May 2005

Hermione had a new routine. She got up, went to work, headed to St. Mungo's to sit by Draco's bedside, fell asleep in her chair, woke up between three and four am, went home to sleep in her bed, and then repeated it all again. She was told repeatedly by her friends that her habits weren't good, not to mention it was interfering with her work. Although the trembling and random body twitches had stopped early in the month, they occasionally came back in full force and at the most inopportune moments. The last time it happened was two days ago when she was attempting to fix an Auror's eye. It didn't go well…

She had taken two weeks off that afternoon and now spent her entire days in Draco's hospital room. With a sigh she tried for the fifth time to read the book she had brought with her. It was a bit hard seeing as her mind was distracted, not to mention it was hard to turn a page one-handedly. Her other hand was clasped around Draco's. As Hermione was reading the book dropped from her as she gasped. It wasn't just her hand doing the clasping anymore. Draco was holding hers tightly and his eyes had suddenly snapped open.

"I need a Healer!" Hermione shouted. "I need a Healer in here now!"

Hermione stared wide-eyed with her heart running wild. She tried to release her hand from Draco's grasp so that the Healers could tend to him properly, but he wouldn't let go and his grip was too tight to simply slip it. So there she stood, watching the Healers check his vitals, his eyes, everything. They were hesitant on removing the tubing from him, but even with one stuffed down his throat Hermione knew the blonde was cursing up a storm. Once it and the Healers were gone Draco rounded off a load of questions.

Hermione massaged her temple to ease her headache. "For Merlin's sake, Malfoy you just woke up from a coma. Will you just rest?"

"No," Draco said indignantly. "Not until you tell me how long I've been out."

"…Two months."

Draco's face paled. "You're not serious."

"It's May, Malfoy." Hermione frowned. She felt her eyes water as she continued to speak to him. "You've been here so long that I thought… I thought you were never coming back. I thought that the curse had worked and that this was it."

Hermione couldn't do it. She tried to hold back tears that had flowed freely and frequently when Draco was still comatose. Now that he was awake she felt utterly embarrassed. Draco saw all of this and remarked how badly she shook. Despite how much it pained him, he sat up further and pulled Hermione closed to him. His forehead rested on hers and he closed his eyes.

"You're not supposed to fall for me, Granger. Remember?"

Hermione laughed and placed her hands on the back of his neck. "Oh, shut up."

June 2005

Draco spent the last week and a half of May and the first three days of June whining about when he'd be able to go home. Hermione spent it slowly sipping a calming potion every three hours so he didn't drive her crazy. Once he was finally home, he only whined further about why he was being confined to his bed by his sort-of girlfriend.

Hermione rolled her eyes and wished she hadn't finished off her store of calming potion the day before. "You were comatose for two months because you were hit with the Cruciatus Curse ten times. By all rights you should be dead. Since you're not, you're going to take it easy."

Draco groaned, crossed his arms over his chest, winced, and scowled when he saw Hermione smiling at him. He hated when she was right. "Alright fine. What about Potter? No news at all on what happened to Elena, Amelia, whatever the hell her name is?"

"None," Hermione sighed as she lay down next to Draco. "I'm beginning to think that there's simply nothing to find. I've started looking for anything under Amelia Malfoy as well, but nothing's turned up there either. She's worked very hard to keep herself undetected."

Draco scoffed. "And a good way to do that is to marry into the Malfoy family a second time? Completely stupid, if you ask me."

"I agree. And who knows? If she did it a second time, maybe she did it a third."

"Humph, then she's more than stupid."

"You're right…" Hermione said after a moment's pause. She turned to Draco in excitement and then hurriedly climbed off the bed. "Malfoy, she's cursed. She's cursed just like we are. She can't help but gravitate to the Malfoy line!"

"If that's the case then things are out of order." Draco furrowed his brow. "She should've been my girlfriend or wife by now, but you and I are together instead."

Hermione's steam engine of thought ran cold. He was right. Things were backwards. If she and Draco were following in both Cornelius and Matilda's and Julius and Giana's footsteps, then how was Amelia able to get away from her own?

"It doesn't matter." Hermione said eventually. "You almost died. The curse is working and we need to find Amelia. She's the only one who can reverse it."

Draco agreed and began shifting himself out of bed despite Hermione's protests. "This is no time to baby me, Granger. We've got my family tree to dig through."

Hermione pouted. Yes, he had been released from St. Mungo's but he had been warned to take it slow. Thanks to magic his tongue had been mended easily as well as his fingers and toes. The same went for his shoulders as they had been popped back into the place the same day he had been admitted. His blood vessels had been the tricky part and took an incredibly long surgery that included an insane amount of spells and potions to restore and strengthen them. His ribs were less difficult to deal with. As for Draco's heart, it was one of the few organs that magic was temperamental with. Protective barriers had been put in place as well as a bit of reconstruction after the second time his heart had failed. The whole "take it easy" instruction from the Healers hadn't been because of his other injuries. It was because any strenuous activity could break the barriers and make him vulnerable to a whole plethora of complications. Draco knew that this is what worried Hermione every time he moved a muscle.

Draco and Hermione each carried a bundle of parchment rolls and eagerly looked through them. In the dream they both had caught glimpse of a calendar, but only first two numbers "18." It was why Hermione had suggested to Harry to check around the nineteenth century for any record of Elena Malfoy. Everything about this crazy situation was nothing but patterns. From the way Hermione and Draco's past selves met and got together, to the gruesome ways that they died, and the fact that Amelia was always involved. If she had resurfaced after one hundred years, then it was a safe bet that that was when she had appeared yet again. They scoured the family trees until they got their answer.

"There she is." Draco said as he sneered at her pleasant face. "Ivanna Amelia Malfoy, née Lovell. Married to Orion Tiberius Malfoy in 1925. Ugh, I think I'm going to be sick."

"What? Why?" Hermione said in alarm, but he only pointed to a photo beneath the couple's own.

"My grandfather was her son. Abraxas Malfoy,"

"Now I think I'm going to be sick."

Hermione leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Alright, so we know her last known name. We can try searching the records for her again, but with the other two failures I doubt it'll be helpful."

"Maybe we don't have to." Draco said as a lopsided grin filled his face. "We'll look at the journals again. Orion had to have mentioned his wife and my grandfather had to have mentioned his mother."

Hermione's ecstatic smile matched his and they hurried their steps back to marble-floored room that held all of the Malfoy family journals. Draco searched the backs of journals looking for Orion's name on the spines. When he found it he eagerly reached for a few of the journals and handed them to Hermione. He grabbed the rest and they piled the small books on the room's table and took up their respective seats so they could get to work. As Hermione opened one journal her face faltered. It was empty. The journal was nothing but white pages –not a single word, not a single streak of ink, not even a punctuation.

"Malfoy,"

"This can't be." Draco said breathlessly. He had begun picking up journal after journal and flipping through pages only to find it the same for every single one. Draco jumped out of his seat with a vigor that made Hermione fear for his health, especially when he held the left side of his body as he scanned the shelves yet again. He sat on his heels as he picked out his grandfather's journals. He felt the covers and the backs as though they were precious objects and peeled through each one, finding them the same as Orion's.

"Damn it!" He shouted as he tossed the tenth one aside. He looked back over his shoulder at Hermione who had begun walking towards him. "How could this have happened? They can't be gone!"

"They're not gone; they're just blank." Hermione said, but Draco shook his head.

"No, they're gone, Granger. Someone didn't wipe these journals clean of their contents. They were replaced. The journals we write in are made with a special leather that no one can get their hands on but a Malfoy; no matter how much money they're willing to pay for it. These," Draco raised a discarded journal. "Are fakes. I just don't know how Amelia did it."

"Couldn't have been very hard," Hermione surmised. "Amelia's a Malfoy three times over, not to mention she used to live here. She had access to these journals just as much as you do now."

"Doesn't matter. Nothing gets stolen from Malfoy Manor. Nothing."

Hermione's eyes grew wide. "Nothing except the ring."

The realization hit Draco hard. Yes, it had been just about fifty years ago when the ring had disappeared from the Manor. The story of the theft had been told to him by his grandfather who had already been married at the time. It was possible. It was highly possible.

Draco groaned as he turned to Hermione. "Owl Potter. We're going to need his help."

Author's note: Amelia's a sneaky one, isn't she? Boy oh boy does she know how to cover her tracks. But good news! Draco's awake and he's home from the hospital and Hermione's his "sort-of girlfriend." Now let's just hope that Harry can be of some help.

Thanks for the support everyone! You guys are great :D

-WP