Chapter 4
Habromania

As a professional Obliviator, Paul Yorick admitted he had slightly skewed views on the importance of memory. People liked to think that the first kiss, the skinned knees, that crushing defeat at Gobstones at the age of four, all those pointless of inanities of life actually defined who they were. It was comforting to think that one's pettiness could be safely blamed on never getting the desired Kneazle kitten for Christmas of '74.

Paul watched people go through life with their thoughts spinning round and round as their minds reminisced desperately, as though the memories held the key to everything. They groped for memories because they didn't understand that they could live without them.

Many times, in fact, their lives were much happier without certain memories, and he was the cause of that happiness. This rationalization was how Paul Yorick was able to look himself in the mirror every morning and stumble off to work. It didn't stop him from lying awake at night, wondering if there was something he had been made to forget.

Work that summer's morning was a terribly regular dispatch. There was a report of accidental magic in Muggle London—explosive and almost eerily controlled but accidental magic nonetheless and nothing more. The little girl in the center of the battered road was wearing a muggle dress, and that was terribly regular, too. The statistics were this:

Muggleborns accounted for four-fifths of the SoS violations requiring an Obliviator on site. Two-thirds of those Muggleborn were minors, and the average age of the culprit was four. Why? Because proper folk lived seperate from Muggles for good reason, namely that young witches and wizards were emotional dung bombs on a timer.

The dispatch was on a public street, a bit of a nightmare to contain, but also usual. Paul reckoned there wasn't a child in the world who hadn't staged a tantrum in the street. It was nearly as common as tantrums in the the grocery, though not nearly so common as tantrums in the vicinity of a toy aisle. Paul would like to forget the day two Decembers ago where he had handled not one but six different toy aisles.

Not surprisingly, he hated children.

The girl was a well-dressed sort in pink lace. Her hosiery was a warren of snags, runs, and small holes. All signs were pointed to a pampered brat. The only mercy, Paul thought, was that the girl was currently silent and not making a greater mess than she had already. Paul tackled the area, scanned the street for Muggle stowaways (they had a nasty tendency to duck down in the back seats of their automobiles), and overall did his best to ignore the child. That was the underaged magic liaison's job.

As it turned out, there had been three Muggles huddled in two cars. After that, the gawkers that the first response witch had corralled into a ward circle on arrival were mass obliviated and dispersed. All that was left was the hunt. Paul listened to the street. A crew of work wizards had been sent to the area as well. The men cast and muttered over the broken pavement and an impressive plume of gushing water. The child had managed to shatter the underground pipes. Paul tuned out their spellwork and the roar of water, listening for sounds of panicked breathing, gasps of, "But that's magic!" or the patter of fleeing feet. People made noises when they'd seen something they weren't supposed to. Paul was practiced at hearing them.

"I don't remember."

He dismissed the small voice out of hand, twice. He had already handled that one, he thought, but the voice grew louder and when the ground rumbled, his eyes snapped to the speaker. To the girl.

Her hair was rising about her, charged with magic. He couldn't quite make out her eyes, two hollow points both sharp and desolately empty, but he could clearly hear her as her voice crescendoed into a scream. "I don't know my mummy's name. I don't know my daddy's. I don't know where I live, or go to school, or play. I don't remember where I was or where I was going. I don't remember anything. I don't remember how I learned to speak or write or find the tangent of a curve! All there is, is numbers! Facts! And it's all useless! Why can't I remember! Tell me!" Heaving the last shout with a cry of tears, she stamped her foot.

With a sick snap, a Muggle electrical line broke over their heads and whipped about, hemorrhaging the surplus magic into the air. Drenched leaves by the gushing hydrant crackled, then caught aflame. Wizards dashed for dry ground, conjuring shields. Paul stood frozen. "I'm empty!" the child shrieked. Her small voice was barely audible over the whirling of the magic-saturated air around her, but no one misheard. "I'm nothing."

There was a beat of silence. Paul braced himself for an explosion as the maelstrom seemed to take a deep breath, like it was ready for a scream of its own. Then it released that breath with an unerring calm. When he dared to look, the girl's hands were held out before her, clasped together. Slowly she opened them and revealed a small bee. It floated in the air, completely still. Then, slowly, it shook itself, opened its wings, and took flight on its own, away from the scene of destruction. The girl watched it go. "Apis mellifera," she said, softly, almost in awe. "Honey-bearing-bee. It was the wrong name. He tried to change it. But she was mellifera first. She'll always be mellifera. He can't change her."

She turned to Paul. "Hello. I've made a real mess of this, haven't I?" He realized with a start that the woman from the underaged magic department had fled. The crew was gone as well. All that remained on the destroyed street was a white-faced Obliviator and a child in pink lace with a memory as shredded as her tights. He swallowed.

"You look official," she observed, "but strange, though of course I don't know why." She said that softly and seemed to withdraw for a moment before forcibly brightening. "Nothing about this is normal, though, is it?"

"No," he said. "It isn't." This was the first SoS child offender he had willingly spoken to in years. That certainly wasn't normal. "I think…I think I should take you to St. Mungo's."

A crease appeared across her small brow, an unremarkable, terrifying, vertical fold of skin. "Should I know what that is?" she asked.

He looked at her dress. It was textbook Muggle. He recalled a slightly less frilly version from an illustration in his Muggle Studies NEWT book, in fact. School. How many years had it been since he thought about that? In reply, he answered. "Not yet, you shouldn't. I think."

"That's alright, then." She held out her hand. "Shall we go? I assume this Mungo's will make me remember. It seems vitally important that I do. I suppose it's normal for amnesiacs to feel that way, but there's…something. How long will it take to reach St. Mungo's?"

He took her hand. "Not long." It was with amusement and panic that he realized he, Paul Yorick, professional Obliviator, was probably the worst person in the world to help a child recover her memories, but there he was anyway. He looked around the ruined street. The Muggles would explain it away as one of their bombings, he reasoned. "Don't let go," he warned and apparated them away.

xXx

The name at the very end of the list of volunteers for St. Mungo's came with not one but four warnings not to make contact, ever. The name was Severus Snape. The mediwitch, whose name was Florence Maylark, was clearly not happy to call on him, as evidenced by the frown marring her habitually pleasant face at his entrance into the curtained room. She was also desperate.

The girl was the reason for all of it. The girl with no name. She had no nickname, no designation, nothing. The spelled card on her bedside remained stubbornly blank. Even attempts by the mediwitch to label the girl 'unknown patient' or even 'the girl' were met by disappearing ink and a blip of the magic-reading device in the curtained room where the enigma sat writing in the margins of picture books.

Severus Snape had been sentenced to 500 hours of volunteer work at Mungo's at the end of 1981, but unless there was a particularly angelic personage dying of a decidedly nasty poison, Mungo's was loathe to let him in the door, let alone call on him for help. In eleven years, perhaps forty of the required hours had been served. And most of that was because of that time with the plague in '87.

"I don't believe we have met, miss…" His voice broke the pensive silence, forcing the mediwitch to steel herself.

"Madame Maylark," she corrected. "You're here because there was literally no other choice. I poured through the medical community lists and the volunteer profiles myself, so I would know."

"I take that it's a particularly unusual poison?" he asked.

"You aren't needed in that capacity. Step this way, please, and do not upset her. The paperwork for wall repair is extremely annoying."

Without another word, she parted the curtain and ushered him through the silencing ward into the hospital's attempt at a child's bedroom. She watched Snape carefully as he took in the occupant. The girl, a long-haired, gangly thing in striped Mungo's pajamas, currently lay stomach-down on the bed with a book open before her. Dark eyes blinked at them briefly through darker bangs before returning to her reading like it had never happened.

"Sweetie, this wizard is Severus Snape." The girl didn't look up. Maylark sighed. "May I introduce Professor Severus Snape?" she tried again.

The child rose up onto her knees. "Hello," she said. "I would introduce myself properly, but I'm not sure what my name is…only that it's certainly not Sweetie. Or Darling. Or Dear. I hear you're something of an expert in memory retrieval, Professor. May I ask for your qualifications?"

Snape blinked and stood there for a moment looking utterly bemused before growing solemn. "They're not fit for polite company, I believe."

The girl's head tilted to the left. A woman with more poetry in her than Maylark might have said the child looked capable then of peeling the Professor apart with her eyes. She buried the thought.

Snape blinked. He turned to look at Maylark.

"Wormwood," said the girl suddenly.

He looked back at the girl, at his fingertips, then back. "I beg your pardon?" he asked.

She tapped the side of her head. "Sorry, stray synapse firing. I've been cheerfully informed that it's impossible to completely…obliviate a mind's memories. Seeing your face in profile, made me think of that word, though I of course don't know why. Wormwood. How odd. I seem to be quite the mystery."

He studied her once more. She studied him right back. Maylark was struck suddenly by just how alike the two looked. Pale, dark, eyes both bright and hollow at the same time like the waters of the Black Lake. Maylark had never liked to go near the water during her days at Hogwarts, had been afraid of it ever since the ferry trip over it her first year. The lake was a shadowy place with secrets so deep that not even the merfolk knew more than whispers.

In a low, clear voice, Snape called out, "Legilimens."

"Well," said the girl. "If you must."

A/N

About taking so long: I'm still alive. Snap. But look, I come bearing Snape. I've been busy with career things. But I'm happy to report I'm writing much more, so here we go again.

About the OCs: I enjoy creating small characters to be observers and show us something about the main (read: canon) characters. And then I enjoy discarding them. Alas, poor Yorick. If you think a character is worth a second shot, please let me know.

About Chapters 2 and 3: They were obliviated. Don't you want to know what happened? Well so does...wait, what was her name again?