Chapter 2
A/N: Hello readers! I've been asked for a timeline just to keep things straight. I actually had to write myself one so that I could keep it straight while I wrote this. Saturday: date with mystery man, Sunday: Hermione had dinner with her parents, Monday-Wednesday: nothing, Thursday: Hermione had lunch with Ginny/ Harry gave Draco his potion, Friday: Hermione doesn't remember.
Coolgems1630 was kind enough to find the manga I mentioned reading years ago. It's here if you're curious: www . mangafox . me / manga / yasei _ no _ bara / Also, I would like to note that when I read it, there was only one chapter there and I assumed that it was a oneshot.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I got waaaay more than I was hoping for, you guys are awesome!
~Frosty
"You didn't listen to me," Malfoy said accusingly.
Hermione had no idea how he knew that, and her confusion must have shown on her face.
"I realized after you left that you'd agreed with me way too easily, which always means that you're just trying to placate me so that you can go do the exact opposite of what I tell you."
He really did know her well. Something fluttered in her chest. The feeling was somewhere between touched that he knew her so well and terrified for the same reason.
Whatever her reaction to it, his comment was enough for her to let him into her apartment with some degree of confidence. She'd obviously interacted with him on some level in the past for him to so accurately predict her reaction to his words.
Malfoy didn't look around curiously or anything else a person usually does upon first entering a new home, he made his way directly to the sofa. It appeared as if he'd been in her apartment before, probably more than once. He sat, producing a bottle of clear liquid from his pocket. Before Hermione could say anything, he took a good mouthful of the liquid and set the bottle on the table with an accomplished thump.
"Ask me whatever it will take for you to believe me." There was a slightly glazed look in his eyes that suggested he was under the potion's effect. Hermione had to be sure though.
Instead of doing as he asked, Hermione first took the bottle of Veritaserum and sniffed it, making sure the liquid was odourless and dabbing the smallest drop on her tongue to ensure it was flavourless.
She decided to start with something simple. "Are we dating?"
"We were; I'm not sure if we still are since you don't seem to remember me."
"How long were we dating?"
"Three months."
"How did our relationship start?"
He smirked the tiniest bit. "I visited your shop looking for something to read, and was surprised to find my childhood nemesis behind the counter. You told me that you'd never, ever consider dating me when I commented that you really filled out your dowdy blouse. Realizing that you had really grown into your looks and turned on by your sharp tongue, I proceeded to charm the pants off of you and visited every day for two weeks until you agreed to date me."
That was kind of cute. Hermione had been hoping that the truth would strike some kind of chord within her and maybe her memories might return. It had been a naive hope, and Hermione should have known better. While she could picture them bickering over dates in her mind, it was her imagination supplying the images, not her memory.
She contemplated her next question for a moment before speaking. "What was it we fought about that made you think I was just ignoring you these past few weeks?"
"I wanted you to move in with me, but you didn't want to leave your tiny little apartment."
Hermione's eyes widened, surprised that they'd progressed so far in their relationship that they had already started talking about living together. They must have been pretty serious.
"Did I love you?" she blurted without thinking.
"Yes."
"Did you love me?"
"I still love you."
Hermione wasn't entirely sure what was going on with her circulatory system, being a plant and all, but she definitely felt herself reddening at the conviction and passion in his voice. She really wished that she could remember him as something other than the angry teenager at his trial, or the surly little boy attending Hogwarts. It seemed like he'd grown up into a wonderful man and she was sorry that she'd forgotten him.
One more question before she let him take the antidote she knew he had somewhere in his robes. "Do you have any idea what's happened to me?"
"No, and when I find out who did this to you, I'm going to remove their fingers one by one and then-"
Hermione cringed. "Please stop before I you give me any more images that I can't get out of my head. I believe you. You can take the antidote now."
He smirked at her for not remembering anything about him but still being able to predict something about him. Malfoy drank the antidote and gave it a minute to take effect before he spoke again.
"What's that red spot on your cheek?" she asked, partially to sate her curiosity and partially because she wanted to make sure that the Veritaserum had stopped working.
"Potter," Malfoy spat. "He came to see me-" he looked up to meet Hermione's eyes- "The day before you lost your memories. He fed me some weird love potion and I spent a week infatuated with a tree. What you're looking at is the resulting bark burn. Trees don't cuddle well."
Hermione would have laughed, but the whole plant thing cut a little too close to home. "Why would Harry do something like that?"
He shot her an incredulous look before he remembered that she'd lost her memory. "About a month ago, we announced to our friends and family that we were dating. Obviously, it didn't go over well."
"You don't think it was our friends and family that did this to me, do you?"
Malfoy stared at her hard for a moment. "There's something more you're not telling me."
"This is going to sound strange, but I'm a plant. I can't eat anything, I sleep almost as soon as the sun goes down, and I get twitchy if I spend too long inside without windows and sun shining on me."
Hermione expected some more of the disbelief that everyone else had shown upon being informed that she was a plant. Instead, Malfoy leaned forward slowly, so as not to startle her, rested his nose in her hair by her neck, and took a big sniff. She sat straight, startled at his action, her movement breaking their contact.
"You don't smell like you," he announced, not sounding surprised. He'd believed her and was just confirming it for himself, which was more than everyone else she'd told had done. His eyes darkened in the angry expression that was becoming the norm with him when he was around her. "Who did this?"
Hermione supposed that was one day to discern that someone was no longer a mammal. It was actually quite clever when she thought about it; having been dating her for a while, Malfoy must be quite familiar with her personal smell, but as a plant, she just didn't have pheromones, skin oils, or anything like that.
"That's what I've been trying to figure out," she explained. I was kind of hoping to have some answers when I solved the mystery of our date. He was my only suspect."
Malfoy leaned back against the sofa and looked in her direction without really seeing her, his mind miles away. "Well, since we were both attacked within 24 hours of each other, and the week after we announced to our friends and family that we were dating, I think it's safe to say they may be suspects."
"I asked everyone I met who I had been dating and couldn't remember, and every one of them told me that they had no idea who it could be." She looked at him sharply. "You can't possibly be thinking..."
He smirked at her. "You know very well that I'm thinking our friends and family could have had something to do with this, darling. That's not your issue. Your problem is that you think the same thing."
"I just don't want to believe that they'd be capable of such a thing."
"I know you don't, love." There was genuine sympathy in his tone, something she wasn't used to hearing in his voice - or at least not in the voice of the Malfoy that she remembered. It hadn't failed to escape her notice that he'd upped the endearments he was using. Hermione assumed that he normally used the endearments and had been too angry with her earlier for them to slip from his lips.
Malfoy continued his distant staring. "You know, when I visited my mum a few days ago, she made a comment about me 'not having to worry about that Granger girl anymore'. I thought it was because she thought our fight over living arrangements was going to be the end of us, but with recent events taken into consideration, I think she knows something."
Hermione hesitated a moment before just speaking her mind. She needed to get all the information she could, without worrying about Malfoy's feelings. If this strange new Malfoy cared about her as much as he claimed - which she suspected he did - then he would understand.
"Is your mother capable of doing this to me?"
Happily, Malfoy wasn't offended, and his answer was immediate. "Yes."
Hours later, Hermione and Malfoy were still on her sofa discussing how they should go about confronting Narcissa. Over the course of their discussion, Hermione had moved from her previous seat across the room to beside him on the sofa – so that she could hear him better, of course. Hermione found that, while she didn't seem very receptive to touch as a plant, she was very fond of listening to his voice. She wanted to be closer to it.
"You used to have pictures of us, you know."
Hermione looked at him questioningly, so he elaborated.
"There was a big picture of us on your mantle along with all of those pictures of the rest of your friends and family. The one with me in it has been removed, but all the other ones remain." He nodded his head towards the alcove beside her door, where her hook for coats was located. "I gave you a lovely cashmere scarf that matched perfectly with that horrible brown coat you love so much, but that's missing as well."
"Someone went through my apartment and removed everything that could possibly remind me of you?" she asked, feeling violated. He'd already told her the answer, so it was just a rhetorical question, a need to voice it herself and let it sink in.
They settled into silence as she contemplated this new horror.
Malfoy's stomach rumbled, reminding Hermione that even if she didn't like to eat, he still needed to.
"Would you like something to eat?" she asked.
His eyebrow rose skeptically. "I'm betting you have quite the aversion to heat now that you're no longer a mammal."
Hermione was baffled; he was right. How in the world did he keep doing that? Even she hadn't been aware of her new aversion to heat until she'd tried to cook herself something and discovered that the heat rising from the stove made her so anxious that she nearly vomited.
Without waiting for her to recover from her surprise, Malfoy rose, walked to the kitchen and started going through her cupboards searching for something to eat. Not having had any need for sustenance other than water and sunlight for months, Hermione was a little low on groceries, but he managed to find himself a microwave dinner in the freezer. He easily operated the microwave, and then pulled it out with a look of distaste.
Hermione couldn't help her staring as he brought the food back to the sofa with him. Of course, he caught her staring and smirked. "You gave me the exact same expression the first time you saw me eat a frozen dinner, and then you showed me how to work the microwave instead of doing it with magic."
At least she was consistent in her reactions, and Malfoy certainly seemed to find her amusing.
Frantic knocking on her door distracted her from being creepy and staring as Malfoy ate his microwave dinner. He hadn't seemed to mind, so she had just continued.
Wondering who in the world would be so desperate for her attention, Hermione left Malfoy to his food and went to get the door. She was on the verge of opening it when it burst open itself and Ginny stumbled in, wand raised and James clasped on her hip.
"Hermione, I have to tell you something," the redhead said, shoving her wand back into her pocket so that she had a hand free to grab Hermione's arm anxiously.
Slightly distrustful of her friend, but knowing that Ginny would never start something with James present, Hermione waited to hear what Ginny had to say. She subtly tapped her pocket to make sure that her wand was where she'd left it, but she didn't draw it. Like Ginny, Hermione would also never start something if James was present.
Ginny shifted uncomfortably, not her usual fiery self. "I may have had something to do with your current... state."
Suddenly, it was difficult for Hermione to take in enough air. Of course, she had logically considered that her friends and family could have had something to do with her strange illness, but emotionally, she hadn't thought it was possible that they would betray her in such a way.
"What did you do?" Hermione asked, her voice quiet.
James, sensing the tension in the room, burst into wet, noisy sobs and he rapidly turned red. Ginny bounced a little and made shushing noises, trying to stop his crying.
Of course, this was when Malfoy chose to make his presence known. It would be asking too much for all of the antagonistic aspects of his personality to disappear just because he was in love with her.
"I thought you strengthened your wards, Hermione," Malfoy said, placing himself firmly at Hermione back so that they presented a united front. "You were supposed to keep just this sort of riffraff from entering." He sneered at Ginny, who responded with a similar expression.
"I thought you couldn't remember him," Ginny called over the wailing of her offspring. She covered her mouth when she realized what she'd said.
"You told me that you had no idea who I was dating."
Ginny paled further and James started to scream even louder. Oddly enough, it was Draco who stepped forward and held out his arms for the baby. Even more confusing to Hermione, Ginny actually let him take James.
"The little guy loves Malfoy," Ginny grumbled. Her point was proven when James' tears stopped and the baby happily squealed at Draco as the blond man bounced him.
Hermione watched Malfoy with the baby. Even as a plant, she could tell that Malfoy would be a good father; she was drawn to him because of it. If the draw was so strong when she wasn't in possession of the mammalian need to reproduce, the draw must have been so much worse when she was herself. She was starting to understand what she'd seen in him before the whole memory loss thing.
Once the boys were settled on the sofa playing some sort of game involving flashes of colour from Draco's wand, Hermione tilted her head towards the kitchen, indicating that she and Ginny would talk in there.
"How could you take my memories of Malfoy?" Hermione demanded of her friend.
Instead of contrition, Ginny's face only showed confusion. "I didn't have anything to do with your memory loss. Neville sent Harry a letter and mentioned your strange plant condition, thinking you would have told us about it. That's why I'm here."
Her gaze turned briefly accusing before Hermione's raised eyebrow made her blush. Ginny had no business pretending that Hermione hadn't been a good friend because she was keeping secrets, when Ginny herself had been plotting behind her back.
"Harry and I were just trying to nudge you two apart," Ginny continued. "Harry gave Malfoy a potion that would make him fall in love with someone else, and when you came over for tea, I slipped you a potion that was supposed to make him unappealing to you. No one was supposed to get hurt or anything."
Hermione's eyebrows drew together. "Malfoy's potion made him fall in love with a tree."
"As far as we can tell, some plant matter got into both the potion we made for Malfoy and the one we made for you." Meekly, Ginny handed Hermione a handwritten potion recipe as well as a vial of deep green liquid. "This is what I gave you. Harry and I have already sent it off to the best Potion's Master we could find, but he hasn't found anything yet."
There was a pause, presumably while Ginny waited for some sort of response. Hermione let her wait, taking her time in reading over the ingredients in the potion as well as the jotted note at the bottom with Ginny's guess about the plant matter that had fallen into the potions.
"How could you and Harry do this to me?"
Ginny's eyes were overly-bright with tears, but she kept her chin up, willing to stand by her actions. "Malfoy is a horrible match for you. He was just taking advantage of your kindness and using you to improve his family image."
Maybe this would have been believable before she'd spent the afternoon with the man, but it wasn't at all believable now that Hermione had gotten to know him better... again. She wasn't sure if Ginny was just deliberately obtuse in refusing to acknowledge that Malfoy had changed, or if her friend had imagined Malfoy a threat to justify her own prejudices. Whichever it was, Ginny and Harry had no excuse for what they had done.
Hermione turned away from her waiting friend and walked into her living room. The boys were still engaged in their game, but Hermione could tell from the tense set of his shoulders that Malfoy wasn't nearly as immersed in it as James appeared to be. She was willing to bet that Malfoy had been eavesdropping to their kitchen conversation the entire time.
Wordlessly, she picked up James and handed Malfoy the recipe for the potion that had supposedly turned her into a plant. She wasn't sure, but she didn't think those ingredients alone would have been enough to change her genetic makeup so thoroughly. Hermione didn't remember Malfoy's current career or anything, but she remembered that he'd been good in potions back at Hogwarts, and she had a feeling that he'd be able to assess the potion's ingredients just as she had.
Leaving the blond to his contemplation of the parchment, Hermione brought James back to his mum, who was still waiting in the kitchen.
The phone rang just as Hermione reached Ginny, so she handed over the baby and rushed to answer it. Like she had every afternoon since Hermione visited her dad and explained her medical situation, Hermione's mum was calling to see if she was feeling any better.
"Hermione, how are you feeling?"
"Still the same, mum, but I think I've found the potion that's responsible for me suddenly turning into a plant." She really wasn't positive, but it was best to give her mum hope so that she could stop worrying.
"Potion?" her mum squeaked. Hermione caught her strange tone, remembering the aversion her parents seemed to have to magic since she'd Obliviated them. The only time they didn't hate her magic was when they thought there was something it could do for them that they couldn't manage by Muggle means, such as healing defective hearts.
"Yes, mum. Listen, I have company and I'm going to have to let you go."
Hermione hung up the phone and turned to Ginny, who was standing uncomfortably in the middle of her kitchen.
"I know you never liked Malfoy," Hermione said, careful to keep the anger from her voice so that she wouldn't upset James. "But as my friends, I would have thought that you and Harry would have more faith in my judgement."
"But Hermione-"
"I think it's best that you leave."
Cheeks red with either humiliation or anger, Ginny left Hermione's apartment. The door shut behind her with a soft thump that seemed to echo with finality throughout the building.
Hermione was losing energy fast, which probably meant that the sun was on the verge of setting, but could also be attributed to her emotionally strenuous day.
"This may have contributed to your current state, but by itself, this potion wouldn't be enough to turn a mammal into a plant," Malfoy said from the sofa. His voice was quiet but pitched to carry.
Jolted from her episode of staring sadly after Ginny and wondering why the other woman had so little faith in her, Hermione turned to look at Malfoy. The person she'd thought just that morning that she could trust the least in the world had actually turned out to be one of the more trustworthy people in her life.
She sat down beside the blond man. "I thought the same thing when I read over the ingredients in the potion."
A glance out the window showed her that the sun was resting on the horizon, about to slip below it. She yawned, wishing for her bed.
"You should probably go to bed," Malfoy said.
For a second, Hermione had forgotten that he was in the room, so she jumped a little when he spoke. He was watching her intently, his sharp eyes not missing a single thing about her. She'd be disturbed that he could read her so easily if he didn't seem to have the best intentions regarding her safety.
"Why do I get the feeling that you're not planning on leaving?" she asked. It seemed that she was starting to get better at reading him. When she had all of her memories, she was willing to bet that she had been able to read him just as well as he could read her.
Malfoy met her stare, daring her to challenge him. "I'll sleep out her of the sofa. Until we figure out what's happened to you and who did it, I'm not comfortable leaving you alone."
Oddly enough, Hermione was actually a little bit comforted by Malfoy's presence. She hadn't been staying awake at night scared or anything, but she had a feeling that she may sleep just a little be sounder with him right in the next room.
"Let me get you some pillows and blankets."
Some of the tension in his shoulders relaxed and he gave her a small smile.
Something was ringing, and Hermione was getting increasingly annoyed with the sound. She tossed and turned in her sleep, but just couldn't manage to rouse herself from her slumber. The logical part of her brain told her that the sun was probably still below the horizon, and the rest of her brain was occupied with supplying a string of strange dreams.
Hermione finally managed to open her eyes when a streak of light fell across her face, let inside her darkened room by the opening of her bedroom door.
Malfoy slipped into her room and pressed something smooth and relatively light to the side of her head. "It's your mum," he whispered.
"Hello?" Hermione grumbled, having figured out that Malfoy had answered the phone.
The red numbers of Hermione's clock said it was just past three in the morning, and her internal clock told her it was still a few hours before the sun would make an appearance.
"Hermione," her mum said, sounding oddly stern, "I thought you'd forgotten about that – that man."
"Malfoy?" Hermione asked, still a little confused and nowhere near fully awake. The blond, having not left the room when he handed her the phone, raised an eyebrow at her from where he sat on the edge of the bed. Hermione shook her head at him.
"Yes; him."
"That's really none of your business, mum. Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?"
Her mum made an annoyed huffing sound. "I have something I need to tell you."
"Something that couldn't wait a few hours for the sunrise?"
"Hermione, I may have slipped you a potion."
Wide-eyed, Hermione hit the speakerphone button and waved Malfoy closer.
"What are you talking about, mum?"
The annoyed huff came again before her mum spoke. "It just didn't sit right with me that you were dating someone who had made you so miserable during school – and don't pretend for a second that he didn't make you cry at least once every few weeks with his horrible words and prejudices."
Hermione chanced a glance at Malfoy, but he was resolutely looking in the other direction. He looked relaxed, save for the one fist that was clenched tightly. When Hermione slid her hand over that fist, he looked at her with surprise and she gave him a comforting smile. He relaxed minutely and returned the look.
"So I used one of those mail-order catalogues," her mum continued, unaware of the scene happening on the other end of the phone, "And ordered a potion that was supposed to give you an aversion to touching that man. It was supposed to end your relationship.
"When you visited and told your father that you'd lost your memory of him, I thought it worked and that it was something else that had turned you into a plant, but then you said a potion may have done it... I contacted the manufacturer and they said if their potion was combined with something else, there may be 'undesired side effects'. I thought I should call and tell you about it."
The woman was talking like she'd done Hermione some huge favour in calling to inform Hermione of the horrible thing she had done.
"Give me the catalogue number and name of the potion so I can find it," Hermione ordered, the first thing she'd said since her mother's horrible revelation.
"Hermione," her mum said sternly, not liking her daughter's tone, "I understand that you're mad at me, but I was just trying to do what was best for you."
"'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,' mum. Just give me the catalogue information so I can hang up."
Predictably, Hermione's mother bristled at the tone, but though she had too much pride to admit it, she'd been horribly wrong to try and break up her daughter's relationship and so gave Hermione the information she needed before hanging up on her daughter.
Hermione looked from the phone giving her a dial tone to Malfoy. "Did you do something in particular to anger her, or is this just some long-buried belief that my judgement can't be trusted?"
Not much more awake than Hermione, Malfoy flopped back onto her bed. "I didn't make the best impression, but I thought we'd gotten past that and your parents were even starting to accept me."
Sensing a story there, Hermione cuddled back under her blankets. "I sense a story there. Come over here and tell me." She indicated the half of her bed that she never seemed to use. Apparently, even without her memories, she habitually left spaces for Malfoy in her life.
When Malfoy was settled beside her, he began the story, shooting her a sleepily amused grin. "It was your birthday, and I wanted to give you a special surprise. I Floo'd over here while you were still at work, lit candles all over your apartment..."
Hermione glanced over at him when he hesitated in continuing. She had an idea where this story was going, and was mortified.
"Your expression actually looked a lot like it does now when you Floo'd home to find me on the sofa, wearing only whipped cream and a cherry while your parents stood in the doorway, horrified."
Actually squeaking in horror, Hermione covered her face as she imagined it. "I must have been pretty upset with you."
"That's an understatement. You were furious, but I knew it was just because you were mortified so I didn't take your harsh words to heart."
Hermione fell back to sleep listening to Malfoy chuckling at the memory. She would deal with the new information of her mum's potion in the morning when the sun was in the sky.