Chapter 4
Blaise and Harry unofficially moved into Hermione's life. Blaise slept in her guest room most nights, and Harry would fall asleep on the couch whenever he was not in the field tracking down Greyback.
Their only saving grace was that there had been no more murders committed since Hermione found that woman dead in her office. All three men were dumbstruck when Hermione brushed off the idea that she not return to work until Greyback and his accomplice were found.
It was fairly obvious to everyone that he was not working alone. He needed magic to avoid detection and to enter the Ministry in the first place. Either he had someone sneak him in, or someone did it for him.
So Hermione stayed home all day; Blaise always stayed with her. Draco took as much of his work home with him as he could. While he was not permitted to actively work the case, there were other situations that needed attending. Draco tried to tell Kingsley that he could be professional like Potter, who was actively working on said case. Apparently, since his dick was involved, he was unable to put aside his personal feelings like Harry could.
He was permitted to work at the office, but Draco preferred to be at home despite Hermione avoiding him.
She spent more of her time out in the grassy area behind their home. Sometimes she brought a book with her, her mind always needing to stay active. Others she brought nothing but a blanket with her, sitting in the grass and staring off into the distance.
Draco was not foolish enough to think that without a book in her hands, her mind was not still busy. He would bet anyone that she was working the case over in her head, going over all the facts, anything that they could have missed.
If Greyback was working with a wizard, Draco had no doubt it was someone he had gotten closer to over sixth year. One of his followers. While there were demented souls out there who had not followed Voldemort, there would be no reason to suspect them. Greyback did not work with wizards, so this had to be someone he had a history with.
"Ginny will have your head if you sleep on our couch another night instead of your own bed."
Harry chuckled, dropping onto his butt beside her. "Ginny is fine; I see her daily for lunch and then supper before I come over here. She knows how important this is to me to ensure you're ok."
"I have two Slytherins guarding me; I can assure you those two don't miss anything. Any scheme I could plot, they would have already thought it up and prevented it."
Harry frowned at her, "Are you? Scheming, that is."
The loud sigh she let out said a lot. "I'm not trying to escape and go out on my own. I know the situation I am in, and to be honest, after what I saw last week, I'm terrified. He got into my office Harry, and no one seems to know how that happened. Draco is trying not to smother me with his presence."
"No doubt failing at it."
Hermione laughed, rolling her eyes. "He means well. I know he does but yea."
Harry fell onto his back, motioning for Hermione to do the same, "The stakes are different this time, but we are still playing the same old game, Hermione."
She snuggled into his side, hugging his arm. "Do you ever think about how different your life would be if something had been changed?"
"Like if Voldemort had never killed my parents." She nodded. "It seems only foolish to imagine that; I have no idea what that would have been like, but I think about the end of third year if Sirius had taken me with him. I would have had that time with him, and maybe I could have changed things for him."
They went silent, thinking about the people they had lost during the war.
"My parents offered to home school me, said that it could be just as fun as going away to 'wizarding school.' They did not want me leaving them for months on end, but I insisted I needed to go to Hogwarts so I could learn. Really I was excited to meet other kids like me; I never much fit in with kids in my elementary school. I convinced them Hogwarts would be good for me; when I had a couple of instances of accidental magic, they agreed."
"I think you made the best choice; Ron and I would be dead ten times over without you. We would never have won the war; I don't care what you say, we wouldn't have. I would be terribly remiss if I never got the chance to meet you." He rolled his eyes. "Malfoy would still be a right prat; no doubt married off to someone we went to school with raising a child equally as horrible as him."
Hermione laughed into his shoulder, "You're horrible. He isn't that bad."
"Now that he has you, he isn't. You've done a lot of good for those you've met in the wizarding world, Hermione."
"I've always been able to find an answer in a book or run around with you and Ron until we stumbled onto the answers. I feel useless now and like I can not do anything but watch those women die, over and over. It's sick, but at least when people were dying in the war, they knew what picking up their wand meant; these women were innocent. What is it that he wants? Is it just to kill me, or is there something else, some reason why he is going to such radical extremes in what looks like an attempt to scare me?"
"He's sick, Hermione; I'm not sure logic is that way to attack this. I figured Greyback got your scent, and he decided to play his little games before attacking you, but now with this unnamed accomplice, there could be another reason."
"What is the Ministry doing?"
"Scouting, and I know it is not what you want to hear, but it is the only answer I can give you. No one has seen Greyback in months, except for you and Ron."
"There has to be something."
Harry bit his lip, "I can duplicate our files and bring them here to you to comb through. Maybe you can find something that we aren't seeing."
"It's illegal, Harry." He kissed her forehead.
"Since when has that stopped us?"
"Then yes, I would very much like those files."
"I will get them to you tomorrow." He looked at his watch."We should head inside; Malfoy was pacing in front of the back door when I arrived. He was trying to stop himself from coming out here and invading your space."
"He's still a drama queen."
"That's one thing that hasn't changed since Hogwarts."
Hermione snickered, climbing to her feet. "Meh, he's toned his act down a little bit since then. Still just as serious."
"I assume living with an evil overlord sleeping in your childhood home would do that to a lad."
"I can only imagine it. How terrifying and alone it must have made him feel."
"In hindsight, when I look back on our fight in the bathroom, it made sense. I think at that point, he did not give much care to if he lived or died. He was exhausted and clearly unhappy, struggling with himself to do what everyone was telling him to do, what was expected of him."
"You two aren't so different, you know. The same could be said about you near the end. The only difference was you had all of us there holding you up."
Harry grumbled, "I suppose."
.
Hermione had gone to bed that night as she had for the last couple of months, tucked in beside Draco. So then, how was it possible that she was now shivering and damp? Prying her eyes open, Hermione was lying outside in the grass area behind their house. The exact spot she had laid with Harry the night before, she had never been one for sleepwalking, which begged the question, why the hell was she outside.
She heard shouting and loud, muffled voices coming from inside her home. Hermione sat up and looked around the empty space surrounded by trees; the voices got louder as the back door was thrown open, and with a loud crack, Draco appeared in front of her.
"What the hell, Granger?" Harry and Blaise joined them a second later.
"What?"
"Why did you appatate out of bed like that, Crookshanks nearly got snagged up with you."
"No." Hermione shook her head, rubbing her temple. "I didn't. I woke up out here."
Harry knelt beside her, hand on her shoulder, "What do you mean you woke up out here, Mione?"
She looked away from Draco's grey eyes and into his green ones, "It's exactly as I said, Harry; I went to sleep in my bed and woke up out here a moment ago."
"That doesn't make any sense..." Blaise paused, "I'm going to go sweep the area for bursts of magic."
"No one's magic can reach us from outside the wards," Draco told him, helping Hermione to her feet. "Are you sick? You don't feel like you have a fever."
"I feel fine; I don't even have my wand on me. It's still on my nightstand. If I was apparated straight out of bed, I wasn't the one who did it."
Draco scowled at the heavy feeling in his gut, the anxiety that shot threw him, "Let's get you inside; your skin is freezing."
Harry and Draco escorted her inside; both had their wands gripped tight in their hands.
Hermione gripped at where her nose met her forehead, "Uck, I feel like I snorted chlorine pool water up my nose."
"I'm going to call for a healer." Hermione grabbed Draco's arm before he could step away.
"I don't need a healer Draco."
"Clearly, something is not right with you, you're disappearing from our bed without your wand, and now you are experiencing side effects."
Blaise came in through the still-open back door. "I did not find any magical signatures, but there was something. I couldn't grab onto it long enough to figure out what it was."
Harry stepped closer to his friend, "So someone broke through the wards long enough to apparate Hermione outside without touching her?"
"That's not possible, Harry. Maybe I have a slight flu, and since I was sleeping, my guard was down, and I had a burst of accidental magic."
Draco's fingers cradled her chin, pulling her back around to face him. "You really believe that?"
.
Harry called Kingsley, and he and the team went over every inch of the Malfoy-Granger property and the surrounding wooded areas. They came back with the same answer as Blaise, there was a slight magic signature, but there was not enough of it to grab onto. Draco and Harry had joined them when they were unsatisfied with that result, but they ended up coming down to the same conclusion.
Hermione racked her brain for a solution but could not come up with anything plausible. Nothing could explain this. If she was sick or if she had been pregnant, those things could result in her magic going a little haywire. She was neither; she was almost certain the magic did not come from her.
"Harry, do you think we could get Headmaster McGonagall to let us access the Hogwarts Library?"
"I don't see why not."
Blaise looked back and forth between them. "Malfoy and I have vast libraries. I'm sure we can get you whatever you're looking for."
Hermione shook her head, "I need to access the restricted section; I remember reading something in there once that reminds me of what happened this morning; I just can't remember the facts or the title of the book."
"How have you read something from the restricted section?" He scoffed. "I've tried to get in there for months, and McGonagall won't let me."
Hermione chuckled, "Harry, Ron and I used to sneak in there all the time."
Blaise rolled his eyes. "They thought we Slytherins were the bad apples. Apparently, the professors needed to look harder at you lot."
"Maybe you snakes aren't as sneaky as you think you are."
Blaise rolled his eyes; Draco kept his eyes trained on Hermione as if she would blink out of the room again at any moment. All he knew was if he kept his hands on her like his right one was placed on her knee at the moment, he would be taken with her wherever she went next.
The hardest part about going to Hogwarts was convincing Draco to stay behind.
Harry had gone home to pack, and Blaise was still working with Kingsley in their kitchen downstairs. Draco had followed Hermione upstairs and started berating her with questions.
"I'll be gone a couple of days; nothing bad is going to happen to me at Hogwarts, and Harry will be there."
Draco's eyebrows shot up his forehead. "While attending school there, you were almost killed by a troll, petrified, attacked by a werewolf; I'm sure there are many other things I don't even know about. Go to Hogwarts fine, but why am I unable to come with you?"
"You have cases you are actively working on that need your attention. I'm going to research, and as soon as I get the information I'm looking for, I'll be home."
"I'm better at research than Potter; he can take over my cases-"
"Harry is lead on the Greyback case." She went to her closet to pick out a couple of outfits.
"Then why don't we three go, and Blaise can take my cases, or Nott, I can shove them off on anyone else."
Hermione turned to look at him, his eyes wide in terror at the thought of her not bringing him along. She abandoned her clothes on the top of her dresser and walked over to him, pressing her hands against his chest to guild him to sit on the couch in their room.
Draco grabbed and covered her hands with his. "What about me going to Hogwarts is making you so anxious?"
"Last time we were separated, you went after Grayback and ended up in the hospital. Aside from that, you just magically woke up outside of our home in your pyjamas, and we have no reasoning behind it; maybe it was you, maybe it was someone else. I'm scared for you, Hermione. There is a wizard helping that deranged mutt, and I'm supposed to happily let you go off without me. If anything happens to you, Hogwarts is hours away unless we get special permission to floo into the headmaster's office; even that could take a long time to arrange."
Hermione lowered her eyes to have a moment to think and really digest his words.
"It's not possible for you to come with me this time around, so how can we make this happen? I can send you fire messages every morning, and before I go to sleep, I could see if McGonagall would let me use her floo, and I can come home and check in with you once a day."
Draco shook his head; he did not want any of that. He wanted her here at their home and for her to do what she loved every day without worrying she would be attacked and killed.
"Stick by Potter, and if you aren't back in three days, I'm coming to bring you back."
Hermione nodded, sealing her silent promise with a kiss. Draco pulled Hermione onto his lap, arms wrapped tight around her waist.
"So you're ok that he and I will be sharing a bed then."
"You aren't funny." He growled, unimpressed at her joke.
"You know we're best friends, Malfoy."
"Pansy and I fucked around, and we were pretty good friends."
Hermione licked at her cheek. "You two also dated."
"I spend most of our time at Hogwarts assuming you two plus the Weasel were a triad." She snorted.
"That is your own fault."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Pack those ugly flannel pyjamas you wear sometimes."
Hermione gasped, pulling away from him, "I love those Pyjamas."
"I know, and they are an eyesore."
"They are cozy!"
"And cotton. You should be in satan or nothing at all."
She cocked a brow at him, "So I should leave this behind with you." She held up her cozy pyjamas and exchanged them for a silky scrap of material. "And bring this with me."
"You wouldn't."
She smiled at him, picking up the clothes she had dropped. "Don't worry; I remember how cold the castle can be. I'll be bundling up this time around."
.
Harry and Hermione had been huddled up in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library for two days now. They had not slept since they got there, and they were both exhausted. Hermione had told Draco she would be back in three days; it did not seem like a possibility now. She would have to send him a letter and tell him she needed more time; no doubt, he would throw a fit.
"Anything?" Harry just shook his head; he had nothing.
"There must be a way to narrow this down."
"I've already tried; I wrote down all of the reasons we would have snuck in here as kids. I pulled all the books from those sections and all the titles I remember. We are getting to the end of the pile, maybe we just won't find it, or maybe the book was destroyed during the final battle."
Harry frowned; Hermione was trying so hard, but he knew she was tired and just needed some sleep.
"Let's go to bed; we can pick up on this again in the morning."
"I'm ok; I don't need to stop."
Harry took the book she was currently reading, out of her hands, "We both need some serious sleep; let's go. We'll set an alarm, six hours of rest and then we can come back here."
"Fine, but if I can't get to sleep in an hour and a half, I'm coming back here."
"Fair enough." He said, knowing that as soon as she slipped into a warm bed, she would be out like a light.
She would do the same thing during the war, stay up all hours of the night. Reading in their tent while he and Ron slept, eventually, he would wake up and force her to get a couple of hours. She would always protest, but as soon as he got her into bed, she slept deeply.
When their alarm went off six hours later, Hermione groaned. She wanted more than anything to ignore it and keep sleeping. Harry being the loyal friend, forced her up and out, knowing she would be mad if she stayed in bed longer than she had promised.
On their walk through the library stacks to get to the restricted section gate, Hermione stopped and turned to her left. What if the book was not in the restricted section after all. Quickly changing their course, the pair grabbed all the books they remembered reading during their days as students.
"Lucky this pile is smaller; maybe we can get threw it before sundown."
Hermione nodded, eyes moving over the words in front of her. "If I don't get back before tomorrow morning, Draco threatened to come to drag me home."
"That's just lovely."
"He worries about me; It's kind of nice to have that with my parents not knowing who I am anymore."
"I worry about you, Hermione." The girl in question rolls her eyes.
"I know you do, and I love you for that; I worry for you too. It doesn't hurt, though, to have more than just you having my back; you and Ginny are a family, Harry; she is your priority."
Harry put down his book and turned to fully face her; Hermione looked up. "You will always be a priority to me."
Hermione felt her eyes sting as strong emotion rolled through her. "Love you, Harry."
"I love you, Hermione."
.
The sun had long since gone down, and Hermione was sure any second now, she would see her blonde-haired boyfriend storming through the library doors.
Harry called for her; he had wandered off about ten minutes ago and had yet to return. Following his voice, her heart sped up when he handed her a book.
"Do you remember the research you started when Tom Riddle started getting into my head?"
"Yes, we were trying to figure out how you were hearing his voices. We had a lot of theories, but we never actually found the answer until we were already off Horcrux hunting."
Harry smiled, "Exactly, but while we were researching, we did find this."
"Astroprojection? You think that a wizard is astroprojecting, and that is how he got threw the wards of our house. He wouldn't be able to touch me, though; how did he get me outside?"
"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure this is what we're looking for. Even if it was not what you were thinking of, this is a pretty solid lead."
"No, you are right. It's possible; we've seen crazier."
Harry kissed her temple. "We'll see if Macgonagal will let us borrow this book for a while. We should pack up and get out of here before Malfoy shows up."
The pair held onto each other as they walked the halls of the old castle, some parts old and some newer from the rebuild. The halls had both happy and sad memories for the pair. They tried their best to push out the bad and keep the good as they went to say goodbye to their old Professor.
Harry sent word ahead of them to call a meeting at the Ministry. Draco was up pacing the room while Kingsley, Ron and Blaise were seated around the boardroom table.
Draco felt the air shift as Hermione and Harry arrived on the floor via the elevator. His eyes drank her in; she looked tired, about ready to pass out, but other than that, she seemed ok.
"Hi." She greeted him, leaning into his side, both following Harry into the room.
"I am hoping you both called this meeting because you have found something?" Kingsley asked, looking between the old friends.
Hermione pulled the Hogwarts book from her bag, placing it in the middle of the table. Draco pulled out a seat for her, immediately taking the one next to her.
"Astroprojection, that is how whoever it was was able to get me out of the house without being seen. It allows you to move like a spirit, no one can see or hear you, and it would have taken a powerful wizard to touch me and use enough magic to apporate us outside. I'm assuming the goal was to take me out of the barrier surrounding our house, but he probably did not realize how much magic that would take."
Blaise stood up, "I'll go start cross-matching powerful wizards and see what I can come up with."
Draco nodded at his friend in thanks. "How do we stop it from happening again?"
Hermione bit her lip; this was the part she was dreading to share. "You can't. There are no spells to block something like this."
Anger flaring in his stomach, Draco looked around the room. "You're telling me this asshole can just get in and take you again whenever he wants?"
Harry pushed his glasses up his nose, "Zabini and I can keep staying at your house; that way, if they do try again, you'll have back up."
Draco stood. "Backup isn't going to matter, Potter, if they get her over the damn barrier. They could be here right now for all we know, able to reach out and take her at any time."
Hermione rubbed her temples. "I doubt this wizard's magic will be recharged enough to do any real damage anytime soon."
"You just said he has the ability to touch you!"
"It's just a theory, Draco; we won't know anything unless they make another move or we capture Greyback and find out who he is working with."
"We should go to one of the Malfoy safe houses." Draco paced as he plotted. "You'll be safe if they don't know where you are."
"I'm not going to hide out somewhere; I have work to do."
Draco turned on her, "Last month, you were willing to drop your work to help look for Greyback."
"And I've found important things to work on since. We can add more wards to the house; I will sleep with my wand in my pocket. If they do manage to get me beyond the barrier, I at least won't be helpless."
Draco shook his head, fuming. "Where are the teams?"
Kingsley adressed him. "Still out patroling Greybacks last known locations."
"I want more wizards posted outside our home."
Hermione shook her head, "I really don't think that is nessicary."
"I believe it is."
Kingsley cleared his throat to interpret the couple staring competition. "We are stretched thin as is; I will ensure that two teams do a sweep of your property every night. The extra activity should deter anyone for the time being." Draco held his tongue; it was better than nothing.
Draco pulled Hermione's chair from the table, "You're exhausted. Let's get out of here."
Hermione did not protest; despite her anxiety, she was feeling the effects of not sleeping well the past few nights. Draco kept his hand pressed into her lower back as they made their way to the lobby.
Their house was dark when they arrived; the couple performed a search of the place before heading to their room. Hermione really wanted a warm shower and some cozy clothes and Draco needed a moment to pull himself together.
When she emerged nearly an hour later, Draco raised his hand out for her to take.
"How are you feeling."
She rested her arms on his shoulders, fingers playing in his silky hair. Hermione shrugged; how did she feel about this? She had no control over much of anything.
"I don't know. It seems endless, like there is always going to be something to face or fight against."
Before Draco could try and comfort her, Harry's Patronus rushed into the room,
"Another girl has been found... A Hogwarts student. Hermione"
Hermione shook, and Draco pulled her tight to his chest, having stood when the stag appeared.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Hermione had just been at Hogwarts; this could have been her.
"They killed a student." Hermione felt like she was floating high above her body. "Draco."
The way she whimpered his name made the blonde wizard feel weak and helpless, she was suffering, and he did not know how to make it stop. Hermione shrugged out of his hold, putting on her robes on top of her cozy clothes.
Draco looked at her carefully; she looked about ready to break. The only time he had seen that look on her face had been in his drawing-room during their Easter holiday.
"You should stay here, Hermione."
She shook her head, "Get your robes."
