Chapter 4

A/N: Hello readers! I still have some reviews to answer, but I wanted to post this now. So don't worry.

If it was confusing to anyone, the snake women were human from the waist up and giant snake from there down. Like creepy land mermaids.

As always, thanks to all the wonderful people who take the time to review and to irianaceleste for betaing.

Also, HAPPY (early) CANADA DAY!

~Frosty

Hermione followed his gaze and found that he'd been telling the truth, but the child wasn't all that small. The girl looked to be at least eight or nine. It was the complete terror in her big, pleading eyes made her appear younger.

Not liking being used as a jungle gym or some sort of giant teddy bear, Draco shook his leg, trying to dislodge the girl's dirty little hands. She clung tightly, making little distressed whimpers as she refused to release him.

When the leg shaking failed, he leaned down and tried to pry her off using his hands like a spatula. The child would be much happier with Granger to comfort her, and he would be much happier when there was no longer a sticky little limpet stuck to his pants.

"Draco!" Hermione admonished. "She's a little girl and she's scared out of her mind right now. Stop trying to scrape her off of you."

Hermione, sensing that it was only a matter of time before Draco had the poor girl in tears, gently untangled the child's small fingers from Draco's trouser leg. She lifted the little girl into her arms, glad that the poor thing wasn't resisting. As the girl buried her head against her neck and started shaking, Hermione rocked a little and made quiet hushing sounds to try and calm her a little.

To compensate for the fact that both of Hermione's arms were busy, Draco stepped forward slightly in case he needed to defend the both of them.

"That was left here. A snack for later," the snake woman hissed. Her words drew a small, terrified squeak from the child as she pressed herself even closer against Hermione.

"I'm afraid that we can't leave her here," Hermione said firmly. "We can't just knowingly abandon a child when we knew that she's going to be eaten."

"He wants her dead. We will be punished if she doesn't die."

The snake woman shifted as if she was going to attack and Draco tensed slightly, ready for it, but one of the creatures from further back in the cave moaned feebly and started to have what looked like a seizure, distracting her. She turned around and seemed torn for a moment, wanting to aid her sister but needed to keep Hermione and Draco from fleeing with their little snack.

"Run," Hermione whispered, turning around and following her own suggestion. Draco was right behind her. He managed to cast a feather-light charm on the child while he covered their backs.

"He will find you!" the snake woman yelled after them.

By the time they got back to the office, the little girl's sobs had stopped and she had fallen into an exhausted slumber against Hermione's shoulder. Hermione transfigured the extra visitor's chair into a small bed and tucked the girl into the softness of the blankets after casting a quick cleansing charm to make sure that the child was at least a little bit less dirty.

"Someone wants her dead," Hermione said in a whisper. She stroked a gentle hand over the child's matted hair when the girl whimpered in her sleep. The touch seemed to clam her a little and she settled down into a restful sleep once more.

Draco scowled, knowing exactly what his partner was thinking. "We can take care of her just fine without an Auror presence."

"You know that's not procedure." Hermione was already halfway to the door.

"You're going to leave me here with her?" There was a hint of panic in Draco's voice that he would never admit to, but Hermione heard it loud and clear. It made her smile.

"Draco, she's a child. She's not going to hurt you. Offer her the biscuits in my desk and some water if she wakes up before I get back. She's probably starving." When he still seemed about to object, Hermione added, "She's exhausted and is going to be asleep for a long time. She won't wake up. You'll be fine."

Draco looked terrified, which was why Hermione wore an amused little smile as she went to talk to the Auror department. They needed to find an Auror to keep the kid safe while she and Draco worked on the case.

Draco spent a while trying to pretend the child wasn't there. He rifled through Granger's desk in search of something to entertain him. Unfortunately, he had done this so many times over the many years of their partnership that everything of even the remotest interest had already been picked over and removed. Granger always got rid of the fun things because she said he was too distracting while he played with them. There weren't even any paperclips left!

Sitting back in his chair, Draco resigned himself to a long, uncomfortable wait. He knew the Auror department could be a little slow when they were assigning Aurors to watch over people. Granger being Granger was going to speed up that process a little, but he was still left supervising a child for entirely too long. Granger would never forgive him if he somehow broke the kid before she came back.

The girl was curled into a small, protective ball. Draco couldn't imagine how horrible it was for her in the cavern of the snake woman. She was lucky that they had all been ill, or they probably would have gotten around to eating her sooner.

"Mommy?" the girl whimpered, suddenly sitting bolt upright and staring at Draco with wide, watery eyes that he had no idea how to handle.

"I'm not your mother, go back to sleep," he said with more gruffness than he had intended. It took a lot for Draco to do gentle, and he wasn't good at it whenever he tried. There was just too much anger and stiffness in him for him to ever be nurturing.

Her lower lip trembled and the moisture accumulating in her eyes threatened to overflow.

Granger would be pissed if the kid was hysterical when she returned. "What do you need?" He managed – just barely – to keep the frustration from his voice.

Wordlessly, the girl held up her arms, imploring with those large blue eyes of hers. Her lower lip trembled pathetically.

"No." He stood and would have backed away if the relatively small office had the room for it. "I'll go get you candy and some biscuits, something to drink. Just don't make me hug you." Draco's only consolation was that Potter or someone else annoying wasn't there to witness his moment of defeat at the hands of a small child. Even Draco himself knew that it was only a matter of time before he caved and did as those pleading eyes begged.

After a remarkably short time considering his pride and stubbornness, Draco sighed, crossed the room and lifted the small girl into his arms. She immediately wrapped her arms around his neck in a death grip and her legs around his waist, clinging tightly. Her grip was so strong that Draco could probably let go of her and she'd stay attached to him under her own power. There was something inhumanly strong about this child's clinging ability.

He hesitantly rocked as he'd seen Granger do, patting the child's back. Unsurprisingly, the girl seemed to like it better when Granger did it. She was better at this type of thing.

When Hermione entered the room a while later with a surly looking Auror in tow, she found Draco leaning over the transfigured bed and trying to scrape the sleeping child off himself. It seemed that even in her sleep she had quite the grip and wasn't willing to release the blond.

"Help me," Draco hissed at his partner when she seemed content to only stand in the doorway and attempt to smother her amusement at his distress. What she didn't show was the little jump she felt in her stomach at the sight of him with a child. She wasn't anywhere near ready to discuss it, and they were always careful to use magical protection, but the thought of one day having children with Draco was something that she found herself contemplating.

The Auror behind Hermione cleared his throat, obviously not appreciating the delay. His interruption spurred Hermione into action. She moved over to her partner and helped him remove the child's arms from around his neck. With her assistance, it only took them seconds to have the girl tucked back into the bed.

"I'm not a nanny," the Auror snapped, obviously sensing that Draco was going to want to go about his work and foist the child off on someone else.

Hermione stepped in before Draco could say something that that would lead to blows. The confrontational way the Auror held himself even when he wasn't being threatened in the least led her to believe that Draco was going to need to be on his best behaviour if they were going to avoid a fight.

"Auror Smith, we don't think that you're here to babysit her," Hermione soothed. "We understand that your duties are confined to protection only."

While Hermione respected that taking care of the child wasn't in his job description, it wouldn't kill the man to help on occasion. After all, taking care of randomly found children wasn't in Hermione and Draco's job descriptions and Hermione fully intended on doing just that – while forcing Draco to do the same, of course.

"Granger, why are you humouring this wanker?" Of course Draco didn't care that Auror Smith was just waiting for something to fight about.

Quickly, Hermione stepped between them before a fight could start. She had a feeling that she was going to have to repeat this move frequently while they worked with Auror Smith. Hermione could already tell that working with Auror Smith was going to be exhausting.

Having suspected that perhaps a traditional interrogation room would be traumatic for the child, Hermione had chosen to question her in the office once she was done with her nap. The little girl, after informing Hermione that her name was Cassy, insisted that she sit in Draco's lap or she wasn't going to answer any questions. Draco had not been pleased but had caved under the combined looks of Hermione and Cassy.

"So, Cassy, do you remember how you came to be in the cave with the snake women?" Hermione asked. She was behind her desk with Draco and Cassy in Draco's usual chair. Auror Smith was standing by the door, as far as he could get from Draco in the confines of Hermione's office. The two were much too alike to have even the slightest chance of ever getting along.

Cassy nodded and seemed to try and speak, but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth. It was like she was selectively silenced.

"Speak up, kid," Draco ordered not unkindly.

She tried, Hermione could see her trying her best, but Cassy eventually fell against Draco's chest with a sad, apologetic look on her face. "I can't."

"What about your parents, is there anything you can say about them? Even the smallest detail could help."

It was clear from her face that Cassy really wanted to tell them something, but her lips just wouldn't form the words she wanted to say.

The same thing happened every time Hermione or anyone else in the room tried to ask Cassy anything that would be able to help them with the case. Cassy couldn't tell them anything more than her name, and even that Hermione suspected was a nickname.

"Is there anything you're able to tell us?" Hermione finally asked. If there wasn't, she and Draco were going to have to go back to the cavern of snake women, something she didn't want to do. The Daughters of Echidna were the last of their kind and it was illegal to kill them, though it wasn't really illegal for the Daughters of Echidna to kill meddling Ministry employees who stole their meal. She and Draco would be putting themselves in danger for what Hermione was almost sure would turn out to be a dead end.

Cassy struggled to give them an answer, stopping to rest for brief moments to regain her strength between attempts. She was clearly exhausted and this was only further depleting her energy. Finally, after several minutes, she was finally able to get something past her lips, "He was looking for an octopus. One that sees the future."

Hermione and Draco exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing: it was looking more and more like the gods were involved in whatever mess they'd stumbled across. Auror Smith, meanwhile, snorted in disbelief and shook his head. He clearly thought that Cassy was telling lies.

It was probably safest that he stayed in the dark.

"Do you think we should attempt Legilimens on her?" Draco asked quietly once Cassy was once more sleeping on the cot in Hermione's office. "Maybe she's just blocked from vocally telling us."

Hermione shook her head. "If this is the work of a god like we suspect, then whoever it was wouldn't have been so careless as to block only her voice. I doubt we'd be able to get anything from her and using such an invasive spell on a traumatised child would be wrong."

"Then I guess we're hunting for a divining octopus." He didn't sound impress.

Later, when Hermione and Draco had taken Cassy and Auror Smith to a safe house in the middle of Muggle London, they finally had a moment alone to discuss the octopus.

"She's a child. It's probably a load of bollocks," Draco said, not for the first time.

Hermione sighed and rubbed a hand over her aching forehead. Only one day back at work and she was exhausted and already had a headache.

"I know that, Draco, but at the moment, it's the only lead we have and it needs to be followed."

They were lucky enough to have been put into a safe house with three bedrooms. Cassy got one, Auror Smith another, and Hermione and Draco took the remaining room. This was where they were as they discussed the octopus.

"How do we even go about finding a single octopus in all the oceans?" he asked.

Draco lounged on the bed and watched Hermione stare moodily at a detailed map of the world that she'd spread across most of the bed and Draco's legs.

"Don't be so negative, Draco. I'm sure there's something somewhere about an octopus that sees the future. That isn't something normal, even in the magical world."

There was some little memory vying for attention in the back of Hermione's mind, but she couldn't seem to grasp it. She had a feeling that this wasn't the first time she'd heard mention of an octopus that told the future, but she just couldn't put her finger on where in the world she'd heard about it.

"Granger, just come to bed. You look like you're going to fall over."

When she didn't obey him, Draco shoved the map off of the bed and grabbed his partner. Ignoring her indignant shriek, he pulled her down beside him and smirked at her as she struggled in his arms.

"Calm down and accept that you're not going to magically solve anything before bed tonight," Draco said against her neck. She stilled as the little hairs on the back of her neck rose in response. Draco was behind her, but she could tell that he was smirking at the effect he was having on her.

Since she was so tired, it took very little convincing for Draco to get her under the covers and resting with her eyes closed.

"Draco?" she asked as soon as he turned out the lights.

His response was an irritated grunt.

"I didn't want to say something in front of Auror Smith, but I ran into Harry while I was in the Auror department. He told me what you did."

Draco scowled. "I don't want to talk about it." His eyes turned contemplative. "Unless you want to reward me sexually, that may just erase the horrors of having Potter in my head."

"I'm not rewarding you at all. You were only correcting a problem that arose from your own stupid prank."

It seemed that he was going to have to be more persuasive if he wanted to get his reward. Draco dug his way through her mass of hair, burrowing until his lips could come into contact with that sensitive spot behind her ear. He was rewarded when she shivered against him once more.

From there, all it took was slyly slipping a hand down the front of her skirt and a little persuasive fondling before Hermione sighed and let him roll her onto her back and place himself over top of her.

"Luna!" Hermione said with a gasp, shoving Draco off of her.

"Granger, it's offensive enough that you called out someone else's name, but it's even more offensive when the name belongs to a woman. Unless you're implying that you'd like to bring another woman into bed with us, in which case I'm sure I'll get over it eventually."

Hermione whacked him, otherwise ignoring his comments. She would have reacted more strongly if she thought for a second that he was serious, but he was just trying to get a rise out of her and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

"Luna is the one I heard talking about an octopus that could divine the future. She said she met one in her travels, but I dismissed it as her usual oddness."

"I write off everything she says as usual oddness."

Hermione whacked him again. "You write off almost everything everyone says to you."

"Not you, I listen to you most of time. I then decide to disregard half of what you say, but I listen to it."

Somehow, Hermione didn't find this as touching as Draco seemed to think she should.