The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 26: The Dark and the Dawn

In the following weeks, Hermione tried time and time again to shake Harry out of his fixation on the Deathly Hallows. None of her efforts made any impact. Before the battle at Azkaban, the Order had rallied around Harry's passion and leadership, but now he was withdrawn, even seeming preoccupied around Ginny. Hermione could see his mind sliding back to the Hallows in the middle of every conversation.

"I shouldn't have told him about the Elder Wand," Draco said one night when he and Hermione were curled secretly in the library, door locked, Muffliato in place.

"Why not?" Hermione asked.

"Because." Draco twirled a hazy curl of her hair around his fingertip. He still looked tired, but less haggard than he had in the week after Azkaban. "If he thought he had to go through Snape to get all three Hallows, would he be this obsessed?"

Hermione sighed. "Yes, I think he would. The last time I saw Harry like this was..."

"Was what?"

"Well, it was last year, when he was convinced you'd joined the Death Eaters. When Harry zeroes in on something like this, he never lets go of it."

And while Harry fixated on opening the Snitch, Voldemort's influence clouded over the nation like a thunderhead. The Azkaban breakout had brought the conflict aboveground, so that by late February, the Daily Prophet was reporting open skirmishes across the country. Near daily, the Order received sympathiser intelligence about Muggle hunts. The Ministry, meanwhile, had begun to demolish monuments honouring prominent Muggle-borns, alongside new efforts to shutter gathering places for goblins, vampires, and other magical beings.

The Order sent battalions from the fortress safehouse to fight these efforts, but reports from the small battles disturbed Hermione. Most bystanders did nothing to act against the Ministry and the Death Eaters. Some even joined in against the Order.

It was becoming more and more clear that the Prophet's disinformation campaign had taken root. Worse, the twins' Wizarding Wireless programme was forced to change frequencies with every broadcast to prevent the Death Eaters jamming their signals. Hermione doubted that The Daily Potter was reaching even a hundredth of those reached by its Ministry-controlled counterpart.

So the Order prepared with ever more anticipation for their pamphlet flyover. Thanks to their allies in the monastery safehouse, who were devoted to copying and magically multiplying the pamphlets, they would soon have thousands upon thousands to distribute, describing the truth about dozens of events since last year.

"We'll have to drop them all in one mission," Kingsley said. "I'll bet within an hour of the first leaflet hitting ground, they'll push through a law to create aerial patrols."

The final piece of the puzzle for the flyover would be obtaining enough broomsticks. The Bulgarian Quidditch team had sent them a dozen Firebolts courtesy of Viktor Krum, enough for the Order members who would spearhead the operation in London and Hogsmeade. But broomsticks were expensive, and now, with nearly sixty locations mapped out nationwide, they would need not so much a cache of brooms as a fleet.

Hermione tried to remind Harry of the urgency of this endeavour, but he couldn't seem to focus on it. Worse, he remained just as disengaged from their discussions of Hufflepuff's Cup—even when Hermione developed a new theory about the final hidden Horcrux.

"We've discovered every hiding place but one," she said one afternoon as they sat in the library. "But the thing is, only some of them are hiding places, when you think about it."

Ron frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that Voldemort didn't really hide the diary," Hermione said. "He gave it to Draco's father to use, eventually. And he doesn't hide Nagini, either; he sends her to attack people. So, really, only three of the Horcruxes were hidden: the ring, the diadem, and the locket."