Remember

Remember: II

(the whole's other half)

The Pensieve was almost full.

It fit his cupped hands precisely, his thumbs resting on its spelled lid. Even through that sigil-incised crystal, its contents glowed: moon-silver against the basin's stone like snow falling through the night, the sort of snowfall where looking up into it felt like flying among stars.

It wouldn't take long. Just one memory. That's all...

He had to close his eyes against it. Had to navigate the folds of his robes blindly, to find the inner pocket and slip the temptation within; it seemed oddly light for what it was, a distortion of shape rather than weight.

Remembering would mean ruination; but to forget would be a greater undoing.

* * * * *

It was a cold little room in which to study. Not even moonlight crept through the small ceiling-cramped window, and the diffuse green glow of his lamp dulled its leaded colours to unrecognisability; he had never seen it by day. Still, there was a rug, and he had brought fuzzy blankets, and a small stash of pumpkin juice preserved by a charm. It was particularly good for practising Transfiguration: any investigating insects became inkwells or quills. He didn't know what he was becoming.

He doubted he'd be missed, though. It had become a simple matter to deceive even his best friends: to clatter through the common room with whatever the worst homework was that night, plus an anguished roll of his eyes that would set Ron snickering--'Better you than me!'--and even Hermione giving him a nod of approval. When he did return late, it was always cloaked in invisibility, discreet enough for the Head Girl to overlook; and, more importantly, over the past few fortnights his marks had gone measurably up. Just in time for final exams.

He had had a lot of time to study, to smother his thoughts in dusty texts, to write what seemed like metres of parchment between the time it was safe to roam the halls and the time a certain silver-eyed prefect would make his closing rounds. Time. It was almost time. Time to... find out. His quill (formerly a hairy-legged spider) jittered with it, blotching the page with anticipation gone slick and black and wet, swallowing up the surrounding words. He blotted the ink away before it could take over even more, but its stain would have to be scraped or charmed away.

And then--the inkwell capped and the quill cleaned, the parchments neatened and the texts ordered, the Pensieve set so carefully in one corner--it was time, and he crossed the threshold, closing the door in a click of locking spells.

This was always the hardest part. Strike that: the second-hardest.

* * * * *

"How do I know the password? Because you told it to me."

Draco whipped back around, robes snapping against the corridor's shadows; his face was white, his eyes--always mercurial--now black with the barest ring of silver. And he all but shoved Harry through the re-opened door, slamming it shut behind them: "You know." And again, "You know.--How could you!"

Harry stumbled but kept his feet, and struggled further to keep his composure. The hardest part... almost... He should know it by now, what to do and what to say in order to get them through; but it was different this time. This time, he wasn't the only one who knew...

...Something.

His voice sounded shaky even to his own ears: "Draco. Hang on. I can explain."

"Why don't you, then." Not entirely an accusation, he thought, he hoped--

Draco had resumed pacing, cutting across the small room's confines as he so often did (but did he remember, what did he remember?).

"You used that spell on me."

"Spell."

"Your father taught it to you--"

"He's taught me a lot of spells, Potter."

"This past summer. He'd brought in a... guest... to his private workroom, the one it was your job to keep clean, because only family was allowed--"

That stopped those sharp strides, for all the dryness in Draco's, "Oh, so it's guessing games now..."

He kept on, resolute. "And you met Goyle by falling out of a tree onto him, one of your mother's prize Hesperiidae, and he was the one who broke his arm--"

"You, you could have heard that from someone else. Though who'd talk to you, Gryffindor--"

"And Alexandra Zabini was supposed to be watching you and Blaise back at the family ski lodge in Geneva, only Blaise had gone to sleep, you thought, and she--"

"You can stop right there." Draco's cheeks were flaming.

He did and he didn't. "And you really do respect Snape, because his recipes are pure poetry, poetry that works, even if he's a failed Death Eater who could compete in greasy hair for England; and you have a soft spot for Sprout because of how Crabbe's face looks when he gets things to grow right; and you like the bread with the different seeds in it so you can pick them off and sort them before you eat them, and you like poppy better than sesame; and--"

"Stop."

This time, he did.

"...I don't remember telling you any of that." Draco's phrasing was precise, his silver gaze considering; the implications hung between them.

"And that's why you taught me the spell."

There was silence.

He would never know how long that silence lasted; he couldn't hear his own heartbeat, was only dimly aware of the constriction that was his last held breath. Not when emotions fled so swiftly across Draco's high-boned features, made all the more unearthly by the wan green light, emotions that--for a moment--he wondered if he'd ever, ever have a chance to learn. He wanted to speak, to fill the void, but it was Draco who'd shown him not to, shown him what could be gained by waiting--

'People don't like silence, Harry. They'll talk to fill it up, so they can pretend they're not alone. You just have to wait and let them. Unless they know what you're doing, and then they get stubborn...' said with a small laugh, more felt than heard, light on the corner of his jaw. They'd been curled about the same History of Magic text, and though he hadn't been able to see Draco's eyes, he hadn't needed to...

Now he did, but that silver gaze was hooded, focused somewhere past them both. The shadows evoked the man that Draco Malfoy might someday be, if he lived that long: they underscored the high plane of forehead, the set of brow, the lines that tension had carved to either side of that sensual mouth.

Eventually he had to blink, and breathe, and the release burnt his lungs and roared in his ears--

--but it had worked.

"...seems Gryffindors don't have a lock on the grand gesture after all," Draco was saying, a wry sort of bitterness etched within his voice. "Let me guess: protecting you. From me. Protecting--but now it's too late."

"It's not!"

"The spell won't work now. It's been too long. It has--you had to have done it. Right after. But I--I remember."

"You remember." Ruination or no, suddenly he'd had enough of waiting. He took a step forward, and then another, stopping only when that sharp chin lifted. "There's a reason for that. It--"

"Happened too many times. The spell. On... the same person."

"Yes."

"We couldn't stay away."

"No." And he'd even tried, early on. "What do you remember, Draco?"

"Don't say my name."

He might have bridled--if it weren't for how the other boy was looking away, as if he... couldn't look back at him and still reply. For he was replying.

"I remember the look on your face, Potter. I remember the way you were with me, I remember the way you taste. ...And everything I know, they'll know." He caught his breath when Draco silently pushed up his sleeve, when he sketched the Dark Mark on the pale skin of his forearm. Where the nail had pressed, the tracery showed paler yet, and then blushed, and then disappeared. This time.

He wasn't about to let it happen for real. Taking greater care to steady his voice, "Pretty show. Especially with those muscles. But you don't have to tell them."

"Veritaserum? Veritas? Ring any bells? That was what the Obliviate was for; they'd have to break me in doing it. Which they won't. Cut off a finger, yes--" anathema, when it came to those long, skillful fingers that Harry had tested about his own, as apt to fence or play the harpsichord as to dice potion ingredients--"But I'm too... useful a piece."

That was what he had told Harry; and Harry had let himself be convinced, had wanted to be, when it amounted to that or no Draco at all; but, abruptly, he wondered whether the other boy had ever truly believed it, or only persuaded himself likewise. Softer, then, "What I meant was, you don't have to stay with them. You don't have to go when they call."

"What? Hide out with Dumbledore to protect me? My family? To give us plain new names, plain new faces, and jobs using our brooms to sweep with, in exchange for telling absolutely everything about what we know? Even Azkaban would seem like going on holiday compared to what the Dark Lord would do to Father--to us--if He survived this time. I've hunted and I've hunted for a way out--if it were just the dreams, that's one thing, but I remember--"

Harry cut him off with another step. They were closer now, near enough to touch in more than voice if he chose, but he didn't take that risk. "We'll figure out a way." Somehow. Surely he hadn't studied Transfiguration these many nights for nothing. "...But the dreams. Do you want to know which of them are true? Because some of them are. That time Vector's charts got ripped in the library's back stacks, yes; anything mid-air, ...not yet." He managed a smile, if only for a moment. "We have them still, have them saved. We--"

Again: "--Couldn't stay away."

"No."

"We..."

"We made--we had--we had each other."

Silence.

It was so quiet that he could hear his shoes squeak faintly as he shifted from foot to foot, or maybe they were Draco's, or maybe a mouse ready to outdo its insect brethren and become parchment--and he couldn't bear another silence like the last one, couldn't help but ask, couldn't stop himself--"Was it only the once?"

The light caught Draco's eyes and made them abruptly, eerily green. "Yes." And then, "I'd planned to stay away, after. Give me that credit. But you found me first."

He usually did. "How did it--"

"What? You sneaked up with that cloak of yours, of course. Not to mention dagger and wand, and a scratchy old ski mask to boot. And a garotte."

"I mean it, Draco. Didn't you think I'd figure it out? Where I was, how I was?" and it was so familiar, he could feel the patterns of tease and taunt--but there was something else. Something that, even as he remembered, forestalled him. "...I didn't even have bruises. The match's been and gone. Nobody's even assigned us detention together, much less partnered us up in class. What memory did it take, what made you believe me? Why did you--"

"--Memory? Is that what you saved? I didn't know. You didn't tell me anything. Just--"

He could feel himself gaping. He had never--after their first time, he'd always relied on the preserved memories to help convince Draco, never risked their conflict's escalating the wrong way--"Memory. Pensieve? We had it left over from class? I confront you or the other way around, you argue and angst and argue some more, I show you a few memories, you finally believe me, afterwards you pour in your new memory, I point you down the hall and spell you from behind, wash-rinse-repeat?"

But the slow headshake was his answer before he'd even finished talking, and exhilarated realisation poured fire through his veins and suddenly it was all worth it; he didn't have to hear the soft, "You just jumped me, Potter. That's all. And I jumped you back."

He was grinning like a fool, he knew it, he could see it reflected in the beginnings of Draco's small, unwilling smile. "You trusted me."

"Trust," and that scoffed, but the smile hadn't gone away. "Just wanted to use that body of yours, get you to play Chaser for the Dark Side. --But this... Pensieve. My memories. I left them with you? Trusting you not to share them 'round the dormitory, or worse?"

He could afford to look smug. "Secret hideaway, Draco. Spelled and passworded. And besides," and he'd saved this for a reason, to dare it now; shyly, "...I've one too. So you could look if you wanted. Sometime."

Grey eyes widened, then shuttered before him. "...I don't have yours, you know. Last time."

"I know," his own glance sliding away, for he'd guessed but it was infinitely worse to have it confirmed, that there'd been that transfiguration and he'd never, ever remember. But it was trust. And sometimes, you just had to leap, and figure it out mid-air, and--just maybe--fly. Or crash, because even Wronski knew not all falls were feints. But this wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot...

And then he realised that a hand was outstretched towards him, a hand made the paler by the blackness of their robes, the grayness of the stone, the shadows all about. How long had it been there? He had no idea; but it was familiar now, lean and strong, its calluses earned. He reached forward, and took it. "...You didn't believe me."

"I still don't believe you."

"Try. Call it a dare, if you have to. You and me, we can do anything--"

"You believe, that much?"

"I'm the Boy who Lived, Malfoy."

"Diggory died," with some of that same old, glittering malice.

He frowned fiercely back at him. "And that's why I'm not going to let you."

Silence again. But, at measured length, "...Tell me what I should know."

"See for yourself." The hardest thing had always been to let him turn around, to spell him into forgetting, to send him out into the halls alone. But this time, whatever else happened, that wouldn't. They'd both remember.

It was still a cold little room; it was still lit by a spell-green light, not the open sun of day, not even stars. But their hands were also still intertwined; and Draco whispered open the Pensieve's lid, and looked inside.