She never regains her memories.
Not fully.
They remain tantalizingly out of reach. On the tip of her tongue.
At night, when she lays awake, Hermione tries to brush against the life she had. She can discern bits and pieces, but she's never sure if she saw them in a dream, or if she really lived that life.
An infirmary. A cottage. An abandoned shack in the Forest of Dean.
Memories immerse her and colour her world; vivid, tantalizing, bright. But in the morning, only a whisper of them remains.
When they finally rose onto unsteady feet and made their way into the cottage, both weeping and clutching each other, afraid to let one another go, it's Hermione that asks.
"What happened?"
Her eyes searched Draco's face and she could see in it the weight of the world; the weight of existence.
His mouth tightens as he gazes down at her.
Haltingly, he begins to recount it all.
"My mother confessed to me that she had erased your memories," he said quietly. "I— I thought you were lost to me. I thought it was the end."
Hermione's heart sinks.
She can remember the pain upon his face with vivid clarity. The fear, the horror. Her hand darts out, her fingers seeking his. He grips her hand reassuringly and gazes down, thinking.
"She never told me her plan. Narcissa never told me anything."
Narcissa.
The name was familiar.
But when pressed, Hermione couldn't make out the details. It was as if the world had become distorted. There was a rough, indistinct shape of Narcissa. But there were no details that remained.
"She said I would know, when the time came. She told me to use the Imperius on you. At the time, I thought she meant— I don't know. I don't know what I thought she meant. I thought she meant I was to control your body, wrangle a wand or something, to end your life," Draco whispered. His voice was hollow and his eyes distant.
A life without Hermione was unfolding in his mind. A life where they hadn't both made it out of the inferno.
She squeezed his hand tighter and he returned to her. His eyes were soft as he searched her face.
"When she— when she executed Bellatrix. That was when I knew," he murmured. Pain tightened across his face. "She had made her choice. She had— ... she had chosen me. She never meant to survive. She never thought she'd ever escape the Manor. And I— I guess she was right. It became her tomb."
Hermione could feel tears rolling down her face.
She could see Narcissa.
An indistinct, small figure, as cursed fire rose through the hall. The curse must've ran through her veins too; it was her birth right. The phoenixes, the dragons, the eagles; they swooped five stories tall. She alone stood against them.
But there were flashes of another life, as she recalled the end of Narcissa's.
Only flashes.
A brilliant smile.
A tearful gaze.
A smile so radiant, a smile so pure, filled with love and light, as she recalled her son, Draco.
Her life had never been hers to life. She had been shackled by obligation and burden, imprisoned by it.
But in the end, it had been hers to end.
She had crashed the prison down around her ears.
She had taken every single one of the Death Eaters with her. In her clawed, tight grip, she had dragged Voldemort down with her, Bellatrix down too.
And Lucius had followed her willingly into the grave.
"I didn't know what was going to happen. I never knew. My plan was to sacrifice myself."
Draco smiled crookedly and brushed his hand across her cheek.
"And then I saw you there. And I saw you being tortured. And I thought back to all that we had endured, everything that had transpired and—"
He broke off as his breathing grew rapid.
Before her eyes, Hermione could see something changing: his pupils were shifting, the black of it bleeding and lengthening. His iris was growing lighter and luminescent.
Draco stilled and blinked.
"I thought we were going to both die. It didn't matter anymore, I was prepared for it. Something about the danger, the threat on your life and mine … something about the end. It was desperation or madness, I don't know," he whispered. There was an inhuman gleam in his eye and Hermione could see the dragon in him.
"It nearly killed me. It was torturous. But I transformed."
A great, terrible dragon had unfurled.
"I could feel every bone in my body breaking. Cracking apart and regrowing. Spines, all down my back. Claws burst through my fingers. I thought I must've been dying, I've never felt anything like it. Death would've been preferable."
Tears filled Hermione's eyes. She, too, could remember it; could see it clearly.
It had felt like the end.
"I broke through the collapsing Manor. Voldemort never knew about our family's secrets; he could've never guessed. I didn't even know about it myself. The transformation was— it was a trial by fire. It burned everything away, it was fire in my blood. It was cleansing. It was holy. I— I nearly died," Draco gasped. He stared down at her, eyes alight, and yanked up his sleeve.
The pale, creamy skin of his arm was bare. Unblemished.
Hermione stifled a gasp.
She pressed her trembling fingers to it, and stared down.
The Dark Mark had disappeared.
It had been burnt off in the transformation; in Draco's rebirth.
"Lucius and Narcissa shut down the wards. They locked the estate down with them, and died in the fire. Nobody escaped but me."
And his eyes met hers again, and Draco looked anguished.
He could hardly reconcile everything that had happened.
He had lost his parents. He had lost his home. He had nearly lost himself, too. Everything had been torn apart, torn asunder — and he was a man left to drift the world.
Lost, for evermore.
His trembling hands brushed against her face and without knowing how, Hermione found herself in his desperate embrace. She kissed his jaw, his lips, the stammering pulse point of his neck.
It was the touch, the love, the desperation that anchored her down; when everything else was dissolving at the seams and she thought she was going to lose herself again, she found Draco instead.
She was all that he had left.
And he was all that she had left.
The days aren't easy.
Some of them feel dark and brooding, like the sea that surrounds them.
When the sky is stormy and overcast and Hermione can't help but feel lost; when she's lost in memories, and lost in the past, and lost in everything that she's lost.
And she knows that he feels it too.
That Draco had suffered, just as much as she.
But the skies clear eventually.
And Hermione finds herself curved around him in bed, their bodies touching. Every inch of her bare skin is flush against his and she thinks that this must be her reward. For the years of pain, and suffering — it was worth it, because this was hers, at last. The easy light filters through the windows, the cotton curtains floating gently in the breeze.
They laugh and they read and they stare out wordlessly into the vast sea in front of them.
Life is open and overwhelming. They feel so very small; breathless. Every possibility exists before them, every life they could lead and pursue at their whim, because they finally have that freedom now.
The war is over.
The cage, the shackles, the prison; they're all gone.
All that's left is the two of them.
"Tell me about Narcissa," Hermione asks.
They sit in the kitchen, at the table. Her hands are wrapped around a tea mug and she sips at it. Feels the warmth spread through her; it gives her courage to press forward.
It's a request that's on her mind, sometimes. She rarely vocalizes it.
Narcissa is the ghost that haunts her. Narcissa is the woman that saved her.
Narcissa was a person, a deeply complex human. And Hermione wants to cry when she remembers Narcissa, because she can't remember her.
Narcissa had wiped nearly every trace of herself from Hermione's mind, and it's Draco that fills in the pieces for her.
His expression tightened for a moment, but he nodded. He tells Hermione about his childhood, clinging to his mother's robes as he toddled through the halls.
He tells Hermione, after swallowing heavily, that it was Narcissa that triggered every event that led to their story.
Hermione licks her lips nervously.
"Did— did I get along with her?" she asks. She can't recall.
Draco goes quiet as he considers. And when he speaks again, it's halting.
"Not … at first. I think she— I think she blamed herself, for a lot. And she blamed you, too. But at the end. At the end, I think she realized," he swallowed heavily. "I think she realized that you two were more alike, than anything else."
His hand reaches out hesitantly, to brush against hers.
He's quiet for a long time. Long enough that Hermione's mind had wandered far, far away.
His words bring her back.
"Do you— do you regret it? Do you ever resent it?"
Her eyes flicker to his face.
She can see the boyish uncertainty in his expression as he waits. Something tender and delicate lay there and she can see that this haunts him, as much as the death and destruction do.
The idea that Hermione, with him at the end, is regretful of all that has transpired between them.
She stares into the depths of her tea mug.
Her fingers twitch absentmindedly against the stained porcelain.
A thousand tiny white scars are flecked across the skin. It's the only reminder of the life she's left behind. A thousand memories, a thousand different iterations of her: Healer, executioner, spy, prisoner.
She thinks sadly of the short boy with dark hair and apple-green eyes. Of the tall one, with cerulean-blue irises and flaming hair.
She can't fully recall who she was; nor does she know who she is now.
Sometimes, she can't help but mourn herself too. Wasn't she also another victim? Didn't she die too, a version of her, when her memories were erased?
Anger simmers below the surface some days. Anger at herself, anger at Draco, anger at Narcissa.
The anger froths and builds until it's shoving violently at the walls of their cottage, until she can't differentiate it from the howling winds outside.
She thinks of throwing herself off the cliff.
Maybe the water could drown her rage. Maybe if she were pulled under, it would mean an end to this haunting; this suffering.
But then she thinks … perhaps it's a blessing that she can't recall it all.
Perhaps it was permission, to move forward from the past; to seek another life for herself. It's what they would've wanted.
Harry, Ron. Lupin and Tonks. Bill. Fleur. Kingsley. Narcissa.
After all.
The same hands that staunched wounds and crafted bombs, that slit throats and ended lives, are now wrapped around a tea mug, held in her lover's hands.
And she thinks that's enough.
"No. Never."
Hermione squeezes Draco's hand, and he squeezes back.