Chapter 16. A Lead, a Letter, and a Leader.

Disclaimer: Nothing has changed, really; and you know, it won't...

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Writermerrin for hanging in there for me and my story.

Harry had had enough of him. "Why did you go if you knew it was a waste of time? You did for the same reason that I did...however slim it might be, there still was a chance of her being there. So stop it! Stop complaining, stop whining, stop brooding, just stop already!"

Snape felt so insulted that he just harrumphed and pretended Harry did not exist.

They had returned from their failed mission at the Mansion three hours ago. The two had been arguing ever since. Instead of going back to Hogwarts, they had decided to visit the Burrow. Even though neither of the two would admit it aloud, they had chosen this place to find the strength for not giving up hope.

They sat in awkward silence until there was a sudden appearance of a Patronus in the form of a small Jack Russell Terrier. Harry turned white as a St. Mungo's bed covering. "How is that possible? That's... Ron's...!" He pointed to the happy little puppy that jumped on his lap and started relaying a message in a very faint tone, "Harry! Help her..."

Harry was visibly shaken with despair to notice the voice of the Patronus was not Ron's.

"Ron! She must be in grave danger to have R...Ron send h...his..." Harry looked at Snape who had an inscrutable expression on his face, and he said, "Is that possible? Can dead people...?"

"No, Potter! Don't go proving me wrong when I was just beginning to think you might be in possession of an iota of intelligence."

"Right!" His sneer shook Harry from whatever state he was in, and he jumped up to his feet at once. "Tonks! Yes! That's it!"

"No, Potter! Absolutely not Tonks!" Snape was exasperated. "Not Ronald Weasley, and definitely not Nymphadora or any other Tonks..."

"No, no, you don't understand. I got it. Tonks' Patronus changed after Sirius' death...it's like that. The message is from..."

"Hermione." The softness of Snape's voice when he uttered her name reminded Harry of the clouds he passed by whenever he was on his Firebolt.

"Yes, she found a chance, and she was well enough to do it." He was proud of his friend. With eyes full of hope, he looked at Snape's face to see a flicker of emotion shining there too.

After a moment, Snape said quietly, "Something or someone must have interrupted her. The message was not complete."

At that moment, Hugo came in, yelling for his sister to come and get her Flooed "Lurve-letter."

Rose chased after him. "I said, give it to me, you little ape!"

However, the ape showed no fear of her. He just waved it from the other side of the room, keeping Harry and Snape in between them, and smirked wisely.

Rose pointed her wand at him to Accio it and remembered that she was at home in front of her headmaster, so she asked for Harry's help. At Harry's request, Hugo finally gave the letter back but did not forget to tease her as "future Mrs. Malfoy." Rose was as red as her hair when she snatched the letter, but then paled instantly after reading it quickly.

Snape became interested after hearing the boy's taunt, but Harry beat him in questioning.

"What's wrong, Rosie?"

The shivering little girl handed out the letter to him. "Scorpius knows where Mum is."

~*Hg*~

"Draco! Please don't be mad at him. It's all my doing. He's just a kid. Don't hurt him, please," Hermione pleaded to the very angry man who had just sent his son from the room with an "OUT! I'll deal with you when I'm done here." The child had scurried off, having never seen this dangerous side of his father before.

Draco was still proceeding towards Hermione. "You care about my son above your own safety!"

"I have been under your Crucio...I know what you can do; just don't do anything harsh to the child."

"My child! What are you trying to do, Granger? Trying to poison my child against me? Why would he want to help you?"

"Your son was trying to do the right thing. Let me go, Draco. You have a son; you know what it's like to have a child. Could he live without you? I'm sure my children miss me. Let me go, please," she pleaded.

"Let you go? I will, as soon as Potter releases my dad."

"Your dad?"

"Don't you know, dear Hermione? You're just a pawn...just like your idiot husband...EXPENDABLE!"

"What are you talking about? And stop calling him names. Ron wasn't an idiot."

Draco ignored her protest entirely by sneering, "Didn't you know? Your darling lover arrested my father."

"Severus?" Hermione was confused.

"Potter. Your... Why did you say Severus? He's not... He can't be! Snape?"

"It's not like that. I mean, he doesn't feel anything for me, nothing at all." The last part was mumbled.

Draco looked thoughtfully at her and said, "If I was your friend, I would have warned you about how traitorous that man could be."

"Then it's a good thing that you are not...not my friend. He is not a traitor anyway; he is..."

"A traitor! A traitor to the bone! I'm not even talking about the Dark Lord! He betrayed my father after a lifetime of friendship. Do you know he's the reason my father was arrested for Ron Weasley's..." He stopped abruptly.

"Ron Weasley's what? What, Draco?" She didn't want him to confirm her suspicion as a fact, but knew he might just do that.

Upon seeing her distress, for some reason unknown to even himself, he gave up and sat down by her. "Ron Weasley's murder."

"Ron was murdered?"

"My father wanted to get Potter off our back. He didn't plan on it. It was just a spur of the moment thing...a miscalculation."

She stood up, saying, "Miscalculation? My husband was just your miscalculation? We are just pawns in your big game? My children are orphans because it was convenient to your father? And you were going along with it? What happened to you, Draco? You were never kind, never nice, but you used to be a human being!"

Draco stood right in front of her and pulled her by her hair to make her face him. Staring right at her eyes, he said, "In another lifetime, we might have been friends; in another dimension, I might have loved you...married, and given my name and my life up for you... But right now, here, we are not friends. I am a Malfoy, and you are a Mudblood, a filthy little unimportant tramp of a traitor!"

Hermione's hands were free, and one of them had landed fiercely on his face. Draco didn't back off like he had in their third year. Instead he forcefully put a short but bruising kiss on her lips, then let go of her, wiped his mouth with his hand, and said, "Wanted to do that since the first time you hit me. Pity! No fireworks like I had once expected."

Hermione spat on him. He laughed, then left, saying, "See, you don't know all I can do to you."

Hermione kept on scrubbing her lips with her sleeve as if they were infected by him.

~*hp*~

"Calm down, Rosalind. It is all right. Your friend took a great risk upon himself by sending you this information. Thanks to him, we now have a lead. We will find her." Snape had consoled her before Ginny had come to take her upstairs.

"It could be a trap, you know." Harry was still skeptical about trusting a Malfoy message.

"The Chateau is secret-kept. That's why those owls came back; that's why I couldn't remember where it was, no matter how hard I'd tried."

"How could he, then...?"

"Isn't it obvious, Potter? Lucius thought it would be clever to make the boy Secret Keeper. No one would think to ask a child if the house became important to the Ministry, and the secret would live longer than Lucius would."

"Clever, but twisted."

"They often are."

"Agreed. So what are we waiting for?"

"You to bring your squad in."

"He is in France; it will take time to legally go through the proper channels. To hell with propriety! Hermione comes first. I think you should bring out your organization."

"My what?"

"You are the leader of the Order. Lead away."

~*R*~

Sitting on her bed, Rose was re-reading the letter from Scorpius.

Rose,

P.S. You told me to think for myself to be your friend. Are we friends now?

"Yes, we are," Rose whispered.