Ginny woke slowly, her mind crawling back toward consciousness like it was dragging itself through thick honey. For a few seconds, she let herself believe she was home. Her body was warm, pressed into something soft, and the quiet around her felt familiar in that hazy, just-woken way that made you forget the details of your life but still feel safe inside them. The air even smelled sweet, like clean skin and soft linens, and she almost sighed into it. Almost.
But then her fingertips brushed the sheets, and a low, creeping awareness started to rise in her chest. The fabric wasn't cotton or anything she owned—it was silk, thick and smooth and expensive in a way that felt alien. The kind of luxury that didn't belong to her. She shifted, the softness too perfect, too pristine, like a bed in a catalogue or a hotel she couldn't afford. Everything was too still. Too untouched. There was no warmth from a recently shared space, no sign that anyone else had ever curled into the mattress with sleep still in their bones. Just silence.
Her eyes opened slowly. Emerald curtains hung heavy over the windows, shutting out the light completely, and across from her, a crystal decanter sat on a polished vanity, gleaming beside a single cut-glass tumbler. The air was cool, faintly perfumed with something floral and faintly spiced, something unfamiliar that clung to her skin like it didn't belong there. The bedframe was dark mahogany, carved in ornate swirls she didn't recognize, and the floor beneath was marble—real marble, cold and pale and heartless.
She sat up, slower than she meant to, her muscles sore in ways she couldn't yet name. Her heart had started to beat faster, thudding against her ribs like it was trying to wake up the rest of her. And that was when the dread crept in, quiet and cold at the edges of her breath.
Nothing in the room was hers. Not the furniture, not the air, not the silence.
For reasons she couldn't name, he was already there when she sat up, seated just beyond the foot of the bed like he had never left. Blaise Zabini, shirtless, perfectly still, his spine straight in a carved armchair that looked older than the house itself. The wood was dark and polished, something expensive and heavy, and he fit into it like he had been born to sit just like that—calm, composed, untouched by sleep or surprise. The light slanted across his skin in a way that made him look almost surreal, more sculpture than man, all gold and shadow and elegance wrapped in human quiet.
He didn't rush. Didn't speak. Just sat there like he had been waiting for her to wake, like this was something they did often, something familiar. His fingers moved with slow precision, lifting a porcelain teapot to pour steaming tea into two matching cups. Everything about him was unshaken, like he had done this a hundred times before. Like he had been planning for this moment and knew exactly how it would unfold, even down to the stillness in his breath.
She watched him, unable to find the right place in her mind to put him, unable to match the image in front of her with anything she could remember. And still, he didn't look startled to see her awake. He didn't rush to explain. He didn't ask what she remembered or if she knew who he was.
Instead, he looked up at her slowly, and when their eyes met, he gave her the smallest smile. Not smug. Not coaxing. Just warm. Just real.
And then he said it. One word. Soft and low, like it wasn't a name so much as a truth: "Amore."
It hit her like something old and intimate, like a song you almost remember but can't place. His voice was smooth and steady, not searching for her recognition but offering something she couldn't quite explain. Like he believed it. Like he had always called her that. Like this—this strange morning in this stranger's bed—was just another piece of a life she had once lived and lost somewhere inside herself.
She blinked at him, slow and uncertain, her body still catching up to the fact that she was awake. Her head felt full of wool, too thick and heavy, like sleep had stitched itself into her skull. Her mouth was dry, the back of her throat rough, and when she finally spoke, the name that came out didn't feel like a choice. It just happened , like her tongue remembered it without asking her permission.
"Zabini."
Not quiet. Not warm. There was no tenderness in it. It came out tight and unsure, as if she were saying it from the edge of a cliff she didn't remember climbing. Like she knew there was danger in the shape of it, but didn't know why. A test. A challenge. A word that might mean something or nothing at all.
He flinched. Not dramatically, not enough for someone else to notice maybe, but she caught it. A small shift in his posture, his fingers hovering just above the teacup without landing. His eyes found hers quickly, but something had changed in them. The warmth hadn't disappeared completely, but it had pulled back. Like a tide retreating just before a storm.
He said her name again. Not the one she'd just used. The other one. The one he clearly preferred.
"Amore."
Soft. Almost quiet enough to miss. But there was weight in it, the kind that came from using a word often enough that it started to mean more than it was supposed to. He said it like it belonged to her. Like it belonged to both of them. But she didn't know how to hold it, and that made her skin feel too tight.
"You had an accident," he said, like he was offering a headline, something to fill the silence.
Her brow furrowed. Something inside her chest gave a small, sick twist. Not because the sentence didn't make sense, but because her body reacted to it before her mind could. Like there was something under her skin that had been waiting to hear those words.
"What kind of accident?"
She hated how fragile her voice sounded. Like a child asking about something everyone else already knew.
He didn't answer right away. And that pause—that single, stretched moment—made everything worse. He ran a hand through his hair. Not performatively, not to charm her. He looked genuinely tired, like the question had taken something out of him. When he finally met her eyes again, there was something stripped bare in his face, something real.
"You fell," he said at last. "Off the top of the stairs. It was bad. You hit your head."
His voice softened as he spoke, the way people do when they don't know whether to lie or to let the truth fall on its own. It wasn't pity, but it wasn't confidence either. It sounded like someone holding a porcelain cup and not sure if it was already cracked.
"I'm not great at this," he added, and his eyes dipped for a second, like he couldn't stand to see what the words were doing to her. "The explaining part, I mean. But… you hit your head hard, Gin. And now you have short-term memory loss."
She stared at him, her mouth just slightly open, but no sound came out. Her thoughts felt too scattered to form into questions, let alone answers. It wasn't that she didn't believe him. It was that the words floated in the air without connecting to anything inside her. Like a sentence cut out of a book she hadn't read.
"Amnesia," she repeated, and the word tasted strange. Too clinical. Too clean. It didn't belong in her mouth. She wanted it to feel like a key, like something that would unlock a hidden door. But instead, it just lodged in her chest like a stone, heavy and cold and unwanted.
She looked down at her hands. They didn't feel like hers either.
Blaise shifted in his chair, careful and unhurried, his hand moving from the teacup to rest casually on his knee as though he hadn't just rewritten the story of her entire existence in a single breath, and his voice, when it came again, was measured and calm in that infuriatingly gentle way people adopt when they think fragility might crack if you speak above a whisper.
"The healer told me not to overwhelm you," he said, and he was watching her now the way someone might watch a wine glass teetering on the edge of a high shelf, as if the slightest wrong word would send her crashing to the floor. "Not to give you too much all at once."
"So," she said, her voice dull but trying to hold onto something steady, "where exactly am I?"
He smiled again, not the wide, easy kind but the practiced one, the one she had already begun to realize he used when he was crafting an answer with more care than truth. "You're home," he said simply, and then, with the softest pause, "I mean, our home."
She blinked slowly, once. "Right. Home," she murmured, glancing toward the windows again where the light had just begun to soften across the floor. "I see that it's a castle. So I can tell you're rich. Are we dating or something? Is that why I live here?"
He made a low sound that might have been a laugh but felt more like an indulgent sigh, and he leaned forward just enough for her to feel the weight of his presence stretch between them.
"It's not a castle," he corrected, his tone lilting, like he couldn't help himself, "it's a manor. And you decided to move in on our fourth date. We're married."
Her eyes widened slightly, but the rest of her face remained blank, and she stared at him for a long moment without blinking, her silence louder than any reaction might have been.
He tilted his head just slightly, lips curling at the edges in a way that might have been fond if not for the way it made her spine go stiff.
"We've been happily married for five years," he added, as if that detail might somehow smooth the shock from her expression, as if it were a reassurance rather than another impossible weight pressed down on her chest.
"Fuck me," she muttered finally, pressing a hand to her forehead, trying to ground herself in the reality that kept shifting under her feet. "How old am I?"
"Twenty-six, love," he replied easily, and his voice slipped into something lower, warmer, nearly affectionate. "Although, might I add, you still look eighteen."
She looked at him, her face unreadable but her eyes sharp with something she hadn't yet put a name to. "Are you always this flirty?"
His gaze softened, and for a fraction of a second, something behind his expression flickered like a candle guttering in wind, longing or maybe something darker, something far older.
"You have no idea how much I lo—" he began, then stopped abruptly, his smile folding over itself with practiced charm. "Anyways. Let's get breakfast, maybe?"
He led her through the bedroom without a word, his hand hovering near the small of her back but never quite touching, guiding her with the subtlety of someone who had long ago learned that control need not be loud to be absolute, and the door he opened for her revealed a bathroom that looked more like a spa than a place meant for the mundane rituals of daily life.
There was marble everywhere, clean and veined and impossibly smooth, with gold fixtures that gleamed like they had never known dust, and across the far wall, an open arch led into a space she only recognized once she stepped forward and took in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, the velvet-lined drawers, the rows of silk robes and designer heels arranged so precisely it looked like a showroom.
For a long, stunned moment, she didn't speak, only stared at the kind of closet she had only ever seen in magazines, the kind that made her wonder if she had ever been this woman, or if someone had dressed her up in the skin of someone far more expensive than she had ever imagined herself to be.
"How rich are you, Zabini?" she asked finally, the words coming out with a kind of dazed wonder, her fingers grazing the edge of a pearl-detailed hanger like it might bite her.
He didn't flinch at the name this time, only tilted his head slightly, lips curving with that effortless arrogance that somehow never quite managed to be smug. "We," he corrected smoothly, not missing a beat, "and very."
She pulled open a drawer and nearly dropped the contents when she saw what lay inside, a single couture thong, black lace and impossibly delicate, the kind of thing that cost more than she wanted to think about, and she held it up with two fingers like it might disintegrate under the weight of her touch.
"I have a couture thong," she muttered, more to herself than to him, and then, louder, "How rich are you really?"
He met her eyes in the mirror across from them, and his reflection was maddeningly serene. "Does it matter?"
She stared back at him for a moment, trying to find the version of herself who might have said no without hesitation, and when she didn't find her, she forced a smile that felt too wide and not quite real. "I don't know," she said honestly, tucking the lingerie back where it belonged, "does it?"
She didn't wait for him to answer. Instead, she turned away from the closet and toward the shower, pausing at the entrance to the marble-tiled space and glancing back over her shoulder with a raised brow. "Well, if you'll forgive me, I think I'll go take a shower."
He followed her without hesitation, steps soft, shadow-like, close enough that she could feel the shift in the air behind her, and she turned fully then, her expression caught somewhere between amusement and discomfort.
"I don't know how close we are, really," she said, gesturing vaguely to the space between them, "but I'm guessing we're not quite close yet for you to watch me strip. Some privacy, yeah?"
His eyes dropped for a breath, not to her body but to the floor, as if he'd only just realized what he was doing. "Oh. Yes," he said quickly, blinking once, then again, as if waking from a dream. "Yes, sorry."
She stepped into the bathroom and let her fingers trail along the edge of the glass shower door, then glanced back again, more out of instinct than anything else.
"Do we shower together?" she asked, tone dry but curious, unsure if she was teasing him or genuinely trying to understand the shape of what they had once been.
He didn't hesitate. His voice was calm, confident, and far too intimate. "We do everything together."
The steam curled around her like silk as the water cascaded down her skin, warm and indulgent in a way that felt almost too generous, as though even the temperature of the shower had been tailored to a version of her that she no longer remembered. For a while she let the sensation wash over her, hoping the heat might loosen the stiffness in her neck, might melt the ache in her limbs, might bring her mind into sharper focus, but instead it only made her more aware of how foreign her own body felt.
She reached absently for the soap and caught sight of herself in the glass, just a flicker at first, just the pale curve of her waist made hazy by steam, but something tugged at her attention, something not quite right.
Her fingers paused mid-motion as she looked down, really looked this time, and that was when she saw them—small, pale marks scattered across the left side of her stomach, the edges of them uneven, like they had been half-healed and half-erased, the skin puckered in delicate starbursts that had no reason to be there.
They were old, maybe months, maybe years, but unmistakably burn scars, thin and silent and undeniably real. She raised her hand slowly, touched one with the pad of her finger, and winced not from pain but from the cold rush of confusion that flooded her chest, because she had no memory of how she got them, no explanation, no image of fire or accident or anything at all, only the sudden awareness that her body remembered something her mind refused to give her.
She stood there in the water, frozen in place despite the heat pouring over her, her fingers still resting lightly against one of the marks, and all at once the bathroom that had moments ago felt like a dream now felt like a stage set, beautiful and false and far too quiet, and the realization settled deep into her spine like something rotten wrapped in silk.
As she stepped back into the room, hair still damp from the shower and her body wrapped in one of those impossibly soft robes that felt like it had been conjured from clouds and crushed lilies, she barely had a second to register her surroundings before a sudden flurry of motion overtook her.
Three small figures darted across the carpet with the kind of energy that could only come from creatures who had been waiting in breathless, anxious silence and were now utterly incapable of containing themselves, their feet bouncing in place like they were caught between reverence and barely restrained joy.
"Oh, Mistress!" one of them cried in a voice so high and bright it echoed off the marble archway, and before she could react, a tiny elf had launched itself into her arms, wrapping thin limbs around her middle with such desperation that she had to stagger a step back to regain her balance.
The pressure of the embrace was immediate and fierce, and the sheer sincerity of it sent a sharp pang through her chest before she could name it.
"Oh, hello, love," she murmured instinctively, lowering her arms to cradle the tiny creature, who immediately began sobbing against her chest in great hiccupping gasps, her small shoulders shaking with what could only be described as profound, unfiltered relief.
Two more followed close behind—Fivvy, with wide shining eyes and a little bow tied too tightly around her ears, and Momki, who looked like she was trying not to cry and failing miserably.
They wrapped themselves around Ginny's legs and waist like roots trying to keep her from ever vanishing again, and Ginny stood in the middle of the room, overwhelmed and blinking against the sudden wetness behind her eyes, one hand stroking Bobsy's trembling back while the other hovered awkwardly near Fivvy's twitching ear.
"It's okay, it's okay, loves," she whispered, the words pouring out before she had time to question how natural they felt, and she wasn't sure whether she was trying to comfort them or herself, or if it even mattered.
The door opened behind her then, and she didn't need to turn around to know it was him. The air shifted when he entered, steady and confident, the scent of breakfast drifting in before his voice did.
"That is enough," Blaise said, not unkindly but with the crisp finality of someone who was used to being obeyed the first time he spoke. "Mistress is awake, yeah. Maybe stop strangling her, Bobsy."
The elves all squeaked in alarm and released her at once, stepping back in a flurry of apologies and half-curtsies, their eyes still wet, their hands wringing the hems of their embroidered pillowcases like they couldn't decide whether to cry again or beam with joy.
Ginny looked at them all, these strange, affectionate little creatures who had clearly adored her once, and managed a smile that felt shaky but real. "Well. I'm happy that you're all so happy that I'm awake."
Behind her, Blaise set the silver tray of breakfast down on the table and straightened, his tone cool and pointed in that way that made her skin prickle.
"Ladies," he said, addressing the elves without needing to raise his voice, "Mistress does not currently have a memory of you. We discussed this."
Momki, who had been doing a rather valiant job of holding herself together with her tiny hands clasped in front of her chest and her chin wobbling like a leaf in a storm, suddenly let out a fresh wail so dramatic it startled even Fivvy, whose lower lip had just begun to tremble again in sympathy.
Her knees buckled beneath her, and she collapsed onto the carpet with a sob that could have belonged to a Shakespearean widow, her little face scrunched in devastation as she buried it in the hem of Ginny's robe like it was the only fabric that could ever console her again.
"Mistress forgot us," she cried, hiccupping between syllables like the heartbreak might actually shatter her bones, "because we were not good enough for her. We were not her perfect little elves."
Blaise, to his credit, barely sighed before stepping in, the tray of breakfast left momentarily abandoned on the nearby table as he crossed the room with the resigned air of a man who had been through this precise meltdown at least six times already. Without a word, he bent down and scooped Momki up like a fussy child, her arms flailing dramatically until he adjusted his grip and carried her like a sleepy toddler toward the nearest ottoman, where he deposited her with surprising gentleness and a very tired look in his eyes.
"Love," he said patiently, crouching in front of her as she sniffled into the hem of her pillowcase tunic, "we talked about this. For weeks. She did not forget you because you were not good enough. She still loves you. She loves you very much. She just forgot you for the moment. That's all."
Ginny, who had been blinking at the scene in a strange mix of horror, affection, and mild existential confusion, nodded quickly as all three elves looked up at her with round, watery eyes that made her feel like the villain in a fairy tale.
"Yes, loves, of course I love you," she said gently, reaching out to squeeze Fivvy's tiny shoulder, which promptly sent the elf into another breathless sob, though this one seemed to be from joy. "I don't want to disappoint you. I really don't."
That seemed to be enough, at least for now. The crying gradually ebbed into sniffling, the dramatic clinging turned into shy smiles, and within a few minutes, the room returned to something resembling order. Blaise waved them all toward the breakfast table with a flick of his fingers, and they scurried off with little curtsies and hiccupping giggles, leaving Ginny standing in the middle of the room still unsure of what had just happened.
Once everyone had finally settled, toast buttered and tea poured and eggs arranged in perfect symmetry on fine porcelain, Blaise sat back in his chair and glanced over at her with a familiar glint in his eyes that she couldn't quite read but felt anyway.
"I apologize," he said, folding his hands neatly in his lap like a man addressing a boardroom, "I already talked with them about this several times. But as you can see, they have chosen not to listen."
Ginny, who was carefully sipping her tea and pretending not to be spiraling internally, let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh. "I don't know how to explain it," she said slowly, eyes flicking to each of the elves who were now watching her like she hung the stars in the sky, "but I feel something when I look at them. It's strange. Like a warmth. A pull. I think I do love them. Even if I can't remember why. Is that weird?"
Blaise, who had been buttering his toast with the precision of a man doing surgery, didn't even hesitate before replying, his voice casual but far too quick. "What about me?"
The question landed in the middle of the conversation like a dropped wineglass, and Ginny froze mid-bite, fork hovering halfway to her mouth as her eyes flicked up to meet his. He was watching her too closely again, head tilted slightly, that small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth like he already knew the answer and was waiting to see if she would get it right.
She swallowed slowly, not the bite but the sudden knot in her throat. "I feel something about you too," she said, carefully, thoughtfully. "Something warm. Familiar. Do we really love each other?"
"Very much," he said instantly, and the way he said it was so firm, so final, so quietly delighted, that it made her heart skip a beat before the rest of the sentence hit her like a velvet-wrapped punch. "Although, you only say it when I make you come."
"Zabini," she gasped, dropping her fork against her plate with a scandalized glare that he clearly enjoyed far too much.
He didn't even flinch. Just sipped his tea like a saint.
After breakfast, once the elves had scurried off to clear the table and Blaise had disappeared with a murmured promise to handle some correspondence in his study, Ginny wandered back into the bedroom with her robe clutched tightly around her, the silk clinging damp to her skin in places where the shower had not fully dried. The air still smelled faintly of bergamot and lemon scones, but there was something quieter about the space now, something that made it feel less like a room she belonged in and more like a set that had been carefully arranged around her while she wasn't looking.
She crossed the floor slowly, her bare feet silent against the plush carpet, and as she reached for one of the wardrobe drawers, unsure whether she should dress formally or casually or if she even owned anything in between, her eyes caught on a glint of gold from the vanity, something reflective nestled between a stack of delicate perfume bottles and a tall, ornate mirror that curved at the edges like it had been plucked straight from a storybook.
She stepped closer without really meaning to, drawn to it by instinct or maybe boredom, and that was when she saw it.
A single framed clipping, positioned as though it had always been there, resting at a slight angle like it had been touched often, as if someone had picked it up and looked at it daily. The paper had yellowed just slightly with time, but the headline remained bold and triumphant, scrawled across the top in gilded ink that shimmered in the light pouring through the curtains. The Golden Couple of the Wizarding World, it declared, accompanied by a photograph that twisted her stomach the moment her eyes landed on it.
It was her.
Her, in a gown she had never seen before, standing beside Blaise in formal robes so immaculately tailored they looked conjured.
He had one hand resting on the small of her back, the other clasped around hers, and they were both smiling for the camera in a way that looked practiced but intimate, like they had mastered the performance of love and comfort long before the picture had been taken.
Her hair had been styled into elegant waves, her lipstick perfectly matched to the bouquet she held, and her eyes—her eyes were fixed on him in a way that made her chest ache, because whoever that woman was, she had known something Ginny no longer did.
She stared at the image for a long moment, unable to look away, as if her mind might begin to unlock something just by studying the angle of her own face. But there was nothing. No flicker of memory. No flash of recognition. Just the creeping, unshakeable sense that she had been placed into someone else's story midway through, expected to carry on as though nothing had changed.
She reached out, fingers brushing the glass, and it felt like touching a stranger. There had been a wedding, clearly. There had been a ceremony and vows and an entire world that had watched them do it. There had been cameras and headlines and bouquets. There had been a version of her who had looked at Blaise Zabini with love in her eyes.
And she did not remember a second of it.