-1Chapter 9
"I think this one's got twenty…no, never mind, it's got one petal that's sort of mutated and bigger than the rest of them, do you think it still counts?" Ron asked hopefully.
"No, it has to have perfectly twenty-one petals. The riddle told us pretty specifically how many petals the flower has to have," Hermione answered Ron without looking up from the flowers she was working on.
"Any luck, Harry?" Ron turned to Harry, who was poking at the blue begonias he was counting.
"Nope," he replied and moved onto counting petals on the petunias.
The three of them had wandered around Hogwarts counting petals on flowers ever since Hermione had revealed the third clue to Harry and Ron. At first, Harry and Ron thought it was going to be easy, twenty-one seemed like a common number. There must be many flowers at Hogwarts with twenty-one petals, but soon they found that they were wrong. Kneeling at the edge of the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the afternoon while the sun deep-fried the back of their necks was definitely not fun. Their eyes were starting to tire and blur as they strained to count the petals on what seems like the millionth flower.
"Maybe it's not a real flower, maybe it's some kind of painting of a flower," Ron suggested, hoping that they could search paintings instead of being burned by the sun.
"It might be possible, it'll be like our common room, you have to know the password to open the door behind the portrait," Harry emerged from his bundle of petunias and sneezed. "I think I've seen enough flowers to last me a lifetime."
"Come on, just fifteen more minutes and we'll take a break, okay?" Hermione continued looking at daisies, she was still fully energized and was fueled by her desire to do something to take her mind off Draco. Harry and Ron on the other hand were exhausted and bored of doing something that seemed hopeless. "Don't bother counting the forget-me-nots, they're too small to have twenty-one petals."
"Fourteen minutes left now, you just spent a minute talking and I was counting petals during that minute," Ron said behind a pile of daisies.
In the next fourteen minutes only the shuffle of trainers against dirt and the disappointed sighs of the three teenagers could be heard, finally it was time to go back in.
"A quick snack and we'll search the portraits?" Hermione suggested as they stepped into the welcoming cool draft of the Great Hall. Ron muttered something that sounded like 'slave trader' and 'inhumane workplace supervisors.'
"Come on, at least we'll be inside. Besides, think of how fun it'll be to see Malfoy's face when we snatch the Butterfly right under his nose," Harry tried to sound optimistic even though is skin was burnt raw and his voice croaked from not drinking for two hours.
"Speaking of Malfoy…" Ron motioned for them to look ahead where Draco walked towards them.
"There goes Malfoy, King of Ferrets!" Ron exclaimed in a loud voice when Draco purposely collided his shoulder hard against Harry's.
"Watch it, Potter. My cloak might be worth more than what Weasel's family has in Gringotts," Draco sneered at Ron and pretended to brush the dust off the shoulder that touched Harry.
"At least my family doesn't walk around worshipping dark lords and killing people for fun," Ron retorted and moved closer to Draco as if he was picking a fight.
"Just because my family can afford a house instead of a pigsty to live in doesn't mean that we're criminals. It's not illegal to be able to afford new things you know?" Draco responded to Ron's comment which caused Ron's anger to flare up.
"Watch your dirty mouth, Malfoy! Or I'm going to curse it off!" Ron let out a long list of swear words after that which only made Malfoy smirk.
"Such terrible language, I'm afraid I'm going to have to hand out punishments," Draco shook his head as if he was really disappointed at their behavior.
"Shove off, you provoked them," Hermione stood in front of Harry and Ron and glared at Draco, who seemed to have softened slightly for a moment at Hermione, but regained his Malfoy smirk in seconds.
"This is none of your business, Granger. I'm a Prefect, he's using inappropriate language. That, I believe is not what I call a fine example to set for our younger students," he smiled triumphantly at the three of them.
Hermione moved closer and whispered menacingly so only she and Draco could hear, "Do you know what I think is inappropriate? Tricking someone to leave their dormitories past curfew. I know what you're up to, Malfoy," She couldn't help but recognize the scent of his aftershave and experience a wave of déjà vu wash over her.
"Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder? Luring people into the Astronomy Tower, I don't think you set a much better example," he whispered back threateningly. Hermione reached for her wand and saw that Draco's fingers automatically wrapped around his.
"Then I guess we're even, but I don't go around provoking people to fight with me in order to feed my ego," she walked away with her wand still out, in case he was planning to aim any curses at her.
"Don't talk about what you don't know, Hermione," he whispered as the three of them headed back to their common room.
"Stupid, bloody prat!" Ron declared angrily at the almost empty corridor.
"Ron! Stop swearing!" Hermione scolded as they headed towards the staircase that lead to Gryffindor Tower.
"Now you're going to be like Malfoy and threaten to put me in detention?" Ron asked angrily.
"That's not what I meant, and you should stop handing ammunition over to him! Just ignore him when he tries to provoke you!" Hermione retorted as they climbed the staircases.
"So I'm supposed to ignore him even when he insults my entire family? Handing over ammunition? Who's the one that punched him?" Ron retorted as Harry gave the password to the Fat Lady and they climbed through the portrait hole.
"Why don't we play a game of chess while eating?" Harry quickly introduced a new subject while Hermione and Ron refused to look at each other.
"I'm getting the chess set, you get the Chocolate Frogs," Ron suggested while walking up the stairs to the boys' dormitories.
"Now that I remember, I'm missing the Grindelwald card, do you have it?" Harry asked while digging through his trunk for Chocolates.
Before Ron could answer, there was a loud scream from the common room. Harry and Ron quickly ran down the stairs to see what was happening, Hermione stood at the bottom of the staircase with a newspaper clutched in her trembling hands.
"What happened?" Harry asked agitatedly.
"L-Look at the headline," Hermione answered with her voice trembling.
Kingsley Shacklebolt Missing!
The Daily Prophet has received reliable inside information regarding the Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt. According to our source, he hasn't been showing up for work in the past two weeks. Normally reliable and hardworking, it is believed that he was captured by Death Eaters (Supporters of You-Know-Who). (Story continued on page 5)
"You don't think he's been captured by him, do you?" Ron asked, taking the paper from Hermione's hands and turning to page five.
"Under his orders, I reckon. Maybe spies at the ministry noticed that he and Mr. Weasley seem to be talking more and he knows that Mr. Weasley and Dumbledore are close. So, he probably figured out that he's in the Order," Harry explained while ripping open the package of Chocolate Frogs.
"I think it was Lucius Malfoy, if it was him and he captured Shacklebolt, that means that they're probably torturing him to get the information of the Butterfly out, so we need to get to the Butterfly before he breaks under torture," Hermione swiped the paper out of Ron's hands and pulled them towards the portrait hole. Kingsley Shacklebolt goes missing, Draco Malfoy discovers her identity, now that she looked at it, the Order was not the one that was controlling the game, they were merely the pawns that were moved around a giant chessboard, pawns that were being pushed into a corner by the horses and castles.
"Are we searching flowers or portraits?" this time Ron sounded serious as time was now essential to their plan.
"Flowers first might be a smarter plan, we can search portraits at night, at least if we get caught, you two can say you thought it was your turn to patrol," Harry threw the wrapper of his chocolate in the trash and stepped out of the Portrait Hole.
"Maybe we should try searching deeper into the Forbidden Forest, there's bound to be weirder plants in there," Ron followed Harry out of the common room.
"Actually, before we go deeper into the forest, there's one place next to Hogwarts castle filled with plants that we didn't look yet," Hermione said as she stepped out the common room.
The boys stopped in their tracks for a second and Harry ran back in the common room and up the stairs to the boys' dormitories.
"What are you doing?" Ron shouted in the direction of Harry's footsteps.
"We're going to the Greenhouses, we need the Invisibility Cloak, if anyone catches us, we have lots of explaining to do," Hermione explained as Harry ran back, panting heavily with the cloak in his hands.
"We need a key," he said as he threw the cloak over their bodies.
"Don't worry, Fred and George taught me this trick, it should work for the Greenhouse locks," Ron whispered.
They tiptoed and tried to walk as quietly as possible to the Greenhouses, this got to be increasingly difficult as they left the castle since there were so many students outside enjoying the rare sunshine this term. After almost trampling on a girl's notebook and an incident where the cloak almost slipped off Ron's head, the finally arrived at the row of Greenhouses.
"Which one should we try first?" Harry whispered.
"I'll close my eyes and pick one," Ron suggested.
"No, let's pick Greenhouse Seven," Hermione tugged the other two to follow her.
"Isn't that the one filled with dangerous plants and Sprout threatened to feed us to the Whomping Willow if we tried to get in?" Ron murmured worriedly.
"Well, let's hope luck's on our side today," Harry motioned for Ron to keep up so their shoes wouldn't be showing.
"Okay, before we use Fred and George's trick, I'll try opening it the normal way," Hermione took her wand out of her pocket and pointed it at the lock, she muttered the spell, "Alohomora."
The lock glowed faintly blue for a moment, but nothing happened.
"Does anyone have a hairpin?" Ron asked, Hermione took one out of her hair and handed it to him. He bent and twisted the pin a few times and rubbed it against his palms. He took his wand out and used the same spell Hermione used, except on the hairpin instead of the lock. He stuck the pin in the lock and wriggled it a few times and the lock clicked.
"I think it worked!" Harry whispered excitedly and they all went in the Greenhouse, they stopped momentarily in their tracks from fright. It seemed that every inch of the Greenhouse was filled with stems, vines, and leaves that did not look like innocent dandelions.
"I think I can see why we're not allowed in here," Hermione nervously looked at a purple vine with sharp spikes.
"At least it doesn't look like there are that many flowers to look at in here," Ron eyed the cauliflower-like plant to his right suspiciously.
"Actually, I think there is only one flower in here," Harry nudged them to look at the purple and pink flower with silver sparkles on it's petals, located right at the opposite wall.
"Well, we found the flower, now to get over there alive," Ron took a deep breath and tried to avoid stepping on the squabbling sprouts lying on the ground.
"Harry, stop kicking my heels!" Hermione let out a painful yelp and Ron pulled her down to avoid being seen.
"Sorry, I'll walk ahead," Harry moved so he was now in front of Ron.
"Bloody hell!" Ron sucked in his breath to stop himself from yelling out loud. "That, stupid vine just wrapped around my leg!"
"Don't move, you're going to make it worse! I'll do it!" Hermione pushed Ron's arm aside and got her wand out. "Agumenti." A jet of water shot from the end of her wand and the vine immediately shrunk back into a stump.
"What was that?" Harry muttered as Ron shot the stump a very dirty look.
"It's an African plant, it's attracted to certain scents, I guess it finds that you smell good," she gave the two of them a gentle shove so they'd walk a little faster.
Ron colored slightly underneath the Invisibility Cloak.
"Someday, when you have your house, Harry, I'll give you one of those so you won't need Security Trolls," Ron relaxed slightly now that he walked a few steps without getting mangled by a plant.
"Won't you get killed when you visit me then?" Harry asked jokingly.
"Good point, maybe I'll send one of those to Snape."
"He probably smells like rotten flobberworms, it wouldn't work."
"Can't hurt to try."
Before they could say anything more, Hermione nudged them hard, now that they were so close to the flower, they could see that approaching it was not as easy as it looked from far away. The flower was planted on a rotting log that was behind a large, menacing, platinum-colored vine that thrashed it's spiked tentacles viciously at the three of them.
"Bloody hell, how are we going to get past this thing alive?" Ron exclaimed, looking nervously at the vine.
"You and Harry distract it, I'll get the flower and we'll run for it," Hermione looked at the flower located behind the vine. A part of her wanted to leave the Greenhouse and tell Ron and Harry what she knew, another part of her wanted to go and hear him explain.
"Right, stun it, grab the flower, and run for it," Ron gulped and took his wand out with trembling hands.
"As soon as the vine stops moving, I'm getting the flower."
"Stupefy! Impedimenta! Reducto! Diffindo!" they shouted while Hermione positioned herself on the side, right out of reach of the vine, preparing to run for the flower as soon as the plant stopped moving. They weren't sure what effects the spells had on the vine.Finally, by luck one of their spells had been aimed correctly and hit the base of the vine, it froze in midair leaving a small hole that only Hermione could have fit through.
Hermione carefully stuck her foot through the hole and tried to stop her trembling body from touching any part of the vine. She flinched and shivered when she felt the top of her head brush past one of the thorns on the vine. Harry and Ron watched with frightened expressions on their face.
"Just a little more," Hermione mumbled to herself. She let out a big breath of relief when her hand finally wrapped around the stem of the flower. She counted the petals, there were perfectly twenty-one, none of them mutated or deformed. She tugged at the stem, it didn't move.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked. In the chaos of aiming spells at the vine, the Invisibility Cloak had slipped off both of them and was now a shimmering pile of cloth at their feet.
"It…won't…move!" Hermione gasped and tried to pull harder.
"Use a spell or something!" Ron suggested.
"Diffindo," Hermione aimed a severing charm at the base of the stem, nothing happened.
"Maybe you need some sort of magic phrase," Harry looked hopeful while Ron tried to think of magical words from spell books.
"Hocus pocus?" Hermione stared at the flower, nothing happened.
But when an image of Draco floated into her mind, she understood what she had to do. She reached her fingers over to the flower and tugged gently at one of the petals.
"He loves me," she moved on to the petal next to it, "he loves me not."
When the final petal was ripped off, a blast of magic shot out of the flower and Hermione felt herself spin very quickly, then everything became still, absolutely still. When she opened her eyes, she saw Draco standing next to her, his wand pointed straight at her heart…