Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Chapter 2: Absence

But he saw only dying light and a dead land.

He uttered no prayer, believed in no deity,

and knew that the past was devoid of meaning,

like the present, and a refuge for cowards.

--E. M. Forster, Maurice

Ginny Weasley still daydreams about Harry Potter sometimes, but it's more out of habit than anything else. He has been a constant in her life since she was ten years old--a crush, then a friend, then a boyfriend, and finally a brother. The star-struck infatuation of her youth is long since faded, and even the romantic relationship they tried on for size at Hogwarts is just a distant memory--affection, little passion, and an amicable parting. The few kisses they shared seem almost to belong to someone else's recollections now. Sometimes she didn't even feel truly involved in them when they occurred, as if she were just an object, an impersonal recipient--and the detachment was on both sides. She is surprisingly unbitter about this. But still there is a certain sweetness attached to the memories--before the darkest years of war, before the deaths began to pile up, before Harry learned to close off his emotions, before Ginny realized love was never guaranteed.

So, on certain days, she remembers. It might be a particular shade of red that calls to mind the fluttering scarlet robes of Gryffindor Quidditch. A fresh, leafy scent in the air that reminds her of how he kissed her for the first time, so sweetly, under a tree behind the Burrow the summer before her sixth year at Hogwarts. The sound of a snakelike hiss that makes her think of Parseltongue and a cold, cavernous chamber and the way Harry fulfilled every girlish hero-dream she ever had of him, and more.

She is long past the age of girlish hero-dreams now.

She reflects sometimes on how Harry is the reason she developed an interest in studying medical magic in the first place--surely a boy as danger-prone as Harry would need a lot of medical attention over the course of a lifetime. First it was simply a personal goal, a way to keep Harry safe and alive. But then she loved it for its own sake--the healing, the mending, the concrete knowledge, the science and the art--and it came easily to her, an unexpected gift, like her talent for potions. She tried to envision a future with Harry--perhaps taking an apprenticeship with Madam Pomfrey, should Harry choose to teach at Hogwarts; maybe a Team Mediwitch, should Harry choose to play Quidditch professionally; possibly her own practice someday, when she and Harry settled down.

The war changed her dreams, of course. But Harry changed them first.

It's been a week since Harry's last visit to the hospital, she thinks now as she examines Draco Malfoy's burn wound. He hasn't stayed away this long since Ron was first injured--only something dire would keep him from here, and, though she realizes it would only irritate Harry if he knew, she worries.

"What happened to your friend?" Malfoy asks suddenly.

Startled, her gaze jerks upward to meet his. "My friend?"

"That Auror. Potter."

"Oh. I...I don't know." She beetles her brows. "Why do you want to know?"

Malfoy shrugs, and even shirtless as he is, it's an elegant gesture, white skin shifting along a spare frame. "He said he'd come back. He hasn't. I wondered whether something happened."

"Like whether he's been killed?" she asks, unreasonably angry.

His gaze is piercing. "It is a war out there. Unless I'm much mistaken."

They stare at each other for several seconds, then she frowns and flicks her gaze back to his chest. "I don't know where he is," she says, applying salve rather ungently. "I'm not his keeper."

"I thought maybe you were." She looks up sharply and he quirks an eyebrow. "His sweetheart anyway."

"No, I'm not. Not that it's any of your business."

He grins suddenly, a flash of white against white. "Touchy, are we?"

She jerks her head to toss an errant lock of hair out of her eyes and fixes him with a stony glare. "Don't even start," she says quietly, and his grin subsides at her tone. "Don't you even start to talk about things you know nothing about."

His gaze flickers downward for a moment before returning to hers. "The problem is, there's a lot I know nothing about at this point."

She can feel her face falling into tired lines again--the weary expression that makes her mirror tut-tut and say, "Dearie, you need sleep. Or maybe a holiday." But there've been no holidays for a dozen years now, not for anyone. And she knows it's selfish to even think about the idea, even if she acknowledges somewhere deep, deep inside that 25 is too young for such worry lines. She sighs tiredly and turns her attention back to the salve.

They conduct the remainder of the procedure in silence.

* * *

Harry turns up at the hospital the next evening, and she knows better than to ask for an explanation. He walks past her in the hallway and brushes his hand against hers by way of greeting, but doesn't say a word. She bites her lip as he disappears around the corner, en route to Ron's room. Some of the Healers in the Incurable Hexes ward have murmured that they hear Harry holding one-sided conversations with Ron, sometimes for hours at a time. Somehow it doesn't surprise her that, even comatose, Ron can lay claim to more of Harry's conversation than she can.

She is pulled from her reverie when a low, unusually reserved voice just behind her says, "Wotcher, Ginny."

She turns to find Tonks standing there, face streaked with dust and dirt underneath spiky black hair, strained smile firmly in place, a hollow look to her eyes. "Tonks," she says, then narrows her eyes. "You're bleeding."

"Am I?" she asks, surprised. Her hand immediately rises to her face, leaving even darker smudges as she fumbles for the injury.

"Here," Ginny sighs. "Let me take care of it." She pulls Tonks into an empty examination room and steers her to a chair before she can knock over anything important. The other Healers still talk about the time she upset a canister of Sad-B-Gone and the entire Emotional Distress ward had to be evacuated. Tonks had been seized by uncontrollable fits of laughter for days afterward. Ginny dampens a cloth and wipes the dirt from Tonks's face. Tonks closes her eyes, and as Ginny strokes the cloth across her skin, she thinks of how young the Auror appears. She's over thirty now, and has her share of scars, both old and new, but she still retains a look of youth and innocence. Ginny wonders sometimes whether it has anything to do with her ability to change appearance, whether it's a conscious affectation. Then Tonks opens her eyes and smiles at her, a guileless grin, and Ginny's almost embarrassed to have thought there might be something false about her. How ironic that her gift is to appear other than she is.

"You have such gentle hands," Tonks sighs. "Like my mum when I used to play by the riverbank and came home plastered in mud every afternoon."

The comment draws an almost reluctant smile from Ginny. "You wouldn't think me gentle if you'd been on the receiving end of the pummelings I gave my brothers when we were growing up."

Tonks laughs, a startling note of merriment in the subdued ward. "Ginny Weasley's fists of fury. I tremble in fear."

"You should," Ginny retorts as she applies a healing salve to the cut on Tonks's temple. Tonks hisses at the sting, then sighs as the cut immediately begins to bind itself back together. "I may not attack with my fists anymore," Ginny murmurs, stroking a thumb along the newly mended skin to test it, "but I have other weapons at my disposal."

Tonks's fingers curl around Ginny's wrist and her eyes catch Ginny's, searching. "Somehow," she says after a moment, "I don't doubt that."

Ginny blushes and drops her hand, Tonks's smooth fingertips brushing against her wrist as Ginny slides it out of her loose grasp. She turns away to dispose of the cloth. "So you came in with Harry?" she asks.

"Yeah," she says, and there's no emotion in her voice now. "The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has been tracking a high-ranking Death Eater for months, and finally thought we had our chance to nab him, but--everything went wrong." Ginny turns and sees that Tonks's eyes are closed, an expression of pain tightening her features. "He had a half-dozen other Death Eaters squirreled away, plus a hostage. No one knew. Or no one bothered to tell us." She slams a fist against the table. "I swear, the Intelligence network is falling apart."

"Careful there," Ginny says, a note of frost in her tone. "One of my best friends works in Intelligence."

"Oh, you know I don't mean Hermione! I mean the lines of communication. Something's fallen apart somewhere. We should have been warned. Someone should have known. Instead, eight people are dead, including an innocent wizard who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Ginny steps closer and puts a hand on Tonks's shoulder, which she touches gratefully. "I'm sorry," Ginny says.

Tonks forces a laugh. "Oh, it isn't your fault, any more than it's Harry's fault he keeps landing in these botched operations." She shakes her head. "But it'll be a long time before I feel like going back to Ireland." She pats Ginny's hand and stands up. "I'd better go. I've already taken you away from your job for too long."

Ginny shrugs. "I'm a Healer. This is my job."

Tonks's smile is wry. "Merlin knows I've required more than my fair share of your services."

"Well," Ginny says, shrugging again, but not without a small, slightly wistful smile, "it's always good for the injury-prone to have friends who are Healers."

Tonks laughs. "Remind yourself of that when you find I've attached myself to you permanently."

"I wouldn't mind," Ginny says, distracted, then blushes slightly when Tonks's smile broadens in response.

"Good," Tonks says, and laughs again. "Good." She winks at Ginny and covers her nose with her hand, scrunching her face in concentration. There is a small pop, and when she removes her hand, her nose is an exact replica of Ginny's small, upturned one, down to the last freckle. Ginny laughs, only a little embarrassed that the old game has never grown tiresome.

"I love hearing you laugh," Tonks grins, and that statement is enough to make Ginny stop, realizing where she is, and why, and how inappropriate it is to laugh now. Tonks wiggles her nose, trying to provoke another giggle, but Ginny just shakes her head. Tonks sighs as she catches Ginny's hand and rubs her thumb along its delicate bones. "I have to go," she says. Her brow creases slightly. "I'm not sure whether Harry's going to be all right. Do you think maybe you could talk to him?"

Ginny tries to tug her hand back, but Tonks holds it fast. "It's pointless," she says. "Harry never talks to anyone about what bothers him." Her mind drifts to the upstairs ward. "At least not to anyone who could respond."

Tonks squeezes Ginny's hand one last time before letting go, and then she's gone. Ginny fights to ignore the tingling in her hand as she puts away the supplies and heads back to her rounds.

* * *

"Seamus is dead," Harry says without preamble.

There's no response, of course, just the quiet hum and shuffle of the hospital ward. Harry stands by Ron's bedside, looking down at that slumbering face, his own countenance nearly as expressionless.

Ron doesn't respond tonight even in Harry's imagination.

"We tracked Aidan O'Leary to a manor house outside of Dublin. We'd been told it was empty, that no one had observed activity there for months. I shouldn't have trusted the information. After the last time, I should have known better."

He sinks into the low, hard chair and buries his face in his hands for a moment, but his voice, when he continues, is dispassionate, echoing the way he related the tale to his superiors just that morning. He can't bring himself to give the details again. "It was another botched raid," he says. "Tonks and I were told only O'Leary was there, but there turned out to be a whole cabal of Death Eaters in hiding--and they'd taken Seamus hostage. It was--" His voice breaks almost imperceptibly, and he pauses. "He pushed me aside," he says, voice tight and controlled. "He took a curse directed at me, and was dead before I could even reach him." His fist clenches against his thigh, and his eyes close. "How many more friends do I have to watch die, Ron?"

He opens them again and stares at nothing. "But you know what the worst part is?" he says slowly. "I hadn't seen Seamus in two years, and it's--I know he's gone. I know that. On the one hand, it's hard to understand that he isn't just at home in Ireland with Lavender and their daughters, owling back and forth with Dean, going about his normal, everyday business. But--I just can't miss him. I can't make myself miss him. Because he was already gone from my life."

Harry frowns at his feet, conscious of the quiet in the room--the hushed sounds of this wing of the hospital, the spatter of raindrops against the windowpane. Ron doesn't answer. Ron never really answers. Abruptly Harry rises to his feet and stands again at Ron's bedside, glaring down at his friend's still figure. "I know you're there somewhere, Ron," he says in a low voice. "You're not going to go away like everyone else." He closes his eyes. "You can't."

* * *

On his way back from Ron's room, Harry heads for the doors, then hesitates. He hasn't forgotten Malfoy. He wishes he could. He knows he promised Malfoy he'd return, but, he thinks, he never promised when. It doesn't need to be now. Malfoy won't care. Hell, Malfoy probably hasn't even thought about him.

But somehow he finds himself standing in Malfoy's doorway, watching him frown over this morning's Daily Prophet. Harry shifts his weight, and his shoe squeaks against the tile. Malfoy looks up, startled, before a wicked smile creeps across his face. "My favorite absent Auror," he murmurs, eyes hooded.

Harry frowns. "I can't very well be absent if I'm here."

Malfoy only laughs and gestures with the paper. "I was just thinking about you."

"Why--oh." Malfoy holds up the front page of the newspaper, and Harry sees his own face scowling out at him, gaze shadowed but unflinching. "BOY WHO LIVED LEADS DUBLIN ASSAULT," the headline reads. Harry grimaces.

Malfoy seems amused. "So you're this 'Boy Who Lived'?" Harry's frown is all the response he requires. He laughs again. "It's so good to see that everyone has such a brilliant grasp of the obvious. It's not as if you can stand here and be the Boy Who Died."

Harry blinks.

"So," Malfoy continues, tossing the paper aside, "what exactly did you live through to earn a name like that? Other than the obvious twenty-some-odd years, of course."

"A curse," Harry says flatly. "When I was a year old."

Malfoy stares at him for a few moments. Then, "Are you serious?"

Harry scowls. "Of course I'm bloody serious."

"You've been called the Boy Who Lived almost all your life--"

"Yes."

"--and all because of something than happened when you were too young to remember it?"

"Yes," Harry snaps.

"What, you haven't done anything noteworthy since?"

Harry feels himself clenching his fists and doesn't even really know why. After all, the same questions have occurred to him many times over. "I do a lot that's noteworthy," he growls. "For one, I managed to restrain myself from killing you when we were in school together."

Malfoy snickers. "The Boy Who Lived With Repressed Anger."

"Do you really think you're being original?"

Malfoy quirks an insolent eyebrow. "Well, I wouldn't know one way or the other, would I?"

"Oh," says Harry, his annoyance subsiding only slightly. "Right."

Malfoy watches him for a few moments with a bland expression, then abruptly laughs. "You know, it's amazing what I can get away with just by pleading amnesia."

"And I imagine you take advantage of that at every opportunity," Harry mutters.

"Of course."

"You always were an insufferable git."

"Oh really?" Malfoy sits up straighter, looking intrigued in spite of the insult. "What else was I?"

Harry blinks at him. "What do you mean?"

"Really, Potter, how dense are you? I don't remember anything beyond the past month or so. You claim that we have a history together. What do you think I mean?"

Harry frowns. "You want me to tell you what you were like back in school?"

"Yes."

"Besides being an insufferable git, you mean?"

"Yes," Malfoy almost growls at him, and Harry can't resist the strange urge to laugh anymore. It's a sharp, rusty sound, unused, but it feels good. Malfoy watches him skeptically.

"All right," Harry says, in a better humor suddenly. He seats himself in the narrow, ugly chair against the opposite wall and rubs his palms over his knees, knobby even through his robes. "What do you want to know?"

Malfoy bites his lip, looking uncertain for the first time. He hesitates. "Anything," he says at last. "Tell me anything you remember. How did we meet? Did we get along? What did you think of me?" He pauses. "What did I think of you?"

"I...we met in the robes shop before we went away to school."

"Where did we go to school?"

"Hogwarts," Harry says, and a ghost of a smile appears. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Oh," says Malfoy. "Right. I've heard of it. That's the place those Death Eater creatures tried to lay siege to recently, isn't it?"

The smile disappears, and Harry sighs. "Right."

Malfoy watches him for a few moments, but when no more information comes, he asks, "So what did we study at Hogwarts?"

"A lot of things," Harry says, but he's clearly distracted. "Transfiguration, History of Magic, Charms, Herbology." He pauses, then continues, looking more intent. "We had Care of Magical Creatures and Potions lessons together."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Harry says, rubbing absently at a small scar on his finger. "We were partners in Potions sometimes."

Malfoy frowns. "I thought you said we weren't friends."

"We weren't. Professor Snape assigned partners."

"Based on similar ability level?" Malfoy asks, considering him with more interest.

At this Harry laughs again. "Hardly. Though I suspect you enjoyed how my incompetence made you look even better by contrast."

"Then why put us together?"

It's on the tip of Harry's tongue to tell him the truth, to say, Because we hated each other, and Snape got his jollies out of humiliating me. Because we were enemies, Malfoy, and it was completely pointless to think-- But something holds him back. "Dunno," he says, and shrugs. "Snape was...hard to understand sometimes."

Malfoy seems to accept this without question. "So," he muses, "I was good at Potions?"

It still galls Harry a little to give him credit. "Yes."

"Very good?"

Harry scowls. "Yes," he says. "Very good."

"Brilliant?"

"You're pushing it, Malfoy."

Malfoy laughs. "Oh, that's all right," he says. "I can tell by your expression that I was, and it just pains you to admit it. No need to say anything."

Harry is torn between making a smart retort, thus giving Malfoy the satisfaction of having provoked him, or remaining silent, thus lending credence to Malfoy's words. In the end he just glares and makes an impotent growling noise.

But Malfoy isn't even paying attention, his brow furrowed in thought. "All right, so I was good at Potions. What else was I good at?"

"Being a complete wanker," Harry mutters.

"What was that?" Malfoy asks, looking up.

"Nothing," Harry says.

Malfoy raises an eyebrow, but doesn't press the issue. "What did I like to do?" he asks. "What have I done since I left school?"

Harry sighs. "I don't know what you've been doing all these years," he answers, almost honestly. "We...lost touch after Hogwarts."

"Oh. I must not have done anything remarkable then." Malfoy looks disappointed. "If I'd been doing great things, you probably would have heard about it."

Harry remembers easily a dozen Auror councils speculating on the whereabouts of the Malfoy heir, about how he seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, how even the captured Death Eaters interrogated under Veritaserum did not know the location of Lucius Malfoy's only child. Harry doesn't know whether Malfoy has done anything either great or terrible, or both. He shrugs.

Malfoy scowls at his seeming indifference. "Where do I live? Do I have any family? A--a wife? Children?" His expression is angry, but there is a shadow of pleading in his eyes as he asks, "Why has no one else come to visit me?"

Harry finds he can't look at him. "Your parents are...dead. You don't have any siblings. As far as I know, you're not married."

"Don't I have friends? Doesn't anyone know I'm here?"

Grim, Harry meets his gaze again. "If any of your friends are still alive," he says, enunciating each word, "they don't know you're here."

"Well, why not?" Malfoy demands. "Why hasn't anyone contacted them?"

"They aren't allowed here."

"Why not?" he asks again, smacking his palm against the mattress. "It's not as if only family are allowed to visit." He sneers. "Unless they make exceptions for Aurors."

"No," Harry says, glaring. "They make exceptions for me."

Malfoy stares at him, as if surprised by his flash of ego, and Harry is surprised himself. "So," Malfoy says, quieter now, "why don't you ask them to make an exception for my friends?"

"I can't do that."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Both."

"Why not?"

Harry snaps, "Because they're on the wrong side of the bloody war, Malfoy!"

Malfoy frowns, then takes a deep breath. "You're lying," he says quietly.

Harry's voice is weary. "I'm not."

"So you're expecting me to believe that all my friends are these--" he gestures toward the Prophet, its pages scattered across the floor "--Death Eater creatures?"

"Yes."

"I suppose I'm one of them too, then, right?" he snorts.

Harry waits until Malfoy meets his eyes, then repeats, quietly, "Yes."

Malfoy looks back at him, his eyes hard. "What am I then," he asks slowly, "some kind of prisoner?"

Harry sighs, hating that he's the one to get these questions, wondering what's taken Malfoy so bloody long to ask them. "Yes," he says again.

Malfoy growls low in his throat and launches himself out of the bed. "Fuck this," he snarls. "I'm getting out of here." He hurtles himself across the room to the door, only to smack into an invisible barrier and end up sprawled on the floor.

"You can't leave," Harry says, still not rising from his chair on the opposite side of the room. He knows he sounds tired. "The room is charmed to keep you in."

Malfoy twists around and glares at him. "But I have left the room, Potter. Plenty of times."

"In the company of hospital staff," Harry says. "Only for tests and the like. If you'd tried to leave them, the spell would have snapped you into a full body bind."

"How do you know that?" Malfoy sneers.

Harry shrugs. "I was one of the people who helped develop the spell. This is a milder form of what they use at Azkaban now that the Dementors are gone."

Malfoy laughs, bitterly. "And I haven't even had a fair trial. At least one that I remember."

"It's just a cautionary measure," Harry says. "A restraint."

"Oh, that makes me feel so much better," Malfoy spits. "Like a dog on a leash."

"If that's how you want to look at it."

Malfoy eases to his feet. "And just how am I supposed to look at it, Potter?"

"It's for your protection."

"Right," he says.

"Under the spell, you can't escape, and you can't harm anyone else. But no one can do you harm either."

"Why would someone even want to harm me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Harry retorts, at the end of his patience. "Maybe because you're a Death Eater?"

Malfoy ignores this. "So when do I get released from this spell?" he demands.

Harry shrugs. "I'm not sure. Maybe after you get your memory back, and you get out of hospital."

Malfoy stands in front of him, clad only in striped pajamas that are a little too big for him, looking more like a petulant, overgrown child than a man who may have killed countless others. His lip curls. "And when is that going to happen, Potter?"

Harry rubs his hands across his face, pressing the heels to his temples. "I don't know," he says. "I don't know anything."

Malfoy turns away, and the gray light diffusing through the window traces the weary lines on his face, giving lie to the childlike image. "Yeah, well," he says, "that makes two of us."