i s o b e l

Ginny waved an Alohamora at the door of the building and left Isobel in the lobby. Isobel walked slowly up the stairs, the weight of the day's progress heavy on her heart.

By the time she reached Draco's apartment, she was already crying.

The weight of five days' worth of heightened emotion had finally built up; was finally taking over and spilling out, and she could no longer push it away. Could not, for a minute more, pretend that she wasn't gasping for air in a world that seemed so determined to drown her.

For so long now, she had disregarded the blur that had taken the place of her memories of Draco. Had pretended it wasn't reality; had moved forward and ignored it all under the assumption that it wouldn't be her permanent future. But now she had, in a matter of minutes, confirmed that that was exactly what it was - that there were years of her life she was never getting back, ever - and she was wiping tears from her cheeks and stumbling in through Draco's door, feeling that she couldn't fucking breathe -

d r a c o

He had seen her coming from his window: had watched her walk back down the street, Ginny Weasley close by her side. The same window from which he could see the street corner where she had stood for weeks, suspicious and untrusting; looking at him and trying to fit together the puzzle pieces of her own mind. The window where a tiny white snowdrop lay, untouched, on the sill. He had not yet told her that it was all he had left from their life before.

Before. . . everything. Before this. Whatever this was.

Belly knocked and pushed open the door at the same time. He turned to her, and he realized she was crying. He looked into her tear-streaked face, and within seconds was by her; taking her into his arms and holding her tightly to his chest.

"I don't -" she said, pressing her forehead into his chest and choking out sobs - "I can't -"

He held her closer, threaded one hand into her hair. Wondered if she could feel his heart, thudding in his chest. Wanted desperately to know what it was that had upset her so, who it was; but forced himself to remain silent.

Belly slid her arms around his middle, hugging him back. "I'm sorry," she said, voice muffled by his jumper.

"Shut up," mumbled Draco.

He slid his hands around to the backs of her thighs, picked her up, and carried her to the couch. Dropped onto it, with her.

"Sorry," she repeated, pushing hair from her face. "Sorry - I'm crying again - it's just a lot -" She paused; red-cheeked, puffy-eyed - then lifted a hand and ran her fingers along his jawline. Despite her tears, her lips tilted up into a half-smile. "Draco, you look furious."

He could not make himself laugh. "I just want to know if there is someone I need to murder."

"No, no one." She looked at him, and her eyebrows knit together, and tears welled in her eyes again as she choked out, "I don't deserve you."

He laughed then, at that. He couldn't not laugh. How ridiculous it was for her to say she didn't deserve him.

He looked at her: her dark eyes, reddened from crying, the tears caught between her eyelashes; the wetness on her freckled cheeks. The way she sat facing him, legs curled underneath her. How fucking insane it was, he thought, that he was lucky enough to have had her brought back to him, to have her curled up here in his arms, and that she didn't think she deserved it.

She brushed away tears. He saw her bite on her cheek, as if trying to figure out how to phrase the information. Then she said, carefully, "Hermione explained the difference between memory charms and Obliviation to me. She explained what Obliviation feels like, when you're on the receiving end of the charm." She paused, her eyes flicking between his. "We confirmed that's what happened to me."

"No," he said. "No, that can't be right -"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I think I always knew it, deep down. I was just - I don't know. Ignoring it all. I was in denial."

"How can you know for sure?"

"Because of the way it feels, it -" She sighed. "There are gaps in my memory - big blurs that I've never understood. That's where you should be. That's where you were, for three or four years."

Draco's throat was dry. "But Obliviate is irreversible."

"Yes." Her tears were gone now: her eyes clearer, and fully focused on him. "So what we had in school," she said softly, "I'll never remember that."

Draco was shaking his head. It was more than just what they had in school. That had been his entire world. It still was. "But if your memories were extracted they can be restored -"

"But Draco," she said. "They weren't extracted. We said it ourselves. What are the chances that whoever took my memories extracted them first?"

He nodded, feeling helpless. "Slim."

"So this is it," she said. "This is how it's going to be, always."

For the past week, Belly had been the one more preoccupied with getting her memories back than he was. It made sense: for days he had been reeling with the revelation that the girl he had loved and lost was here, alive and present, while she had been confronted with a stranger who she once had loved but had forgotten all about. He had been more concerned with talking to her, basking in her presence, than worrying about her memories all too much, but still -

To know that the Isobel he had known in school, the one who had changed his entire world within a few short years, was never coming back -

It was pretty fucking painful.

"I'm sorry," said Belly.

"For what?"

"Just - I'm sorry that I'm not the Isobel that you knew. I don't even really know her, myself."

Draco placed the back of his hand on his thigh and splayed his fingers. Moments later, Belly's hand; much smaller than his, all thin fingers and broken nails; followed. She placed her palm on his, and they rested there. Hand to hand; her fingers stretched across his.

"It doesn't matter to me," he said. "What you know of me is a small price to pay for having you back. For knowing you're alive and healthy." He dropped his eyes to their hands. "A price, yes. But one I would pay in a heartbeat. Over and over."

When he looked back at her, her eyes were on his. "Really?"

"Really."

His throat felt dry, his head light, and for all he knew, they could be the only two people in the world right now. Here on his couch, in this tiny apartment.

"I want to watch your memories," she said. "Please."

"Yeah," he said, distractedly. "Of course you can watch them."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he said again. "Whenever we can find a Pensieve."

She might hate him after it: he knew that. Might watch Draco stand at the top of the Astronomy Tower, pointing his wand at Albus Dumbledore's heart, and decide she never wanted to see him again.

He didn't want her to watch them. And he knew that even if she watched them, anyone might still erase her memories -

But still. If she wanted to see his memories, then she would see them.

"So what next?" he asked her. "Do you have any other ideas?"

Belly was quiet for a long while. "Yes, actually," she said finally. There was a small, almost imperceptible shake in her voice. "I do." She looked back at him. "I'm going to ask my mother who took my memories," she said. "And I won't leave the hospital until I get the answer."

i s o b e l

Isobel had always disliked hospitals, and her recurring visits to St. Mungo's were making the feeling stronger. The whole place was aggressively sterile; walls polished and gleaming, the overpowering smell of cleanliness heavy in every room and hallway.

But Draco walked by her side this time, and that made things ever so slightly more tolerable.

They walked through the hallways, up flights of stairs to her mother's private ward; Isobel with a bouquet of pink flowers in her arms. It was the first time she had been out with Draco in a wizarding area, and the contrast to the muggle streets of London was tangible. She immediately noticed the recognition that registered in the faces of visitors, patients and the hospital staff as Draco passed them. The way their gazes lingered as he walked down the corridor. The way their eyes moved to her, next.

She was less invisible when she was with Draco. That was for sure.

When they reached her mother's ward, she turned to him. "I think you should stay out here," she said. "For a while, at least. I'll see how it goes."

"Alright," he said, leaning a shoulder against the wall. "Call me if you need me."

Isobel pushed open the ward door. She didn't want her mother to see him; felt certain Maggie would freak out if she did. But she also was not sure she had the courage to ask by herself.

Her mother was very pale. Each time Isobel saw her, between visits, she was momentarily taken aback by how sickly she had physically become: how very weak she appeared.

She looked up as the door opened, and Isobel breathed a sigh of apprehension. She was awake. That meant there was no excuse not to ask her.

She gave Draco a final look. He leant against the wall, arms folded. Expressionless as ever: his eyes on her. He couldn't say anything, now, with the door open. But he gave her a nod, and she understood. She could do this. She had to.

She stepped into the ward, and Maggie smiled. "I've missed you, darling."

"I missed you too," said Isobel. She propped open the door with the doorstop. "Mind if I leave this open? It's stuffy in here."

"Are those flowers for me?"

Isobel moved away from the door, towards her mother's bed. In the brink of her vision, Draco's grey eyes disappeared from view.

"Of course they're for you." The flowers that were already on Maggie's bedside table were withering. Isobel took the vase and emptied them into the bin; arranged the new bouquet in their place. "How have you been feeling?"

"Good," said Maggie. "Better."

Isobel shrugged off her coat. She wasn't sure that she believed that. Her mother didn't look any better. And she was still in a private ward.

"Sit down," said Maggie. "What have you been doing, at home? Have you been lonely?"

Isobel had only been in her own house for one night since she had found Maggie in the hallway. And then she had slept on the couch; not even in her own bed. "Yes," she said, sinking into the wooden seat beside Maggie's bed. "Of course."

She noticed that Maggie showed no empathy for these words. If anything, her expression brightened. "Is the house quiet, without me?"

Isobel looked away. "Yes."

"Oh dear," said Maggie. "Well, it's a good thing I'll be home, soon."

Isobel nodded. "That's true."

"Is something wrong?"

"No," she said. "No, nothing."

"Then why are you so quiet?" Maggie's dark eyebrows knit together. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing, I just -" Isobel clasped her hands together. She took a breath. "A few days ago, you said some things while you were asleep."

She did not expect that her mother's face could get any paler. But at those words, it did, and Isobel's heart skipped at the change in her expression. The confirmation that she knew more than she was letting on.

"I'm sure I talk in my sleep all the time," said Maggie. "I'm sure I spout complete nonsense."

"Well," said Isobel slowly, watching her mother. "You said something about Lucius Malfoy."

Maggie dropped eye contact at once. "As I said, none of it means anything."

"Don't you want to know what you said?"

"No." Maggie shook her head adamantly. "No - none of it means anything."

"But don't you even want to hear -"

"I always speak in my sleep. Your father slept beside me for years and used to tell me about it all the time." Maggie looked back at Isobel. "He used to do it too, sometimes. It was funny."

Isobel felt frustration build inside of her. Her mother was purposely steering the conversation away; was knowingly changing the topic to something she was more comfortable speaking about. She glared at her own palms, then said, "I want to know about Draco Malfoy."

There was a long, weighted pause. Isobel looked at the open door of the ward. Draco stood right around the corner, surely listening to their every word. And she feared what her mother might say next, but she had to know.

"Mum," she said. "I want to know. You've kept me in the dark for long enough."

"There's nothing to know," said Maggie.

"That's not true."

"Nothing you need to know, now -"

"That's not true," repeated Isobel. "There's so much to know. So much that doesn't exist in my mind anymore - and you know why I can't remember any of it, and you won't tell me -"

"You hit your head."

"No, I didn't." She felt hot, angry tears spill over onto her cheeks. "I didn't forget everything I knew about him simply by falling and hitting my head. Someone took my memories. They took them from me and now I have nothing left of him."

For a few moments, the room was silent again. Isobel looked up, half-surprised; fully having expected Maggie to come out with another nonsensical, unfounded response. But Maggie looked just as tearful as her daughter. "I'm afraid if I tell you," she said, "you're going to go and find the boy. You're going to speak to him. And that would put you in so much danger. Again."

Isobel felt sick; her insides riddled with guilt.

She had two options. Either she could walk to the corridor, take Draco's hand and pull him in - let her mother see who he was, who he really was - so very different to everything they had come to believe about him and his family -

Or she could lie. Promise to never speak to Draco, if her mother told her the truth.

She had just found a crack, with her mother. Had reached a fissure she had never managed to before; a tiny moment of opening up. A glimpse of hope that she never had seen before, and she was quite certain that if she told her mother the truth now - told her that she had betrayed her trust; had not only spoken to Draco but had hugged him, held him, slept in his bed - if he walked in now and her mother caught sight of his pale skin, white hair; so like his father's, the Dark Mark peeking out from his sleeve -

It would be too overwhelming for Maggie.

No, Isobel needed to wait. Even though it made her stomach turn, to lie like this -

She needed to know what had happened. She glanced at the doorway, then back at her mother. "I won't speak to him," she said. "I never will."

Maggie looked back at her; the uncertainty distinct in her pallid face. "How can I know?"

"I have no reason to," said Isobel. "He's a Death Eater."

"Yes," said Maggie. "And his kind ruined everything. They killed your father. They almost killed you. I don't know how you ever loved him in the first place."

Isobel ignored the thundering of her heart in her chest, and reached for her mother's hand. "Will you tell me what happened, now?" she asked. "Please?"

Maggie Young sighed. She closed her fingers around her daughter's palm.

And finally - finally - she told Isobel what had happened after the Battle of Hogwarts.

On the sixth of May in 1998, the day after the Battle of Hogwarts, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy visited the Youngs' old house in Surrey. Because Isobel Young had been attacked in the Battle by Alecto Carrow, and Lucius and Narcissa wanted their suspicions confirmed.

Draco would recover, thought Narcissa. He was shut in his room now, blinds down and pillows damp with tears, but he would make it through this.

That was what Narcissa wanted. She wanted Draco to recover; to move on from Isobel Young. She wanted him to be happy and healthy in a family that could give him that.

Lucius, on the other hand, wanted his son back. His old son, the son that had looked up to him and followed in his footsteps wherever he went, and sworn his loyalty to the family as if it were the most important thing in the world. Which it should have been. He wanted back the son that wore the Malfoy name like a badge.

He had always despised Isobel Young. Could have killed her himself, if Alecto Carrow hadn't beaten him to it. He had hated the girl that had stolen away Draco's attention; had stolen the devotion that had once existed so very strongly for their family and no one else. He wanted her out of Draco's life. Out of the Malfoys' world. For good.

And Narcissa maintained that Isobel was dead; that she had seen a green light fly out of Alecto's wand at Isobel's heart; and Draco had bent over her; held her face in his hands. But Lucius wanted to be sure.

Because the Malfoy reputation was in fucking tatters. Every possible thing had gone wrong, and the Malfoys had gone from powerful to scorned in a matter of minutes -

And there was no way of fixing that as long as Isobel Young was alive. And he was seething; livid; because for all he knew the Wizarding guards were ready to whisk him away to Azkaban at any moment, and the only heir to his family name was torn up over some blood-traitor Gryffindor girl.

He hadn't knocked: had stepped into the Young house as if it were a public building. Narcissa, nervous and frantic, followed on his heels.

Maggie Young had screamed - had ran into the hallway with her wand raised, and Lucius had laughed at her; mocked her; had said, Put it away, woman, before you harm yourself, too. He had pushed past her: it wasn't her, that he was interested in -

Isobel Young lay on the couch of her living room, unconscious. A tiny, angry burn in the shape of a star rested on her throat: the only trace of the magic that had saved her. 

The necklace that Draco had given her, and her mother had enchanted lay on the coffee table: a tiny heap of silver.

And after twenty minutes of shouting and screaming, of derision and distrust, Maggie Young and Lucius Malfoy had come to the same conclusion.

They didn't want Isobel and Draco anywhere near one other. They were bad for each other. They came from separate worlds, and their being together only caused more harm than good.

"You are going to remove her memories of Draco," Lucius had snarled, deathly close to Maggie's face, "And tell everyone you know that she's dead. And you're going to move out of this country to somewhere where you'll never be found - where she'll never bump into our son, ever. Do you understand?"

Tears leaked from Maggie's eyes and down her cheeks, but she was quiet. Saying nothing; her head spinning with what Lucius was suggesting.

A life of safety, for Isobel. A life away from Death Eaters, from all of the people that had ever hurt their family. A life where the two of them could live together peacefully, their safety undisturbed.

"Lucius," said Narcissa, "We can't. I won't take Draco's memories from him. I won't, we can't do that -"

"We won't take Draco's memories," said Lucius. "He will stay in the Wizarding World, with us, and people will inevitably ask him about the girl. We would never get away with that." His eyes fell to Isobel, still on the couch. "He'll get over her," he said. "Soon enough."

Maggie was leaning over her daughter, looking worried. She was a good witch. She had worked in St. Mungo's for two decades, knew all about memory spells and could execute one perfectly.

She just knew that if she did, Isobel might never forgive her.

Isobel as she was now, lying on the couch; her memory intact and her heart belonging to Draco Malfoy - would be furious at Maggie if she knew what was currently happening.

But surely, thought Maggie. . . Surely what she didn't know - didn't know anymore - couldn't hurt her.

"But Lucius," Narcissa had said, tears bright in her eyes. "They're going to comb through all of our memories, when we're taken to trial. That's how it always goes - they're going to see all of this, are going to count it against us -"

An unsettling smile had crept over Lucius' face. He had undergone enough trials at the Ministry to know how the proceedings went. Knew that a case like this, now that the Dark Lord was gone, was serious enough that the Ministry were likely to extract and sift through his memories like documents. That they needed all information they could get in order to find and convict escaped Death Eaters; that if he wanted any chance of avoiding imprisonment in Azkaban, he needed as clean a slate as possible -

"That's why Maggie isn't just going to wipe her daughter's memory," said Lucius. "She's going to wipe ours, too."

Narcissa's mouth had pursed into a fine line as she slowly understood: if she and Lucius never knew they had spoken to Maggie, if there was no memory of this plan for the Ministry to access, it couldn't be counted against them. And what was more - she wouldn't be able to feel guilty about any part of this plan, if she couldn't remember it.

"So I have to remember?" asked Maggie. "I'm the only one that will remember this conversation?"

"Yes," said Lucius. His grey eyes narrowed, menacing. "And if you care about the safety of your daughter at all, you won't mention a word of it to her, ever. Do you understand?"

Maggie nodded. Of course she cared about the safety of her daughter. It was the thing she cared about most.

And so, as Isobel Young was lying unconscious on the couch, Maggie vanished every good memory her daughter had of Draco Malfoy. In ten minutes more, she had packed everything they owned into boxes with mere waves of her wand. Then she turned to Lucius and Narcissa, and used Obliviate on them, too.

Not one memory was extracted first. Not one memory could ever be restored.

On the sixth of May in 1998, the day after the Battle of Hogwarts, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy opened their eyes, and found themselves in the Youngs' old house in Surrey.

They had absolutely no recollection of how they got there.