Shadow Walks |h.p/h.g|

ch. 10

"Malfoy was in France," Remus reminded him gently. Harry looked at him stonily.

"Malfoy was seen in France a couple of times that evening, and not seen at the Battle. His own house-elves testified that he was at his house in France; the wards showed that he was there - but you don't think that the owner of that villa couldn't manipulate either of those? I'd bet my Gringotts' vault that he was under that cloak. The timing was exact. They probably felt it in their Marks the moment Voldemort died. But somebody - somebody had to have been tracking Hermione for them to appear when they did. When she disappeared, I was already on my way back from the tomb. I was on my way back..." He trailed off, thinking of how close he'd been - how he might have saved her. What-ifs and could-have-beens careened mercilessly across well-worn paths in his mind.

"And that necklace..." he continued. "I've never seen one like it before. Bellatrix yanked it off of Hermione's neck right before...it's got to be involved somehow." Harry pressed the fingertips of one hand to his forehead. "I need to talk to Luna," he said. "But I - " He stopped suddenly, and looked at Remus with realization in his eyes. "Wait a minute," he said. "Dolohov was one of the Death Eaters that Hermione wounded before she was disarmed. He escaped, must have portkeyed away at some point, but the Battle was so nearly over that he had to have already had the portkey on his person somewhere. Why did the person beneath the cloak toss Bellatrix a portkey? Why didn't she already have an escape route? She said 'One minute'. During one of the replays, I timed it - and she disappeared exactly one minute later. Where did she go?"

"Harry, you don't necessarily know that the object was a portkey. We didn't even see what it was," Remus chided him gently.

"It was a portkey. Had to be," Harry said in a clipped way, resuming his pacing. "An automatic one - preset - she didn't have to activate it. Perhaps to get into a place with a lot of wards..." His eyes flared greenly, as he looked up at Remus. "The Malfoy villa in France... If Malfoy was under that cloak, it makes sense, because he would have had to authorize portkey entry personally. And since it's somewhere magical, she wouldn't have to use her wand at all - she'd have known it would have been registered, just in case..." Remus looked mildly surprised.

"Even though she was listed as dead?" Harry pursed his lips in near disgust.

"It's the Ministry's way of covering its own arse. Hermione's was registered too. It's one of the ways Neville got on Dolohov's trail before the end. He tried to mask it, but after he had that informant killed, I guess he got careless. There's never been any activity on either of the others. But the Ministry was too ready to end it all... chalk them up in the dead column, neat and tidy, and try to act as if this whole messy war never happened."

"Your department looked for her for months," Remus corrected, trying to absolve the Ministry - and subsequently Harry himself - of some of the guilt. "They let you look, even when you were still in training."

"Nobody ever closely examined your memory - or Ron's," Harry countered. "They never even tried to figure out the spell Bellatrix used. It was just easier to assume she was dead." But he stopped, stance slumped as he began to reshoulder the blame. "But then, neither did I, I suppose," he said glumly. "If there had been a ricochet, some kind of magical mishap, then no stone would have been left - but I never - it never occurred to me that Death Eaters would have any kind of plot that reached further than mere death."

There are things worse than death.

Bellatrix was right.

"I need to pay Malfoy a visit," he blurted grimly. Remus' expression became wary.

"Tonks told me what happened yesterday," he said. His voice was gently remonstrating, fatherly. "Do you really think that's wise?"

"It can't be helped," Harry said. "If Bellatrix isn't on-site, then I guarantee Malfoy knows where she is. And one or both of them know where Hermione is. This has been going on for five years, and I think that's long enough, don't you?" Remus was already reaching for his wand.