Chapter 18
1999
Harry opens his eyes, feeling weak and heavy.
His vision swims on the blur of a fairly handsome face, smirking at him; white blond hair combed neatly, and gray eyes sharp on his.
The last thing he remembers is being caught alone in battle with Malfoy while on a transit back to his current safehouse, cornered at a deadend. Weeks ago, he'd gotten separated from the rest of his people. He hasn't dared to try and find them ever since, even though he was smart enough to work out that this was perfectly orchestrated by Malfoy. Even so, he'd been careful as can be, disguised as much as possible. It wasn't enough anyway.
Malfoy grabs his jaw to wrench his face straight and force him to meet his own eyes, gloved fingers digging into his cheeks painfully. His mouth is tilted over his, like an almost kiss. It feels bizarrely like a mockery.
"Hello, beloved, " Malfoy says, sneering the word into his face.
Harry blinks, blank and confused.
This reaction makes Malfoy tilt his head. His eyes dawn in some realisation..
"Ah…" His mouth parts around the sound, his lower teeth, his chin lifting slightly, "I see."
Harry doesn't understand.
Malfoy lingers there, face teetering in a half-smirk and half-sneer, flat eyes roving up and down his face. He releases him roughly, throwing him back a little, and straightens.
"Call the Dark Lord over," he commands to the two men behind him. "Today will be a celebratory day, for decades to come."
***
Harry's death is not immediate. For days, he is left weak and starving and thirsty, on top of his already pre-existing conditions of malnutrition and dehydration. Being on the run and trying to survive constantly makes it difficult to have basic needs met.
Malfoy comes on the third day.
He does not stay outside the bars. He seems confident enough, because of the magic-canceling shackles, to open the door of his cellar and enter inside, to crouch before him at his eye-level.
"Why did you call me that? Beloved?"
They'd never even talked, only ever fought, Malfoy always silent behind his skull mask.
"Strange thing to call your enemy, isn't it, Malfoy? I don't even know who you are."
Malfoy stares at him, his smile tight and empty. His eyes, however, are ablaze with loathing and anger.
"How dare you give yourself such reprieve, when you have ruined my life?" Malfoy's voice is otherwise calm, impassive. He smiles, then, cocking his head, "Did it hurt too much to think of me, Potter? I hope it did."
Malfoy leans into his face, grabbing the top of his hair. Harry stares him dead in the eye, impassive and bold.
"I hope it ruined you, and I hope you remember me before you die, so that this will hurt even worse."
***
The implication seems to be that Harry has forgotten something about Malfoy, or forgotten Malfoy entirely. But when he searches through his memories for an interaction, for anything he may have done that should affect Malfoy, he comes up empty. Harry simply does not know who Draco Malfoy is, beyond that he is a Death-Eater who seems to be especially after him or against him, has perhaps been assigned especially for Harry's capture with how diligently he planned and orchestrated it.
Harry doesn't know what he did to Malfoy. He remembers nothing about him.
It didn't matter anyway, he thinks. What did Harry care, whatever happened to a Death-Eater?
But slowly, in the cellar when all he has time to do is think, he begins to realise something.
When he tries to think back through his life, his memories seem faded and incomplete. There seems to be a vague, uncomfortable implication that he is missing something or someone, but he has never known what. Once he expressed this to Hermione; She did not say anything, simply changed the topic.
But surely - surely this haze around many of his childhood memories have nothing to do with Malfoy.
This strange sense that there has always been a blurry person next to him.
There has always been something about Malfoy that he couldn't put his finger on, ever since the first day they faced against each other on the battlefield.
***
Draco notices the changes and progression. He doesn't know the memories that are returning to Potter, but he can watch them return in the changes of his gaze, his body language, his facial expressions.
It starts with cold anger. Draco can only conclude that the first memory he regained was that of his precious old headmaster's death.
Slowly, the confusion takes its place; missing context, gaps in his understanding.
There were days Draco could feel Potter's eyes on him, following him. When he caught his eyes, the emotions in them were unfathomable and innumerable. They looked lost, almost.
Draco relishes it, the pain that grew in him day to day with the gradual return of his memories.
The last day is when he comes upon Potter crying against the wall; silent, his head turned into the wall.
"Poor baby..." Draco smirks, snapping his fingers. The cellar door unlocks.
Draco grabs his chin and turns his face to him, and he is looking into his face closely, this way and that into his gritty, raw eyes, a cruel sort of glint in his gaze, in the twitch at the corner of his mouth. Potter swallows and looks right back at him, resigned to his fate, of whatever's coming next.
He wants to see it all; pain and sadness and hurt. He wants to see him suffer .
Draco laughs, a vicious and cutting sound, "Right on time too, for you to remember. We've gotten word that the Dark Lord wants you today. As a matter of fact, he'll be asking for you any minute now."
The Dark Lord did not say why he needed so much time. He merely said that some arrangements were being made for Potter's death.
"So tell me. Does it hurt?" Draco asks, "to lose like this?"
Potter stares at him, saying nothing. His head is half-turned into the wall, hair riding up. His eyes are tender, heavy; sadness and something else more nauseating.
He smiles, then, sad and pained.
"What a flimsy attempt," Potter's voice rasps, weakly, "to forget... you."
You, he says, with a sickening reverence and fondness.
His throat sounds parched and dry, and he is slumped back against the wall with his full bodyweight. He looks much thinner and weaker than the day he was brought here.
Draco startles, at the shaky hand that touches his face.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
He grabs Potter's wrist and throws it aside.
Potter just touches him again. Whispering, faster, "I'm sorry I failed you and your mother. I don't know what went wrong that day and I wish I knew. Maybe I didn't time it right, or fucked something up. And I can't - I can't even imagine what must have happened to you, to either of you, after that..." Draco is frozen, strangely, by the words, the intensity of his gaze and trembling voice; his hand on his face. "Your father... I'm sorry for him too... I heard he died that day at the manor, and he died because of me..."
Draco grabs his wrist again and flings it away with such violence that Potter's breath hitches, flinching. It seems to have hurt, knocking against the wall. Good.
"You really think this act is going to work on me, Potter? You're a fucking fool."
"Bring the Potter boy, MacNair!" A muffled voice yells from above.
Potter's eyes are on the door, wide. He grabs Draco's face again, quick with urgency.
"Draco. Draco, listen to me... they did something to you. Even if you truly hate me, you need to figure out what it is, okay? I need you to think about it all. I need you to try to understand and make sense of everything they've told you, everything you know. I need you to question things -- "
"You really expect me to believe that? And what makes you think I care about what you need me to do?"
Potter doesn't seem to be listening, and all Draco wants is to backhand him across the face again; but the Dark Lord wants the savior boy all polished and shiny, it seems. "There wasn't a second that went by that I didn't think of you." His voice is thick. He looks like he is about to cry again, eyes red-rimmed, but he reigns it in. "I wanted to end the war for you. For us. I thought if I could end it all, I would... I would be able to bring you home. But I couldn't do that either."
The hatred and anger Draco felt burned like acid in his throat; these pathetic words, lies. Potter, pretending like he cared, like he was sorry -
Draco's hand is to his throat, shoving him up against the wall. "Shut up. I swear I would have killed you myself if I wasn't under orders."
"I love you."
"I said shut up!"
"I love you so much."
It's not the words so much as the way Potter was looking at him that made Draco go still; quiet. His eyes, strange and liquid, and the tenderest smile on his lips.
It's bewildering.
It's bizarre, that Potter should look at him like that, that it almost seems --
And how dare he?
Draco's hand flexes, holding back the urge to hit him.
"For all intents and purposes," Draco finally says, "I am the one that took your life."
He wants that fact to break Potter.
Even if it's at the Dark Lord's hand that Potter dies, it is Draco that captured him, brought him here, kept him away from the tracks and searching eyes of the Order and the opposing side; found a desolate place like this for Potter to be kept.
But Potter is smiling gently, still, as if it did not hurt him at all. The footsteps are coming nearer, more audible.
"You are," he says, very quietly, "the only one that's allowed to take anything from me."
The words end nearly soundless inside his mouth, until his lips are only shaping around them; his smile.
Draco can only stare at him, as the heavy door opens. He stands straight, Potter's hands falling away from him.
MacNair appears in the entryway, and walks up until he is stood beside him.
"Get him out of my sight," Draco says, coldly.
"Don't give me orders, boy."
Draco looks at MacNair right in the eye. "Why, you'll have to get used to it now."
He walks past him, waving a beckoning hand high over his shoulder.
"Bring him along."