:::Following Orders:::
If records of the Cruor Unum still existed, they were nowhere to be found in the final week of Christmas holiday. Those select factions of the Ministry that had been alerted of the situation had each contributed their expertise to the search for answers, to no avail. The Order, too, had dug deep, trying to find something, anything that might be useful. But their quest had turned up nothing. They were no closer to understanding this elusive curse—no closer to helping Hermione.
Harry watched his silent friend from across the library table. Her injuries had visibly healed, the swelling and discoloration mended by Madam Pomfrey's aggressive treatments and endless cups of herbal tea. Only the through-and-through wound to her delicate hand remained, tightly wrapped now to prevent infection.
And to prevent questions. They were asked anyway, of course, as the bandage itself was rather conspicuous—but the trio had explained it all away by telling anyone who was curious that her moody pet, Crookshanks, had been to blame. It was believable enough.
Aside from that, her skin was soft and flawless again, leaving no evidence, no trace of the trouble that had befallen her. She'd been out of the hospital wing before anyone could even discover she'd been in it—and the professors, the other students, even the best-informed gossipmongers, didn't so much as suspect that something had happened, that something was wrong. They didn't suspect that the Head Girl had been hurt, that she'd been beaten, stabbed—and cursed. They didn't suspect that her condition was part of something bigger, something that would likely affect them all. As far as everyone knew, this was just another day. The rest of the world was none the wiser—blissfully ignorant of what was happening right under their noses, behind closed doors.
Draco Malfoy hadn't come back—"leave of absence" was the official phrase being regurgitated out by the unwitting professors. Lies had been created, vague excuses for anyone wondering why the Slytherin Prince hadn't returned from holiday like everyone else. And once Brandon Madison was named temporary Head Boy in his stead, it became evident that he wasn't expected to reemerge anytime soon.
The gossip varied wildly, the rumor mill turning out all sorts of contradictory explanations. Preston Charles had heard something about an ailing Malfoy relative who was on his deathbed in Munich and had requested that Draco, his favorite cousin, stay with him until the end. Lucius Malfoy, always concerned with multiplying profits, was reported to have sent his son to Germany to secure the flush inheritance that was sure to follow once this alleged cousin finally did them the favor of dying off. Leslie Morris, on the other hand, supposedly had it on good authority that a Christmas trip to Paris had become a lavish tour of the Continent that was expected to last at least half a year. Even Seamus was concocting his own madcap theories, the most "plausible" of which involved the ferret needing time to recover from a particularly decadent bender, one which the Irish boy was sure involved gambling debts to the Sicilian mafia and some sort of disfiguring venereal disease.
No one, however, seemed to suspect the truth—that he was on the lam, that the Aurors were after him. He was wanted for questioning. Questioning—that was how the government had worded it, disguised it. Officially, however, he was wanted for far more than that—two felony counts of assault and battery, one felony count of kidnapping, one felony count of cruel and unusual use of magic, and a felony hate crimes count for violence against a muggle.
But no one knew that, not even most of Law Enforcement. Like everything else, Draco Malfoy's arrest warrant was classified information.
Hermione's eyes stayed turned down on the book AncientIncantations that sat open before her, and Harry watched warmly as they slowly, almost imperceptibly, scanned from one side of the wrinkled page to the other. Hushed laughter sounded sporadically from behind her, and involuntarily his gaze shifted focus, narrowing on a group of Slytherin girls who sat chattering in the background. Pansy was at the center, as she always seemed to be, flipping absently through a textbook as if it were the pages of a magazine. Harry's jaw clenched as he watched them—Malfoy's sweetheart, in particular—his hands automatically tightening into fists in his lap. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that someone knew more than they were letting on. It drove him mad, knowing that he was here hunting desperately and in vain. His people were groping in the dark while the answers they sought lingered somewhere just below the surface—perhaps as nearby as the Slytherin dormitories underneath the school.
