Granger showed up with a Bonder a few hours after their conversation. He was some hapless youth with a vague expression and spots, who obediently administered the Vow while breathing heavily through his mouth all the time. As soon as they were done, Granger dismissed him with a nod.
"I truly am sorry," she said as soon as the door had closed behind him. Her hair seemed to have shrunk a bit, and she looked older than Draco had ever seen her.
"You're still going to do it though, aren't you?" There was no response; of course she was. "You couldn't wait to get your hands on me, could you?" Draco asked. Now that he had secured the vow, he had time to be angry.
Granger visibly recoiled – she was so predictable. "I suggested my experiment would come first," she whispered. "I thought it would be easier on you..."
"Easier? How would losing my mind make it easier?" Draco's head finally caught up with his mouth, and a wave of nausea hit him as he realised why that might be the case. What sort of experiments had they lined up for him? "Oh." He grabbed on to the wall to stop the room from spinning.
When the world was stationary again he looked up. Granger was still there. One look at his face must have told her exactly how little he wanted to her company, because for once in her life she rose quietly and slipped out without saying a word.
When he met her again, Draco refused to talk to Granger on principle.
The hatchet-faced witch who'd taken him to spell-practice in the beginning had knocked on his door again. It had taken him a full three seconds to ensure his face looked as smooth and haughty as his father's ever had, before he'd opened the door with trembling hands.
He'd hid his hands in the folds of his robes, so he could face Granger looking like he was supremely untroubled by the prospect of having her rummaging through his mind. It only lasted until the other witch had left them alone in the Muggle-looking laboratory and he'd sat down on the odd-looking chair in the middle. He half-expected it to spring chains binding him into place, like the chair allotted to the accused in the Wizengamot. Despite the shiny metalwork and strange wires poking out everywhere, absolutely nothing happened.
Draco would almost have preferred being chained; then he couldn't have flinched when Granger took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes for the first time since she'd sworn not to betray what she found in his memories.
"Ready?" she asked; he could tell she was trying to sound business-like, but the tip of her wand was shaking.
"Fuck off." It had already slipped out when he remembered he shouldn't be speaking to her at all.
"You know I can't do that." There was sadness in her voice, which was a fucking laugh – it wasn't her mind and soul at stake here, was it?
Draco forced himself to keep his head still, looking straight back into her muddy brown eyes. Such a pedestrian colour. He infused the thought with as much spite as possible, knowing she'd hit it first as she delved into his mind without as much as a by your leave. They both knew she had the entire resources of the Ministry at her disposal, and Draco... hadn't.
"Thank you," she said as she decanted the silvery substance into a carefully labelled vial, and Draco clutched the hard edges of the armrest to stop himself from cradling his head, trying to reverse what was being done to him.
"I hope you get bitten by a werewolf on your way home tonight. Before you're laid down with incurable Dragon Pox." He clicked his mouth shut when he remembered he wasn't speaking to her, but at least he had the satisfaction of seeing her shoulders deflate infinitesimally.
Apart from the hatchet-faced woman who collected him every morning, Granger was the only person he ever saw. Draco's silent sneering seemed to have no effect on her. She kept up her asinine policy of saying "Thank you," after every extraction, no doubt trying to assuage her precious Gryffindor conscience.
He tried to track his memories, in one of the notebooks that had appeared at the same time as the bookshelf in his room. The caution bred into him made him write in code, although Merlin knew why he bothered when his mind was wide open to them. It was impossible. He started with the most important events of his life: finding out he had magic (Draco still remembered the relief on his mother's face), being sorted into Slytherin, getting on the Quidditch team (Granger had shown her complete ignorance that day, incidentally: no one bought their place on the team), his father being arrested... It only got worse from then on.
When he came back to his room after another session, he'd check his list obsessively. It didn't work – even when Draco added less momentous occasions like becoming a member of the Inquisitorial Squad, or when his mother gave him her own wand to use after he'd lost his own, he couldn't find the gaps.
He'd never realised before how many memories there are in a quarter of a century.
There must be other ways. He spent hours examining himself in the mirror, inspecting each scar he could find and trying to remember how he'd got them. When it occurred to him that, while he couldn't see into any other windows in the courtyard, this was no guarantee the reverse applied, he draped the sheet from his bed around him but continued his inspection.
It was useless. He couldn't be sure if he couldn't remember if the scar on his knee was from Quidditch or from That Night because it hadn't been important at the time, or because it had been taken from him.
The next time he saw Granger, he stared at her as she completed the now familiar routine before the memory extraction (as she called it in her meticulously detailed research notes). She didn't appear to take much notice before she sat down opposite him.
"Is there anything you'd like to say, Malfoy? Or are you trying to make me spontaneously combust by glaring at me?"
"I –" Asking was difficult, even though she'd given him an opening. "I need to know – Can you tell me which memory it is you've taken? Please," he added, hating himself for it.
Granger looked at him like he was a particularly interesting specimen of asphodel. He forced his chin up, returning her gaze with his best attempt at looking disinterested. No matter what was at stake, he refused to fall to pieces in front of Granger.
"I think I can," she said eventually. "I'd have to check with my advisor first, but I see why you'd want to know."
She was as good as her word – of course she bloody was, she was Granger. The next day she told him about a long afternoon in third year, about Crabbe and the rat he'd found lurking under Draco's bed. Draco looked at her blankly: he couldn't remember anything about it, which of course was the whole point of the enterprise from her point of view.
After that, she told him about every single memory, and Draco did his best to jot down the important bits when he was back in his room.
It was strange, like watching someone else's life. Some memories were connected to others, so he knew they'd happened. Sometimes, he wasn't sure it was actually his memories. He knew they must be, of course, but he suspected he hadn't thought of them for years.
There was so much to remember, so many memories of people and places and things and regrets and all too brief moments of triumph, and he couldn't bear to let go of them. To realise that his life had been worth living only as he was losing it.
Draco was very young, perhaps only four or five: his mother was towering above him, and his stubby little legs had to work hard to keep up with her pace. They were walking on a country road, gravel crunching beneath every step. The sky was wide open, and clouds were flitting across it so quickly Draco could barely follow before they disappeared off the edge of the horizon.
"Why are the clouds running?" he asked, panting. His mother slowed down a little, and he squeezed her hand even harder.
"It's the wind," she told him. The same wind snatched at her hair, tearing wisps out of her tight bun and sending them flying around her head. The dark hood on her coat was also picked up by the wind, bobbing up and down like she'd got an extra head.
"I like it," Draco said, turning his head from side to side to feel the edge of the wind across his nose.
"So do I. Come, let's run, too!" She took him by surprise but he soon caught up, running as fast as he could with his mouth open to swallow gulps of fresh, clear air.
Suddenly, his legs didn't feel heavy anymore, and he could run faster than he ever had before. The hedges along the side of the road went slightly blurry. He laughed: it came out like the hiccups, from deep inside his chest.
There was a bubbling sound from his mother: soon she was laughing, too, and he'd never heard her sounding so carefree. They were almost flying down the gravel now, the crunching of their footsteps spread out so far he was only hitting the road with a thud every few seconds.
He could have stayed in that memory forever.
Draco hadn't played Quidditch for years, but his hands still remembered the smooth wood of the broomstick vibrating in his grasp, almost alive. It promised power and speed and winning, and it was better than anything else in the world; better than kissing Pansy behind the Transfiguration shelf in the library, better than his father being pleased with him.
This, too, would disappear.