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: 7500

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

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

Chapter Fifteen

"Harry, wake up."

It wasn't the first time the voice had said so.

"You're dreaming, Harry."

Maybe, though, it was the first time it had mattered, or at least the first time it had seemed to mean anything...to break through to where he was, so that he could...

Harry left the green light behind and emerged, gasping, into a more welcome darkness.

"Fuck," he said, in a thick voice, knowing he'd just been in his crying dream again, and at the same time knowing it had to have been real, couldn't have felt the way it had unless there was something to it... "Fuck," he said again, and fumbled around for his wand. If he could see his room, then he wouldn't still be seeing those still figures, lined up on the floor of the Great Hall...

Before he'd managed to find his wand in the dark, much less to light it, someone else's wand lit up, and Harry found himself eye to eye with Draco. 

Draco, who was here, in his room, frowning at him. Draco, who still had circles under his eyes no less dark than they'd been on Boxing Day a week ago. Draco, who hadn't spoken to him at all since then, but who was at least here to frown at him instead of...

"Better now?" Draco asked coolly. "Can I go, then?"

Harry wiped his face with his hands, which didn't do much when it came to having him feel like he was anything other than exposed, but at least left his face fifty percent dryer. "Have you got to?" After he'd said it, Harry heard how plaintive and baby-ish this sounded. It might actually have been alright having been said to Draco Malfoy in general, but was a thousand times worse having been said to Draco Malfoy who didn't want to be there. "I mean, yeah, go ahead. I'm alright. No need to hang around!"

Draco's expression seemed to soften, both in pointiness and in temperature. "If you like," he said. "I just didn't think you'd want..."

"I'm not the one who hasn't been talking to you," Harry pointed out.

He budged over before Draco could say to, and moved the covers over too for good measure.

Draco put out the light, then climbed into bed next to him. He did it quietly, without even acknowledging what Harry had said. Did he think they were still in a fight? There was not, so far as Harry knew, any rule saying a crying dream erased being in a fight. So probably they actually were still in one, if you could actually call it a fight when one of you was giving the other the silent treatment, but only when you happened to be in the same room together, which mostly you weren't because the first one of you was avoiding the other one in addition.

Harry lay there quietly too for a while, until wondering about this seemed to have eclipsed the feeling of still being in the dream enough for the pink gumminess to worm its way back in behind his eyes. 

"I don't like it when you don't talk to me," Harry said then, figuring it was a decent bet now since Draco was both here and had been responding to him just a few minutes ago.

For a long few moments, there was more silence, during which the pink gumminess did some more worming. It had got very bad lately; presently it was so overwhelming Harry could actually smell it. If it were as bad in the morning as it had been yesterday, he wouldn't be able to see much of anything but flashing pink lights for the first twenty minutes after waking up.

Just as Harry was certain Draco must have dropped off after all, an answer came from out of the dark: "I know you don't like it."

"No," Harry said, without knowing he meant to say it, or even having the faintest idea what he meant to say next.

"...No?"

"It's not about what I liked or didn't like before," Harry said. "I don't like it. Me. Who's here right now."

"Oh," said Draco. "Well. I know that too. You've spent the entire last week stomping around like a--um. I mean, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, alright. Me too," said Harry, though he still wasn't sure why, exactly, Draco had been so fucked off with him to begin with. All he was really sure of was that Draco was here now. It seemed, somehow, to be the most relevant thing. "I still don't get why," he started, and then stopped. "What am I missing about the case thing?" he asked, because there had clearly been something, hadn't there? Something that had gotten Draco all fucked off at him, or that had upset him, or whatever it had been.

"Harry." Draco hesitated, the quiet non-sound of which was recognizable even in the dark.

"Draco," Harry said, a little mockingly, not having known he meant to say it that way, not unlike the way Draco said his name sometimes.

"It's just--it's not that I don't care about Teddy's welfare! Of course it's a good thing he'll be out of harm's way. Though, need I remind you he's an Auror, and will be in it again within days, if not hours. It's just that it won't be about you then." Harry opened his mouth to protest this point, but before he could, Draco went on: "I'm not saying it doesn't matter! I know it does, to you, and I understand why. That's all fine, and everything, it's just..."

"What?"

"Don't make me say it." Next to Harry, Draco shifted around, though it was hard to say exactly in what way, given that even if the clouds outside the window hadn't been covering up the moon, the pink gumminess would not have made it easy to make things out in the dark.

"You can't make an enormous deal about something and not even tell me what you're talking about," Harry said, rather reasonably he thought, considering he'd always hated conversations that went in this sort of direction.

"I think you'll find I can do whatever I like," said Draco snidely.

"But it makes you a bit of a dick, doesn't it?" Harry said. "If you do."

Draco shifted some more. The blanket shifted with him, so that when he next spoke, his voice was muffled enough that Harry imagined he must have been hiding his head beneath the blanket, or else had his face smashed into the pillow. "I suppose I'll have to be a bit of a dick, then," he said. "I didn't mean to--I'm not trying to wind you up. I just--I can't. I fucking can't, alright? Not when you don't--not when you're going to..." He took a breath which, even muffled, seemed loud and shuddery. "Not with the you who's here right now. Alright?"

"Oh." Harry felt a bit as if he'd been slapped in the face, and maybe slammed in the stomach by a wayward Stunner in addition. He swallowed, which seemed somehow a much more difficult thing to achieve than it generally was. "Alright," he added, and thought that even if he'd been able to come up with anything worth saying to this, he might not have been able to get it out.

"Harry..." Draco said with a concern Harry didn't have to see to recognize, he'd heard it often enough over the past few months.

"Don't worry about it," Harry said, managing to keep his voice unwobbly and normal out of nothing more than sheer panic that Draco might pick up on just how much he was bothered by that. "I want to sleep now. You should too, you need your rest..."

"--Alright," Draco said.

*

The last time Draco had lain in bed next to him, Harry had been surprised at how quickly he'd managed to get to sleep. It hadn't seemed like an activity it was advisable to do around Draco Malfoy. It didn't seem very advisable now, either, if for different reasons than the other time.

Still, though part of Harry was convinced he couldn't possibly sleep--not in the shadow of his crying dream, which had been difficult to shake when it was new, and felt as if it should be more difficult to shake now parts of it were new again; not after whatever that had been, with Draco--he must have done eventually. He must have slept, because at some point Draco's voice woke him again, a low urgent whisper:

"Harry. Wake up."

"Mmeugh," Harry said, not very alert as well as pink and gummy indeed, in that first moment.

"Harry, come on."

Draco was here, in his bed, with him. Draco was here, and he was saying...something important-sounding.

Harry came completely awake, if no less completely gummy. "What's it?" he asked blearily, his throat not yet caught up to the idea of being awake. "Whas'happen? You alright?"

"Nothing's wrong," Draco said. "It's, just, I thought you might like to..."

"What?"

Draco swallowed, a very audible sound in the dark and quiet, and one which seemed to make its way past the pink gumminess with ease. The murmur that followed was barely any louder: "Easiest to show you."

Then his hand was on Harry's arm, tugging him closer. Harry turned onto his side and found his chest pressed up against Draco's back. He was solid, and incredibly warm, a surprise that seemed to shoot through Harry's entire body so that all of him seemed to tingle in that way his lips had on Christmas.

"Sorry," Draco said. "I didn't want to move too much, in case he stopped..."

Harry, filling with a heat along with the tingle, barely heard this at first, and came nowhere near knowing what Draco meant. "It's alright," he said, in what seemed even from inside of his own skull to be very hoarsely. "I don't, er, mind."

Then Draco had hold of his hand, guiding it to where he wanted it, and for a moment Harry's everything blazed with a question (did Draco want...??), two (did Harry???), and then Draco had laid Harry's hand against the part of him that in recent weeks had become a puffiness followed by a roundness rarely seen but often looked for. It was round again now, firm and warm beneath Harry's fingers, his palm.

"It's been, um, happening for a few minutes now," Draco said, in a voice that gave the distinct impression that the back of his neck, which Harry must certainly have been breathing on, must certainly have gone a bright pink. "You might get to feel it if you keep your hand still..."

Harry waited for a long moment, understanding now what was happening, what he was meant to be waiting on. He kept his hand still on Draco's stomach, 

"Here," Draco said, a lower murmur, and pulled Harry's hand up a little, and laid it there, pressed flat against him...

Harry was still again, as still as could be, not moving, not even to breathe. His lungs started to burn, he started breathing again, and still nothing had.

"Um," said Draco. "I swear I'm not--he really was moving around, before. Apparently he wants to play hide and seek now."

"He must be a natural, given he's winning," Harry said, not sure if Draco was trying to say they were done, but keeping his hand where it was. "D'you get to feel him a lot?"

"A little, the past few weeks. Only from the outside for the past few nights..."

"Yeah?" Harry said, and if he was disappointed not to have felt anything for himself, which he was a little, it wasn't much of a thing compared to the relief flooding through him, dispelling the last wispy remnants of his crying dream: here was Draco, warm and living; inside him was their son, safely hidden; together they were proof against the latest new part of his crying dream, more still bodies lying toward the end of that terrible line of them in the Great Hall...

"Listen, if you want to try--sometimes I do it this way." Draco grabbed Harry's hand again. This time he didn't move it anywhere else, but pressed down, just a little. "If you rub it, then sometimes--you don't have to, obviously, but it might..."

"Yeah, alright, I'll try it," said Harry, aware that whatever color Draco's face was right now, it couldn't possibly be as red as his own at the mention of...rubbing stuff... 

He rubbed Draco's stomach, very gently, then rubbed it some more, slowly indeed. He was not, by now, expecting much to happen; was instead focused on just how much of Draco he was touching, and how little he minded it; how he didn't actually mind it at all, this unexpected intimacy with Draco Malfoy...

A little while into not expecting anything to happen, something jabbed at his hand, so lightly Harry didn't catch onto it until a moment or two after it was over.

"Was that...?" he asked, at the same moment Draco asked, "Did you get to feel it that time?"

Something jabbed at Harry's hand again, so lightly it could have been a muscle twitch, except that it wasn't...

"There it was again!" Harry waited to see if there would be a third jabbing. "That's brilliant," he said, after there had been a third and didn't seem to be a fourth on offer.

"You're welcome," said Draco smugly, leaning back against Harry for a very nice moment before pulling Harry's hand off his stomach and moving away again.

"You're brilliant too," said Harry, who'd known he never could have done anything like this, but hadn't realized just how amazing it was that Draco could, and had...

"I," Draco said, followed by, "yes," followed by another swallowing sound. "I'm glad you--that you noticed," he added, in a strange, thick voice. And, a minute later: "I need the loo. Think I'd better head back to my room after. Less likely to wake you the next time, that way..."

Harry wanted to say he was happy to be woken up every hour on the hour, if it meant Draco were here with him. That it was really nice, lying next to him, and actually had been even better when they'd been more or less spooning. He might have managed to say some of it, that first bit at least, except then he thought, not with the you who's here right now, and thought couldn't even try to manage it after that. Not when the catch in Draco's voice so obviously meant the same thing.

"Alright," he said, instead. "Er, sleep well."

"You too," Draco said.

After Draco had gone, Harry lay in bed for a long time. Long enough to hear Draco go in and out of the bathroom; long enough to hear another door close, further down the hall. Hopefully it was the one that led to his bedroom; hopefully Draco was sleeping right now.

As for Harry, there was not really much chance of sleep. Not, at least, until he'd got up, and fumbled with his potion in the dark, and realized that wasn't going to work out, and so lit his wand and then poured himself his third full dose of the day, and drank it down.

After that, he did manage to sleep, or at least did a little.

*

"It's past time we took down the decorations," Draco said imperiously several days later. "They've been up days too long already."

Harry, who'd dragged himself out of bed pinkly, and eaten his breakfast so gummily he'd been half certain he wouldn't be able to finish it, thought about arguing the point. There was, he was certain, a reason he shouldn't want to that was unrelated to how he kind of just wanted to find a place to curl up, with his forehead pressed into something on the off-chance it helped with the pink gumminess. He just couldn't think of what reason that was.

"Alright," he said.

There came a pause, which might have been long or might have just felt it. "Are you feeling alright?" asked Draco, who had been somewhere else before, and was now by the couch, looking down at him.

"Fine!" Harry said, glad he hadn't given in to the forehead-pressing inclination out in the living room, where Draco could see. "Everything's great."

"It's just that you'd usually...nevermind." Draco went from hesitant to imperious again in the blink of an eye, but Harry couldn't seem to focus enough to look at him to find out if he were now sneering: "Suppose you'd better get your arse up and help me, then."

Harry got his arse up, an activity he seemed to be able to handle without having to think very much or at all about. In fact he rolled off the couch and onto his feet with an ease he felt sure hadn't given away how shit he felt. "What's first?" he asked.

"We'll box up the small things. You can handle the tree ornaments, while I'll get the things on the shelves."

Harry would rather have handled boxing up the non-escaping kinds of objects, only there wasn't a way to express this that wouldn't come off as whiny. Or at least not one he could think of right now. So when the boxes flew down the stairs, seemingly a whole lot faster than they had done the first time, he got to work.

First the things that were actually attached to the trees, and didn't seem to want to move on their own. Each one packed carefully in the box, the Muggle ornaments placed especially carefully, with enough padding around each one that the boxes could be dropped from a very great distance and still hopefully not break them. Then the owls, which could be coaxed to come to you if you offered the sort of head-scratching motion real owls didn't tend to be terribly keen on. Then the broomsticks, which seemed to take a regular break from flying around, and could be gathered up in a handful if you caught multiple ones taking one at the same time. Then, finally, the little Snitches, which seemed to predict when they were about to be caught, and flitted away at a speed Harry could have handled easily on a less gummy day, but did not feel very equipped for on this one. Still, he managed to catch them, one by one, even if they took a few tries apiece.

"Harry?" Draco said, when this was done.

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine!"

"When you're fine, you don't need three minutes to catch a tree-Snitch," Draco said, probably sneerily, who knew; when Harry turned to try to look at him, there were pink lights flashing across his vision, not unlike the ones he'd gotten first thing the last few mornings, so that he couldn't make out much other than Draco's general outline. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing much," said Harry. "Just, the pink gumminess from before has got a bit worse lately..."

"Oh? Since when?"

Since Christmas, really, but it had been bearable at first, not really that much worse than it had been to start with. It was only recently it'd got actually unbearable, a swelling pressure in his head, even fucking with his eyes. "Maybe about the last week," Harry said, not up to counting back the days to figure exactly how many there had been. "It's not that bad, though..."

"Oh, is that all?" said Draco, after a beat. "And here I thought it might be something serious."

Harry felt weirdly let down by this response, but would much rather have died than let on about it. "Yeah."

"Maybe it's a good sign," Draco went on. "Given it's meant to be a side effect of your potion, maybe it means it's actually working now. I know you don't care, but..."

"Yeah," muttered Harry, knowing even through the pink gumminess that his potion was dangerous grounds for conversation with Draco, the idea of him finding out Harry'd gone the first three months ducking it an even worse one now that he wasn't anymore... "Can we just get this finished?"

"Alright," said Draco, what might've been a little sharply, or maybe not.

With Draco casting the charms meant to remind Christmas trees of how cozy and dark and nice a cardboard box could be for the other eleven months a year, Harry managed to wrestle the smaller living room tree into its box. Then it came time for the second one, which fought twice as hard with three times the charms on it, and he managed to get it in its box too...

Then he straightened up from this endeavor, and the flashing pink lights turned to something else, a pink fuzz that started at his peripheral vision and moved in on the rest so swiftly there was no chance of reacting...

"Um," Harry said, thought later he might've said, pink fuzz going all the way to black. "Draco--"

*

"Harry?" Draco said, this time sharply, definitely very sharply. "Harry. Harry!"

Harry was half on the floor, half atop the Christmas tree box. The tree was protesting this by weakly slapping at his torso. Draco was down on the floor too, shaking Harry by his shoulders.

"Harry," he said. "Fuck--Harry--"

"What...?" Harry tried, feeling fuzzy indeed, and not entirely or at all sure what was going on.

The hands on Harry's shoulders stilled. "Oh, thank God. Did you hit your head? Can you stand?"

"What happened?" Harry managed.

"What happened? What happened?" Draco laughed, a sound that didn't come off so much sharp as it did hysterical. "You fainted, that's what fucking happened!"

"Oh," Harry said. The pink fuzz had gone, and the pink flashing lights too, but what was left was doing a nauseous twisting thing behind his eyes, which seemed to be radiating downward in order to twist a bit south of his chest too... "How long was I out for?"

"Five seconds, maybe ten, I don't know," Draco said. "I wasn't exactly timing you, was I?"

"Oh," Harry said again. "That's not too bad, is it?"

"Not too bad! One second of fainting is too--"

One second was about all the warning Harry had. He rolled over, away from Draco, just in time to be sick all over the floor. 

"Er," he said, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "Sorry..."

"It's alright," Draco said. His hands were back on Harry's shoulders, the coolness of them leeching through his shirt. "Can you get up?"

Harry was sick all over the floor a second time.

"Maybe not right now," he said when he was finished, not having tried to stand, but too weak and shaky to think it was likely to be worth the effort.

"It's alright. You're alright," said Draco, rubbed Harry's shoulders. "Do you--"

Harry was sick again, less chunkily this time, but not really any more pleasant to go through. In fact things were getting distinctly less pleasant each time, not as if he were letting go of something awful, but as if it were ingraining itself even more deeply with each bout of retching.

"That's it, we're going to Mungo's," Draco said. "I mean, we were anyway, but now we're going now."

"But, Teddy--" Harry said. "What about--"

"Don't worry about him."

"We should at least wait til--" they could Floo him a warning after his classes were over for the day, was what Harry meant to say; he sicked up again instead, an unleashing of yellow bile that wasn't anywhere near as pink as it seemed like it ought to have been. "You're too upset, anyway," he said croakily, not having missed the tremor in Draco's voice, or the one in his hands... "You can't Apparate--"

"If no one could Apparate in an emergency, a lot more people would be dead in them, wouldn't they?"

Harry made an effort to get up then, to wrench himself away...but his legs and arms didn't seem able to do what he wanted them to do, or really anything at all, and Draco had too tight of a hold on him anyway, so that when the squeezing dark came for him, there was no ducking it...

*

Something about the Apparition point was different this time. Even being sick again didn't keep Harry from knowing that much, though he wasn't anywhere near un-sick enough to figure what it could be.

A voice, not Draco's, asking, "What are you doing in here?"

"I've Harry Potter here," Draco snapped back. "The real one. Go find an Auror and tell them so. Better yet, find someone with clearance and tell them. " Footsteps, that seemed to be rushing away, until: "Where are you going? Can't you see he needs an anti-nausea something or other? No, not a potion, for fuck's sake, how do you think he'd manage to keep it--thank you, I'm glad to see you recall basic charms you probably were taught on your first day!"

"Ugh," Harry said, not feeling exactly as if being sick again might not be on the table, so much as that he wasn't going to be sick again imminently. He sat up in time to see a flash of Healer's robe go out the door of the small room they were in.

"He'll have to be Obliviated anyway," Draco said. "So it doesn't really matter if I'm rude to him."

For some reason, that statement was how it became clear to Harry exactly where they were. They'd landed within a yellow circle which had been drawn on the floor. Around them were four hospital beds, all empty. The walls were covered in shelves covered in bottles of medical potions, everything from easily obtained to really restricted ones.

"You planned for this. You and Ron," Harry said, because they couldn't have landed at the Auror's Apparition point within St Mungo's if Draco hadn't been shown it, at some point. Not safely, at least, when the situation was already...

"I mean, obviously?" Draco said, tone not really that much nicer for Harry than it had been for whatever poor Healer had been assigned here today. "We weren't  keen on letting you bleed out if got your hands sliced off during lunchtime in Scotland."

"You could have said."

"Yes. Because you were in a place to hear me." Draco's voice was measured now, maybe too much so; he crouched behind Harry, who was still on the floor, and put his hands on Harry's shoulders again.

"Yeah, but you could've still tried."

"Honestly, Harry," Draco said, his thumbs doing a thing somewhere above Harry's collarbone. "You're so--how do you feel?"

"Er, fine," Harry said, though the pink gumminess seemed to be settling behind his eyes again in a sickening pressure, now he wasn't too busy being sick every five seconds to take notice of it.

"Harry."

"Alright, fine, I feel fucking terrible," Harry admitted. "Still better than before, though!" he added, in case this had come off as whiny or baby-ish.

"Better than when you were busy losing all the liquid in your body out your mouth? Yes, I should hope your current state is an improvement," said Draco coolly. "Why didn't you say something before?" To which he didn't even let Harry respond before adding, "Nevermind, you're an idiot, that's why."

"Yeah, an idiot who married you," snapped Harry, not up at all for being picked at.

Behind him, Draco seemed to suck in a breath. "Harry, do you--"

"I meant apparently," Harry snapped some more. "And no, I don't remember it! I never do, do I? But you keep on asking!"

Draco's hands went very still, and seemingly even colder, then left Harry's shoulders altogether. "Yes," he said, a coolish sort of wavering. "I, just--um. Do you think you could have hit your head? I don't think you did, but I'm not--it happened so fast, I'm not sure if I could have missed it."

"I don't think I hit my head," Harry said. "I don't know for sure, though," he added, less because he thought it could've, and more because those missing five to ten seconds seemed longer now than they had at first.

"Alright," Draco said. "Can you get up?"

"Yeah, I can," Harry said, and proceeded to can't, so dizzily he ended up landing right on top of the mess he'd made on the floor. Warmish bile soaked into his trousers. When he looked down, he found his shirt matched his trousers, with a cooling patch of disgusting all down the front.

"Here," Draco said, and helped him up and over to the nearest hospital bed.

They only made it there because it wasn't very far, about a step and a half from where Harry had been sitting. Harry sank down heavily onto the end of the bed, his head starting to spin, which made him feel vaguely like being sick again, although again there didn't seem to be much danger of it happening.

"Scourgify," muttered Draco a couple times in succession, leaving Harry's clothes clean and dry again. Then he turned and did the same for the mess on the floor--and then, mortifyingly and without any commentary at all, to his own hands. "Do you need help scooting back?" he asked. "Or do you, I don't know, want to lie down?"

"I don't need to lay down," Harry said, gripping the sides of the bed with both hands, and having scooted back several inches on his own, so that he felt secure enough for falling off not to feel too likely, and for any help to not be wanted even a tiny little bit.

"If you insist," Draco said, and wandered over to the door to poke his head out. "What's taking them--! Do people have to be bleeding out to receive prompt attention in this ward?!"

He headed out into the hall, possibly to locate whoever he thought was supposed to be here, or possibly to tear a strip off another unsuspecting Healer. The moment he was gone, Harry was hit with a wave of dizziness that seemed to whirl him around pinkly, until he wasn't actually sure how he wasn't being sick again.

A minute later, people swept into the room, Draco and someone in red Auror robes and another someone in Healer robes. Possibly the same someone as before, Harry didn't know. Whoever it was, they came over to him, and said, "Mr. Potter? I'm going to cast some diagnostic charms on you now. Nothing intense or complicated; I just want to be certain you're not in immediate danger."

"Yeah, alright," Harry said, and closed his eyes again. This seemed to help, or at least didn't make everything worse the way trying to keep an eye out did. He imagined he could feel the diagnostic charm sizzling over his skin, which made his stomach turn over so flippily it really must have been magic keeping him from being sick again.

The Healer was very quiet in casting, which allowed Harry to hear some of what Draco and the Auror were talking about.

"--collapsed at home, nothing to do with the case so far as I know," Draco was saying. "He's been seeing Healer Jenkins from Potion and Plant Poisoning, I've already sent someone to...we might have to have other people in, depending, unless he has to be moved..."

The Auror muttered something Harry didn't catch in entirety.

"...change your plans, then..." Draco was saying, rather more sharply. "If you imagine Teddy Lupin wouldn't care if...Ron Weasley, for that matter..."

"All finished," said the Healer, who'd turned out to be a young-looking wizard, meaning one at least five years older than Harry had thought he was not so very long ago. Silence fell as he continued: "Your vital signs are strong, with no mortal indications. Which means--"

"I'm not dying, got it," said Harry hastily, feeling that having to sit through having this explained to him might actually be several hundred times worse than anything else. "Is that it?"

The Healer seemed to hesitate for a moment. "And you're not pregnant."

"Great," Harry said, feeling he could have cleared that much up for himself.

"God, can you imagine," Draco muttered.

Harry could, but preferred not to, all things considered.

*

Healer Jenkins, who turned out to be the Head Healer Harry had been seeing the other times, arrived a few minutes later, just around the time the Auror left again. She closed the door and brightened the lights, which until then had been fairly dim and unobtrusive ones.

"Hello, Harry," she said. "I hear you're not feeling well today."

This somehow managed to feel like an understatement while at the same time making Harry even more nauseous at how big a deal it seemed to be becoming. "I passed out, I guess. And I puked a little."

"He couldn't have done it more if he'd taken half a dozen Puking Pastilles," Draco offered.

"I puked some," Harry amended.

"Alright," said Healer Jenkins. "Which came first, fainting or vomiting?"

"I passed out first. The puking started after."

The Healer pulled out her want and cast something or other in the direction of Harry's head. "Hmm. No sign of concussion. What were you doing when you fainted? Can you describe how you were feeling?"

So Harry told her about how they'd been taking down Christmas decorations, and about the pink gumminess. How it had been getting worse lately, adding in dizziness and eye flashes and that terrible pressure behind his eyes too.

At this, of course, she wanted to shine a light into his eyes like she had done the last time. Harry couldn't imagine what she was looking for, at least not until he imagined a pink fuzziness that might've crawled down from inside his head, or something. Then he wished very much he'd imagined anything else.

When she was done with that, though, she cast a few more things, none of which Harry felt or could see, or that seemed to do anything. Finally, she said, "Are you still taking the Memory-Induction Potion?"

"Er, yeah," Harry said, glancing at Draco, who was looking very pointy indeed, at the moment.

"Alright," said the Healer. "I'm finding no sign of underlying illness, even a subtle one. Your original symptoms--the pink gumminess, as you've called it--are most likely a side effect."

"Of WHAT?" Harry asked, very loudly indeed. "What could they possibly be a side effect OF?"

It was only then that he realized, in a pink gummy sort of horror, that he really oughtn't to have said so, might have just given away that he hadn't been taking his potion (at least, not until very recently)...

He looked back at Draco again, and happened to still be looking when the Healer went on: "The difference between today and your visit in October seems to be one of severity. The Memory-Induction Potion is specifically calibrated not to linger within your body. This is why it must be taken daily, and means it's unlikely a regular dosage over a period of months would cause an increase in the initial side effects."

"Which means...what?" Harry asked, but he was still looking at Draco, who was looking at the Healer, pointier than ever, and now sort of pale too.

"Overdose," the Healer said.

Draco made a sound, a low awful one, and went from pale to completely white in the face.

For a moment, Harry was between two options, the only ones there seemed to be. Then, he said, to the Healer, "Can I, er, speak to you in private?"

"Of course," she said.

"Sorry, Draco, but I need you to go, please," Harry said.

The worst thing about it was that even then, Draco didn't seem to be suspicious...surely he would be later, once he thought about what Harry had said and the way that he had said it; for now all he did was nod, a short jerky motion, before gliding out of the door, pale as any ghost and a good deal more silent than many.

Once he was gone, the door closed behind him, Harry turned back to the Healer and said, "It could be an overdose, maybe, I can see that." He couldn't not, considering he'd been taking two and three times what he was meant to for more than a week now... "But the pink gumminess isn't a side effect. It can't be. I've been having it since the beginning, but I didn't even start taking my potion until Christmas."

"Ah," said the Healer.

"I, er. I wasn't sure if I wanted to, at first...I mean, I was really sure I didn't want to take it, but then things changed..."

"I understand," the Healer said, soothingly again, when Harry had come to a stuttering halt. "It's not an uncommon response in this sort of situation."

"Right," Harry said, not really wanting to talk about all the ins and outs of it, whether or not it had been understandable, or whatever. "So anyway, the pink gumminess can't be from that. It's got to be from something else."

 "Mmm." The Healer reached into a pocket of her robes, and drew out a little bottle. It was filled with a gritty-looking potion of a particularly repulsive shade of green. She filled a little cup--thimble sized, again--and offered it to him. "This is a Detoxification Potion. If you'll drink it, please."

The potion was just as gritty going down as it had looked, and tasted the way foul-smelling sludge tends to smell. After Harry had drunk it, the Healer pulled out a basin from her pocket, too, and handed it to him just in time for him to be sick for what felt like several weeks. Nothing sludge-y came back out, but just more bile, on and on, until he felt nearly as empty as he had the time he'd got food poisoning and spent three days locked in the Dursleys' downstairs bathroom.

Empty, but a whole lot better than he'd felt before it had happened. The nausea was gone, the pressure behind his eyes gone too. There was no hint of the eye flashes, not a sign of any dizziness. Even the pink gumminess was fainter than it had been, so much so he would have been unlikely to notice it if he hadn't been looking.

"Er," he said when the Healer had Vanished the basin. "Guess it was mostly an overdose after all..."

"Mmm," the Healer said noncommittally. "How much of the potion have you been taking, and for how long?"

Harry's face heated up. He didn't want to admit to this, but there was really no helping it now. "Two thimblefuls for a while. Then, er, three the last few nights..."

"Because you haven't remembered anything yet," the Healer said, less a question than definitely not one.

"No, that's why I needed to, I dunno, try to catch up?"

This sounded very stupid, when said out loud. In retrospect it had been the whole time, probably.

"Taking more than the intended dose would never have worked," the Healer said. "It's meant to nudge at the places where your memories might be hidden, a little each day; it's not the quantity you've taken, but the consistency with which you've taken it. Your best path forward is to take the recommended dose each day, and give it space to do its work. Otherwise, you'll only end up being rushed here again--and next time, you might hit your head when you faint. The potion itself is unlikely to be directly fatal at any dose, but indirectly it--"

"Alright, alright," Harry said, feeling more than a bit sick over this explanation. Not quantity, but consistency, meaning he'd lost nearly three months of time on his potion, and could never get them back... "I'll be good for the rest of the time!"

This statement didn't do much to forestall the rest of the lecture, which went on for a while and seemed to imply he was an irresponsible idiot without ever actually coming out and calling him one. 

When it was over, Harry asked and the Healer said much the same thing she'd said about the pink gumminess in general, two months ago: that everyone was different, and every Dark memory curse was different too, and now that just because the pink gumminess had existed before the potion didn't mean it couldn't have turned into a side effect now.

This didn't, to Harry, really seem all that likely. He liked the idea a bit more than he had back then, though, because if it was a side effect, then maybe it meant his memories really had been trying to come back the whole time. So maybe the potion was more likely to work in the time he had left than it would have been otherwise. It was the kind of thing he really wanted to believe was true, but simultaneously the kind of thing that seemed too easy to be.

And in the meantime, there was Draco.

*

Draco was sat a little ways down the hall, with his head in his hands. When Harry got close to him, he looked up. He was still terribly pale, though not as bone-white as he'd been when he'd gone out of the room. The skin around his eyes was now very red.

"Er," Harry said. "I'm better now. So we can go whenever..."

"Alright," Draco said, and got up what seemed very heavily indeed. He followed Harry quietly back into the room with the Apparition point, and closed the door quietly behind them. "Well," he said then, with the air of a man on his way to the gallows--which didn't make a lot of sense, considering that was also the way Harry felt, but maybe he was projecting, or whatever.

"Er," Harry said. It was not very easy to come up with a way to ask if Draco had noticed the implication that Harry couldn't have been having side effects from his potion--which of course implied too that he hadn't been taking it for most of this time--without giving the whole thing away if Draco somehow hadn't.

Draco took in a deep, loud breath, then let it out again. "Listen. Harry. I never wanted to--I know I shouldn't have--" He took another deep breath, that sounded a bit more like a sob than any normal sort of intake. "It was just so obvious you wouldn't--and I've felt guilty as fuck about it the whole time--and before you get started shouting, I want you to know I'm really very sorry. Alright?"

Harry blinked at him, fairly, no, one-hundred percent certain he was meant to be the one apologizing in this scenario, for stuff like taking too much of his potion, and lying about taking it for quite a long time beforehand. "Er. For what?"

"...What?"

"What are you being really very sorry about? I don't get it."

Draco stared at him. "Um," he said, a sort of blankness hanging over his face for a second or two before a sneer came in to replace it. "You mean we're not going to have a massive row about me dragging you to Mungo's against your will? Thank Merlin for that, I've thousands of better ways to spend my time. Now, tell me what your Healer had to say."

For a moment, Harry thought about confessing the whole thing. In the next moment, he decided that was both crazy, and not something he could deal with, and went on to pass along to Draco only the things the Healer had said that didn't have implications in them.

"Alright," Draco said, when he was done. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Yeah," Harry said, though it was unclear to him what part of it Draco was talking about. "Anyway," he said, as Draco sniffed a little, and rubbed his eyes on the sleeve of his robe. "I'm alright now! Totally, one-hundred percent okay."

"Yes, you said," Draco said sniffily. "I'm glad. Really, I am, I just...fucking hormones. God."

"And, er, sorry if I was being an arsehole before," Harry went on, not remembering exactly what he'd had to say while the pink gumminess and everything was trying to bring him down, but fairly certain not much of it could have been very nice. Possibly some of it had been very not nice indeed, if Draco had been that convinced they were going to have an awful row over it...

"You should be," said Draco, wiping his eyes some more. "I'm nothing less than sweetness and light when I've been puking up everything I've eaten this year. If I can do it, you can do it too. I believe in you, Harry."

"Yeah, right," Harry said, grinning. "Laying it on a little thick, don't you think? Git."

Draco didn't grin back at him, exactly. It was more like he wobbily sneered at him, as if it were somehow a thing he had to try at much more than normal. "How about let's go home now, and try not do this again?"

"Let's," Harry agreed.