1 : IMPERIO

CHAPTER 10: ATTACK IN THE WOODS

Word Count: 6236

"This is frustrating" Charlotte mumbled, as they tried to find Valentin on Hogwarts ground. It was as if the boy had disappeared in thin air, and they could do nothing about it.

Walking towards the forest, she was ready to get back to her home, to ask Sirius some serious questions.

"Lily, wait!" Draco called, hurrying behind her. "Lily, wait, listen." He said stopping her, as he pulled her back by the arm, before she could reach the tree. "I, uhh, I might have a theory." He said, and Charlotte turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

"What?"

"Can we sit down first?" he asked, and the two made their way towards the altar.

Settling down, he pulled out a piece of parchment, and started writing.

"I believe you put Remus up for some job, am I right?"

"Yes," she replied with a cold nod, not really in the mood of discussing rather anything.

"And, who do you think is making the Weasley's, Snape, or Black keep things from you?"

"They're not keeping things from me Dray, they're under oath or something"

"You helped Black for god's sake" he said, as writing four names down. "I don't know him for long time, but if something were to go off radar, you'd be the first person he would have told."

"But we already talked about the possibility of blackmail," she said with a shake of her head. "It's not possible. I tried to dig, there's no leverage."

"Even if there were," he said, and wrote down stomach pain in the next line, "And trust me, there is." She looked at him confused. "They are all getting blackmailed over the same thing Lily. The only thing that ties these four people is you." She let out a short laugh, staring at him.

"You think Valentin is doing all this, by using me as a bait. What the hell is he going to do to me?"

Draco looked at her tentatively.

"You said that the Weasley twins knew about you using dark magic right?" she gave him a short nod of confirmation, and he continued. "Then Snape is probably the closet person to you, Sirius would be the second one in line?" she gave him another nod. "Meaning they know your secrets. You have many secrets, Lily, and someone knows them. They might have told the four that if they didn't help them, the person might expose you, and they took the bluff."

"The theory does make sense, but what does any of this have to do with Remus?"

Draco, then wrote down Remus' name, and added an arrow in front of it, and wrote 'Bonds'

"You think it has something to do with the bonds?"

"Part of it" he said with a nod. "Maybe this person wants to keep you from finding out about the bonds. And you said Snape started acting weird since,"

"Since Sirius' hearing."

"That's when you felt the bond pull for the first time," he said with a nod. "And then came the discovery of bonds."

"How do you explain the pains?" she asked, now interested in Draco's theory, but he scratched the back of his head.

"I think that's an entirely different issue"

"Understood." She said with a nod, and looked down at the list in Draco's hand. "But then why these people? Why not Harry, Cedric, or you, for god's sake, you are the closest friend I have. Why these four?"

"They were easy to get to."

"Snape's the part of this list you know" she said with a snort, and Draco let out a short chuckle.