Disclaimer: I do not own anything. The story and the characters belong solely to J.K, Rowling. I'm just playing with them and making no profit from this.

Chapter 15

The night sky shimmers with silver stars, shining brighter than ever in the unclouded darkness. It is so late at night, or early depending on how one looks at it, that a lighter blue can already be seen, brightening the horizon. Daylight will not be too far away.

It is at this view that Hermione is staring at, enjoying the simple beauty of the sky. She simply stands there, removing the pins in her hair absentmindedly, completely unaware of Pansy lingering in the doorway.

The party had lasted till the early hours of the night and all of the party guests have just left. Pansy, being a good organizer, had waved them all out and wished them a save journey. Now she is waiting to tell Hermione the important news she had found out in the idle hours before the party had started. While she had been waiting for the first guest to arrive –Blaise had been taken a last minute shower- she had picked up her research and had her first breakthrough.

XXXXX

Pansy can hear the shower running through the open door of the bathroom. Draco always prefers to take his shower before he goes to bed. It relaxes him completely and helps him sleep better - or at least, let's him sleep a little. Draco suffers from insomnia. He has been having trouble with that for as long as she can remember. But somehow she thinks and hopes that Hermione is having a good influence on it.

Turning away from the window, with her hand full of pins, Hermione looks surprised at Pansy.

"What's wrong, Pansy?" she asks while walking over to her vanity.

"I have found something," she answers, pushing away from the door. Hermione pulls off her bracelets and puts them away before looking up at her.

"And that is?" she asks curiously.

She hadn't wanted to look up her mysterious missing memories, not herself, though she would have jumped at the possibility of research in the past. But that side of her seems a long time ago now. Hermione doesn't want to look up anything related to herself, afraid of what she might find.

"Wait for Draco," Pansy smiles, taking a seat on the bed. As if on cue, Draco steps out of the bathroom, his hair still dripping wet. It is fixed with a quick flick of his wand.

"What have you found, Pans?" he asks while laying a protective hand around Hermione.

A smile forms on Pansy's lips and at first she just looks at them, smiling. Hermione is about to ask her if she is going to tell them, when she does.

"I found out that the Veela venom might trigger her memory. So, perhaps, we can just wait and see if you will remember yourself."

"That would be amazing," Draco says with enthusiasm.

"Yeah, if it would be true," Hermione answers wryly. "Oh come on, Draco," she sighs, irritated, when seeing his look of utterly disbelief at her lack of faith. "You can't be serious. If I could remember because of the venom I would have by now. It's been two days!"

Shaking his arm off her, she stalks to the bathroom.

Momentarily defeated, Draco casts his grey eyes onto Pansy's brown ones. "She'll come around." When the door of the bathroom slams shut, she adds, "Eventually."

XXX

He kisses her temple again while she lays dozing off, staring out the window. Draco tightens his arms a bit more around her.

"Why don't you believe Pansy?" he asks in the peaceful silence of the room.

"I do believe Pansy," Hermione says quietly. "I believe that the information she found is true. But I don't think it works with me."

Draco sighs and kisses her bare shoulder, trailing a path up her neck. At her ear he stops and whispers, "Why do you think that?"

"Because I still remember nothing. When I try to remember back to a time before I was nine my memory just turns up blank. Not even a feeling, a sound or a picture. Just black nothingness." Hermione takes a deep breath before continuing. "If what Pansy said was the key, I should be able to remember something by now."

Draco watches her in silence while she keeps staring out the window. After a while she turns her uncertain eyes at him, rolling on her back. "Shouldn't I?"

For a moment, he is stunned. She has never asked for nor needed his confirmation before. When they were younger, yes, but now that she keeps holding on to Hermione Granger, she has never asked him for anything. Always pushing him away and not needing him. But when she looks up at him now, her blue eyes uncertain, even a little bit scared, he finally sees Sophia Naberrie. Oh, he had seen glimpses of her in Hermione's attitude, he is certain of that. But now, for the first time, he really sees Sophia, his Sophia, lying beneath him. And it breaks his heart to see her so scared. Not knowing her memories and knowing she's missed a lot, not knowing information is the scariest thing for her.

"I believe," he says after a moment, bending down to give her a sweet kiss. "But promise first that you're not going to be mad."

She stares straight into his eyes, not saying anything, just nodding. He smiles, bends down again and gives her one more peck on the nose. "I believe that you don't remember anything because you are too scared to."

He shushes her when she opens her mouth to protest. "You are Sophia Naberrie but you are holding on to Hermione Granger so much that you are unconsciously pushing everything related to Sophia away."

"But," Hermione starts to protest but is silenced by a sweet kiss from Draco.

"Let me finish," he whispers against her lips and she nods again. "I know that you cannot forget about Hermione, because that person is also you. I'm just saying that you have to open yourself to let Sophia in, because that is also you, and I'm confident that in the end you'll manage to make a mix of both personalities. After all, they are both you. You've just got to open yourself to let the memories in and stop fighting it off."

Hermione is very quiet now. She bites on her bottom lip while staring at him, waiting for his trademark smirk which doesn't appear. Over the last few days, she has seen a whole other Draco than the one she had known before. She has seen the Draco that Sophia knew, she knows. The sweet, kind, trustworthy, overprotective but still arrogant Draco. Sophia's Draco, and her Draco, and however much she hates to admit it, he might be right. She hadn't been conscious about it at first but every time someone called her Sophia, she had recoiled away from the name. Shied away from the memories. Maybe she should listen to him this once, and try to open up herself to the memories of Sophia.

XXX

She had a very strange dream as she slept besides Draco during the early hours of the afternoon, it had almost seemed a memory. But that couldn't it have been. Could it? she thinks warily, sitting at her vanity in the late afternoon light, brushing her hair.

"Could it?" she asks herself, looking at her mirror reflection.

"Could what?" Draco emerges from the bathroom, his blond hair still dripping from his quick shower. Picking up his wand from the bed, he dries it magically. Hermione has still not answered him, but is just staring at her mirror's reflection.

"What's wrong?" His grey eyes pierce hers in the reflection. She absentmindedly brushes her hair. It doesn't even seem like she has heard him. Draco takes a few more steps until he is standing right behind her. Conjuring himself a chair, he then tucks his wand up his sleeve and takes the brush from her hand. Sitting down, he starts to gently pull the brush through her tangled hair. Draco himself had tangled it up an hour before. When the first gentle stroke of the brush goes through her hair, she speaks. "I had a strange dream."

She can't help but relax into Draco's gentle caresses.

"These things happen, love."

"That's not what I meant. It almost seemed like a memory."

Draco halts his movements and he looked at her face's reflection, shock and happiness mingled in his expression.

"Could it?" she asks his mirror reflection.

"Tell me, maybe I will remember."

She turns around to face him. "I didn't do anything."

Draco gently turns her around again. "Maybe consciously you didn't, but me pointing out the facts might help."

She bites her bottom lip. It's a habit, Draco notes, when she is distressed. He continues brushing her hair and visibly sees her relax.

"Hermione," Draco urges.

"It's pretty vague but I think it was my birthday. I have no idea what age we are because I can't see clearly. But I have a feeling we're still very young. I don't recognize the room anywhere here so I'm guessing it was at the Naberrie home." She turns around and throws questioning eyes upon Draco.

"Could be, there were often parties at the Naberrie Manor. If you say it's your birthday then it was most definitly at your home. It always was." He turns her around again and resumes letting the brush, or his fingers, glide through her hair.

"You came to me with a small present, wrapped in emerald green. There were lots of other presents around me but still I opened yours first," she says, turning around again to look at him. "It was my book, the same one you threw in the water: Alice in Wonderland." A bright smile breaks through on Draco's features. Somehow he doesn't even seem surprised that she knows about him ruining her book. Perhaps Narcissa or Lucius mentioned to him that they had told her.

Without saying a word, he places the brush on the vanity and gets up. After placing a light kiss on her hair, he walk to the door and before opening it, says,

"It was your seventh birthday."

AN: Oh gosh =D Do you like it? =)

Great thanks to my wonderful beta Sarah Liz B!