*AU Note*
It is 445AM where I am, I'm on my 3rd Rockstar Energy drink, 3/4ths a way through a pack of smokes, and I'm twitchy AF! But chapter 16 is done, and chapter 17 is started! Will continue once I cross post! Enjoy!
"HERMIONE GRANGER KIDNAPPED"
That was the headline plastered across the Daily Prophet mere hours after the raid. What would usually take a few days to reach England was news in a matter of hours.
Early this morning there was another raid on the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary, yet unlike the previous raids, the cages were left untouched as the poachers focused on a new target: Hermione Jean Granger.
Early reports are saying that Miss Granger was surrounded by dozens of poachers and was forced to surrender after killing almost half of them.
She was last seen being led out of the sanctuary bound in ropes before disapperating to an unknown location.
The last word to leave her mouth before disappearing into the unknown was "Charlie!" A final call to her lover.
It is unknown why the poachers targeted her, we are left to speculate that it is because she posed the biggest threat to their operation. That is the leading theory, says a source from the Romanian Ministry.
Aurors from both our Ministry and the Romanian Ministry have been deployed to find the missing dragon tamer.
Chaos has ensued as all of Europe is on high alert for the brains behind the Golden Trio.
We here at the Prophet are praying that Miss Granger is found safely or in the more likely event, is able to escape in a daring manner and take down a giant ring of poachers.
We expect nothing less of her.
Any tips on her whereabouts can be reported to the Ministry.
Keep her in your thoughts.
That article is how Molly Weasley found out that Hermione had been kidnapped.
Her shrill scream woke the not far village from their slumber. Author came running down the stairs to find Molly still screaming as she held the paper in horror.
Harry and Ron were woken from their slumber by the head of the department flooring into their shared flat mere minutes after the attack. They were port-keyed to Romania an hour later to help with the investigation.
Upon arriving in Romania, they found a frantic Charlie Weasley who was red in the face from screaming at everyone to do something, even though he knew it was in vain.
Charlie was hurting.
He had lost the woman he loved and he wasn't sure if he would get her back.
The poachers had left no ransom note, they had attacked no dragons, they came for Hermione and left with Hermione.
One of the things that the sanctuary was trying to figure out was how Hermione had managed to sound the alarm before the attack even started.
Another thing they were trying to figure out was how such a massive amount of poachers had managed to sneak in, even with all the heightened security.
They had come to a consensus that there had to be a mole somewhere, someone must have let the poachers in; they just didn't know who would do something so heinous.
Ron was tasked with calming his brother down first while Harry assessed the situation.
This was their first really big mission. They had graduated training merely weeks earlier and now they had a mission that really hit close to home. Both Harry and Ron were aching. Losing Hermione was like losing a part of them, she was their sister, blood or not; they were family.
There was a language barrier as frantic Romanian aurors kept slipping into Romanian while talking, and had to backtrack in English for their British counterparts. It was eating up time.
Harry closed his eyes and tried to think like Hermione.
"What would she do?" he thought.
His eyes opened and he pointed his wand at the ceiling, and cast a charm that would translate every word said into physical writing that would appear in the reader's native language. It was akin to muggle subtitles. Harry had learned the spell from a book Hermione had given him last Christmas. "Useless Spells that are Actually Useful" was the title.
Harry made a mental note to write her another thank you letter once they rescued her or she rescued herself.
The Daily Prophet wasn't wrong, there was a strong chance that Hermione would rescue herself.
All the magic folk in the room stopped talking for a few moments as words suddenly popped up in front of them. They looked at Harry.
"It's a spell that will make it easier to communicate. We're wasting valuable time with the language barrier. I don't speak Romanian and you are all too frantic to constantly remember English. This will help." Harry said calmly.
Everyone shot him a thankful look and resumed talking, the floating subtitles making communication a lot easier.
After a few minutes of discussion, it was decided that they needed to interrogate Pansy to see if she had any inkling on where Hermione could have been taken.
Ron wanted to interrogate her, but Harry cut him off. Ron would be too brash with her, and while she hated Harry, she hated the Weasleys' more.
Harry accompanied a Romanian Auror to his ministry, where Pansy was pulled from her cell and put in a room.
Harry stepped into it and Pansy quirked her eyebrow.
"Well, if it isn't Potty." she sneered.
"Hello Miss Parkinson." Harry said calmly as he took a seat across from her. The Romanian auror sat next to him. "We need information and we need it now."
"What's the problem?" Pansy asked innocently.
"Hermione has been kidnapped by your lot. We need to know where they could have taken her. If your cooperation and information helps lead us to finding her and capturing those who took her, then we can possibly discuss a shorter sentence." Harry said.
Pansy had a look of shock, "The mudblood has been kidnapped? That's preposterous."
"Well, it isn't. It happened. Your lot didn't harm a single dragon last night, they targeted Hermione and took her. We have no leads. Hermione killed any leads we might have had before surrendering. Where could they have taken her?"
Pansy sighed, "I honestly don't know Potty. I have been compromised. I've already told the Romanian Aurors everything that I know about hideouts. And my comrades know that I sang like a canary. So anything I might have to offer is old, useless information. My only thoughts are hideouts in the mountains. It will either be somewhere completely off the grid or hidden in plain sight. There will be no inbetween."
Harry took a few quick notes before looking back up at her. "Do you think they would have gone far or stayed close to the sanctuary?"
"Well, it was probably a side apparition for most of them. That's hard magic to do en masse. So I bet they disapperated to a nearby location then went their separate ways. But they still have to have a good guard on Granger. I may hate the bint, but she is highly capable of great things. I would want AT LEAST fifteen people on her guard. Anything less she could easily take out." Pansy said factually, gaining eye contact with Harry.
Harry tapped the feather of his quill against his face as he thought, "I haven't had a chance to read your case files, but how high up in the operation were you?"
"Not very. My assets were seized, I was doing it strictly for the money. I had zero input in planning. I'm just using basic reasoning right now." Pansy replied.
The Romanian Auror spoke up then. Harry had forgotten his name.
"Let us say, that you were planning the operation. Where would YOU take her?" he asked in his thick accent.
"I would take her to the Făgăraș Mountain range. There are many potential hideouts by Negoiu Peak. It's secluded, hard to navigate unless you know the terrain, and I'm assuming that Hermione doesn't have a wand. Even if she were to escape, she would be hard pressed to find help in the mountains. Again, just reasoning. We never used that range because it's so treacherous. But Hermione is a major danger to the operation, so I'm simply deducing." Pansy shrugged.
The Romanian auror nodded and Harry tried to write down the names that Pansy had mentioned, but he had no clue how to spell them.
The Romanian auror rolled his eyes and took the quill and paper from Harry, scribbling down the names for him.
"Is there anything else you want to add or have thought of Pansy?" Harry asked.
Pansy was silent for a few moments before speaking, "I cannot confirm this, because it was simply rumors. But the rumor was that my people had dragons hidden in those mountains, dragons that we needed to be kept alive so we could continuously harvest supplies that were needed from live dragons. I wasn't high enough in the operation to have access to that information, so I cannot confirm it. But if it is true, then she is being held with the dragons. I genuinely do not know if that is good or bad for her."
With that last line, they finished up and Pansy was taken back to her cell while Harry returned to the sanctuary to pass on the information he had gathered.
Charlie was calmer when Harry arrived back at the sanctuary. He was eerily quiet as Harry shared the information that he had gathered.
A search party started getting planned. Scouts went out to various villages along the range to interview the muggles and try to find guides. Nobody at the sanctuary was intimately familiar with the area since it was more central Romania and the sanctuary was in the Northeast.
Charlie was to sent Sibiu. While he was emotionally compromised, he was still fluent in Romanian, though he would be speaking a different dialect than the natives there. Charlie's mission was to find a guide through the mountains and hopefully learn some rumors.
Never before had it been heard that poachers were keeping dragons alive, let alone keeping dragons alive in the mountains of Romania.
Charlie held tight to the portkey as he was hurtled to his destination. He was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery and end the poaching once and for all.
*AU Note*
Review, favorite, follow. We've got a few more chapters to go, hopefully I can churn them out in the next 2 hours before I have to wash the sour smell of cigarettes off my body and report to my 4 hour shift! I'm hyped up and wired and now a mini expert on the mountain ranges of Romania lol!