Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Setting: Half Blood Prince AU
Word Count: 820
Tag: Hogwarts!Dramione, Secret!Dramione
Trope: Obliviate
She had no idea how Neville had managed to get hold of the bulk of scopolamine, and managed to keep their transaction a secret. Use a mortar and pestle for best effect; it apparently works best when a warm-bodied host grinds them into a teaspoon of olive oil, he wrote in the note she had crumbled up after she had read it once.
She rolled the small tube attached to the note as well between her fingers and a shiver went down her spine: what started as a research project to impress Slughorn now had another meaning, rendering the purpose into something as forbidden as selfishness. The marble pestle was cool to touch, and she put a single gather of Devil's Breath in with Neville's sample and bind the contents together. She smashed the mortar with excessive anguish and force, projecting all the childish things she wanted to hold on to, and to not ask why bad things happen to good people all the time.
She wondered if a few tears would fulfil the trick, but she had long ran out to spare. When her experiment was as smooth as Liquid Luck, she put down the mortar and rummaged into her robes for the tubes. The pair was as thick as her ring finger, in a dull emerald green; she filled up the tubes and put a stopper on her hope and their fate.
She waved her wand so the traces of her trials disappeared and was left with nothing but a memory; she Transfigured the pestle kit into a thank you note to Neville, and slipped it under the boys' dormitory on her way out.
She still had a few moments alone in their corridor, so she resumed the pretence of writing up the latest Defense essay, aptly and ironically about Unforgivable curses and she was writing about the Forgetfulness Curse and reasons why it should be made illegal.
"I haven't started that." The menace usually in his voice was non-existent as his footsteps and she blamed for time to hurry them forward.
"I'm just doing the outline and some research." The nonchalance in their first interaction had seeped in the instant comfort and reassurance from hearing his voice, but she didn't have the heart to mind. That would be a full circle, a token that it was as real as they made it to be.
Perhaps it was his instinct, or it was the cowardice he often sharpens against himself that hurried him to rip the bandage off. "I'm not sorry." His clutched jaw betrayed his conviction in his voice.
"I don't count on you to." Her voice was as steady as his when both of them were no longer lying.
There was nothing else to say anymore; when he had woken from the infirmary after the bathroom incident and met her eyes, the compromise had been sealed, no more bargaining, no tug-of-war.
He touched his fingertips over the shell of her ear, her pale face and over her exposed collarbones. "Fifty-two days will last me a long, long time."
"Not long enough." Her fingers drove under his sweater and shirt, and trembling fingers met the healing line of the scar on his torso.
"It will never be enough with you, Granger; I think you know that about me already." He felt sick to his stomach apart of what they were about to do: only in times of being driven apart could he find the courage to admit his feelings to the one person who knew him like the back of his hands.
"Goodbye, Draco." It couldn't be a farewell: it was inevitable that they are going to meet in the battlefield, on polar sides, on different grounds, on opposite agendas. He would resume hating her, and she would resume suspicious of him.
He reached for her waist, "Goodbye… Hermione." That was why they decided to do this, to severe the ties before they were bond too tight.
He waited for her to raise her wand to his temple before doing the same to her; he had to reach out once again to hold her shaking wrist steady and one final kiss.
Their voices mingled in the cold dusk, casting what they had aside and away: Obliviate.
.
.
.
.
Her scar itched un-bearably. The headaches were getting worse. Her nightmares were crawling into her blood stream and seeping into her heart. Twisting her neck and hearing the bones crack, she staggered over to the medicine cabinet and pushed potion bottles tinkling aside. Her fingers made to reach for the orange prescription bottle, but one dull green tube behind the plastic containers caught her eye.
Warmth emitting from the tube.
The scent of blueberries.
One last kiss that tasted of longing, of worry, of want, of the salt of their misery.
I don't really know what this is, but I will just bring it along. Just in case.
DRINK ME.
A/N: I made up the formula for the reverse-obliviate antidote. i guess it worked?