Hey everyone!
Here's the next chapter hopefully to get you through the next week.
Please review, I do love to hear everyone thoughts 3
Much love as always 3
Hermione's Point of View
Ron pulls my hand as we move. His other arm holds my elbow as if directing me. Firm but bordering on aggressive.
"You can shout if you want Hermione but I'm not going to engage. You're upset right now."
"Of course I'm upset. You just let him go and you stopped me from trying to help him, Ron."
He sighs, looking across lake. The nights chill is piercingly sharp wherever we are.
"We'll cross and apparate there," Ron answers, disregarding me.
We've apparated at least four times already. I don't know how many more times Ron plans on it. But I can tell by the sweat on his forehead that he doesn't have any more goes left in him. Apparition can take a lot out of the caster and if he attempts it too many more times, he puts both of us at risk.
But rational thoughts right now are not easy. It's hard to care about anything going on around me considering what happened only an hour ago. When I had gotten out of bed to check on the noise everything had changed. Everything I had thought I knew.
I was aware that there was a lot of things Ron, Ginny and Harry were keeping from me, but I just hadn't imagined the extend of it all. It feels the same as when they told me about my parents. When I had the realisation that if my memories didn't come back that I would never see them again.
As Ron drags me through the undergrowth that lines the edge of the lake, I ponder on the girl I forgot. The girl who lived for years and accumulated memories, wants and desires that no longer exist in my head. The girl who had fallen in love with Draco Malfoy. The girl who had Draco Malfoy fall in love with her. It seems surreal. Like a joke but I'm still waiting for the punchline to drop.
"Everyone knew?" I ask, feeling dazed and lightheaded now. I don't question whether Ron knows where he's going. The sun isn't set to rise for another few hours. The cold hurts but I barely feel it.
"Hermione, please," Ron groans. I feel the ground lift beneath me as we apparate again. This time when we arrive, I recognise the area. We're close to the burrow. Maybe a couple of fields away. I pull myself up and Ron staggers a moment before grabbing me again and directing me forward. He's weak now. We will walk the rest of the way.
"Everyone knew and nobody said anything to me. What else have you lied about?" I ask.
He pulls me forward and helps me over a dilapidated stone wall that borders the next field. When my feet sink deep in the heavy wetland, I know we're close to the burrow. I can just about see the lights in the distance.
"Everyone lied to me," I mutter, more to myself than to Ron. He stops, his shoes sinking up to his ankle in the mud and turns towards me.
"You know why we had to lie Hermione. You know why we had to keep that from you," he implores loudly, but his voice drops off towards the end, almost reassuringly.
"I figure I can guess why you didn't want to tell me," I snide. It's not a prideful remark but I'm also not ashamed to have said it. Maybe it's the light-headedness or the lack of sleep. Or maybe it's just the profound anger that seems to envelope all my words. Ron bites the corner of his bottom lip but choses not to respond. Instead, he turns and pulls me again through the field. The nettles and high wet grass biting against my ankles. I can hear the chickens squawking loudly up ahead.
When we push through the shoulder length grass in the meadows that surrounds the Burrow we make our way through the orchard. The sweet smell of apples that will flourish in a few months' time. I notice four of the five chimneys are lighting meaning there must be a full house tonight. I wish we had come here instead of that cottage. Maybe if we had come here everything would be different. Maybe Malfoy would still be here.
Ron kicks one of the fat brown chickens out of the way of the back door as we make our way into a conservatory of sorts before passing into the kitchen. Molly jumps away from the pot she's been hovering around when she sees Ron, taking him quickly into her arms. Oblivious to the mud we've trekked into the house. I quickly kick off my shoes and leave them outside the kitchen door.
"Oh, Ronald I was so worried when Harry said he couldn't find you. Where did you run off to?" she whimpers pulling at his collar and stroking the back of his head affectionately. She spots me standing behind him. Her eyes turning anxious, the lines by her eyes crinkling in that affectionate, empathetic way they always do.
"Hermione," she gasps, turning towards me. I notice her eyes scan behind me briefly before turning curiously towards Ron.
I push past, ashamed that I'm unable to greet Molly properly. I move into the sitting room where I notice most of the group is gathered. I guess the late hour didn't grant me any privacy. They all stare agape and questioningly at me before I turn and stalk all the way up to the attic. It's where I usually stay when I'm here. I leave the curtains open and lie across the bed, gathering the pillow under my head in a ball.
When I realised, we were coming to the Burrow I had hoped because of the late hour that everyone might be asleep. I guess that had just been wishful thinking. Perhaps no one really sleeps in war. How scary to wake up in the middle of a war. How terrifying to wake up with no memories of it.
A gentle knock sounds at the door, pushing it slightly open. The sound reminds me of the knocking that had interrupted Malfoy and I back at the cottage.
"Hermione," Ginny calls, pushing the door open and peaking in. I keep my eyes focused out the window at the moon. Focusing and unfocusing my eyes as my mind tries to stop itself from fading. I'm close to drifting away to a place of silence. A place of not speaking for days. The place I went to when I found out about my parents. Ginny notices my face and she uses her tender voice with me. Like a mother trying to soothe a child to sleep or away from an active tantrum.
"Hermione talk to me," she requests softly, careful to not jostle the bed as she sits down.
"If we speak, will I get the truth? Or more lies?" I query. It's already hard to move my mouth. To form the words. I am slipping away. I can feel it.
"No more lies, Hermione. Please speak to me," she asks again. She's worried. She's very worried and she had a right to be. It's going to be bad again. I can feel it.
"Why?" I ask, turning my head barely to see her. I want to see her eyes. I need to know why they would do this. Why would they keep something like this from me?
"We were scared," she admits.
"Of what?"
"Of this happening again," she says. I turn back towards the window.
"Some things are unavoidable."
"Tell me what happened? What happened with Malfoy? Why isn't he here?" she asks, pushing. She moves up a little on the bed towards me. I'm grateful she doesn't try to light a candle. I want to stay in the dark. In the dark I can pretend this isn't happening for a little while longer.
"He said 'since Hogwarts'," I muse, remembering. Since Hogwarts. For years.
"Hmm?"
"For years, Ginny. Years. Since Hogwarts," I repeat, the severity of it settling into my bones. There are years of memories with him that I don't recall.
"He told you then I take it?"
"Yes, he told me. Ginny, why didn't you? You're one of my best friends. I can't believe you would allow him to come to Grimmauld Place and just not tell me," I say, hoping she can't see the tears in my eyes in this light. They're hot and burn the dryness around the crinkle of my eyes.
"What we did was wrong. We shouldn't have kept that from you. It was done out of fear. Out of love Hermione I swear," she reasons.
"How?" I ask, interrupting her.
"How?" she questions.
"How is it even possible? My last memories in Hogwarts were that he hated me. He hated us. All of us. Especially me and then suddenly he's calling me baby and-" my thoughts trail off to the feeling of how his hands held me. Knowledgeable and firm as they pressed into my hip bone.
"Baby?" she questions but I can hear the smirk in her voice. "I never pegged him as the cute baby names type of guy," she says, laughing a little. I can't find the humour unfortunately.
"No one has ever touched me like that," I whisper remembering it all. The warmth of his lips against my neck and the fever at which he kissed me. No one had ever looked at me like that either. I am not a fool. I have noticed the way the guys around here tend to look. I had often chalked it up to the lack of options within our friend group and the fact that everyone knew Ginny was spoken for. But the way Malfoy looked at me was different to the way Ron or even Seamus looked at me. They looked at me with curiosity. Malfoy looked at me with desire. Curiosity tends to come from the unknown. But desire, that comes from experience. When curiosity has been quelled, desire tends to take its place. Tonight was not the first time that Draco Malfoy had ever touched me like that. It wasn't even the second time.
"What happened?" she asks again, agitatedly measuring me.
"His father came to take him back home," I supply. The words not truly making sense. Like when you repeat a word several times it starts to lose all it's sense and meaning. His father had come to take him back. Where had he been before? Had he been fighting with his father all this time? Or had Draco Malfoy been with us? The questions stretch and fatigue my head, causing a pulsing pain to start in my temples.
"His father?" Ginny exclaims loudly. "And he just let you and Ron walk?"
"Malfoy say it was him or me," I say. Him or me. I can see the long string of questions bubbling in Ginny's eyes, but she keeps them at bay.
"Ginny? Tell me how it started," I ask, pleading. She stares at me for a long time before sighing, finally releasing the weight of the truth that everyone has kept from me.
She starts to speak and in a way I'm glad the Malfoy was the one to tell me because honestly, I would have never believed her. If Malfoy hadn't kissed me like that I would have laughed in her face. But to her credit she explains what she can. Letting me know that she doesn't know everything that I was a rather secretive person about it all for a long time. She tells me about the award and Dumbledore and the time Malfoy, and I spent apart at the start of the war. I ask her to go over what she can about Hogwarts. I want her to tell me things she can't. I want to hear about the exact moment it happened. I want to feel that change for him in my chest, but she doesn't know. She can't give me all the answers only what I've trusted to tell her over the years. She laments that she wishes it was more.
She tells me that she's especially worried now because of what happened the first time we were apart after he left Hogwarts. She skims over the details, but I demand she tell me everything. I don't doubt the story she tells me about when Ron, Harry and I were on the road. In fact, the more she speaks the less I seem to doubt any of it. Although the stories come pouring out of her, they don't stick like I want them too. They swirl above me and stay as just that, stories. I want them to fit into my mind like puzzle pieces, but they don't. I listen but I can't feel myself in those stories. It's like hearing about someone else's life.
She tells me what little she knows about after. After Hogwarts and what I had told her about where he was and what he was doing. She tells me about running into him in the forest and I find that particular story fascinating. Being apart for over a year and then running into him randomly in a remote forest in the south of England. How scared and shocked I had been. How he had tried to help.
She tells me how I had brought him back to Grimmauld Place and after a while everyone had gotten used to him. I feel like she might be embellishing that part a little bit, but I don't argue. She also tells me the room I had stayed in in Grimmauld place had been mine and Malfoys room. I guess that explains the sleepwalking incident.
"Ginny?" I ask, after a beat of silence passes between us. She turns towards me expectantly.
"Did I love him?"
Ginny grins a little, picking at her nails as she ponders the question. She raises her head again.
"Yeah, Hermione. You do," she answers. Do not did. Her answer lodges in my throat and I bite down hard on my tongue trying to stop the tears.
"Did everybody know?"
"Yeah. I mean it was obvious. You guys were something to watch," she teases.
"What do you mean?" I ask, uncertainly. It hard to hear stories about yourself like this.
"It's hard to describe, Hermione."
"Try, please. I want to understand," I admit.
"I guess," she starts. "When you moved, he moved. And vice versa. Even when you two weren't looking at one another. You were connected in this other way. I would see you two have these conversations with just your eyes. You were both very intune to one another and I have never seen you act like that with anymore else. You are very close with my brother and Harry, but this was different Hermione. With him it had more weight to it. It's deeper with him."
I shift in the bed, sinking lower into the pillow.
"It's hard to hear this but I also want to hear more," I ponder aloud. "It's hard to put myself in these stories. I mean these memories you're describing. It's hard to be that girl," I say.
"But you are that girl, Hermione. All those stories they're you. You and him," she replies.
"It's hard though. Not even to just be that girl. It's hard to go to sleep at eighteen and wake up at twenty-one," I explore.
"Yeah," she laments, placing her hand over my leg.
"I can't picture Draco Malfoy leisurely hanging out in Grimmauld Place. I know he was there for a few days but that felt like it was because he was there on business almost. I can't picture him there just for me," I explain. Ginny smiles, hiding her mouth.
"Why are you laughing?"
"I'm just remembering when he kissed you on the stairs in front of Seamus and Dean when they came back," she laughs, covering her mouth again.
"What?" I ask, shocked.
"They didn't know about you guys, and I guess Malfoy got a little jealous or something."
"Jealous?" I inquire, remembering how upset he had been when I had slept in the same room as Ron.
"Yeah. He was a little possessive when it came to you, Hermione."
"I mean you hear this right? You hear how crazy this all sounds? I thought he liked that 7th year girl. Astoria something?" I ask.
"Well," she laughs, "You would guess wrong then," she admits.
"Why me?" I ask then and Ginny smirks again.
"You asked me that back in Hogwarts too and I always thought he might have liked you. Even when he acted like he hated you."
"Okay the late hour must be getting to your head," I reply.
"No, really. I think he did. I think he was angry that he was attracted to you because his father had taught him that muggleborns were worthless. It was a 'want what you can't have' kind of thing with him I think."
"Then why did he leave with his father? He didn't even try another option. He just went after everything he had said to me. After how he had kissed me, Ginny. He still left," I lament, wiping my face against the pillow.
She looks towards the door, and we hear the faint chatter downstairs still going in the sitting room.
"What is it?" I ask, noticing she's thinking heavily. "You promised you'd be honest with me," I remind her.
She sighs loudly and turns back towards me.
"Harry thinks that it was his father who did this to you," she says.
"Lucius Malfoy took my memories away?" I ask, confused. "Why would he do that?"
"We figured it was him because the memories that were taken were right before the award. Right before you and Malfoy got to know one another. The curse that hit you was supposed to kill you Hermione. But it only skimmed the side of your head. It was an embedded curse. In case it wasn't a direct hit. So, it took your memories away. The ones you have with him."
"But why? Why would he do that?"
"Harry thinks it's because he wanted Draco to come back to the Manor. His father must think you're the only reason he's choosing not to be home. That you're the reason he basically left that side of the war," she says.
We stare into the abyss for a moment. Letting that newfound truth solidify its place. Draco's father had tried to kill me. Draco's father was aware even that there was something between me and him. The man who could lead the party against muggleborns finds out his son is dating one. It makes sense why he would do anything in his power to eliminate anything that stood in his way. Especially me.
"Did he leave his father because of me?" I ask.
"I mean I think he always had doubts. It's easy to see if you just watch him for a little while but you were definitely the driving force," she answers truthfully.
I scratch at my arm and Ginny notices the movement, turning her eyes away. There is something I had never mentioned to anyone because I was scared of the answer. The markings along my forearm. 'Mudblood'
"Ginny? Did his father do this to me?" I ask, pulling up my sleeve, running my fingers along the deep marks. It seems like it was a while ago and someone had made a decent attempt of trying to heal them because they look like they've gotten some work done on them.
"No. Not his father. It was Bellatrix LeStrange," she answers and my hand freezes. I shiver at the thought of that women touching me anywhere let alone embedding those words possibly forever into my skin.
"Makes sense," I say, ending that topic. I don't want to know anymore. I don't want to hear anything about that woman. I pull back down my sleeve and rest heavily back in the bed. The sun is starting to rise now, and I don't have to squint anymore to see Ginny's face. But I can see the tired lines that are forming around her eyes. It was easier to talk to her than I imagined. Once I started of course.
"Gin you can go to bed," I say, shimming out of my jeans and jacket finally. She assesses me again, nervous.
"Can't save the world without rest," I muse, smiling slightly but this just makes her worried expression deepen.
"Are you okay? Are we okay?" she asks uncertainly.
"We're fine Ginny, don't worry. As for me," I start but trail off. I don't know how to finish that sentence. I don't know what happens now.
"Where do we go from here?" I ask childishly, as if Ginny can give me an answer that will sort everything out. Unfair of me to ask her something like that.
"I don't know. But I will talk to Harry. We'll both talk to Harry," she says. Again, the situation is left in the hands of Harry like most things are. I wonder how crooked his back is carrying the weight of everyone's worries and concerns.
"What's going to happen now with my lost memories?"
"I don't know."
"I'm sorry I know it's not fair of me to ask these questions. I know you don't have the answers either."
"Sometimes it helps to just say them aloud," she says, yawning. I slip under the duvet, and she makes her way over to the small three-seater couch and undresses quickly. I throw a blanket over to her. Something about her sleeping here now that the truth is out feels better. I don't feel as if I'm being watched. She slips down and stretches out on the couch, her eyes falling closed almost immediately.
"I'm sorry about lying," she says low now that sleep has decided to fall on us.
"It's okay," I whisper. I'm not angry about it anymore. Maybe I will be again after a few hours sleep but I don't feel the anger right now.
"Ginny?" I ask, her eyes briefly open to meet mine.
"Do you think he was in love with me?" I ask, remembering the words he had said to me just before he left. She smiles in response, shifting over in the bed.
"Yes. Obviously."
Ginny turns to face towards the back of the couch, and I wait until her breathing evens out. I trace the pattern in the ceiling until my eyes grow heavy too. His soft, pleading words re-playing in my head.
Remember I love you.