Draco felt as if he couldn't move.
Standing there, in that hallway, watching Potter walk away, he felt his whole body tighten, and something was broken deep inside of him. There had been something important there- a song, a flutter of wings prompted by Potter's touch and smile. And now-
Cold ashes, no traces of glowing embers. Bent cage bars, perhaps a bit of his own heart's blood splattered across the metal.
Pansy is shaking him, and he thinks that her lips look very red, that her lashes look clumpy and thick with mascara. He thinks that she looks like she's trying to be an adult, when the baby fat still hasn't completely left any of their bodies.
He feels like a child right now, consumed by the absence of someone who had given him a sense of home.
He'd wanted to talk to Potter- to explain why he had done what he did. To perhaps confide in him about the oncoming raid on the castle. He had hoped- his mind swirls now, and he feels foolish- to breach the wall between them.
"...aco…" He stumbles a bit, tongues the inside of his gummy, shredded cheek.
"Draco!" His head snaps to Pansy and Blaise, and he's sure that he looks a state, eyes wide, a trickle of blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth from his bitten cheek. His friends watch him with careful concern, Blaise catching him by the arm, his face hard, and, Draco thinks, a little angry.
"Fuck Potter," he mutters, low enough so that Pansy can't hear. "You deserve better."
"I don't understand," Draco whispers, and his head begins to pound. "He was different, something was…" Potter's face hadn't revealed a trace of emotion towards Draco, except the surface-level anger and irritation the two boys had shared before any of this happened.
Blaise shifts, uncomfortable. "Maybe… ask the Weasel?"
Draco looks at him as if he were mad. "Why in the bloody hell would I do that?"
Blaise scratches his head.
"He seemed off, Draco. Shifty, but a little smug, like he knows something that we don't, that you don't." Draco thinks about it, and supposes that Blaise is right. Weasley had been more than smug- he'd been blatantly self-righteous. And Draco is intent on finding out why.
He follows Weasley after dinner that evening, when the boy leaves his friends early. Draco thinks that's odd- the redhead never skipped out on an opportunity to stuff his face. Still, no matter, all the better for Draco to confront him.
It isn't until they had reached a long, winding staircase that Draco realizes that they're heading to the Astronomy Tower. Weasley stops for a moment, looking around, and Draco hugs the shadows of the dim, stone walls. He waits with bated breath, for Weasley to round the last section of the stairs.
When Draco opens the heavy, wooden door, he sees Weasley, standing at an arched window, looking out. Hot breath fans across the back of Draco's neck, and he tenses, his heart hoping for a single, beating moment that it's Potter, there to take him in his arms and tell him that, don't worry, he was just joking earlier, he didn't mean any harm- but Blaise's familiar, smooth voice results in a heavy pang of sorrow, "What do you think the bloke is doing?"
" Shhh! " Draco stares at him, wide eyed, confused as to why Blaise had followed him. The other boy quirks a brow, opening his mouth, but finds himself cut off by none other than Weasley himself.
"I knew you lot would follow me. 'Spect you're here about Harry, yeah?" His lip curls wickedly, "Seems much happier now, doesn't he?"
Anger, and something else, something that Draco had grown used to over these months with the cupboard and the order to kill Dumbledore- fear - grips his heart. He grips his wand underneath his robes, relishing in the familiar hawthorne texture sliding beneath his fingers. Potter had seemed to have a sort of floaty bliss encompassing him when he was sitting with the Weaslette, as if someone had relieved him of all of his burdens and secrets-
Draco stumbles towards Weasley, realization dawning on him like a heavy, sudden outpour of rain from the sky. He feels horror, a sort of sickening twist in his stomach that rears its head up in ugly, red rage.
"You didn't," he whispers, and his voice comes out stronger than he expects. His grip around his wand tightens.
A shadow passes over Weasley's face- guilt?- before he covers it with an uncharacteristic sneer. Evil, Draco thinks, doesn't suit the usually carefree Weasley. "I didn't what, Malfoy? Please, tell me what I didn't do."
Draco feels like doubling over, "He doesn't remember me. You- you took me from him. Took him from me." He takes a shaky breath, "You selfish, self-indulgent, self-serving-"
"All I did was save him from you! He'll be happier with her, without you," Weasley's face is a deep, swollen red, a nearly purple color that spreads to his ears and his neck in ugly, angry splotches.
"You were just going to hurt him, and my sister- neither of you gave a damn about my sister-"
"That wasn't your decision to make, Weasle." Draco had forgotten Blaise was there at all, but sure enough, there he is in all of his confident, pureblooded glory. "You should have let it sort itself out. People get hurt , you ginger headed fuck, that's life. You can't very well go obliviating everyone who you're trying to protect." Draco's impressed that Blaise has been able to keep up with the situation, but then again, Zabini has always been too smart for his own good. The two keep arguing, sounding like bloody first years, throwing insults back and forth.
The weight of the situation hits Draco again, and he misses Potter's warmth already, his banter, the smell of him when they lay together in the grass.
Merlin, he's been such an idiot. He should have never pushed Potter away, should have kept him close in his arms, locked him away somewhere so that Ronald fucking Weasley could never-
Weasley.
Fucking Weasley .
Something wild unhinges inside of Draco. The bird in his heart is shrieking wildly, do something, do something. His eyes dart back and forth, his muscles tensed, jaw clenching and unclenching, and he whips out his wand, driving it beneath the redhead's chin. Weasley's nostrils flare as he falls silent, and Draco feels the hard tip of Weasley's own wand against his stomach, and, in a flash, Blaise has his wand pressed against Weasley's temple, his body framing the lanky, rundown boy's body.
An odd noise bubbles in Draco's mouth, something akin to a growl, "Change him back Weasley, or Merlin help me-"
"I couldn't even if I wanted to Malfoy. And I don't."
Desperation claws at him, no, no, he can't be gone.
"We're going to march to the Gryffindor Common Room and you're bloody well going to change him back, Weasley, or I'll- I'll-"
"You'll what, Malfoy? Tell your father? Something tells me that wouldn't go over very well, knowing that you've been taking it up the arse- and from a half-blood , no less-"
There's laughter underneath the cruel words, and the curse is on Draco's lips before he realizes it. " Expulso! "
Weasley flies back against the wall, his head smacking against the brick with a sickening crack. He groans, touching the back of his head, his eyes widening at the blood coating two of his fingers. Draco draws his wand back again with Blaise at his side, feeling an awful satisfaction building in him.
" Arresto Momentum !" Draco feels his limbs and body slow down exponentially, and it seems as if he is moving in slow motion. His next spell dies in his throat, and it seems the whole tower thrums with magic. Weasley strides towards them, and Draco barely registers that Blaise has stilled, too. Their attacker raises his wand, and Draco realizes too late what he's going to do. His lips go to form a last minute plea, a no, please, don't make me forget about him, his touch, his warmth, please, because I really think I could fall in love with him, in fact, I'm probably already halfway there-
His thoughts are cut off by the word he knew was coming, a horrible sound tearing from Weasley's chest.
" Obliviate!"
He sees the images taken from him- him and Potter playing quidditch in the cloak of the night, sneaking into Honeydukes cellar, their first kiss, their first time, the night they spent telling each other things that they had never dared say out loud to anyone before, the softness Potter's skin and hair, the smell- mint, grass, vanilla, mint, grass, vanilla- the feel of dewy grass beneath his back, the water lilies that grow near the grove they had made their own.
Lastly, Potter's smile. A warm touch. A word- "forever."
And darkness.
Ron wonders if this feeling will ever go away. This unsureness, this feeling like water swelling in his lungs and throat, wave after wave of guilt hitting him. He had seen the look in Malfoy's eyes before he fell to the ground in what seemed like a peaceful sleep, an aching request to be able to keep his memories of the one he loves.
He stumbles, his head pounding, vision blurry. No, he reckons, it probably won't ever stop. But it helps to think of how happy his flushed sister had looked when Harry doted on her today.
He's surprised that he makes it to the Fat Lady at all, with the state he's in. He's certain that his head is still bleeding. She raises an eyebrow at him, "My, my, don't you look frightful. Gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble again, have we?" Ron clenches his teeth and grinds out the password to her, ignoring her indignant sniff as she swings open. He limps into the Common Room, which is empty save for Hermione.
Fan-bloody-tastic.
The wild haired girl doesn't look up from her book at first.
"Harry's gone to bed already," she says absently."Said he was tired- Ronald, what happened ?"
She rushes over to him, her touch light and fleeting, her breath sharp when she finds the gash on his head. Her brown eyes gleam with concern in the light of the fire, almost golden, and he feels another kind of guilt, remembering Lavender's body beneath him and how he wanted nothing but for her to be the girl in front of him.
He considers lying to her, but remembers Malfoy's face again, so similar to Harry's when he'd Obliviated Harry, and tears sting at his eyes. "'Mione- I, I fucked up 'Mione. I fucked up real bad." He breaks down in her arms then, no doubt getting blood all over her robes, thinking of his best mate and wondering, for the hundredth time, if he'd done the right thing. Zabini had been easy to Obliviate- he wasn't involved, not really. But Harry and Malfoy, they were so entangled in each other, so obviously enamoured .
He feels like a monster.
So he tells her everything, sitting across from her on the ground next to the fire, afraid to look at her as the quiet words spill out. When he finishes and she stays quiet, he forces himself to meet her gaze.
"'Mione?"
And oh , the look on her face breaks his heart.
She's leaning back from him, her hand poised in postured horror over her mouth, eyes shining with ready tears. When she does speak, her words are thick and filled with choked back sobs.
"Ronald," the way she says his name kills him, "how could you?"
He reaches for her, and she flinches, "I just wanted to make him happy- I don't know, I was thinking of my sister, of him-"
She stands up, her movements filled with calculating fury, and her eyes are cold.
"Ronald Bilius Weasley, he was happy. He was- dare I say- falling in love . I don't like Malfoy any better than you do, for Godric's sake, I'm the one he thinks is a filthy Mudblood. But Harry," her gaze drifts back to the boys dormitories, "Harry was happy with him, happier than he'd ever been with Ginny, and she deserves someone who would never even think of straying from her."
Ron draws his hand back, his mouth a hard line.
"There's bloody well nothing I can do about it now Hermione, they've forgotten and now they- they can be happy without each other."
Disgust and fear consume her features.
"We've got to fix it Ron. I- I don't know much about memory spells, but I've got some books, and together I'm sure we could…"
Cold dread fills him, and he begins shaking his head at her incessant stream of consciousness, her insistence at fixing what he'd done. He cuts her off.
"Can't you, for once, leave it alone, you insufferable know-it-all?"
Hurt floods her eyes and body, and he softens, reaching for her again.
"No, Ron," she backs away from him. "I can't leave it alone , and Harry at least deserves to know, and if you won't tell him-" Ron's eyes widen.
"I will." She finishes firmly, turning away from him. She stalks towards the room he's shared with Harry for years, and panic overtakes him. Harry can't know. He'll hate Ron. He'll never trust him again, and he can tell that Hermione already feels a sort of aversion towards him and- oh god, what if she never finds it within herself to love him the way that he's always loved her-
"Hermione! " she turns, determined, brow raised, and he does the first thing that comes to his mind.
" Obliviate!"
Betrayal colors her features right before the spell reaches her, and it hits her oddly, on the side of her head, and for a moment, her whole body is glowing with light. She sways, eyes fluttering, knees buckling, and Ron rushes forward to catch her, scooping her up and laying her across the couch, spreading an open textbook across her stomach. He brushes a curl back from her forehead, worrying his lip and pressing a chaste kiss to her palm. He stares at his wand, which has never been the most reliable thing, but Harry had seemed fine, and he can only hope that Hermione comes out alright, too.
He's alone, now, the only one who knows. And he wonders just exactly what he's done.