Chapter 12

A/N: Hello readers! Allergies suck, just for those of you who don't know first hand.

Thanks as always to all of the wonderful people who review. Also thanks to irianaceleste for betaing!

Also! For those of you with any knowledge of Greek mythology, I've fiddled with it to make it fit my plot, so some things might be slightly off.

~Frosty

"We should have thought of this," Hermione murmured as they stared at the storefront. She'd been so set on running off to save Cassy from the snake women that she hadn't given much thought to the unimportant little technicalities.

"That the place would be closed in the middle of the night? Yes, we should have."

Hermione carefully cast a few spells to see if the place was magically protected against breaking and entering. It wasn't.

She was just desperate enough to make her willing to break the law. Hermione hated doing it, but she understood that sometimes rules and laws needed to be broken in order to get things done. She'd always understood this, but it didn't mean that she had to like it. Laws maintained order when adhered to in general but there were extenuating exceptions to every rule.

While Hermione debated the best way to break in – Apparate herself inside and hope that no one saw her disappear from the empty street, go around back and hope to find a door left unlocked or a latched window, or any number of other, non-destructive scenarios – Draco stood beside her with as much patience as he had for anything. He lasted a whole second before he rolled his eyes, wound his sleeve around his fist and punched the glass that made up the top half of the shop door.

"Draco!" Hermione snapped. It was unlikely that there was a Muggle alarm hooked up in the shop since it was owned by magic users, but it had still been a risk to so blatantly shatter a window on a public street. Even if it was the middle of the night and the street appeared empty, it was possible that someone was watching from a window somewhere, or that the sound would draw the attention of a well-meaning citizen.

"Calm down, Granger. We're in a hurry." He reached through the broken window and unlocked the door from the inside. Draco dragged her into the shop, their shoes crunching on the broken glass. He used his wand to repair the window once they were safely in the building. "There, now no one will see that I broke the window."

She would have stayed to scold him, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

Hermione stopped in front of the wall of fish tanks, taking a moment to figure out how in the world the girl had opened the wall of tanks before. The catch was well hidden between two tanks, not too difficult to find, yet still small enough and tucked away in a manner that would make it unlikely that someone would accidentally touch it.

She pushed the latch and the front of the tanks swung out, leaving the water there waiting for them to pass.

Apparently there was another button that needed to be pushed in order to keep people dry as they walked through the water. Hermione and Draco were both dripping wet then they emerged from the other side.

They both immediately wrinkled their nose at the horrible smell. Before, the caves had smelt mostly of wet stone with hints of sickness, but now the scent of illness and death. Hermione covered her nose with a hand, her eyes watering. She cast a spell that filtered the air for them as they breathed. It wasn't perfect and some of the smell still lingered, but it was no longer choking.

"I have the feeling that there aren't many snakes down there," Draco said.

She nodded grimly. Still, she pushed forward towards the stairs after they dried themselves off with their wands.

Draco wasn't happy. Fortunately, he seemed to know better than to voice his displeasure. Hermione would hate to have to hex him and then have him at anything less than top fighting form once they arrived at the nest of possibly hostile magical creatures below them.

The trip down the stairs seemed to stretch even longer than it had been last time. Hermione tried to rush but was wary of slipping on the rough-cut stone partially obscured by the darkness. Cassy wouldn't be helped if her rescuers broke their necks on the way down to her.

When they reached the bottom and cast the necessary spells to light up the cavern, they were met with an unpleasant but not entirely unexpected sight. No longer was the cave filled with snake women. There were only a few piles of rotted remains to mark the unique species that had flourished there not so long ago.

Draco's face was twisted up in disgust. The smell was much stronger down at the source, and the sights to accompany it weren't any more pleasant than their scent.

"Have we considered the possibility of contracting this illness ourselves?" Draco asked as he paced the perimeter of the cave, just to be sure that there was absolutely no sign that Cassy wasn't there. He knew his partner would refuse to leave unless they'd thoroughly scoured the place.

"I've thought about it, but it's unlikely." Hermione was using briskness to cover her sadness. "No fully human creature has been infected so far. I think it may have something to do with the way partial human bodies are combined with other creatures that really allows the disease to take."

It was just a theory, of course, but Hermione had been thinking on it for as long as they'd been investigating the case. Contracting the illness themselves was always a concern. She wasn't going to let it stop her from helping the creatures, though. Someone needed to do something, and if not her, then who?

So far, they weren't even positive on the symptoms of the illness. From the few known details in the file, the illness seemed to present itself differently in different beings. In the case of the Daughters of Echidna, the sickness had been virtually symptomless until they dropped dead. The women would slow down, much like snakes when exposed to cold temperatures, except instead of hibernating, the snake women simply died.

When Hermione was done staring at the various corpses with sadness, she followed Draco's example and started scouring the cavern with her partner. Together, it didn't take them long to cover the entire cave.

"She's not here," Hermione said sadly. The hope had been small, but she's still allowed herself to hope. Now she was once again back to square one.

"No sense lingering then." Draco's hand in the middle of her back encouraged her towards the stairs. She didn't resist. She was just as eager to get out of there as him, but her feet didn't seem to want to move.

Halfway up the stairs, she wiped irritably at a tear that escaped.

"The girl or all the death?" Draco asked from behind her.

She didn't pretend that she had no idea what he was talking about; he deserved more credit than that. "There was nothing we could do for those women. They wouldn't even let anyone down there to help ease their suffering. I still feel like I failed them somehow, though."

"You're such a Gryffindor, Granger. There's nothing you could have done for them that you're not already doing."

They reached the top of the stairs, where Draco had the room to stand beside her and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "There's nothing else we can do tonight. I vote we go back to bed and tackle this mess of a problem in the morning."

"How can you think about bed at a time like-" she was cut off when Draco kissed her. It was really more of a quick peck than a proper kiss, but it served its purpose of getting her to stop talking.

"One: I'm always thinking about ways to get you into bed." He put a finger on her lips to keep her from interrupting. "Two: We're both bloody tired, probably nearing complete exhaustion and are going to be useless come morning if we don't get some rest."

Hermione sighed and leaned against him for a moment before pulling away and heading towards the wall of fish tanks. She didn't say anything, but they both knew that her acquiescence was an acknowledgement that he was right.

The pet store, when they emerged inside it once more, was just as they had left it; perfectly silent and completely dark. Outside the window, the streets were still empty and peaceful.

Hermione and Draco slipped out of the shop. Thankfully, the lock on the door allowed it to be locked from the inside, remaining locked after it was closed. Otherwise, they may have been forced to leave the shop unlocked for the night.

Squinting down the street, Draco stared hard. "Did you see something move down there?"

She had been staring back at the shop, making sure that there was no evidence of their little breaking and entering stunt. Just because the shop happened to sit over the former cave of the snake women didn't mean they should suffer for it. Hermione was going to make sure to send the store a muffin basket or something. There may not be any evidence of their lawbreaking, but she still felt the need to atone for it – later, of course.

"Nothing," she said, starting to understand what Draco meant about their exhaustion. Now that her adrenalin and certainty that she was going to find Cassy with the snake women had faded, she was really starting to feel how tired she was.

"I'm going to look into it."

Hermione started to follow, but Draco shook his head at her. "I'm sure it's nothing I can't handle. You find somewhere hidden away so we can Apparate."

"That's not how a partnership works and you know it."

"Granger, I want to sleep. We'll be out of here so much faster if we split up. I'll be just down the street, what could possibly happen to me?"

She didn't even want to contemplate the myriad of things that could happen to him just down the street from her. Just because she was near didn't prevent the same people who took Cassy from hurting him, or worse, killing him.

"I don't think that's a good-" Draco had turned and was already halfway down the alley. "Idea," she finished with an exasperated sigh.

Resigned, Hermione looked around for a good place for them to hide so they could Apparate.

Just as Hermione was about to step into a likely-looking alleyway, a hand shot out of the alley's darkness and yanked her out of the meager light provided by the lamps spaced along the storefronts. Whoever it was that had grabbed her pressed her up against the wall. Her eyes were having difficulty making out the figure, but she could tell that whoever it was, they weren't much taller than she was herself. Hermione wasn't very worried, she had fought more dangerous adversaries under worse circumstances, and Draco wouldn't take long to find her.

She was just about to aim a nasty kick at her attacker's shin when something cold and metal pressed against her temple. Her entire body went completely still as she reassessed her surroundings. Hermione didn't have much experience with guns, but she certainly knew enough to recognise one when it was aimed at her head.

The alley was abruptly lit up in harsh light when Draco rushed onto the scene. "What the hell is going on here?"

Having been raised a Pureblood, Draco's exposure to the Muggle world was limited and his knowledge of guns was nonexistent. From the situation, he was able to figure out that it was some type of weapon and from Hermione's expression he easily discerned that his partner's life was in danger.

The woman pinning Hermione to the wall glanced over her shoulder to snarl at Draco. "One wrong move and I put a bullet in her brain."

Draco froze, his wand still lit and held in front of him. His eyes snapped to his partner's. She was the one who knew all about the thing pressed to her skull. Sure, he could use his wand and disarm the Muggle woman in a flash, but he wasn't sure how quick she'd be able to use that metal thing pressed to Granger's head and wasn't willing to risk her death.

There was something scarier about being at the end of a gun than there was about being on the end of a wand. While magic was capable of healing and any number of positive things, guns really only had one purpose and it wasn't one that boded well for Hermione.

Still, Hermione managed to keep herself together. "What do you want?" If it was money, the woman was out of luck. Neither Hermione nor Draco had any on them. They'd left it at the Manor when they went to pick up their swords and kits.

"I want my daughter." She accentuated her statement by twisting the gun a little, grinding the metal into Hermione's poor head.

Startled – by the words, not the pain in her head – Hermione took a second look at the woman. Her hair wasn't the blonde curls that Cassy's was, but her eyes were the same; large and bright with a fringe of dark lashes. There was a hardness in this woman that Cassy, an innocent child, just didn't possess.

Despite the gun to her head, Hermione felt sorry for the woman. Her eyes were hard but not violent. It took something truly horrible, like the abduction of a child, to make someone as non-violent as she suspected this woman to be desperate enough to grind guns into the heads of strangers.

It was Draco who answered the woman. "We don't have her."

"Of course you do, I saw it."

Eyebrows drawn together, Hermione tried to figure out when the woman could have seen them with Cassy. More importantly, if the woman had seen them with her daughter, why hadn't she said something and taken Cassy back with her. What they needed was to have a civilized conversation without a gun pressed to anyone's head.

"We'll explain," Hermione said in the most soothing voice she could muster considering the circumstances, "If you'd just put the gun down, we can explain everything." She ignored Draco's warning expression. He didn't trust the woman, but he didn't trust many people so she didn't take it to heart.

"I'm not stupid," the woman spat. "If I'm putting the gun down, I want both your wands on the ground with it."

Hermione and Draco weren't really surprised that the Muggle woman knew about their wands. If she had been watching them as she claimed, then she must have seen them using magic on multiple occasions. Just moments ago Draco had burst into the alley with the tip of his wand lit, so even if she hadn't known about magic before, she certainly did now.

Apparently the swords that both of them had strapped to their hips weren't as much of a concern.

"Fine." Slowly, because a clearly desperate woman had a gun to her head and everything, Hermione pulled her wand from her pocket and dropped it on the ground. She even kicked it down the alley a little so that she wouldn't be able to easily pick it up again. If worse came to worse, she'd still have wandless magic and her sword.

Both women turned their stares on Draco until he did the same. He glared the whole time and didn't even bother to mutter his stream of curse words, but he did it.

Only when Draco's wand was also on the ground did the woman finally lower the gun. She watched them distrustfully for a moment, seeming to check them over for spare wands. Apparently the swords still weren't a concern. Maybe Muggles were so focused on guns that they no longer thought swords a threat. Finally, she threw the gun to the ground and nudged it away from her with her toes, just as Hermione and Draco had with their wands.

Left without her weapon and outnumbered, the woman crossed her arms over her chest. She was less threatening this way, and it became apparent that she was more scared than she had wanted them to think. Her hands had been shaking before she tucked them under her arms and her eyes kept shooting to the sky, searching for some unknown enemy.

Hermione chanced a glance up there, wondering if the woman was expecting an attack from the rooftops. There was no one up there.

"We found Cassy in the den of snake women under this pet store," Hermione started, watching closely so that she would catch any flash of surprise in the woman's eyes. So far, nothing. "The Daughters of Echidna told us that someone didn't want Cassy alive. That they were supposed to eat her."

The woman paled slightly, but she still didn't appear as if she was being given new information.

When the woman didn't offer any response, Hermione continued. She tried to pick words to soften the situation, but there really wasn't anything she could do. "We didn't know who was out to get her so we took her to a safe house. A safe house from which someone abducted her, severely injuring the man there to keep her safe."

With this news, the remaining fight drained from the woman. She leaned against the dirty wall of the alley, sliding down it until she was resting on the dirty ground. "He has her again," she said brokenly, more to herself than her audience.

Hermione crouched down beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. "Who has her?"

The woman tilted her head slightly to look at Hermione through the tears that had accumulated there. She was suddenly hopeless. "Apollo. Apollo has my daughter."