The signs were there.
An onlooker would notice each one as a separate incident, no connection, but they were. They were connected. After today he was sure of it.
Draco had been casually trudging down the path to the pitch on Saturday afternoon before the practice scrimmage between the second-string players of the Slytherin and Ravenclaw house teams. As he wasn't set to play today being the first rotation seeker, he hadn't been in any rush to make it to the field and join his teammates, whom had presumably already arrived. It was a rare warm and humid day in November, just before the beginning of the snow front that was sure to hit in a week or two. The students of Hogwarts weren't used to this type of weather but had capitalized on the reprieve of the cold by spending most of the weekend day outside in various clusters all around the grounds.
Draco had been seemingly lost in thought as he rounded a large Ash tree slightly off the path, barely taking notice of the littering of white blossoms that had fallen from it and began to brown and decay until he noticed the droplets of stark red blood on a few petals, almost hidden by the shade of a branch. Alarmed, he glanced around. The blood was fresh; he knew by the shiny wet glint. The rustle of movement caused his gaze to turn upward into the bulk of the tree where he caught the sight of the infamous Weasley hair. Ginny Weasley was seated in the junction of a particularly sturdy looking tree branch next to the truck and was softly covering her face. Or maybe her mouth?
The sight of the blood had Draco falter in his steps but the sight of where it was coming from halted his advancement completely. Truthfully, he wasn't a fan of the Weasleys, just as they weren't one of him, but the She-Weasel was never a core member of the squabbles that occurred between the Slytherins and Gryffindors. He still felt the small pull of concern over the idea of an injury.
"What happened? Are you okay?"
It took him a moment to realize that the words hadn't come from him, though they had been on his mind. Granger's voice was unmistakable from around the side of the tree and from the way Weasley craned her neck toward the sound, she was seated at the tree's base. Presumably, Weasley and Granger must have been relaxing underneath the shade of the Ash tree before the Weaslette decided to climb up.
From Draco's vantage point he saw Weasley's look of unease and the way she immediately adjusted her positioning to ensure she was out of Granger's line of sight. He watched as she frantically pawed at her face and struggled to come up with a sufficient answer to give to her concerned friend below.
Weasley made a noise of agreement in the back of her throat and nodded slightly back in Granger's general direction while she continued to worry her at her face, this time with both the back of her hand and the light blue sleeve of her top. "Yeah, I'm fine 'Mione. Just got caught by a branch coming up I guess." Apparently, Granger was satisfied by this answer because Draco could hear the sound of book pages being reopened. It didn't surprise him that her leisure time was spent doing homework or the like.
What did surprise him, however, was the dark contrast that a significant amount of blood made on her pale hand and forearm. Much more than he expected from the small patch of blood that had stopped him on his way. The opaque scarlet liquid was smeared all over the back and around the thumb where she had used it to rub at herself. Glancing back at her face, there were smudged ribbons of blood running from her nose to her chin. Draco felt like a fool for being alarmed over what appeared to be just a nosebleed, but something about the situation gave him a strange feeling, like he was spying on a secret.
This feeling increased tenfold when he softly cleared his throat to announce his presence and Weasley instantly stiffened, her eyes growing wide like a deer caught in headlights. A secret indeed, apparently.
She quickly wiped at her nose once again and ducked her head behind the cover of a few of the lower branches, shifting herself to the other side of the canopy where Draco wouldn't be able to view easily.
Confused and a bit dazed, Draco contemplated for a moment rounding the area and asking the young redhead exactly what warranted lying to her friend about a simple nosebleed. Then he heard Granger's voice pipe up from her reading to tell Weasley of her wanting to head to the scrimmage and his muddied mind cleared. That had been where he was headed before the strange encounter and Draco knew that Flint would be more than slightly perturbed if he didn't make it to the field before Madame Hooch's whistle blew.
With one last puzzled look up at the bare branches of the tree, Draco stepped back onto the stone pathway and finished his solo hike to the Quidditch pitch where, suffice to say, his mind wandered for the entirety of the evening.
Later on, Draco would look back and understand that that unexplained moment beneath the old tree was the first sign.