When I enter the doors of St. Mungo's, the Healers look at me pityingly and shake their heads. That's never a good sign in a hospital.
The lift is quiet. I arrive on the fourth floor and someone else gets in as I leave. She doesn't even glance at me – it looks like she's trying to be inconspicuous, though I'd recognize that hair anywhere. Hermione Granger just walked past me, and she won't even say hello. It must really be bad, then.
I tap lightly on the door and then enter. He lies on the bed, staring up at the shapes the dappled light makes on the white ceiling with huge green eyes while humming happily. I take a deep breath and walk over to him. I don't know why I'm doing this to myself. Again.
"Hello," I say quietly. He sits bolt upright and stares at me.
"Hi," he says cautiously. "Do I know you?"
"No," I say calmly, trying not to alarm him. "I'm just here to see how you're doing."
He squints at my tattered robes, so unlike the ones that I am used to.
"You don't look like a Healer," he says suspiciously. Well, I was disowned of the Malfoy fortune, so I can't really do any better.
"I'm not a Healer," I say. Heck, I didn't even get to finish school. "I'm not going to try and give you medicine or anything. I'm just here to talk to you, see how you're doing."
He visibly relaxes, and I can see the dark circles beneath his eyes. Even though he is only eighteen, he looks an age older. I nervously swallow the lump in my throat and plunge onwards.
"So, have you been reading the news?" my smile is ersatz, just like my calm.
Remember me, I silently beg him. Remember yourself.
"Yes," he says, his brow furrowing in thought. "I read about Harry Potter. Who's Harry Potter? Why is he so great?"
I take a few deep, calming breaths. He twigged on quickly today. He pushes his glasses up his nose and grins at me expectantly.
"Harry Potter is a great man," I choke out. "He defeated the Dark Lord and saved pretty much all the world."
"Do you know him?" he says, his eyes wide and shining with curiosity.
I used to, I think. Now he doesn't even know my name.
"No, not really," is what I say.
The two of us talk some more about Harry Potter, every sentence a knife to my heart. He doesn't remember. He can't remember.
That curse from my father hit him right after he killed Voldemort, and he doesn't have any idea who I am. He hasn't any idea who anyone is, really, but it hurts me most that I'm just another face in a big, wide world that he has no memory of.
When the clock chimes four, I stand to leave. I push my blonde hair off my face and smile gently at him. He smiles back, a happy, dopey grin.
"It was really nice of you to come and see me," he says happily. "You should come again sometime."
I do, I think. I'm here every day, and every time I enter that door, you ask if you know me. Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Harry?
"I'll try," is what I say. I'm quite accustomed to not saying what I mean now.
When I reach for the doorknob, he says, "Wait," and I look into his vacant eyes, willing with all my heart for him to remember me.
… He doesn't.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" he says, his smile less sure than it was before.
"Yeah," I whisper, tears forming in my eyes as I turn away from him. "You used to love me."