Chapter 44

"It's like he's disappeared!" explained Hermione. "I watched carefully during my shift, and I know Angelina and Ginny did the same. We just can't find any sign of Draco on the Marauder's map." Breakfast was still two hours away, and she was in Moaning Myrtle's second floor bathroom, along with Harry, Imogen, Angelina and the Weasley siblings. It was now a routine for them to meet every morning at this hour to discuss their efforts to follow Draco's movements on the Marauder's Map. Usually they met in the Gryffindor common room, but this morning some students had been using it to complete some homework, and so the meeting had convened in Moaning Myrtle's second-floor bathroom.

"How about you, Imogen?" asked Harry. "Have you seen any sign of Draco?"

"I stared at the map until I was cross-eyed," replied Imogen, whose face still showed signs of eyestrain, "and there was no sign of him at all. I even skipped dinner last night, thinking that I'd spot him on the map when he was in the Great Hall. But I didn't see him."

"But that makes no sense," said Harry. "I know he was in the Great Hall last night — I saw him with my own eyes." Ron seconded Harry's observation, as did Hermione.

"We've always been able to rely on the map," said Harry, shifting uncomfortably, for during this meeting he had been sitting on a hard stone ledge and his body was now stiff in places and cold as well. "Last year, we were able to see Crouch wandering around, and the year before, I had no problem spotting Pettigrew, even though he was transfigured into a rat. What could Draco be doing that those other dark wizards weren't?"

"Draco can't possibly be better than Crouch," said Angelina. "It must be that we're missing something, or not doing it right. We don't have as much experience as you and Ron with the map. I think we just need more practice."

"I doubt you missed something," said Harry. "Ron, whose shift it is today, when it's dinner time?"

"Mine," replied Ron, with a grimace. "I'm not looking forward to going hungry"

"I'll ask Dobby to send you something from the kitchen after dinner," said Harry. "Here is what I would like you to do. During dinner time, I simply want you to assume that Draco is in his usual place. Then look as carefully as you can, and see if you can find anything."

"I think we can do a bit better than that," said Imogen. "Or at least, Hermione can. By now, if I hadn't arrived at Hogwarts, Hermione would have used a rather complicated charm to enchant a number of coins, one for each member of the DA. The charm enabled the serial number on the edge of each coin to display the time and date of the next DA meeting. I don't know how to do the charm, but if Hermione could figure it out, she could use it to send signals. At dinner tonight, she could send Ron a signal using a charmed coin - a sign telling Ron that she is looking right at Malfoy. Then Ron would be sure to see Draco on the map, and then we could follow him from there."

"Really!" said Hermione. "I must say that is rather advanced magic. Very impressive... " Hermione's voice trailed off which she realized that she was inadvertently complementing herself. "Anyways, I know the charm Imogen's talking about. I've never tried it before, but if you say I can do it, then I guess I can.

"You know, Harry," said Ron, "it might help if we asked Ernie, Luna, Marietta and Cho to help out. None of them has had a shift yet, staring at the map, and maybe some fresh pairs of eyes would be good idea."

"Not Marietta," said Hermione. "I don't trust her at all."

"And if you can't trust Marietta, then I think Cho's out as well," said Fred. "Those two are very close."

"Well, Ernie's out too," said George. "At least for the present. He's got enough on his mind as it is." This was true enough. Only few days earlier, The Daily Prophet published a list of the latest disappearances, and Ernie's entire family was among them. Reports of this nature had become so common that the students had been getting used to them, but still it had been a shock when someone so close to them had been made to suffer.

"Well, there's always Luna," said Harry. "Say what you like about her, she's as trustworthy as Ernie. And I don't agree with you, Hermione, about Cho and Marietta. They took the unbreakable vow just like the rest of us did, and regardless what their intentions are, they could not possibly betray us, not without dying. I think we 'll need their help on this, if we don't locate Draco soon."

While Harry and his friends were having their meeting, a creature slipped through the fence bordering the Hogwarts grounds. At first glance the animal appeared to be a rather overgrown squirrel. It was not yet dawn and the small mammal was hard to see in the darkness. But in the daylight, the white streak on the creature's back was a dead giveaway - the unmistakable sign of a skunk. Once past the gate, the skunk paused, raising her small head and sniffing the air. She looked about, her ears poised to catch the slightest sound. Satisfied that she was alone and unobserved, she made her way slowly through the snow, heading for the forest that lay in darkness opposite the school. The skunk's slow pace was not due to caution; she would have preferred to move more quickly, given that she was plainly visible against the white snow gleaming in the moonlight. But she walked with a limp, heavily favouring her right front leg, and so her progress to the forest boundary was slow and painful. As the skunk made its way across the snow covered fields, the birds who wintered in the forest began to wake and signal their presence with their cries. The skunk hobbled faster now, fearful of being exposed for so long in the open. Aside from Fang, there might be other predators eager to take her. She knew that she was easy pickings for any of the larger owls that inhabited the forest. She must get to safety and out of view of Hogwarts before she transformed, resuming her human shape: the skunk was the animagus form assumed by Maude, and she had used it for the purpose of getting onto Hogwarts grounds, the school's magical defenses being proof against all other known methods of entry. It was odd that such a gap existed in the school's defensive armoury, but then it was the rare death eater who possessed the ability to transfigure himself into an animal. Almost without exception, any dark wizards possessing the animagus ability had acquired the skill long before they had been seduced by the dark arts. Maude wasn't sure as to whether any of Voldemort's other servants possessed her ability. If she was unique in this respect, then this was one more reason for the Dark Lord to value her more highly. But her mutilated right limb was, it seemed, the measure of the level of the esteem in which Voldemort held Maude, the pain an ever- present reminder of the unwisdom of her decision to cast her lot with Bellatrix and the others.

Maude did not stop at the forest's edge, instead heading deep before she willed herself to resume her human shape. Her hand immediately went to her pocket, to make sure that her wand was where it was supposed to be. As always a thrill of fear went through her at the possibility that she might have lost wand somehow, but she felt the usual sense of relief as her some fingers grasped the wand that had been her constant companion since the age of eleven.

The sun was only just beginning to rise, and it would be a while after that before the students were up and about, and before people would begin to enter and exit the school. Until then, Maude was alone with her own thoughts. She held her wand, feeling the familiar small knot in the wood under her forefinger. She knew intimately every irregularity of the wand's surface, and it was every bit as precious to her as it was the day she bought it Ollivander's twenty years before.

The letter had come from Hogwarts only a few days before the wand purchase. Maude's mother was a squib who saw her magical relatives but rarely. She had only the vaguest idea of what Hogwarts was about, and her father, a Muggle, had no idea at all. There had been signs that Maude was no ordinary child: her uncanny ability to find any lost object; the ease with which she tamed the wild animals in the forest near the family home; the fact Maude never seemed to suffer any of the usual scrapes and cuts typical of the rough and tumble life of an active child. Had Maude's mother been more observant, she might have noticed other signs as well. But the children at Maude's school in the neighborhood knew better. With the infallible instinct that children possess and usually lose as they enter adulthood, the youngsters knew that something was not quite right with Maude. People around her always seemed to get hurt, and the local children learned to keep their distance. By the time she was six, Maude was a rather sad little child, friendless and far too conscious of an impenetrable yet invisible barrier that set her apart from everyone else she knew. She had no understanding of what the barrier was, but of its existence she had no doubt at all. But then the letter had arrived, and shortly afterwards Maude was in Diagon Alley. Rather small for her age, Maude looked up and into the face of the Hogwarts prefect whose hands she was holding.