A/N: Hello all! I'm back! It's been years but there have been some recent developments in my life so, merely as a way to keep my sanity, I've picked up writing again. I actually found all my old, partially written fanfictions from years ago. Some of them are ten years old. I picked the one that peaked my interest the most and decided to attempt to do something with it. This one was originally written in 2005. At the time, I was 15 years old. I am now 24 and as I read it through I realized how severely underdeveloped my writing was back then. Everything was rushed and I'm not even quite sure where I was going with the plot. HOWEVER, I have gone through it, rewritten and embellished upon what I already had, and even developed a plot line lol. Life now is pretty busy, but I'm going to try to stick to a dead line of one chapter a week. I highly appreciate feedback (good, bad, flames, the whole kit n caboodle), as I once read somewhere on this site, criticism is to the author as salt is to the meat.
It was four o'clock in the morning when Draco Malfoy's Witching Stone began to pulse a glowing red, casting an eerie glow throughout his dark bedroom, and shrieking next to his head. He moaned and blinked blearily at the stone. Recognizing the red glow as a call from work, he moaned louder and slammed a pillow over his head. Despite his best efforts, the stone would not stop shrieking and, if anything, seemed to grow louder. Abandoning his futile attempts at ignoring the noise, he angrily threw his pillow across the room and roughly snatched the stone off his bedside table. The shrieking immediately stopped at his touch and began to emit a soft, white glow from between his fingers.
"What?!"
"Don't get snippy, Malfoy," replied the stone, the voice sounding as though it were bouncing off of ceramic tiles, "We've got something on the Recorders that we want you to take a listen to."
After the downfall of Lord Voldemort, any Death Eaters who hadn't immediately surrendered has scattered. Many groups had been tracked down, disbanded, and delivered to Azkaban. However, the current Minister of Magic, Arthur Weasley, was not under the illusion that the threat was gone, nor did he believe it would remain gone even if they managed to locate the rest of the rogue Death Eaters. He had taken it upon himself to create a whole new branch of the Ministry; Defense Against Dark Wizardry.
"Hardly worth waking me up before dawn," Draco growled in irritation.
While the Aurors were the Ministry's front line of attack, the witches and wizards appointed to work the new department were the Ministry's cautious defense. They had already discovered a few years prior that many of Voldemort's followers were resorting to using Muggle telephones as a means to communicate with one another. Apparition, the Floo Network, and Port Keys were being closely monitored and many Ministry members had seen it as a sign of victory when efforts showed no more Death Eaters using any of the previously mentioned. Not everyone was so easily fooled.
"Watch your bloody tone, Malfoy," the voice replied gruffly, "This is something you want to get your arse down here for."
Once they had figured out they were using telephones, they began to place Tracers on any words relating to their world that were spoken over telephone lines. It was mostly rubbish these days. Muggles had taken a fancy to fantasy movies and video games that included all sorts of magic. Once in a while, though, they struck gold.
"Fine, fine, I'll be there in ten minutes."
"Make it five and you can keep your job."
"Okay, what was so important that you had to wake me up at four in the morning?" Draco asked loudly, strolling into the room and throwing his arms in the air dramatically. The person from the Witching Stone, an attitude endowed twenty five year old witch named Tilly Matthews, swiveled her chair away from a complicated looking machine to face him.
"We havin' a slumber party, Malfoy?" she asked, one eyebrow arching up in a slightly amused fashion.
He glanced down, taking in the fact that he was wearing his silky drawstring pajama pants and nothing else. It suddenly dawned on him why the female interns had been staring at him and why Neville Longbottom had looked significantly more uncomfortable than usual around him as they shared an elevator. "You woke me up at four in the morning and gave me five minutes to get here. You're just lucky I even wore pants to bed," he snapped, pointing a finger at her, "Let's just hurry this thing up."
Tilly shrugged. "Don't get your pants in a bunch," she said, turning back to the machine, "No, really. Don't. It'll obstruct the nice view of your arse that they give." He scowled at the back of her head and sat in the chair next to her. "Okay, so here's what we've got; a call goes out to a seemingly random Muggle family about an hour and a half ago-"
"An hour and a half? What took you so long to call me?"
"Deflate your ego, Malfoy," Tilly scoffed, "You aren't the only able mind in this department. Besides, would you have rather been woken up at two thirty when it came in?" At Draco's silence she continued. "I had Penny Applegate and once of the Fowling boys helping me-"
"Which Fowling?"
"Bloody hell, Malfoy!" Tilly shouted, glancing at him in irritation, "I don't know! They both look exactly the same, I can't tell them apart."
"Me either, but one of them's a total nit."
"I thought you wanted me to hurry this up?" Draco motioned extravagantly with his hands, as if to tell her to continue. "As I was saying, the Muggles in questions are presumed to be random at this point in time-"She held up a hand in front of Draco's face without sparing him so much as a glance, fingers splayed, as he opened his mouth yet again. "Yes, there will be a follow up, but judging at how bloody pissed he was at being woken up, it's a pretty safe bet that it was random. I've edited out the Muggle, it's irrelevant and he gets a bit vulgar, but this is like none of the others we've ever heard before." She hit a few colored buttons and the speakers began to emit a crackly noise, broken up at first only by squeaking and the clanking of chains in the background.
"Magic, wands, trolled, Hogwarts, Ministry of Magic, Hogsmeade, Arithmancy," came the voice, contorted by the quality of the phone, "Please. Danger. Please, I don't want to go back." The voice paused before continuing. "Ronald Weasley, Harry Potter… Lord Voldemort." Then the line cut off.
"And that was it," Tilly said helplessly, turning to him and flopping her hands in her lap, "It was like they were trying to be traced."
Meanwhile, Draco was racking his brain. "I know that voice," he blurted out, frowning.
"You can identify the voice on this crappy phone line?" she asked in amazement, "Wow. I should give you a raise."
"I've got an idea, but I can't be positive. I've definitely heard it before." Draco ran a hand through his hair, and unfortunate habit he had whilst stressed. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "Can you clear the voice up a bit? Maybe get rid of the garbage in the background?"
Tilly gasped in mock surprise, placing a hand over her heart. "I never even thought of that!" She shook her head and giggled, her long golden hair bouncing gracefully around her face. "Where is my brain?"
"Tilly, it's too early to work with your dumb blonde routine," he replied dryly, "Just be serious for once."
Tilly grinned. "Says the man wearing his pajamas to work." When Draco glared at her she held up her hands in surrender and turned back to the machine, turning knobs and pulling levers. "Judging by the quality, I'd say that the call was made from a payphone.
The voice came on again, this time a bit less crackly and without the interfering squeaking and clanking. Draco abruptly jumped from his chair, sending it wheeling backwards into the wall. "I knew it!" he shouted hysterically, "It's Granger! That's Hermione Granger!"