It takes a bright purple car, spewing smoke and bouncing along the countryside path, for Harry to realize that something is wrong. Honeysuckle, dangling from the windowsills, the cinnamon-apple scent of baking turnovers in the kitchen, Lily opening the curtains to admire the twilight, the moor wreathed in heather - the scene is familiar to Harry, but the car looks like something he once saw in London.

Yes, he remembers; he saw it that summer, from a hotel window two stories off the ground. The brilliantly purple low-rider, bass thumping a grand percussion along with the squeaks of suspension. Harry chuckled at the strange sight and turned to tell Draco to come see. Pale limbs tangled in the sheets, eyes that drooped - he was no morning person.

Harry gasps, taking his hands off the windowsill as if burned. He suddenly feels bigger, taller, more tired, and he touches his face, feeling the stubble.

"Draco!" He calls wildly. Please don't be gone, please don't-

"What?" Harry turns to see Draco toddling down the hall, a little boy in an overlarge sweater, then an ambling teenager, then himself, running a hand through his lavender-colored hair. Draco blinks at Harry, mouth falling open slightly. "Oh, no."

"What's happening?" Harry whirls back to the window, where streets take over the moor, asphalt from London and Ashfell and New York City swallowing the childhood garden, the solitary swing set. The present begins to seep into the house, too, and Harry watches helplessly as the gleaming, wooden floorboards lose their shine and color. The house plants shrivel and fade away, and Harry runs to the living room, where the furniture slowly morphs into the worn armchair, the pullout couch.

"Stay with me," Harry murmurs, and Draco takes his hand as the house creaks and groans around them. "What about…"

Lily, bright-eyed, still in the kitchen, stirring a pot of something he's forgotten.

"Mum!" Not again. Not again. Tears fill Harry's eyes - the days, the weeks he'd spent here, all for nothing. He knows that they were minutes, really, spent in jest, because he couldn't imagine, didn't even want to think that she'd leave him once more.

"Harry." Draco kneels, for Harry has crouched, bending over and sobbing in despair. "Shh. It's too late." His hands are firm on his shoulders.

"No. No, no, no…"

"We have to be ready for what comes next." The past screams in glass and shingles all around them, but Draco's voice is soft and warm in Harry's ear. "You need to brace yourself."

Harry shakes his head furiously, and Draco grips him still, holding him. "I can't. I can't."

"You can, Harry. You have to."

And then the moor is swallowed for good, and all is silent, save for a clipped, robotic beep.

Padma sighs, cracking her knuckles as she leans back from the computer. She turns her head to find Luna at her elbow, and jumps, startled.

"Sorry!" Luna steps back, silver eyes wide with apology. "I brought you this." She holds out a mug of coffee.

"Oh - Thank you." Padma takes it and sips. It's nearly black, with a dribble of milk, and no sugar. "It's just how I like it. How did you know?"

Luna smiles, brushing a sheet of blonde hair over her shoulder. "I pay attention."

The coffee sends a much-needed jolt through Padma's tired system. She stares at the monitor, watching the red slowly but surely devour the green. The erasing has continued, for now.

"Is it working?" Justin asks, twisting his hands. He's been pacing restlessly over Harry's sleeping form for the past half hour, listening attentively to the clacking of the keyboard and occasionally peeking over Padma's shoulder.

Padma slowly nods. "I think so. We should give it an hour, let it settle into autopilot again."

"What happened, exactly?" Luna takes a seat on the nearby armchair, her dress fluttering as she crosses her legs. Padma watches the motion of the light, floral fabric, possessed by the whimsicality that would spur a girl to wear summer clothes in February.

"Nothing that we haven't seen before," Justin replies. "Erasing a memory in a snap isn't natural. The brain is bound to rebel."

"This one put up quite a fight," Padma agrees.

Luna rests her hands on her knee as she gazes at Harry Potter, his eyes moving weirdly about as he slumbers. "He must have really loved him."

"Yes." Padma's fingertips absentmindedly touch her wedding ring, a thin, silver band. "The stronger the love, the stronger the heartbreak."

Justin clears his throat, and Padma realizes that she'd been staring at Luna, at the curve of her jaw, her worried hands. "Thanks a million for your help, Doctor," He says.

"Of course."

"If there's anything we can do to help, let us know," Luna says earnestly, and Padma almost smiles at the way she leans forward, pulled by heartstrings, and her lips that tremble with kindness.

"I will."

Dishes clink and clatter in the nearby kitchen. Harry slumps, tipsy, on the maroon-colored sofa. The warm light of the lamp illuminates photographs perched upon the stuffed bookshelf - mostly of Hermione and Ron, though Harry makes an appearance in many.

Their voices, muted and calm, wake Harry. He's dimly aware of the flush crept up his neck, the leftover taste of Hermione's famous treacle tart, the wind reminding Ashfell of autumn against the windowpane. And there's a weight, warm and familiar, in his lap.

Draco mumbles something unintelligible, head shifting on the ratty cushion laid on Harry's thighs. The movement brings a jab of clarity to Harry's mind, and he immediately, perhaps a little too roughly, shakes Draco's shoulders.

"We're back."

"Hm?" Draco blinks to bleary consciousness. Then, as if electrocuted, he sits up, eyes wide. "Oh, hell."

"Mid-October, by the looks of it," Harry says, glancing around the cozy, mismatched Weasley-Granger abode. A shadow of vertigo that has nothing to do with the earlier wine swoops over him, and he stops talking.

Draco squeezes his hand, and it feels like something between hope and desperation. "I have a few ideas of where we can go."

"Where no one can find us." Harry understands at once, nauseated with the memories that come to mind. Buried deep, pushed to the back, scenes festering with mold and poisonous weeds. Yet, maybe there, they'll remain untouched.

"Think," Draco says, and it's nearly a snarl. "Bring me where you'd never want me. It's the only way."

Harry shuts his eyes in fear.

Padma is scarcely halfway through her coffee when she notices the brain map has become stationary again.

"He's not backing down," She mutters, and Justin perks up in concern. "Go, keep a close eye on him," Padma instructs.

Harry Potter remains still; Padma thinks she must have imagined the furrow in his brow. She taps her foot nervously against the floorboards, clicking and typing away. A tussle at three in the damn morning, she thinks bitterly. Harry certainly isn't making her job easy and fun.

The apartment's bare walls seem to close in with doubt, but Padma grits her teeth and keeps going. She hasn't failed yet.

A warm brown gaze looks up, unsure, untrusting. The bedsprings whine, yet its occupants are near silent. Harry fucks her without feeling, without seeing. He tells himself he loves her.

"Choke me," Ginny pleads, and Harry knows her well enough to guess she'd hate it, but she's searching for something to fill her, so he obliges. He grapples with that feeling, too, the gnawing emptiness that reaches for lust and love like a fumbling hand on a high shelf. Harry's fingers close impersonally on her pale neck.

The dim moonlight is watered-down milk, and Draco watches for only a moment before turning away, struck speechless.

"No passion" is his brilliantly worded observation, and Harry's jaw clenches. He can't be angry for long but wishes under his breath that Draco lay with him instead.

Draco shakes his head vehemently. "It can't be connected to me in any way. Go darker."

The time ticks on. Pixels writhe beneath Padma's control, yet still others inch an escape across the machine.

Impertinent bastard, she almost mutters, but she can't be mad at a man who's only trying to protect what he loves. Padma knows the feeling.

Crimson flowers bloom on white tile. Harry doesn't cry, doesn't gasp, only stands open-mouthed over his own blood. His mind, leached of dopamine, carries him to such delirium that he laughs in surprise. Who knew kitchen knives could be that sharp?

"Oh, Harry." Draco tuts, rests a hand on his broad, jersey-cloaked shoulder.

"I deserve it," Harry says with a helpless smile, because he's sixteen, and bundles his emotions until they come bursting through a dam. "We lost because of me. Aunt Petunia's right: I'm worthless. I deserve everything bad that happens to me."

"Darling, I'm sorry," Draco whispers into his skin, "I don't want you to relive this."

Harry sniffles as he soothes the cuts with a damp bathroom towel. "Fine, then. Deeper." He doesn't touch Draco this time as he sinks further into the tarpit.

A frantic beeping pierces the tense stillness. Padma leaps up immediately, rushing for the thick briefcase that she'd brought.

"Dr. Patil?" Luna's and Justin's voices overlap discordantly.

"Stay there, Justin," Padma says sharply over her shoulder, rummaging around in her bag. "Miss Lovegood, watch the monitor, please. If the activity starts to disappear, let me know."

Luna hovers like an anxious butterfly over the computer. "Is he going to die?" She asks, as Padma clambers over the equipment towards the couch.

"No." Padma unscrews a bottle filled with viscous liquid and puts together a syringe. "I think he's trying to wake up."

The car spins and smashes against the guard rail with a screaming cacophony of metal and shattered glass. Harry's head is yanked to the side; he remembers the pain in his neck first, and the smell of smoke second.

Then, Lily, rich auburn hair matted with death's sickly stench. The beautiful eyes that hovered over his crib, by his side after a football game, in the driver's seat, stare like lifeless jewels.

Harry twists, but the seatbelt that saved his life pins him in place, and he sobs for his mother, for the solitary life that stretches before him, and it feels so agonizingly real that he's shocked back into the present.

Get up, Harry. GET UP.

The patient's eyes flutter, unseeing, and Padma tugs away the silken, scarlet fabric of his pajamas, pressing the needle into his arm. Harry's breath catches - then he sinks back into dreams, deeper than before.

This particular August lends the air a warmth and humidity that reminds Harry of Ashfell, but the wider, busier, more polished roads of London bear little resemblance to the tiny, northeastern town. Along Bond Street, shiny cars and cabs speed by finely dressed natives and jovial tourists. Harry doesn't classify him nor Draco in either of these categories, though Draco certainly looks like he belongs, in a breezy, forest-colored button-down and prim loafers.

"We're back," Draco observes. His mouth is unreadable, gaze hidden behind a pair of Dior sunglasses.

Harry nods, numb. Draco's coolness tells him that Harry's mind must have given up, wearily presenting its memories to cruel technology.

"Summer already," Draco says. He pushes back lilac hair with the sunglasses, and his eyes are rimmed with red. "Is it going faster now?"

"I don't know," Harry says helplessly.

They pass a Chanel store, and Draco slows in front of a mannequin dressed in a crisp, masculine, black-and-white ensemble, complete with gold accents and a cross-stitched blazer. His lover thus distracted, Harry falls in the middle of the street, knees to concrete, head in his hands.

"I'm so tired of this," He mutters, and soon feels a tug on his elbow as Draco tries to haul him up.

"London pavement is the absolute worst place to sit down, Harry," Draco insists. "Come on, up you get."

His fingers are like cold marble, and when Harry stands, he abruptly tilts Draco's face towards him, searching his eyes, which remind him of tarnished silver, an overcast sky. "I'm losing you," Harry says, and the familiar words taste like acid.

"Of course, you are," Draco says dully. "You're erasing me. Now, Potter, do you think a poor artist-slash-café minion like me can afford a single damn thing here?" He slides gently from Harry's grip and looks again to the store window.

He's wavering, Harry realizes, between consciousness and ignorance, because the two years he's known Draco for are slowly dwindling. Harry wonders how long it will take for Draco to turn into nothing but a phantom, vivacious and full of emotion, yet fading more and more into asinine memories every second.

Harry wants to scream. He wants to find a loose brick and throw it through the Chanel window.

Instead, he interlaces his fingers with Draco's, paying no mind to the stray, judgmental stares. "Let's find out," Harry says with a hollow smile.

Justin watches Luna's hands as she talks to Dr. Patil. When she's with him, they often move, smoothing out her dress, winding through her hair, fidgeting in her lap. But Luna, positively lounging on the armchair, is now as still as a frozen spray of waterfall. Only her face, her expressive mouth and crinkling eyes, show that she's listening with rapt attention, and her pale fingers are folded comfortably on her knee.

Justin wonders what it means. He can guess.

"When did you come up with the idea for this?" Luna asks.

"So many questions," Dr. Patil laughs. She seems more at ease in the cozy apartment, smiling more, letting her hair down so it rests in thick, dark waves down her back. "I thought I've told you the answer to that one already."

"I might have asked a while ago," Luna says with a shrug, "I don't remember too well. Why, do you get bored of telling the same story over and over again?" The corners of her lips curl teasingly.

"No, of course not." Not for you, Ms. Lovegood, Justin imagines she might add, but Dr. Patil doesn't. She wouldn't - the boundary between her and Luna is firm, and she doesn't dare cross it.

Justin has heard this account before, so he tunes out Dr. Patil's youthful tales of traipsing about the MIT psychiatry labs and continues watching Luna's hands.

The glow from the solitary lamp, burning steadily with its electrical loyalty, bathes the scene in warmth. Justin's eyelids droop; he wishes he were back in front of the monitor, methodically clicking away. But he's confined across the room, forced to watch a flame burn between his girlfriend and his boss, a flame that…

The thought stops cold. Justin had promised himself he wouldn't think about it. He needs to get out of here, to let February slap him across the face.

Justin makes an excuse to get them all breakfast muffins and leaves without a last look.

Summer shifts fill abundantly at The Raven and the Mushroom, so Draco takes his time eating a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, nibbling with all the delicacy of a prince. Harry's knee bounces; he twists his hands.

"I can't believe I agreed to do this," Harry mutters.

"Stupid," Draco confirms, and takes a swig of iced tea.

"What was I thinking…"

"Taking a promotion for a desk job at a police station."

"Following your shitty example."

Draco's brow furrows. "I feel like we're not talking about the same thing," He says, drumming his nails on the table.

"I'm talking about the memory erasure. What are you talking about?"

"Your promotion." The lines on his pale forehead grow deeper, and Draco rubs his temple. "Oh. That. Yes, sorry, I forgot."

"It's okay," Harry says quickly.

"Everything's fading so fast."

"I know."

Paper crinkles as Draco takes another bite. Strange, how a memory can be hungry. Harry watches his jaw move. He can't see his legs, but he knows they're crossed beneath the table. Somewhere, in the busy nook of the café, a burst of high-pitched laughter erupts. Teenagers, maybe, out for a bite after school. Harry can't realte to their energy.

Focus. "Did this happen often?" Harry wonders aloud. "This…disconnect."

Draco abandons his prim manners as the soup dwindles; he picks it up and drinks from it directly. "It happens in every relationship," He replies after a gulp. "It happened in all of mine."

Harry purses his lips.

Draco quirks an eyebrow. "Don't do that."

Harry rearranges his face. "What?"

"Pity me."

"I'm sor…"

Draco silences him with a finger to his lips, and the touch makes Harry's heart seize. He wants to take his skinny wrist, kiss his palm and every fingertip, but before he can find it in himself to move, Draco withdraws.

Harry's eyes ache with unfallen tears at the thought of how much he wants Draco. Funny how he never stopped wanting him. Yet Draco hadn't felt the same.

"No apologies either, Potter. Level with me."

The American saying makes Harry grin despite himself.

"We'll talk, but I'm going to keep eating," Draco tells him, "I don't exactly get a two-hour lunch break."

Harry nods. He half-wishes for a coffee, something to curl his hands around. "There was a disconnect," Harry starts. "From the very beginning.

"Maybe we didn't know each other well enough. I wasn't exactly on friendly terms with you in high school. Or maybe we knew each other too well, at the end of it. Maybe people just grow apart, and there's no logical reason for it, and love is stupid and finite." The last words are spat, like an insult from a child's mouth. It feels appropriately furious.

"That's a lot of maybes you're using, Potter," Draco observes. "Harry," He amends, and pops the last bit of crust into his mouth. "I think…" He pauses, and Harry watches him gather the words, watches his Adam's apple dip as he thoughtfully swallows iced tea. "You didn't listen to me."

"Really?" Harry raises an eyebrow. "All I did was listen to you; you did most of the talking…"

"I'm your subconscious." As Draco says this, he twitches, a wave of pixels rolling through his body in the blink of an eye. "Holy hell. Erm, anyway…you're technically listening to yourself right now. So, you must know you didn't listen to me enough."

Harry nods, slowly. "You're right."

"Yes, yes I am. I'm infallible; you should know this by now."

Harry nearly smiles, but melancholy drags him under again, an unwanted anchor tethering him to the freezing outside, where his listless body waits. He wants to go back in time. He wants to go after Draco and fix all this. Harry closes his eyes. I want, I want, I want. What did Draco want?

"You didn't listen to me," Draco repeats.

Golden threads of sunlight pull Harry's limbs from earth. For a moment, he's weightless, in wind that carelessly tosses spring and summer as if they were interchangeable. Then he finds purchase on shifting ground.

"But maybe I didn't listen to you either," Draco admits. He's already on the porch steps of the old beach house. It stands in dark blue and white, unwavering, hollow.

Harry breathes in Montauk, looking across the choppy water, dotted in the distance with sailboats. This stretch of beach is mercifully empty, the only joyful cries of children faraway, torn quickly by the wind.

"We both have…" Harry began.

"Strong personalities. Yes. I've heard that one before." Draco holds out his hand to pull Harry from the powdery sand lapping at his shoes. There's another ocean flowing in his eyes, gray and deep and knowledgeable. "I'm fine with that. You match me."

Harry's not sure he would agree. Draco always seemed one step ahead, a whirlwind of force and color, an extrovert born into something close to aristocracy, who chose to live like, and love nobodies like him. Of course, Harry doesn't feel like a nobody in Draco's arms. He feels seventeen, on the shoulders of his teammates, a trophy in his sweaty hands, grinning across the field at his best friends. Better than that, even.

Draco sees all this and takes Harry's face in his hands. "That was your first mistake, Harry. You thought I was some magical elfin boy who'd fill in all your holes and fix all your problems. I can't. I've got enough of my own to deal with."

The air tastes like salt.

Draco turns, footsteps creaking the porch as he moves closer to the house, wandering around, peering in through the dusty windows; Harry follows. "This is where I agreed to be your boyfriend," Harry remembers.

"You were already, I think. You just admitted it here." Draco cups his palm around his eyes to squint inside. Harry doesn't know what's in the house. He's too captivated by the curve of Draco's fingers, the way his eyes rove in short bursts of motion, taking in every detail. "I really like you, Potter. I do." Harry realizes that he's repeating, word-for-word, what he said that day. "I just haven't been tied to any one person so tightly before."

Harry picks up the script. "Maybe that's a good thing?"

Draco ceases bending by the window. "It's different, that's all. I'm scared of being controlled. But I need you to be there for me. I know I put up a confident front; I'm not faking it, exactly, I…" He stops, and finally, he's looking at Harry, every atom of attention focused on him. Draco walks forward and takes both his hands. His palms are rough with stray sand. "At the end of the day, all I am is glass. Like everyone else."

The sun has dipped into the ocean. Harry doesn't look away from Draco, but he can tell from the rosy light on his face that the day's end is near.

"I'm going to forget about all this," Draco says regretfully. Tears slip silently, one by one, down his cheeks. He pretends they're not there. "The me out there already has."

"I won't waste any second chances," Harry promises.

Draco nods, rests his head on Harry's shoulder. They breathe, listening to the entrancing song of the waves. It's not long before Harry stands on the porch alone.