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: 6600 words

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

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

Chapter Three

There hadn't been an elevator the last time Harry had been to St Mungo's. It was an astonishingly Muggle-seeming addition, at least for the first few moments. Then the stainless steel doors closed behind them, and the metal seemed to shimmer, and the light of the shimmer seemed to scatter, before coming together in letters that read:

SEVENTH FLOOR: Visitors' Tearoom and Hospital Shop

SIXTH FLOOR: Long-Term Care

FIFTH FLOOR: Pregnancy/Maternity, Unusual

FOURTH FLOOR: Spell Damage

THIRD FLOOR: Potion and Plant Poisoning (YOU ARE HERE)

And so on. The layout did not seem to have changed very much, other than the addition of a floor. It was enough to make you wonder if there were very many more long-term care cases than there had been eighteen years ago. Surely there must have been, if there was now an entire floor devoted to them, as opposed to a single ward. It was no wonder Ron had seemed so stressed--the Auror Office was likely flooded with this sort of thing, these days.

"We'd like the ground floor, if you would," Malfoy said. He was standing much too close to Harry, so that the sleeves of their robes were brushing against one another. Harry would have said something, except that he had not yet found within him an ability to say much of anything to Malfoy without feeling sure things would devolve to shouting and a drawing of wands (his own, at least). "You may want to sip that down a bit more."

"Er, what? Why?" said Harry, at the same time the elevator said, "Of course, dearie."

The elevator car began to spin. It lasted only a second or two, but in that time spun around so many times that when the ground beneath him was unmoving again, Harry himself seemed to be the opposite. Though he had managed, he saw with no little surprise, not to spill a single drop of his coffee.

The doors opened onto a short hallway. Across from the elevator was a door Harry knew: it led to the staircase he had always before used to go up and down floors. To the right was Reception, where even now could be heard the low murmur of Healers and patients, the occasional low groan, and the much less occasional very strange sound, which you would have had to poke your head around the corner to find out what it had been from. To the left was a large, glowing sign that said APPARITION POINT. There was one group ahead of them, but a moment later they crossed the wiggling yellow line on the floor and Disapparated with a cracking sound like a gunshot, or a whip.

Though he would usually have been curious, Harry had no desire whatsoever to approach Reception to find out about the squelching sound, or the crunching sound, or the indescribable sound that gave the impression that either reality or one's own teeth were bending in ways it/they had never been meant to.

He headed left, barely aware by now that Draco was still with him. He seemed, in fact, to be floating along outside of his own body, nothing around him seeming quite real. It was a feeling he'd had before, a surreality that had come for a while after he'd learned he was a wizard, and for another while after the end of every year he'd been at Hogwarts, and even sometimes came now that Voldemort was three years dead, and with him so many others who had deserved to live. It was a feeling that said whatever had happened a day or a week or years ago couldn't have; that he was perhaps living in some strange dream.

"You're in no fit shape. I'll Side-Along you," Draco decided. 

Harry had nearly forgotten he was there, and now found himself staring. Draco had got older, no less pointy as well as quite a lot more frowny. Or at least he was frowning at Harry right now.

Then his hand was on Harry's elbow, a light touch guiding him past that yellow line--and then St Mungo's was gone, replaced by a blackness that squeezed him from all sides, seeming to last for an eternity, which flipped around to seem as if it had been no more than a moment when they arrived somewhere bright and sunny and very, very green. 

The newness of it seemed to have flipped Harry around, as well. The surreality had been left behind, abandoned somewhere in the squeezing dark.

He took stock of his surroundings. In front of him was a two-story stone cottage with a thatched roof. It didn't have much in the way of a garden, mostly because it was sat in the middle of the woods--or, really, more like an established forest, with a number of mature trees crowding in close to it (though either not close enough to block the sunlight, or spelled to allow more of it down). It was very quiet other than the buzzing of insects and a soft trickling sound from somewhere close by. It was the sort of place that immediately made you feel comfortable--or at least, it did if you were him.

"I thought we were going," Harry said, and struggled with the next word, which ought to have been home . "To wherever we live."

Malfoy, his hand still upon Harry's elbow, a tough so light Harry might not even have noticed it if it had been anyone else, said, "Yes, well. This is it."

Harry hadn't put very much thought into imagining the sort of place Malfoy might live, or even the sort of place where they might live together. If he had, he'd have expected something closer to Malfoy Manor. Not something like this. Not something so...small, comparatively, and homey in a way nowhere he'd ever lived had been homey. If he'd ever really thought about where he'd like to live, someday, when he had a home of his own, it would have been a toss-up between something like the Burrow, or something like this. He might have wanted to share a little cottage like this with someone he cared about.

He could not, Harry thought, have been married to Malfoy for very long, if this was where they lived. He must have had this cottage before Malfoy had...done whatever he'd done, to make that other, older Harry want to marry him.

He went toward the door, Malfoy's touch on his elbow receding. It opened--he was never quite able to recall reaching out a hand or even a wand to open it, that first time; it might have opened itself, as if it were an old friend which had seen him coming--and he walked into a living room that seemed just as homey as the outside had. 

There were two comfortable-looking couches, and several Leaning Chairs (these were something like a recliner, except that they automatically adjusted to the angle that would be the most comfortable for the sitter--or sometimes the most uncomfortable, if they'd been instructed to keep the sitter awake). There were pictures along the walls, and if some of them had the bad taste to feature Malfoy, many others included people Harry knew and loved...or maybe, in the cases of faces he didn't recognize, people he supposed he would come to know and love. There were a number of shelves as well, filled with wizarding games and books with titles like Practical Hexes and Jinx Removal . Three shelves next to the more worn of the Leaning Chairs were filled with a number of thin paperbacks with bright-colored spines, which Harry would have taken a closer look at if, at that precise moment, there hadn't come a sound from behind him.

He turned. There on the window ledge was an owl. For a moment, he might have been thrown back back to Privet Drive, instead of forward to this cottage. He couldn't breathe.

"No," said Malfoy. "Absolutely not. I refuse."

"...What?" But now that the moment had been broken, Harry could see that this wasn't Hedwig, after all. This owl was clearly smaller, for one thing. It was completely snow-white in color, with none of the barring Hedwig had had on her wings. But other than that, it still looked more like her like any other Snowy Owl he'd ever seen, now that he was looking more closely. It was something in the shape of its eyes, the tilt of its head as it looked at him.

"We've already done this. I'm not doing it again. Have a row with yourself about it, if you'd like."

"What are you talking about?"

"First I got him for you, and we had a row about it. Next I tried to return him, and we had a worse row about that. I don't care if you don't recall it. I'm not doing it over again."

Harry stared at him, any upset he might have had about the owl momentarily eclipsed by the idea of having rows with Malfoy. You had rows with people you cared about. With people like Malfoy, what you had were fights, and those only because they insisted on them, or because they were pretending not to be up to something when they so clearly were.

"Well?" Malfoy demanded, before Harry was even remotely done thinking it through.

"Well, what?" Harry said, a little peevishly--and, well, he thought he had the right to be a bit peevish, considering everything that was going on. "Well, alright. So you got me an owl that looks a bit like Hedwig. Alright. Whatever. It doesn't matter."

"It certainly does matter," said Malfoy, coolly again, for all the world as if he was the one who wanted a row, regardless of what he'd said. "Do you know how hard I had to look, to find another from that line? They're rare. And--and valuable. You've never appreciated my efforts."

Harry looked back at the owl. Was Malfoy telling him this owl was related to--

He couldn't breathe again.

"Um," said Malfoy. "I didn't mean--I don't really care that you didn't like my present, back then. Or that you don't now." This was not said particularly convincingly. "It's only--his name is Herbert. He likes you much better than he does me. Which is fine. Given he's yours. He probably wants an Owl Treat. He'll nip you for being gone so long--he usually does, after every week you stay at Hogwarts."

"Aren't I at Hogwarts most of the time?" Harry asked, thinking for the first time that he must be away from home from September to June, outside of holidays and perhaps weekends. Wouldn't he bring his owl with him, then, if it really was meant to belong to him?

"No? You only do overnighters every fourth week." Then, at Harry's blank look: "When you've got to patrol the corridors after lights out? Which is the main job of the head of Gryffindor? For a pay rise unworthy of the name, by the way. Honestly, Harry."

"Oh." Harry'd never thought of Hogwarts professors as going home at nights. He supposed some of them might have done, back in his day. He really wasn't sure. It was the kind of thing you never thought to wonder until you did. It also seemed the kind of thing, once you'd wondered it, that made you think you ought to have made some remark about how it was hard to know what Hogwarts professors did or didn't do when you'd never actually been one, if only you hadn't already botched the timing by the time it had come into your head.

"You're quite good at it, considering how much practice you've had on the other side," Malfoy continued snidely, in a way that seemed to Harry as if it ought to have involved a sneer. Perhaps there was one to be found there, if only you squinted. But though Harry tried it, all the squinting showed was the same thing he'd have seen normally: Malfoy, crossing over to the shelf with all the thin paperbacks, and pouring himself a tumbler full of some amber liquid.

"So how related to Hedwig is my new owl, then?" Harry managed, given the timing on the other thing.

"I don't know how new he can be, considering I bought him for our second--" Malfoy began, then stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment, then, opening them again, said, "He's a third cousin to her. His grandmum, so to speak, was your Hedwig's grandmum's sister. Several times, actually. The better owl lines are all a tad linebred."

"So kind of like the better Malfoys, then?"

Whatever reaction Harry had meant this to provoke, what he got was that Malfoy laughed: not a loud or even a startled sort of laugh, but more of a low chuckle. It came off almost friendly, or even fond. It was accompanied by a small smile, which seemed to be aimed at Harry himself.

"Something like that." Malfoy looked from Harry back to the tumbler he was holding, which was by now halfway to his mouth. He frowned at it, as if he hadn't expected it, somehow. Then he Vanished the amber liquid and set the emptied tumbler back on the top of the bookshelf.

At some point during all this, Harry had drifted over to the window ledge, where Herbert the owl still was. Now, he received a sharp nip for his troubles. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a bag full of Owl Treats; he took one and offered it. He managed to keep breathing this time. In return, something seemed to tear, deep inside his chest.

"I'm going to go," he said, not at all sure, when he started speaking, just where he was going to go.

"You should," said Malfoy into the pause. "Do you want me to--no, you clearly don't. Well. Enjoy your tour."

So saying, he turned his back on Harry and his attention to another shelf, on which sat an innately carved stone bowl. Harry would have recognized it for what it was even if Malfoy's next move hadn't been to place the tip of his wand to his head, the better to draw out a silvery wisp of memory.

*

The cottage turned out to be a bit bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. There were not just the two stories that had been visible from the front non-garden, but three floors plus an attic.

The first story was made up of the expected things: a drawing room to go with the living room, a kitchen, a sunroom by the back door.

The middle story was made up of bedrooms and bathrooms. There were four of the bedrooms, three of which were guest rooms, and the fourth of which was half again as large as any of the others and many times as lived-in. 

When Harry went into this fourth bedroom, he found that the view from the very long window against the far wall was rather enticing: for there was, it seemed, a clearing out back of the house, which had three goalposts set at either end, and plenty enough room between them for flying. It was a very beautiful sight in the afternoon light. It drew Harry's eye for long enough he could almost pretend he hadn't noticed the size of the bed in the center of the room, twice again the size of any of the beds in any of the others. He could almost pretend not to notice that there were two long dressers on opposite walls, and that while one was piled with things that seemed like they might be the sort of things he would use or be interested in, the other gave off more of a Malfoy sort of vibe.

On the side of the room that wasn't his, there were two doors. One opened into a walk-in closet, filled with robes in all colors and styles. The other opened into a nearly empty room too large and airy to be another closet. It had large windows on three walls, giving the impression that it was sticking out of the side of the house. The ceiling was spelled to display the sky, almost certainly the same sky that was actually in evidence outside at the moment: startling blue, with a few wispy white clouds that didn't threaten rain, and didn't look as if they ever would. The walls were painted a sort of pastel yellow, but didn't seem destined to stay that way for long, as there were cans of paint stacked by one wall, red and green and gold and silver, as if whomever was planning to paint was also planning to be chaotic about it. Other than that, the room was empty except for a rocking chair, which, when it spotted Harry, began to rock back and forth, slowly and, Harry supposed, enticingly.

Still pretending not to have noticed who he was meant to share his bedroom with, Harry left in a hurry, and headed up the stairs to the third story. Here he came out onto a short, dark hallway; not a sinister sort of dark, but one that instead gave an air of being full of secrets and mysteries. 

On the left side of the hall were two doors, and on the right side of the hall were three. The first door to the left was locked, the doorknob rattling loudly when Harry tried to turn it, but unwilling to give way before a murmured Alohomora . The doorknob of the second left door grew a mouth as he reached for it, with teeth which snapped at him warningly. Then, as he passed it, it tried to lick him.

At the end of the hall, a long string hung from the ceiling. Pulling on it revealed a ladder, which unfolded nearly to the floor. When climbed, it led the way to the attic - large and sunny, again, but still an attic, filled with dust and, probably, spiders. Harry glanced around, and, when glancing around did not immediately turn up any Dark artifacts, or even any kind of nasty vibe, went back down the ladder again.

The doors to the right (now his left) turned out to be much better than the doors to the left, or at least more accessible. The first door led to a little library, shelves full of proper books, quite a lot of which were old friends or enemies from Harry's Auror studies, but plenty of others which he didn't recognize. 

The second door led to a small study, which must not have been Harry's by the looks of the Slytherin banner taking up half of one wall. There was a writing desk in the center of the room, with a quill and parchment which someone had been in the midst of writing with; but when Harry approached it, the lettering upon it disappeared and was replaced by the words, NO PEEKING! YOU KNOW THE RULES!

"Er, I didn't want to peek."

LIKELY STORY, said the parchment.

"Right," Harry said, and exited. Part of him, not seeming very excited by the idea, wondered if he oughtn't to have given Malfoy's office more of a once-over; the rest of him, seeming incredibly weary, thought that if there was anything really important hiding up here, it was hidden behind the licking door.

The third door led to a second study, and it was immediately obvious to whom this one belonged to. It wasn't just the Gryffindor banner on the wall, wasn't just yet more books on Defense on the bookshelf in the corner, many of them visibly cracked spines, these volumes more clearly worn with re-reading than the roughest in the library. It was more the sense of belonging he got, the second he stepped in. It was a room made just for him, arranged in exactly the way he'd have arranged it if he'd had to do it himself. 

There were photographs hanging on the walls. There was one of him in his Auror's robes, looking the way he remembered looking, just days ago; he was standing on a stage, and as he waved at someone off-stage, grinning widely, Harry thought this might have been his graduation ceremony, must have been...

Next to it was a picture of himself at the front of a classroom, looking more than a little green. He looked from the blackboard behind him, and then to something off to the side, which, from the way he kept glancing at it with a panicked sort of expression, might have been the door, which he might have been tempted to run through.

There were other pictures of him in the classroom, but he looked better in the rest of them. There were students there, too, in most of them, from more tiny little first years all the way on up. Sometimes the photos were staged, himself surrounded by a group of students; other times, they seemed to have been taken without his knowledge, or at least without any posing: when he was leaning over a student's desk to point out something in their work, or writing upon the blackboard, or standing in a defensive stance, his wand out before him, demonstrating the Disarming Charm or the Stunning Spell, or mouthing the words " Expecto Patronum " as a silvery stag leapt from out of the tip of his wand...

His desk was up against the far window. He rounded it to find multiple stacks of parchment, which turned out to be essays. One stack on how to identify werewolves had been marked up by his own handwriting; the others, which had to do with vampires and trolls respectively, didn't seem to have been touched yet. 

There were more pictures there on the desk. One of him and Ron and Hermione, back at Hogwarts; another of them, what mustn't have been too long ago, for his own hair was graying in it again. But the pictures that caught his eye were of him and someone else. 

First there was a picture of a large number of people, out back of the Burrow. There were all the Weasleys, as well as Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, all in their dress robes. Harry and Draco were in the middle of the front row, grinning at each other (Draco of the picture caught sight of Harry looking at him, and tipped him a wink; and the Harry of the picture caught him looking, and rolled his eyes; and they were both still grinning, practically glowing with what must have been happiness, even though it seemed a completely foreign expression for Draco, and not actually that much less strange for Harry to see on his own face). 

No point asking what day that must have been. There had been dozens of other pictures of their wedding in Draco's album, and he was clear-headed enough now to know he didn't really want to look any more closely.

Harry looked hastily to the next photo, which was also of Draco and he. In this one, they were dressed in normal robes, and were alone, or at least must have thought they were. They were in a quiet corner of whatever room they were in, Harry's back against the wall, Draco leaning in close to him, his hand braced against the wall. They must have been speaking in low tones, or at least looked it, so wrapped up in whatever they were discussing that they didn't even notice Harry watching. It was the sort of picture that might have seemed ominous, considering their history, if it hadn't been for the way it simply didn't, no sign of threat in either of their postures, nor on either of their faces. It was, if anything, even more rattling than the wedding picture; and, though there were other pictures of the two of them on his desk, Harry found that he couldn't look at any of them closely, couldn't do more than skim his eyes over them.

There was not much to be done in his study, unless he wanted to ransack his own desk or grade his own essays. He found he didn't, and headed back down the stairs.

In the living room, Malfoy was still standing by the Pensieve. His wand was pointed at his temple again. As Harry watched, he peeled a memory away from his head, a silvery squirmy thing that soon joined however many others.

"Er," Harry said.

"Oh, hello," said Draco, with a startled sort of warmth. "There you are. How did you like it?"

"Like what?"

"The house, obviously."

"It's fine," said Harry, unwilling to admit either how rattled he was by all the signs that they really were married, nor how much he really did like the cottage itself, which he thought he might have fallen head or heels for if he'd come across it apart from the rest. "What are you doing?"

When he'd left, Malfoy had already been using the Pensieve. That he was still using it now suggested he might have been at it all the while Harry had wandered the cottage's upper stories. So he wasn't just clearing his head of an irritating memory or two, or setting aside a few memories to try to make more sense of them later. He was doing something bigger, perhaps something more suspicious.

"Ah," said Malfoy. "The Healers said it might help."

"What might?"

"If I set aside a selection of my memories for you. Of our relationship. Our life. They said it was more likely to help than the photographs."

"Oh," said Harry. "Sorry you've wasted your time, then." And, at Malfoy's questioning look: "I don't want to see your memories." And, at the careful blankness on Malfoy's face: "Er, sorry."

Malfoy stood there a moment, blank some more. Then he said, a little too casually, "It's because you hate me again, isn't it? That's alright. It doesn't have to be today, anyway."

"I don't hate you," Harry said. "I just don't--care."

It was either not the right thing to say, or the wrong one, or perhaps something like the right thing after all; at any rate, Malfoy's blankness broke. "Oh, you do too. You've always hated me. Or, you did, anyway. Back then."

"I don't, really," Harry said. Even attacking Malfoy at St Mungo's had been more of a reflex than anything else. He'd been disorientated, confused, and Malfoy had been there, and for a moment they might have been back at Hogwarts together, where it mattered what Malfoy was doing, and whether or not he was up to something. But that hadn't mattered at all since that last battle and the trials that had followed. It hadn't had to matter, and Harry hadn't had to think of Malfoy at all in years, which had been just the way he liked it.

Malfoy snorted, and rolled his eyes. "Say what you like. Think it, even. But you hated me plenty around the time we started shagging. Which, since nothing else actually happened between us before then, means you hate me now."

"We've never shagged," said Harry, another reflex, which brought with it a wave of humiliation, because if they were married, then they must've--but he never would have--not with Malfoy --but the triumph that had come over Malfoy's face suggested the humiliation was about to grow ever so much worse.

"Yes, well, the evidence would suggest," Malfoy began, with a sort of airy glee--then stopped talking, in much the same manner in which people stop walking when they've collided into, say, a telephone pole, and with much the same expression. He seemed to swallow, hard.

"What evidence?" Harry asked stupidly, which must have been a third reflex altogether, brought up by the memory of all the other times Malfoy had done suspicious things, and how Malfoy acting suspiciously meant he, Harry, ought to push it, because it wasn't like anyone else would.

Malfoy closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again and sneered. It was an expression that, even though Harry had seen it on his face a thousand times before, seemed somehow forced.

"The evidence," he said sneerily, holding eye contact as he placed the tip of his wand against his temple again and drew out another long, silvery thread of memory, which he next caused to swirl vaguely in Harry's direction. "If you like."

"Er," said Harry, flushing hot. "I wouldn't."

"Right." Malfoy turned back to the Pensieve, added the memory to whatever soup of memories were already in it.

It couldn't have been a clearer dismissal. Harry had in fact been about to dismiss himself, and at a run, nevermind Malfoy's suspiciousness; but now, stubbornly, he found himself staying, instead. Watching as Malfoy drew another memory out of his head, seemed to regard it for a minute, then put it back. He kept going, removing memories and either placing them in the Pensieve or changing his mind about it, for a few minutes.

"Was there anything else?" Malfoy asked, finally, in a level sort of tone.

"I have a question," said Harry, which even if he hadn't expected to say so, wasn't really much of a surprise, considering he had loads of them.

Malfoy turned to look at him. "Yes?"

Why they lived out in the middle of nowhere. Why they had a door that licked people. What was behind that door, or the other door he hadn't been able to open. What had happened to all the people he knew, everyone other than Ron that he hadn't gotten to see yet. All the things he'd missed in their lives and his own, both good and bad. Yet if he asked any questions about the house, it might give Malfoy the wrong idea, somehow; and as for everything else that might have happened in the last eighteen years, those years didn't seem like a real thing yet. It would have been hard to work out where to start, with any of those sorts of questions.

"Why'd I leave the Aurors?" Harry asked, the one question that was real and raw enough to bother with, in the end. "Ron said you might know."

Malfoy made a low sound, which might have been anger, or frustration, or anything. "That's ancient history, Harry."

"It isn't to me. If you don't know, that's fine--I'll find someone else to ask."

Harry turned to leave.

"Ugh, wait," said Malfoy, sighing.

Harry turned back around.

"You left the Aurors because it wasn't safe," said Malfoy.

"It's the Aurors , of course it's not--"

"Because it wasn't safe for your partner, or anyone you might have been trying to help," said Malfoy. "Or even the suspects, I suppose."

"What are you talking about?"

"Harry, you have these--spells," said Malfoy.

"I'm a wizard."

"Not that kind of spell," said Malfoy. "More like--panic attacks? Anxiety attacks? Something."

"I do not have panic attacks," said Harry loudly. He had defeated Voldemort, hadn't he, and he'd never had any kind of attack then. Not unless you counted the kind that came from part of Voldemort's soul possessing you. But he'd been possessed by no one but himself since. He'd been fine. He was fine. "Liar. I bet you don't even know why I left."

"You had a Mind Healer, for a while. She told you it's not unusual, to be able to hold it together in the midst of--things. And then, when it's over, and you come to realize it's safe..."

"I, what? Fall apart? No," Harry said. "It's been three years since Voldemort died. Since I killed him. I've never had a--thing."

"I'm sorry, Harry," said Malfoy. "You left the Aurors to protect everyone else. It was very self-sacrificing of you. It was idiotic and entirely in-character, in other words. And, it was ages ago. I don't know what else you want me to say."

What Harry wanted was to not be eighteen years in his own future. Or if he had to be in his own future, he wanted the future he'd been planning on. Not this, whatever this was.

"Fuck you, Malfoy," he said, and fled out of the room, and through the kitchen, and out the back door.

He half-expected Malfoy to try and follow him, but when he was halfway across the Quidditch field behind their house, he looked back and found, to his relief, that no one was there.

*

Exploring the forest around the cottage didn't turn up much. It wasn't like the Forbidden Forest, full of magical creatures that might eat or aid you (the former being much more likely than the latter); there didn't seem to be much in the way of wildlife at all, outside of plenty of birds, and the occasional snake which slithered by with a "Hello there," or, in the case of an adder he had startled, "Oh, it's just you." Perhaps they'd have had more to say, only Harry didn't feel like interrogating them, and didn't know what sorts of questions he'd have wanted to ask anyway.

In short, the forest seemed to be more or less an ordinary sort of forest, and led to nothing much other than a hike that helped get rid of his nerves. By the time Harry cast the spell that would direct him back to the cottage, he was sweating, and covered in dirt despite not having rolled around in it at any point. He hadn't even sat down anywhere. It had been all trudging through underbrush type activities, no trail to be seen.

It had, somehow, made him feel a bit better.

When he got back to the cottage, he found Malfoy in the living room again. He must have finished with the Pensieve, for now he was sitting in one of the Leaning Chairs, his legs draped over one of its arms. He had a quill and parchment, and was in the middle of scratching something on it when he caught wind of Harry, and paused with the tip of the quill in the air. It was a sight that immediately made Harry feel worse again, because--Malfoy. He was married to Draco Malfoy . The surreal feeling of it was starting to feel like something else. Something actually real, and actually depressing. How had his life come to this?

"Who are you writing to?" Harry asked, suspicion flaring at the thought that Malfoy might be telling all the details of the day to--Narcissa Malfoy. Or, worse, Lucius Malfoy. Any of a number of people, really. Rita Skeeter.

"My adoring public," came the answer, as Malfoy set the quill and parchment aside. "You're not the only person who has one, you know."

"Yeah. Right," said Harry, suddenly beyond weary, even though it couldn't have been past seven o'clock yet, judging by where the sun had been when he'd started out, and where it had been when he'd started back. 

He needed...he didn't know what he needed. A shower, which he hadn't had since he'd woken up in St Mungo's. A good night's sleep after that, probably. He'd learned in his Auror training how important it actually was to listen to his body, and what he needed--that although he might sometimes have to work himself to the breaking point, that was only when he had to, when there was a reason for it. It didn't help his team to do it when he didn't have to; and if he was on his own, as he seemed to be here, it would help even less.

Without another word to Malfoy, he headed up the stairs. Malfoy didn't follow him; when Harry looked back, he was frowning at his parchment again, gnawing on the end of his quill. There came no more scratching as Harry turned back to the stairs.

Harry looked through his things in the master bedroom until he found a bathrobe that would cover him entirely on his way back from the bathroom. Then he changed his mind and rummaged through drawers until he found a full set of clothes he could wear back, instead. He was relieved to find that he had plenty of T-shirts and jeans in addition to all the robes hanging in the closet; he must have still liked being comfortable at home, even if he was married to someone who--he must have still liked being comfortable at home, and so he took the oldest, most faded of the shirts and jeans with him into the bathroom.

The shower was a pleasant surprise, the way getting clean after a time spent somewhere where showers weren't always is, even when you haven't gone for a woods romp in-between.

When he stepped out of the shower, the showerhead wolf-whistled at him. Considering Malfoy had had a hand in this house, Harry was just surprised it had taken that long. 

"Knock it off," he said firmly, and was not a little surprised when it actually did.

A few minutes later, still a little damp but covered in all the important places, Harry headed back to the bedroom. He'd had the thought, in the shower, that he ought to move some of his things to one of the guestrooms, the better to avoid waking up to a Malfoy-shaped lump next to him in the middle of the night (or, somehow worse, the next morning). But when he got there, he saw that one side of the room had already been cleared out--not his own side, but Malfoy's, the top of his dresser now with nothing on it, his dresser drawers and what must have been his side of the closet cleared out.

Well. That worked, Harry thought, with no little relief.

On his pillow, he found a bottle that hadn't been there before. It was filled with a blue potion, in which floated golden specks of...something. The Memory-Induction Potion, which Harry now recalled he was meant to take daily. A thimble-full, according to the piece of parchment next to it. He picked it up, and the thimble-sized cup it had come with, and considered whether he actually wanted to take it. It would answer a lot of his questions, if he did, and it worked. Why he'd left the Aurors. How and why he'd ended up with Malfoy, of all people.

Did he want to remember?

He thought of the way Malfoy had sneered at him about all the shagging. Or--not even that, really. The way he'd looked when he'd said, "Harry, you have these--spells" and "I'm sorry, Harry ." The pity, sympathy, whatever it had been, had been a thousand times worse than the sneering.

Did he want to remember? Or did he prefer to find out the general outline at some point, if he decided he wanted to, and leave it at that?

It really wasn't a very difficult question, in the end.

Harry uncorked the bottle, poured a bit of the potion into the little cup. He opened the window with a flick of his wand. With a swish of it, he floated the thimble-cup outside, and tipped it over, so that tonight's dose fell onto the grass below his window(or actually, onto a shrub that was down there, when Harry went to look).

Then he corked the bottle, set it on the dresser, and went to bed.