The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 3: The Midnight Vigil

"Your house?" said Lucius Malfoy, aghast.

Hermione didn't bother answering. She fixed her eyes on the bookshelves and breathed, trying to draw some comfort from the familiar scents of home, maple candles and old pages and soft leather.

It didn't work. Her eyes had found a photo of herself and her parents. She was six, ready for her first day of primary school, one of their hands on each of her shoulders. And now her mind was summoning the image she'd ruminated over dozens of times: her parents lying in bed the night she'd modified their memories, her mother's hair in a nightcap, her father's mouth ajar. As she'd left for the Burrow that night, she'd wanted so badly to go back and say goodbye. If something happened to her during their hunt for the Horcruxes... if she never had the chance to say it...

She'd refused to acknowledge the possibilities then, but now her eyes slid back onto Dumbledore's cold, thin body, and she knew she'd been right to expect the worst.

The knowledge was strangely stabilizing. At least she could stop telling herself that she was being overanxious. Here was proof that the world was as dangerous as it felt.

"There's nowhere else you could have taken us than a Muggle house?" said Narcissa, not bothering to veil her disgust.

"No. The Order's safehouses are all in use tonight to move Harry."

"Of course," Draco muttered under his breath.

Hermione ignored him. Wingardium Leviosa, she thought, flicking her wand. Dumbledore's body rose from the ground, and she walked him over to the sofa and let him settle there. She knew it was ridiculous to think that he looked uncomfortable, but she tucked a pillow beneath his head anyway.

She glanced back at the three Malfoys. Lucius and Narcissa had edged closer together, eyeing the house as if afraid it might contaminate them. Mr. Malfoy looked different now than he had in the dark alleyways of the Department of Mysteries. Azkaban had followed him out into freedom. The once-faint lines in his pointed face had deepened and set as if his skin were candle wax, aging him a decade.

Draco wasn't looking at the house. His colorless eyes were fixed on Dumbledore's body.

"Do the Order know he's dead?" he asked. His voice wasn't the usual drawl but something unfamiliar, closed-off and hard.

Hermione shook her head. "I was the only one with him. The others won't even know anything's wrong on our end for another..." She glanced to a clock on the wall and was disconcerted by how early it still was. The night's events seemed to have stretched time out like elastic. "Another half an hour, when they start arriving at the Burrow."

"What, you can't contact them?" said Draco with disbelief.

"Yes, I know we have to, but I can't think how." She bit her lip and began to pace across the sitting room. "I don't know how to cast a messenger Patronus. That's well past N.E.W.T. standard. And that's not an option for any of you, obviously"—she glanced at the Malfoys— "in case someone recognizes your Patronuses who shouldn't. But then..." She stopped pacing. "I don't suppose you have a way of sending messages? You wouldn't know where to find an—an owl, or—?"

"An owl?" Lucius Malfoy let out a scathing laugh. "What use would an owl be to us when we're meant to be dead?"

Hermione's temper flared. "Well, if you have any ideas to get us out of this, I would love to hear them."

Narcissa drew herself up. "There would be no need to 'get out of' anything if you hadn't Apparated into our hiding place with Dolohov hanging off your robes, you stupid girl."

Rage filled Hermione like hot tar. It seemed unbelievable that they were blaming her for this. She wanted to say something to defend herself—it had, after all, been impossible to feel Dolohov seizing her robes in freefall—but when she thought of the attack, her mind conjured Snape's face, full of loathing, and she felt anew the horrible sensation of Dumbledore's body sliding off the Thestral behind her, brushing her as if in farewell, and her stomach began to churn, and her eyes began to sting. She couldn't make herself vocalize any of it, could only stand there and tremble, suddenly choking on her anger. She could finally appreciate why Harry hardly ever spoke about Cedric's death, even now, years after the graveyard.