I Will Remember You

Chapter One

"Hermione!"

His voice rang out in the air but it was lost in the din and the humming throb of voices as people loitered around, talking about what had happened just seconds before. The images twisted and somersaulted through Ron's mind and yet, he couldn't quite fit them together. Death Eaters. Wands. Curses. Hermione falling to the ground.

For the first time, he wished that he had actually paid attention in class especially when they had been learning about this medi-magic stuff. Hermione would have known what to do.

"Bloody hell, Hermione," he said, his own frantic voice echoing in his ears. "Speak to me. Aren't you listening?"

He brought his fingers, stiff with cold, to her body, checking for a heartbeat. Her skin was so cold beneath his hands and Ron felt himself shiver. He didn't like the cold. Winter meant dead things and trees, icy winds freezing faces and fingers, frostbite and a bleak Quidditch-less despair that seeped into your bones.

He remembered then a moment in autumn when they had both been standing under the trees by the lake - Hermione and him.

"Look, Ron," she had said. "It's raining leaves. Isn't it gorgeous?"

So are you, he meant to say but he couldn't quite get the words past the lump in his throat. So he had said, "Er, yes. Really?" instead and she had sighed in exasperation.

"Of course it is," she said.

"Look," he said, picking a leaf out of her hair. "Leaves. My mum says they're good luck. Wizard magic and all." He pressed one into her hands as if that simple gesture

could say for him all the things he couldn't.

"Ron?" he heard a voice besides him and he was brought back with a suddenness and swiftness that unnerved him to the cold, gray muggle street. The voice was so familiar and so distinctly female that his heart leapt in his chest and hope rose within him.

He turned but his hopes came crashing down when he saw Tonks standing beside him.

"Sorry," he said. He could still feel his heart pounding in his chest. "I thought you were-" He stopped abruptly.

"It's okay," she said briskly, nodding her head but he could see the fear in her eyes as she knelt down. "I was on duty, you know. Doing an assignment. I was in the area."

Ron winced at the sympathy in her voice.

"Where's Harry?" she continued.

"At Fred and George's shop."

"I'll take care of this," she said. "And I'll get the others. Go to the shop and get Harry and I'll meet you at St. Mungo's."

Ron hesitated, his gaze falling on the still figure on the street. "No," he said, with a determination and fierceness that surprised even him. "I can't leave her".

"She'll be fine," Tonks reassured him with a small smile. "You won't have to."

The whole way to Diagon Alley, he didn't look back.

*

Ron arrived, panting and out of breath at Fred and George's shop minutes later. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see several people giving him strange looks but just then, he couldn't bring himself to care about any of that.

"Fred!" he gasped, bursting into the shop.

"Oy," Fred said, clearly not hearing the panic in his voice. 'You're dripping all over our shop."

"Easy, Fred." George's familiar voice came floating to Ron's ears. "He looks..." George seemed to be at a loss for words. "Maybe you should be nicer."

"Nicer?" Fred echoed incredulously. "Since when are we nice?"

Ron ignored them. He didn't have any time to waste standing around arguing. "It's Hermione!" he said, the words bursting out of his throat impatiently. "Got attacked! Death Eaters."

The shop went utterly still and for once neither Fred nor George knew what to say.

"Ron?" Fred pressed on; dropping the bag he was holding and coming towards him with an expression Ron had never seen before, not even when Percy had left. The pounding in his heart reached a crescendo and for a minute the room seemed to fade away until there was nothing left but blood and earth and pain.

"Where?" Fred asked, dragging Ron back to reality. He blinked and looked up into Fred's face, eyes wide with an expression he knew must mirror his own - fear and shock intermingling together. It was almost unsettling.

Ron took a deep breath. He knew that he had to snap out of whatever daze he was in. Hermione's life might depend on it. "There were some Death Eaters. They just appeared out of nowhere," he said shakily.

"They Apparated, you mean?" Fred asked quickly.

"No. Yes. I don't know," Ron said impatiently. "Let's go. Now."

"She's okay, right?" Harry asked, interrupting his thoughts. Ron turned to look at him in surprise. He couldn't remember when Harry had appeared.

"Ron?" Fred asked again. They all stood there in the vastness of the shop, the silence permeated by nothing but the drip, drip, drip of rainwater from Ron's clothes onto the floor.

*

Later, Ron stood in St. Mungo's waiting with the others and Tonks.

"What time is it?" he asked irritably.

"2:03. One minute since you last asked," Harry said distractedly.

"Are you sure?" Ron said, aggravated. "Check again." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fred and George exchange looks but for once, they said nothing.

"I'm sure she'll be okay," Harry said, sounding more like he was trying to reassure himself than stating the actual truth.

"Sure, like you'd know," Ron muttered darkly.

"The rest of the Order will be here soon." Tonks cut into their exchange. Ron glanced over at her pale figure crumpled in a chair.

He couldn't stand waiting around any more. He suddenly felt the urge to drink something strong, very strong - anything to make this ache inside of him go away.

"Coffee, anyone?" he asked.

"Sure," Harry said, looking incredibly relieved.

Ron kept on glancing at Harry the whole way to the tearoom.

"What?" Harry said, after a few minutes of constant staring. "WHAT?"

"Uh, nothing," Ron muttered though he couldn't stop the flow of thoughts. What if Harry had been there?

Harry gave him a look that said 'Tell me or else.'

"I wish you had been there," Ron said, the anger at himself boiling away near the surface. "Would have been more useful than me anyway."

"Don't be silly. You did all you could, Ron," Harry protested. "There was nothing else you could have done."

"Then why-?" he said.

"There's only so much we can do," Harry said quietly but his eyes behind his glasses looked suddenly so far away.

"Well, I wish we could do more things then," Ron said bitterly. He turned and saw Harry observing him with a gaze of quiet understanding and somehow everything seemed much better because Harry understood.

"Harry," Ron said as they sat down later holding cups in their hand. Harry slouched down in the chair besides him, his eyes looking too old for a boy of sixteen. "You know," he began. "Before the Death Eaters came, I was going to say that I loved her."

"She'll be fine, Ron," Harry said fiercely, clutching his cup of coffee like it was a lifeline. "You'll see."

"And what if she isn't?" Ron asked. "What if she bloody well goes and you know-"

"She'll be fine," Harry said again."She'll remember. And you'll tell her that you do love her." Ron stared at him - how could Harry be so sure?

"Besides," Harry said softly, running his finger over the rim of the cup. "I think she already knows." There seemed to be a wall around him, Ron thought. Why hadn't he noticed it before? Ron couldn't reach past it.

Ron stirred milk into his coffee watching the light mix into the dark until it became a smooth bittersweet blend of brown. You could add more coffee, Ron thought but it would never really be black again and no amount of milk would ever make it white.

*

"It's easy," Harry said later as Ron put down the cup of coffee.

"Easy?"

"Yes," Harry said. "It's easy to appear calm. Just take in a couple of deep breaths and just don't think about it." Ron wondered if Harry did this all the time. Was that what was happening behind his cool, calm gaze that Harry had adopted ever since the summer after Sirius had died?

"Okay," he said, sighing and taking in a couple of deep breaths. "I'm trying here but all I can feel is air rushing to my head."

"That actually isn't physically possible," Harry pointed out as they dragged their feet all the way back to the Spell Damage ward.

"Ron," he heard a voice as he entered the corridor outside the ward. He blanched when he saw it was his mum and there was a Healer standing besides her. It was definitely time to put Harry's advice into practice.

"Mum?" he asked, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. "What is it?" It was then that Ron found out that words could break. Words could hurt the most.

"I'm sorry, dear-" she began but he cut her off, his heart leaping into his throat.

"Why?" he demanded. Breathe, he thought. One -

"She's alive."

Two -

"But she's hurt. She's -"

"Lost her memory, you see," said a cool calm voice that he didn't know which bubbled over him like acid.

Three. Breathe, Ron.

"I'm sorry to tell you this; it's rather bad news, I'm afraid," the Healer said quietly but the words sounded harsh and loud in the silence of the room. "You see, it seems that the attacker fired the 'Nusquam Esse' Curse. Very rarely used, of course, but quite effective and deadly. It's virtually impossible as well to trace what wand was used to cast it."

Four. How many more to go?

"What curse is that?" Harry asked, looking pale somewhat like how he'd looked in those long days of summer after Sirius had died.

"'Nusquam esse'," the Healer said and the twinge of fear in his voice sent shivers down Ron's spine. "It's a curse that makes the victim forget to exist. When backed by enough will, the force of this influence causes the victim to believe that they no longer exist. This in turn causes an overload of the mind and kills the victim. It's not used very often, as it's quite difficult to cast. One must be powerful. Very powerful."

Five. Five felt like a giant leap and Ron was left gasping for breath.

"Will she recover?" Harry's voice was brittle like sticks.

"The attacker missed," the Healer explained, his voice sounding very far away. "Since she was hit with a glancing blow, she managed to survive as she forgot everything except her own existence."

The walls of the room seemed to be closing in around Ron and he gave up counting. It seemed like an eternity had passed when the Healer finally continued.

"So she's lost her memory, you see. Can't remember who she is. I'm so sorry for your loss. One shouldn't give up hope, though. Chances are, she may recover. Magic works itself in the strangest ways. It's all rather unfortunate."

Unfortunate? Ron thought disbelievingly, the word slamming into his gut. It wasn't unfortunate. It was every shade of wrong. Hermione couldn't have lost her memory. She was his; she was the one he...loved (how ironic - a word he couldn't say just hours ago).

The words washed over Ron like acid and for the first time, he wondered what it would be like without her. How long ago it seemed when he had first seen her on the train. Bossy and loud, a know-it-all, announcing loudly that she had studied all her books. He had thought she was annoying and overbearing when really she was just aching for a friend and too scared to say so.

How could she not remember any of that?

*

Amnesia was a thief that came creeping silently in the night to take all that Ron loved away. It was a silent disease, one that robbed a person not only of memory but identity, for how do you know who you are if you can't remember? How do you know what you have become?

After the Healer left, they went outside into the cold December afternoon. The wind was like ice eating into Ron's bones.

"Do you think she'll be alright?" he asked and his mum came to stand quietly besides him.

He noticed how she didn't say anything. Not, 'of course she will, Ron' or 'don't be silly, Ron' or 'this is all some joke'. Instead she patted him on the shoulder as if she couldn't think up of anything to say and that was the saddest thing of all. "The war's on, Ron," she said finally. "Sometimes we have to make sacrifices," and she hugged him closer as if she was afraid that the world would crumble if she let him go.

Ron moved away. For some reason, he couldn't give in to her touch. He couldn't just stand there and take it. What did sacrifice have to do with him?

He stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and was surprised to find something hard beneath his fingers. Pulling it out, he saw that it was a crumpled piece of parchment. On one side was part of his disastrous Charms essay. With shaking fingers, he flipped it over half wanting to tear it up and the other half of him wanting to read it again.

A hastily scribbled note in his writing was written on the other side.

Astronomy tower. Midnight?

This was followed by a line of writing in Hermione's familiar hand.

You wish, Ron.