When Draco returned home from yet another trip away he vowed to see if he could try and cut down on the amount of business trips he had to take. Travelling had always being an enjoyable part of running the family business, but his priorities were changing. Travelling was fine when he was a single man with no commitments, but soon he would be married to Hermione and she and Anya would need him at home. Luckily Draco had a wealth of loyal employees and it shouldn't prove too hard to find someone to take over the majority of his business trips.
As usual when Draco returned home, he'd apparated directly into his own private wing of the Manor. Despite having several luxury flats and penthouse available to him via the business, Draco had chosen to remain living at home. The wing of the house he lived in was completely private and had everything he could ever wish for. Draco could spend weeks in the Manor and never have to see his parents if he didn't want to. Not that his parents were really an issue as Draco got along with both Lucius and Narcissa really well and he had no objection to spending time with them when he was home.
Deciding he would go and say hello to his parents, before heading off to see Hermione and Anya, Draco first decided to grab a shower and get changed. As he was changing after his shower, Draco's eyes drifted to the window and he spotted the snow outside. He'd just come from France, and until now he had no idea it had been snowing at home. Still fastening his shirt, Draco wandered over to the window to see exactly how much snow had fallen. He was rather surprised to see a thick covering of the white snow, but he was even more surprised to see a half built snowman standing in the centre of the gardens. Peering even closer at the scene, he spotted a small child and someone he thought was his father working on the snowman. Draco was fairly certain the child was Anya, but why she was at the Manor was a bit of a mystery.
Knowing the answer as to why Anya was at the Manor wouldn't be solved by looking out of the window, Draco left his wing of the house and headed down into the main part of the Manor. A quick glance out of one of the back windows on the ground floor, revealed that the child was indeed Anya, who seemed rather happy to be building snowmen with his father. Wondering if Hermione was also at the Manor, Draco poked his head into several rooms before he found his fiancée and mother. The pair were in one of the back living rooms, which had large glass windows that looked out over the gardens. Normally the rooms were used in summer as they could get a bit chilly in the winter, but a roaring fire was keeping the cold from the room.
"Hermione," Draco said happily, smiling at his fiancée as he entered the room.
"Draco!" Hermione tore her gaze away from the window, where she'd been watching Anya intently, and rushed over to her fiancé the second she saw him.
"What's wrong?" Draco asked as he enveloped Hermione in his arms. He knew instantly that her reaction to seeing him wasn't just because she was happy he was home, something else was going on.
"It's a long story," Hermione answered. "You better sit down."
"I'll get us some more tea," Narcissa said, calling for a house elf and asking for more tea while Draco and Hermione settled down on the sofa together.
Once the elf had returned with the tea, Hermione explained to Draco what she'd found when she'd gotten up that morning. She also told him that Harry and Ron were looking into things and would be popping round with some answers later that day.
"But you and Anya, are okay?" Draco checked, cursing that he hadn't been there to protect the woman and child he loved so dearly.
"We're fine," Hermione reassured her fiancé. "Whoever it was didn't try to get in or anything. To be honest, I was more worried about the fact that Anya was in the house at the time. Ron says the prints were made sometime in the early morning, and you know what Anya's like for going wandering downstairs when she wakes up."
Draco nodded, knowing exactly what Anya was like. Even though she was only four she was a clever, independent little thing. Many a morning he and Hermione had gotten up to find her settled in the front room with her toys. He shuddered to think of how traumatised Anya would have been if she'd gotten up early that morning and when she was sitting downstairs a face appeared at the window.
"Do Potter and Weasley have any ideas on who it could be?" Draco asked.
"Not yet," Hermione replied. "But I only spoke to them briefly this morning. I wanted to get Anya out of the house before she realised what was going on. I don't know if Harry and Ron will need to be around the house to do some investigating, and I don't want her asking questions."
"How did you explain coming here without me?" Draco asked.
"Anya wanted to play in the snow, so I suggested we come and play in the snow at the Manor. You've got a much bigger garden, and I said she could build you a snowman as a surprise for when your return."
"Your father couldn't wait to get outside with her," Narcissa added.
"Who knew father was so good with kids," Draco chuckled, looking out of the window and watching as Lucius helped Anya roll a ball for snow for the snowman's head.
As they continued to watch Anya building her snowman, Draco asked Hermione a bit more about the incident with the footprints. Specifically if she planned on returning home that evening.
"Yes," Hermione declared with a determined nod of her head. "I'm not letting someone drive me out of my own home. The house has enough wards so that no-one can enter without triggering a whole host of alarms."
"Are you sure you don't want to stay here for tonight?" Draco offered.
"I appreciate the offer, but I want things to be as normal as possible for Anya."
"Well, how would you feel about me staying over more often?" Draco questioned. "I would feel better if I was there as often as I can be."
"I'd like that," Hermione replied with a relieved smile. She was slightly nervous about returning home and having Draco at her side would make her feel a lot better.
"Good." Draco smiled at his fiancée as he pulled her into his arms. He may not have been there for her that morning, but he would be by her side as much as possible until they found whoever had been prowling around her house.
Hermione and Draco sat together for several minutes, watching Anya out of the window. When it looked as though the snowman was complete, Narcissa got up and left the room. A few seconds later she appeared outside, bundled up in a long coat and boots. Hermione and Draco watched as she scooped Anya up in her arms, before adding a few finishing touches to the snowman with her wand. With the snowman now fully complete Anya turned towards the window and waved for her mother and future stepfather to come outside.
Leaving the room, Hermione pulled on her jacket and boots, which were placed beside a door in the nearby kitchen. Not having any winter things by the door, Draco quickly summoned a coat and some boots before the pair headed off into the snow. Narcissa had now put Anya back down and the second she spotted Draco, she began trudging through the snow towards him.
"Draco, I've made you a snowman," Anya cried excitedly.
"Wow, you've done all this for me?" Draco asked, striding up to the four year old and picking her up in his arms.
"Yes," Anya nodded. "It's a surprise."
"It's a brilliant surprise," Draco told the young girl. "Everyone should come home to find such lovely snowmen in their back garden."
"Do you like him?" Anya asked as they stopped in front of the snowman, who was now wearing a hat and a Slytherin scarf wrapped around its neck.
"I love him," Draco told Anya, before turning to his mother. "Is that my scarf and hat?"
"You're not wearing them." Narcissa shrugged.
"I should hope not, the hat's hideous," Hermione laughed. "I can remember you wearing that in third year, you looked like a right idiot."
"Hey, I liked that hat," Draco protested.
"It is a really ugly hat," Narcissa agreed.
"I've seen worse," Draco grumbled, thinking about some of the hats he'd seen other people wearing at Hogwarts in the winter.
"Unfortunately, so have I," Hermione nodded. "Ron had some hideous hats in school."
"Most hats are hideous," Lucius remarked. "Ugly things they are."
"Is my hat ugly?" Anya asked with a pout. Her hat was white and had the ears and face of a polar bear on.
"No, your hat is lovely," Lucius told Anya. "It's the perfect hat for such a cute little girl."
Anya giggled happily as everyone turned around and headed back indoors. It was just starting to snow again, and Narcissa suggested they should all warmup with a nice mug of hot chocolate. Inside everyone removed their outdoor clothes and Lucius cast a warming charm over Anya to ensure her normal clothes weren't chilly from being outside for a few hours. Heading into the main front room at the Manor, Narcissa once again summoned an elf and asked for hot chocolate and some biscuits for Anya.
After hot chocolate and cookies, Anya drifted off to sleep on Draco's knee. The little girl was still lying asleep when the floo network sounded to signify a message coming through. The message was from Harry, asking if it was alright if they visited in a few minutes time. While Lucius responded to the message, telling the two Aurors to come through when they were ready, Hermione and Draco took Anya upstairs. Settling the young girl in Draco's bed, they called for an elf to sit with her in case she woke up and was confused about where she was.
When Draco and Hermione re-entered the front room they found Harry and Ron had already arrived. The pair were perched on a couple of seats and it was clear they weren't quite comfortable at the Manor, or in the presence of Lucius and Narcissa. Both men knew the Malfoys had changed since the war, but they simply didn't know Lucius and Narcissa very well, therefore their slight uneasiness was understandable.
"Do you have any answers?" Draco demanded as he sat down with Hermione at his side.
"Not a lot I'm afraid," Harry sighed, wishing he was bringing his friend something that could ease her mind a bit. "The shoeprints are a man's size eleven boot, and whoever was wearing the boot filled them properly, so we're not looking for someone trying to outsmart us by wearing someone else's shoes. As for the actual boot, we've tracked down the maker to a shoe factory in Milan. Unfortunately they supply all the shoe shops in wizarding Britain, so it's going to be hard to trace someone who owns a pair of these boots."
"What about beyond the garden?" Hermione asked her friends. "Could you trace the intruder before or after he entered the garden?"
"Not by his prints," Ron answered. "We managed to perform a magical trace and found signs of apparition early this morning. It appears as though he apparated into the street behind the house and left the same way."
"Have you traced where he apparated from and to?" Lucius asked.
Harry nodded, but his expression indicated that it wasn't any good to them. "He used the apparition area just outside of the Ministry. It's one of the largest apparition points in the country and narrowing down where he apparated to and from will take weeks, possibly even months. Not to mention it's an expensive job trying to track down one single person's apparition trail."
"And a prowler isn't enough to justify the time and money the Auror department would spend conducting the search," Hermione concluded. Working in the Law Enforcement Department she knew how these things worked, and she knew there was no way Harry and Ron would receive clearance to track down the apparition trail.
"I'm sorry Hermione," Harry said. "We would struggle to get clearance for such a large scale operation on almost any crime but a murder."
"If money's an issue, we can foot the bill," Lucius offered.
"It's not just the money," Harry told the older wizard. "Even if we were able to track the apparition trail, unless it led us directly to the home of whoever was trespassing at Hermione's house then we would have the same situation again. And the longer time passes the harder it is to track down a trail. If whoever was in Hermione's garden is clever they would have used several apparition points up and down the country, making them virtually impossible to trace."
"Did they not leave anything behind that could be used to cast a tracking spell on?" Lucius questioned, trying to think of some way they could track down the person who'd been prowling around Hermione's house.
"Not a thing," Ron replied. "The only evidence we found that someone was even there was the footsteps in the snow. Without the snow we never would have known there was someone prowling around."
"Don't you have any wards around the house?" Narcissa asked Hermione.
"I have wards around the house, but there's a limit to what I can put around the garden," Hermione answered. "I live in a muggle village, so what magic I can use to ward the house has to be carefully monitored. The house itself if virtually impenetrable, but I just can't put up any decent wards around the garden."
"We've managed to add a couple of wards to the property," Harry told his friend. "They're very subtle, and they'll alert Ron and I if there's an intruder. I'm afraid it's the best we could do given where you live. But rest assured, we are still looking into this. We will find whoever was lurking around the house, I promise."
"I appreciate everything you're doing for me," Hermione told her friends, offering them both a smile.
"Will you be going home tonight?" Ron asked.
"Yes," Hermione replied. "I'm not letting this incident drive us out of our home. Anya and I will be back home as normal."
"I'll be with them though," Draco added. "Unless I have to go away, I'll be there every night."
Harry and Ron were both relieved that Draco would be there for Hermione and Anya. Neither of them doubted that Hermione could look after herself, but given she had Anya to think about they were pleased she had some support. The morning's incident had clearly shaken their friend and they knew she would handle anything else that may happen a lot better with her fiancé at her side.