Unofficial Portkey Archive

Title: The Remedy of Love
Author: Crystal
Disclaimer: I own nothing but a cell phone I didn't pay for and maybe the Pepsi can I'm drinking from. Sad, huh?
Dedication: Nitya, whom I love very very much much much.

Author's Note: Viola! Chapter One. Featuring Sexay!Prettier!Older!Mature-rier!Draco. *winks to Daniela*

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It was almost kind of funny, Herimone thought, that dreams of simply seeing him, touching him again haunted her nights, and she'd wake up, arms stretched out to encase empty air. Hermione thought it was almost funny that after she cried for him in that distant dreamland, a peice of her kept being left behind when she woke.

She wondered, looking into Ginny's fearful eyes, what price would she have to pay Harry to get those peices back?

"Hermione? Please... say something," she pleaded.

She wondered if there was a price to pay, if there was a tag you could put on a captive heart. "Do-" She tasted traces of salty liquid decorating her lips, a crashing realization of what her soul was screaming. "I can't-" A shaking breath and dismissive hand. A reasonable voice in her head, the logical tone that soothed her, stopping the trailing, unwanted tear. "Just..."

She blinked away memories of a time long past, love and pain, hopes and fears that drowned out all else.

"Just... tell me everything, Ginny."

"He has been talking lately... about what happened, Hermione. That what he did for Harry... what Harry asked him to do... it was a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"Yes, that, he shouldn't have, even after all that had happened..."

An aching image of hopeless desperation in Harry's eyes filtered across her vision, gone before it could be chased away.

"...that making Harry forget was not the answer."

Her heart skipped an angry beat. "Was it ever, Ginny?"

Hurt flashed across the contours of a freckled face. "Don't turn this around."

"Harry should have remembered. He should have had to live with it every day of his life," the words, bitter and unused hissed out of her mouth like venom, "I have."

"Hermione..." A sad voice that reached out to quell the rising anger left Ginevra's mouth.

A mixture of regret and ire fought in the tombs of her shaking foundation, bringing glossy tears into her eyes yet again, and with a hasty resolve, Hermione looked away in shame. "I'm sorry."

"I know," responded Ginny quietly, ghosts of former problems and misdeeds hovering over their heads.

Silence commenced, a short reflection that settled over them like thick fog, "where-" Hermione sighed, bringing her eyes back to Ginny's. "Where do you think he'd start?"

"I'm not sure..." Ginny shook her head in hopelessness.

The wheels turned, an idea formed through the mist of emotions that were steadily building inside. "A tracking spell, Ginny. Any good Auror would. He would just need something of Harry's."

Cinnamon eyes widened. "Harry gave him his invisibility cloak." A wispy tone took hold of her voice.

Hermione breathed, remembering the day long ago, the day she had taken so much time and care to tuck away in the deep confines of her consciousness. Harry had.

"Ginny, go get something of Draco's," she said, voice shaky with anxiety and memory. "Where Draco is, Harry will be."

A familiar patter of rain awakened Harry, coaxing his heavy eyelids open. The dampness of yesterday's rainfall soaked into the mattress and his clothes, an uncomfortable warm-wetness. Limbs weary, he rose, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of his clinging clothes.

He had slept without a single dream recalled, yet he felt as if something lingered behind his eyelids that he should remember. An unamused huff of air left him, thinking of the ironicy. He couldn't remember a dream, and yet he couldn't forget what he desired to.

Harry slowly stood, reaching a hand through his tousled jet-black hair before peeling the discomforting jumper from his body and padding into the adjacent bathroom, kicking his shoes off on the way. Hesitantly, Harry looked up into the wide mirror. Half-moon circles painted under his emerald green eyes, his pale, almost translucent skin eerie in the shadowed room. Cold tiles brought shivers into his feet and he stared himself down, thinking of the long lines of sadness attacking his features.

The white-linned scars of duels and war.

The faded, black skull, home to a silent serpent that clung to his skin, curving and grasping his forearm.

The Dark Mark.

Two fingers reached to trace the inky blackness, a heavy sigh escaping his mouth. All that he had feared to fight and yearned to be rid of, now branded on his very skin.

Two sharp thuds sounded, the act tearing his gaze and thoughts away. Treading around the strewn clothes, he reluctantly pulled on the discarded jumper, and still grimacing at the feel, he opened the door.

Grey, cold eyes sought out for his, and Harry's heart slowed, his forearm burned in remembrance. In reminder.

"You look like a bloody wet rat," the blonde drawled, his lips twisting into a sneer.

"What-? How-?"

"Always the eloquent speaker, Potter. Great manners, as well. Are you going to invite me in or leave me out in the bleeding rain?"

"I- Come in..." He stuttered out.

Draco stuntered in, his gaze calculating every inch.

Confusion blanketed him, and Harry stared in disbelief at the figure from his past. "How did you-" He began, voice awed.

"Find you, Potter?" The patented Malfoy smirk was flashed. "Tracking spell. Invisibility cloak. I suspect you've been remembering things as well."

Smugly, he fell into the old armchair that rested in an inconspicuous corner.

"Remembering things?" Harry realized, and suddenly it all started falling into place. Muscles clenched and tensed against the accusatory anger that slid down his throat, releasing with the loud bang of a door slamming shut. The frame rattled and Draco raised an eyebrow, even as his eyes darkened and his lips thinned.

"Yes."

"It was you-" Fists curled and Harry took took a step forward, a horrible rush of rage building. "How did you know how to-"

"Don't get your knickers in a bunch," Draco commented dryly. "When I found you, I wanted you to be lucid. As for how, my wife, Ginny, is afterall, a mediwitch. It didn't take long to figure it out, and you were pretty willing to remember it seemed, anyhow."

"Why?" Harry grounded out. Earlier thoughts of regret, betrayal, bitterness- that almost calm acceptance of them all in his dismal, long life- they all shattered.

Draco sighed, his skin even paler in the dark room. The cocky behavior that was so constant in him seemed to filter out of his posture, leaving only a tired being that looked just as old as Harry felt. "Because, Potter, it's time to stop being a coward and come home."

His eyes burned with furious tears and his breathing stuttered with shame. How ironic, he thought, that of all people it would be Draco Malfoy to lecture him on his cowardice. Denial and fear crept up on him, twining its grip on his voice, and ire-laced words spoke. "Home? I have a home?" He growled. All the self-hatred and regret, the doubts and questions that had quietly been brewing seemed to erupt. "I have nothing to come home to, Malfoy."

"You have Hermione."

Something ugly, something malicious reared its head in his blackening soul and prodded him. "Shut your fucking mouth," the voice grated on his insides, scraping his throat with digging claws. "Hermione is the last person who would ever want me home."

Draco stared at him steadily, eyes narrowing. "Then what are you doing, Potter? What exactly can you possibly be doing that makes your life worth living from a rent-by-the-hour, trashy motel across the way from some fucking pub with five-cent whores? Do tell."

"Nothing," he answered between teeth, blinking fast to keep down the tears. His jaw felt glued, his head pounding from the pressure. "I don't fucking deserve to live because my life has become shit. Happy now, Malfoy?" He spat out contemptuously, the loathing mostly for himself.

A sneer adorned Draco's lips, a disgusted glimmer entering his eyes, and he stood. "You're pitiful," he said, and something snapped and crumbled to peices inside of Harry. "I'll send Hermione your heartfelt regards."

The words lashed out at him, creating imprints of slashes across his being, the wounds opened and spilling whatever trickle of life he had left.

"When you grow the fuck up, she lives in London."

And he left.

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