Chapter 11

A/N: Hello readers! I was going to post this a while ago, but I was without power. It was a traumatic time for me.

As always, thanks to all of the wonderful people who take the time to review! Also, thanks to irianaceleste for betaing!

To summerful21: Sorry, no smut for me. I tried, it was just an uncomfortable experience all around. I know the plot drags a little. I was focused on making something at least a little light hearted when I was writing and now that everything's pre-written, it would take all kinds of work to rewrite all of the chapters and speed it up again. Sorry. Anyway, thanks for the review!

~Frosty

Just like the last nest they had cleaned out of vampires, this one was located in an abandoned warehouse. There was something about the dark, empty spaces right on the edge of dense population that was immensely appealing to vampires. The letter from the Aurors hadn't specified why they needed the vampire nest cleared out, but Hermione didn't like how close it was to a Muggle elementary school so she didn't question it too much.

Draco didn't question it at all. He was just pleased that he was going to get to behead something without getting scolded by his partner. If he fit in a beheading along with a good shag all in one day, it would be a good day indeed, scorching hot climbing of mountain aside.

Had he been given the chance, Smith probably would have argued about being left along with Cassy, but the orders had come right from the Auror Department and he couldn't go against them. Cassy was so exhausted from her eventful day with Luna that she wouldn't even notice the difference.

The letter had been accompanied by a brief description of the nest. Apparently there were only five or so vampires. It shouldn't take them very long at all to clear off the nest.

Glancing up at the sky, Hermione frowned. There was a trio of crows sitting on the edge of the warehouse, watching them.

"Have there always been this many crows around or am I paranoid after seeing that huge group of them outside the safe house the other day?"

Draco turned his eyes up to the birds as well. "It's hard to tell, I've never paid much attention to the things."

"They've been known to be associated with-"

He held up a hand. "If this is going to take a while, can we put it on the back burner for now? I'd really like to behead some vampires."

Rolling her eyes, she drew her sword from where it rested at her hip. She wasn't offended. Draco was right; they shouldn't be discussing theories in a back alley where anyone could hear, especially when there was a nest of vampires waiting for them.

She shot a glance at her partner. "Are you ready for this?"

His silver eyes flashed with the same spark as his drawn sword. Draco was having the most fun he'd had in a while. He was always at his best when there was a creature to be beheaded. "More than ready."

Standing back, Hermione watched as Draco kicked in the door and then rushed into the building. She followed behind him with her sword raised and ready to take down anything that managed to get past her partner.

Their entrance made a lot of noise, drawing all of the vampires into the echoing emptiness of the warehouse's working floor. The letter had been wrong; there were eight vampires, one of which Draco had beheaded before Hermione was even on the scene. She watched him for a moment, appreciating his strength as well as the wild and vaguely worrying joy in his eyes.

Her staring was cut short when one of the vampires noticed that Draco wasn't the only target in the room and dove at her. Three other vampires quickly followed, probably thinking her to be the easier target. While she didn't have Draco's brute strength and intensity, she had a precision and superior knowledge of her prey. Their skills evened out and made them pretty much equally difficult opponents.

She jumped back a step as a vampire took a swipe at her, and she responded with a slash that lodged her sword halfway into the neck of the vampire. Hermione took a page out of Draco's book and swore as she yanked her embedded sword out of the vampire's neck and then swung again, this time with enough force to completely behead the vampire. It hadn't even turned to dust before her attention was elsewhere.

The time she spent vulnerable and fighting with only one vampire left her open to attack. She had to quickly turn around so that the vampire sneaking up on her didn't catch her off guard.

"Hey Granger," Draco called as he calmly swung his sword in a broad arc that neatly beheaded the vampire in front of him.

"What?" With less finesse, Hermione jerked her arm away from a vampire that had been about to bite it and stabbed it in the eye. Not quite a beheading, but it still slowed the thing down a little – long enough for her to behead it properly.

"Isn't it a little strange that the Auror department didn't send an Auror with us to do this?"

"I was thinking the same thing," she said grimly. Having spent enough time physically defending herself that Draco wouldn't tease her about pulling her own weight later, Hermione sheathed her sword and pulled out her wand.

Sunlight charms were only as strong as the castor, and Hermione's were exceptionally strong. However, she could still only cast a charm strong enough to eliminate two at once, maximum. Draco was on his fourth vampire while Hermione finished off her third.

Not so horribly outnumbered, she hung back and watched as Draco handled the rest of them. Her partner had more of a taste for violence that she ever would.

She kind of poked around the warehouse while keeping one eye on her partner to make sure that she didn't need to cast a quick shield or sunlight spell to save his butt. She was rather fond of his butt.

Draco sliced the head off of the last vampire, breathing a little heavily but hardly winded. "Let's get out of here and make sure everything's okay back at the safe house," he called.

Hermione was in complete agreement.

The door was gaping open when they arrived. Hermione's stomach immediately dropped. She should have trusted her intuition! Not stopping to think, she rushed towards the house, only to be stopped by Draco's hand on her elbow.

"I know you're worried about the kid, but you can't go getting yourself killed just because you let your emotions get the better of you."

He was right. Hermione knew that he was right, yet she still tugged half-heartedly a few times. She shouldn't have left the helpless little girl that had already been through so much alone with an Auror that she knew for a fact wasn't the best person to leave alone with a child. If Smith had let something happen to her, Hermione was never going to forgive him. In fact, she'd make sure to have his job.

When Draco saw that she was thinking properly and had drawn her wand, Draco released her and then followed her into the safe house, his own wand drawn as well.

Any suspicions they'd had regarding Auror Smith pretty much completely dissolved when they found the man lying in a pool of blood in the foyer. Hermione wanted nothing more than to continue the search the rest of the house for Cassy, but she knew that Draco wouldn't stay there to make sure that Auror Smith was okay. Without glancing at each other for confirmation, Hermione kneeled down and pressed her fingers to Smith's neck to check for a pulse while Draco continued further into the house in search of Cassy.

Smith's pulse was beating strong under her fingers, but he was colder than he should be and had lost so much blood. She quickly ran her eyes over him in search of a wound, eventually finding a nasty slash in his shoulder. If she had to guess, she'd say that someone had stabbed him with a razor-sharp, yet very small knife.

Casting a healing spell, she got a better idea of the wound. An artery had been nicked, but it was a clean cut healing and Smith had started to show signs of waking up when Draco came back into the room. His grim expression let her know right away that Cassy hadn't been anywhere in the house.

"Even the horse is gone," Draco said.

Only then did Hermione notice that Smith's blood was soaking into her knees. She cleaned up the blood on him, her, and the floor with a quick cleaning spell, though even with magic she didn't think the carpet was ever going to be the same.

Smith's eyes blinked open then. With all of the blood that he'd lost, it didn't surprise Hermione that he seemed to struggle to get her into focus. His eyelids fluttered several times before he managed to keep them open and meet hers.

"I did everything I could to keep her safe, but I lost too much blood and blacked out." His eyes were asking for her understanding and despite whatever doubts she'd had about him, Hermione couldn't help but believe him. Draco seemed less willing to do so, but that was just his hatred for the man getting in the way of whatever compassion he possessed under all of his anger.

"Did you see who did it?" While Hermione would have preferred a more gentle voice from her partner, she also wanted to know the answer to his question. She joined her partner in looking at Smith expectantly, thought without the vague threat that Draco exuded.

"There were three of them," Smith said, looking at Draco almost challengingly. "One of them stabbed me with something while the other two grabbed the kid and the horse. I didn't see their faces or anything, but they didn't use magic. They may have been Muggles."

Hermione strongly doubted that. Muggles wouldn't have been able to get past the wards without some type of magic – unless someone let them in, of course. She took a second look at Smith, just to make sure that her initial assessment of him was correct. There was no guilt in his eyes and there was no refuting the wound on his shoulder.

Magical beings tended to look at injury with a slightly different eye than Muggles because they had potions and spells that could instant heal many wounds that would take weeks or even months for Muggle medicine to repair. Still, Hermione doubted that Smith would intentionally allow someone to give him such a life-threatening injury just to assuage any doubt that may be directed towards him. He had no way of knowing that they would be back to rouse him before he died of blood loss.

Standing, Hermione conjured a Patronus and sent it to the Auror department informing them that the safe house had been compromised. Normally, she and Draco would report to the Ministry themselves, abandoning the safe house in case the attackers returned. However, the attackers had acquired their target and no longer had a reason to return, and Smith was in no position to be Apparated anywhere.

While she may not be overly fond of the man, she wasn't going to leave him alone and injured after he had been hurt defending Cassy. Her eyes travelled back down to the man on the floor, who now wore a grimace of pain. If she thought about it, she was indirectly responsible for his pain. If she had been quicker to catch the false order to clear the vampire nest, she may have been back in time to stop Auror Smith from being injured and prevent Cassy from being kidnapped... again.

Her only consolation was that Cassy was with Sylvester. That little horse could take care of himself, and hopefully do something for the little girl as well.

While they waited for Aurors to appear, Hermione and Draco each took one of Smith's arms and helped him walk to a chair in the kitchen. He groaned and gasped in pain with every movement, and at one point all the blood drain from his face, leaving his already bloodless skin even paler. He managed to keep himself upright without assistance though, which was impressive in his condition.

Hermione felt eyes on her and looked up to see that Draco was watching her. He stepped up beside her and bumped her with his shoulder.

"Stop blaming yourself for this, Granger. We're all just doing our jobs. I'm sure Smith would agree." When Smith didn't immediately answer, Draco bumped his chair, making the man flinch. "Auror Smith?"

"Not your fault," he grunted.

It was a sentiment to how out of sorts with worry that Hermione was that she didn't even give Draco a dirty look for being so rough with someone that, while admittedly unpleasant most of the time, was on their side.

Needing something to keep her hands busy, Hermione set about making a large pot of tea. She knew that they could all use some and that the Aurors would probably appreciate a beverage when they arrived.

"How could they just - just send us home?" Hermione yelled, her voice shaking with anger. Her hands were shaking as well and she could feel that her cheeks were red with anger.

After she'd served them their tea and they'd investigated the house, the Aurors – no one she knew – had told her that it was best she just go home. They'd known who she was, who she knew, and while they'd given her the respect warranted by her war hero status, they'd been adamant. Hermione wanted to be part of the investigation into Cassy's disappearance, but the Aurors had insisted that she go home, get some rest, and "leave finding the missing child to the professionals."

Those condescending Aurors were lucky that Draco had been there to literally drag her away from them before she could get to her wand. For once, he was acting as the rational one while it was her whose anger threatened to overwhelm her. Even knowing that she'd be glad for Draco's actions later, she couldn't help but being a bit angry with him as well.

Knowing better than to draw her attention to him while she was spitting mad, Draco just sat back and watched her as she paced and ranted. They were well away from the Aurors – or any living people, really – so he felt it was best that she get all of her anger out of her system. Draco knew from experience how to handle anger.

If he was lucky, she'd tire herself out before she remembered that he was in the room. Old Draco would have just left her to her distress, but he was growing or something, because he just couldn't leave her alone in the drafty Manor with her emotions.

"We have to do something. What if those Aurors miss some important clue that could lead to finding Cassy? We need to go back and look at the safe house again in case there's something we missed."

And there was the line. Now he was going to have to intervene before she went charging off into the night.

"Granger, you're going to get yourself arrested if you keep this up. Those Aurors are already pretty unhappy with you for calling them 'useless, uncaring twats' as I dragged you out of the house. Not that I'm objecting to your description, it was accurate and I'm more than a little aroused by the way you insulted them." He got himself back on track before his partner turned on him. "We need to let the Aurors handle that case and work on our own. I have a feeling that whoever started the plague is the person who has Cassy and we both know that this person is almost certainly a deity of some sort. We're the only ones who can handle this, so we're going to have to find the cause of this plague before the Aurors get any leads on Cassy's disappearance."

With all of the pieces of the puzzle presented to her so neatly, Hermione was unable to resist. She stopped her angry pacing and sat down to divert all of her energy to her brain while she thought about what Draco had said. She missed Draco's knowing and victorious smirk because her eyes were unfocused and staring into space.

His plan backfired when Hermione's eyes suddenly refocused on him, shining with a new purpose. "We have to go see the Daughters of Echidna right now. Cassy could be there right now."

Draco cringed, disappointed that he hadn't anticipated that course of action. He should have known better though, she'd been a Gryffindor back in school, facing down Voldemort with her suicidal, yet incredibly lucky friends of hers.

"Granger, it's a little late to be gallivanting to other continents."

"Draco," she mimicked his irritated tone. "It's possible that Cassy's kidnapper took her back to the snake women so that they could finish off the job of killing her. In case your memory needs to be refreshed, they weren't just keeping her company until her parents came to get her."

Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get any sleep that night, Draco stood from his chair. "Let's get this over with then. Before I remember that I'm a horrible person who doesn't give a shite about the kid."

Hermione ignored him. He wasn't as horrible as he liked to think, but he would be annoyed with her for pointing this out. They both pretended that he was horrible as they gathered what they needed to take another trip to see the snake women.