Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Blinded	By : ssdawn Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 26888 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Harry Potter, it's characters, nor make money from writing this.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
- 9
I'm starting this chapter with a lighter mood and with some Draco/Hermione goodness before more dark things pop up. Thanks for reading!
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Blinded Chapter 8
Hermione sat back in her chair lazily watching Draco Malfoy eat. After conceding to a lunch break with the man, she was determined to sit, eat, and relax for an hour. It hadn't taken long for her to finish her chicken salad on a croissant. Draco was still working on his steak and kidney pie, his small tossed salad and his bowl of fruit sat waiting for him. Hermione kept eyeing the large strawberry sitting atop his fruit bowl.
"You know, you can have that strawberry if you'd like it," Draco said after taking a sip of his ale. "You've been salivating over it for the last fifteen minutes." His familiar smirk flashed her way as he finished his pie.
Hermione felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. She hadn't realized she'd been eyeing his fruit. Her hand quickly shot out grabbing the strawberry. "Thank you. I love strawberries."
"Good to know." Draco winked at her and continued eating the rest of his salad. What had that meant? Good to know? Why would it be good to know that she liked strawberries? It was quite the show watching Draco eat. His impeccable manners combined with the way he held his cutlery, and the odd way of eating a bite of pie, then a bite of salad, then back to pie, then to salad, truly had made for an interesting lunch.
"Do you always analyze your lunch companion as much as you do?" Draco asked her as he tilted his head, his blonde locks falling once again into his eyes. She wanted to reach over and push his silky hair back where it belonged. Everything about the man was one, huge temptation. The more time she spent with him, the worse it was becoming. He was like a drug. The more it sinks into your system, the more it takes over your body. She could say the same about Draco. The more she talked to him, and watched him; she could feel him sinking into her soul. This felt like dangerous territory to her, considering why she was spending so much time with the man. She needed to focus more on the case and not analyzing his idiosyncrasies.
"Would you like more fruit?" Draco said as his fork stabbed a piece of pineapple. She watched as the juice from the pineapple ran over his lips, and down the side of his mouth. Unconsciously her own tongue came out to lick her lips. Draco's napkin came up to dab the sliding juices. Again she noticed the wicked smile that seemed to often grace his face.
"The pineapple is really good today. Are you sure you don't want some?" he picked up another piece extending it out to her. Her hand reached out to pick it off the fork. Draco shook his head, "No, here…", his hand went to her chin pulling her towards him as he put the fruit in her mouth. She bit down on the juicy piece, squirming in her seat at the intimacy of the action. He seemed to be in a playful mood, which was actually refreshing from the sad, dour mood that had been in place since Scorpius's kidnapping.
"Isn't it time we should be back?" Hermione asked hoping to hurry him along. Even with how nice the lunch with Draco had been, there was still so much work waiting for her at the ministry.
"Juice," he motioned to her chin. When she looked at him puzzled by his answer, he brought his napkin up to her face. He gradually ran it over her lips and down to her chin. He was slowly killing her with this leisurely dance of seemingly pre-seduction moves. Their eyes met and she could definitely see a twinkle there she hadn't seen before.
"Um, thank you." Hermione stood up, knocking the small diner table in her haste. Draco looked at her in surprise. "Lots to do back at work." Her nerves had taken as much as she could at the moment. Draco Malfoy was a puzzle that she didn't have time to figure out right now. The smirk returned.
"You're the boss." His long arm snapped out to grab the check booklet just as Hermione was reaching for it. "My treat, because it was my idea to eat out for lunch." Hermione just smiled and nodded back at him. Yes, this man would be an enigma, but she'd have fun figuring him out eventually.
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"Did you send the package?" the man asked his partner.
"Yes, of course, I sent it. Though I think it was a waste of time." The man glared at the taller one. "If we're going to be sending presents they need to be more like the one we sent earlier."
The man in charge slapped his partner upside of the head. His large fists grabbed his shirt and shoved him into the wall, his head banging harshly against the brick. "You don't get to question what I do. We always keep them on edge. This will do exactly that. We'll always be one step ahead of them."
"Especially that highfalutin bitch Granger! She thinks she can catch us." The man sniggered.
"As long as we don't do anything stupid we'll get what we want." The taller man glared accusingly at the shorter one.
He looked up to his partner puzzled, hesitated, and then asked, "What is it we want?"
The taller man gave a wild laugh, "That's for me to know and it's none of your concern. They'll know soon enough what I want. If they want these brats back alive, they'll give it to me too."
The man laughed again and whistled to himself as his hand forcefully hit the cages full of scared children. The cages shook back and forth, almost to the point of tipping over. The small whimpers and cries were not acknowledged by either man. One small boy, in particular, cringed and shrunk into the corner. After what had happened the night before, it was no wonder the boy was so frightened. He had cried for his mum and dad until the wee hours of the morning. The house-elf had rubbed his back until he'd cried himself to sleep. The elf had been beaten for showing mercy to one of the children. Mercy was definitely lacking for all of the children who'd been taken away from their loving homes. It also didn't look like it would be any time soon that they'd be returning to those homes either.
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Draco held the door open for Hermione as they came back from lunch. Most of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement employees were coming back from lunch.
"So did you enjoy the pineapple as much as I did?" Draco asked Hermione, smiling at the blush that graced her cheeks.
"Yes, Malfoy I did." She answered as she walked a few steps ahead of him, not daring to meet his eyes. She was almost afraid of what she would see there. She hadn't been this nervous around a man since she'd been dating Ron.
Hermione stopped abruptly, which resulted in Draco slamming into her back when she noticed Harry, Ron, and several other Aurors gathered around her assistant's desk. He tried to move forward, but Hermione's hand caught his wrist stopping him. Cora, her young assistant, stood nearby with her arms around her middle, staring at the chaos that was happening around her desk.
Drawing closer she could see Harry was in a snit, "So no one knows where this came from? It just magically appeared out of thin air and landed on Cora's desk?" People started stepping back not wanting to be blamed for this huge mistake.
As the crowd moved back, Hermione and Draco were able to see what was causing the commotion. There, sitting on the desk was another red box wrapped up like the first.
Hermione took a deep breath. This was never good to have packages start coming in so soon after the first. Last time this had happened in Paris, body parts had come in a package at a time. It seemed that a copycat situation was happening. The case in Paris had been in all of the wizarding papers around the world, so these kidnappers would know the timeline of what the other sick bastards had done.
"Everyone step back now, except for Harry." Hermione's words were, sharp, crisp, and loud. Everyone backed off making a pathway for her. Most of them knew not to get in her way or land on her bad side. They all were grateful they weren't the ones who had made this current mistake, especially after learning the new rules of how to handle mysterious packages.
"Harry, who did you leave on duty during lunch hour? Please tell me someone was here and you didn't leave an empty office?" Hermione's red face and scrunched eyebrows made Harry squirm. He'd been in this position before being berated by his friend, and it wasn't a happy place to be in.
Hermione could see the wheels turning quickly in Harry's head. As the deafening silence permeated the room, in came a whistling trainee Auror Williamson. All heads turned towards the man who was oblivious to the disorder happening in front of him.
He soon looked up, "What? What's going on?" The man looked upon each face, from the scared Cora to the red-faced Harry Potter, and finally to the outraged Deputy Head Ms. Granger. Then his eyes focused on the red package sitting on the desk. Hermione saw the color drain from his face. She knew they'd found the fool who'd broken protocol.
"Williamson," Harry shouted out his name, "Are you the one responsible for the delivery of this package?"
The trainee swallowed hard and licked his now, very dry lips. The man couldn't speak. His eyes shifted from Harry to Hermione and still, the words didn't come. Only after the often scary Draco Malfoy gave a low growl did the man start stammering.
"Well, I…you see one of those…uh…muggle postman came in and..." The man looked like he was ready to drop from a heart attack. His pale color and wide eyes showed the fear he felt.
"Were you at the meeting this morning Williamson?" Harry asked walking up to him. "I gave out new guidelines as to the proper handling of unknown packages coming into our office." Harry's voice almost shook with indignation. His fisted hands and the grinding teeth were almost the undoing of the unfortunate man.
"No, sir," the words were quietly spoken.
"Would you like to remain an Auror in training Williamson?" Harry now was in full shouting mode.
"Ye…yes…sir, Auror Potter sir." Williamson squeaked out.
"Then you MUST attend all required meetings and follow procedures given to you. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir." The young man swayed as Ron grabbed his arm.
"Take him to my office, Ron. I'll be there for questioning in a moment." Ron left, dragging the scared man down the hall.
Harry gave out more orders, "Patil and Finnegan, head to the Atrium and speak to anyone who may have seen when and where exactly the package was delivered." Both Aurors left the room immediately, glad to be away from the tension-filled office.
"The rest of you go back to your other cases." As they left, he turned to Cora, "Please go and get word to Minister Shacklebolt, personally, about the appearance of this new package." She too scurried away not wanting to stay by the package any longer than was needed.
This left only Harry, Hermione, and Draco still staring at the bright red box waiting to be opened.
"Harry, before we do anything else, I have a spell that I've come up with that hopefully will help us identify who sent the package." Hermione was so focused on the parcel that she missed Draco melting down in back of her.
Harry spotted it first seeing Draco's sweaty and pale face, as he started hurling into the wastebasket. He came around holding the man up by his shoulders. As soon as he finished, Harry transfigured a handkerchief out of a piece of paper and handed it to Draco. Then he evanescoed the contents of the wastebasket while Draco sat down in Cora's chair staring right at the package.
"Thanks, Potter," Draco managed to say to the Auror. There had never been any love lost between the two men, but at the moment, the past didn't seem to matter with more pressing matters of finding out the contents of the box.
Hermione levitated the box into her office and quickly scourgified her desk. Setting the box down, she withdrew a pair of rubber gloves from the side drawer. Draco looked at them mystified but didn't say a word. Next Hermione waved her wand and a huge light board came sailing across her office from the closet. "Lumos" was cast that lit up the board.
Harry and Draco stood watching as the witch proceeded to do something they'd never seen before.
"This part of the procedure needs to be done very delicately, otherwise the fingerprints could be damaged," Hermione said casually like she was talking about what she'd had for dinner last night.
"So this is what you said you'd been working on in order to try and identify fingerprints," Harry said almost with awe.
Hermione nodded her head. "Yes, and it needs to be done layer by layer, especially after more than one person has handled a package or object." Her concentration was unhindered by the two men hovering nearby. "Tollere Stroma" she started speaking the spell while waving her wand over the box. Each time that she repeated the words, a layer of fingerprints would lift from the package and float over and attach to the light board.
"Hermione, brilliant as ever," Harry said. His admiration for her work clearly showed in his words and tone of voice.
Looking at the board, Hermione could see she had taken off six different layers of fingerprints, which in most likelihood that meant six different people had already handled the box.
"Now what?" Draco asked as he still looked at the box like it would bite him any second.
"Now I send these to the forensic lab where we have already started taking fingerprints of employees and anyone brought in for questioning or violations. They're also starting to take fingerprints of every person brought into St. Mungos and their employees."
Smiling back at both men she added, "By the way, you both need to head down there also to be fingerprinted as you are ministry employees."
"What about the package? Are we going to open it?" Draco stood frozen in place as he looked at Hermione. "I'm not going anywhere until I see what's in there?" His words were spoken firmly and much like the old Draco she'd always loved to hate. There was something though looking at the despair that clearly showed on his face, she knew what she needed to do next.
"Please sit down Mr. Malfoy," Hermione said motioning over to his normal chair.
"No." He shook his head defiantly. "I'm fine where I am"
"Please, we don't know what may be in here." Hermione softened her tone as if she were speaking to a child.
Harry walked over to Draco, "Malfoy come on," he tried to grab his arm to guide him to the vacant seat.
"Get off me, Potter!" Draco shook his arm taking a step back. "Quit treating me like a child and let's get this over with."
"Fine," Hermione said, not happy about the added tension in the room from this encounter.
With her gloves still on, she delicately peeled away the tape, trying not to touch more of the wrapping than what was needed. She took a deep breath trying to ignore the two men who were lingering near her. Using her wand she sliced through the tape holding the top closed. Looking inside, her eyes grew wide and a gasp came out that she wished hadn't.
Draco grabbed the box and peered inside. "Oh, Fuck, Scorpius!" The agonizing cry struck to the core of Hermione's soul. His hands dug in the box and came out with handfuls of hair the same color as the man who was holding it. "What have they done to you?" Draco dropped to the floor cradling the hair against his chest and proceeded to break down with deep moans and tears.
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I know I'm being evil leaving it here, but the good news is that I've already started to write the next chapter. Thanks to anyone that has been leaving reviews for this story.
-Tollere Stroma translates to "Remove Layer".
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- 8
- 9
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