Black Sheep

Harry Potter woke up in his bed disoriented. As he shook away the last of sleep's haze, he wondered if he had been dreaming. There was no reason to feel disoriented, after all; he'd woken up in this bed every day for the past five years.

He hauled himself up and stumbled out into the short hallway. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, not needing them to arrive easily in the kitchen. He opened the door to the refrigerator and leaned on it as he peered at his meagre provisions. Grunting in dissatisfaction, he grabbed the quart of milk and started to drink straight from the carton. Then he gagged.

He spun around and spat a mouthful of curdled milk into the sink. He immediately turned on the tap and ladled handfuls of water to his mouth, trying to get rid of the disgusting taste and feel of the bad milk. Trying not to retch, he spun the carton around to see the expiry date. It said 17 October. Then Harry paused.

What day was today? He had no idea. He couldn't even remember what season it was. Beginning to feel the cool chill of alarm spreading from his hands and up his arms, he jumped over the couch and grabbed the remote control for the telly, jabbing the buttons and watching as the screen burst into life. He flipped through the channels until he arrived at a news program, with the date and time written in the corner. The twentieth of December. December? It was nearly Christmas. What had he been doing? He tried to remember the past few days but he had no recollection of them.

Falling back onto the couch in shock, he stared to his left. He asked the empty room, "And when did I get a piano?"

"Oh, bugger."

Draco Malfoy woke up in an unfamiliar room. Or at least he thought it was an unfamiliar room, but then when he tried to think of his own room, he came up with a blank. He looked around slowly. The room was completely white and personality-less. This couldn't be his room, he felt pretty confident about that. He got up and tried to snoop around but when he pulled open the cheap-looking wardrobe, he found that it was full of his own clothes. "Huh," he said quietly to himself. "Well, bugger me." He looked around the small room, somehow feeling that he should live somewhere more impressive.

A few minutes later, having donned a pair of trousers and a grey pullover, he opened the door experimentally onto an equally unfamiliar hall. Mentally shrugging, he walked out into what appeared to be the main room of the tiny house. There was a man sitting there, dark head cradled in his hands, and Draco asked mildly, "What are you doing in my house?"

The man's head shot up and he stared at Draco, looking completely flabbergasted. "This is my house!" he said, though he didn't sound so sure.

"Oh, good." Draco was happy enough to agree and he asked, "Then what am I doing in your house?"

"I don't know," the man said, his expression cloudy. Draco already had formed the impression that this was a fellow prone to getting over-wrought about things.

"So... you don't know me?" he asked in an easy tone, luckily not suffering the same problem.

The man looked carefully at him and Draco noticed that he had spectacularly green eyes. Shaking his head, the stranger said, "I don't think so..." He sounded worried as he continued, "I don't think I can remember, well, anything."

Draco sauntered over and threw himself down on the couch next to the stranger. He leaned back, his hands folded behind his blond head, and he grinned. "Must have been one hell of a party."

"Do you remember how you got here? Or how I might know you? Or who I am?"

Raising his eyebrows at the other man, Draco said, "Really, one hell of a party." In fact, though, he had also noticed that he couldn't remember much of anything himself. Who could miss that? Except of course a raging alcoholic prone to blackouts. At any rate, he knew his name. He knew this was England. He knew the name of the Queen and the current standing of all the football teams and how to drive a motorbike. But he didn't remember the names or faces of his parents, if he had any siblings, if he had a job, where he had grown up or gone to school, or how he might have possibly ended up apparently living in this man's house.

He jumped to his feet and stood in front of the troubled fellow, saying, "If we don't remember, mate, maybe it's better that way. I've had my fair share of piss ups - I think - and there's hardly anything you might have done that you'd actually want to remember. But I suspect the memories of whatever embarrassing escapades we might have engaged in will come back to haunt us soon enough." He smirked, his eyes bright with humour. "My name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

"Harry Potter," the man mumbled in a daze.

"You'll soon find out some parties are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go getting pissed at the wrong sort. I can help you there."

He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't immediately take it. Instead he looked up at Malfoy, getting the strangest sense of déjà vu. He slowly reached out a hand and clasped Malfoy's white hand firmly. There was something so familiar about all this that he felt better suddenly. Whatever had happened, he and this Malfoy were in it together. He tightened his grip on the blond's hand and at last he began slowly to smile.

Outside in the bushes, from beneath James Potter's invisibility cloak, Hermione watched silently as her friend began his new life. He had left her the cloak, along with all of his photos of his parents and everything else. His wand had been destroyed. She watched as he made sense of a life without her, the last of the Trio. Ron was lost to her and now Harry had forgotten all of their times together. Of course, he would eventually notice the note that she had left him and, as had been agreed upon with the Ministry, she would "remind" them of their Muggle bank accounts, where all of their Galleons had been converted into pounds. She would do what she could to help them, at least until the winter hols ended and she was due back at Hogwarts. But they would never know that they had all once lived together in the magical world. Thing would never be the same.

But then she remembered what Harry had told her just before he had been charmed:

Things might never be the same - but they might just be better.