"Are you sure that this is what you want?"

Draco nodded silently, too sick to his stomach with nerves to speak. His fingers were tightly curled around the arms of the chair, his feet dangling several inches above the ground as his large, grey eyes followed Poppy Pomfrey as she stalked about the little office, checking and double checking that there was nothing she had missed, that she had everything that she might possibly need for the impending procedure.

"Because, once we have begun, there will be no going back," she warned, stopping and crouching down before him. "You understand the consequences of this, don't you Draco? You know that this will leave you with a considerable gap in your memory – not just of the incident, but of everything in connection with it. There will be many memories that you will never be able to get back, and I cannot tell you when or if you will ever be able to truly recover from that." She fingered her wand fretfully. "You must not enter into this lightly-"

"I'm sure," Draco whispered with an emphatic nod. "I don't care about the other things. There is nothing that I want to keep. I just want it all gone…" The words trailed off as his voice cracked and he dipped his head, not wanting to see the pity in her expression. He didn't want pity – it never did any good – he just wanted to be fixed. This was his chance, his last chance, to put right what had gone wrong. No-one else was going to try, and he was sick and tired of them all pretending to care. Truth be told, if Draco were to be given the opportunity to wipe his memory completely and start again, he would have grabbed at it in an instant.

But perhaps, he thought as a soft sight escaped his lips, perhaps this would be enough.

"It will be uncomfortable," Madam Pomfrey continued. "It might even be painful, you have to be prepared for that. I cannot give you veritaserum, or anything that would numb you, as I need you completely lucid. I will give you something to help with the discomfort afterwards, but during the operation itself-"

"It's okay," Draco cut in, forcing a brave smile to reassure her. "I don't mind. Really." He was not a stranger to pain and at least this would end well. It could surely be nothing compared to… other things he had experienced that had ended less pleasantly.

Poppy eyes him doubtfully. The boy's staunch courage in the face of such blatant risk disconcerted her greatly. This whole situation disconcerted her greatly, and there had not been a moment since she had first agreed to it that she had not regretted her involvement. It was a mess – wholly and completely – and if she had any true sense of right and wrong, she would have alerted the Ministry as soon as Severus had approached her. Not that they would have bothered to do anything, she reminded herself with a twist of anger. Damn useless, the lot of them. That was why these things were allowed to happen – there were no consequences, and then it was left up to people like her to pick up the broken pieces in the aftermath and, more often than not, when any hope of success had long since passed. She met Draco's eyes and sighed as she was reminded forcefully that she was this child's final chance of relief. Backing out now was not an option.

"Well then." She rolled up her sleeves and gently tipped up Draco's chin so that they were looking squarely at one another. "Let's give this our best shot."

"Wine?" I didn't wait for Lucius' response as I poured too slightly over-full glasses and pushed one across my desk towards him. He took it without a word but raised it in a brief toast of gratitude before bringing it to his lips and drinking deeply. I mirrored him. We both needed it. Badly.

Lucius had come out of Madam Pomfrey's office far worse off than I had, feeling guilty and contrite. The fact that Draco had not wanted either of us to go with him when he went for the procedure had not helped in the slightest, and had left us both with no doubt in our minds that we were solely responsible for the situation in which we had found ourselves.

Poppy's disapproval had been almost tangible when she had come to take Draco up to the Hospital Wing, and had left us alone beneath a fog of despondency without a word to say to each other.

We simply sat in a brooding silence and drank and hoped that the grass would be greener on the other side. It had to be. It was impossible to even entertain the possibility that it wouldn't be.

He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the arms of his chair as she pushed and pushed, trying to probe past the front most defenses of his mind as gently as she could. Draco flinched as, with every needle-like jab of her magic, a sharp twinge bolted down his spine. It took every ounce of self-control not to pull away or cry out, and the effort of remembering to breathe made his lungs burn with every breath.

But it was for the best, Draco kept reminding himself – his jaw aching from the pressure. When it was all over, it would all be better.

Madam Pomfrey's brow was furrowed in the deepest concentration, never once blinking as she held Draco's gaze steadily in her own whilst she searched carefully for how and where to make the first, vital incision. Poppy was acutely aware of how crucial it was to cause as little fundamental damage as was at all possible. The first cut was the hardest, and would certainly dictate the nature of the outcome. It was not a move to be made lightly.

Once she had found the desired spot, she began to apply pressure little by little. A whimper slipped from Draco's lips and tears sprung into his eyes, but she could not comfort him, could not allow herself to break concentration for even a moment. Her heart thuddered beneath her tunic but she held herself perfectly steady as she pressed harder against the barrier. It was the right place, of that she was certain, and once she had broached the first wall, the rest would be relatively easy.

Aware of every contour of Draco's mind, Madam Pomfrey pushed and pushed, inching her way until in until – finally – something broke, and she was in.

Draco screamed, the sound ripping right out of his heart as all his deepest and most secret memories flooded up to the surface.

I can only presume that it was the wine that finally prompted the question I had been suppressing for so many months. "What did you do with him?"

"Hmm?" Lucius, who had been staring vacantly up at the ceiling, glanced over to me. "Who?"

"Southard." The name tasted like bile on my tongue.

His expression darkened and he turned his face away from me, lips tightening into a thin line of revulsion. For a moment, I was certain that he was not going to tell me and, to be perfectly honest, I was relieved – I didn't want to know, and I was not entirely sure why I had asked. But then, after a brief pause, Lucius began to speak. "You must swear not to tell Draco," he warned quietly. "If I tell you, you can never mention it to him. In any circumstances."

My stomach twisted in dread, but still I nodded my consent. "I promise."

"I meant to kill him," Lucius began, his voice soft and sad. "I wanted to, and that had been my intention as soon as you had left with Draco. But…" He grimaced and shook his head in shame, struggling to put words to his guilt.

"But?" I pressed, leaning across the desk. "But what? What did you do?"

Lucius pressed his eyes tight shut, the nerve in his throat flickering as he swallowed hard. "I let him go."

"You did what?" I stared at him, unable and unwilling to believe what I was hearing.

"I let him go." Lucius' voice was distant, as though he too were hearing it for the first time. "I wanted him to live what he had done. Death was too good for him, and I could not risk it being traced back to me. I wanted it over and done with. I wanted him as far away from Draco as possible. At that time, nothing else mattered."

"You let him go? After what he did?"

"I am not a murderer, Severus!" Lucius snapped, glaring at me. "I know that you have an extremely low opinion of me, but even I have my limits."

"So what did you do?" I asked scathingly. "Pack him a picnic and sent him on his way?" I could feel anger building up inside me the more I ingested this new information. "How could you? How could you be so careless?" I had been absolutely certain that Lucius would have done away with that monster, that I had never thought to ask. "You know what this will do to Draco-"

"Which is why he must never find out. He is gone, Severus, I can assure you of that. As far as we are concerned, he is as good as dead. That is enough. It is enough," he repeated firmly as I opened my mouth to argue. "And once Draco has had the memory extracted, it will be as though it never happened at all."

"Where is he?" I fought to keep my voice steady. "Where did you send him?"

"I don't know," Lucius admitted, reaching for his goblet and downing the contents with a grimace. "I bound him with an untraceable spell and sent him through the Floo Network with a tongue-tying curse. He will never be able to speak the name Malfoy again." His expression was one of grim determination as he fixed me with a look. "We are free of him, Severus. I am certain of it. And that must be enough."

But it wasn't enough, and I wish vehemently that I had never known, had never asked. Whether Draco ever found out or not, I know that I would be living out the rest of my days searching every face in every crowd, waiting for the single glimmer of familiarity that meant he was back in our lives. And, until that moment, I knew that it would drive me insane. I could protect Draco, but I could not protect myself.

I shook my head hopelessly. "How do you live with it?" I asked, truly not knowing. "With any of it? How can you sleep at night, knowing that he's still out there, after what he did to Draco?"

"I don't," was Lucius' simply reply. "There has not been a day since when I have not regretted not slitting his throat then and there. Especially now… Oh god!" He shuddered and let his head fall into his hands. "I had no idea it was going to be like. I thought, if we just gave it time, if we just let it be, then…"

"Then it would just go away," I finished dully.

"Yes," Lucius sighed. "Yes, that is what I hoped."

"Draco? Draco, stay with me darling."

Poppy cupped the boy's pallid cheek and tried gently to turn his face back towards her. His neck was a rigid as a steel pole, his skinny waxy and cold to the touch, and his eyes were glassy with an impenetrable fear. Far away and trapped within the thick walls of the past, Draco could not hear her. Tears gathered in the corners of his unseeing eyes and fell – unchecked, unnoticed – into his lap.

He was lost to her, and it was proving almost impossible to find the root of the memory she needed amidst the unleashed chaos of his mind. Bitter failure loomed above her head, waiting to swamp her, but she would not let it go. Not yet. Not until the bitter end, when any hope of success had gone completely. She only vaguely knew what she was looking for – no-one had been particularly forthcoming when it came to explaining exactly what had gone on – but she had assumed that she would know it when she saw it.

Now, Poppy was not so sure. Everything inside this child's head was a mess, and really – if he was to have any hope of recovery – everything needed stripping. Of course, that was far from feasible, but the truth of the matter remained the same: Draco Malfoy was far far beyond repair.

But still she searched on; rifling through memory after memory, acutely aware that Draco was re-experiencing everything she saw and wishing ardently that they could stop, pause so that he could have some relief. Faces flashed up again and again – Mr Malfoy, Severus, a woman – presumably his mother – but never the one she was looking for. Occasionally there would be a nameless feeling of the deepest dread accompanied by the shadow of a faceless man, but whenever Poppy tried to pursue it, it would fade away and leave behind only the ghost of the memory and a weak, static warning.

That was the one she wanted. That memory of that man, so carefully hidden away it was almost untouchable, was the rotten tooth that needed extraction. She went after it, gripping her wand and gritting her teeth, eyes narrowed in the deepest concentration, ignoring everything else that rose up to the surface of the boy's mind. Once she was able to take it by the root and rip it out, half of this would be taken with it, she decided. She mustn't let herself be distracted.

Draco trembled as she pushed further and further in towards the very back of his mind, the place where his secret-most thoughts were locked away for no-one – not even himself – to see. Closing his eyes only made it worse, made the memories all the more vivid as she dragged them out to the surface, so he tried to focus on her face to keep himself from being pulled out on the tide. He felt like he was drowning and being ripped apart from the inside out and re-experiencing every single second of pain he had ever felt all over again.

But not that. Never that. That was too much, unbearable, and he was certain that he could not survive it again.

It'll be better afterwards. It'll be gone, forever. He had to bear it just a little while longer and then everything would be better.

Poppy could see it now. She had chased it as far back as it could go, and now there was nowhere else for it to hide. It was almost over. Warm relief flooded through her as she reached for it with her magic, ready to cut it away for good…

Lucius and I jumped to our feet in unison as soon as we heard the click of my door being opened, our nerves and senses on the highest alert.

"Well?" Lucius demanded, worry sharpening the edge of his voice. "How did it go?"

Poppy hesitated on the threshold, her eyes flickering between us, and took a deep breath before shaking her head. "I'm so sorry," she began haltingly, her normally unruffled demeanour now decidedly flustered. I felt my heart plummet in an instant. "I did everything I could do, but…" She dipped her head in regret. "I'm so sorry."