When Sam awoke, the room was dark and stuffy. The curtains were drawn to block out the light, it could have been the middle of the day for all he knew.

"Sam wake up, you've got to take your next dose of potion."

This was his third day of quarantine with Rose, and while he was consistently drinking every single potion pushed at him, he was getting weaker with each passing day.

He groaned, and opened his eyes, groggy from either the Scrofungulus or the potion he was drinking every 6 hours for treatment.

Sam grabbed the phial from Rose's hand and tried to tip it straight down his throat but Rose interrupted him.

"Woah hold up, you have to sit up so you don't bloody well choke."

.

She put her arm behind Sam's head and gently helped him sit up.

Looking at him up close, she saw how much he'd deteriorated even with the potions and salves, she felt a lump in her throat as she suppressed the urge to cry.

He didn't look good.

Sam slowly swallowed what was in the phial then placed it on the bedside table.

He sighed, "Ok so now that that's done and I'm fully awakened by its delectable bitterness, how about we, I dunno, play a game of chess?"

Rose covered up the moment of sadness with a quick quip, "Oh you want to go there? You know you always lose."

.

She turned away to bide herself some time to compose herself and walked over to a cupboard to get out the chess board and some stock pieces.

As she rummaged through the cupboard she called back to Sam, "I know we don't have our own pieces to play with, but it's okay, whichever pieces I use, they're still going to crush yours."

"Hey, aren't Healers supposed to be humble?"

"Absolutely not, we're the most uppity profession there is - we save lives, we're one hundred percent full of ourselves."

"All right Weasley, just sit down. Let's see if you've still got it."

.

Rose sat down at the end of Sam's bed and placed the chess board between them.

All she had to do was slightly open up the box of pieces before all the pieces started to push open the lid and clamber out, making their way onto the board by themselves.

If there was anything Rose loved about Wizard's chess it was the sassy character of all of the pieces as they played to destroy each other.

The white pieces in the set hissed at the black ones the entire time they were getting into place but they all eventually settled themselves onto their starting squares without any bloodshed.

As the game got going Sam watched Rose's face carefully.

All he could think about was the last time they'd seen each other.

.

Did she remember what had happened between them or had all those memories remained erased?

For some reason, contemplating this was filling him with conflict.

On the one hand, if she had found her memories or broken the memory charm she would remember all of the things that had happened between them; the good and the bad, but at least the guilt Sam felt for erasing them and lying to her all these years would finally be able to subside.

On the other hand, if the memory charm was still in place she wouldn't remember any of the pain they had caused each other, which was what she wanted, and they could continue on with their shallow, vague friendship.

Rose hadn't given any more indications that she remembered their relationship from Hogwarts.

It still felt like a punch in the gut whenever Sam thought about the night he'd Obliviated her.

Surely though, if she didn't remember she would have been confused that he had called her Cherry?

.

'I need to find out what she knows,' Sam thought to himself.

"So Cherry, remember that time we went camping with all the Weasleys and the Potters? It was wild fun hey."

"Bishop to F3," Rose said nonchalantly as her bishop screamed with glee and waltzed over to smash Sam's pawn to pieces.

.

"Yeah it was all right, although nobody would bloody apparate Bee and me back to camp and we had to bloomin' walk. You were all such snot-rags."

Sam laughed, "Yeah, we did love lording that we were of age over you. Rook to A6. But we had a good time other than that right?"

"Knight to A6," Rose's knight promptly galloped on top of Sam's Rook and squished it till it exploded into tiny peices.

But she couldn't enjoy the triumph, "Sam," she looked up awkwardly, "I… I know what you're trying to ask.. I've been trying to find the right time to tell you."

Her gaze dropped back to the chess board.

Silence filled the moment, neither of them really daring to cross the line, and break out into the open.

Sam felt like his lungs might explode from the suspense, 'Do I really want to go there?' he thought to himself.

But before he could really decide he could feel himself blurting out words.

"You figured out I Obliviated you."

It was a statement, not a question.

"Of course I did. I'm a genius," she stated dramatically, but the joke fell flat and her face quickly faded to a sadder look.

"I was studying at the Healer academy, learning about symptoms of magically-induced forgetfulness and it just became abundantly clear that I was experiencing them. Small details were missing, implications by Bee and Jen and Annie that I didn't understand, they even told me about the Polyjuice party and we were all so confused about how I could possibly have forgotten. And then I just kept having this niggling feeling…"

Rose's lip trembled with heartache, "It was like this emptiness, and I kept pushing it aside, thinking it was nothing but… it was always there."

Emotions were welling up inside of Rose, crashing over her like a wave.

She pushed back her fringe to distract herself, ground herself, give her anything to focus on other than the intensity of this.

Her palms were sweating and her chest constricting, but she knew that this was going to have to come out eventually, they were going to be trapped in quarantine for an unknown quantity of time - and she had run from this for too long already.

"I just started hunting around, through all my old Hogwarts books and journals, asking all our friends… I was honestly about to tell Harry and Ron and ask them to look into it, in case it was malicious, like a Dark Witch or Wizard you know?"

Sam's face dropped from concern into a panic, "You didn't get your father involved?! He would have figured it out in a second and probably has a warrant for my arrest waiting for me right now! I knew I should never have come back to Britain, if the Scrofungulus doesn't get me your Auror family members will!"

Rose jumped in, chuckling at his genuine fear (because that's just the kind of friend she was), "Don't worry, lucky for you I asked Al for help before I went to the Auror department. Dad never heard about it. And, well after some bullying, Al showed me the flask."

The flask.

.

Sam had given to Al right before he left Britain.

The flask that was full to the brim with all of Rose's pearly white memories.

Sinking his head into his hands, it finally hit him.

She remembered everything, of course she did, she remembered all the awful things he'd said and done, how badly he treated her, how much he'd hurt her.

Shame flushed his cheeks with a tinge of pink, he felt like he'd walked onto a stage in front of a huge crowd only to find they all knew every single one of this darkest secrets and they were all judging him for it.

Merlin, he'd been such a child back then, "I am so sorry Rose, for everything."

He searched her face for answers, did she still hate him?

"I was a selfish prat and I caused you so much pain, sometimes I really thought you'd made the right decision, even though it hurt. Maybe it was better that you didn't remember me… us."

Rose levitated the forgotten game of chess off the bed (she was clearly going to win anyway) and moved closer to Sam on the bed.

.

He looked so ill, he had bags under his eyes and a rash still spread out across his neck.

Even though this conversation was putting her under pressure, and she was all sweaty palms and anxiety and adrenaline, she knew she owed Sam the truth.

There might not be another time to say it.

.

"No. The most cowardly thing I ever did was erase my memories of us. It was awful and vindictive and totally ridiculous for me to make you leave the country. It was even more cowardly for me not to contact you when I got my memory back. I should have told you, I should have said you could come home. I'm so sorry…"

Her face trailed off and tears started to roll down her cheeks.

"Rosie, no, please don't cry. We've both made mistakes," Sam murmured, he moved closer to her to grab her hand.

"I know, I really know that now, with all my memories back and everything. I don't know how we managed to fuck things up so completely, but I know it was my fault too. I wanted to blame you for everything, but I was the one who took it too far and turned it into something we couldn't take back."

He squeezed her hand and she gripped it back tightly, her chest finally feeling a release as she breathed out the air she had been holding subconsciously.

.

Rose took a deep breath in and quickly wiped her tears away, "The only thing you should be concerned about right now is getting better. I am the best person for that job, so if it's okay with you, I'd really like to stay and do that. Okay?"

Sam nodded, his throat was aching with sadness for all that they'd been through, how young and ridiculous they'd been.

Their world had been so much smaller back then.

It had been easier to lash out than to deal with things, to self-reflect, to grow, to heal.

Tears filled his eyes too so he quickly looked away, but Rose saw them drop down and lifted a hand to wipe them away.

The mood had shifted to deeply personal and intimate, Rose had to mentally remind herself that this was really only the third day they'd even spoken to each other in the last seven years.

She pulled her hand away from his face, unsure.

Their history was filling the air and neither of them knew quite what to do.

.

Rose shifted and smiled gently, breaking the moment.

"Do you want something to eat? You must be starving after all that sleeping, we can get anything you want in quarantine, you know."

"Yeah that sounds good," Sam turned and slowly eased himself out of the bed, relieved but also wistful that the moment was over and they had turned to more mundane things.

Internally, he laughed at himself, he should have known she would find her way back to her memories.

He could never have constrained Rose Weasley from her own mind.