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: 8000 words

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

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

Chapter Four

Harry woke the next morning with a sort of pink, gummy sensation behind his eyes. At first he thought it must be the start of a morning headache. These were unrelated to his scar anymore, a lot more likely to be caused by stress or a lack of sleep than anything else. But by the time he'd dressed, it became apparent this was something else, for the Headache Banishing Charm he'd cast didn't seem to have touched it.

It was just distracting enough he could almost forget to notice where he was, even though his flat didn't have such a large bed, or such a large bedroom to place such a large bed in, or such a large window to let such a large amount of morning light in (or any morning light to speak of, really). His flat didn't even have stairs except to get from the part of the building that wasn't his flat to the part of it that was. 

Nothing, though, could have kept him from noticing just who was at the breakfast table, waiting on him. It was Malfoy, of course, sitting there with the Daily Prophet opened in front of his pointy face. As Harry sat down--as he was obviously meant to sit down, considering there was a steaming plate of breakfast foods in front of the empty chair across from Malfoy--he flicked down a corner of the paper long enough to eye Harry, and then to say, pointily, "They haven't got it yet."

At this, Harry felt he ought to go ahead and dispense with the idea that today would make any more sense than the last few days had. "What haven't they got, again? And, er, who hasn't got it?"

"The press," said Malfoy, with a put-upon sort of sigh. "The story. There's been nary a peep about your disappearance from Hogwarts."

"It isn't the first paper out since, though," said Harry, to whom it seemed self-evident that today was Saturday, and so they might have put out the story on Friday or Thursday, instead. Or perhaps even Wednesday, depending on how long he'd been out before he'd finally come to. He hadn't thought to ask. It seemed no one had thought to tell him, either.

The paper, which had gone back up upon Malfoy's initial pronouncement, flicked a corner back down, all the better for Malfoy to raise an eyebrow at him. Pointily again, because he was still a giant wanker.

"Yeah, alright," Harry said, before Malfoy could point out that Harry Potter features didn't tend to sink after one day, or even one week. And ones where something had actually happened tended to be much worse about not sinking. "So they haven't got it. Who cares?" He was abruptly struck with the knowledge that, actually, he cared. He liked his privacy. He loved anonymity when he could get it, which was only rarely. It had been the reason he had a flat in an all-Muggle-but-for-him neighborhood; it was probably, now that he thought about it, the reason they lived in a cottage out in the middle of nowhere. "Well, good," he finished, and started on his breakfast.

He was more than halfway through seconds--he'd barely eaten the day before, and must have slept at least twelve hours if not longer, judging by where the sun had been out the window, and therefore had not required prompting to switch out steaming plate #1 with steaming plate #2 from closer to the middle of the table--when Malfoy folded the paper closed and peered at him.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Alright," said Harry, and then something, possibly the intense way Malfoy was squinting at him across his sausage and eggs, prompted him to add, "I've this pink, gummy feeling behind my eyes. Dunno what that's about."

What had seemed to make sense when thinking it to himself came out like utter nonsense when said aloud. Malfoy, though, didn't sneer, or say anything snide, or even really seem very concerned about it. "Hmm. Likely a side effect."

"Er, of what?" asked Harry, followed by a cringing moment where it seemed certain Malfoy would be onto him, after a slip-up like that.

This might have then been followed by a resentful moment of having to worry about Malfoy's opinions at all, except that before he could get that far, Malfoy said, "Of your potion. Honestly, Harry. Did you even read the instructions?"

Harry didn't recall having even seen any instructions. There might have been, somewhere, a parchment that said how to brew more of the Memory Induction Potion. Where that had got to, he couldn't have said, especially given he had no intention of wasting his time actually brewing anything.

"Of course you didn't. Why aren't I surprised?" said Malfoy, with not very much bite in it. Very little, in fact. Practically none. Perhaps none whatsoever. With, instead, a sort of fond warmth that wasn't shocking, exactly, after the last several days, but nevertheless seemed uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of. "I don't suppose you've remembered anything," he said, much more quietly, and not sounding very hopeful about it. "You'd have said right away if you had."

"Er," said Harry, with a squirmy feeling in his stomach it wouldn't do to examine too closely. "Yeah. I mean, no, I haven't. Sorry," he added, though he wasn't. And, it wasn't as if he were lying. If Malfoy wanted to assume he was taking his potion without even trying to verify it, that was his mistake. Hadn't Harry outright told him he didn't want to be married to him? Or to remember being married to him. He ought to have known better. It was his own fault, really, if he wanted to take it on faith like this. Just like it was his own fault he'd been a tosser all through school and then a Death Eater on top of it all.

"It's not your fault. I suppose ," Malfoy said, which caused the squirmy feeling to grow a good deal squirmier.

"Yeah." Harry looked down at his plate, where he'd speared his next bit of egg with his fork. He had the feeling he wasn't going to be able to finish now, nevermind that he'd still been ravenous a minute before.

"Anyhow. An owl came for you last night, while you were sleeping. Letter's on the counter."

Harry couldn't have been gladder for an excuse to get up and not have Malfoy peering at his face anymore. After he'd read it, he was gladder still: for Ron had written him to come by Grimmauld Place sometime over the weekend. 'Feels a bit silly having to invite you,' he'd written, 'but Hermione thinks you might not know you can. No need to fire-call, either. Just Floo over when you want. Don't try to Apparate, though, or stand by any opened windows.'

"Everything alright?" Malfoy asked.

"Oh, yeah, fine," Harry said, tucking the letter into his pocket and getting rid of his grin before he turned around to where Malfoy could see his face. He didn't elaborate, feeling that he didn't owe Malfoy an accounting of his correspondences any more than he owed him an accounting of what potions he did or didn't want to take.

He went into the living room, and was only a little completely gutted to see Herbert the owl napping upon his perch. Harry took a pen and scrap of parchment from a basket on the shelf nearest the window, and scribbled down a response ( Ron, Alright, I'll be by later. -Harry' ). This he tied to Herbert's leg, feeling more than a bit like the world's greatest traitor for not going down to the nearest owlery to send it, instead.

"Ron Weasley, 12 Grimmauld Place," he said, then opened the window, and Herbert was off. It was hard to see him flying away, looking even more like Hedwig in the air than he had when eying Harry puffily after having been woken up--but it seemed as if it would have been harder, somehow, not to watch him go.

*

That afternoon, Harry stepped out of the fireplace at Grimmauld Place. At first glance, the drawing room appeared to be empty. At second glance, it was nothing at all like the drawing room as Harry remembered it, all light and air instead of darkness and shadows. At third glance, there was a small girl sitting in one of the large, comfy-looking armchairs, with her nose stuck deeply in a book. And at a fourth one, she looked up, and said, "Hi, Uncle Harry."

"--Hi," said Harry.

"I'm reading your book," she said proudly. She showed him the front cover, which, when Harry stepped closer and also squinted, was titled The Beginner's Guide to Defense , by someone named Harry J. Potter.

"Er," said Harry, and then, when she, all bushy red hair and freckles, seemed to be looking at him expectantly: "That's great. I mean, it's--fantastic, really. Excellent work."

"Thank you," she said, a little primly, and lifted the book back up to her face.

Harry stood there for a minute, watching her. There was no doubt, really, who she was, must be. There was barely more doubt about why Ron hadn't mentioned it. Harry would have been there, of course, for every milestone. Why should it have occurred to Ron to mention he and Hermione had a daughter? Or, that they'd had at least the one daughter?

He stood there for a long minute, a new warmth in his chest warring with an equally-new lump in his throat. He wondered what her name was. He wondered, too, if it was alright if he asked, or if it would--upset her. Or, freak her out, somehow. She didn't seem to think it was weird that he was here. Did that mean she didn't know that something was different about him, that no-one had told her? Or was it just that she was more concerned with reading his book than she was with Harry himself?

He was saved from his bout of indecision as well as given the answer to one of his questions by a voice, one he recognized, would have known anywhere: "Alice, darling, are you--"

"Hey, Hermione," said Harry, for it was she who had come, who stood in the doorway of the drawing room.

"Oh, Harry ," she said.

She rushed forward to hug him. Harry found himself returning it just as fiercely. He'd seen Ron already, he'd known Ron was alright, but as obvious as it had been that someone would have said something if Hermione weren't, he hadn't realized how badly he needed to see her until she was right there in front of him. There'd been security reasons for him not to have visitors at St Mungo's, and they must have been at least as good as he'd thought through the haze of everything he'd begun learning about his life, if she hadn't come to see him regardless. Still, Harry hadn't realized how tense he'd been about it, up until now.

"Good to see you, too," he said, and found that neither the warmth in his chest nor the lump in his throat had subsided at all. More like the opposite of that.

Things had been a bit awkward with Ron from the word go, and were of course beyond weird with Malfoy. With Hermione, those first few moments were exactly what they should have been--until, at least, she let him go, and Harry caught sight once more of the little girl. Alice, Hermione had called her. She was smaller by far than any of the first-years in the Potions Dungeon. Which only made sense, didn't it, since she was at home instead of Hogwarts during October?

"How are you doing?" Hermione asked, but Harry barely heard this.

"So," he said, "Is this--is she--your--er--"

"Our daughter, yes," said Hermione in a soft, low voice, having seen where he was looking. "Ron's and mine."

A few moments later, Harry managed, "She's reading my book."

In an even lower voice, Hermione said, "Don't worry about her being traumatized. It's still a bit above her reading level, technically, so she's able to come to us about the bits she doesn't understand. Which is most of them, honestly. It's not really very graphic anyway, is it?"

Harry hadn't the first idea how graphic it was or wasn't. He was more stuck on the fact that his name was on its cover, his words presumably contained within its pages.

"No, I mean--I wrote a book," he said.

"Oh, of course, you wouldn't exactly remember writing it, would you? All things considered?" said Hermione. "Well, it's quite good, really. Much more accessible than most beginner's texts."

This was, from Hermione, quite a high compliment. It wasn't one Harry could wrap his head around, just at the moment.

"Right," he said. He found that where he'd had no interest in asking questions about his and Malfoy's life together, now that he'd seen the barest glimpse of Ron and Hermione's, he was dying to know every detail, every single thing he'd missed. "Do you have just the one, then? Or have you got a bunch more stashed away?"

"It's just the one for us," came a voice from the doorway. Harry turned to see Ron, grinning and proud. "Likely to be our only. Hermione says if we ever have another one, I'm the one who has to have it."

"That's right," Hermione said. "But now that you're here, Harry, you two may as well get started. I'll join you in a bit."

"Get started with what?" Harry asked, as he'd been under the impression this was meant to be more of a catching-up sort of visit than one with planned activities.

"You'll see," Hermione said, and then, in an aside, "Don't pay any attention to Ron. I've almost got him talked into it."

Talked into what, Harry nearly asked, then rewound the conversation far enough to feel his face grow a little hot. "Right," he said.

He followed Ron out at speed, and was pleased to discover there were no Dark artifacts, screaming portraits, or other ominous wall hangings anywhere to be seen. The clean-up he'd been planning to try to finish for the last three years and had never quite gotten around to must have worked out. Eventually, anyway.

They were nearly all the way down the stairs when Ron glanced quickly over his shoulder, then said, in a conspiratorial sort of way, "You know, I'm actually considering it."

"Oh, yeah?" Harry managed, with the uncomfortable feeling that this was more of the same thing.

"Yeah. She's just too brilliant, you know, Alice. 'Til we had her, I never really knew--anyhow, I'd love to have another. Two seems like a good number. Quieter than loads, but less lonely than one, yeah? Just don't tell Hermione; I haven't made up my mind yet."

"Yeah, alright," said Harry, because, well, he had to say something, it wasn't as if he could rush out of the room Ron was in when he was meant to be following him. "I won't."

"Good man," said Ron cheerily.

By then they'd reached the study. There was a large oaken desk in the middle of the room, its surface covered with files and scraps of parchment. 

"What's all this?" Harry asked, as much in the hopes that they could now be done with the family planning talk Ron and Hermione ought to be having in private (and, even more importantly, without him) as out of any real curiosity.

"The case, yeah?" said Ron. "Knew you'd want to go over it, so I brought everything home for the weekend."

Harry's chest was flooded with a new warmth. His throat also seemed to have gone a bit tight, all of a sudden and in a different way than before, and he was forced to blink a couple times before he said, "Alright, yeah. What've you got?"

*

They sat down, Ron behind the desk and Harry in a chair he'd pulled up to it, and Ron started catching him up. 

It was the world's most massive relief. Here at last was something familiar, something he could do. It hardly mattered that he didn't recognize any of the major players' names, or even the vast majority of the earlier cases Ron kept referring to throughout. It hardly even mattered that Ron had to catch Harry up on nearly everything that was even tangentially related, up to and including the last five attempts on his life.

"Which we're not even certain this was," Harry said. It seemed important to point this out, since if they could be fairly certain it hadn't been any kind of attempt on his life--that he'd merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time, instead of Harry walking into a trap that had been laid for, well, Harry--then at that point, he'd be free to leave. He could go where he wanted, figure out his own life far away from Draco Malfoy.

"No, but we've yet to work out who's involved," said Ron. "And even if it was an accident it got to you this time, what's to say it won't give someone else ideas? No, Harry, you've got to stay careful."

As Harry hadn't actually said anything about not being careful, he found himself resenting this. "Right. Moving on, what are our next steps?"

So Ron went on to talk about the various teams who were involved. Some were already undercover and had been for some time, infiltrating the worst of the illegal potions rings. Others were tracking down where the known tainted potions ingredients had come from; as it was an industry that had only become regulated due to necessity over the last few years, it sounded as if this was where the bulk of the manpower was going to. Still others were sifting through records from six or seven years ago up through now, looking once again for any similarity or connection that might have been missed in the past. 

It didn't sound as if any arrests were imminent. It sounded, in fact, like an operation that had been going on for quite some time, irrespective of Harry's own involvement. If there were a noose being slowly closed around a target or a number of targets, it was closing slowly indeed.

Once Harry realized how long it had been taking, and how long it still might be, he very much didn't want to think about it anymore. Thankfully, there were plenty of other things to focus on, starting with--

"The way you're talking about all this," Harry said, because while Ron had said 'we' and 'our' often enough when talking about things, he said 'I' just as often. Perhaps even more often, in the end. "It almost sounds like you're--are you Head Auror? You are, aren't you?"

Ron looked startled, and then pleased. "Well, only for the last five years."

The seemingly-momentary resentment of before must have been a longer-lived, stealthy sort of thing too, which had twisted around into something quite a bit nastier while Harry hadn't been looking. He hadn't known it was there, but now it had turned into something else, a hot and raging thing in his chest and stomach.

He'd decided back in fifth year that he wouldn't be the kind of person who hated a friend--who hated Ron, specifically--for having something he had wanted, even something he had presumed would be his by rights. He found now that it was one thing to decide as much when you were fifteen and hadn't been made prefect, another thing altogether when you not only hadn't gotten to do the only thing you'd ever wanted to do with your life, but one of your best friends not only had , but had done such a brilliant job of it that he was now in charge of the whole deparment. Thus it took him a moment longer than it ought to have to corral the nasty feeling into a far-off corner, so that he could say, only a little less chipperly than he might have done had he been able to feel entirely sincere about it, "That's incredible! Congratulations, you deserve it."

"Yeah, well," said Ron, turning a pleased shade of red, which seemed for only a moment to be pasted over more of a concerned sort of expression. "I suppose I'm doing alright. I haven't been sacked yet, at least."

"Oh, don't listen to him, he's done brilliantly," said Hermione. She'd just come in with an armful of thick books with titles such as Weird Poisonings Through the Ages and Memories, Brewed , and now began arranging them on the desktop. "The department was in such a shambles before Ron took it over. Things are much better-organized now," she added, and cracked open a copy of The Fragility of Recollections and set it in front of Harry.

Harry was beginning to feel a bit panicked, as if he were in one of those dreams where he was meant to be studying for NEWTs for classes he hadn't known he was taking, and in the course of studying had also managed to miss the first three-quarters of his examination block. It was this and this alone, probably, which prevented him from saying the department might not have been in a shambles in the first place if he'd been around to help organize it in the meantime. 

Was this what Hermione had meant when she'd said 'You'll see'? That she'd been doing research on memories and things--that she'd been doing a ridiculous amount of research on memories and things, probably, because even thirty-nine and married and with a daughter Hermione was still Hermione--and now he was going to have to research, too, or at least pretend to, even though getting his memories back was still the last thing he wanted?

Without being sure quite why, or even knowing he was going to say it at all until it had come out of his mouth, Harry said, "Malfoy says I have panic attacks, and that's why I left the Aurors."

What kind of reaction he'd expected, he didn't know, except that the two of them reassuring them that Malfoy was a lying little ferret would have at least made him feel better. Instead, though, they looked at each other, a shared glance Harry didn't seem to have been invited to.

"We thought it might have been something like that," said Hermione after a moment.

"Yeah, but you never wanted to talk about it," Ron said. "So we left it alone. We did after that first bit, anyway."

"Of course I didn't want to talk about it, considering it's not true." Harry said this hotly, and felt his face heating up as he realized how this had come out sounding like more or less complete nonsense.  He shoved Hermione's ancient dusty book out of the way, then said, firmly and before anyone could suggest he try to read anything from it, "What else about the case? Have you got anyone watching Hogwarts?"

Ron had said quite a lot about the suspected perpetrators, and how they were working to track them down. He hadn't said a lot about what was going on at Hogwarts. Or, really, he hadn't said anything, had he?

"We have a man on the ground," said Ron, after another shared glance with Hermione. "He's checking all the potions ingredients coming in--not that they do very often, mid-term, outside of anything harvested on the grounds, or from the Forest. He's even, uh, taken over your classes."

Suddenly, there came to Harry another reason Ron might have wanted him out of the way, instead of divorcing Draco immediately, with whatever media circus was likely to be involved. Holed up in the house he shared with Draco instead of looking for a new place, seeming to live the life he'd been living before instead of striking out on his own. It was brilliant, but also made him feel a bit odd.

"You've got someone Polyjuiced as me, haven't you?" he said. "That's why it hasn't been in the papers, about me leaving Hogwarts."

"We're going to keep him in place until Christmas, if we can," said Ron. "Minerva says it'll come down to how decent he is as a teacher. Says she can't let the students' educations suffer due to all this."

"You wouldn't want that, either, Harry," Hermione said. "You're really quite a good teacher."

"And there's no Polyjuice involved, either. Which is all to the better. We're stretched thin with our stock, considering the issues with boom-slang skin these last couple years. Luckily, we were able to send--this is in confidence, right?"

"Yeah," said Harry, very conscious of the fact that as many details as Ron had given him about his case and all of the related cases over the years, he hadn't given a single name of anyone who'd been sent out undercover, either now or in the past.

"Alright. We were able to send Teddy Lupin. So there shouldn't be any--are you alright?"

Harry wasn't alright. All the breath seemed to have been sucked out of him. When he'd managed to suck back in enough for speaking with, he said, "No."

"You're not alright?" Ron said, at the same moment Hermione said, "What's wrong?"

"No, you're not sending Remus's son into danger over me," Harry said. "No."

Ron stared at him for an exceedingly long, blank moment, then said, slowly, "Teddy's been an Auror since he left Hogwarts. He's had assignments loads worse than teaching first years how to cast Stunners. He'll be alright."

"I don't care," said Harry, to whom Teddy Lupin was still three. He had a tendency to forget Harry between visits, as grief and general busyness tended to keep him away except for Christmas and Teddy's birthday. "Find someone else."

Ron stared at him a bit more. Then he said, slowly again, "Sorry, Harry, but it's not your decision to make."

"The hell it isn't."

"It's up to me, and I've decided," Ron said. "Shouldn't have told you, I guess. My mistake."

"You shouldn't have done it in the first place," Harry said loudly. "You should have known how I'd feel--"

"But he does know how you feel, Harry, you were the one who wrote Teddy's recommendation--"

"I don't care what I felt before," Harry said, cutting off whatever else Hermione had been about to say. "Right now, I think it's too dangerous. Call it off."

"I can't call it off," said Ron. "If I could, I still wouldn't. Sorry, Harry, but no. It was decided days ago. Before you even properly woke up. It's done."

The argument went on for a few minutes more, largely repetitive in subject matter. Harry would never quite remember what all he'd had to say about it, only that all he could see, as if projected before Ron's reddened face and Hermione's near-tears, were the bodies of Remus and Tonks, as they'd been, lying out in the Great Hall. They'd died for him, and now their son was putting himself into danger, however slight it might end up being. For Harry, again. It was happening again, and he didn't want it to, and no matter who else was okay with it, it was never going to be alright with him.

Eventually, Harry stopped shouting, largely because they'd stopped saying much of anything back.

Into this first complete lull came a cool, drawling voice:

"Discussing me again, are you?"

In the doorway stood Malfoy, but the most startling part about his sudden appearance was that he had little Alice Weasley riding piggyback on his shoulders.

"Er, no," said Harry, and a large part of him must have expected Ron and/or Hermione to immediately leap into action to rescue their daughter from Malfoy's clutches, because the rest of him was shocked when they didn't. "Why are you here? Did you follow me?"

"What do you think?" Dryly, Malfoy added, "I thought it would be prudent to make certain you weren't here before I reported you missing."

"Oh," Harry said.

"Conveniently, if you hadn't been here, I could now be explaining your disappearance to Ron," said Malfoy. "Killing two birds with one stone, I suppose."

"Right," said Harry, who wasn't entirely certain if that particular expression quite fit the situation, but didn't feel equipped to snipe at Malfoy five seconds after he'd not so much left as fallen out of a rather distressing row with Ron and Hermione.

"Yes. He's Head Auror now, if no one told you," said Malfoy. Then, very stiffly: "I'd like to go back home now. Will one of you come collect this one? She's latched onto my head."

Alice really was, her arms wrapped around the top of Malfoy's skull as if she had no intention of ever letting him go. A second later it became apparent that she was being rather literal about this, as she had her hands actually stuck to his head, somehow. When Ron and Hermione went over to get her, it took almost a minute and a few careful spells to de-attach her, and it was possible it only worked because Malfoy and then Ron and then Hermione all promised her a lolly if she would let 'Uncle Draco' go.

*

After Malfoy had left again, what remained between the three of them was a silence which seemed somehow louder than the row had.

"Well, that was," said Ron, finally, after he'd ushered Alice back out of the room and back upstairs, lolly and all. "Wow."

"I know," said Harry, meaning that he agreed it had been weird for Malfoy to follow him here when he hadn't been invited. 

"Harry, you've got to tell Draco where you're going," said Hermione. "Whatever problems you two are having, he needs to know where you are."

"At least for right now, yeah. Safety first, and all that," Ron said. 

This was the final straw as far as Harry was concerned. "I can't believe you're siding with him!"

"We're not siding with either of you--" said Hermione, at the same moment Ron said, "You've got to realize how serious--"

"I can't believe you let me marry him to begin with," Harry continued, in a loud enough voice that he was soon left the only one talking. "Don't you see how mental this is?"

"Let you!" said Ron. "Mate, we couldn't have stopped you."

"You made it quite clear you were set on him," said Hermione. "All we could do was try to accept it."

"After we'd made you have a full work-up at St Mungo's, anyway. Just in case, you know."

Ron didn't have to say in case of what. Love potions, the Imperius Curse, whatever else might have made Harry do something he wouldn't have done in his own right mind.

With those options out, he'd apparently simply lost it, somewhere in the last eighteen years.

"Me and Malfoy," he said, sagging back down into his chair. "Me and Malfoy. How does that even work?"

"Fairly well, actually," said Hermione, though she had to have known it wasn't a question he actually wanted answered.

"Yeah. He's changed a lot," said Ron.

"He hasn't changed at all!" Thinking of the locked rooms on the third story of their cottage, Harry added, "He's up to something. Or at least, he's keeping something from me. That's still meant to be a bad sign, isn't it? No matter how brilliant of a marriage we supposedly have."

Another of those shared looks between Ron and Hermione. Harry was starting to hate that look. It left him on the outside, yet this time not far enough outside that he couldn't tell what it meant they thought of him.

"Harry," said Hermione, and the worst part about it was how careful her voice was. "How old do you think you are, again?"

"Twenty," Harry said tightly, knowing exactly what was going to happen next, and helpless to do anything other than storming out to stop it.

"Not sixteen?" Hermione said, a little dryly, but still not exactly unkind. "Harry, even you have to admit you used to be--well, rather paranoid about Draco. And it makes sense, doesn't it, in this situation? You're confused, you're--"

"I'm not confused. And, I've never been paranoid about him," said Harry. "You both thought I was--but I was right, wasn't I, back in sixth year? I've always been right, when it comes to him."

"Yeah, you have. And for the last twelve or fifteen years, something like that, what you've been saying is he's changed," Ron said. "Excuse us for taking your word for it, I guess."

Harry didn't care what he'd supposedly been saying all this time. He might care later about how long he'd apparently been saying it, though only in a despairing sort of way. "Well, now I'm saying he hasn't." Then he recalled Malfoy summoning his wand for him when he'd been certain he'd been captured by Dark wizards and had asked for it. Fairness compelled him to add, "At least, not that much. And he is hiding something."

Another shared look, and maybe Harry was further outside of it than he'd thought, because although he was braced for more arguing about how Malfoy was the most brilliant husband ever to have husbanded, all that happened was that Hermione said, "Alright, Harry."

"It, just," Harry said, because if he couldn't talk to Ron and Hermione, then who could he talk to? "It's mental, alright? The last time I saw Malfoy, he was trying to turn me in to Voldemort!" This wasn't quite 100% true, since they'd passed by Malfoy later in the battle, and Harry had glimpsed him at his trial, too. He'd even spoken at it, and had said a lot about childhood mistakes, and how Malfoy had it in him to be a better person, if he were allowed the freedom to do it. Mostly, he'd done it because Narcissa Malfoy had saved his life for her son's sake; and what he'd meant, without thinking he had to clarify, was that Malfoy should do all that improvement as far away from him as possible. Which Malfoy had done the last three years, to what Harry would have assumed was their mutual satisfaction, if he'd spared much thought for it at all. "I don't understand how I could have ended up with Malfoy. He's such a git!"

"You know, that's what I said?"

" Ron !"

"Well, I did," said Ron. "Quite a lot actually. Had to quit saying it once you threatened to hex me, though."

Harry couldn't imagine threatening to hex Ron over Malfoy's honor. Or, really, over anything involving Malfoy that wasn't Harry wanted to kill him and Ron trying to stop him (probably because of being Imperiused, because up until the last three days, Ron had been the one who still hated Malfoy, and Harry the one who didn't want to waste timing thinking about him). 

This suddenly seemed like rather a lot to try to say, however. In the end, all he managed was a groan.

*

After which, Ron got out the Firewhisky. It helped, a little. At least, it did right until the point Hermione got that look in her eye again. It had been her studying look in school, her researching look in all other circumstances. The books she'd brought in were still on the desktop, staring at Harry. Judging him for not wanting his memories back, probably. He was abruptly determined not to get dragged into a discussion about it. If they did start talking about his memories, they'd just end up in a fight about how he hadn't taken his potion. There was no way it wouldn't come up. Several hours ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to bring it up first. Not to them. Now, though...

"I've got to get home," he said, rising from his chair. "Wouldn't want Malfoy to worry, you know."

Before he could see if Ron and Hermione shared another one of their married people looks, he rushed back up the stairs, only distantly hearing them as they said "Alright," and "Take care," and "Come back anytime, Harry, really." 

It wasn't until he got back to the drawing room that he realized what the trouble was going to be with this. He turned back around and tromped down the stairs once more.

"Hey," he said from the doorway of the study, where Hermione and Ron could be seen speaking in a low tone, most certainly about him. When they looked toward him, he said, "Where do I live? Er, for the Floo, I mean."

They stared at him a moment. It was, Harry thought, a pitying sort of look, not really all that far removed from the way they'd have looked at him if he'd ended up in Ward 49, instead of this. Then Ron said, "You're at 1 Hummingbird Lane."

"Right," said Harry. "Thanks."

"Harry?" said Hermione, when his foot was back on the first step. 

Harry considered ignoring her, but looked back, instead. "Yeah?"

"Try to be kind," she said. "I know this is really very difficult for you, but--it can't be easy for Draco, either."

There were a thousand things Harry could have said to this. Starting with asking who she really meant, because there was no way she could have been talking about Malfoy. Middling with demanding an explanation about what part of this was meant to be not easy for Malfoy. Ending with being offended at whatever comparisons or explanations she came up with, and the way Ron would probably agree with her, since both of them apparently liked Malfoy now.

He didn't say any of it, because as much as he wanted to let loose, what he didn't want was to have to hear whatever they'd have to say back.

"Yeah," he said, instead, and went back up the stairs.

*

Green flames whirled around him. Harry spun and spun some more--and then, instead of stepping or even clattering out of the fireplace, he simply stopped, there in what had suddenly become total darkness. He wasn't, so far as he could tell, anywhere at all. Before he could move even enough to draw his wand, the tip of someone else's came to press against his throat, right at the soft underside of his jaw.

"Are you a friend or foe of Harry Potter?" asked a cool, drawling voice he'd have known anywhere, except evidently when he was a bit concussed and a bit more cursed and quite a bit more thrown nearly two decades forward into his own life.

"Er," said Harry, thinking quickly. Either someone had sabotaged the Floo Network, or this was one of the protections Ron had talked about, that were on Harry's house but not Grimmauld Place. Since he'd left the cottage without anything like this happening, then it'd most likely be the latter, wouldn't it? It was what he was going to have to bank on. "I'm Harry Potter."

"I don't think it sounds like you," said the cool, drawling voice. "Do you think it sounds like you?"

"No idea," said someone else cheerily. "Next you should try saying, 'How do you know, are you one?' If I think it's funny, I'm me, and if I'm, I don't know, confused about it, or weird, then..."

Harry, very confused about it indeed, had nonetheless managed to figure out just who this second voice belonged to, even if he usually heard it from inside his skull rather than from the outside. He kept his mouth shut, lest the spell pick up on his confusion and end up doing whatever was meant for foes to him.

"Ha, ha," said Malfoy. "No, but anything like that really would be a bit too tricky. I don't think the spell can distinguish between someone pretending to be you, but badly, and you if you were--I don't know, fucked up and trying to get home."

"I don't know why we have to bother with all this anyway," complained Harry--the other one, who was talking to Malfoy in the darkness, or had been, however many months or years ago they'd set this up. "Why don't we add in a voice-recognition spell, and worry about the rest if we ever have cause?"

"Suppose we'll have to."

"That first bit was good, though--really ominous. We can keep it for the other versions. And then you can work on sounding even gittier for the enemies one."

"Alright," said Malfoy.

The spinning began again, green flames all around him. The voices faded, but not before the other Harry said, "We can keep this one for me, I'll get a laugh out of it."

"That's only because you have an atrocious sense of--"

At this, Harry was spat out into the drawing room at Hummingbird Lane, and didn't hear any more.

*

"He returns," Malfoy said dryly, the moment Harry came into the living room, which he pretty much had to, seeing as it was connected to the drawing room.

Harry ignored this, in favor of saying, "What's going on with our Floo?"

Malfoy blinked at him, then said, "Oh, that. You didn't like it? You always did before. Said it reminded you of moist mail."

"...Moist mail?" repeated Harry doubtfully.

"If you can't keep up with all these Muggle inventions, how do you expect me to do it?" said Malfoy, which seemed unfair for a number of reasons. "Now, have you got anything to say for yourself?" he went on, which caused Harry quite abruptly to remember how Malfoy had followed him to Grimmauld Place.

"Haven't got anything to say to you, no," he said, abruptly defensive once more, and appreciating it as an emotion somehow less than he had when he'd been having it at Grimmauld Place. "Didn't realize I needed your permission to have a visit with my friends."

Malfoy, who'd been sat in his Leaning Chair again, made a choking sound, then bounded up. For a moment, Harry was sure he was about to be hexed. He reached for his wand, but by the time his fingers had brushed against it, Malfoy had changed direction. Over to the Pensieve he went, with the distinct air of a person who was set to add more shagging to the mixture just because he was pissed off at Harry.

"It's not that you need permission ," Draco said levelly, when the memory, whatever it was, was no longer shimmering at the end of his wand. He hadn't turned around. "You don't, of course. You're a bloody adult, aren't you? It's just, if you don't come back from wherever you've gone, it'd be nice to be able to give the Auror's Office an indication as to where they should be looking for your body."

Harry couldn't help thinking that, actually, he did more or less need permission to go places, at this point. He couldn't very well be seen out and about when Teddy-as-Harry was being seen at Hogwarts in the same moment, could he? Not that he could say any of that to Malfoy, or would have wanted to even if he could.

"Funny how you're so concerned about it when I'm trying to see Ron and Hermione. Didn't seem to bother you at all when I went off by myself yesterday," he said, this having just occurred to him, along with the uncomfortable thought that Malfoy might be trying to separate him from his friends, for some reason--or, even more uncomfortably, that he might be jealous, or...something.

Now Malfoy did turn around, looking peevish. "I knew where you were yesterday. You were off stomping about in the woods, same as you always do when you're in a strop. You do so love scaring off the deer."

"I didn't see any deer," Harry said.

"Yes," said Malfoy, as if Harry had asked a question instead of engaging with the only thing Malfoy had said that didn't seem to imply he knew more about what Harry was like in a temper than Harry did.

"Whatever," Harry said. "Alright, Malfoy, I won't go anywhere else without, I don't know, telling you, or--I'll leave you a note, or something. Happy?"

"Incandescent," said Malfoy dryly. He looked off in the distance for a few moments, then seemed to zero in on Harry again very intensely. It was unnerving.

"What?"

"I heard something about Teddy, back at Grimmauld Place," Malfoy said, which was by far the most horrifying thing he could have said. Harry felt the blood drain from his face and, possibly, something of his soul leaving his body. "What's he doing at Hogwarts? Impersonating you, it sounded like, but I didn't--are you alright?"

"You can't--you can't tell anyone," Harry said, hearing himself only distantly as he wrapped his hand around his wand, wishing he remembered getting far enough in his Auror training to have learned a proper Obliviate. "Malfoy, you can't--"

Malfoy's face twisted into something less nasty than incredulous. "Of course not. What do you take me for?"

"--I don't know," said Harry, because although Malfoy had been a Death Eater once, he wasn't anymore. For one thing, all Death Eaters had more or less ceased to be ones the moment Voldemort had died. What was left was the occasional Dark wizard, and he was relatively certain Malfoy wasn't one, regardless of how much of a prat he was; everything else aside, all their personal shit, he really had believed the things he'd said at Malfoy's trial, and still did, more or less. There was a line between being an unpleasant person and a monster, and the latter had never actually fit Malfoy all that well in the first place. "I, just--don't, alright? You have to promise me you won't."

Malfoy's face twisted again, and this time it was into something nasty indeed. "Why should I promise you anything? You wouldn't trust my word anyway, would you? And--and it's not like I can blame you, really, is it? Not after how we left it, back then."

The way he said this seemed to indicate that he was blaming Harry quite heavily anyway. All Harry could think, though, was that here was a way to get off Teddy. To distract Malfoy, get him to talk about something, anything else--

"Hard to trust someone who's keeping secrets from me," he said, and was pleased, though distantly again, to see how white and strange Malfoy's face went, at that. "It's been, what, about five minutes since I got back from St Mungo's? And you've got about half the house locked up. For all I know, you could have dozens of Dark objects tucked away upstairs."

Harry didn't really believe this when he started saying it. He believed it a lot less by the time he finished, which was about as long as it took for the color to return to Malfoy's face, and for his expression to go all sneery again.

"Would you really like to know what I've got hidden up there?" Malfoy asked with a brightness that clashed awfully with his twisted expression.

"Er," said Harry, who had decided not to care, before, and didn't really care now, either, not really. At least, not compared to everything else he needed to care about. "Yeah. Alright. Tell me."

Malfoy came up very close to him. So close Harry wanted to take a step back, only he couldn't, in case Malfoy took it as a sign of weakness or...he didn't know. He leaned in, and said, his breath brushing hotly against Harry's face--

"Yeah, I don't think so." So saying, he whipped around and stormed off. Then, a moment after he'd disappeared from the doorway, he reappeared in it, or at least his head did, as he peered back in. "And, by the way? Fuck you, too, Potter."