Chapter 20: Vanished

"...we'd need to hire more people if we go with two distribution centres instead of one, and it wouldn't be as efficient. Remus? Earth to Remus... Hello, are you listening to me?"

I jumped as I suddenly became aware of Hermione's voice directed my way and sounding more than a little annoyed. I turned away from the wall that I'd been staring at without seeing it and tried to focus on my assistant as she looked at me with concern.

"I'm afraid I missed that last bit..." I admitted sheepishly.

Hermione sat down in the chair next to my desk and stared at me. "Just the last bit?" She looked as if she'd like to laugh, but to her credit, she didn't. "I've been discussing the set up for the Welsh distribution centres for a good ten minutes, but I don't think you've heard anything I've said at all."

"I'm sorry. You're probably right." I rubbed my eyes wearily. "Maybe we should table this discussion for now."

"We really need to get it settled." She persisted.

Hermione was an excellent assistant. She was extremely efficient and always up on the details of every aspect of the project, but she could be a bit single-minded and right now, I was finding that to be a bit trying. Not that I really had a right to, I suppose. I was at work. I really should have been working, but damn it was hard to concentrate. All I could think about was Severus, and those rings, and our stupid frustrating situation, and this vague, unsettled feeling that I'd had in the pit of my stomach even since he'd left the house that morning.

As I hesitated, she asked, "What's wrong, Remus? You haven't been yourself for weeks now."

"Nothing," I said automatically, hoping to cut that conversation off before it even got started, not that I really had much of a chance of that.

Her response was to cross her arms and raise an eyebrow. Her sudden resemblance to Severus was uncanny.

"It's personal," I admitted. It was obvious that I couldn't fool her into thinking that everything was okay, but I'd be damned if I was going to discuss the situation with her either. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked sympathetically.

I shook my head and forced a smile to soften my refusal. "No, I appreciate your concern, but it's really not important."

"Okay, if you say so." I could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn't buying it, but it appeared she wasn't going to press the issue either, thankfully. "We really do need to make a decision on the number of Welsh distribution centres before the three o'clock meeting, however."

"Okay." Fine, back to business. That's where I really needed my thoughts to be focused anyway. At least there they might do some good.

She nodded and referred to the papers in her hands. "Our people in the field are suggesting five centres to cover the whole country. I don't see why we can't manage with four. The area involved isn't that vast and as far as we've been able to determine, the werewolf population isn't excessively large."

"Which centre are they recommending that you don't agree with?" I asked, trying to get to the root of the problem as quickly as possible.

"They want to put two separate centres near Cardiff, but I think that's a waste of money and resources. One should be more than adequate. Having two centres where one would do is inefficient and would require the hiring of more people than we've budgeted for."

"I disagree. Didn't you read the report Samuelson sent in about the rival packs in the Cardiff area? Their territories bump up against each other, and there are a lot of tensions between them. We need a centre in each of their territories if we're going to reach them all. We'll avoid a lot of trouble that way."

"I still say it's inefficient..."

"It's more inefficient not to reach everyone who needs to be reached," I snapped, not feeling remotely in the mood to argue the point. "If two centres are required, then two centres are what we'll set up. It might be possible to consolidate them later, once we're a known and hopefully trusted commodity, but for now, we'll go with two even if it does require us to hire a couple more people. The budget will stretch to cover it. Now, if there isn't anything else, I have some correspondence to take care of before the meeting."

Hermione got to her feet, her face was stiff and a trifle red, and I could see I'd annoyed her, but I had to admit at the moment I didn't really care. She nodded to me and crossed the room to the door, but instead of walking through it, she paused and looked back at me.

"If you want my opinion, you need to find someone with whom to discuss this unimportant personal issue that isn't bothering you, and you really should do it soon."

Then she proceeded out the door and closed it behind her very deliberately and quietly.

After that I really did try to work, but I didn't accomplish as much as I needed to. When the time for my three o'clock meeting rolled around, I got up from my desk with a sigh of relief. At least now, I'd get to see Severus. For some reason I couldn't adequately explain, I'd been feeling somewhat anxious about him ever since he left for his meeting with Minerva that morning.

There was no logic to my feelings, and I knew that, but nevertheless I couldn't seem to banish them. I knew that I'd feel a whole lot better once I got to the conference room and saw him sitting across the table from me ready to give his report. Then I could finally convince myself that he was fine and I'd been concerned for no reason. I'd probably feel like a bit of a fool for worrying needlessly, but I'd be a relieved fool. I could live with that.

When I walked into the conference room in the Minister's suite at the stroke of three that afternoon, my eyes immediately went to the chair Severus usually occupied only to find it empty. His assistant on this project, a fiftyish, moon-faced man named Edward Macgregor, sat next to the empty chair looking decidedly nervous while Percy, Kingsley's clerk, walked around the table setting out copies of the agenda at each place.

I took my seat and before anyone else could speak, I looked from Macgregor to Kingsley and asked, "Where's Severus?" The faintly uneasy feeling that had lurked in the pit of my stomach all day suddenly threatened to become full blown nausea as their uncertain faces clearly told me that neither of them had an answer.

Macgregor darted glances here and there, obviously hoping that someone else would answer me, but when no one did, he swallowed hard and said, "I don't know where he is. He hasn't been in the lab all day. We had a meeting scheduled for 9 o'clock this morning but he never showed up or sent a message. I was hoping he'd be here."

Kingsley frowned and turned to me. "That isn't like Severus. I haven't known him to miss a meeting since he came to work at the Ministry. He's always very punctual. When did you last see him, Remus?"

"At breakfast. He got an owl from Minerva McGonagall asking him to go to Hogwarts and meet with her. She said it was urgent."

Kingsley nodded. "Perhaps that explains it. She didn't say what it was about?"

"No, but nothing Minerva might want of Severus would prevent him from sending a message if he'd been delayed. I know he didn't expect to be away all day. He mentioned that he had a lab meeting this morning, and he specifically told me he'd see me here, now."

"What are you suggesting?" asked Kingsley, concern beginning to cloud his features.

"The message was an odd one from the start and it's been bothering me all day. It said that Minerva wanted Severus to meet her at the gates to the school. That struck both of us as rather strange at the time, but Severus went anyway. Now I wish he hadn't, at least not without contacting Minerva first."

I pushed myself to my feet. "Minister, may I use the floo to contact her now? I want to be sure that message really did come from her."

Alarm spread across every face at the table at my sudden suggestion that something might be very wrong. A couple years of peace was not enough time to remove the automatic prickles of fear that unexpected and unexplained absences immediately sent down everyone's spines.

Kingsley got to his feet and headed for the door. "The floo in my office is the most secure."

I followed Kingsley out of the conference room, across the reception area and into his private office. Hermione and Percy trailed behind, followed more hesitantly by Edward Macgregor, all of them looking anxious. They hovered in Kingsley's doorway as he and I made a beeline for the fireplace.

I know I should have deferred to Kingsley. He is the Minister for Magic, and we were in his private office, but I was too worried and too impatient to pay attention to protocol. I used my wand to bring up the fire in the grate from halfway across the room and as soon as I could reach it, my fingers dug deeply into the bowl of floo powder that sat ready on the mantel. I wasted no time in tossing it on the fire and calling out Minerva's name.

The Headmistress must have been sitting by her office fire because her head appeared, wreathed in flame, by the time I crouched down in front of the hearth, Kingsley at my side. Even through the distortion caused by the flickering blaze, I could see surprise and vague apprehension on her face as she noted our grave expressions.

"Remus... Kingsley... This is a surprise. What can I do for you?" she asked politely.

I wasted no time getting to the point, though I was convinced that I already knew what her answer would be. "Minerva, did you send a message to Severus this morning?"

She looked startled by my question. "No, I didn't. Why do you ask?"

"While Severus and I were eating breakfast, an owl appeared bearing a note that said it came from you. It asked Severus to meet you at the gates of the school this morning as soon as he could get there."

"How strange! I certainly wouldn't have any reason to ask Severus to meet me at the gates. If I wanted to see him, I'd have invited him to come to my office," she said.

"Yes, we thought that was odd, too, but at the time neither of us suspected that the message didn't come from you. Do you know if anyone at the school saw him today?"

"I haven't heard anyone mention Severus for some time. However, I'll check with everyone and let you know. I'm assuming that you haven't seen him since he left to meet whoever sent that message?" Her voice now mirrored the concern we were all suddenly feeling.

"No, no one here, other than me, has seen him today, but until now, we didn't know there was any cause for alarm in that."

I exchanged a worried glance with Kingsley, who turned to Minerva and said, "Please, let us know if you find any indication that Severus was at the gates this morning or if you find anyone up your way who's seen him today. We're going to begin a search from here as well."

Minerva nodded. "Of course, I'll look into this at once and let you know what I find."

Then Minerva's head vanished from the fire and Kingsley and I got to our feet. Before either of us could say anything, Hermione interjected, "Mr Snape caught up with all the Death Eaters we knew about. Could there possibly be any left that we didn't know about? Or do you think it might be some member of one of their families out for revenge?"

Neither possibility appealed to me in the least, and as voices began to be raised in conjecture, Kingsley put up his hands for silence.

"Speculating wildly won't help us find Severus. Percy, conduct a thorough search of the Ministry, make sure that he hasn't been seen here today by anyone."

Percy nodded and left the room.

"Hermione, call up the Aurors. Have every one of them who's currently available meet me in the large conference room in 20 minutes. We need to get them started in a search. Macgregor, go back to the Potions lab, check Severus's calendar and question all your staff, make certain that no one has any information they haven't passed on to us about where he might be."

Hermione and Macgregor left as quickly as Percy, and I turned to Kingsley and asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"You don't happen to still have the note that was sent do you? Or know where the owl came from? I take it that it wasn't a bird you recognised."

"No, the bird didn't seem familiar. It could have come from any post office. As for the message..." I tried to remember what Severus did with it, and I suddenly had a very sharp mental image of him stuffing it into his pocket before he left the house. I sighed in frustration. "Severus put it in his pocket. He must still have the thing."

"That's unfortunate. I was hoping it might give us a clue as to who sent it."

"If you're thinking about the handwriting, I'm sure if it was obviously not Minerva's writing Severus would have noticed and said something."

Kingsley nodded, his face grim. "No doubt you're correct. All right. The best thing you can do is start thinking of all the places he might have gone, even if they don't seem that likely to you. If you think you have time to do so before the meeting with the Aurors you could either go home or check with your housekeeper to see if he might be there as well."

I nodded. "I'll check with Hester, and try to think of places he might be, but we both know it isn't too likely that he's just gone off somewhere on his own. Someone sent him a phoney message pretending that it came from Minerva in order to lure him to a relatively isolated spot. The only reason to do something like that is to abduct him."

Forcing those words out of my mouth was like spitting out bloody knives, so much pain did they cause me when they passed my lips. But I knew we weren't going to get anywhere by putting our heads in the sand and pretending that Severus had just taken an unexpected trip. He'd been taken, and we needed to figure out who did it, where they took him, and what they intended to do with him as soon as we possibly could.

The next few hours passed in a blur of activity that all seemed to yield nothing but negative results. He wasn't at Greycliffs, he wasn't at Hogwarts, he wasn't at the Ministry, but no one seemed to have any idea where he was. Search teams fanned out all over Britain, checking any place even remotely related to either the Death Eaters or Severus. I wanted to go with them, to do something concrete, but Kingsley held me back.

It was possible, he said, that Severus was being held for ransom. If that was the case, they'd probably send their demands to Greycliffs, and Kingsley wanted me to be there to receive them. I thought this idea was a bit unlikely. Wealthy people were kidnapped for ransom, not people like Severus, who had a good job and was certainly not poor, but was hardly rich either. Of course, someone could have heard about his inheritance. If they didn't know the particulars of Miss Sparling's very unusual will, they definitely could have come to the conclusion that he now was quite wealthy and would make a tempting target for extortion.

It was also quite possible that he could have been taken because he worked at the Ministry. If someone had some sort of political agenda they wanted furthered, kidnapping a Ministry official and threatening him wasn't an unheard of way to try to accomplish their goals. In that case, their demands might either come to the Ministry itself or to Greycliffs. There was no way of knowing.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that I really had only two choices. I could either go running blindly through the countryside poking my nose into every cot, cave, or hollow tree I came across, which was, of course, my first impulse, or I could go home and wait for word and try to come up with some logical explanation for this that no one else had thought of yet.

Ultimately I did the harder thing; I went home and paced up and down the length of the house while I paid witness to Severus's presence in every corner. Every few hours a report would come in from one group of searchers or another, but every one of them was negative. The only report I received that contained anything substantial came from Hogwarts, and it wasn't good news.

Minerva and Filius went down to the castle gates themselves and searched the area. They found what they thought might be signs of a struggle. Some upturned clods of earth, a few unfamiliar nicks and scars on the statues that flanked the gates, some flattened grass... all suggestive but hardly conclusive with no way of knowing how long those things had been there. Then, just as they were about to give up, Minerva found proof of a much more decisive sort. In a patch of thick grass by the side of the gate, she found a wand which she immediately recognised as Severus's.

She sent the wand to Kingsley, who had it tested, but they didn't find anything out of the ordinary in the record of recently cast spells. Some people might have found that reassuring, but I didn't. To me it only made it seem more likely that Severus had been taken by surprise.

Once the Aurors had wrung every bit of information they thought they could get from the wand, they turned it over to me. I hadn't let it out of my sight since it had arrived.

If only it could talk.