Summary: Harry is hit by an unknown curse during the Final Battle. The effect is a timed Obliviation every 24 hours.

Author's Note: This is Dark. A one-shot told in two parts.

I had this idea flitting around in my mind for a while. I'm still playing with the second half, but please let me know what you think!

No Pairings.

Tabula Rasa- "Something existing in its original or pristine state, used especially of the mind before impressions are recorded as a result of experience" (Sadlier Vocab Book)

TABULA RASA

They came in every day. They came in every day at 7, so that they'd be there when he woke. Sometimes they'd walk in too late, and Harry would already be drenched in sweat, shouting for mercy from a tormentor unknown. Sometimes he'd wake up just fine and give them a dazed smile that brought them to tears. Sometimes he didn't wake at all.

...

"Ready?" Ron asks, looking concernedly at his girlfriend. Hermione nods, blinking away tears.

"I'll never be ready, you know this, Ron."

"Yeah. I do know."

Ron pushes the door open to the little isolated ward where Harry is just waking up, dazed and confused.

"Who?" he asks, blinking in confusion. He looks wildly around for his glasses and when he finds them on the bedside table, he jams them on his face, ready to run out of bed. "Wha-?"

"Shhshhh..." Hermione soothes. "Just relax."

"NO! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" Harry shouts, scrambling away from them where he promptly curls up in a ball. "Get the Fuck away from me!"

Hermione looks pained. A shadow crosses her eyes, but she doesn't cry, not yet.

"Harry, Harry, it's your friend. Hermione. And your friend Ron." Hermione tells him quietly, in that same soothing voice.

"I have no friends!" Harry protests. "I've never seen you before!"

They expect this, for he says it every day, but it still doesn't stop the shudders that run through his best friends. Ron takes a shaky breath and touches Hermione's arm to calm her.

"Harry, mate. You can trust us." Ron whispers hoarsely. "I can prove it." He puts his book bag on the ground and extracts the photo album Hagrid had given him. It is the one thing they know of that can jog his memory. "Here. These are your parents."

Harry swats his hand away, but Ron has learned to drop it instantly. Curious, Harry eventually uncurls and reaches out for the fallen album, only to flip through the pages with a frown marring his face.

"I have no family." Harry says. "If I had they would have come to visit."

"Oh, Harry..." And this is the hardest part she thinks. "Your parents are dead. They died protecting you."

"Then how come I can't remember them? How long ago did they die?" Harry asks quietly, tears welling in his eyes. "Why did they do it?"

"They loved you." Ron steps in, wrapping a comforting arm around Hermione. "And they still do. They died when you were one, Harry."

Harry frowns. This isn't the explanation he wants. He wants to know his parents are right outside the door, that they'll be in in a minute. But Hermione and Ron have already tried that route. They can't restrain Harry, and when he ultimately breaks through the wards, he realizes no one is there.

"Why aren't I dead?" he asks.

"Well, you see that scar on your head? The killing curse left that and spared you." Ron says.

Harry reaches up to touch it, like always.

"Why?"

"Well, they say it was luck." Hermione says.

"Not for my parents."

"No, not for your parents." Hermione echoes.

"Where is the castor who tried to kill me?" Harry wonders. "Do I have a wand too? Can I fight him?"

"Harry, violence is never the way." Hermione chides.

"But it works." Harry whispers hauntingly. "It works."

There aren't many allusions to what happened to him. Harry doesn't even know himself. But why he does say, strikes a nerve.

"The wizard is dead. You killed him, Harry."

"Are you lying?" Harry asks. He always needs to be sure before he lets himself feel any type of emotion.

"No! I wouldn't lie about that!" Ron insists, taking out the laminated Daily Prophet clipping from last year.

It shows a picture of Harry dueling a snake-faced man on the front, and then underneath, it shows the fatal spell flying towards the other as another jet of light hits Harry in the back.

"Where Is Our Savior Now?" Harry reads the title aloud. "After being hit in the back with an unknown curse, Harry Potter promptly went missing...But I'm here." Harry remarks slowly, coming to the same epiphany he always does. "How long?"

Ron clears his throat. "A year. That was at the end of fifth year. Now we're seventh years."

Harry contemplates this, mauls it over. Then he breaks.

"My memory's gone, isn't it? That spell in that battle wiped it clean. Do you come here every day? Do you have to explain this over and over?" Harry asks, voice cracking, tears streaming down his face. "Why? Do I always ask these questions? Is this all scripted?"

Hermione shifts uncomfortably. "Sometimes you say things differently. I'm so sorry Harry."

"So I cry everyday? You watch me break down? Is this fun for you?" Harry shouts accusingly. "Did you ever once think to tell me lies and let me believe there was hope?"

"Harry!" Ron cries, "This isn't ideal for anyone!" He shakily takes back the newspaper and the album and sticks them back in his bag. "I'm real sorry Harry, but we've got to get to class."

Harry nods forlornly. Time moves on. They move on. But Harry does not. He sits and sits and waits. He ages without memory.

"Goodbye Hermione, Ron. It was nice to meet you."

He has uttered these words countless times. Hermione cries and Ron leads her through the door.

Harry's next visitor isn't but ten minutes later. A plump, compassionate-looking witch bustles inside his ward and introduces herself as Poppy. He asks for her surname, but she just laughs and says "Formalities have no use here."

Harry takes an immediate liking to this witch, but then she begins to poke and prod him, to make sure his body is healing up nicely. She must be a type of doctor, he thinks as she pokes a particularly painful wound.

"If you do this every day," Harry wonders, "shouldn't I be healed already?"

Poppy shakes her head dismally. "Not these kinds of wounds. They take a bit longer."

"How long?" Harry questions. He knows it must be longer than a year. That these are curse scars, battle scars, that won't ever go away.

"As long as it takes for us to find a cure." she says impassively. "Now, take these potions. One's a Calming Drought. One is for recovery. One's a Dreamless Sleep."

Harry watches her uncork the vials with accuracy. She must have done this a million times already, but for Harry, he marvels in the way her wrist twists, at the clink of the glasses, full to the brim with foul smelling potions. He wonders how much he's damaged, then shrugs and takes the vials from Poppy's grip.

He downs them all in one go, not even caring as night overtakes him. Poppy sighs, waves her wand and dims the lights.

"Good night, Harry." she whispers.

He has no measure of time to gauge how long he has been out. His thoughts whirl around inside him, smiling faces, laughter, hissing, crying. There are other things too, fights, the sound of spells whizzing past and smacking into an opponent, the sound of Hogwarts' wards falling. He nearly remembers getting hit in the back as he shouts the Death Curse, but the memory recedes, like the tide.

He finds himself resurfacing back into the little white ward, the lights still dimmed, the room still empty. He runs the meeting that morning over and over in his mind, of the girl named Hermione, and the awkward red head boy named Ron. He wonders if they could ever have been his friends, and he wonders what would have happened if he had never been cursed.

Harry tries to get out of bed and stretch, but as soon as the thought occurs to him, there is another knock at his door. Harry gives a tentative "You can come in." because he thinks he hardly has a choice. The door opens very smoothly, and a polished black shoe steps into his room, followed by a handsome man in dark emerald robes. His brown hair is pulled tightly in a ponytail behind his head, giving him the appearance of having no hair at all. He has cold black eyes and a pale white skin, but his smile is warm. Harry finds himself smiling back. The man feels familiar and he hangs on to the feeling for all it is worth.

"Hello Harry." he says elegantly. "I'm the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Thomas."

Harry thinks he should know what Hogwarts is, but he doesn't. It must be a school though, because this is the headmaster, and his friends had left to "go to class."

"Hello." Harry says in an effort to be polite.

The tall man walks closer to him, hands behind his back, eyes open and calculating.

"How are you feeling? Poppy said you had a pretty nasty fall when the curse hit you...Is your scar bothering you at all?"

"My scar?" Harry echoes, hand flying up to touch it again. He notices a slight tingling in his forehead, as if someone had sliced shallowly with a blade. "No, nothing." Harry murmurs.

Suddenly the man turns on him, nostrils flaring, and hand coming around to smack him- but it stops.

"Don't. Lie. To. Me. I know everything about you, more than anybody in this world, including yourself."

The statement chills Harry to the bone, but before he can force out an apology, the man smooths back into his former seamless self.

"I only mean that recovery is a joint effort." Thomas says calmly. "You need to tell me how you feel so that we can better treat you."

Harry takes a deep breath to steady himself. An odd feeling begins to pool in his stomach and he doesn't know what it is. The man's piercing black eyes are upon him, feasting on his soul, and something feels as if it slammed itself into a wall inside him. Thomas frowns.

"I need you to relax. Will you do that for me?" he asks. "Tell me about your day so far, you must have questions."

Harry shifts on the bed, running his fingers on the hem of the white sheets.

"What curse was I hit with?"

"Hmm, a rare type of memory charm." Thomas informs him, "A bit like a timed obliviate. We don't have a name for it because no one has ever used it before."

"Is there a cure?" Harry asks with trepidation.

"Perhaps. But only if you cooperate. Now, can you remember anything at all of the Final Battle?"

Harry frowns. "There were a lot of deaths. Running. Spells shooting everywhere...who was the man I was trying to kill on the cover of the Daily Prophet?"

Thomas smiles, "They call him You-Know-Who, the Dark Lord."

"You-Know-Who?" Harry echoes. "But doesn't he have a name?"

"He has many names, Harry, just as I am the headmaster and all the Minister of Magic. But do you remember anything like emotions? How did your magic react when you were near him?"

Harry stills. The energy in his scar thrums just a little bit louder, but he doesn't understand.

"Why?" he asks. "I don't understand. I was shot in the back, not-"

"Some say you had the power the Dark Lord knew not." Thomas says almost indifferently. "As you were shouting the Killing curse at You-Know-Who, that power might have coursed within you, reacting oddly with the spell aimed at your back."

"Oh...well, I never heard of that. At least, sorry, I just don't remember."

"That's okay, Harry. Here, how about you just shut your eyes and try and picture it in your mind."

"Er, alright." Harry complies, but all he sees is the faint red of the back of his lids. "I don't see anything."

"Just imagine it. It's in your mind somewhere." Thomas says with a hint of frustration.

Harry tries again. He blocks out the image of Thomas' onyx eyes, the sharp pinching of his scar, the ache in his mind where something crashed against it. He can't make anything out but indistinct sounds, but he gets the odd impression that Hermione and Ron had tried to save him. He doesn't know when, but then ruby red eyes gleam out from the darkness, set on a papery face without a nose. It reminds him of Thomas' eyes, but he knows no more.

"I'm sorry." Harry mumbles blankly, cracking open his emerald eyes.

Thomas sighs out. "We'll simply try again tomorrow."

And then he's gone.

His next visitor brings him dinner, some chicken soup with pumpkin juice. She has gray hair and a tired face, but overall seems kind.

"How are you, Harry?" she asks, voice soft. "You can call me Minerva."

"Minerva?" Harry repeats. The day has been long and these faces stir something in his heart, but he cannot name them.

"I was your head of house." she says, "But more importantly, I knew your parents."

"They're dead." Harry says.

"Yes, they are. But you're alive."

"Not really." Harry tells her, emerald eyes welling with tears. "C-can I have some parchment?"

"Yes, Harry." The old woman reaches inside her robes for a little bound notebook. She seems sad as she holds it out, her hand shakes.

"I've asked for this before, haven't I?" Harry wonders.

"This is your fifth book." Minerva tells him. "You stopped writing after a while. Now you just read."

It makes sense, Harry thinks. The length of the book changes every day, while everything else stays static. He opens the book gently, surprised to find his own cramped handwriting staring back at him. He runs his fingers over the lines, never remembering writing any of it.

"Have you ever read it?" Harry asks her.

"Once," she admits. "I don't keep the book, Prof- er, Thomas does."

The thought strikes Harry as odd. Why would Thomas need to see his journal?

"Will you tell me how it ends?" he asks, giving her back the book.

She takes it uncertainly, fumbling for her reading glasses.

"What's wrong?" Harry asks.

"You've never asked me that before."

The room is silent.

A/N- Please Review! It's my first time writing something of this nature and I could use the feedback! Thank you!