Harry crossed to the corner of the room where he’d thrown his books the night before and pulled the Marauder’s Map from his bag. As he spoke the words to make the map spring to life he hoped that a dot labeled “Draco Malfoy” would appear somewhere, anywhere, in Hogwarts.
But he wasn’t too surprised when it didn’t.
Now what? Harry thought desperately. He could wake Ron, but it was too early to get Hermione out of the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory. It wasn’t like he could just walk in there after all, like he could the boys’ dormitory. Better let Ron sleep, he decided finally. If he couldn’t find Draco by the time his friends woke up, then he would ask for their help.
Harry sat down on the sofa, idly staring into the fireplace. He had to think like Draco… yet how could he? He didn’t know what else Draco knew about the situation.
OK Harry, he thought, hypothesize. If it’s right, you’ll find facts to support it once Hermione’s up to help you.
So…. Worst case scenario first. Draco was caught by Voldemort…no, worst case was that Draco was dead. But that was out. Harry would be able to feel if Draco was dead or hurt or in danger. No, he wasn’t in any pain so Draco must be safe…or physically well or something like that. So, no Voldemort and no death.
Then, the next worst…or hardest to deal with, was that Draco had gone to Malfoy Manor…somehow. Even with Malfoy Manor disconnected from the floo system and unplotable…
Unplotable! Harry grabbed at the map again, a streak of terror snaking down his spine. Where was Malfoy Manor? Draco had never really said where…no one ever had. Somewhere in England, but that wasn’t much help was it. But he knew that Malfoy Manor was big so logically you’d need a really large amount of land, so…
The area Draco had starred was a large plot of land with nothing on it.
Harry bit his lip. It made sense, but it was just a theory. He would need to prove somehow that what Draco had starred was in fact Malfoy Manor. But the number one candidate to ask about anything Malfoy was not in Hogwarts. So then who could he ask?
Only one name came to him and Harry decided that the Fates must really hate him if he had to wake this particular person up at…three forty-five in the morning.
“Snape’s gonna kill me.” Harry muttered at the fire’s flames, but they didn’t seem to care.
Harry looked at the door to the Potions classroom with more than a few feelings of misgiving. If all the classrooms were set up like the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, then Snape’s personal quarters would be at the back of his classroom…or to the right of his classroom or connected to his classroom in some way.
Harry grasped the door knob and willed his hand to turn it. The door opened soundlessly. Harry stepped into the classroom and cast his wand around in the dark, looking for a door that didn’t lead to the supply room.
There was only one other door to the Potions classroom, other than the doorway Harry stood in and the door to the supply room (which Harry knew didn’t have any doors inside it). It was a rather modest door over on the Slytherin side of the room that Harry had never seen opened during all his years at Hogwarts.
Well, that looks a bit promising, he thought as he crossed the room.
“And what exactly do you think you are doing in my classroom at this time of the night?” A voice asked from the shadows behind Snape’s desk and Harry nearly jumped out of his skin.
The light of his wand swung to illuminate the glare that he knew would be prominent on his professor’s face as the man leaned against the wall. He knew I was here the whole time, Harry berated himself snidely.
Harry said the first thing that tumbled into his mouth. “I need to talk to you about Draco.”
“And this is something that you could not speak about to Mr. Malfoy himself? And felt it necessary to wake me up in order to speak at this particular time?”
Screwing up every ounce of Gryffindor courage he had, Harry replied. “Yes. Because I only just found out that Draco isn’t anywhere in Hogwarts.” After a second’s hesitation he added, “sir,” just to try and appeal to Snape’s good side…if he had one.
Something shifted in Snape’s eyes, but outwardly he appeared the same. “And you know this, how?”
Bloody hell, Harry hadn’t thought how to reveal how he knew that Draco wasn’t in school. Think Harry, think, he told himself.
“Well Mr. Potter?”
“I know it in the same way that I knew how to get to Hogsmead back in third year” Harry muttered, looking down at his shoes, or what he assumed were his shoes—he couldn’t tell in the dim light of one Lumos spell.
He could feel Snape’s eyes burning into his skull as the man thought about what Harry had just said.
“Where do you think Mr. Malfoy is?” Snape asked after a long silence. Harry’s eyes shot up in astonishment before he realized that he was supposed to answer the question.
“I found this in one of Draco’s books.” He held out the map of England to Snape. “I think he’s gone to the starred area…wherever that is.”
Snape cast his own Lumos spell in order to look at the map. “If you are right, Mr. Potter, which I highly doubt you are, then Mr. Malfoy has gone to Malfoy Manor. You are undoubtedly aware of how impossible it is to get to Malfoy Manor at this time. How would you propose he got there? Apparated out of Hogwarts and into Malfoy Manor? Rode in one of the school carriages perhaps? Sprouted wings and flew?”
Snape stopped short and Harry’s mouth dropped as they both realized what the potions master had just said. A memory of last weekend played through Harry’s mind, of snitches, bludgers, and black wings.
“Yes, Professor.” Harry replied. “I think he did sprout wings and fly there.”
Chapter 29: Serpentis Draconis
Harry fumed silently as he paced the Gryffindor Common Room. Draco had been missing for over fifteen hours now; how long exactly wasn’t known because Harry didn’t know when Draco left.
Harry fought back the yearning to hit something, knowing that were he to let out his rage, his two friends would become more scared of him than they already were. As it was, his behavior resembled a caged animal to them.
It was all just so stupid! Sure, if a student was petrified the whole school went on bloody alert, but if a student was just missing, there were protocols! Was Draco really missing? Bloody hell, Harry was so sick of hearing another teacher ask that to the rest of them.
Snape had gone to Dumbledore immediately and while Harry was sure that Dumbledore believed them, there was a bunch of legal stuff set in place for just this occasion.
So after rounding up all the teachers at four in the morning, they had begun searching the castle. All of it. Every room. And Harry had been sent back to his dormitory to wait! Then, when everyone realized Draco really wasn’t in the castle, as Harry had been telling them, they had to search the bloody Forbidden Forest because apparently Draco had permission to go there because he needed someplace to go be a Veriae for a while where no one could see him, or something like that.
And of course, the centaurs hadn’t taken kindly to a group of people gallivanting around in their forest, even if one of those people had been Hagrid, who knew his way around pretty well. Of course, they found that Draco wasn’t in the forest, after three hours of searching. Harry could have told them that but they didn’t listen, of course.
So now they were thinking that maybe Draco really wasn’t in Hogwarts. So they had to go check Hogsmead! Harry, of course, knew that Draco wouldn’t be found there. He knew where Draco was. So did Snape and so, he suspected, did Dumbledore.
“Harry, are you OK?” Hermione asked cautiously as she saw her friend had stopped pacing.
“Do I look like I’m OK?” Harry shot back immediately.
“Looks like you’re worried sick,” Ron observed.
“We should have stopped this searching hours ago!” Harry exploded. “If he’d done something stupid like going to Hogsmead, then he would have been back by now anyway!”
“And he wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night,” Hermione added.
“Exactly!”
“So what are we going to do about it?” Ron asked.
“What can we do? They obviously don’t want us involved,” Hermione pointed out. “You shouldn’t even be here, Harry. They told you to go wait in your rooms in case he came back.”
Harry waved a hand at the Marauder’s Map on the table. “I would have known if he came back,” he muttered.
“But if they go to find you and tell you that they actually believe you, you won’t be there,” Hermione continued.
Harry sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll see you later then.”
