Chapter 19

Draco watched a bee from his window, thinking it was such a simple creature, wanting nothing but to find some pollen, or whatever it was they made honey out of. In a way, that felt more meaningful than the useless crap he was surrounded by. A simple task, performed again and again. No need to think, or plan, or anything. At least it actually created something good. And then humans came along and stole the product of their hard work. The world was cruel.

It deeply bothered him that Hermione would have been placed out on the street like trash. It didn't give her due respect. She, out of all of them, had been the one to survive. She'd survived something few people had, and less people could. That was until they had gotten her killed—by accident too. It hadn't even been intended by anyone. How was that for ironic?

He wanted to find her body, he decided. A least give her a name for when they…cremated her. The indication was that she would have been taken by the local muggle authorities. If they didn't have an identity for her, they would probably keep her there while they searched for one.

During the war, finding people hiding in the muggle world was a skill he'd had to develop. Most magical persons were terrible at hiding. They simply didn't know now to fit in, only those who'd grown up in the muggle world had proven hard to find. It was rare that it proved impossible—especially as the muggles had a penchant for surveilling their own people. They tracked and filmed, and listened, and all those systems could be harnessed to find people.

Drawing his attention back inside his study, he went to the bookcase and pulled out a map, trying to determine where the nearby local authorities would be to Marcus' house. The men he'd sent to canvas for her outside Marcus' property had shown that her body wasn't there. She had been claimed already, or otherwise delivered to the muggle authorities.

King's Lynn seemed to be the closest town that looked of the size to have a municipal function. He apparated to the local tavern, which was something he tended to do when going somewhere he'd never been before. For some reason, people were less surprised when someone suddenly appeared in a tavern. Muggles just seemed to accept that someone just be there one moment.

He arrived in the hallway to the bathrooms, and he was unobserved.

"Oh, hello," the barman said as he walked out into the bar itself. "What can I get you?"

"I need to go to the nearest hospital," he said.

"Right. Well,…" The man went on to give him directions and he followed them, arriving at a characterless boxy building, where a harried receptionist looked up as he walked in.

"The morgue," he said.

She looked him up and down, and probably assumed he was an out-of-town undertaker coming for a body, which, in essence, wasn't far off the truth. "End of the corridor, down the stairs. The door will be on the right. There's vehicle access around the back of the building."

Again he followed as he was told and found another reception where a young man quickly hid whatever he was eating.

"Imperius," Draco said and observed the dull look glaze over his eyes. "I need to see a young woman brought in—brown, curly hair, early twenties. Around one hundred sixty centimeters tall."

"Uhm," the man said and started clicking on his computer. "There's no one here matching that description."

"There has to be," Draco said, but the man stared at him blankly. "Where else would she have been taken?"

"Uhm, where was she taken from?"

"Nearby. Where else could she have been taken?"

"If she died at another hospital, it could be there, of course. Sometimes, people are taken direct to funeral homes."

"But there would be trace of her."

"Of course," he said and poised over the type writer mechanism again. "What was her name?"

"Hermione Granger."

The man clacked away. "There's no one deceased by that name, I'm sorry."

"What about unnamed?"

The man clacked again and searched. "Do you have a date when she died?"

Draco gave it, and after he did, he wondered if it would be a date he'd remember every year. Maybe not. Maybe he wouldn't remember her next week, he told himself, even as he knew that wouldn't be true.

"Well, maybe this one," the man said.

"Let me see."

The man turned the screen around and he saw a photo that wasn't her. "No. Who else is there?"

There were three other women, one of them with tattoos on her neck. "No. What about in London."

"I'm not supposed to—"

"Just do it."

He clacked away again, and showed him ten more pictures of sickly pale bodies. None of them were her. "No."

"Those are the only unidentified women of that age group right now. I can check Scotland."

"She wouldn't be in Scotland."

Where was she? There was something odd here, and oddness always meant something. This was the feeling he got when something was a ruse. Something was wrong. There was no body. The knowledge pounded into him. Was if that meant she wasn't dead? Was this all a set up? If so, his father was in on it. Realization struck him. This was absolutely something Lucius would do. Somehow, Hermione had charmed him and he'd done this for her.

Where was she? Did Lucius have her hidden away somewhere? Were they lovers? Rage coursed through his body, his hand gripping his wand tightly.

Where would he have put her? No, Lucius would never allow himself to be attracted to someone like her, even if he was. Lucius wouldn't seek to hold her captive—he'd release her. He'd removed the tracker on her and let her go.

"Fuck!"

The urge to destroy something was so intense, he literally had to hold himself back. It wasn't worth the consequences if he blew this place up right now just to blow off some steam.

Fucking Lucius. How often was he going to destroy things for him? Really, if you couldn't trust your own family, who could you trust?

Draco left the building before he did something, emerging into cool drizzle, which suited him right then. The rain had made the streets empty, but he didn't apparate out of there, because he had nowhere to go. He needed to think. Instead, he apparated to the nearby coast, which was even more desolate. Gray ocean and gray skies and cold wind. It cooled his mood.

She was alive, and she was free. Where would she have gone? She was too smart to go anywhere she was known for being, or where someone would expect her to go. That meant, she wouldn't seek out anyone she knew, except maybe the Weasleys, who'd done a remarkably good job of hiding themselves. But then they were like rabbits, happily contented in some hole somewhere.

It was that nauseating happiness that attracted Hermione to them. Did she know where they were? Maybe she was there right now.

She would have left England. But how?

The iciness worked into his suit and he was growing cold.

Now he knew what he needed to do, so he apparated to a dingy apartment in Tower Bridge. It smell bad, it looked like death warmed up, and now he needed to find the little mouse who lived here.

"No, no, no!" the mouse said, but Draco froze him where he tried to scramble out of his seat next to his rig of computers.

"Hello, Kevin," he said and saw the young man's eyes roll fearfully to him. "I need you to find someone for me. Do I have to imperio you?"

Kevin tried to make a noise. Draco released him and he collapsed back in his chair. "Please just leave me alone. I haven't done anything to you."

"No, but I do find you useful. Now, I need to find someone who's left the country."

"That would be custom's databases. They're heavily protected."

"Oh, I know you can get into them. That's why you're useful, Kevin. Let's not have the same problems we've had in the past, shall we?"

Kevin grumbled. "You need to leave me alone." Grudgingly, he turned back to his computers, with screens that made up most of the wall.

Kevin didn't seem to have friends, or family. And he didn't seem to leave this dingy apartment much.

"Who and when?"

"Hermione Granger and in the last week."

"Thousands of people leave the UK in a week."

"You'd better clear your schedule then, Kevin."

Now he clacked, and then turned around. "No one by that name has left the UK in the last week."

"No, I should imagine not. She's smart enough to not use her name."

Kevin glared at him hatefully.

"You will have to identify her by her picture."

"I don't know what she looks like."

That was a good point. Draco know he had a picture of her in an old copy of the Daily Prophet. It sat in the back of his wardrobe. He never looked at this, but he knew it was there. "I'll be right back. Don't try to run, Kevin. It would only make this harder for you. We both know how much you hate being Imperio'd, but the mood I'm in, trust me, I wouldn't think twice about leaving you that way after we're done."

Kevin swallowed hard, and Draco knew he would be exactly where he was when Draco returned with her picture. "Call me when you find her," Draco said, handing over a picture of a smiling Hermione. For a moment, something in Draco hesitated to let it go, but he knew it was something irrational. This was the necessary step, so he let Kevin take the photo, then apparated back to his house.

It took two days for Kevin to call.

"Hannah Fogmore," Kevin said the moment Draco answered the muggle device what was astonishingly useful when dealing with muggles. "She left two days ago and flew to Boston out of Glasgow airport."

Draco hung up. She was alive. The confirmation both elated and deflated him at the same time. Again he had direction and the purpose. Chasing Hermione. So Boston. She wouldn't stay there, but he had a trail. Not even she was good enough to evade him. That he was sure of. He would find her.