Well... In editing this chapter, I kind of erased the whole thing. Thank goodness for backups!

Two Boxes of Memories belongs to me, and nothing else!


She sometimes wishes she wasn't a government pencil-pusher. She cringes whenever she thinks of herself that way, but she was never an active Auror on the field, like Harry or Ron. Years after the end of the Exile Project, as it's been dubbed, she's still writing reports on magical law and dealing with issues on parchment. She wonders if it hadn't been for the Project, she would've even joined the Ministry. Certainly, when she was planning it, she felt a sort of righteousness and sense of duty that had kept her fighting in the war – the same feelings that still reside within her, albeit fragmented and distorted.

So it's not without some bitterness that she recalls her quarterly meetings with the Wizengamot. She feels the loss of the fire in her younger self, who stood in the Wizengamot for the first meeting of the Exile Project and fought those old, esteemed wizards and witches for what she thought was right.

In reality, it's only been a year since the Project ended. How bizarre, what time can do.

Chief Warlock Elphias Doge, that dear old man, had been the first to speak. He gave her a kind look beforehand, as if silently sympathizing with her cause. It eased her somewhat. But the speech he gave as an introduction made her tense again, although it was obvious that Doge was not speaking for himself but for the entire Wizengamot. It was nothing she hadn't expected. She knew the older members of the Wizengamot, who fought Voldemort in both wars, heavily disapproved of the Project. The concern of the Wizengamot, Doge said, was that collaborators of the Dark Lord were being forgiven far too easily with a five-year exile sentence. Would she, as the supervisor of the Project and its main supporter, please explain?

She remembers this moment fondly, because she is proud of herself for having been so brave. She remembers standing up, clearly articulating that the Light would not achieve true victory until every wizard and witch of the community believed that blood purity had nothing to do with magical ability. And to that end, the Project would allow those whose families had supported Voldemort but who had not actually become Death Eaters to come in contact with Muggles and understand that they were not in any way inferior to wizards, and by extension neither were Muggle-borns.

The elderly judges surrounding her didn't look convinced. She stood still, holding her ground. If she had anything, it was courage. She hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor for nothing, after all. The conviction part was a little bit shaky. But the nagging voice in the back of her head, the one that told her that she was doing more wrong than good, that this can all backfire on her and the rest of the Wizarding community, had been silenced for the moment.

Another man with frosty white eyebrows questioned her next on the progress of the exiled. She calmly sat back down, and answered questions about the people she stood for – fellow schoolmates she never would've imagined defending in Hogwarts, but again, time was a bizarre phenomenon. The Wizengamot and she had gone through numerous names, among them Theodore Nott, Pansy Parkinson, and Gregory Goyle. She had to admit that they hadn't yet adjusted well to the Muggle lifestyle as of yet (a few eyebrows were raised about the tone in some of the reports that the exiled had written), but pointed out that they had only been there for a few months. She still remembers the clammy feeling in her hand increasing as she turned the pages, reaching the end of the pile.

The members of the Wizengamot, who were reading through magical copies of the reports she held in her hand, finally reached the last name. It was a woman with frizzy, wild hair that spoke his name, in the form of a question.

She still marvels at that younger self in her memory, who answered the question calmly with a normal voice, not a single thing out of place. Although she was, and is, terrible at hiding her emotions, she doesn't remember the slightest tremor in her voice that usually gives her away.

It was with a curt nod from the woman that the meeting was finally over. The eyes of the Wizengamot bore into the back of her head as she passed out of the room, relieved. She practically flew to her nondescript office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and closed the door with a quiet click.

She tries hard to not remember this part, because it was then that she noticed the deathly clamp of her fingers on the sheets of parchment and paper, her knuckles white. It was only then that she broke down and sank to the floor, the stress of reading barbed reports from the exiled and frenzied preparations for the meeting finally getting to her. The nagging was back, the niggling doubt. She wonders if he knows how uncertain she had been about it all, whether he knows that he was the one that she worried about the most, because the curiously detached cards he sent unsettled her more than the caustic letters she received daily. At least those let her know there were things to be changed in them, that they needed to be there. That they hated her, but at least they felt emotions.

She sat on the floor and chanted: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I took you away from everything you know, I'm sorry I couldn't even let you have some peace with the family you tried so hard to protect, I'm sorry this was the best I could do.

I'm sorry, she told him. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…


He remembers getting sloshed at a bar. He recalls thinking that bars were the same whether they were serving firewhiskey or just plain whiskey, right before his thoughts became too cloudy to sort out. But he remembers paying the bartender probably more than he should have, then dragging his feet through the horrid London snow, thinking that he would clean them with a Scourgify when he got home. Then he remembers that he realized he couldn't use magic, and kicked more snow out of spite.

He realizes now that memories are selective, because he only remembers thinking about her during the whole time home. He resented her for a second for sending him to that godforsaken street in the Muggle part of London, and then thought that had she been there, she probably would've helped him home and maybe he would've had her in his house, for… well. He hated her, because he should've been only like this after a night of drinking with his mates from Slytherin, not drinking by himself on a Friday night. He wondered what would've happened if he had been given a week of freedom to say goodbye to his friends before leaving, but then realizes that they were all on exile too. But really, if he had that free week, he would've used it productively.

Maybe he would've even used those days to go for drinks, but with her. Maybe he would've properly said an apology to her. Maybe he would've had the courage to ask her to wait for him, promising that he would come back a better man.

He inwardly cringes, remembering the next moment in which he laughed like a true drunkard in the middle of the street. Sure, it may have been in the Muggle world, but he still had his dignity. He also remembers, all too clearly, that he had laughed because it was ridiculous for him, the prince of Slytherin house, to be pining over a woman he barely knew for all the years they spent together in school. A Gryffindor, at that. But what did it matter at that point? Trying to stay alive during the war with his family was hard enough without all the childish hatred and house enmity clogging his thoughts. He suspects, to this day, that he had realized this the moment she had shown up with her two hero buffoons in the Manor.

He never could say her name, whether it was at that moment of mortal danger or at school. No, he'd only been able to call her in nasty nicknames.

He remembers that as the day he started addressing her by her first name in his letters, watching the letters swirl in his drunken stupor and hearing the name roll on his tongue with a strange satisfaction.

He fell asleep with his head on the letter, her name still on his lips.