Forget to Forget

Pairing: Dramione (Draco x Hermione)

Universe: post-war, EWE

Rating: M

Summary: Olivie Advent cont'd.

Prompts: 1) Veela!Draco; 2) dramione with memory loss; 3) Theo as a therapist.

Imagine my surprise upon discovering the Noble House of Black was not as noble as it appeared. True, I had questioned upon some occasions why my mother had platinum blonde hair that didn't seem to grey as other mothers' did, but there were other things on my mind for most of my conscious adolescence. Quidditch, for example. The heinous murder of an authority figure whom I did not technically respect. The Yule Ball. You understand, I'm sure, the quintessential hallmarks of youth, hence why I did not question until my early twenties why something odd seemed to be separating me from my peers.

It started when people began to fall into a trance of sorts whenever I came around. Initially I thought they were all having a laugh, or possibly avoiding me because I had recently become what some called an "unjustly exonerated war criminal," but eventually I started to notice it happening with undeniable frequency. People struggled to recall my name or any details they had once known about me, peering at me as if through a fog instead.

Naturally, I knew there was only one person I could ask.

"Oh yes," remarked my mother, thoughtfully reclined in her cell at Azkaban. "I wondered if you might start to see some signs. Granted, you're less than half, but I suppose now that you've reached sexual maturity something was bound to show up sooner or later."

"Mother, I lost my virginity ages ago," I informed her. After all, I'd been a virile, sexually active human (?) man since I was sixteen.

"Well, I'm sure you tried your best, darling," remarked my mother unhelpfully, adding, "You really ought to be careful, sweetheart. I suppose you've noticed the… side effects, by now?"

"People not remembering me, you mean?" Even Pansy and Daphne had struggled to recall my name recently, and the two of them, at least, should certainly know it, though thanks to my mother I'm beginning to doubt myself profoundly.

"Yes," said my mother, offering the salivating guard a lascivious glance over my shoulder that made me supremely uncomfortable. "Your lovers, for what it's worth, likely will not remember you either. My mother certainly didn't remember her own tryst that led to me," she added, lifting her pinky on a delicate teacup I now suspected was not typically given to Azkaban captives. Come to think of it, most cells, my father's included, were not so lavishly decorated, either.

"Father seems to know who you are," I reminded her, reconsidering their relationship from an entirely new and upsetting perspective, and she gave something of a lofty shrug.

"Oh, you know how these things go," she said. "Skips a generation, I suppose."

She went on to tell me that I, much like a werewolf, would be at the mercy of some sort of aggressive hormone; something like an animal in heat. I would be overcome with a specific kind of need, which ultimately would be wiser to indulge than to fight.

"Just be careful, dear," added my mother, and she made an excellent point, as it was no small thing I'd been cursed with, and though I didn't realize it at the time, I might now have preferred to be locked within a cell like she was, or even contaminated by a werewolf, for that matter.

You see, the problem isn't that veelas bite, my friends.

They fuck, and only one of us remembers.

I first saw her in Diagon Alley, five years after the war. Unlike the others, she did manage to recognize me after a blink or two, though I could see it was a strain. That brilliant mind I'd loathed and envied in equal parts was piecing me together like a set of ancient runes, clarity swimming before her eyes like something long-forgotten.

"You," she said with all the derision she could muster, and as you might have guessed, given the nature of the universe, it was the Tuesday of a full moon and I was suffering all sorts of indelicacies. I was noticing things I didn't quite know I was noticing, like the little sliver of skin I could see from the parted neckline of her simple Oxford. When her lips parted to acknowledge my presence, I could only process the exquisite red of her mouth, the pink of her swollen lips. She seemed to me to be the only thing for miles, my vision altered irrevocably, and so I said something utterly nonsensical to her.

"I'm sorry," I believe were the words in specific. They caught her by surprise, and then I pushed it a bit further. "Let me buy you a drink."

She protested, glaring at me, but I reminded her that prejudice was the very thing she had fought against, and therefore if I were making amends it was only reasonable she should accept. "One drink," I said.

One drink turned into two, which became three, which was then five and eventually, perhaps, more. She was waxing poetic about her breakup, though of course I had forgotten Ron Weasley even existed (and not in a magically-altered sort of way). I was straining at the time, unable to look away from the juncture of her knees or the way her tongue slid across her lips, moistening them. I looked at the curve of her throat with only the image of my own fingers tracing over it playing in my mind.

Eventually she seemed to gather some awareness of the things coming to fruition in my head, so when I offered to get us a room, she accepted. I don't know if this was a result of fluid conversation or excessive alcohol or my natural hormonal secretion; perhaps a combination of all three. In any case, I summoned a key and we fell into a sparse, undecorated room, tumbling together onto the bed. Her breasts, I remember, fit perfectly into my palms, and running my tongue over them was sweetly satiating, like lapping at a pond of cool water. The parting of her thighs was my oasis, and I quenched my thirst all night.

She seemed to remember her hatred of me throughout the whole of the encounter, because she tugged at my hair and bit hard at my lip, and I think there was conflict within her (that is, alongside my cock). I think she hated me, or hated that she did not hate me quite enough to stop herself. I know she was thinking only of me when she came that night, because she said my name like a shudder of relief. I think she was exorcising me for herself, and had no intention to see me again.

Nor did I have any intention to see her. I woke early, pulling on my clothes, and was already fully dressed when she opened her eyes, staring at me.

"What on earth are you doing in my room?" she demanded.

It was back. I could see on her face that she saw Draco Malfoy, junior Death Eater and unrepentant idiot, rather than me, Draco, the man who had whispered to her how sweet she tasted while she used my hand to stroke herself.

"Wrong room," I said, and saw that she could find nothing amiss in my obvious lie.

"Get out," she told me coldly, and so, on that particularly lovely morning, I left.

I think there was something especially odd about the fact that it was her mind doing the forgetting. Easy enough for other people to fuck me and forget me, considering I'd never known them to be the brightest to begin with, but for the labyrinth that was Hermione Granger's mind to lose track of me entirely felt somehow… disappointing. Never fuck your heroes, as they say. Not that she was my hero, but she was a hero according to the Daily Prophet, and that was all that mattered. I watched her for any sign she could recall having spent a night with me, but as far as I could tell, she didn't. Typically my partners' minds fill in the gaps with something they can stand; her mind had told her she spent a relaxing evening alone in a tavern room, avoiding her bed at home where Ron Weasley no longer slept.

She moved out of her flat and into a new one. After a week, she began taking her coffee at the same little cafe, answering her correspondences and then stepping out to go to her job as a newly minted Ministry employee. She worked in the legal department, and also had a longstanding weekly appointment with someone in a nondescript building near the cafe.

Upon occasion of my next heat, I manufactured a little stumble in her path, colliding with her as she struggled to place me. "You," she groused through her teeth, and unfortunately I timed it poorly, because I was much too far along in my hormonal cycle by then to restrain myself. I kissed her, and she shoved me away angrily. "What on earth do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

I'm a bit ashamed to say I begged. "Please," I said. "Please, I need you."

She looked stunned, so I tried my best to backtrack. Unfortunately, I was clinging to her fingers, and physical contact sometimes makes things worse. I must have looked desperate, because she pulled me up to her flat and made me a cup of tea. As she poured it, I felt my eyes glued to the motion of her hips, the swell of her breasts as she bent over the table, tucking one rose-scented curl behind her ear.

I inhaled raggedly, and exhaled, as solemnly as I could, "I'm sorry."

That night I made a note of the books she kept in a pile beside her bed, most of them marked with little slips of parchment to contain her many thoughts. I wondered what she was taking note of, though later I realized they were descriptions of sensations that I, too, had somehow felt: "I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness." "Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves." "Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe."

I devoured the books, and the next time I put myself in her path, I made sure to be in a more manageable state of mind.

"Listen," I said before she could speak, "I know you don't want to see me—"

She gave me the derisive look she usually paired with the word you, and I couldn't tell whether I was relieved she knew me at all or displeased she couldn't seem to rid herself of her continued loathing.

"—but I have to know something," I said. "Could you ever forgive me?"

I watched her mouth twitch with excuses to leave. I wanted to tell her listen, we've spent two nights together by now, surely you must remember something! That great brain of yours, Granger, it can't be a total sham—

"Give me a reason to forgive you," she said, and so for the rest of the afternoon we talked about our school days, about the war. I told her I had been a fool and she told me she had known it. I assured her that I had repented my wrongs, and she seemed as if she might believe me.

She was the one who kissed me that time, and I remember feeling a strange, haunting sadness, because I was unsure whether she meant it or whether something in my blood had awoken something in her.

"I should go," I said. "Shall I come by tomorrow?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, tomorrow."

But when I arrived, it was more of the same.

"You," she said through her teeth again, staring at me as if I'd cost her everything.

I was starting to wonder if perhaps I had.

I suppose there are many ways to view what I was doing as abhorrent, perhaps even repulsive. After all, I was repeatedly tricking a woman that I had now slept with dozens of times. Each time I told myself there wouldn't be any more sex, but every time there was, because of course there was a little seedling of truth between us: What we had in the bedroom together was riper and more undeniable than anyone else could possibly give or fathom or believe.

Even after months, I have only watched her stare into nothing after any sort of sexual encounter with another man, her brilliant mind half-remembering something she had once clung to like some intangible craving. Worse, by now I've started intervening. It's upsetting, I know, but I can make her come like no one else.

I can make her smile like no one else.

I was beginning to think I was getting a bit mental, so I booked an appointment with my old friend Theo Nott, who is some sort of counselor these days. An odd choice of profession, though I suppose he was always good at listening intently to things and fading into the background while doing it.

"Oh," he said when he saw me. "How odd. You remind me of someone."

"A friend, I hope," I said when I took a seat, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glisten.

"He died," said Theo. "My old friend."

I told you, didn't I, that people's minds give them something they can make sense of once they've forgotten me? I suppose it's no wonder that Theo's mind would tell him I died around age eleven, or certainly well before age sixteen.

"In any case," Theo said, throwing one long leg over the other, "what's the matter?"

"I may be in love with a woman who routinely forgets me," I said.

"You mean she isn't particularly thoughtful?"

"No, she's very thoughtful," I said, because she is. Sometimes she frowns to herself when she inexplicably guesses how I take my tea. Other times she kisses the spot beneath my jaw where it makes me growl a little in my throat, and then she stiffens, as if she's feeling the echo of knowing how I like my cock sucked.

"It's more of a…" I clear my throat. "Well, I'm always having to prove myself to her."

"An unfortunate consequence of love," said Theo. "All the proving oneself. Terribly inconvenient."

"Oh, I agree," I said, "though it's… a bit more of a challenge than it sounds."

"I'm sure it seems that way," Theo demurred. "Every love is some new and different oddity. A unique and solitary language. Have you tried discussing it with her?"

"Well—" I hesitated. "I suppose not."

"Open communication is the key to a healthy relationship," said Theo.

"I suppose," I replied, because I had a feeling cognitive recognition was equally of consequence, but wasn't entirely sure how to point that out.

At that moment, however, I heard the sound of familiar footsteps, and it occurred to me (belatedly) that this was the building where she had the longstanding weekly appointment. I had forgotten, which was ironic. Normally she was the one doing the forgetting.

"I should go," I said to Theo, resolving to return, and then I slipped out just as she came in, sparing me another hateful glance.

"You," she said derisively.

"Yes, me," I sighed, waving her inside.

At the last moment I waved the door open just slightly, just enough to hear. Invasive, I know, but this is not a story about my morality. Besides, I have a tendency to escape punishment for my crimes.

"How is the recurring dream?" asked Theo.

"I seem to be having it more often," she said.

"You said before it made you feel unsteady. Like you woke not knowing where you were."

"Yes."

"And now?"

"I still wake without knowing where I am," she said uncertainly. "It's… very vivid. Unsettling."

"Still the same, then?"

"No, not the same," she said. "I feel… safe, actually. As if I'm coming home somewhere."

"Would that have anything to do with your sense of loss? It's been a difficult couple of years for you, losing your parents and then Ron."

"Oh yes, it has, but it's not like either of those things, I don't think. I don't feel loss at all. In fact, I feel… free." She swallowed. "Untethered. As if I'm finally given permission to be myself."

A pause.

"You can't live in dreams, Hermione."

"I know. I know." Her voice was small. "But sometimes I wish I could."

I left around then, finding the situation to be quite private, though I waited for her outside. She collided with me outside the door, distracted with thoughts from her session.

"I," I told her, "am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness."

She stared at me, taken aback, and I said, "May I buy you lunch?"

That night we made love three times on her sofa. Normally she's very ritualistic about where the fucking takes place, but we'd just finished watching a film that she and I have seen together seven times and I know her fondness for cunnilingus, so when I slid between her legs she didn't argue. Before I left, I wrote her a note detailing everything that had happened that day. What I had said to her and what she said back to me, the positions I had fucked her in, the details I understood of my family tree. I cited a book about veela behaviors from a Romanian professor whose work she respects, and then I wrote: I will be back for you tomorrow at ten. You will not remember any of this, but if you read this letter, then you already know what I'll say to you—I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness—and you'll know I wasn't lying.

Then I slipped out, hoping Theo had been right.

I was waiting for her at the cafe. She stopped dead when she saw me, and I could see the letter with my handwriting clutched tightly in her hand.

"You," she said, but this time, it sounded more like a question.

"I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness," I said in answer to the thing she hadn't asked, but she still blinked uncertainly, so I pushed out the chair across from mine.

"Sit," I said. "I'll tell you all about it."

There may not be sex tonight. In my experience, she'll have a lot of questions, and I plan to answer every single one. To the best of my knowledge, anyway. Besides, maybe the letter will be more effective in the future if she writes it herself, or if we write it together. Then tomorrow I can tell her all over again, at which point we can both start to prepare for the next full moon.

"Okay," she said, and slowly took a seat.

"Does it feel familiar?" I asked her.

She chewed her lip for a second before answering.

"Yes," she said eventually.

"Like a recurring dream?"

She glared at me. "Have you been stalking me?"

"Yes and no," I said. "But again, I'll tell you all about it."

For a second she looked like she might still hate me, but then I caught the look that followed.

Relief.

"Alright, fine," she said, choosing to believe in me, and then I thought: Maybe this is love. "Talk."

a/n: Getting close to the end! Also, the literary quotes come from I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, Henry and June by Anaïs Nin, and Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, respectively.