Chapter 29

They'd swept the area three times already. The Aurors who had Portkeyed out had all returned to the forest to clear the scene of dangerous magic, arrest any Death Eaters they flushed out, and to scour the landscape for any sign of their missing Auror.

Tiredly, Harry set his broom down in a clearing. He knew that Draco was very capable of taking care of himself, but outnumbered and possibly injured, it was looking more and more like he had been captured and spirited away. With a prize like Malfoy, it would explain why no one had returned for the unconscious Death Eaters they'd found.

Still, until Harry found some kind of clear sign, he was determined to keep looking. He was sure there was a detail that he was missing, if only he knew where to look.

It didn't help that whatever had happened to his hand and his arm was fogging up his brain with achiness, and making it hard for him to think. That was why he decided to fly over the area on his broom. It was much faster and took considerably less effort than covering the area on foot.

Behind him he heard Ernie set his own broom down. The Auror had taken it on himself to shadow Harry around, having apparently been self-appointed as the babysitter. Harry knew the minute he appeared to wobble on his broom, Ernie would be whisking him straight back to St Mungos.

The Hufflepuff stood beside him while Harry surveyed the clearing. He kept coming back to this same spot, though he wasn't sure why.

Taking the scene in with a quick glance, Ernie echoed the conclusion Harry had already come to. "Looks like a skirmish."

The ground was littered with holes that looked like someone had used blasting spells on it, over and over again. Mounds of turned dirt made for uneven footing, but Harry slowly walked out into it, trying to recreate the battle in his mind.

It made no sense. The holes were almost randomly placed. He couldn't tell if there were two people fighting or several. There was no blood, no swatches of torn clothing, no indentations from bodies landing or hand-to-hand combat. And no footprints.

Harry wasn't a tracker. But he felt like there was something very significant about this spot.

Turning in a circle, he tried to take in all the details of the scene around him. Dirt, tufts of grass, trees, holes, scrub, flowers.

He was missing something. He turned again, his eyes snagging on a brightly colored orange-red flower. Having nothing else to capture his attention, he wandered over to it, noting that it was actually a clump of three flowers.

Idly, he noted that they were unusually shaped. The design was rather ugly, and caused a recoiling sensation in the pit of his stomach. There was something familiar about them, but he couldn't quite place the memory.

"Do you think it's a sign?" Ernie asked, looking at the flowers curiously. Quickly, he scanned the rest of the clearing and then said, "Those are the only ones here."

"Really?" Harry looked up, noting that Ernie was right. The bright orange stood out against all the green and brown, and they were definitely the only ones of that kind. The little white flowers that almost overgrew the brighter ones were all over the clearing, but this funny orange one was nowhere else.

"What do you think it means?"

Feeling the first prickle of hope, Harry touched the cuff on his wrist, sending a quick message. "I think it means that we need Hermione."

The waiting room at St. Mungos seemed the most logical place for the women to stay. If Harry got into trouble, he'd be brought right back by his Auror team. And if they found Draco—when they found Draco—he'd also surely be brought back to the magical hospital.

Hermione was trying very hard not to think about what condition Draco might be in. She'd dated an Auror for a very long time, and her best friend was an Auror, so she wasn't unused to the stress and the anxiety of waiting for word. But this was somehow different.

Draco was known for being brilliant, and he did not have a reputation for being reckless. She should have been less worried about him than her fellow Gryffindors. But after the conversation she'd overheard, which she was sure Harry hadn't meant her to hear, she was suddenly all too aware of how many enemies Draco had made over the course of his short life.

He'd told her the other Aurors weren't fond of him, but it seemed that was an understatement. She did her best not to think of the vile things that Auror had said as Ernie was throwing him out of the room. If she did, she'd be furious all over again at the accusations that were thrown at a man who had done nothing since the war but prove himself time after time.

Still, Hermione couldn't imagine that Draco had anything to fear from his fellow Aurors. The thing that was really worrying her, what was causing the tight ball of fear in her stomach, was knowing that every time Draco went out into the field, he was risking more than the others because he was a prime target of Dark Wizards.

It made sense. After serving his probation and joining the Auror department, he'd promptly followed up on all information he had on the possible whereabouts of the missing Death Eaters, and he was instrumental in finding and capturing them. Having been raised a pureblood in the highest circles, he had an innate understanding of how they thought and strategized.

She knew of at least a few Death Eaters who had been very close to the Malfoy family—parents of his closest friends, even—who had been imprisoned as a direct result of Draco's information or his work.

Clearly, he was viewed as a traitor. By both sides. But one side had no scruples, was extremely angry, and would not hesitate to cast Unforgiveables.

Merlin, she hoped Harry found him first. Please, let them find him first.

The inactivity weighed on her. She stood up to pace the little room they were in. Every few minutes she'd get up to do the same thing. She'd take a few steps to cross the length of the room, then turn back, until she realized what she was doing, and then she'd force herself to sit down again.

This time, as Hermione's brisk stride tap-tapped on the tile floor, Ginny broke the tense silence. "Jamie just fell asleep." She rocked the bundled baby in her arms as if to punctuate her statement.

She didn't include any words of censure, but Hermione promptly stopped her frenzied pacing and forced herself to sit beside her friend again.

"How can you stay so calm, Ginny? I can barely hold still. I want to be out there doing something." She was still upset that Kingsley had refused to let her go into the area until it had been swept and cleared. She was as good as any Auror, and her war record proved it, but she didn't wear the badge, and Kingsley was a stickler for the rules all of a sudden.

Ginny raised a sardonic eyebrow at Hermione. "You remember your seventh year? I got real good at learning how to wait on Harry Potter throwing himself into danger."

Hermione remembered those days all too clearly. It was hard enough to live in fear, constantly on the run. Not for the first time, she shuddered to think of what it had been like simply waiting impotently for news or for something to happen.

She stood up again, as if to start pacing, before she remembered she'd stopped so her rapid movements wouldn't accidentally wake up the baby.

In a low voice, Ginny said, "I'm surprised you aren't handling this better. You've lived with an Auror for equally as long as I have. I've never seen you like this when Ron was out there."

"I know, but it's not the same," she said, before she could think through her words.

"No?" Ginny's question was mild, but Hermione heard the subtle probing.

She looked up to see Ginny's eyes were very direct on hers. She opened her mouth to speak the deluge of words that had been pressing upon her brain only to find that they were suddenly gone. How did she explain that what she felt for Draco was different, somehow bigger than anything she'd ever felt before? And that the fear of losing him was an overwhelming, gaping maw that she kept feeling herself sliding towards?

He was more than she'd ever expected. She'd always known he could be funny and clever, intelligent and insightful. But she learned that when it suited him, he was incredibly caring and thoughtful, too.

And he was so sweet. Under all the prickly layers of arrogance and pride, there was a man who was so tender and kind it took her breath away. There was the roaring flames and the warm, banked fire, and both sides of him drew her.

But it was so much more than that.

She liked who she was when she was with him. She felt good about herself, wanted and appreciated.

And real. For the first time in such a long time, she felt like she was real, truly herself. It was an incredible feeling to know that someone saw her and wanted her for exactly who she was.

It surprised her how badly she needed someone to see her, to know her, to want her.

She closed her mouth, wondering how she could convey this to Ginny without implicating Ron any further in the damage that had been done to her self-esteem.

How could she tell Ginny that she finally felt like she had someone to rely on, without insulting their friendship?

She had so many friends, and she knew she could count on them in a pinch, but she'd never had someone just for herself. Someone who she knew would be there for her, and for her alone; who could be strong when, for some reason, she just couldn't do it anymore. Someone who understood her, who could be what she needed, who sometimes knew what she needed before even she did.

She thought of that afternoon by the pond when she'd broken all of his china. She'd been free to lose control because he was there to catch her.

Being with Draco was the first time that she could ever remember where she felt that she wasn't really alone.

Thinking of going back to that place of emptiness and loneliness, if something were to happen to Draco, caused the slightest sheen of tears to well up into her eyes.

"Merlin," Ginny whispered, leaning close to Hermione. "You're in love with him."

"What?" she said too loudly, pulling back. Having the L-word dropped on her interrupted all her internal musings and scattered her thoughts. She felt her stomach drop suddenly, as her brain protested.

Surely not yet. She'd told Draco only the other day that she thought she might love him. Surely it must be too soon to tell.

Ginny smirked at her knowingly.

Hermione pressed a hand to her belly as a wave of nausea and fear passed through her. "I—I don't know, yet."

Ginny scoffed, but her eyes were bright and her expression was pleased. "There's no mistaking the signs."

All the words she'd been thinking, that she didn't say to Ginny, came crashing down on her. They sounded exactly like something a woman in love would say.

"I—I mean, I suspected," she hedged, "but—it's just too soon to tell."

The redhead seemed to find this an amusing statement. She cocked her head to the side and asked playfully, "And how long, exactly, have you 'suspected.'"

How long had it been? It was only that weekend that she and Draco had been intimate for the first time. But if she was honest with herself, she thought the feelings had been growing for some time now. From even before that first kiss. Maybe all the way back to that first night when he'd held her hand and danced with her in front of all those witches and wizards in defiance of one of the worst episodes of her adult life.

She wasn't sure she was completely ready for love again. She'd loved Ron with her whole heart, and yet it somehow was not as big, as all-encompassing as this feeling that threatened to overwhelm her if she acknowledged its existence.

Her belly flipped again, and she pressed her hand harder to it. "Maybe a few weeks," she said, quietly, her voice shaky. Her emotions were just running too damn high. She shouldn't be thinking about this, not right now while Draco was missing.

A crashing sound made her miss Ginny's next question.

They both turned to see a passing mediwitch with a tray of dropped phials. None of them had broken when they'd hit the floor, but she was frantically gathering them back up.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, her face red.

Hermione recognized her as a Ravenclaw, a few years younger than her, but couldn't recall her name.

"If you'll excuse me," the mediwitch said, placing the last phial on her tray and leaving quickly, her lime green robes swishing behind her.

Confused at the woman's jumpy behavior, Hermione turned to Ginny to ask her to repeat what she'd just said, but Ginny's gaze was riveted on the message that had appeared on her wrist cuff.

"It's Harry," she said, inanely, as if it could be anyone else. "He says..." She trailed off, looking at her cuff confused.

Hermione leaned over to look at the words that were scrolled across the surface in small script, all remnants of their conversation pushed aside.

Think I've got a clue. Sending pictures. Tell Hermione to be ready.

"Sending pictures?" Hermione wondered. "For me? What could that mean? Can you send pictures through the cuff?" She'd made them herself, but had never considered whether sending more than text was a possibility.

Ginny looked a tiny bit embarrassed, her face flushing lightly pink, and said, "If you're very specific about one particular thing and concentrate on the details, you can send what looks like a drawing."

Hermione began to ask her what kinds of pictures they'd sent each other when she abruptly decided it was best not to know. Instead she asked, genuinely curious, "Did Harry ever accidentally send something to Ron instead of to you?"

Ginny's eyes opened wide and her face flushed even further, as if the idea hadn't even occurred to her. "I hope not!"

Her reaction only confirmed Hermione's suspicions, and she didn't know whether to be indignant at the misuse of resources, or pleased that two of her oldest friends still acted like teenagers in love.

She didn't have time to comment, however, because the first picture came through the cuff and Ginny held her arm so they could both see it.

It looked like a twig from a bush. Several tall spears came out of the center, covered with spots that might have been flowers. It was hard to tell the size and the shape, as it was clear Harry hadn't concentrated hard enough on the details.

A quick message scrolled across, replacing the twigs.

What is this?

The picture of the twigs came back. She assumed Harry wanted her to identify the flower. But why? Was this the clue he was talking about? And why would he ask her, when she wasn't a florist or an expert on flowers?

Hermione peered closely at the sketch on Ginny's wrist, and both girls puzzled over it for a moment. "Can you ask him to send me a more detailed picture of one of those spear-things?" she asked Ginny. "And see if he can use something for reference so I can see the size. I can't tell whether it's really big or really small."

With her wand pressed to the cuff, Ginny relayed the message, and the response was a much more detailed picture of a stem with several little flowers on it, and a curious oblong shape lying across the bottom.

Puzzled, Hermione opened her mouth to ask Ginny to ask Harry what the object was.

"It's his finger," Ginny replied, quickly, placing her own hand across the bottom, to show how Harry had placed his finger there for reference.

As if he'd heard Hermione's skepticism, the shape suddenly included a fingernail and knuckle lines, proving it was, indeed, a finger.

Deciding not to comment on how Ginny was familiar with cuff-pictures of Harry's fingers, and also deciding she didn't want to know which finger it was, Hermione examined the flowers closely. They were very tiny, and lined the entire stem, branching off the twig with tiny little leaves in between.

"Ginny, ask for a picture of the whole plant," Hermione said.

A moment later a picture of a large bush with hundreds of those tiny spears on it appeared, with the silhouette of an entire hand over it for size reference.

"Heather," Hermione said. "I'm sure it's heather." Her heart was beating hard in her chest, wondering why Harry needed the information and hoping she was correct. She felt absurdly like she was back at Hogwarts taking a pop quiz she hadn't known to study for.

Dutifully, Ginny relayed the information and received another question back.

"What does it mean?" Hermione read. "What does he mean, 'What does it mean?'" Her voice had risen in pitch, irritated at the extremely ineffective means of communication and the man on the other end asking inane questions. "How am I supposed to know what it means?"

The question on the cuff changed, no doubt in response to Ginny asking for more information.

What does heather symbolize?

Oh, flower language. Harry meant flower language. Well, she supposed she did know quite a bit about that, after having spent a whole afternoon studying up after Draco had sent her that large bouquet of flowers.

Hermione wracked her brain. Her bouquet hadn't contained heather, but she did remember seeing it in one of the sections. It had to do with celebrations, she thought. Good luck? Beauty? Was that it?

But there were different colors, and she knew the color often made a difference in the meaning.

"What color are the flowers?" she asked, knowing that even if she got the answer, she wouldn't be able to remember what the specific meaning of each color was. She stood up, gathering her bag, and moving quickly, heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" Ginny asked, following her to the door, but clearly reluctant to leave the waiting room.

"To get my book," she answered. "Wait here, I'll be right back."

She'd taken a few steps down the corridor when she heard Ginny's voice call out, "White!" after her.

White flowers. White heather. What did it mean?

She repeated the words to herself, even knowing she wasn't going to forget the information, as she ran all the way to the Floos.

Fortunately, she had taken her book home, so she didn't have to go through the trouble of getting into the Ministry to retrieve it. A quick trip in, an Accio later, and another Floo ride back out, and she was at the hospital again.

As she ran down the corridors, her feet pounding on the tile floors, she tried to turn the pages in the book to find where the heather was listed.

Ginny was standing and anxiously waiting for her. Baby Jamie had obviously woken up again, and he was mewling softly as she rocked him in her arms.

"Protection, it means protection," Hermione gasped out, opening the book to where her fingers were marking the page. As she laid it out on one of the seats, they could see the several photographs that matched Harry's drawing, each one swaying in its own gentle breeze. Hermione placed a finger on the white ones, showing that they were used to symbolize luck and to indicate protection.

"He's sent another," Ginny said, holding her arm out.

Hermione looked and saw a very detailed sketch of a large, ugly-looking flower, with blooms that resembled a gaping maw with teeth.

She felt an icy shiver go down her back. She'd seen that flower before. It was extremely unique and forbidding in its appearance. Hastily, she flipped the pages toward the last section in the book.

"Harry says the flower is orangey red," Ginny relayed to her, peering over her shoulder at the vivid pictures that were flying by.

But Hermione already knew the color didn't matter. The flower was only ever used for one very formal occasion. In her book, which was especially for guiding a witch or wizard on appropriate flowers for every occasion, there were several pages taken up on the proper care and arranging of the magical blooms. It was an older tradition, not much adhered to in recent generations, due to the distressing appearance of the flower itself. Though the plant was not dangerous, it was ghastly to look upon. One had the strangest sensation that they were going to be sucked right into that open mouth.

Hermione's hands shook as she frantically tried to find the articles she was looking for, hoping there was some additional nuance she was forgetting that could relieve the sharp dread that was gnawing in the pit of her stomach.

The page turned, and Ginny gasped as they both looked at a full-page picture of the same plant that Harry was asking about.

Death's Kiss.

A/N: Aren't you guys glad I waited until I could post all these chapters close together? Imagine if I'd posted them one at a time, and you had to go months and months in between each one, and poor Draco's fate was just left hanging in the air? Don't worry, we see him again in the next chapter.

And while I'm here, I want to remind you all to check out my latest works. Though I wasn't working on Draco's Bad Day very much in this last year, I did write an entire completed novel-length Tomione called Light of the Moon. It's probably the main reason it took me so long to get back to DBD. I spent 6 months agonizing on that story, but I'm exceptionally proud of it, so if you haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, please give it a shot. I guarantee it's not your regular Tomione story, and it's a great story for even non-Tomione shippers. It will NOT convert you at all to the Tomione ship. *cackles evilly*

The other reason I took so long was I spent four months participating in a one-shot competition that took up all my creative writing energies. Two of those four stories have been posted here on FFN, and I hope to catch up with my posting and post the other two soon.

S&R: CONSTRUCTIVE REVIEWS WELCOME (CRW), which means feel free to leave me encouraging comments, constructive criticism, or anything in between.