In the month that followed Draco and I grew closer as we spent time together with our egg. It didn't do much, but there was still something about taking it out of the nest and holding it to my chest that I loved. It really was a beautiful and captivating egg and I could spend hours staring at it and imagining the child that was growing inside; my child with Draco. I knew he felt the same way about our egg and with that came a shared understanding between us. We stopped having so many misunderstandings and we started progressing in our relationship.
I was preparing to ask Draco to marry me. The ring was ordered and I was planning the perfect dinner. I was still waffling back and forth on when to ask him, but I knew it would be soon.
And then work interfered. Robards called Ron and me into his office to inform us of our new assignment. It was a reward for our outstanding performance on our last assignment, he said, but it didn't sound like a reward to me. It was a challenging assignment, which was good, but it was out of the country, which was very bad. They'd uncovered evidence against Grafere Skeeter, Rita Skeeter's husband, indicating that he had joined the Death Eaters before Voldemort's fall. It fit right in with the type of pro-Death Eater stuff Rita Skeeter had been publishing and he was a pureblood with ties to several known Death Eaters. Furthermore, he'd run off at the end of the war and hadn't been seen in Great Britain since, which screams guilty to anyone in law enforcement.
The Grafere assignment was just the type of thing I would love to get my hands on. The problem, however, was that Grafere was last seen in the small country of Kyrgyzstan. It was a Russian speaking country in Central Asia that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Located in a rugged, mountainous area, it was just the type of place a Death Eater on the run might go to hide. Especially one with a Turkish mother who had traveled through the region as a child. But, it was also more than forty-three hundred miles away from Draco and our egg.
Kyrgyzstan was so far away that Ron and I couldn't reach it by floo. And neither of us had ever been anywhere near there, which ruled out apparition; even if we had been there before, it would take five separate apparition jumps to get there, because of the sheer distance, which meant we would also need to have been to five intermediate apparition locations along the way. Traveling by muggle means, with a train or a car, would take entirely too long. And when all other means of transportation are ruled out, that leaves the portkey, which was why we grabbed hold of a mankey old jacket in London and were transported to the slope of a mountain in Kyrgyzstan.
We landed in sight of a wizarding inn, where we booked a room and pulled out our map of the area and the case file. First on our list of things to do was to track down the witness who had reported seeing Grafere three months previously. Unfortunately Hamid Usenov didn't even speak Russian, which meant we had to first find a translator who could translate the local language, Kyrgyz, into English. This mission would go much more smoothly if either Ron or I spoke one of the two languages common to the area, Kyrgyz or Russian, but we didn't. I'd pointed this out to Robards when he gave us the assignment, but Robards had pointed out that he was scraping the bottom of the Auror barrel already given the number of Aurors who'd been lost during the war. That meant that there were no Russian speaking Aurors left and there'd never been any Kyrgyz speaking Aurors, so Ron and I were just as qualified as anyone else for the job.
We'd been in Kyrgyzstan for just under three hours and had a solid lead on a potential translator when I felt it: the pendant hanging around my neck sent fear and distress racing through me. It was Draco's fear and distress, I knew, because that was how the pendants worked.
I stopped in my tracks and said to Ron, "We need to get home right away. Something's wrong with Draco."
"What? We can't go! We're supposed to be on assignment here!" Ron protested. "And it's way too bloody far to pop over for a chat. We can't get back until our pre-arranged portkey in two weeks."
"He's afraid and distressed; I have to get back to him now," I insisted.
"Well how do you propose we do that? We still haven't been to five places evenly spaced between here and home and the floo here isn't connected that far. The train will take so long that we might as well finish our mission and take the portkey back in two weeks."
"We'll find a way. Come on; let's go back to the inn and floo to the Central Eurasian Ministry of Magic."
Ron went along with my plan and we turned our brooms around. The Central Eurasian Ministry of Magic was a bad joke. Their floos weren't connected to anywhere worth going and they were too poor to afford a portkey service, which meant they didn't even have a portkey technician who we could pay to arrange a portkey for us. The furthest west they could get us was the western edge of Russia. I looked at the map and Moscow jumped out at me. Moscow was a major city and bound to have a way for us to get from there to the United Kingdom.
We flooed to Moscow and spent several hours looking for a portkey specialist who could get us home, but it seemed portkeys weren't very popular in this part of the world. They were too expensive and too uncomfortable and thus there was only one portkey specialist in all of Moscow and she happened to be on vacation and unavailable. We were all but stranded in Russia with no way to get home, while Draco and our egg were back in Wiltshire and still under distress.
Time was passing too quickly with too little progress. I had to get home and I couldn't take the frustration anymore. If the wizarding world couldn't get me home, then I'd just have to go muggle. I dragged Ron with me to the Moscow airport, where we presented our fake muggle passports, which we were required to carry with us at all times, just in case we were caught by muggles. There was the small matter of money, but a confundus charm to their electronic device took care of that. There was some waiting around in the airport for our plane to arrive and then we were on a non-stop Moscow to London flight scheduled to land in just under three hours.
Ron and I disapparated from the men's bathroom in Heathrow International Airport straight to the grounds outside Malfoy Manor. I ran at top speed up the driveway to the house, leaving Ron in my wake. I would've ran all the way up to Draco's room, but Auror Ferrell was there in the entry hall, blocking my progress.
"What's going on? Where's Draco? Is he alright?" I asked.
"Draco Malfoy has been taken to the Ministry Holding Facility along with Narcissa Malfoy," Ferrell answered.
"What? Why? He's on house arrest and his trial isn't until next month; they weren't supposed to leave the Manor."
"The MLE got a tip that the Malfoys were hiding dark objects. Since they are still in Ministry custody, that is a violation of their house arrest, and a team of Aurors was sent out to investigate. We found a large number of magical objects in Draco Malfoy's possession that he isn't allowed to have, including one very dark object. The Malfoys' house arrest has been revoked and they've been remanded to the holding cells."
I wanted to strangle Ferrell upon hearing this news. This had to be a setup, because it was too much of a coincidence that Ron and I were sent away on such a far-flung mission on the same day the MLE gets a tip and raids Malfoy Manor.
"And what of my egg?" I asked when I finally managed to control my rage enough to get another question out.
"In the Ministry holding cells with the Malfoys."
"You arrested my unhatched egg?" I wished then for claws to slash through Ferrell's throat with.
"No, but you weren't there, so we relocated the egg along with the other parent," Ferrell answered.
"Who's in charge of this mission?"
"I am."
"On whose authority?"
"Robards and Temby."
Temby was the prosecutor who had tried Lucius Malfoy and he was also set to try Narcissa and Draco next month. He looked incompetent in the papers after Lucius got off with only five years in Azkaban and house arrest thereafter. I was set on getting both Draco and Narcissa off completely, which wouldn't look good on Temby's record either. Obviously Temby wasn't going to have it and was stirring up trouble for the Malfoys. And everyone knows that I'm on the Malfoy's side, which was why Robards had to send Ron and me away.
I had all I needed from Ferrell, so I walked out the door, with Ron yelling at me to wait up, and apparated to the Ministry. I went to Robards first, barging into his office. He was in the middle of a meeting with Temby.
"I demand that Draco Malfoy and our egg be released at once. You had no reason to barge into their home today and take them. I've been there every day for months and I know for a fact that there are no dark objects hidden in that house," I said forcefully.
"Harry, calm down and have a seat. We will discuss this rationally," Robards said.
I took a seat and glared daggers at Temby, who raised an eyebrow at me and picked up the twig of willow from Robards' desk. "If they were harboring no dark objects, then how to you explain this Horcrux I found hidden in Malfoy's nest?" Temby asked.
It was the twig from Grandfather Willow; Abraxas Malfoy's tree. I spluttered indignantly as I contemplated that they had desecrated my nest to get a stick given to Draco by his grandfather and were now calling it a Horcrux.
"It's not a Horcrux," I said when I finally found the words. "And I expect that twig and the rest of our nest to be returned in the original condition immediately! How do you expect us to care for an egg without our nest? Draco put a lot of work into that nest."
"Draco put the work into it, alright. He hid this Horcrux in the one place he knew you wouldn't look," Temby replied.
"That is not a Horcrux! Abraxas Malfoy did not split his soul," I insisted.
"Harry, you seem to be aware of the situation. Just what exactly did the late Abraxas Malfoy do to this stick?" Robards' tone sounded reasonable enough that I thought I might be able to persuade him to take my side.
"It's not just the stick; there's an entire tree out in the woods surrounding Malfoy Manor. My men just informed me that they found it right before I came to meet with you," Temby said.
So they had found Grandfather Willow's tree. It was unfortunate, because I didn't know what they would do with it. I worried that they might cut it down in their idiocy, but at least I wouldn't have to lie about its existence.
"Abraxas Malfoy got up out of his death bed and his dying act was to fuse his being with that tree. He didn't murder anyone to do it. He didn't split his soul. His essence left his body lying there dead on the ground and joined with that of the tree. He is more like a ghost than a Horcrux, with the exception that he is still alive and can be killed," I explained, looking to Robards pleadingly; I needed him to take my side.
"What documentation do you have of this? If we can repeat it and show that this is fundamentally different from a Horcrux, then we can call the whole thing off as a simple misunderstanding," Robards replied, looking at me expectantly.
"No, they can't repeat it yet. He's forgotten what he did exactly. Being a tree has addled his memory, but I can assure you that he is fundamentally different from a Horcrux. I have more experience with Horcruxes than anyone. I would know if he was one and he's not," I insisted.
"Potter's lying to protect his boyfriend and has undoubtedly been lied to himself. Veela have been known to dupe their suitors into believing outrageous lies," Temby said.
"That's not true! I haven't been duped into anything! Draco doesn't even have an ounce of allure; Not. A. drop," I said, emphasizing the last three words as if they were each their own sentence.
"Temby, what evidence do you have that this tree is a Horcrux exactly? Using a living thing as a Horcrux is most uncommon," Robards said.
"Voldemort only used Nagini as a Horcrux because he already had so many others," I added.
"The fact that an allegedly deceased Malfoy's soul is merged with a tree is enough proof in my book. It was a spell to detect Dark Magic that detected the twig within the nest, although I must say it was ingenious to hide a twig among branches-" I interrupted Temby there.
"He didn't hide the twig among the branches! There was no reason to keep a piece of his grandfather's tree around the house. Draco's grandfather gave him this twig to show his support for Draco and our egg, nothing more."
"Regardless, the evidence remains that a piece of soul is merged with that tree and the only known way to do it, is to create a Horcrux," Temby replied.
"That is because Abraxas Malfoy was the first one to do it. But the facts remain that he didn't split his soul, he didn't murder, and he doesn't have a body out there walking around or even a spectral form, like Voldemort did," I said. "His entire being left his body and fused with the tree.
"That is just what Draco Malfoy told you. Of course he would lie to you about it; you're an Auror. But you have no way of knowing those facts, because you weren't there at the time, were you? The man died while you were a fifth year at Hogwarts and not even Draco Malfoy was there to see what really happened," Temby said.
"Cissy then. Narcissa Malfoy would've been there; what did she say about it?" I asked.
"She wouldn't tell us the truth about something like this; she's as guilty as the rest of them," Temby replied.
"All the same, we will have to question her," Robards piped in.
"Fine," Temby agreed, "but I want to be there. I know that they've hidden the body of Abraxas Malfoy's last victim just as they've hidden the fact that he made a Horcrux."
"They haven't hidden anything, because he did no such thing," I protested.
"They hid the tree," Temby retorted.
"Gentlemen, we are getting nowhere. This situation must be investigated properly so that we can get to the heart of the matter. Temby, you better make sure Ferrel does everything by the book when it comes to this accusation against Potter's family. Potter, Draco and Narcissa Malfoy have asked for you; I suggest you pay them a visit and ensure that they are being treated properly," Robards said, effectively ending the meeting.
Author's note: And so the plot thickens. Please review!