Chapter 2
He waits behind the wall of the bedroom as he hears the loud fuss of a man making his way in, presumably the man whose name was on the envelope, Draco Malfoy.
In the mirror, he sees white-blond hair, long fingers at the wrist of a leather-glove, face bowed unsuspectingly until the sudden halt of Malfoy's steps, fingers still as well where they are. He has seemingly noticed the open door, which should have been closed. His eyes flit upward, and as his head lifts —
He lunges.
He tackles Malfoy to the ground, straddling him, and in the scramble of the two of them trying to gain their footing and control, he pushes himself up quickly by the palms and gets his fingers around Malfoy's throat and squeezes.
It is unexpected, then, that Malfoy laughs, the sound high like air being forced out through a small space, frighteningly unbothered.
Even as Malfoy's hands are gripping his instinctively, he is not trying to loosen them at all.
"Is this how — " he chokes out, wheezing. "you say hello to a man that — has harboured you — for years?"
He will discover why Malfoy is so unfazed by having a pair of hands clenching around his throat. Perhaps he should have known all along that this would happen, how compromised and weakened he himself is.
Malfoy knees him solidly in the lower abdomen, forcing a grunt out of him.
The minute distraction is enough for Malfoy to do something so swift as to be incomprehensible and blurry and dizzying and suddenly he has found himself on the flip side of this, under Malfoy with his wrists pinned above himself and struck breathless from the force of it, a gloved hand loose at his throat.
"Well, then," Malfoy whispers to him, his eyes bright and wild into his own. And he realises, bizarrely, that Malfoy seems overjoyed. "Hello to you... Harry James Potter."
*
His name is Harry James Potter. He is twenty-four years old. He was born to Lily Evans and James Potter on the 31st of July but he grew up in Privet Drive with his muggle relatives, the Dursleys: his maternal aunt Petunia, his uncle Vernon, his cousin Dudley. It is strange to Harry that he spent nearly half of his life not knowing of magic. Even with no memory now, its existence feels like a visceral truth.
"You know if I meant you any harm, all I'd have had to do was hide your glasses," Malfoy says, which Harry guesses is meant to be a joke, as he goes up to a drawer in the room. His back is to him. "But also I've had a year to do any nefarious thing I wanted."
The thing is that Harry does not know if Malfoy hasn't done anything to him.
"Maybe you were the one who Obliviated me," Harry says bluntly, before he can stop himself, and wonders if maybe he needs to keep his mouth shut and not give Malfoy so much insight into his doubts and fears.
"Well," Malfoy says, a bit distractedly, ruffling through things in the drawer. His movements are quick, light. "I can't prove I haven't. But I can give you memory-restoring potions to prove I don't necessarily think this is ideal."
"I can't say I'm inclined to take anything from you."
Malfoy doesn't seem to hold it against him. "I'll drink a bit of it first, if you'd like."
"Why are you holding me captive?"
Malfoy stills, and then turns around, with a raised brow. "Captive?"
"The barrier around your house," Harry says.
"Ah," Malfoy says. "The barrier. Yes. But technically, that's not to keep you in. It's to keep everyone else out."
"So you'll tell me how to move through it?"
"Maybe, yes, when I'll be sure you won't try to run away." Malfoy turns back around, quickly, and he makes an odd, strained sort of laugh, "Can't have you dying so soon after you've just woken."
"That's not exactly helping me feel less like a captive."
"It's a dangerous world out there, for you. It's for your own safety."
Harry will learn why soon when, as evidence, Malfoy presents files of all his records and information, casting Infinites to prove nothing has been magically modified. Then comes the old newspapers, ones with his face and name on it, one about the night He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named came to kill him, and killed his parents, and then there are all the newspaper clippings after. Harry Potter was what they called him as well. They called him The Boy Who Lived.
And he was the one meant to end the war.
But he did not. The world he is standing in now is a world allowed by his failure.
The Boy Who Lived, Dead At the Hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
You-Know-Who Conquers Wizarding Britain
The Death-Eaters, the pureblood supremacist, terrorist organisation, is led by Voldemort, whose name was never to be said aloud. Harry thinks at first that it's simply fear, but Malfoy says that it has a summoning power, and so Harry can't take the risk.
Harry had been Voldemort's nemesis, someone that Voldemort had tried to kill when he was an infant, and then all through his school years. Harry was the boy of the prophecy, the one destined to bring his downfall. It fits into why the Dark Lord wanted him dead as a baby, why he wanted him dead all his life; the lightning scar on his temple, the bite marks on his arm from the Basilisk, the slash on his hand from when they brought Voldemort back. Malfoy tells him the story behind each of his visible scars.
The war went on for nearly four years between the Light Side and the Dark Side, until in their last battle three years ago, the Dark Lord managed to gain victory over Harry.
It is unclear why he has lost his memories so thoroughly. One of the theories Malfoy offers is that it may have something to do with a partial obliviation before being placed into a coma, and somewhere between that the obliviation must have spread to the rest of his memories, and it remained so to this day.
After his 'death', Voldemort hung his body on a tower for all the people who had faith that he would win, that he would end it all, and those that loved him. The Death-Eaters gloated and celebrated by tearing him apart in front of them all, burning him to ashes in front of their eyes.
"Only, it wasn't you. It was a trick," Malfoy tells him. "A disillusioned, disfigured corpse of a boy that looked like you."
Another battle struck after, so enraged and in grief the Light side was. But many more of them died in this retaliation against his humiliation, and they were forced to retreat.
An hour later, they sit together across from each other over a spread of fanciful dishes; herbed cheese, spiced fish, a decorous plate of steaks. The clinks of their spoons are loud as they eat, and his eyes keep raising to Malfoy from under the bow of his head, half his mind on him, guarded and wary.
"Treacle tarts?" Malfoy asks, half-way through the tense lull, pushing the basket towards him.
"No thank you," Harry says. He is only eating whatever Malfoy is, and Malfoy hasn't touched anything there.
"Never thought I'd see the day you turn these down. They were your favourites," Malfoy says, with an exasperated sort of huff, something else fainter. "Scarfed them all down like a barbarian every time."
"You seem to know a lot about me."
"I know a lot about a lot of people. And a lot of people know a lot about you."
"Did we know each other?"
"We did."
"What were we?"
"We were in school together."
"That's all? Just schoolmates?"
"Sure."
Harry waits silently for him to elaborate. He doesn't.
"You need not worry. I'm certain you will remember everything by the time you need to," Malfoy says. "And if it helps you feel a bit safer, I need something from you, so you have plenty of leverage over me. And in return, I'm offering you plenty of things myself."
There is so much he wants to ask.
What does he need from Harry?
What does he mean when he says by the time he needs to?
What if Harry doesn't ever remember anything, and what will he —
What will he do then?
There are questions that are so overwhelming he can hardly even think of it. So he doesn't.
"Well, how did we get here then? You said you've harboured me in your house for years."
Malfoy hums. "A long story. But to summarize, you and your friends... you hunted down all the horcruxes — that is..."
"The split pieces of a soul." Harry finds it strange that he remembers that, but didn't his own name. "To grant someone immortality."
"Yes. Good to know the general knowledge parts of memory are intact. Will need to look into that later some more. But moving on... you got them all, but one. The one that was in you."
"In me?"
"Yes. In your soul. Something to do with when he tried to kill you in your crib."
"Alright. Go on."
"You-Know-Who worked that out. By that point, it was impossible to create any more horcruxes, since the flesh and blood must be one's own to do so. If he wanted to salvage the remnants of his chance at immortality, he couldn't kill you outright. He needed to extract the horcrux from your soul first, so he had you captured, placed you into a magically induced coma, and assigned his best Death-Eater to do it. But something went wrong in these attempts."
"Instead of succeeding, the horcrux merged even further into your soul. And it's not clear how, but somehow his life became tied to yours. If you died then, so would he, with no chances for his return ever again."
"The person responsible was executed for this...mishap...and the task was then assigned to Severus Snape to undo this. You were put in his home."
"But here's the thing: unbeknownst to The Dark Lord, Severus was a double spy loyal to your side. He was to keep you alive and in the coma until the horcrux could be separated from your soul and housed into another object, and then kill you. Instead he harboured you as he operated on you and waited for you to awaken. He had done nearly a third of the work over the course of two years, until he fell terminally ill."
Malfoy looks up at Harry.
"And then he gave you to me. I was to carry his plans on after he passed."
"Is it gone?"
"It's gone."
"Did you destroy it?"
"No, but it's somewhere safe. I'm not in possession of a basilisk fang, certainly not the Sword of Gryffindor."
Malfoy takes his glass of wine and drinks it, his eyes on Harry, as if taking stock of his reaction. They are silvery, Harry notices, sharp and quick in a way that scarily seems as if he catches on to everything, as if he is constantly assessing and studying him and can pick him apart if Harry gives him even a single word or facial expression. It does not help that Malfoy knows him better right now than he knows himself.
Harry is only silent, only half able to process what he's learned just now. None of it has any emotional and experiential attachment. It's all like a story he's listening to about someone else.
"And the plan?"
"To bring you up to par with You-Know-Who. To teach you everything I know so you can have all the means at your disposal to protect yourself."