Author's Note: Sorry this took so long, I've been quite busy in the real world. This is the longest chapter yet and lots gets revealed, so I hope it was worth the wait! Enjoy! Just 2 left after this! Once again, thank you everyone for reading and reviewing!

Chapter 19

June 2000

Hermione stumbled into the kitchen of The Burrow, her eyes darting around for Ron. She needed to tell him what just happened and what she remembered. She needed to explain why she had gone to Azkaban without telling him, why she kept it from him, and how important the trip had been. He couldn't be mad at her. He just couldn't. Ginny had said he wouldn't be.

Ron paced in the sitting room which was visible from where Hermione stopped in her tracks in the kitchen next to the large table that housed the Weasley family at meal times. George was sitting on the couch, trying to calm his little brother down with consoling words. Ron looked over at the door when he heard it open and close, his face screwing up in anger again upon seeing her. "What?" he started at her, causing George to jump up and grab his arm. "You've come to explain yourself? As if you can?" he spat angrily at her. His tone reminded her of the memory that just returned to her, of the crude words he'd spoken before abandoning she and Harry in the forest while they were on the run and tracking down Horcruxes.

"Ron," her voice cracked and every memory of her ever crying over him rushed back to her. The number of times would have surprised her had a sudden wave of dizziness not poured over her. It made her so faint she had to grab onto the table to sturdy herself. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, hearing footsteps from Ron's direction. When she opened them again, hoping to see Ron coming closer, she saw that it had been George instead, perhaps to help since she probably looked dreadful, but Ron had put his arm out to stop him.

"Trying the sympathy card? Gonna tell me you remember something again and think it'll all be better? All be ok that you lied to me? Lied straight to my face? You made me feel guilty for thinking you'd done something when you really did!" he spat again, his anger getting the best of him as it often did. Hermione tried to remind herself that he often overreacted as such in times like these, but was finding it hard to focus on rationale when she felt so ill.

Her head felt like it weighed more than three times the rest of her body. She swayed slightly as things she couldn't remember moments before ran back at her like a full force quaffle.

"How could you do something so stupid?" he kept going as her head kept swimming. "Something so dangerous? You're supposed to be the responsible one!" And she was, the majority of the time. It was usually she who'd rant and rave about rules and procedure and ethical thinking. She was the voice of reason, the planner.

He was coming closer to her as he rambled on loudly and memories kept rushing back at her, hitting her one after another like a hoard of hippogriffs. She focused her eyes on his face and watched it transform as she remembered every time their eyes had locked in the past. The images she was seeing were blurring so rapidly that it made her woozy. She could hear Ron yelling at her still as her eyes uncontrollably slipped closed and everything sort of flickered.

Blackness and then arms around her waist. Nothingness and then the strong smell of a familiar shampoo. An empty void and then the sensation of apparating. Silent stillness and then his voice in her ear, frantic.

When she was finally able to open her eyes again, he was hovering over her. His eyes came into focus first, then the rest of his features. She felt his hand on her cheek and she nuzzled against it. "Ron," she murmured.

"You're ok," his voice cracked.

She nodded gently. "Always the tone of surprise," she murmured, a smirk growing on her lips as she looked up at him.

He smirked back. "You fainted and I panicked and apparated us."

"Easy to be mad when I'm conscious, hmm?" she tried to joke with him. "I'll remember to faint more often."

He frowned. "You have a lot of explaining to do, still."

She closed her eyes for another moment and took in a deep breath before sitting up. It was now or never. "When you met me in Hogsmeade the first weekend trip after I went back to Hogwarts you grabbed me and kissed me and said you'd do anything to be with me forever." Ron nodded gently, a bit shocked that she remembered, he hadn't told her that entire story. "Well I'd do anything to be with you forever, too. So when I put the pieces together, I knew you'd think my idea was crazy and risky and dangerous. I knew you wouldn't want me to go through with it.

"But it all made perfect sense. Those memories that would come back to me happened when Draco underwent a brutal dementor attack. When they weren't coming fast enough I suspected that for whatever reason, Draco was getting special treatment in Azkaban. So I went to Kingsley and he confirmed my suspicion. He said the specialists and healers on my case suggested that the longer Draco was around, the more likely they'd be able to find a cure. Like they needed him to give it to them. But by the time I formed my own ideas on how to counter Draco's curse, they hadn't been working on my case for months. They'd forgotten about me. They gave up, but I wasn't about to.

"I needed to see Draco for myself, to really see what state he was in. At the same time, I wanted answers. We never really understood why he did what he did. We saved his life in the end, I thought it was over. He was always bitter and pompous growing up, we knew that, and even after the war he remained that way. He hated us, Ron, that never went away."

Hermione closed her eyes again, transporting herself back to her meeting with Draco so she could explain it to Ron in detail.

"Oblivi Kedavra," Draco had spoken the words clearly. Hermione had panicked and sent her patronus at him, knocking him over. Draco had begun to laugh at her attempt to disarm him, though it wasn't really disarming since he had no wand. He'd threatened her with a couple of words. As the silvery otter swam back to Hermione and circled her, Draco sat up again.

"Why did you do it?" Hermione asked, trying her best to hold her voice steady and confident.

"Why not?" Draco sneered back at her.

"Because we saved your life. More than once we saved your life. Because deep down you weren't a brave deatheater, you were a scared little boy who needed our help and we helped you."

"You bought the scared little boy act? I kept myself alive, Granger, I never needed your help." Hermione was shocked that he actually believed this, that he thought he'd still be here if it weren't for them. "Ever since you showed your little mudblood face at Hogwarts and befriended Potter and that blood traitor Weasley, I've hated you all. All the fame you three received after you destroyed the Dark Lord make me sick to my stomach," he continued and despite his discombobulated appearance, his tone was laced with hatred. Hermione tried to hold herself together, but was finding it hard, she wished he'd just hurry and spit out the rest of his story.

"I guess I do have something to thank you for. Because of you, Weasley, and Potter, I wasn't immediately shipped off to Azkaban. I was allowed my freedom to plot my own revenge. So I got my hands on a few dark arts spell books that weren't destroyed after the war. The name Malfoy still held some power after all. I studied up, practiced on a few poor foolish muggles, and plotted what would be the most glorious night of my life." Draco rubbed his hands together, silently savoring in the glory of his scheming. "It was quite simple, really. Making an unauthorized portkey is rather simple, the trick was having your touch alone trigger it. Planting it in that retched house wasn't that hard, either, given that it's no secret you lot took up there." Draco's expression darkened as he silenced himself. Hermione knew what came next, a glitch in his plan. "I knew the spell would work. I'd apparate with you, leave you in a place you'd be found, and then watch your nightmare unfold. You'd be brought back home, having no idea who your precious Ronald or Harry were. If I got the spell just right, you'd even forgot your own parents. Then I'd claim you as my own, lure you in and keep you like a house elf of sorts. I'd enjoy every minute of Weasley's misery." Hermione was shocked by his last statement. His final goal was to claim her as his own? To make her a slave? To make her forget everyone completely and make her believe it was him that she was meant to be with? All so he could savor in everyone else's despair.

Hermione felt physically ill, she wanted to vomit at this news, but she knew she had to say her piece for her plan to really come full circle. "Well your plan didn't work," she started and he practically snorted before she could finish her sentence.

"Of course not," he scoffed. "Weasley had to come along with you when you grabbed the portkey which just made everyone notice you were missing. I had to be hasty with the spell which means it wasn't as strong as it could have been." He smirked and looked her right in the eye which sent a chill through her body. "But it still worked, didn't it?"

"Not quite," she smiled and her patronus swam in a happy circle around her. Draco's face immediately fell. Hermione reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the remembrall that she brought everywhere with her. "Every day this gets a little clearer. Every week I remember something you made me forget. The longer you're here, the more I remember, and you're never going to leave this place. You'll keep suffering and I'll keep remembering. Ron and I are still together, Draco. You never understood true friendship or love and the lengths that people would go through to protect it. You're more like Voldemort than you think." She put the remembrall away and the fuzzy feeling at the back of her head meant she was already having an effect on Draco. "You're going to lose again, Draco. You'll always lose this battle."

Hermione extinguished her patronus, the signal that the dementor's could come back to let her out of the cell. She left Draco on the cold, hard floor, his jaw dropped in what she could only assume was shock. As she was lead out, she could hear his scream echoing the halls. The dementor's started in on him right away.