BANALITY : Draco Malfoy

62

I am left alone in the morning. Terry takes the Floo to the ministry so that he can get Veritaserum for one of his interviews that is tomorrow. He sent out letters last night and I got the first response from the Patil twins this morning shortly after he left. They are available, and they will be here after dinner. When the owl arrived with their letter, it cocked its head at me. I wonder if it recognizes me. After it is gone, I am once alone in the house.

It has been so long since I was last properly alone. I used to enjoy walking alone to work. I had managed a few seconds outside weeks ago, but Ron had caught up with me only a few minutes after I had come back into myself. Now, I am here for at least an hour.

I use Terry's radio to listen to music. I know the words even though I don't remember the song. The magic that robbed me has not stolen everything, and at least there is that.

Then, I find a pair of sunglasses in one of Terry's drawers. I consider putting them on to help me hide my identity, but it is raining outside. The clouds are grey. I might look more suspicious that way.

I pull out my coat from my bag. The last time I was in the rain was the day that Goyle found me in Inverness, when Graham walked me home to make sure that I was safe. Before then, it was when I fled to Draco's house after Graham had touched my hair. I was so cold. I haven't felt water on my skin since.

Even though I only have one pair of shoes, which aren't properly waterproof, I put them on and the coat. Then, I stand outside with tea. I try to sip it, but I do not quite like it. Maybe I do like apple juice more than any other liquid. My love of it seems like a very strange thing to steal from me. I suppose the person who stole my memory hates me more than I even understand.

There is the ghost of the touch of Draco's hand on my face, pinching me and forcing me to look at him, and I flinch. The tea sloshes over the edge of the mug. It is like the ocean in a thunderstorm, but my thoughts are not misty rain. Rather, my thoughts are hazy as though they are behind a fog. The thought of Draco's hands on me is real, but it is not real. They aren't Draco's hands. They weren't, I should say. Someone else was pretending to be Draco. Even things that didn't actually happen feel real.

I suppose that must be what Draco thinks when he remembers how Theodore Nott described my torture. While I didn't entirely die that day, he was right.

"You like to be outside," Terry says behind me. The rain is soft enough that he doesn't need to speak up.

"I was kept inside for a long time," I tell him. "A few weeks recently. Then I was inside for months before I lost my memory, so I'm told. When I was in hiding and all of that."

"Right," Terry says. "Most muggle-borns were hidden in an underground network. It was so secretive that there were only ever two witches or wizards who knew their location. To this day, people will not say whom they kept and where they hid. I suppose everyone is worried about another war."

I glance back at him, "another?"

"Well, Voldemort was first defeated on Halloween in 1980, and then again in 1998," Terry shrugs, "and before that, there was Grindelwald. Most of the public who weren't active in the war blamed those two wizards and their cronies for the war. There has not been a single policy shift to prevent this from happening again. Anti-muggle-born sentiment is on the rise in the rest of Western Europe, and it's always been bad in Eastern Europe. There are rumours of death squads in Poland. Nobody here talks about what's happening over there either. We act like its isolated, just like the violence here. It is easier to scapegoat a few people than to acknowledge that it's all of us that are complicit."