Chapter Eighteen
Thorfinn turned onto his back, uttering a subdued groan as he stretched, still mostly asleep. Until his reach across the bed told him he was alone.
With a drowsy, confused pout—that he knew Hermione would never let him live down if she saw it—he propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the room. It was still dark, and the door was shut. Already he'd gotten to know her routines well enough to understand that were she simply in the bathroom, she'd have left the bedroom door open, as she intended to come back quickly. But the door was closed, which could only mean that she knew when she walked out of the room that she'd not be back for some time.
That pout melting into a frown, he peeled back the covers and climbed out of bed. A little hissing breath caught his attention and he turned to look at the bedside table. Salazar had raised his little head from his sleepy coil, clearly also looking for his mum.
"Don't worry, little serpent, I'll go rescue her from herself."
Thorfinn couldn't be sure if Salazar actually understood him or simply found the cadence of his rumbling, sleep-roughened voice soothing. Whatever the reason, the minuscule Basilisk put his head back down.
Snickering with a shake of his head, the wizard murmured, "That's it, back to sleep, my little boy." When it was clear Salazar had drifted off again, Thorfinn turned and left the room.
He thought, after the revelation she'd had this afternoon—after the shock and the panic—he should have expected it when he found her in the kitchen. The smell of fresh brewed coffee hung heavy in the air, and she sat at the table. One hand clutched around the handle of a steaming mug, the other was poised over the thick, glossy pages of a Muggle photo album, not the one she'd had her breakdown over the day after she'd learned the truth, either.
"Did you make enough for two?"
She nearly jumped out of her skin at his question. Just barely did the witch manage to avoid burning herself when her startled reaction sloshed around the coffee in her mug.
Hermione laughed at herself, bracing her free hand against her forehead as she looked up at him. "Sure. Sorry, did I wake you?"
"Yes." He nodded as he rounded the table to fix himself a cup. "What with you being so very quiet and still down here? Who could sleep with all that going on?"
She smiled, taking a sip of her coffee while she watched him pull out the chair beside hers and sit. "I couldn't sleep." Sighing, Hermione shook her head and returned her attention to the albums. "I just needed to see them. I thought . . . I thought I was prepared to let them go, but . . . ."
Thorfinn reached across to her, brushing the backs of his knuckles delicately against her cheek. "Of course you're worried about them. There's so little to go on, so much that could've happened to them."
Her brow furrowed as she winced.
He mirrored her expression. "That sounded a touch more comforting in my head."
Again she smiled at him, nodding. "I know what you meant. That 'so much' you mentioned includes nothing at all. They could be fine wherever they are. I get it. I just suppose not much is going to be of comfort until I know for certain that they're safe."
Her wizard shrugged. "I dread to say this, but perhaps Draco will turn up some useful information."
Draco let out a hissed breath as his shoulders connected with the wall. At the last second, he'd bowed his head forward, saving himself from slamming the back of his skull against the rough stone.
The impact jarred him, nonetheless, and he coughed out a pained chuckle. "Good to see you, too, Bas."
His green eyes blazing with anger, Rabastan Lestrange leaned his face right over Draco's, his fingers gripped tight in the collar of the Malfoy heir's robes. "The fuck are you doing following me?"
Okay, so maybe Draco hadn't been as subtle as he'd thought, but then again, he had sort of wanted to get caught. Play the hapless manipulator card too many of the other Death Eaters still expected him to pull when they looked at him. Never mind that he was the only one to figure out how to get them into Hogwarts at the end of sixth year when the others were completely useless . . . .
"Can't a man just say hullo to his estranged uncle?" Draco slipped his hands around the other wizard's wrists for leverage.
Bas' features settled into an expression of displeasure so chilling Draco forced a gulp down his throat. "I thought I made myself clear. Family or not, I didn't want any of you Malfoys anywhere near me." He pulled back just enough to give the younger man an angry once over. "How did you even find me?"
"Now I'm just insulted. You know I'm cleverer than your average Dark wizard."
His scowl hardening further, Bas shook him. Hard.
Draco grimaced, tightening his hold on Bas' wrists. "No offense, since you're already clearly very angry, but you're not exactly the strongest wand in the shop, as it were."
"You really think it's smart to sass the person holding you off the ground?"
"Oh, now, you're not that strong. I'm on my toes."
Bas shook him again.
"All right, all right!" Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slow, Draco allowed his head to tip back against the wall. "You once said if the Dark Lord's plans went sideways, you'd hide out right smack where no one would expect you to be stupid enough to go . . . . Home."
"Yeah? Well . . . ." Bas' scowl melted down into a far less terrifying frown. "I was right. No one's thought to look for me here." He finally relinquished his hold on Draco, taking some small satisfaction from the way his deceased sister-in-law's nephew crumbled where he stood a moment before managing to straighten himself up.
"Place looks like no one's set foot in it in a few decades, probably helps," Draco said, rubbing a palm against his collar bone absently—bloody Neanderthal had probably given him a lovely bruise. He glanced around as he went on, taking in the vine-choked iron gates in the distance, the cracked and pitted cobblestone walk winding up to the estate house, which, itself, looked as though the upper floors were ready to tumble down into the front hall any moment, "To say you've been laying low would be a massive understatement, but a little advice? Because, well, as you've said, we're family."
"You have got advice for me?" Bas chuckled richly and folded his arms across his chest. "This should be good."
"Maybe lay a bit lower than you've been for a bit, hmm? In fact . . . ." Draco paused, glancing around again. "We should probably continue this conversation inside the house. Away from open view."
His brows shooting upward, Bas made a show of turning his attention to the wooded area beyond the boundary of the Lestrange Manor grounds. "Open view of whom?"
Draco didn't answer. Instead, he slipped from his place between the other wizard and the stone wall at his back and walked around the steps to start up. "Just c'mon. Trust me."
"Trust you?"
The tone made Draco halt. He could just feel Bas' proverbial hackles going up. Turning, he braced his palms on the chipped marble banister and peered down at Bas. "I know. Trusting me—me more than any other Malfoy—is a regrettable decision, but believe me, when you hear what I have to say, you'll understand not trusting me is the more regrettable choice."
Bas only stared at him. Only watched as Draco pivoted away and started up the steps, once more. After a few heartbeats, one heel tapping impatiently against the dilapidated stone beneath his feet, he groaned. Rolling his eyes, he dropped his arms to his sides and followed.
"You won't do anyone any good by missing sleep, my darling."
Narcissa smirked, taking a sip of her drink before turning her head to look at her husband. "Perhaps not, but could you imagine how many problems I would have solved by now if I did?"
Lucius snickered, uncorking the crystal decanter and pouring himself a glass. He'd already known this was likely to happen when Draco wasn't home in time for dinner. Of course, the young man had let them know he was 'busy handling something' and might not be home until tomorrow—which went over hugely well with his mother—but he was their only child and this was a strange situation in which they all found themselves.
Those two factors, alone, were bound to rob a mother of sleep. She'd barely slept an hour a night from the time Draco had taken the Dark Mark until the night the Second War ended. After Voldemort's defeat, the witch had spent what was probably the better part of two days simply catching up on sleep.
Taking a seat on the sofa facing the fireplace, he gestured with his free hand. "Come, sit with me."
Heaving a sigh, Narcissa crossed the room. As she settled beside her husband, she turned her gaze to the flames dancing in the hearth. "I can't believe I was actually thinking I was relieved to 'only' have to support Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter as she chooses what to do about her legacy. Our lives have been madness since the day Draco started at Hogwarts."
"And just as when he started at Hogwarts, I'm going to remind you that while you enjoy coddling our son, he is not as fragile as the world seems to think." Lucius couldn't help a half-grin as he lifted his glass for a sip—he knew perfectly well Draco could play 'frail' with the best of them if it suited his purpose.
The witch hmphed in a distinctly dignified breath and leaned closer, settling the back of her head against her husband's shoulder. "Do you think it's true? What Miss Granger said in her letter?"
"Which part?" he asked, still a bit amused at how incensed Draco had become over Thorfinn's unpermitted use of his visage. Oh, surely the act was a violation of trust, but there could be no such violation where there was no trust, which in itself proved that a confidence had formed between the two young men, and it was likely a fact neither of them would allow themselves to acknowledge.
She turned her head, running her gaze over his long-familiar features. "About Minerva McGonagall." The message had been brief, and coded, lest an interception could reveal Sabina Slytherin's existence to parties unknown—parties who might have reason to harm the girl—but they were Malfoys, and they had understood her meaning plainly. Neville Longbottom's sudden appearance at his friend's residence had forced Thorfinn to disguise himself as Draco, and by the way, her spectral sister had informed them that the Headmistress of Hogwarts was one she could trust.
"It does seem too good to be true that a witch as formidable and with as much standing as she could be on our side in this, but there's always something we can do."
Narcissa arched one lovely, sculpted brow. "There is?"
"Of course." Her husband gave that charming smile he wore when planning anything and was feeling quite pleased with his own intellect. "We'll invite her for tea and have a little chat."
She nodded. "And suss out for ourselves her forthrightness?"
"Precisely," he answered, clicking his glass against hers.
"And where's this one from?" Thorfinn asked with a tired grin, tapping a photograph of thirteen-year-old Hermione, smiling broad and cheesy, with her adoptive father.
"Hmm?" She leaned closer. Her expression brightened as she let out a sigh. "Italy. We'd gone to France to visit my grandparents—or, rather, my dad's parents—and in the last few days of the trip, Mum and Dad spontaneously decided they wanted me to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa."
"Did they often do that? Change travel plans on a whim?"
Hermione shrugged, yawning. "I suppose. I mean, we always came home on time, but yeah. A lot of family vacations ended up being to more than just the place we . . . ." She sat up straight and turned her head, fixing her gaze on him. "You think they voluntarily left Australia?"
"What I think—what I'm starting to think, anyway—is that maybe we're looking at this wrong. I mean, we haven't considered one very distinct possibility. Like . . . if your parents had such an important job as to keep the knowledge of who you were at the ready in case this was when you awoke, to know what they needed to do in the event of any sort of emergency regarding your safety . . . . Well, there should've been something to keep their minds from becoming compromised, don't you think? What if there were safeguards in place to keep memory charms from taking effect on them?"
The witch felt as though she'd gotten the wind knocked out of her. "It wouldn't have just been them, then. It would've had to be the squib-born line of the Grangier family throughout the generations, because whoever had custody of me while I was in the bronze sleep would've had to know everything, too. But the safeguard would have to be a tricky feat of magic. I saw them when I performed the memory charm on them—they were affected." She shook her head, frowning pensively. "There would have to be some sort of behavior triggered by an attempt to memory charm them, so the person casting it would believe it worked."
"Or perhaps the safeguard makes it so that the effects of the charm are only temporary? You know, so that it wears off and then the charm's victim remembers precisely the thing they're supposed to forget?"
"That could make sense, too. They knew Voldemort was my enemy, they would know I was sending them away so I could fight against him and his forces. Their only other option would've been to stay and tell me the truth—"
"And you never would've believed it at that time. Might've even told your friends in Dumbledore's Army the 'mad' thing your parents had told you, putting them and yourself at risk. You might've even feared someone from the Dark had gotten to them and was trying to trick you through them."
Hermione nodded. "Precisely. The only way for anything to work out like it was supposed to would've been for them to go along with the act of being memory-charmed and hope fate would take its course."
Setting down what was left of his coffee, Thorfinn shrugged. "Whichever it was, no one is born with a built-in safeguard against magic. That would have to mean—"
"That would have to mean there's been a wizarding line keeping close to the Grangers all along."
"A wizarding line who, perhaps followed the Grangers to Australia, waited for the charm to wear off and then took them somewhere else for their own protection?"
Again she nodded. "It's possible. If that's what happened we need to figure out who these people are."
"But if the Grangers are safe, then why—"
"Because the Ministry is looking for them. If they vanished on their own and were taken in by these people, or if these people 'made' them vanish for their own safety, either way finding them could lead to those mysterious dangerous parties Lucius Malfoy is so worried about—if they in fact exist, which we can't know for certain they don't—figuring out that I've remembered who I am. And because there's still a chance that something terrible has happened to them at the hands of another dangerous party, entirely. Either way, the Grangers could be in peril on account of me."
"Not on account of you. On account of people who want to see you hurt, or worse, dead. That's not your fault."
Hermione's features twisted into a scowl. "Doesn't change that I'm at the center of why they'd be in danger, now does it?"
"No, I suppose it doesn't." He sighed through his nostrils and placed his hand over hers on the table. "I promise we will figure this out. Everything else can wait until after you've some peace of mind about the Grangers."
"Thank you," she said, a small, sad smile playing on her lips.
Now that another revelation had rolled through her mind, the witch was beginning to feel quite sleepy. She let Thorfinn tug her back upstairs and tuck her into her bed before he crawled beneath the covers beside her and snuggled down. All the while, there was a flurry of activity in the back of her head, organizing where to begin, what to plan, lists to make, in the search for who the mysterious wizard family aiding the Grangers might be.
"Okay, we're inside. Talk."
Draco nodded, taking a deep breath as he seated himself on a sofa still draped in a dusty, dark tarp. "You know the . . . ." He actually had to brace himself to say the term. "Mudblood, Hermione Granger?"
"The one you've been dallying with? Yeah. Even hiding out, gossip in Wizarding Britain manages to find one's ears. Guess she's better than nothing, and what pure-blood witch would have you after your family turned their back on the Dark Lord?"
Groaning, Draco rolled his eyes. "That is . . . ." He clenched his jaw, aware he couldn't exactly tell his 'uncle' the truth. "That isn't what it looks like. It's an act—being close to her allows me to keep tabs on the Ministry. Anyway, what it let me hear is that her parents have gone missing."
Bas folded his arms across his chest, looking brooding and intimidating, just as he had outside. "Wha's that got to do with me?"
"They think a Death Eater might've, well, done something to them to get revenge on Granger for her role in the Dark Lord's demise."
"Again, wha's that got to do with me? My biggest plans are figuring a quiet way to sneak myself out of the country and go somewhere no one's ever heard the name Lestrange."
"They're looking for any of the Dark Lord's ranks who weren't captured at War's End. That leaves three names, Rowle, Dolohov, and you."
Bas dropped his arms back to his sides, instead propping his hands on his hips as he nodded. "I see. Rowle couldn't be arsed to put in that much effort. And so you decided to check on me, next?"
"Something like that." Draco returned the nod. "So? What about Dolohov? It was apparently no secret he wanted to get Granger back for not dying from his curse. Your always-open ears catch anything about him recently?"
Green eyes narrowing thoughtfully, Bas came to a decision. "It's not much, but I'll tell you what I know if you'll do something for me."
Oh, Draco did not like the sound of this, but he didn't see what choice he had. If he tried searching for Dolohov by himself, he might not find anything, sure, but there was an equal chance he'd find something—that something actually being Dolohov—and get himself brutally murdered by a lunatic.
Exhaling a weighted sigh, the pale-haired wizard nodded. "What?"
"Help me get the fuck out of Wizarding Britain."
Draco understood—the Malfoy name might not have much influence these days, but they still did have money, and it wasn't as though Rabastan Lestrange could go waltzing into Gringotts to access his family vault. They could provide Bas with more than enough disposable resources that he could pay off those willing to look the other way as he crossed at a border or checkpoint and booked passage by whatever means necessary. "I'll do what I can."
"Your word on that?" Bas pressed with a sneer.
"Yes." Draco's voice was steady, his tone solemn.
The set of Bas' shoulders eased a bit and he looked away, his gaze moving over one half-boarded up window. "I don't know where he is, but I do know that no one—and I mean no one—has seen hide nor hair of Antonin Dolohov since he escaped the battlefield after the Dark Lord fell."
"He what?" Draco shook his head, his grey eyes wide. "Vanished?"
Bas shrugged. "Not unlike your little Mudblood girlfriend's parents. Maybe the Ministry's onto something, though. Maybe it's not a coincidence."
