Please Be There If I Remember

Chapter Thirty: Memories

Draco was in Herbology with the Hufflepuffs when the memory came to him.

Sprout had been saying something about a certain plant or another—Draco wasn't really paying attention—when his body stiffened and he felt something shoot through his head that he distantly registered as pain. Through the haze of the memory he could feel himself fall to the floor and grab his head in his hands.

The colours swirling around him were hazy and dark, the mantle piece that had been looming above him before now at eye level. There was a man in front of him dressed in long robes that matched his height. From where Draco was looking down at the floor, he noticed that they fit him perfectly and not a corner was trailing on the ground.

He felt angry. Hurt. Annoyed. He wanted to make the man in front of him realise something, but another piece, deep inside of him, was absolutely terrified. A part of him wanted nothing to do but run away.

They were having a conversation and Draco kept telling himself to look up, but his eyes stayed trained on the floor. He wasn't prepared when the slap came to him. He felt his body jerk backwards on instinct and his foot braced itself so he didn't completely fall over from the rebound of the force. The man had been wearing rings—two of them to be exact. He couldn't see the man's hand from where his head had swivelled around; he just knew. When Draco felt himself look up, defiance shining in his eyes, the memory faded before he could see the man's face.

Shouts rang out around him, sounds jumping from every corner of the room and bombarding into his ears. Draco felt like he had just been run over by the Hogwarts express as it ran over the Scotland plains. His head was pounding something fierce and a blinding headache had sprouted in his temple where he could feel his own heartbeat in his head as it left a static feeling all throughout his body.

He carefully opened his eyes to the greenhouse's golden window panes with the light streaming through and Professor Sprout leaning down in front of him, snapping her fingers in front of his face like he was a cat that she wanted the attention of.

He groaned slightly into his hands.

"Someone bring him to the hospital wing!"

Draco didn't know who was speaking through the foggy blur of his mind, but he agreed with the sentiment all the same.

Madam Pomfrey will know what to do, he thought, but it was all in some jumbled mess of words that he couldn't quite make sense of, yet he understood what he was thinking anyway.

His cheek also felt like it was stinging—an echo of pain that once was, and not one that was current as he rubbed it absentmindedly.

Who was that man? Why did he always get images of him in front of that mantlepiece? And why did he always have to get memories at the worst possible time? (The last one was spouted with quite a bit of disdain.)

He finally decided that the floor had gotten uncomfortable and he slowly, slowly got his knees under himself to push himself up.

As he lifted his leg up he felt someone grab his arm to help him, and instinctively he flinched away. When he looked over to see who it was that had grabbed him, he noticed that it was Theo and a girl with yellow robes.

Bloody Hufflepuffs, he thought, then chuckled softly to himself at the fact that if Haisley were there she would probably glare at him.

The others in the greenhouse all had varying expressions on their faces, a small few worrying, some sneering at Draco, and a lot of them just straight up ignoring him except for the whispers that were scattering through the room like flies, darting this way and that, spreading around new rumours.