Present Day
Amelia walked through the forest near the base camp, a solo activity she usually undertook to get away from the claustrophobia of the shanty town in which she and her friends existed. It was two weeks since the Daily Prophet had celebrated a year's marriage between Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, but Amelia was unable to shake it. Every night her sleep was interrupted by distorted visions of him, every meeting or duel practice she had attended he'd been on her mind, every moment of every day the questions that had haunted her for years resurfaced and spun around her head.
She felt a deep shame and embarrassment for being so fooled by Draco; she thought back to the night they spent together before he vanished with the Death Eaters, and how she'd given in to him so completely and even said she loved him. She knew that was why she hadn't told anyone, not even Ginny. The shame she felt consumed her, like a full but constant throbbing pain.
A cool breeze wafted through the leaves of the forest as Amelia trudged slowly through the thicket, and once again a horrid memory pushed its way to the front of her mind.
1998
Amelia woke in a daze, her head pounding and her body aching all over. The outlines of towering trees came into focus. A forest. As she sat up, memories started flooding back. Apparating. Death Eaters. Outnumbered. Pain. And then… this.
She called Draco's name, scrambling to her feet and picking up his discarded rucksack they'd been traveling with. No answer. She called again, spinning desperately and peering in between trees, waiting for a flash of blonde hair to come out from the shadows. Her voice echoed and was met with a faint reply from a gentle wind rustling the leaves above. Her throat swelled and her eyes stung.
Panicking, she took her wand out of her pocket, suddenly feeling like she was being watched. Her hand quivered violently as she raised her wand to nothing. Again, she called Draco's name, feeling her voice crack as terrible thoughts started to flood her mind.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember what had happened before she was tortured.
"Your mother mourned her son long ago, so when you are killed in this forest today, it will not matter to her, nor to me."
No.
There was no way.
She'd know if he'd been… surely, she would be able to sense it – a change in the world somehow, a shift from deep within her if he'd been…
She couldn't bring herself to even think the word.
Hastily wiping tears from her eyes, she slung the rucksack onto her back and started through the forest, still calling his name. She had to find him. Wherever he was, she needed to help him.
For weeks Amelia searched for him; revisiting places they had spent the night, tiptoeing in the shadows of small wizarding towns, flicking frantically through the pages of any Daily Prophet she could come across. She was desperate to find Draco. She sat in a deserted field one night, in the tent which now felt a hundred times vaster in the mocking solitude it gave her, wearing a sweater of Draco's that still had his scent woven into the wool. She felt exhausted. Her eyes were bleary and her limbs ached. Her head felt heavy from trying to keep all of the terribly morbid thoughts at bay.
She had to accept it. She wasn't going to find him. The Death Eaters had taken him that day in the forest – it was the only explanation for things.
Amelia curled up, pressing the oversized sleeve to her mouth and deeply breathing in his scent as a sharp lump swelled in her throat and the thought she had tried so hard to keep away, painfully crawled its way forward, hitting her like a tidal wave.
If the Death Eaters had him, it meant he was dead.
Present Day:
And she had believed this, even as she was found by the resistance and taken in by them, right up until she had seen an engagement announcement of his in the Daily Prophet: an experience much like the one she had just gone through by the campfire fire with her friends. The small article had torn her world apart and made everything she had believed come crashing down around her.
1998
It had been months since she had last seen Draco. When she entered the resistance for the first time she felt numb, like her limbs were working without her permission. She world moved around her and she felt unaffected by it all.
She looked around at the few tents dotted around; some small, some larger and more like a marquee. There were people patting her on the back, hugging and greeting her enthusiastically, but she just nodded vacantly and tried to blink away the fog in her brain.
It was Henry who first brought her back to reality; his sprinting up the row of tents, beaming and scooping Amelia up into a tight hug parted the clouds in her mind for just one moment.
"I've been looking everywhere for you, all around the sodding country," he said with a small chuckle. "I knew you'd still be around – my sister, the fighter."
That evening, as she sat at the long dining table in the marquee-come-dining-hall, the small flicker of hope she had held that Draco had found the resistance himself, was extinguished. New arrivals seemed to excite everyone in the resistance and word of Amelia had travelled around the modest campsite like a gust of wind, but as she spooned soup into her mouth with shaky hands, there was no flash of blonde hair or silvery eyes running towards her.
"Eat up – you're practically skin and bone," Henry said with a nudge as they sat side by side at the table.
After dinner Henry told her all about his time since the Battle of Hogwarts had been lost. Like Amelia, he'd been on the run but, through a previously used secret communication, had made contact with fellow aurors and banded together with them. The five aurors made it their mission to seek out members of the Order of the Phoenix, making it a priority to form an underground society to offer a safe haven for those fleeing the Death Eaters, and eventually build up strength to fight back. That was the beginning of the resistance.
Amelia began her time at the resistance sleeping on Henry's sofa and on her first night there, as Henry lay fast asleep, Amelia sat up to rifle through the small collection of Daily Prophets Henry had beside the tattered sofa.
She spread out three newspapers across the wooden coffee table at a time, hungry for what she had missed in the wizarding world and eager to see a glimpse of Draco's name – anything at all that told her anything about him. Even if it was bad news.
It didn't take long for her to glance his name on the third page of a Prophet from only two months ago. Her heart stopped in her throat and she scrambled to pull the paper closer to her. Bringing her dim and shimmering wand-light closer, she leaned over the article, but what she read made her almost throw up.
'Malfoy and Parkinson: Engaged to be Wed'
Amelia clapped a hand over her mouth as her stomach tightened and contracted. She read the headline a hundred times, but it did not change. She allowed her eyes to rake from the headline to the accompanying photo, and there he was.
Pansy Parkinson wore a frilly black dress, her neat black cropped hair bouncing as she sprang onto her toes to plant a kiss on Draco's cheek. Next to her stood Draco in a plain black suit. His hair was slicked back, something that Amelia had become unfamiliar with over their time on the run. His jaw was clenched and he looked straight forward; Amelia felt his eyes sting her own vision, but they were not the cloudy, silver eyes she had grown to love. They were empty and foreign to her. All of this, this person whom Pansy was clutching onto with such keen possession, did not make sense to Amelia.
She could hardly bring herself to read the article, but forced herself to confirm the headline with the first small paragraph.
'Mr. Draco and Malfoy and Miss. Pansy Parkinson announced their engagement today to their excited families. The childhood sweethearts, both pureblood and from distinguished wizarding families, will be wed in a lavish ceremony which will celebrate their love for one another, as well as mark the beginning of a new era of the wizarding world where pureblood wizards across the nation will strive through their own personal endeavours for a promising future.'
Amelia was suspended in time. Her body had seized up; her breath held tightly in her throat as she was unsure or unable to feel sad, confused, angry, hurt…
Present Day
It was after reading that article that Amelia vowed to never tell anyone of her and Draco. It was too humiliating – how could she say it out loud? Who would respect her afterwards? She thought that perhaps if she didn't tell a living soul, then the memories would die and stop being part of who she was.
It had all been a lie. The man she had loved and mourned and searched for all over the country had planned their entire relationship for some still-unknown gain. Perhaps worse still, he had done this all while loving and wanting Pansy Parkinson behind Amelia's back. And now she existed somewhere between love and hate; unable to switch off the feelings she'd harboured for so many years now, while somehow completely aware that none of it was real, that he always had been a Death Eater; a heartless liar who'd played her for a fool.
