Remember

From somewhere far away I hear people talking to me. "Draco," they say, but I ignore them. Perhaps if I do not answer they will go away and leave me here. Leave me here to die on this lonely battlefield strewn with bodies. I do not want to live any longer. Would you, if you had seen what I have seen? I don't think so. I have nothing left to live for.

Someone is tugging on my arm, but I keep walking. Where exactly I am going? Is that what you want to know? I will answer honestly--I do not know. I simply know that there is someone I must find. If I do not find this someone I will explode into a thousand tiny pieces and melt away into the cracks of the earth. Am I crazy? Yes, I suppose I am, in a sense. You would be too if you had killed and killed and killed, as I have done. I had no choice, you see. Don't sneer at me like that, with that disapproving look in your eyes. I have done what I had to do. I cannot change it, no matter how much I wish I could.

There. There is what I am looking for. I don't know how I am so certain! Stop asking me these foolish questions. I know. That is enough for me.

Something bad has happened here. I don't need my magic to sense that. The ground is scorched, as if someone had set fire to it. There are bodies all around, in a sort of ring-shape, as if someone had thrown up a protective ward that had killed them who touched it. How do I know this? You learn some things, I suppose. My father was into the Dark magic, you know. You see this sort of thing often. This doesn't feel like Dark magic, though. The residue the protective ward has left bears the strong feeling of someone familiar. Someone I know very, very well.

There he is, the one who cast the ward. He is lying on the ground in a crumpled heap. Is he dead, you want to know? Yes. Someone has broken his neck; I can see finger-shaped bruises on his pale skin. Not by magic, though; the ward would have stopped them from hurting him with magic. I guess it didn't have an effect on physical threats. Foolish, you say? I guess it is. One can hardly blame him, though. They didn't teach us about how to deal with physical fighting at school, not really anyway; he wasn't expecting it. It seems almost like they're not playing fair, them who killed him. But we depend so much on our magic, too much sometimes. I wonder what would happen if we lost it, or if we ran out. I wonder how we'd survive.

Excuse me. My thoughts wander. I am close enough to see the boy's face now. It seems familiar to me, even with his eyes closed and the blood drained from his face. Wait a moment, a memory is coming to me. A raven-haired boy with laughing green eyes and a jagged scar across his forehead, running towards me across the Quidditch pitch; the same boy leaning over his Transfiguration homework in a library; the same boy looking at me with such tenderness. I know him. I know this boy.

Harry? Is that what you said? His name is Harry? Yes, it sounds familiar. We were enemies, once, I think. Why? I don't remember now. I barely remember anything about my old life, before this war. We fought over petty grievances. Yes. We were enemies once, and once we were lovers. He was so soft, so beautiful. I wish I could feel something for him now, some emotion. I am sorry that he is dead, yes, but I have the strangest feeling that it is not enough. I feel as though my heart should be breaking into a thousand bits. It's so frustrating, really, not remembering things, not comprehending things. I feel almost like we're hovering somewhere above it all and just watching the world play by like some kind of Muggle movie.

Why are you crying? Don't cry. Tell me about Harry. Stop scolding me for forgetting him. I don't chose what memories stay and which ones go. Here, I'll sit down right here beside him if it makes you feel better. I'll cradle him like this and you can tell me about him and I'll try to remember. I promise. It's easy to listen to your voice. You have such a pretty voice. It sounds like my own, did you know? You look like me too, even though it's hard for me to see you, since I think I've made you up anyway. I think we're the same person, only you remember and I don't. Help me remember, please? Help me remember this boy I loved once. Help me remember my Harry.