Tabula rasa. Those are the terms.

Get out of Azkaban, work at her insipid house-elf charity for a year, and pretend they've never met before.

It's weird, but anything is better than sitting in Azkaban for a second year.

It's like a fresh start.

The concept is tantalising.

He refrains from rolling his eyes as he agrees to the terms. "I'd love to act like I've never seen her before."

"The terms will be magically binding. Violate them, and you will return to fill the additional year of your sentence," the weevil-faced lawyer says.

Draco glances at his mother who sits eagerly beside him and is nodding her encouragement.

"Fine. I'm legally bound act like I don't know her. Sounds ideal. Where do I sign?"

He doesn't know why the clause even exists in the agreement. Three weeks on the job and he hasn't even laid eyes on her.

The day he arrives, he's shuffled off into a cramped office in the basement, and, after they try giving him a variety of different tasks, he ends up being assigned to write thank you letters.

It's his entire job.

Excellent penmanship is apparently the only usable skill that he possesses.

He assumes at first that it will be easy. He'll come in late, leave early, and spend a matter of minutes charming a couple dozen notes tops.

"Dear Bootlicker, Thank you terribly much for your generous donation of 500 galleons. I'm thrilled there was literally nothing else you could conceive of to do with your money. It will assuredly be used by yours truly to improve the lives of the sentient abominations called house-elves. Sincerely, love and kisses, the Wizarding world's favourite buck-toothed harridan, Hermione Granger."

No. It's not easy. Granger has elaborate requirements for all the thank you letters that she doesn't even bother to personally write.

He has to go through the society papers and Granger's detailed personal calendar to make references to the donor's last meeting with her. He's expected to ask about children and grandchildren by name and discuss the inner-workings of the charity as well as to relate anecdotes about all the sad little elves the donor's money saves.

Within a few weeks, he's maintaining a full-fledged correspondence between the most bizarre assortment of Wizarding folk, a centaur, two vampires, and an alleged forest troll. A correspondence that he is maintaining as Granger, whom he hasn't laid eyes on in years.

Supposedly she looks over all his letters before signing them and sending them off, but Draco doubts it. After weeks there, he still hasn't so much as caught sight of her bushy head.

He torn between a sense of outrage and admiration over what a slick ship she runs. Poor dear little Hermione, the Wizarding world's darling, has an entire legion of Yes-men at her beck and call, doing all the work she's allegedly achieving with her chipper can-do attitude.

He doesn't think she even shows up in her office most days. If she does, she never slips so much as a toe past the fourth floor where her office sits.

Granger has a matronly personal assistant the size of a mountain named Charlotte. The woman is like the female version of Crabbe and Goyle simultaneously. Draco is convinced she must be at least a quarter troll. She glares at Draco whenever "passing on messages" and makes clear to Draco that she'd gladly snap his spine if Granger ever gave her the go-ahead.

Draco accepts his "job" with his head down. He just has to endure it a year and then he's free. Maybe once he's not at risk of returning to Azkaban, he can expose what a fraud Granger and her charity are.

He finally sees Granger after two months.

She's walking by with her assistant when he's standing in the hallway, taking a break from his cramped office's inadequate air flow.

Granger catches sight of him all the way down the hallway and without hesitating, bolts down the hallway to him.

"Hi, I'm so sorry. You've been here for over a month, and I haven't said hi." She's beaming at him as she takes hold of his hand and shakes enthusiastically. Her assistant comes thundering down the hall after her. "I've been admiring your penmanship for weeks. I'm Hermione Granger, and you must be Draco Malfoy. I'm so pleased we could have you on the team here."

Draco stared at her blankly while she pumps his hand up and down.

Tabula rasa.

Everyone at the charity knows who he is, even though they make a show of not. There are loud comments about the kinds of people who would become Death Eaters. The receptionist pretends to be unable to recall his name or that he has a job there. Draco is obliged to go through the full sign-in process every morning as though he's a visitor.

However, Granger has no idea who he is. It's not an act. There is not even a flicker of recognition in her eyes as she grins up at him.

He's imagined their fake "meeting" a dozen different ways, but this iteration isn't one that's ever occurred to him.

"Granger," he says as she continues wringing his hand. Charlotte is ten feet away, her footsteps shaking the hall, and her eyes are threatening a slow and painful death. "It's been a—pleasure?"

"Miss Granger, you have a meeting with Gibbling to review charity finances in five minutes," Charlotte says as she reaches Granger, trying to tear her away from Draco.

"I do?" Granger's hand slips out of Draco's, and she looks chastened, as though she's been slapped. "I didn't remember—"

"I apologise, ma'am," the assistant says smoothly, inserting herself between Granger and Draco. "It slipped my mind, I only just remembered he sent a note this morning. I'm sure it will only take a few minutes."

Granger is craning her neck to look back at Draco as she's being herded away. She side-steps her assistant and cuts back.

"It was nice meeting you, Draco. I'm having a little party at my flat this Saturday with some of my friends. Would you want to come by? It's the least I can do after being so rude."

"I..." Draco glances back and forth between Granger's hopeful face and the venomous expression of Charlotte behind her, who is shaking her head warningly. "—don't think I can make it?"

"Oh. Well, I'm sure we'll see each other again."

Draco watches Granger trot off with her assistant in tow feeling incredibly confused about what's going on.

He feels like if anyone were going to tell him, they would have already done so. He's legally bound to play along with whatever this ridiculous farce is.

His mother has to know, but her lips are apparently sealed on the matter.

"You're out of Azkaban, darling. Focus on that and leave everything else alone."

He wants to, but he can't help but try to figure it out. Why doesn't Granger remember him? It feels like he's been personally and exclusively excised from her life, and he hasn't the foggiest idea why he was the only one singled out.

Granger still knows his mother. She's still an active participant post-war rebuilding and gives speeches from time to time about things like the Battle of Hogwarts.

She isn't the type to fuck with her memory based on anything and everything Draco knows about her. If she were, he doesn't know why she'd choose to forget him. And if she did choose to forget him, he doesn't know why her weird melange of employees and friends would let her hire him.

It feels personal, and he can't bring himself to leave it alone. Is there anything else she doesn't remember?

When he isn't ghost-writing her correspondence, he starts going through the newspapers and her old calendars trying to pinpoint exactly when Granger may have forgotten his existence.

He thinks it happened about six months after he was imprisoned in Azkaban following the war. Granger's exhaustively detailed calendars start immediately after that, and her public appearances were sporadic and odd up until then.

He starts hanging around in hallways when he thinks he might run into her. Her assistant is always a few steps behind her, glaring at Draco as though she knows why he's there and inventing meetings and events in order to get Granger away from him.

He's been there four months and has barely spoken to her for more than ten minutes in the entire time.

He's in the middle of writing a sarcastically cordial letter to Romanian vampire when his office door cracks open and Granger sneaks into his office.

He looks at her as she drops into the chair across from his desk and lets out a heavy sigh of relief.

Draco eyes the door, waiting for Charlotte to burst in like a raging erumpant.

Granger notices where his gaze is directed. "Don't worry. I sent Lotte on an errand. We have at least fifteen minutes before she comes looking for me."

Draco looks back to Granger. He doesn't know what to make of her.

This version of Granger is weirdly cheerful, like all her prickly defensiveness has been smoothed away. She still looks frightful, as though she suffers a phobia of hair potion, she's still bizarre and obsessed with things like saving house-elves and everything else in the world. But he feels like she's an entirely different person around him.

Maybe he'd just never known her without her claws out.

Granger shifts and looks slightly uncomfortable. "She's very protective of me. I—I lose track of things sometimes."

Draco just nods, not really sure how anyone who keeps records of their daily activities as exhaustively as Granger does could possibly be accused of losing track of things.

She glances around his office. "Why on earth did they put you in here? This room looks like a storage closet."

Draco refrains from telling her that it literally is a storage closet and the absolute furthest room from her office. He measured one day, just to confirm it to himself.

"I'm not picky," he lies. "It's more comfortable than Azkaban."

Her mouth purses. "That's hardly a commendation. I'll have you moved upstairs. I'm sure we still have a few extra offices. Somewhere with a window and plants! My friend, Neville, is a genius with plants. Once we've moved you, I can get a few."

She pokes around in his office for a few more minutes, interrogating him about how he likes his job and how his "co-workers" are treating him. Draco lies his way through her questioning until she stands up looking at him thoughtfully.

The next day, Charlotte appears looking enraged while he's at the front desk filling out the visitor sheet for the hundredth time.

"Miss Granger wants your office moved to the fourth floor," she says, looking as though someone has force-fed her a lemon.

Draco's new office is two doors down from Granger's. He has an entire wall of windows.

Granger pops in relentlessly, bringing him plants and knitted tea-cosy, and "Lotte" looks more and more as though she wants to throttle him.

Granger takes to sneaking into his office whenever Lotte is out running errands. Which seems to occur suspiciously often.

Draco is certain that Granger's aware that there is something odd going on. Her eyes are sly and calculating. She knows she's being "handled", and that it involves endless attempts by all her employees to keep her as far away from Draco as possible, which makes her obstinately seek him out all the more.

At first Draco tries to ignore her, but she is his boss. He feels obligated to talk to her whenever she shows up.

Eventually they talk about all the letters he's writing on her behalf. She looks down at her lap and spends several seconds straightening her skirt.

"You must think it's odd that I don't keep up with the donors personally," she says, looking up at him.

"Not at all," he lies. "I'm sure it's common for charities of this size. I'm happy my handwriting can be of some use."

"I used to—" she says, her voice somewhat halting. "But—" her head jerks slightly, "my—my memory can be rather—that's why I keep so many notes in my calendars, to keep track."

Her expression is visibly strained, her beaming effusiveness gone.

"You're a very busy person," he says, eyeing her carefully.

She gives a stiff little nod and her eyebrows furrow. "I think—I used to remember things better. Now, if I don't have someone to remind me about things... sometimes"—her head jerks—"I forget details."

"It's probably just stress."

"Maybe," she sounds unconvinced.

She has all the traditional symptoms of someone who's been extensively and powerfully obliviated. Absent-mindedness. She's chronically forgetful, Draco realises over time.

Charlotte does invent appointments to get Granger away from Draco, but almost as many reminders are for real events that Hermione forgets she's headed to. On several occasions, Draco finds her standing alone in the hallway, trying to remember which door is her office.

She's still smart. Still blisteringly smart, but it's like watching a bird with its pinions clipped. It's clear she's intended to be airborne, but someone has hobbled her.

It's painful to witness, and it's made worse by the fact that she's clearly aware of it.

The memory loss somehow seems to centre around Draco, which he cannot understand. If someone malicious were to go and wipe something from her memory, her best friend's school rival is not the person Draco would pick.

Obliviation is self-protective. The mind will not consider the idea of tampering or let her realise her memories are incomplete. Whenever a conversation strays anywhere near their shared past, her attention abruptly, almost violently pivots to a different topic.

However, despite how obstinately her memory keeps her from suspecting any past acquaintance with Draco, she can't seem to stay away from him. As though she can instinctively tell he's a missing piece.

One day she tells him about a potion idea she has, and it's almost brilliant except she's clearly forgotten a brewing idiosyncrasy of a key ingredient. She realises she's missed something and just comes to a rambling halt in the middle of her explanation, a drawn, embarrassed expression sweeping across her face.

"Never mind. I think—I should...maybe it will work out if I write it down—" she looks down and her cheeks are stained scarlet.

"Sting slime needs to simmer for six hours uncovered," he says. "Unless you want the potion to result in weightlessness."

She stares at him for a moment and then her face breaks into a smile. "Yes! Six hours of simmering. That's when you leave it under the full moon and gather fresh asphodel." She sighs with relief and presses a hand against her head. "That's what I was missing. I thought—thank you, Draco. I thought—I thought maybe I'd gotten it all wrong again."

Her exuberance causes Draco's entire body to grow warm and a weird bubbling sensation in his stomach.

He avoids her eyes. "I haven't brewed much since leaving prison, but everything else sounded correct. If you want to send it on to a potions journal, I can look it over if you ever write it all out."

Her eyes are shining, and she beams at him. "That would be so helpful. My friends didn't really care much for potions class. I'm so glad I found you."

She skips slightly as she leaves his office which causes his entire face to twitch repeatedly as he witnesses it.

Granger spends increasing amounts of time in his office, and Draco doesn't—well, he doesn't exactly mind.

She's infinitely better company than dementors, he tells himself.

She incredibly interested in him, in a way that he has no idea how to handle. She wants to know what he'll do once his contract with the charity is over, and he finds himself trying to come up with ideas to share with her that don't don't merely involve him indolently frittering away his time on his family's properties.

It isn't as though he's not allowed to be friends with her. The terms of his contract simply require him to give no indication of any prior acquaintance with her.

They can be friends, he tells himself when she invites herself into his office to have lunch with him.

Good friends even, he reasons, when she invites him to her flat for dinner one evening.

There's nothing in the contract that restricts them from being more than friends. He's certain of it. He's checked and rechecked.

Hermione is perched on the arm of his desk chair.

Their faces are getting slowly closer and closer until he can feel her nervous breathing. She has the most beautiful eyes. Her hair falls forward as his nose brushes against her.

His hand ventures up until his fingertips trace along her cheek.

She smiles. Her eyes smile and the corner of her mouth curves faintly up as she dips her head lower.

Their lips are almost touching when the door bursts open and Charlotte storms across the room.

"Miss Granger is supposed to be at a board meeting," she says as she rushes Hermione away.

Draco has barely gotten his heart rate back down to a steady pace when Charlotte returns in a state of seething rage. She grips him by the robes and physically drags him from the building.

"You're contagiously ill. Bed-ridden. I don't want to see you set foot in this building for a month," she says, glowering at him. "Stay away from her, you Death Eater bastard."

Draco goes home sulkily. His mother is in France visiting a cousin and he has nothing to do but lie about indolently drinking.

The attempted separation goes as well as Draco expects. Charlotte may be obsessively loyal to Hermione, but she clearly didn't think through what sending Draco home sick would result in.

Hermione shows up at Malfoy Manor through the floo after three days. Draco has to bolt through the manor and dives into bed mere seconds before she comes trotting into his bedroom, carrying a basket packed with soup and potions.

She fusses over him for several minutes while he lies and pretends to be languishing. Finally she sits down, looking endearingly awkward, and starts updating him on the various going ons at the charity.

As the minutes tick by, Draco can't help but develop a sense of unease. There's something off about her.

Her eyes begin darting around. She speaks faster and faster. Her hand rises up and touches her throat before twitching up to her temple. Her head jerks.

It finally dawns on Draco why she doesn't remember him.

She breaks off mid-sentence, her eyes darting around wildly.

"Draco—have I—have I—been here before?"

Draco sits up instantly and reaches for her, trying to keep his voice steady. "Hermione. Hermione, look at me. Focus on me. You were telling me about the elves that came to you yesterday. Don't look around. Focus on the elves. Let's get you back to the office. I'm feeling better. Let's get out of here."

She doesn't seem to hear him.

She glances up and catches sight of the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A whimpering gasp escapes her, and she falls backwards off her chair.

Draco lunges, but she stumbles to her feet and skitters away from him.

Her head starts jerking violently.

"We didn't! We didn't—"

Her voice breaks off with a sob.

Her face is turning white, and her eyes lock on his. Her voice drops into a ragged, pleading whisper that pulls up memories that Draco has tried to bury in depths of his mind. "Please... Malfoy... Malfoy...please—"

Her head jerks. "We didn't! We found it—"

She starts screaming at the top of her lungs.

It's one endless scream that vibrates and tears the air apart. Draco doesn't know what to do. Hermione keeps screaming until her whole body starts shaking violently.

Her voice abruptly cuts off, and she drops to the ground.

Draco has to leap to catch her.

He's shaking with panic and seething with rage as he carries her downstairs and through the floo to St Mungo's.

He nearly decks Potter when he and Weasley come bolting down the hallway into the Janus Thickey Ward.

Draco wants to murder them both. "You couldn't have bothered to explain that the reason she doesn't remember me is because you obliviated her entire memory of Malfoy Manor?"

They just shove him out of the way as they rush into her room and leave him waiting outside.

Potter is the first one to re-emerge, more than an hour later. He stands staring at Draco for a minute. "She'll—she should be fine," he says in a dull voice. "The mind-healers will just have to reseal the memories."

Draco glares at him. He's still shaking. He doesn't think he's stopped shaking the entire time. "Why didn't anyone just tell me why she didn't remember me? Why the fuck did you obliviate her at all? Do know what you've done to her mind?"

Potter's expression turns deadly. "Do I know what I've done to her? Why do you think it happened, Malfoy? Did it never cross your mind that there might be long term consequences for telling your insane aunt that Hermione was Muggle-born."

Potter's face starts turning white with rage. "If you want to know whose fault this is—try looking in a fucking mirror."

Draco stares at Potter in blank horror.

"Did you think people just get over torture? Since the war, St Mungo's has discovered there's an entire spectrum of brain damage that the cruciatus can cause, prior to reaching the point of insanity. Your aunt didn't torture Hermione to insanity, but just—barely. We thought she was fine. The first couple months afterward—she seemed fine. She started having neurological issues a few months after the war. When she got them checked here at St Mungo's, they found out the cruciatus had fried parts of her brain. That's—apparently that's how it works."

Potter pulls off his glasses and wipes them. He refuses to look at Draco. "The only way they could contain it was by walling off the damage with magic, by using targeted obliviation. So—that's what we did. It was just coincidental that she forgot entirely about you. I guess, for her, you were just as much a part of it as your Aunt."

Draco stares at Potter and doesn't know what emotions he's experiencing. A lot. An entire maelstrom. More emotions than he knew he had. More than he ever wanted to feel.

"Why—Why did you let her hire me?" he finally forces himself to ask.

Potter's face hardens. "That—was your mom's meddling. Your release was conditional on your ability to secure a job. To the surprise of no one, no one wanted to hire you." He scoffs and looks down, his voice becomes mocking. "She'll do anything to protect her son. She'd heard Hermione didn't remember you, so she went to her with a whole sob story about her poor son who'd been forced to take the Dark Mark before he was an adult and now he was rotting in Azkaban because no one would give him a chance."

Potter stares bitterly at him. "Hermione can never say no to a lost cause." He gives an empty laugh. "We couldn't explain to her why she shouldn't without endangering her. We thought if you and your mother were both magically gagged, and Hermione was kept away from you, that it would be doable. But of course she noticed how lonely you were and decided to take you under her wing."

Potter exhales slowly and swallows. "Stay away from her, Malfoy." His voice wobbles slightly. "The healers say you and your house are her main triggers. If you hang around her, she will inevitably relapse again. Every time they have to re-obliviate her, it's going to carve away a little more of her mind and memories. If there's even a shred of anything decent about you, stay away from her."

Draco manages to nod once before turning and walking unsteadily away.

When he's home, he floo-calls his mother and yells at her until his throat gives out.

He packs a bag and gets a cheap room in Diagon Alley. It smells and there's noise from the bar below, but it's not screaming. There are no chandeliers.

He returns to "work" after a month and is informed that his office has been moved back into the basement. He doesn't even blink at the news.

He resumes corresponding with Hermione's growing donor list.

He doesn't see her again.

Charlotte no longer bothers with passing on messages personally in order to communicate her utter loathing of him. She doesn't ever leave Hermione's side.

Draco only has to work at the charity for two more months. He puts up a calendar and X's off each day.

He's walking back from his lunch break two weeks later when he catches sight of Hermione's bushy hair all the way down the hall. He ducks quickly into a nearby closet and waits until he's certain she's gone.

He nearly crashes into her as he steps back out.

Her eyes are bright and she's slightly breathless from running. Charlotte is thundering down the hall after her.

Hermione beams up at him as she sticks out her hand. "Hi! Hi, I'm so so sorry. You've been here for months and I haven't even said hello. I'm Hermione Granger, and you must be Draco Malfoy. I'm so pleased we could have you on the team here."

Draco stares down at her.

There is not even a flicker of recognition in her eyes as she smiles up at him.

His throat tightens until it's like being strangled to death. His heart is beating itself to death inside his chest.

A second year in Azkaban would have been infinitely less painful than this.

He sneers down at the proffered hand. "If you don't mind, I just washed my hands. I don't want filth like you sliming them up."