A/N – Good news. I've finally finished writing year 7 and I can announce it will have 40 chapters in total. When I first had the idea of this story and decided to split it into seven years, I honestly expected each year to average between 15-20 chapters. But COTD had ended up being far longer than I ever intended, and in the end it's ended up a rather long story. And it's not really over as there's still my collection pieces to accompany the series. They will be continuing long after I've published the final chapter of year 7 – and a great deal of them will deal with what happens next for the trio and their family, as well as the ones going back to before the series and filling in on pieces I just didn't have time to fit into the actual story. I won't be changing the publishing schedule (it will still be Mondays and Fridays) as I'm wanting to try and finish some other stories as for the first time in a while, I'm almost out of new finished stories as Children has been my main focus for so long. But with the end in sight, I hope people continue to enjoy Children as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Harry's disappearance sent Severus into a spin, and he was on autopilot as he helped organise the search down in Hogsmeade. For the first time since taking over as Headmaster, he couldn't care less about Hogwarts and he'd handed things over to McGonagall without a second thought. Of course, Narcissa was still up at school to keep an eye on things, but school was the last thing on Severus's mind. Along with his father and Lucius, he'd brought the Ministry into things and helped as the Aurors shut the village down. While the Aurors did their thing, and organised a search in their own way, Severus, Voldemort and Lucius began their own search.
Sadly as they expected, any trace spells they could think of, yielded no results. Harry wasn't young enough to be traced via the Ministry's underage detector, and other tracking spells failed to pick up his trail. Even the blood spells Voldemort knew came to nothing. Wherever Harry was being held, he was being held somewhere that magic wasn't reaching him. Whether it meant whoever had him had ensured the wards around his prison was strong, or if it meant something more sinister, Severus didn't know, but he intended to find out.
By the end of the day, Harry was no nearer to being found. They knew he'd gone missing between the time Daphne had left him to enter the quidditch shop and the time the group were supposed to meet for lunch. However, most people in the village hadn't been paying much attention to the time so it was hard to pinpoint when he was last seen. Although most people who had seen him, said they'd seen him either with Daphne or with his group of friends. The only person who said they'd seen him on his own was the jeweller, who informed them that Harry had visited the shop and bought a necklace. The jeweller was adamant Harry was in the shop alone, but he couldn't say where he'd went after that as he'd gone into the back room to grab some new stock to put on display.
Severus was convinced that the Weasleys had something to do with his son's disappearance as they were really the only members of the Order left. The only other people of any note were Ted and Andromeda Tonks, but they'd both been extremely quiet since their daughter's death. Voldemort had people looking into both the Tonks' and the Weasleys to see if they could be involved, but Severus was still itching for answers and he knew if he didn't get them soon he would be the one to drive the war into violence as he searched for his son.
Severus had hoped that Ginny would be the key to finding Harry, but he was disappointed when questioning of the students revealed she'd likely been at the castle before Harry vanished. Without a firm time of Harry going missing, it made it hard to be sure of anything, but there were plenty of people who swore that Ginny had been back in Gryffindor Tower by mid-morning. Of course, it could have been later when Ginny got back to the castle, but it was impossible to prove and she was denying ever having seen Harry that day.
With no sign of his son, Severus had endured a restless night at home, and he was up at the crack of dawn trying to think of ways to find Harry. Sadly, other than searching Hogsmeade again, which he spent his Sunday morning doing, Severus drew a blank. He just didn't know how to find his son and he hated the helpless feeling it left him with. He'd never felt more worthless as a father, and no matter what anyone said, he was wracked with guilt as it reached twenty four hours since his son had been seen.
By Sunday afternoon everyone had gathered at Voldemort and Beth's house. Lucius and Narcissa had left Hogwarts for the afternoon, and they'd brought Hermione and Draco with them. Rosmerta had dragged Severus along to the gathering, reminding him that he needed his family to support him. When he saw how broken up the rest of the family were, especially Beth who was heavily pregnant and looked as though she could go into labour at any time, he felt bad for wallowing in his grief. He wasn't the only one who loved Harry, and he had to remember that his family was strong and they would get through this crisis together.
"How are you doing?" Beth asked, sweeping Severus up in her arms.
"I'm numb," Severus admitted. "But how are you? This stress can't be good for the baby."
"The baby and I are just fine," Beth said, her hand automatically falling to her stomach. "And I know Harry will be fine as well. We'll find him, Severus. You have to keep believing that."
"I want to Beth, but it's hard," Severus said with a sigh as he sat down next to his wife. "Why can't we find him? How are the Weasleys smarter than us?"
"It's not a case of being smarter, it's a case of knowing the right magic," Lucius remarked. "We all know the right wards can basically lock a house up and make it impenetrable. All they needed was some of these wards around wherever they'd holding Harry."
"And don't forget the eldest one was a curse breaker," Voldemort added. "He'll know all about these spells."
"There has to be a way around them," Hermione protested. "There's a loophole in almost all spells, isn't that what you taught me, Daddy?"
"It is sweetheart," Voldemort replied with a small smile. "It's just finding the right loophole, and hoping it's a one that can help us. Sometimes there's loopholes but they're still useless."
"Maybe I should go back down to Hogsmeade," Draco suggested. "I can maybe try and narrow down the scent that was mingled with Harry's."
"We don't even know if the scent was left at the same time as Harry," Narcissa gently pointed out to her son. "You could just be picking up a crossed scent."
"I guess so," Draco reluctantly admitted. Since he was new to the whole heightened sense of smell, he knew his mother was right and he could be leading people up a blind alley by trying to be helpful and not quite knowing if he was right in his hypothesis.
"But thank you for the offer, Draco," Voldemort said. "Your help yesterday was greatly appreciated. You narrowed down where Harry went missing from a lot quicker than we could have done. You saved us precious hours there."
"But not enough to get to Harry," Draco muttered.
"You did all you could, Draco," Severus said to his godson. "We're all doing all we can."
"It doesn't feel like it sitting here," Hermione said with a sigh. She knew without knowing where to look it was pointless them being out searching for Harry, but it still felt defeatist to be sitting at home while her nephew was missing.
"Sometimes you have to take a step backwards to put things into focus," Voldemort said. "What we need to focus on is a way to make contact with Harry."
The room fell silent as each and every one of them tried to think of a way to locate Harry. Of course it didn't help that they knew even the most advanced tracking spells, both dark and light, hadn't yielded any results. It was hard to think outside of the box when the simplest answer just kept popping into your head and you knew it was useless.
"The house elves," Draco suddenly cried. "They're not bound by the same laws as we are. Could one of the family elves track Harry?"
"We tried last night," Severus said with a rueful shake of his head. "Not one of the elves can reach him."
"Damn," Draco muttered. "I thought it was a good idea."
"It was," Hermione reassured her boyfriend. "It's just already been tried."
"Everything has," Severus muttered as the room once again lapsed into contemplative silence.
"I might have something," Hermione finally ventured. "We've tried tracking Harry, so what if we try tracking something he has on him."
"Like what?" Beth asked with a frown. "I hardly think he was carrying anything personal on him."
"The necklace," Draco suggested. "He'd just bought a necklace and it wasn't found in Hogsmeade, meaning its likely still on him."
"And there's a good chance the jeweller had a tracking spell in it in case it was lost or stolen," Severus continued as he jumped to his feet. "All we need to do is activate the spell and track my son down."
"Let's go," Voldemort said as he and Lucius also got to their feet.
"I want to come," Hermione said, but before anyone got a chance to respond there was a pecking noise at the window and the group turned round to find an owl perched on the window sill.
As the person nearest to the window, Narcissa got up and let the owl into the room. Soaring into the room, the owl dropped a brown envelope onto the coffee table before flying back out of the open window and out of the house. As one the group surged forward, staring at the letter that had 'VOLDEMORT' printed on the front in what was clearly magical writing.
"Should I get Bernie and alert the Aurors?" Lucius asked as they all looked at the letter on the table.
"No, we're handling this my way," Voldemort insisted. "The Aurors are there for when we find Harry if I chose to go down a route where his kidnappers aren't killed."
"Open the letter, father," Severus barked impatiently.
Picking the letter up, Voldemort tore into the envelope and pulled out the contents. Inside the envelope was a picture of Harry, clearly stunned and lying next to the previous day's paper. Voldemort scanned the picture carefully, looking for clues as to where it was taken as well as checking his grandson appeared unharmed. The anger in Harry's eyes relieved him a bit as it meant his grandson was fighting. Passing the picture over to Severus, who immediately choked up at the sight of his son, Voldemort's attention turned to the brief note included with the picture. The note didn't say who was writing, it just said that if they wanted to see Harry alive, Voldemort would agree to an exchange. He would trade places with his grandson at a time and place the kidnappers would inform him of in twenty four hours. After reading the note, Voldemort passed it around so that everyone could get a picture of what they were dealing with.
"That makes no sense," Hermione muttered with a frown. "The Order know you can't be killed, so why ask for a swap? What are they hoping to achieve?"
"They think if I'm out of the picture there'll be no threat," Voldemort said quietly.
"Then they're stupider than I thought," Hermione snorted. "They can't possibly believe we'll just roll over and stop if you're not here. We would still fight."
"And maybe that is what they're hoping for," Lucius said. "At the minute people are staying neutral because there's no violence. If the Order can provoke us into violence, they can get people on their side. I'd dare like to bet that if that happened, we'd soon find ourselves in the midst of another messy war, and there'd be no shortage of people fighting against us."
"That will not happen," Voldemort said firmly. "There will be no war like before. I will not risk my family like that. We carry on as we have been, even if I'm not in the picture."
"You're going to do it?" Beth gasped. "You're going to exchange yourself for Harry?"
"If all else fails, yes," Voldemort replied with a nod. "And in my shoes, you would do the same, Beth."
"I would," Beth confirmed. "But that doesn't make it any less scary. We're about to have another child, and now that child might not get to know their father."
"At least their father won't be dead," Voldemort said quietly. "We all know the worst they can do is trap me somewhere without magic. They can't kill me, but they can kill Harry. If nothing else works, I agree to the exchange and you get Harry back."
"If that happens, we'll save you," Severus said, grasping his father's hand. "We won't let you rot in whatever hell-hole they put you in. We will save you."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Voldemort said with a small smile. "Let's try the necklace idea. You never know, we might get to Harry before we next hear from the kidnappers."
With an air of hope, Lucius, Voldemort and Severus went off to see the jeweller in Hogsmeade. Hermione had tried to go with them, but her father had wanted her safe so she'd stayed at home to keep an eye on Beth. Sadly an hour later their hopes were dashed when the men returned with long faces.
"What happened?" Rosmerta asked, wrapping her arm around her husband.
"We're too late," Severus replied in a despondent voice. "The charm on the necklace wore off this morning. It's designed to fade twenty four hours after purchase. We tried tapping into the old signal, to see if that helped us but it was too weak. All we got was that Harry wasn't in Scotland anymore."
"I'm sorry," Rosmerta whispered, hugging her husband and wishing she could do something more to help him. First his son was missing, and now he was facing the prospect of losing his father in his place.
"And there's nothing else we can use to track him?" Narcissa asked.
"I can't think of anything," Voldemort replied with a sigh as he pulled out his wand and summoned a bottle of his best firewhisky and some glasses.
"The wand," Hermione suddenly cried as she watched her father. "Harry's got his wand."
"We've already established we can't trace him via his magic, and his wand is a part of that," Lucius said gently, not wanting to hurt Hermione, but not wanting her to cling to false hope.
"I wasn't talking about his wands magic, I was talking about the connection it has with Fathers," Hermione excitedly explained. "Their wands are twinned. They share a core."
"Share a core?" Rosmerta questioned with a frown as hopeful looks appeared on the faces of those around her.
"My wand's core is a phoenix feather," Voldemort explained. "When Harry got his wand, he also got a wand with a phoenix feather at its core. But not just any feather, a feather from the same bird that gave the one for my wand. In fact, they're the only two feathers this particular bird gave."
"And that makes the wands special?" Rosmerta asked.
"It does," Voldemort replied with a nod. "Although, we're not too sure just what they can do. We've been looking into it over the years, but to be honest, other things have just ended up taking priority. But there's a very good chance we can utilise the connection to track Harry down. After all, there's no way anyone could have known about the wands, so they won't have thought to block a connection between them."
"Of course we are banking on Harry still having his wand," Beth cautioned. "They might have taken it, in and in that case, it won't lead us to Harry."
"But it will lead us to his kidnappers," Severus pointed out. "Either way, it's worth a try."
"Do we know how to use the wands to track Harry?" Narcissa asked.
"Not yet," Voldemort replied. "It's going to take some research. Are you all up for it?"
"We are," Hermione confirmed. "Even if we've got to work all night. We'll help you find a spell that will lead us to Harry."
"What about school?" Beth asked with a frown. "It's Monday tomorrow."
"Sod school, Harry is more important," Hermione stated.
"No, your mother's right, you still need to go to school," Voldemort insisted. "You and Draco can help us for a few hours, but you will be at school tomorrow. And there's no point arguing as my mind is made up."
"We better make the most of the time we've got then," Hermione grumbled as she stalked off to the library to see what she could find.
The rest of the family followed after Hermione, while Lucius and Narcissa popped home to check if they had anything that could help in their library. An hour later everyone was ensconced in the library, trying to find a way to use the connection between Harry and Voldemort's wand to save Harry. The alternative would result in Voldemort being the one held somewhere without magic, and no-one wanted to see that happen. They wanted the whole family together, especially as over the coming months their brood would be expanding and they didn't want anyone to miss out on getting to know the newest members of the dark family.