Love Never Dies. (Draco Malfoy Fan Fiction) (Watty Awards 2013 Winner)

Chapter 40: Orphanage.

A/N: Hi everyone, here's the next chapter. Hopefully you'll like this one. I spent quite a while on this chapter. I thought I should make some progress with the task so here it is. Please keep reading and voting! Comment on anything that can be improved on and I'll be adding more POVs when the whole story is completed in Rachel's POV. Thank you! x

I get an interdepartmental note from Snape, asking Draco and I to pay him a visit right after breakfast. We do that and when we reach his office, it was wiped clean of everything but we found him sitting in his chair, his back facing us.

"Professor?" I ask and he swivels around.

"I expect to both of you to have come up with a plan? Because if you haven't... I have one for the both of you prepared," he pauses, scruntinizing the both of us. "You should start in the Library, in the Restricted Section." He hands us a permission slip to which we passed to the Librarian to gain access to it.

We leave his office, my mind still wondering why it was still stripped of it's contents. We move along swiftly throught the corridors, careful not to make any noise. We reach the Library and the Librarian lets us into the section. There were chains dangling helplessly from book shelves and the books were both thick and disgusting. 

"We should start here," I pull Draco along to the wall of books that had the words Dark Arts written on their binds. 

His eyes widen at the countless books that lined the wall and sighs as he takes the first one off the shelf. I start somewhere in the middle, one that had the words ,History of the Dark Arts, written on it. I take it to a table and open it, dust erupting from its pages. I ignore them and keep flipping through the book. I look to the Contents page again and there was an entire chapter dedicated to the Dark Lord's past and how the first Wizarding War started. My fingers run through the pages of the book and I find a wordless page with a photograph of an orphange on it. I read the short caption under it that said - You-Know-Who stayed at Wool's Orphanage, muggle orphanage, for most of his childhood years.

"Draco!" I screamed in my whisper, beckoning to come see my new discovery. "Look at this," I point to the photograph, then the caption.

He frowns, scrutinizing the photograph, running his fingers down it as if feeling for an unknown texture to it that would help us find the chest. "Let's pay the parentless children a visit," he mutters, soft enough so that I was the only one who could hear it. I nod before we put the book back to where it came from and took another trip down to Snape's barren office. 

"Do you really think it's there?" I ask him, brisk walking so quickly the words came out in syllables.

"Yeah I do," he answers, his eyes looking forward as his eyebrows furry in concentration. "A muggle orphanage is the last place anyone would go looking for a piece of a wizard's soul." He said it so matter-of-factly that I felt stupid to think otherwise. I tilt my head in agreement but raise it up again.

Right before my hand could touch the knob, the door swings open and Snape was pacing around in his empty office. "Ah, I see you're back. Have any new information?" he asks, monotonely.

"Yes, sir. We want to go to Wool's Orphanage," I tell him, waiting for a response. I widen my eyes and shake my head in an expectation of an answer. "Sir?"

"You may go but on one condition. I want the both of you back in my office before ten o'clock tonight. It won't be easy finding the chest. It may take weeks of visiting the young children before you find it but good luck," he says, emphasizing every word.

"Thank you sir," I thank him before he waves his wand around the room. 

"You can apparate in and out of this room, only. Anywhere else will trigger an alarm. Be back my ten," he says again before Draco takes my hand and we apparate out of Hogwarts.