

"Yeah."

"Alright." He could handle that. He could. It wasn't as if worse things hadn't happened to him. To other people, because of him. This, at least, was something that had happened to him, alone. "What happened to me?"

A concussion, hadn't Malfoy said? And something about a potion, a cursed one. But Ron just looked at him, features shifting again, until that undefinable look from before was back. It was, Harry thought, a professional sort of look. Quite a lot better than it had been during practice sessions in Auror training, when Ron had always looked green at the concept of having to ask questions of witnesses. Even more than professional, it was...not so much competent, for of course Ron would be, when they'd been Aurors together for so long. It seemed to be made out of a confidence that Ron wore more easily than anyone would have imagined he might; as if he were not only competent, but believed it, a bone-deep knowledge he no longer questioned.

"For that, I really do need to hear your version, first," he said, firmly enough to make Harry want to protest, and kindly enough to make him squirm. "Sorry. It's better if you aren't influenced by what we think might've happened. Alright? I'll tell you everything we've got after, promise."

Here was another thing to bring relief: the familiar cadence of an Auror interview. It hardly mattered that he wasn't on the side of it he should have been; this was something he knew, and that seemed to be the most important thing.

So, Harry told Ron all about it. Waking up in the Potions Dungeon, the students all around him. The pain, his confusion, falling back into the dark. Lying there in the shadows, only vaguely aware of what had gone on around him; the times he'd woken up, and how confused he'd been, certain he was being held, and that it was Lucius Malfoy holding him.

Ron listened to all of this, but didn't seem to have much interest in anything that had happened once Harry had been at St Mungo's. Or at least he didn't ask many questions about those bits; what he seemed to want details on was what had happened at Hogwarts. Any details Harry might have left out: sounds, sights that might not have seemed important or that he might not even have noticed at the time. Smells, too, which wasn't surprising. Smell was the sneakiest of the senses sometimes, making you feel things or dragging up memories, and sometimes you might not even realize until later what had caused them, if it ever occurred to you that something real had caused them in the first place.

"I can give you the memory," Harry said, when he'd been questioned up and down about that briefest of wakings. "If it'd help."

"The Healers said not to." Of course Ron had already asked; he'd surely have spoken to a Healer before he talked to anyone else. "If your mind's already full of holes, it couldn't help to make another."

"Oh."

"You've given me enough to go on, anyway. Better than most people would have, anyway."

Whether this was really true, or only meant to make him feel better, it was hard to say. It was also not the most important thing right now. 

"What's going on?" Harry asked. "I mean--how's the investigation going?"

That there was one was not in question. There was no other reason Ron would have come here with these questions, more than a friend to Harry's bedside. Even if it hadn't been for the other Aurors who'd come with him, it would have been obvious.

"Well," said Ron. "You seem to have been splashed with a Sleeping Draught."

"But that wouldn't do anything." He'd been splashed by Sleeping Draughts plenty of times and never felt more than slightly woozy; it was one of those potions that had to be ingested to do very much.

"It would if the Flobberworm Mucus were tainted," said Ron grimly.

It turned out the Auror's office had been seeing more and more of that sort of thing; Dark wizards were a lot less likely to run around casting Unforgivables at people these days, a lot more likely to seed nastiness into the supply chain instead. In this case, now that the Auror Office started testing, they'd found all the Flobberworm Mucus left in the Hogwarts stores from last year was alright, but everything new had been tainted by Dark magic.

"So I was, what, investigating dodgy potion ingredients?" asked Harry--though some part of him felt there was at least one thing wrong with that, and quite possibly a number of things. "We must not have thought it very likely, if I was there without a partner. It's lucky I happened to be there; imagine if it had been one of the students were splashed with it, instead."

Now Ron had another look on his face. This one was less unreadable than it was startled, perhaps even a little pitying. "Really lucky, yeah," he said faintly. "Harry, you don't think...you don't think you're still with the Aurors, do you?"

Being clearly married to someone (surely not Malfoy, no matter what he'd said; surely not Malfoy, nevermind that he'd been left alone at Harry's bedside after what must have been regarded as an attack, when it was vanishingly unlikely he'd be allowed normal visitors, let alone random ones; surely not Malfoy, even if Ron had stopped to speak to him about Harry before he'd gotten around to speaking to Harry himself), that was one thing. This was something else altogether, a low and heavy weight that sank into the pit of his stomach and burned there. "Of course I am. What else would I be doing?"

Ron looked at him. Harry looked back.

"What else would I be doing?" he asked again.

"Teaching, you know? At Hogwarts," said Ron.

Suddenly Harry knew this had to be a joke. A desperate sort of relief flooded his limbs. "Next you'll be telling me I teach Potions."

It was a ridiculous thought. Harry wasn't dreadful at Potions, provided he had a good textbook to go off of (he'd discovered during independent study for his N.E.W.T.s that he didn't do particularly well being taught the subject by any teacher, but managed learning from an ordinary textbook just fine, so long as no one was sneering at him about it during). It would never be a subject he was passionate about; he couldn't imagine it being a subject his every workday was centered on.

"No, you were subbing in. The usual Potions Master had an emergency--his mum died, he went off for the funeral--we've already checked it out, all legit--and in you went."

"So what do I teach normally, then?" Harry asked slowly, because the more Ron talked, the more miserable he looked about being the bearer of bad news.

"I mean. Defense Against the Dark Arts, yeah? You're the best Defense teacher Hogwarts has ever had. The caliber of trainees we've been getting since you started--"

"Well, what was I doing before now, then?" Harry demanded. He could hear his voice getting louder and louder. "You can't tell me I was an Auror until this summer, then all at once figured I'd had enough, may as well fuck off to Hogwarts to teach in a jinxed position--"

"You've got it wrong, you've been teaching it for almost ten years," Ron said, then, before Harry could ask just how he could possibly have done, he added, "We got rid of the jinx years ago. You and me and Hermione (though don't tell anyone, technically she's not supposed to come along for official Auror business). It was one of the first cases we had together, no one thought it could be done--"

"Yet we did it, of course. And then I just quit ? Why would I quit?" By now Harry was nearly shouting. He didn't mean to, and yet he couldn't help it, either. This didn't make any sense. But as abruptly as the volume had come, it faded away, so that the rest came along so quietly it was hard to say whether Ron would even be able to hear him: "Being an Auror is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. Why did I quit?"

Ron shrugged. "I dunno. No, really: you never said. Just that it was personal, and you were set on it, and you didn't want to talk about it. We'd a hell of a row over it, actually. It was a bit of a shock, wasn't it, coming out of nowhere like that?"

"I don't know what it was or wasn't, considering I wasn't there for it," said Harry, and really felt he hadn't been. This was all like being told the story of your own future as written by someone who had never met you.

"You might ask Draco if he knows why you did it. Out of everyone, he's the most likely to know."

"Why's that?" Harry asked blackly, though really he knew, he'd known since looking into the mirror, since before then. Maybe even since Draco Malfoy, who hadn't turned out to be his father after all, had called himself your loving --

"Um, he said he told you--"

"I don't care what he told me. Since when isn't Malfoy a pathetic liar?" The indignation felt like the ghost of everything he'd felt about Malfoy when they were in school. Beneath it was tiredness at having to feel anything at all about him now that they weren't. "He'd say anything to rile me up."

"He would, once," Ron agreed, though a lot more glumly than he'd ever agreed on one of Malfoy's bad points before. "Not a lot recently. Or, not like you mean, anyway."

"Why's that?"

Ron looked around. At the closed door, up at the ceiling, then back to Harry. "Well," he said reluctantly, "you're married to him, yeah?"

*

Ron didn't seem inclined to try to explain about Malfoy and him. Harry wouldn't have wanted to hear it if he had. They sat there a minute, Ron radiating awkwardness, and Harry...he didn't know. What to think. How to feel. The last time his life had been upended like this, with no warning whatsoever, had been the day he'd found out he was a wizard. That at least had been something wonderful. Or wonderful most of the time, anyway. Enough to make up for the times of darkness and terror. Enough to make up for the disappointments that came, now and again.

Or at least it had always been enough before.

"I'm having a divorce, obviously," Harry said.

Ron didn't immediately agree. He also didn't disagree. Instead, he sort of sighed, and then sort of stretched, and then said, "Listen, Harry--"

"Can I stay with you and Hermione a while? Once I'm discharged, I mean."

He fully expected Ron to say 'yeah, of course,' or even mutter he had to clear it with Hermione first, which would of course mean yes, in the end. Instead, he said, "I don't think that's the best idea, Harry."

"Why not?" asked Harry hotly, and for the first time he wondered if Ron's professionalism had more to do with them moving apart over the last eighteen years, than it had to do with anything else; if there was no longer that unspoken agreement that when one of they three needed something, anything, the other two of them would show up. "Don't you," and he faltered, not sure how to ask that , either, and very certain he didn't want an answer in the affirmative, no matter what the truth was.

"It's only, we've no idea who's behind this," Ron said. "It might've been random. It might not've been. If it wasn't, then whoever was responsible for it won't be content with making you forget some years. They'll want to finish the job. Your house is Unplottable. Ours isn't anymore, didn't I mention? And you've got all sorts of protections on the property, around it--far more than we could set up at our place on short notice. And you'd be with family there, too--"

Harry snorted. He couldn't help it.

"Yeah, I know, you hate Malfoy again, now--but he's still your family. Your house is still your married home. It's not the same sort of protection you had when you were living with your aunt and uncle, but it's something. More than you'd get anywhere else." Ron shrugged, in that noncommittal way that meant he didn't actually feel noncommittal about it at all. "If you really can't handle it, we can get you set up somewhere else. But our budget isn't really equipped for it these days." His face went a little red at this part, but he kept on anyway: "If you really have to, you can come stay with us. We'll make it work. But, Harry, I really think this would be better."

"Fine," said Harry, because as awful an idea as going home with Malfoy seemed, if there was one person whose judgment he trusted, it was Hermione, and if there was a second person in the mix, which there was, it was Ron. And Ron would never have suggested something like this if it wasn't really the best option. And it was clear from what he'd said and what he'd hadn't that doing otherwise would be a much greater imposition, somehow, than he had admitted out loud. 

Harry did his best not to impose, these days. Ever since those horrible first weeks at the Burrow after the war, when he'd felt as if he were both responsible for and intruding upon everyone's grief for Fred. "Alright. I'll stay with Malfoy. But only so long as he doesn't drive me round the bend."

"All bets off then," Ron said, a little more cheerily. "Though, who knows when you'll start getting your memories back. Could be any day, yeah? Then it'd be alright, hanging around Malfoy all the time. It'd be back to the way it was."

"I suppose," Harry said, though in that moment what he meant was that he hoped he never did get his memories back. Not if Malfoy featured so prominently in them. "Or maybe you'll wrap up the investigation really quickly. Like within a week or so, say."

"Yeah, maybe," Ron said, though rather doubtfully.

*

Ron took his leave not long after that, citing paperwork and the need to Floo Hermione and let her know how Harry was doing. He'd no more than headed down the hall when the Head Healer came back in, with several helpers with arms that were full of small vials. They must have decided Harry's having chased Malfoy out of the room didn't make him dangerous, for there was still no sign of St Mungo's security, nor did the Head Healer appear concerned. (The other Healers did look a bit nervous, but people often did around Harry if they hadn't known each other at school or through the Order, and this was evidently not something that had changed in the last eighteen years.)

"Now you're awake and stable, we'd like you to take these potions," said the Head Healer. She rattled off a list that included several potions Harry knew, and a number he didn't.

"I don't need a Calming Draught," he said, first thing.

"You'll have it anyway," said the Healer, rather severely. "I can't have you attempting to Stupefy anyone else. If you won't take it, we'll have to have your wand back, instead." She paused a second before adding, "All our potions ingredients are inspected the moment they arrive. Everything used in any of these has been inspected with oversight from the Auror Office. You needn't be concerned about that."

Harry was, in fact, much less concerned about being poisoned again than he was about everything else. So, he took the Calming Draught. Once it had gone down, taking everything else, even the Memory Induction Potion, did not seem that terrible an idea, even if it was meant to make him wake up tomorrow remembering things like being married to Malfoy (or worse, having deliberately chosen to be married to Malfoy).

"Good," said the Head Healer, when it was all done with. "Now. We'd like you to remain under observation until afternoon tomorrow. While we've no reason to suspect we missed anything, we do want to make certain of it before we send you home. That's easier done if you're in the ward, rather than requiring housecalls."

"Alright," Harry said. He wasn't certain he wanted to go home, anyway. Even under the influence of the Calming Draught, he had the sense he much preferred it here.

*

Malfoy showed up again a while after the Healers had gone. The door opened, and there he was, standing hesitantly in the doorway.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

Malfoy had something in his hands. It looked like a book. As he came closer to the bed, it turned out to be a book in fact.

"They said," he started, awkward where he hadn't seemed the least bit awkward before Harry had charged at him with his wand out. "Do you still not remember?"

"Er, no," said Harry, in a way that might have been shortly if it hadn't been for the calmness that still suffused him, making it so that none of this mattered so much. Not even Draco Malfoy, lowering himself into the chair by Harry's bedside as if he really thought he had the right to be there ahead of anyone else Harry knew.

"The Healers said it might help if--here," said Malfoy, shoving the book at him.

Harry took it. It turned out to be a photobook. A rather pretentious one, with a dragon-skin cover and lettering that was almost certainly made out of real gold.

He opened it. A little part of him, far back inside, seemed to protest. It was a part of him easier to ignore than not under his current feeling of sereneness. So Harry flipped through the pages. Slowly, not really taking it in.

The photos inside were mostly of him and Malfoy, of course. Him and Malfoy inside various people's houses. Him and Malfoy outside in various places. Lots of ones of him and Malfoy at what looked like quite a big party. Photo Harry was grinning in most of the photos, turning red when he noticed he was being watched by Harry, or turning even more red when he noticed he was being watched by Malfoy. Photo Malfoy tended to a lot of winks, and the occasional obnoxious kissy-face. He was such a wanker, Harry thought, with rather less irritation than before; and thought, even more distantly, that it was good he was on a Calming Draught, actually, since otherwise he might have had to gag at the revoltingness of it all.

"What's this supposed to help with, again?" he asked, when he was done looking.

" Honestly. I know you hit your head, but couldn't you at least..." Malfoy said. "Your memory, Harry. It's meant to help you remember things."

"I don't need help with that." Harry closed the book. It sat, a heavy and somehow cooling weight, in his lap.

"Oh? Why's that?" asked Malfoy, in a tight way that might have meant anything, mostly because Harry couldn't recall him ever having looked or sounded that way in his own direction before. Or at all before. At school, it had mostly been sneering, or miming about Harry's misfortunes. Enough of which Malfoy had caused for Harry not to be inclined to enjoy any more miming. Then there'd been that year where Malfoy had been too busy being a Death Eater to bother with any of that. Now, it was almost like he was a normal person, or trying to be.

It was confusing, but not so much so that Harry couldn't find his way to what he'd meant to say. "I'm fine with the memories I've got, thanks."

Malfoy made one face, then another, and again neither of them was very close to any expression Harry recalled him wearing before. Finally, with a strange little smile, he said, "You're digging yourself quite the hole, you know."

"Er, what?"

"Oh, yes," said Malfoy, and now the expression was a bit closer to ones Harry knew: amused, and almost unbearably smug. Coolly, he added, "When you do get your memory back, you'll be mortified. I'll have blackmail material for--oh, for ages." He put his chin on his hand and batted his eyelashes. "Remind me just how much of a divorce you were looking for?"

"You shouldn't listen at doors, Malfoy," said Harry, a little hotly, which must have been out of instinct or something, since it currently felt as if every thought and emotion were wrapped in wool. "So what if I don't want to be married to a wanker like you?"

"Do go on," Malfoy said, in the cool drawl from before that seemed to have come back, now. "By the time you're finished, I'll have blackmail material to keep me going for decades."

Confused, and still wrapped in wool, and much more tired than he'd felt even an hour ago when the last of the Healers had departed with orders that he was to sleep as much as he could to allow the potions to do their work, Harry had nothing, really, to say to this.

*

Harry was discharged around two the following afternoon.

"Outside of your missing memories, nothing appears to be amiss," said the Head Healer. "There's no reason to keep you here unless you were to be moved to Ward 49--and as you know who you are, and both comprehend and retain what you're told about your present circumstances, there's no call to hold you."

"Great," said Harry, who really had no argument for any of this. Even if his current life was complete madness, he was perfectly sane.

In the end, he was let go with just one prescription, more because he'd protested the idea of any more Calming Draughts than anything else. His prescription was one of the potions he'd been given the day before. It was a brilliant blue color, with specks of something gold floating in it.

"This is the Memory Induction Potion," she said. "Taken daily, it may help you recall your lost memories, in part or even in whole. You're to take one thimbleful every twenty-four hours. It may be either drunk or inhaled, and must be brewed anew every two weeks. As a Class Three medical potion, it may be brewed at home, or you may arrange for our in-house Potions Master brew it for you."

"I'll do it," came a voice from the doorway. Turning, Harry saw that it was Malfoy. In one hand he had a muffin, and in the other a ceramic cup filled with something steaming. "I had top marks at Potions, and not only because our professor favored me."

"I'll do it," said Harry, tucking away the potion and the parchment of instructions that had come with it. "Or I'll have their Potions Master do it. I don't need your help."

"Of course you don't. Here, have this."

And Harry found the muffin and cup shoved into his hands. Evidently, this was meant to be breakfast, as he'd only woken up a bit ago, having slept away most of the last day. Further evidently, he was too hungry not to be tempted by the muffin, and far too caffeine-deprived not to immediately sip at his drink. It was coffee, which he'd preferred over tea since he'd discovered how much more quickly it got him going in the morning; worse, it was exactly the way he liked it, with a dash of milk and several spoonfuls of sugar, enough to make it palatable without losing the bitter taste he'd come to associate with waking up.

"Er, thanks," he said, disgruntled to be thanking Malfoy and annoyed at being forced to feel yet another thing about him.

"Shall we be off?"

There really wasn't, all things considered, a realistic or mature way to say they shan't.