The liquid burns your lips as you take your first tentative sip. In the background, you can hear the clink of glasses and clatter of pots. You stare at the tabletop, noting the delicate carvings of rosebuds that weave along the edge. Your finger traces their pattern.
“You’re quiet.” It’s a statement. He never asks you questions; he doesn’t like to seem unsure. You raise your eyes to his. He looks calm. He’s wearing the robe you picked out when you went shopping together last weekend. It looks nice.
You need to speak. Your palms are sweaty and your heart is pounding. Two secrets; does it matter which you tell first? Words swirl in your head like flies caught in a tornado. You take another sip of tea.
“I lied.” You bite your lip and clasp your hands together. His face is unchanged; why isn’t he reacting? Is he angry? Upset? Finally his eyes sparkle and a smile tilts the corner of his lips, “About what?”
“About being a witch.” The smile drops. He is angry; he has every right to be. If he had been lying to you all this time . . . .
“Draco, say something,” you plead.
“You are a Squib.” His voice is tense. Bang! You jump and stare at the shuddering cup. Liquid sloshes over his hand and onto the table. He continues to stare at you. You tremble as you shake your head.
“A Muggle. My sister was a witch.” You need to explain, “She brought me here, when we were younger. I loved it here. She loved it here. I didn’t want to lose that . . . and then I met you. I didn’t mean to lie; you just assumed, and I . . . I liked it; I liked being a part of what my sister was. I liked doing magical things and feeling a little of what she felt, but most of all I liked you! I’m telling you now, because . . . because, well, there is something else.”
You pause. His face hasn’t changed, his wand is in his hand. He is staring at you as though for the first time. You take a deep breath, “Draco, I’m p . . . .”
Your head is aching. You glance around and see you are in Goldfry‘s; it’s your favourite wizarding coffee shop. It seems different. In front of you is a cup of cold tea. You are sure you ordered hot chocolate. You look to the next table and your heart sinks. Where is that fine young man you saw earlier? The one with the white blond hair. Your eyes had met his. You had smiled; he had smiled. Surely he was about to come over and talk to you, hadn't he risen and walked your way? And now he is gone.
You stand up to leave. A wave of dizziness hits you. You stumble and bile rises in your throat. You feel sick.
“Are you okay?” A young witch asks. You shake your head and dash for the bathroom. As you sit upon the tiled floor of the toilet, retching into the porcelain bowl, a feeling of déjà vu washes over you. You spit to rid yourself of the vile taste. Why does everything seem so foggy?
Searching your purse for a stick of gum, you find all sorts of things you can’t remember; a key chain with keys that are not to your flat, ticket stubs to the July third concert of the Weird Sisters, a packet of saltines. Saltines? You don’t like saltines, why would they be in your purse? And why, you wonder, would you have ticket stubs to a concert that is three months off? Distracted, still queasy and with the beginnings of what will soon be full-blown panic, you look in the mirror to straighten your hair. Hair that now lies in a sleek fringe across your forehead and is a good six inches shorter than it was when you last looked at it, twenty minutes ago, before you left your flat for Diagon Alley and coffee with Verity. Your fingers become white at the knuckle as you clutch the sink. Where is Verity?
As you walk up the street to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, your legs feel wobbly and your body feels unaccountably thick. Trousers that fit just yesterday are tight at the waist. Under your robes, you surreptitiously unbutton the top button and breathe a sigh of relief.
“Oh, there you are, how did it go?” Verity, dressed in magenta staff robes, stops grooming the pygmy puffs to look at you. They squeak mildly at the lack of attention.
“How did what go?” you ask, “I thought we were meeting at Goldfry’s for coffee?” You have known Verity for quite some time; she was your sister’s best friend in school.
“Well, no. We haven’t actually been out for coffee since you met Draco.” Verity is beginning to look concerned. After your sister was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, she looked in on you every day. You know that she has thought you fragile and you have used that to persuade her to help you stay a part of the wizarding world, Muggle though you are. She has supplied you with charms and trick wands, enough to fool the casual observer.
Really, you think, wizards are no more observant than Muggles, they see what they expect to see.
“You were going to meet him today, remember? You were going to tell him you were a Muggle.” Verity shook her head. “Mad, that. I thought you were absolutely barking to be telling a Malfoy such a thing.” She looks at you closely, a shrewd look in her eye. “What day is today?”
“It’s . . . March twenty-seventh?” Your answer is a question, because outside it is far too warm to be March.
“July sixth, my dear,” says Verity, her expression grim. “I think you have been Obliviated, and by someone who isn’t terribly good at it either.” Verity’s sniff tells you just what she thinks of that; working with first Fred and George Weasley, and then with George, she has come to regard their extraordinary magical abilities as the standard by which all others are measured, and few indeed measure up.
“And I have a very good idea who it is too.” Verity looks angry, and this unaccountably makes you nervous.
“Who . . . who would want to do that to me?” Your voice quivers and so does your stomach. The nausea that plagued you earlier hasn’t quite subsided, you wonder if it could be a side effect of the Obliviation spell but something tells you it is not.
“Draco. Draco Malfoy; that’s who! You’ve been seeing him these last three months, haven’t you? Except you don’t remember it do you?” She turns as the door tinkles and a patron comes in. “Go on to the storeroom, I’ll see if Mr.Weasley can cover for me and I’ll take you home.” Placing a professional smile on her face, she goes to assist a wizard in search of fireworks.
As you walk slowly to the storeroom, you wonder what sort of man this Draco Malfoy was, but there is nothing, nothing to tell you, nothing to remind you of him.
Your flat looks much the same as it did three months ago. There are some new shoes in your closet, your winter jackets have been packed away for the summer and beside your bed is a photograph that you have never seen before. The fine looking white blond man you remember from Goldfry’s has his arm around you, a sly smile on his face. You are laughing in the photo, and since it is a wizarding photo, you are really laughing, whispering in the man’s ear and giggling as he squeezes you back.
Holding it in your hands, you search, once again for any semblance of memory.
Verity is in the kitchenette, making tea. As she brings you a cup and a plate of biscuits, you show her the picture, mute. She examines it as you sip your tea. You make a face; it tastes off to you, unpleasantly bitter, rancid almost.
“Well, I never thought it was such a good idea, you and Malfoy, I mean,” says Verity. “I mean, you are pretty clever at pretending you are a witch, but it can’t last forever, and I must say, I had no idea that it would last this long. I confess I was worried about what would happen when you told him. But you were determined.” Verity sighed. “At least you followed my advice and did it somewhere public. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater, I say. I don’t care that the Ministry pardoned the Malfoys; just goes to show you what money and an old name can do.
“I always did wonder what you saw in him.” Verity keeps her eyes on the picture and says, very carefully, “Was because you really loved him or because you so much wanted to be part of the wizarding world? I know you still miss your sister terribly. As do I.”
You open your mouth. Close it. You don’t know the answer either, but the thought makes you uncomfortable.
“Now you, my dear, have a bit of a problem." Verity is briskly practical once again. “If you try to get your memories back there will be all sorts of bother about you being aware of the wizarding world. I mean, it is absurd, with so many Muggle-born and half blood witches and wizards you would think that half of England would know already, just from being related to a wizard.” Verity sniffed. “But there you have it; if you go to a Healer you stand to lose everything you remember about the wizarding world, including me and your sister. Stupid, eh? But the International Statute of Secrecy says you are not supposed to know.”
“But if I don’t get my memories back then I have to explain to everyone that I don’t know what happened in the last three months.” Verity hands back the picture of you and Malfoy. As you look at it you feel a rush of hate; this man that you are laughing with took three months of your life and you are not going to get it back. And how are you going to explain the lack of memory to your parents, your friends and your boss?
You think. Maybe Verity can help you. Maybe she can make it look like you have had a concussion. People can have amnesia after a concussion, can’t they? You feel a little better now that you have a plan. It will be a bit inconvenient, but life goes on, and what’s the worst that can happen?
“What are you going to do?” Your best Muggle friend is sitting beside you on your bed. Your bathroom has several home pregnancy tests scattered about. They all say the same thing. You are pregnant.
You remember a funny story your mother used to tell, about how your father misunderstood when she tried to tell him she was pregnant and he thought she had been in an accident. When he had asked if anyone had been hurt she had said that the rabbit had died. Then they laughed and laughed. That’s what they used to call it, the Rabbit Test. In a way, you were disappointed that the home pregnancy test hadn’t shown pink and blue bunnies instead of two pink lines. You try to tell your friend the story, but she doesn’t care, she is more worried about the present.
You had been flat mates for the last two years before you got your own place last spring and she knows most everything about you. What you like, what you dislike, that you lost your sister four years ago. That your parents are divorced and you are not close to either one of them. Now she knows that you are pregnant and that you don’t know who the father is. You squirm slightly; you do know who the father is, or at least you have a very good guess, but you have no recollection of the act that got you in your present state.
“Was it that bloke you were seeing? You never said much about him. I guess you broke up? But I guess that was those three months you don’t remember.” Most of your friends have accepted the concussion story. Accepted, but not fully believed it.
You could call it ‘breaking up’, I suppose, considering he removed three months from my memory, I’d venture a guess that he doesn’t want to continue the relationship. You keep these thoughts to yourself, as far as the Muggle world knows you fell from a ladder while putting up some boxes in the closet and suffered a rare form of amnesia.
“All right. Let’s be practical, then. You are at the start of your career and you have that dream marketing job for Abracadabra Magic Jokes and Toys, Inc. You are not married. You are still in your first trimester, right?” You shrug, you don’t really know, although the morning sickness has recently worn off. “It’s not too late to have it ‘taken care of’, right?”
You think about that. You know, vaguely, that an abortion is not too hard to get, but how easy would it be to live with yourself after? You always thought you were pro-choice. Now it is your choice. You wonder if you really want to end this life inside you, to take away all its memories before it even has a chance to have them.
“No, it’s too late.” Without even thinking about it, you have made your decision. It might even be true; it might be too late. Your hands curve around your belly, protective.
You are sitting on a bench by a little square with a memorial at its centre, watching your son. The spring sunshine reflects off his white blond hair. He is a bundle of energy and you feel a great swell of pride and love. Verity has taken you on her monthly trip up to the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, Hogsmeade, and as the store’s supplier of Muggle joke and trick paraphernalia, you have come with her. The excuse is that you are inspecting the marketing of the products, but the truth is it is a fine spring day and you are happy to have the outing into the wizarding world.
Verity is happy too. She has just shared with you the news that she, too, is about to become a mother. You feel a little pang of envy for Verity’s happy marriage to a Muggle-born wizard. She won’t have to struggle nearly as hard as you did, although your parents surprised you with their support. Your mother looked after the infant; your father astounded you by becoming a weekend dad to his grandson. Sometimes you think that the rebuilding of your family was the most unexpected side effect of your pregnancy. Your parents had fallen apart after your sister’s death and so had their marriage and although some things will never be mended, you have noticed that they seem to be showing a certain fondness towards each other of late.
The little boy runs up to you, his short legs flying, his face beaming. He has some flowers clutched in his hand.
“Mum! Mum! I ‘ave fwowers for you!” You are endeared by his five-year-old lisp. Hands out, you take the wilted flowers and make appropriate ooo-ing noises.
“Look Mum! LOOK!” He cups his sweaty little hands around the flowers and scrunches his face up in concentration. As he lets go his face is triumphant. The flowers look as fresh as if they hadn’t been squashed, sat on and dropped; they wave their petals gently at you.
“Well, what a surprise!” Verity doesn’t sound very surprised. She sounds smug. “A wizard, just like. . . .” She pauses; you wait. “Just like his aunt.”
Across the square, you see a flash of white blond hair. A fine looking man is walking away from you; at his side is a woman. A tiny hand waves vaguely at you from the pram he is pushing. You stare at the back of his head, at the man who is both a complete unknown and the father of your child. For a moment, you think of going to him, this stranger, but then you look at your son, who is now clutching the bench next to you, eye to eye with the rabbit peeping out of a wizard’s top hat. Verity is watching you, her eyebrows raised. You smile and shake your head. You don’t need Draco Malfoy to feel a part of the wizarding world, you never did, everything you need is right here beside you.