Disc.: My plot.

Chapter Seventeen

She collapsed on his chest, unable to move. Draco, the Aurors, everyone could storm the room wands blazing and she didn't care. She had every indication of just extracting whatever information she could, but she didn't think she'd actually sleep with him. Sure, he was good looking, and he had told her that they'd had history, but still she never thought she'd actually go through with sleeping with someone she didn't know or remember. Not that it mattered anymore, she not only had, she remembered everything about him, every interaction in precise clarity. Some of the memories there was a third person, that person wasn't clear to her, but she knew that she was closer.

He stroked her hair, stopping at her shoulders like he'd know her hair didn't go to her waist. She closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that one of them needed to say something. It was obvious. She listened to his breathing for a few moments, the two of them still connected quiet intimately. She knew he hadn't been her first, even if she couldn't remember the rest of them, but he had been the last. He eased out of her, laying her gently to his side.

"I'm sorry," he whispered in to ear.

"Don't be," Lily told him.

"I should have stayed away from you, all along," he told her quietly as she edged closer to him. "The temptation was too great."

"Why Argentina?" Lily asked him.

"The thought of not having you in my life, Lily," he nestled his face into her neck. "I've grown incredibly selfish."

"Did you know it was me the whole time?" Lily sighed. He chuckled.

"Only you could come dressed up with poly juice and whore boots, and still drip of innocents," Damon kissed her mouth. He pulled away with a sigh. "I should stop. You should stop me."

"Why? I care about you, you care about me," she protested.

"You don't love me, not like you love him," he tried to put a little space between them. She curled against him.

"I don't even remember him," Lily frowned in the dark. "You, I remember in almost painful clarity, but he's still nothing more than fuzz and haze."

"Trust me when I say that he is the love of your life," Damon groaned as she tilted her head back to look at him. He flipped the beside light on but looked not at her but the ceiling. She placed her hand on his cheek gently, guiding his face to look at her. "Lily, don't do this."

"I can't imagine being with anyone else," she breathed as she kissed him again. Someone started pounding on the bedroom door, startling them both.

"Hey man, you in there?" a very masculine voice called out from the other side of the door. Lily's head whipped toward the door. Something in his voice called to her, something deep and primitive. She looked back at Damon, her obvious confusion evident in her eyes.

"Who's that?" she whispered. Damon was already untangling from her, pulling Lily to her feet.

"It doesn't matter right now, Lily, but you have to go!" Damon whispered to her. "You can't be found in here."

"Hey, Damon? You okay in there? Why's the door locked?"

"I'm heading into the shower," Damon called out loudly, almost gruffly as he pulled a shirt free of the dresser and pulled it over Lily's head. She quickly stepped back into her skirt and cinched it on her much smaller frame.

"You're about to take a shower when Lily is Merlin knows where doing who knows what with whom, with half of her memory gone because of us?" he demanded through the door as he jiggled the door handle. Lily round on him frowning.

"Us?" she mouthed to him.

"Later," he mouthed back as he directed her toward the window. She frowned deeper, stepping through the window. She turned back to look at him and he ducked under the window sash and kissed her, one last toe-curling kiss before closing the window and curtains, turning just as the bedroom door opened.

"Man, everyone knows how proud you are that you're hung like an elephant, but do you have parade around with it all hanging out?" Scorpius asked as he quickly looked away from his best mate. Damon scooped up a pair of shorts, pulling them on and flipping his covers back over his bed but not before Scorpius saw the evidence of Damon's loving on the bed.

"About to shower my butt. Lily's out there all alone and you're in here, polishing you wand so to speak," Scorpius accused frowning as he turned around and headed toward the bedroom door. "The ministry's summoning all Aurors, about the search for Lily." There was a crash outside the window, down near the rubbish bins.

"People need to keep their cats inside at night," Damon exclaimed as he directed Scorpius back into the living room.

Lily wanted nothing more than to sneak back into her own apartment to get better fitting clothes. One of her boots had slipped down her leg and fallen off, crashing below. She took the second one off and threw it as far as she could. She knew that she could probably slip into the master bedroom and at least put on underwear that fit, not these that were trying to slide down.

Lily found herself climbing through the second window of the night, tumbling with a thump to the ground. She paused, half expecting someone to storm the room with wands blazing. She pulled herself off the ground, heading to the shower to clean the grime of the day in the city and the after love of being with Damon. She stood in the shower, the too warm water pouring over her, humming some tune that seemed almost painfully familiar.

She rung the water out of her hair, pulling a big bath towel around her body as she stepped out of the en suite, coming up short to the man who stood in the doorway of her bedroom. If she was surprised to see him standing there, he was even more surprised.

"Lily?" Scorpius asked cautiously. He didn't make a move toward her, just stood and looked at her. She looked at the man in the doorway, framed by the glow of light coming from behind him.

"You look so much like Draco," Lily breathed. "So much like the boy."

"Lily, I'm so sorry you don't remember him. That wasn't my intention. None of this was," he explained. He extended his hand to her. "I know you don't remember, but I'm Scorpius Malfoy. We were almost married, we had a child together."

"So I've been told," Lily didn't move toward him. Rather she gripped the edge of her towel tightly, looking at him warily.

"I did this to you," he admitted.

"Did what?" Lily asked.

"I obliverated your memories," he told her apologetically.

"Why?"

"Well, it wasn't my intention to have you forget our son, or me for that matter," Scorpius explained as he leaned against the doorframe and watched her standing there.

"What was your goal, then?" she demanded.

"I wanted you to forget Damon," he frowned at his own words.

"Forget Damon? You mean forget the one man who didn't abandon me?" Lily snapped at him. She turned away from him and marched to her dresser, pulling out a pair of jeans and a shirt, laying them out on her made bed.

"I didn't abandon you, Lily," Scorpius protested.

"I wouldn't know," Lily shrugged. She gestured for him to turn around so she could dress. He hesitated, fighting whatever urges he had, before complying. She glanced at him, his back to her, and she wondered if she had really loved him as much as everyone claimed she had. She knew it'd been 10 years, but only because that's what people had said. She'd moved on, first with Marshall, though she couldn't really remember that, and then again with Damon most recently, who she did remember.

"Can I turn around?" he asked.

"I guess," Lily scratched at her elbow nervously.

"I can't even begin to tell you how much I've missed you," Scorpius told her. Lily fought and lost against a grin.

"I can't either," Lily joked. He smirked, that famous Malfoy smirk that she'd seen on Draco, seen on the boy who was her son, and seen in the pictures. She couldn't deny that it was something that caused butterflies in her stomach. She could imagine that she must have really loved this man, she could understand that.

"Honestly, if I had known that it'd have removed your memories of our son... I didn't know. I was just trying to make you not love Damon, I didn't know how much of him was intertwined in your being in Argentina, how much of our son would have been involved," Scorpius offered. "That and what the minister of magic did to you, we removed those memories, Damon and I. Never in a million years did we think it'd erase almost everyone from you."

"That's kind of sucked quite a bit," Lily admitted with a nod.

"I'm so sorry, Lily," Scorpius hung his head a little bit, and Lily felt bad for him. She knew that she shouldn't, he was the one who had set this whole thing in motion, but the tender side of her had her crossing the room slowly. She stopped about an arms' length from him.

"I want to say that it's okay, or that I understand, but it's not and I don't," Lily confessed. He looked at her, surprised to see that she had moved towards her. She frowned, sad. "If you could have seen the look on that little boy's face when I turned to him, and basically told him he was nothing to me."

"Lily, I'm so sorry," Scorpius sighed, looking away.

"I still don't remember him. I've not seen him, not sense they carried him away, kicking and screaming," Lily's voice broke and he looked back at her face.

"I've seen him," Scorpius admitted. "The ministry decided that the boy deserved at least one parent. They pulled me off my mission and brought me home."

"How is he?"

"He's really good. He talks about you all the time," Scorpius shared. He looked at her, silent for a moment. "You've done an amazing job with him. You can tell that you are his world."

"I'm sure he was mine, too," Lily replied with a half smile, wiping away a tear. She turned away from him, walking back toward the window she'd come through. She closed and locked it. She wasn't going to act like a child and run. She wouldn't demand from the ministry anything. If things could come back for her slowly, or be encouraged to rush, like with Damon, she'd let it come.

"Do you remember anything?" he asked her as he moved into the room. She ran her fingers over the things on the dresser, hesitating on small boxes and tracing the designs on them.

"Sometimes, I catch wisps of memories, but it's like trying to catch smoke with your hands," Lily explained, leaning against the dresser to look at him. She cupped her hands and then opened them, still empty. "No matter how hard I try, they're ever elusive."

"No one's offered to help you remember?" Scorpius asked. Lily grinned.

"Oh, some have for sure," Lily told him. "Draco, for one, offered to try Legimancy but Marhall Clocks shot it down."

"Marshall's still in your life?" Scorpius frowned.

"Yeah, apparently he and I had a go of it, too," Lily offered flippantly with a shrug. "Not that it matters. I don't remember if he was any good or not."

"I hate that guy," Scorpius growled. Lily laughed.

"And Damon, do you hate him, too?" Lily asked after she regained her composure. "You obviously knew I was with him."

"Damon is like a brother to me, was like a brother to me," Scorpius explained. "I won't lie. It hurt when it got back to me that the one thing I asked him not to do, he did."

"You didn't see how much he missed you, Scorpius," Lily defended.

"So he sleeps with my girl?" he challenged skeptically.

"They made me believe that you were dead and gone," Lily snapped at him. "I don't know when you stopped talking with Damon, but my bringing Theron-" Lily froze. The memory of Damon being upset over Theron came flooding over her. She gripped the dresser. Less painfully, the memory of that night eased in, untwisting and unfurling in her.

"Are you okay?" Scorpius asked as he reached for her. She tried to take a step back but was already backed against the dresser. She held on to the memories of the little boy that she'd raised from her body into the boy who was probably lost and frightened without her well, each one slowly coming into focus. The very though tore her heart into pieces.

"Damon tried to fight his feelings," Lily choked out. "I'm the one who encouraged it, the one who sabotaged everything. I'm the one that went to him that night. He protested, of course, but I knew by then how he felt about me and I was so lonely."

"Lily," Scorpius looked pained.

"So, if you must be mad at someone for what happened, be mad at me," she demanded. She stepped toward him, grabbing his arm with her small hand. Electricity seemed to shoot through him, the jolt rocking him back half a step.

"I could never be mad at you," he told her. She looked up at him. "Trust me, it would feel so much better to be able to blame someone other than myself."

"Why did you remove yourself from my memories?" Lily asked him, still holding on to him.

"That wasn't my intention," Scorpius frowned. He pulled free of her, walking toward the edge of her bed. He took a seat. "The minister did horrible, horrible things. I didn't realize that when Damon and I went to remove them so close to my removing memories of Damon, that it'd cause a chain reaction. It's the only thing that the specialists could come up with as to why some memories crumbled and were destroyed where some remained."

"Have you ever done anything like that before?" she asked him. He shook his head.

"No, I mean they train us to, and during training they let us practice on prisoners, but never unguided," he offered her. "I just wanted to take away all that pain and suffering the minister caused you trying to steal your secrets."

"Well, you can count that a success," Lily shared. "I don't remember much of Argentina."

"But you do remember some?" he asked her. She nodded, sitting on the bed next to him.

"Yeah," she shared. "I don't remember all of the reasons that I went there. I remember my brother pressing me to go on holiday, and Damon leaving me the postcard."

"You got my other post cards, and he piggy backed on that, huh?" Scorpius frowned.

"There were other? Oh, of course there must have been," Lily sighed.

"I only hoped that they'd let you know that I missed you, that I still cared even if I couldn't be there for you," Scorpius offered as he folded his hands in his lap. He focused on her own hands clutching the hem of her tee shirt.

"I don't know what might have happened to those," Lily murmured absentmindedly.

"You handed them over to the Aurors, and they knew that I was trying to contact the outside," Scorpius explained. "I was in so deep, I couldn't find a way out. I'm sure that my father didn't mean for any of us to get hurt, this plan wasn't supposed to take any time at all. James and I were supposed to get in and get out, only he got hurt, died, and I was trapped."

"My brother died," Lily confirmed with a slight nod. She could vaguely remember him dying in her arms, though it was distant enough that it felt more like she'd watched someone else suffer.

"It got back to me," Scorpius frowned. "I only survived by the grace of Poly Juice and a scalp full of one of the minister's thugs. He wasn't the first person I'd killed, but I did feel bad about it."

"Thug..." Lily looked like she was in deep though. She vaguely remembered someone tall, with thick hands and a drinking problem. "The Spanish Auror?"

"Yes," he nodded at her.

"It's all like trying to look through a foggy looking glass," Lily's voice was etched with frustration.

"Will you share with me what you do remember?" Scorpius asked her. She glanced up at him. He looked so sad, so broken. She wondered if the truth would set him free or be the final blow.

"Sometimes, I remember little bits and flashes of things. Before I would try to grab at them, and they'd disintegrate under my fingers," Lily offered him. She didn't try to smile. "I'm starting to remember Theron, I remember parts of his upbringing that you weren't there, the parts I'm assuming you were there, is hazy. I remember whispered words and hints of touches we shared, but they're still unfocused."

"What about Damon?" he asked her hesitantly. Lily met his eyes guiltily, able to clearly see the hurt in his gray steel eyes.

"I went to him, once I found out that he and I had a history," Lily whispered softly. He froze, a frown marring his face.

"Went to him?" Scorpius pushed. Lily squirmed.

"I didn't know you were alive or back or even existed other than by what people told me, Scorpius. Even now, I can't be sure that I'm not just trapped in some delusion or under some sort of spell thought up by the ministry," Lily growled at him as she clenched her fists by her side. She jumped up and started pacing the room in quick, angry steps. "So yeah, I went to him. I drank poly juice that I stole, and I went to him. I snuck in his bedroom window and I went to him. I didn't fight my feelings, I won't let anyone make me feel bad for being attracted to him or to you or to anyone!"

"What?"

"He tried to turn me down, so your bro-hood should still count for something," Lily snapped at him angrily.

"He tried to turn you down?"

"Yeah, isn't that swell? After all this time, his friendship with you meant more than his love for me," Lily's tone was bitter. "Oh, he gave in. Don't delude yourself into thinking that he didn't. But he did try to turn away from me. Ten years changes a person, Scorpius. Ten years a long time for me to sit by idly mourning you. So yeah, he tried to suppress his love for me, but I wouldn't let him."

"You make it sound like you forced him," he said coolly.

"Basically, I didn't take no for an answer," Lily crossed her arms.

"So, you remember him then? Just like that?" Scorpius choked out, snapping his finger once. She looked at him.

"Don't you think for a moment I'd give up a chance to remember you that way," she told him. She wrapped her arms around herself, shaking. "I'm told by everyone that you are the LOVE of my life, Scorpius. I looked back at all the pictures of us, and you've been in my life for a very long time. I feel so strongly about Damon right now, and he's in so few of my earlier pictures, and only dotted in the older ones. Can you even imagine how it feels to feel so strongly about Damon and know that there is some else out there that I felt even more strongly about? Someone I can't remember?"

"Lily, I-" he groaned softly. Lily marched over to him, grabbing his hand and jerked him off the bed. She drug him into the main living room, not realizing that there were other people in there that looked very much surprised to see her there. She didn't notice them, just reached up and grabbed Scorpius by the face between her thumb and finger, directing his face to the portrait.

"Do you see this? I don't remember this, but that look on their faces, OUR faces, how could anyone deny what has been said, that you ARE the love of my life," Lily complained angrily. "YOU, not Damon, not Marshall, not anyone else. YOU. YOU ARE the love of my LIFE, and I don't remember you. How can you sit there, look at me, and think that I wouldn't give up heaven and earth to be able to LOVE YOU the way I must have at one time."

"Lily?" Albus' voice startled her and she turned, barefoot, in her living room to see that there were a fair few Aurors that had entered either from one of the back rooms or the wide-open front door undetected by Lily. Damon was standing there in the kitchen, leaning against the counter. His face was an emotionless mask.

"Lily," Draco's voice was calm. The minister was there with him. "Lily, let go of Scorpius, please." Lily immediately dropped her hands from his body, keeping them by her side. She fought the urge to cross her arms against her body, but she felt very cornered. Her previous body guards were there, Sharity, Chuck, and Brody, though none of them looked very comfortable. She wondered if they'd gotten into trouble for her running off on them.

Knowing the ministry, and she didn't exactly have a lot of memories of it, they probably had been punished or would be soon enough. She frowned as she realized that they were creeping closer to her, slowly as if she were a rabid animal that needed to be handled with care. It wasn't too far from the truth. She felt like a cornered animal, their wands all trained on her.

"I'm unarmed," she snapped at them.

"Protocol," Draco told her quietly. "Put your hands out, palms facing up please."

"Why?" Lily demanded as she took a step away from Scorpius.

"Lily Luna Potter, by the order of the ministry, and as the minister, I hereby charge you with assault on Aurors, evading, and treason," the minister announced. Draco drew shackles with his wand, the metal appearing and locking down on Lily's wrists. She looked at him, her mouth drawn in a grim line. "Until trial, you will be held at Azkaban Prison."

"Wait, what?" a few of the Aurors were outraged, including Damon and Scorpius. Lily just stood there, staring at the minister. Frown on her face.

"Take her away," the minister demanded. Brody stepped forward, taking her arm, his wand pressed against the fabric of her white tee shirt. Chuck took the other side, same position. "And this time, it will be your jobs if you lose her."

Lily glanced back the rest of them as she was marched out of her apartment. She dug her heel in, kissing her hands and directing them to the minister almost sweetly menacing.

"Don't worry, Minister Parker," Lily threatened. "I'll be seeing you real soon."