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Draco turned on the recorder as soon as he walked into the lab. Two of his colleagues stood by the main table, fastening the unconscious subject’s limbs, and a third one handed him his notes, which he took without looking up as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.
There was a hum of magic around the body, keeping it safe, keeping it still. He forced himself not to think too hard about who it belonged to.
“What’s the status?” he asked the room at large, approaching the table.
“Alive, under a magically induced coma to prevent strain to the core. We haven’t identified the curse,” replied Zeller, holding her hands over the subject’s head to hold the charm. Draco nodded at her, turned his face towards the recorder and spoke clearly.
“This is Draco Malfoy, code DM17008512, head of the Dark Arts BioStudies division, reporting from Level 9, on the 25th of June, 2008.” He walked around the exam table, lowered Zeller’s charms and replaced them with his own, finding the subject’s vitals with his magical awareness. “Subject A1534, Harry James Potter, is alive, kept under a magical coma. Slight bradycardia, as expected, blood pressure of 110/60, core unstable at 250 joules and climbing by the second.”
The manic energy of Harry’s magic zinged his forearms, crazed, looking for an outlet. Draco felt it around his fingers, underneath his nails. He clenched his teeth.
“This is Rose Zeller,” she picked up as he fell silent, “code RZ19003276, member of the Dark Arts BioStudies division, reporting from Level 9 on the 25th of June, 2008. Subject Harry James Potter arrived unconscious in the emergency department of St Mungo’s Hospital in the early hours of the 24th of June, 2008, and was referred to the Dark Arts Biostudies division that very morning, after the medics failed to identify the curse responsible for his condition.”
Draco knew all that, and yet it made his hackles rise once again to remember what the medics had said, the call he’d received the previous day, informing him of his new subject. He looked at Harry’s prone form now, the easy rise and fall of his chest as the coma imitated sleep, the peaceful drop of his eyelids, and had to will himself not to think as he ran his hands down the tan neck, the long clavicles. This was just a subject, he told himself. Nothing was different. He cleared his throat, “Curse entry identified over second rib, at midclavicular line on the right side. Trifocal, seeming to suggest a curse of the Imperial family. No exit mark apparent upon inspection.”
He took his hands off the body, clasping them together so he could pretend they weren’t shaking, and retracted his magic, pulling it free of the magnet of Harry’s. It was quiet, only the static hum of the spells keeping Harry unconscious broke the silence of the insular room. His soft breaths. The occasional brush of Zeller’s pen against paper. Draco tried not to stare, and couldn’t. There was so much naked skin on display, so much history, that no matter how hard he attempted to root himself to the present, he found himself falling into memories of that body, of those hands, of years of watching. Years of wanting.
“No exit mark apparent upon inspection,” he repeated. Made up his mind. “Impossible to reach further conclusions until the subject is woken up. Zeller, Nott, rennervate him. I shall stabilize his core.”
It was a testament to how far he’d come that neither of them thought to argue. They moved, one of them standing at each of Harry’s sides, and Draco stayed near his head, reaching towards his core with his magic, coaxing it into stillness, easing it from the entropy the curse had unleashed.
“Rennervate,” Zeller and Nott whispered in unison.
Harry’s core cells shook against Draco’s hold, fought the intrusion for a moment, but he held on, and soon enough Harry’s eyes popped open, frantic, his body immediately battling the restraints, thrashing, attempting to free his arms and legs, to flee. But still Draco held on, and at last, when Harry looked up and their eyes met, he stopped struggling, as sudden as a bucket of water dousing a fire.
“Potter,” Draco muttered through clenched teeth, as he reined in Harry’s core cells. “You need to tell us what they hit you with.”
He felt Zeller’s magic join his own, take some of the brunt of Harry’s magic, lift a bit of weight off his shoulders. His breaths came more easily.
“W-what?” Harry asked, still confused, still looking at Draco, only at Draco.
“You’re in the Department of Mysteries,” Draco said, “you were attacked. Do you remember what they hit you with?”
“I don’t— what? Department of— Do I know you?”
“Boss, his core is nearing 300 joules,” Nott said. “We need to put him down again.”
But Draco barely heard him. “You don’t remember me?”
Harry blinked, confused, tried to stand up, shook his wrists against his restraints when he found he couldn’t. “No. I was hit?”
“Yes, with a curse. Did you have the chance to hear what it was?” Zeller asked when Draco, stunned into silence, didn’t continue the interrogation.
“A curse? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harry said. “Did you kidnap me? I — what’s happening?”
“Boss, core at 325”
“You’re the boss?” Harry asked Draco, looking right into his eyes once again. “I thought… you feel familiar but I don’t really—?”
“Boss, 350.”
“Mr Potter,” Rose said, “We really need you to…”
“Potter?” Harry asked.
Draco felt faint.
“360”
“Am I—?” Harry didn’t look away from Draco, his eyes pleading.
“380”
“Put him down,” Draco said.
Nott did.
The silence that followed ringed in Draco’s ears. They were all quiet, stunned into it. Harry lay unconscious on the table once again. Draco could still hear his pained confusion.
“Subject appears to suffer from severe amnesia,” he said at last. “Recording over.”
-
They’d kissed once.
It could almost have been passed off as an accident, brief and light as it was.
To Draco, it counted.
It had been four years before, the night Harry graduated from the Auror Academy. Him and the other 24 graduates had piled up into a bar and made a big deal of it, gotten drunk out of their minds. Draco’s presence had been a mere coincidence, his getting drunk a very conscious decision once he’d seen the boisterous, red-coated lot.
His memories were confusing, the images blurring into each other as the night progressed in increasingly drunker increments, but he remembered stumbling into the bathroom and finding Harry there, broad shoulders free of his coat, with Ron weeping into his arm and saying, “I just love you so much, you’re my best friend I love you sooo—“ and Harry patting his shoulder and saying, “I know, I know, I love you too.” He remembered, somehow, ending up at their table. Doing shots with them. A confusing few minutes on the dance floor. He remembered standing outside the bar in the rain and then, right there, the kiss. He couldn’t remember what had led up to it, but the fact of it had sobered him up immediately, and he remembered it, crystal clear, himself leaning against the wall, wet from the rain, and Harry, a long line of heat along his side, their lips pressed together. He remembered pushing for more, and then Harry pulling back. Harry saying, “Oh god.”
Then, the night dissolved in his mind and the next thing he remembered was waking up the following morning, hungover.
He’d not seen Harry for weeks after that, and when they’d finally met again at an interdepartmental meeting, Harry had given him a mere nod, eyes sliding right past him. As if nothing had happened. Perhaps, to him, it hadn’t. But to Draco, it counted.
-
“What’s the plan now, boss?” Nott asked him, droplets of sweat high on his brow from maintaining the charm keeping Harry down.
Draco took a deep breath. “We got some information. Find all references to amnesia linked to a curse of the Imperial class on the records.”
“On it.” Zeller said.
Harry lay unconscious once again, incongruous in the calmness of his induced sleep. A tamed lion. Draco reached forward, removed his glasses, folded the temples carefully. Then, he ran his knuckles along the dark, freckled cheekbones.
“I’m going to talk to The Professor,” he said. His colleagues hummed their assent.
The Professor’s office stood right at the end of Level 9, a door you might not see if it didn’t feel like being seen, in a corridor that, at times, didn’t exist at all. Fitting for the head of the department of mysteries.
The door opened for him before he knocked, which told him he was expected. When he walked inside, Hermione Granger stood beside her desk, two books in her hands.
“Professor,” Draco said. “You heard the recording.”
“Yes,” she replied, fingers quick on the pages of one of the books she held. “I want nothing more than to go see him myself, but I have to meet the minister right now. I did find these, I hope they help,” she handed Draco the books, one of them open to a specific page. Her level, browned eyed gaze was harsh on him. “The only reason I’m not storming your lab is that I know you’re capable. Take care of him.”
“I will.”
She nodded. “Do whatever it takes to bring him back.” He would.
Back in his lab, Draco sat on top of his desk and paged through the books Hermione had given him. The first one, the one she had handed him open, was on mind magic.
The dissolution of memories following an attack with dark magic, the title read at the top of the page.
A clear marker of mind magic is its lightness. Schuester and Neels classify the magical particles that travel through neurons as a follow-up to their natural action potential into two large groups: permalight and everblue. The permalight particles possess an immutable quality that ensures their stability, whereas everblue particles, in charge of the pathways pertaining to memory, when disturbed by specific dark curses (especially those dealing with the proceedings of the magical center in the medulla oblongata) become overactive, releasing an increased amount of energy that forces the magical core into a state of overcompensation. Cases with magical cores that reach up to 500 joules have been documented, and the main consequence is a loss of the overactive everblue particles and the resultant dissolution of memories.
“Found it,” Draco said, marking the page down and putting the book aside before reaching for the second one. “Nott, give me a rundown of the state of his everblue particles.”
“Got it,” Nott replied. After a couple seconds, he added, surprised, “the everblue particles are… going haywire, just frantic, it’s hard to say. They’re definitely more active than they should be.”
“Attempt to stabilize, give me a second,” Draco opened the second book. It was a Mind Potions manual. He paged through it, looking, looking, until he found what he was looking for. “McKinney, get me a silver cauldron.”
“There’s an antidote?” Zeller asked.
Draco nodded. “It will take a few hours to brew, but if I’m right, he should be out of here by tomorrow morning.”
“Baseline?” McKinney asked.
“Memory potion. Get me one as well, I’ll modify as needed.”
In a second, they were all working again. Draco went to the supply closet and picked out the ingredients carefully, one finger over the page that held the instructions. If he did it right, Harry would be back the next day. That was all that mattered. That was all he cared about.
“You need help?” McKinney asked him when he took the cauldron from her. He didn’t, not really, but one look at Harry lying on the exam table and at the clock on the wall had him nodding.
He would bring him back, and he would do it as soon as possible.
“Yes. Chop the staghorn.” He got the fire going, crushed the neem leaves, squeezed the valerian root. Together, he and McKinney completed the ingredient list, and Draco added them to the cauldron one by one, paying attention to the scent of the fumes, the color of the smoke. Once he had a royal blue potion, he turned the fire down.
“It needs to simmer for two hours. After that, I’ll need your help to wake him up and make him drink it.”
Mckinney cringed. Draco nodded, sympathetic. He wasn’t keen on forcing Harry, either.
“Will he have his memories back, boss?”
“The important ones, right away. He should remember the rest in the next few days.”
“Everything he remembered before?”
Draco nodded. “If I did it right, yes.” He was looking at the clock, at the slow tick of the thin hand marking the seconds. “You should all go grab lunch, I will need you sharp. I can guard the subject.”
They all recognized it as the order it was and, after taking off their aprons and offering to bring him coffee once they returned, they left him alone. The room was eerily silent in their wake. Draco brought a stool next to the exam table and sat there, right beside Harry. His hand, wide and open, lay next to his body. Draco swallowed, brought his hand up and ran the tips of his fingers down Harry’s palm.
Would he remember, Draco wondered.
He supposed it didn’t really matter.
-
When he’d mentioned the graduation party, over a year after it happened, Harry had simply stared at him blankly.
“You were there?” And then, sheepish, “Oh, man, I was so drunk I don’t remember a single thing. I’m sorry, did I do something embarrassing? Do you have embarrassing stories about me?”
Draco laughed it off, relayed the story of a weepy Ron in the bathroom of the bar, and Harry laughed along.
They’d become friends by then, were already past the tentative first drinks, well into the stage of inside jokes, of shared meals. And now Draco knew that Harry didn’t remember.
For a while, he willed himself to forget. Once he realized it was impossible, he resigned himself to living with his one-sided crush. Harry’s friendship was already so much more than he could’ve ever hoped for, his hyper-distilled attention heady enough as it was. It was enough.
-
“Ready?” Draco asked, holding the vial between his fingers. Zeller, Nott and McKinney stood at Harry’s sides. He waited for their nod before giving the order, “Now.”
“Rennervate.”
Once again, Harry woke up fighting, struggling with his binds before even becoming fully conscious. This time, though, Draco was right there, a hand to Harry’s sweaty nape, the short hair at the back of his head.
“Hey, it’s okay. Harry, wake up.”
Harry did, his eyes overtaken by his pupils for a couple seconds before adjusting to the bright lights of the lab. He looked at Draco, right at him as he had before, just as confused. “What’s happening?”
“You lost your memories,” Draco whispered, disarmed by the absolute trust in Harry’s eyes. “We can help you, but you have to drink this. Will you?”
He showed him the vial. Harry eyed it, swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”
Draco breathed out, relieved. “Here, I’ll help you.” He tipped Harry’s head back, brought the vial close to his lips. “It tastes good, I promise. I made it specially for you.”
Harry nodded, didn’t look away from him for a second as he swallowed, and soon enough, the vial was empty.
The potion acted immediately. The monitors beeped as Harry’s pulse skyrocketed, his breath quickening, but his core began to regain stability, the number climbing down from 400. His hand shot forward, clung to Draco’s arm, and Draco let him, watched him ride the waves of memories.
At last, Harry’s eyes fell closed, a faint sheen of sweat covering his forehead. The monitors showed his core at 80 joules.
“What’s your name?” Draco asked softly, gently.
“Harry James Potter,” Harry whispered, eyes still closed. He brought a hand up, covered his eyelids.
“Do you know what they hit you with?”
“Desvelo”
Unveiling.
Draco nodded at Zeller. She nodded back, took off her apron and walked out of the lab, to investigate previous uses of the curse on their records. Draco turned back to Harry.
“Do you know who I am?”
Harry stayed still for a moment, then nodded, a slight jerk of his chin. He didn’t say anything.
“How are you feeling, Harry?”
“My head really hurts.”
Draco moved his sweaty hair away from his forehead, still gentle, still speaking low. “Do you want a painkiller?”
Harry nodded.
“Nott, bring me ibuprofen, 650 milligrams,” he didn’t turn to see if Nott had listened, instead ran his fingers through Harry’s hair once again. “Anything else?”
He saw Harry’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Yes. Back when— On the day of my graduation I—“
“Oh god, no,” Draco said quickly, hands stilling in Harry’s hair. “You don’t have to say anything. Please, just… you need to rest.”
“I do. But… we’ll talk about it later?”
Draco took a deep breath. “Yes. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Good.”