Author's Note: Thank you for the reviews! So sorry, if the last chapter was too short... but hey, I'm getting to the good part. Yahoo! I know you guys are all wondering what's going on... well, just read on!

Chapter 3

"How long is this going to take, eh?" The man behind the wheel of the Expedition said. "We've been here for what, three hours..? I'm getting bored..."

"Patience... you know what's in store for us when we do this." Replied the man next to him. He was slightly less beefy than the other man. But they were both big, nonetheless. At the back of the Expedition were audio and video equipment, charmed to appear only with a secret password.

"Yeah, I guess... You know what–"

"No names. Remember?"

"Oh yeah. Right." Said the driver. He began to scratch his head. "Um... what are we supposed to do again, mate?"

"This is a stakeout." The other man replied. This was usual for him, as his partner had some kind of memory lapse every now and then. He got used to telling what they were doing, about fifteen minutes after they were told what to do.

"I don't see any steaks." Said he, looking around.

It took superhuman effort not to: a. Laugh; b. Hit the other guy on the head with his boot; c. Groan with pent-up frustration; or d. All of the above. But as usual, he just smiled and said, "Not steak-out, man. Stakeout. Checking things out for the Boss. You know how he is; he's been waiting for this chance for months."

"Oh..." Was all the other man could say, then kept quiet after that.

A few minutes later, a phone call ripped through the silence of the vehicle. The man in the passenger side immediately went to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Have they walked out yet?" The man on the other line asked.

"Not yet, sir."

"Good. We're just finishing up here. Get ready to pull out, though. I hear the wizard police are roaming the streets... wouldn't want to be little D.E.V.I.L.s, would we?" He said with a snort.

"No. That we wouldn't. Hold on, I see someone coming out." With that, he hung up and started to watch as people were milling out of the apartment building. About less than 20 yards away, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were saying good-bye. He watched silently, noting some of their mannerisms. They did not know what was going to happen in the next few days or weeks of their lives. The fact that he was someone who had in a hand in "controlling" their lives was actually gratifying.

-

Hermione took off the glasses she sometimes used for reading and rubbed her eyes. She checked the time and found out that it was almost six o'clock. Both Lavender and Hannah were gone, leaving her to her peace. She knew that she was working too much, but somehow, she didn't care. Every new case was a new possibility for her to have a major breakthrough. So, she worked to the limit. She didn't even have time to eat a decent meal, for the case that she was working on now was particularly interesting.

Hermione leaned back on her chair and read the diagnosis:

'This form of sickness has eluded Medical Wizardry books and tomes for what I believe to be about fifty years or so. It seems that we are in the midst of an epidemic which is not contagious yet may prove to affect every single human being, magical or otherwise.

As far as we know, there is no cure and there have been no previous encounters with this sort of predicament in the wizardry medical field.

A thirty year old man had been brought to the hospital about 3 days ago. He bore signs of head trauma and internal bleeding. The patient's pupils were uneven, showing possible hemorrhage in the right side. He had no response to pain. A look in his mouth showed that he had been either coughing up blood or drinking it. His breathing was labored. Fever was also noted.

A few minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

The autopsy report stated that he died from internal bleeding. His blood simply refused to coagulate...'

Hermione set the report down and lightly chewed on her fingernail. She had never heard anything like it. More things were being said in the report but she didn't want to go any further. Quite frankly, she was scared. The report was only a few days old but almost everyone in the medical community knew about it. Which is why they called her; to create a potion or serum that could cure it.

She yawned, stretched and looked at the time. Almost 7. She had a date with Harry at around 9 o'clock. Torn between reading the rest of the report and going home to get ready, Hermione chose to leave tomorrow's work for tomorrow.

After organizing the messy papers on her desk, Hermione checked to see if the cabinets were secured with anti-theft charms. She checked the lab and found that everything was in order. One might say that Hermione must be very courageous to be alone in such a place at night... However, dear reader, she was not aware of the dangers that she would face that very night.

Hermione put on her coat and grabbed her bag. Walking to the door with her head in clouds of potion equations and reactions, she did not notice the faint mist that appeared, engulfing her feet in their violet folds. She did not realize that the violet mists were sedatives. It caused her mind to grow sleepy and her body to become weak. The room then became dark, as the lights had been switched off. Before Hermione could scream, before she even laid a hand on the handle, she dropped in a dead faint.

Not a second later, three men went inside the laboratory, clearly the perpetuators of the crime. One, the leader perhaps, carried Hermione's body out and into the container van which was their getaway vehicle for the evening. Meanwhile, the second man got all the transcripts from the file cabinet, taking only what was needed and left the others on the floor, which would burn later. He even got a few of which they didn't need, just to throw the police off the trail. The third man began to send chairs and tables into the wall, breaking them. He threw the papers in the air, crumpling some of them, some of them, he kept. He looked at the locked cabinet containing all the materials for the production of potions. He tried to break the glass but found out that it was protected against breakage. And so, he did the only thing that was allowed to do under these circumstances. He set fire.

With that, the two men went inside the van as their leader was taking Hermione's pulse. She was sleeping soundly, no cause for alarm there. With a signal from their leader, the men sped away just as a fire truck came to the scene, completely ignoring the black van that was making its way along the streets.

What Hermione didn't get to read in the final sentences of the report that was currently being engulfed in the flames, was that the patient was recently released from Azkaban.