"Temporis Et Spatii"

EPILOGUE.

Draco spooled sidelong to into an armoire, crashing its contents. Upward exertion found his legs to lack any integrity, but it didn't matter anyway. It was no use trying to amount to anything other than the human larva he was; He melted to gelatinous pulp, soused inexorably with blubbering intonations. The popcorn ceiling stared back at him, pimpled and callous and the sky deluged beyond it and he didn't care.

"Oh, it's you." Thunder rumbled overhead. "Nice of you to return my property. I was wondering when you'd turn up for it."

He may not have engaged if he hadn't recognized this voice as his singular salvation. His muscles fortified what his bones had disinherited, rising him arduously to his feet. He hadn't, however, expected to witness cloudy hair wisping over a merlot armchair. The library illumined with a clatter, studded with arched windows between bookcases. "I didn't return it; It was taken from me," he sneered. "I need the counterspell for the Coronacurse."

She turned to investigate him and he awed at the ravines each year had knived from her countenance. The plucky seventeen-year-old he once knew now sat before him a tired, canyoned old woman. She frowned, assembling a web of her chin. "I'm afraid there isn't one."

The lambaste upon the windows surged passionately. He charged for her. "Don't you toy with me, Granger!"

"What? Is it so uncomfortable having a soul?"

His wand landed square in her mudblood face. "Your stupid jinx made me care about a muggle. I hate muggles! And now an innocent girl I had no business knowing in the first place is dead! You don't know what fresh hell I've been through. Undo the curse!"

She turned to face him, cavalier as the young girl who had slugged him in the nose those many eons ago. "I didn't do any of this, Draco! You clearly took it upon yourself to cast it. Far as I'm concerned, you deserve everything that -"

"COUNTER THE CURSE, GRANGER!" The sky exploded, percussing the walls anarchically.

She sighed. "I do know of a spell that will revert you back to the day you stole my book. But," she enunciated, "if I do this, none of what happened as a result of this curse will have transpired. You won't remember any of it, and you may feel some piece of you missing that you can never define or replace. Are you sure - are you absolutely sure, Draco Malfoy - that this is what you want to do?"

His breath rattled ragged. Anything. Absolutely, unequivocally anything that would exonerate Cora from ever having met him. "Yes," he hissed.

"Very well." She pushed herself languorously to stand and centered her wand to his chest. Her gaze downcast. "I am sorry that this happened to you."

He closed his eyes as a final sob racked his body.

. . .

The sky blustered ashen as Draco elapsed woozily into the Knockturn Alley shop. A raven-haired woman, obscured by a rather formal veil, approached the front counter. "Headache potion, please."

"Ms. Weasley." The clerk eyeballed their company and leaned closer to her. "I should inform you the recipe has changed in this batch. I'm afraid I can't guarantee its quality."

She considered it a moment, but waved her fingers. "Thank you; I'll be careful."

He nodded and rounded behind a bookcase. The woman shifted her weight and glimpsed Draco in the outskirt of her eye. He returned a glare. When the clerk returned, she paid and left demurely.

"Mr. Malfoy," the man remonstrated. "Fine day seeing you after that wands-blazing, high-noon shootout you brought into my shop last time. I hope you know you destroyed my wormwood stock and now I have to wait for the next shipment."

Draco surveyed the establishment haughtily. "Seems you're getting on fine. I've come to reimburse the damages since I'm a swell guy."

But something ensnared his eyes: A pockmarked leather book overturing an inflection only Draco could know, coiling serpentine around his bruising marrow and squeezing.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" the clerk remarked mildly. "It is said every wizard who uses it meets a terrible fate."

"How much?"

"Oh." The man shook his head. "I'm sorry. Its author, Hermione Granger, is on her way to take it to an undisclosed location."

"I don't believe you heard me. I asked you how much." His fingers closed over his pocket, where his wand waited.

The man responded in kind. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy," he reiterated sharply. "I'm afraid it's not for sale."

"Ohhhhh!" Draco clamped his forehead and unshackled a moan to its most despondent cusp. "You know, I think I'll take some of that headache serum."

"Cranium Quiet." The clerk narrowed his eyes, but embarked.

Expediently, Draco drew his wand and whispered to the book. Seaweedlike mist snarled and coursed to it, puffing on impact. When he heard a clink behind the bookcase, he scurried to resheathe his instrument.

"Doses are to be small," the shopkeep instructed, returning rather more quickly than before. "It's usually safe."

Upon rounding the corner to the main thoroughfare, Draco released his fingers, hearing the useless syrup smash as he disappeared into the throng.