A/N: I'm so sorry for the delay! I really am, but the original chapter was catastrophic and took me forever to be satisfied with it. I really do apologize and hope it was worth wait. Please enjoy and tell me your thoughts on it. :)
Inhaling deeply, he straightened his shoulders in determination and pointed his wand at the box, enlarging it so each side was the length of an arm. Before losing his nerve, he flipped the golden latch at the front and opened it with a loud creak. A puff of dust billowed out at him and dispersed, hazily exposing a load of jam-packed baubles tightly inside. Feeling whole-heartedly miffed at Hermione for literally getting rid of everything, he frowned into the open box and slipped his hand inside.
Draco's hand emerged, pulling out a stuffed toy bear with a pink bow wrapped around its neck and a small card strung around the little furry arm. Running a finger across the dust-matted fur, he traced a pattern to the card and opened it and read,
To my Dearest Bookworm and Love of my Life,
I give you this bear on this silly little display of affection because I want to make you smile, so you will be less reluctant to shag me this night. Happy Valentine's Day, Granger.
With all my Horny Heart,
Draco.
He recalled Hermione's gushing at the bear and watched with an inflated ego as she cuddled the gift to her chest before opening the card, her smile hastily morphing into a horrified gape. She then decided to punch him in the bicep with his crass words, thinking the words 'shag' and 'horny' unromantic.
Along with the bear, he had made her breakfast. Or more like burnt it. He attempted heart-shaped pancakes but ended up looking similar to blackened checkmarks. Expectedly, Hermione hadn't touched the pancakes and neither had he, but she did think his attempt kind of cute. All in all, they raided the fridge of maple syrup, chocolate sauce, glazed strawberries, chunky peanut butter, whipped cream, and then proceeded to race each other to her bedroom where…
Draco felt something swell inside his throat. With a grimace, he placed the bear down on his desk and then grabbed something else out of the box. It was a photograph of them together in front of the Christmas tree at her parents' house. He had proposed in the front yard after building a snowman with her the Muggle way. He remembered staring up at her on bended-knee with the question ready on his tongue when her father came marching towards them with a disproving scowl. The irrational man bellowed at him, spouting about how he was supposed to ask permission from the father to marry the daughter.
He appeared peaky in the picture from the earlier encounter with her father, unlike Hermione who wiggled the fingers of her left hand, showing off the ring. His stomach hollowed out at the memory of when he demanded the jewel back, giving it to Astoria only months later. Hermione had loved the ring, and Astoria only saw it as an accessory.
Setting the frame aside with guilt laying heavy on his shoulders, he shoved his arm back into the box and retrieved a dingy knitted infant cap. It was a tiny thing in Draco's hand, and he gently rubbed his fingers over the delicate yarn and closed his eyes and remembered their first and only pregnancy scare, and both of them were scared shitless. Hermione had been late and said she was going to take the test to make sure. Before she disappeared into the bathroom of her flat, he gave her this. The infant cap had been his when he was a baby. He had wanted her to know everything was going to be fine regardless what the pregnancy test verified.
Of course the test came back negative.
Draco put the cap aside, his hand diving back inside the box, coming in contact with some glass and pulled out a vial that housed the wispy essence of a memory. Hermione must have bottled some memories away before deciding to rid herself of all of them. He uncorked the vial and turned around to face his pensieve and poured the contents inside before sticking his head in into the basin and feeling himself disperse like an ink drop in a pot of boiling water. He expanded to see his younger self at twenty toss a twenty-one year old Hermione Granger over his shoulder and pack her inside his parents' villa in Italy. Between giggles, she demanded that he put her down. He had smirked and slapped her on the bum instead and toted her up the stairs and into his bedroom where he deposited her on the lush comforter and attacked her mouth with his own. The present Draco watched Hermione's engagement ring glint in the darkened room and remembered how they rang in the New Year after their Christmas engagement.
Draco had no particular reason to feel like a pervert while watching his younger self and younger Hermione make love, but he did. He felt like he was imposing and had no right to be there. Yet, he couldn't stop watching. He needed to see how far this memory went.
When the two were satiated for the time being, present-Draco watched as past-Hermione slightly moved away from his past self and prop her head up by the support of her elbow.
"I want to get pregnant," she had said.
The present Draco's eyes bulged and wracked his brain for this particular memory, eventually finding it glossed over and vague in the well-hidden depths of his mind. And to his astonishment, his past pelf laughed and told her, "We're not married, yet, Granger."
"We will be soon." Hermione shrugged with a smile, and young Draco was silent for a moment.
"I thought we weren't ready. We nearly pissed ourselves when we thought..."
Hermione rolled her eyes and bit her bottom lip nervously and then huskily said before pinning him to the mattress, "That was then. I think we'll be okay now. I want a baby, Draco. Give me one."
Not caring if Hermione's memory ended there or not, Draco yanked himself out of the pensieve, demolishing the intimate setting and with shaking hands, coerced the memory back inside the vile. He set it aside next to the bear and infant cap.
Of course, Hermione hadn't gotten pregnant after demanding he get her with child. However, the present concept was damned near absurd that it took one night…no…one round of 'okay' sex, cautioned with a contraceptive, and he still he got her up the duff. Bloody hell, Hermione hadn't even done anything to not get pregnant when they had been in a real relationship. It was like karma was laughing at them for both of their stupidity.
His gumption was fading with each passing moment, no longer feeling the need to dig inside the box. Every memory was beginning to hurt him. The curse was acting up. That sharp and acidy ache of the ulcers was engorging to new heights.
And it was because of Hermione's hate for him.
All the tugging and twisting inside him had sprouted from her hatred.
These were Hermione's memories of him, and she boxed them away and hid them herself. Like he told Ginny, she hated him. She had loathed him, and she turned her hatred for him into a physical element. Because of Memoria Obscurare, when Draco ran into Hermione at the bookshop, that feeling had latched on to him, seeking out the enemy for retribution. He may not be near the girl, but this box and everything in it were hers.
The cursed pain was multiplying and he sat down, leaned over, and rested his forearms on his desk for support. What if he gave back her memories and the curse still wasn't lifted? If anything, it may cause a whole different problem, but Severus said it may be worth the risk. Still, what if he wasn't healed, and a Curse Breaker couldn't do shite.
His jaw began to tremble and his eyes humiliatingly stung. With a growl so primitive and piercing, he gripped the sides of the box and flung it at the wall, feeling just a smidgen of satisfaction as the lid broke, and all the contents spilled out with crashes, thumps, and splats.
The satisfaction only lasted a millisecond when his eyes landed on a book that spilled out with the other trinkets, the cover familiar. Slowly, he started towards it, the objects beneath him shattering and crunching from his steps. Wisps from the shattered memory vials floated around him as he stood over the tome.
Hogwarts, A History: The First Edition, the cover read.
And Draco nearly died. On their own accord, blasted tears welled up while his chin trembled. He clenched his eyes closed and hissed in pain. That sharp ache had erupted into something unfathomable, and he wished for reprieve because, Great Salazar, the pain was unbearable. The discomfort, the pinching of the heart, the dull throb in the stomach turned into an unbearable attack upon his whole body. He tasted stomach acid and copper in the back of his throat and coughed. Tiny spatters of blood spewed from his lips and landed on the thick binding of the book.
He was aware that St. Mungo's was a pinch of Floo Powder away, and he should leave, but he needed to stay, so he licked his blood spattered lips and remembered Hermione had loved Hogwarts, A History. It was her favorite book since she had received her Hogwarts letter twenty years prior, and she already had a basic copy. Furthermore, he had a few first editions in his family library, and on her twentieth birthday, he presented one to her, thus, earning him nightly shags for weeks following. Often during their love-making, she would gasp out things like, "Did you know that Godric Gryffindor's son and Salazar Slytherin's daughter were having a steamy, scandalous affair and needed a place to have a their nightly rendezvous? They created what his now called The Room of Hidden Things."
The tome lay open, its splayed pages pressing against the marble flooring and its cover and back facing upwards. Slowly, he reached over and caressed the golden lettering of the title with a fingertip before gently picking it up. As he did so, an envelope slipped out of the pages. Hesitantly, Draco stooped again and picked up the envelope. It was the color of ivory, sealed with red sealant, and completely blank. There was parchment in it, Draco could tell and smoothed his pointer finger over the wax, debating as to open it or not. It was kind of curious. Why was there a letter in the book from Hermione but not addressed to anyone? Was it even a letter? And why would she put such a thing in the book when she asked Ron to destroy the box in where they both dwelt?
Without giving it much more thought, he broke the sealant and slipped the parchment out of the envelope. It was folded in thirds, so Draco straightened out the paper with his hands and read the first line written in Hermione's neat, quill penmanship.
Dear Draco,
His heart thumped painfully against his chest bone and slithered downwards into the painful pit of liquid-fire called his stomach. His mouth also went dry, so he swallowed and continued to read:
You should not have this letter. Ronald should have destroyed the box including Hogwarts, A History: The First Edition of where this letter was housed. If he broke that promise to me and somehow you have acquired this letter, then so be it. I can take this opportunity to tell you that by the time you are reading this, I will not remember you. There is a potion I have acquired. Once I have drunk it, you will no longer be a part in my memory. I will go through the rest of my life as if you had never been in it, and I'm anticipating for that change.
I want you to understand that I am not extracting you from my mind simply because I cannot stop loving you. I lost all love for you when I heard about your engagement to Astoria Greengrass. I am getting rid of you because you are not worth looking back upon. When I move on with my life, I refuse to have the face of a cowardly in my memory to distract me from what I deserve. I deserve happiness. I deserve loyalty. I deserve a man and not a scared little boy.
One day, Draco, we may cross paths. If you read this letter before then, you will understand my complete lack of memory pertaining to you. If you read this letter afterwards, you were mostly likely confused. You may even research as to why I cannot place your memory. You may even try to restore my memories. Please refrain.
If we may cross paths, I beg of you to not inform me of our past together along with keeping your distance. We are not a part of each other's lives anymore and have no right to dwell in them. You have chosen the life in a world where I do not belong. For me, I belong in no place particular which I find far more suitable than being bound to one world like yourself. I admit I was hoping to show you all kinds of worlds just like I hoped to be your wife and be the one to give you children. I know I made you happy during our time together, and if you would have let me, I would have done so for the rest of our lives.
You must know, Draco, you will marry the Pureblooded Astoria, but she will never challenge you in life like I had once done. So you will take this letter and the box of our memories, grow old in your cold, empty Manor with meaningless objects, and you will look back and wonder what might have been. As for I, I will fall in love again and eventually marry and have children that look nothing like you. I will grow old in a simple house, most likely with the love of my life by my side, and I will not look back and wonder what might have been. Goodbye forever, Draco Malfoy.
-H
Draco crumpled up the parchment and doubled over, hacking juicily. Harsh, rasping sobs wracked his entire body, and he couldn't even ponder how unmanly he appeared or even the physical agony bursting inside his body. All of his thoughts were on Hermione.
If his eyes had been open, he would have vaguely seen from the corner of his eye, his father silently shouting at him, demanding to know what was going on. But he didn't notice, so he wiped his mouth, grabbed his wand, and Apparated in front of Hermione's apartment suite. Shuddering uncontrollably, he knocked on her door and wiped his mouth again, removing any external evidence of his malady. Moments later, the witch opened the door, and he threw himself at her with his arms wrapping around her middle and head resting on her shoulder.
To be continued...