make sure she was alright. Of course she was alright.
She was at Hogwarts. Dumbledore was back. The Aurors had only just left the school and Potter now knew to watch over her.
She was safe.
Then why do I feel like I've just fallen off a rooftop only to stop short before hitting the ground?
Damn, but he felt out of sorts all of a sudden.
Focus, Malfoy. The stress was getting to him. It made sense that he was worried about her. Hermione was worrying in general, was she not? The sooner he returned with Goyle, the sooner he could get on with life minus the Ministry' s blasted contract dogging him. He could then spend the rest of his days worrying about her in peace.
Draco almost smiled at the irony of it.
He pulled out Pansy's poor excuse of a map and consulted it again by wand-light.
Pansy was not nearly as detailed or meticulous as Hermione had been with the Hogsmeade map in Dumbledore's office after the first Dark Mark sighting. Draco made an irritated noise. If the map was intended to be somewhat to scale, then by Pansy's account, Hogwarts would occupy half the Dark Forest and the lake would be more of an annoying puddle beside Hogsmeade Village.
By his calculations, he was about an eight-minute walk from the Castle.
Well, eight minutes by his speed of walking.
Pansy had said fifteen minutes, which meant that he was roughly where he ought to be. A Compass Spell confirmed it.
Draco pulled the hood of his clock off his head and did a complete three-sixty from where he was standing.
What bloody rowan? All he could make out were oaks and willows and a great deal of shrubbery. He shoved the map back into his trouser pocket and tried to recall what else Pansy had said.
You won't know it's there until you know. It sort of sneaks up on you.
Fantastic. He pictured an evil, cackling, nightmare tree, tip-toeing on its roots through the forest, sneaking up on annoyed Death Eater wannabes who were scouring the area for it.
And just as he thought this, it happened. Draco made a startled noise and backed up.
Pansy hadn't been kidding. The tree had to have been there the whole time, and yet Draco was sure he had looked at that precise spot several times before and spotted nothing.
It was indeed a rowan; an evil and creepy version of the Whomping Willow.
Cautiously, Draco walked up to the thing, looking for signs of an attached Portkey.
The tree couldn't possibly be the Portkey, could it? He didn't think it was possible to use a living thing. After a deep breath, he slapped his gloved hand on the trunk and was a bit relieved when nothing happened.
Was it his imagination or did the tree actually seem to puff up its canopy, in agitation?
"There, there. Nice tree," he crooned. Probably best not to annoy it. The limbs looked sturdy enough to pick him up and hurl him all the way back to Hogwarts.
Hesitating briefly and feeling not a little foolish, he laid his palm against the trunk and stroked it. The tree shuddered, sending several leaves flitting down to the ground. Draco wondered if it behaved like this with all magical folk or whether it happened to be partial to Death Eaters.
And their progeny, he silently added.
Just when he was contemplating cajoling the thing, there was a great and ominous creaking noise as the topmost branches parted. Something caught the moonlight and glinted amidst the leaves and blood-coloured blooms.
A thick gold chain swung back and forth in the moving canopy.
Was that a pendant? No, a coin. Coins were favoured for use as portkeys.
Draco knew he had found what he'd been looking for. It dangled enticingly in challenge, high above his head.
The tree did not seem to be in an agreeable enough mood to offer it to him.
He was going to have to climb.
With a long suffering sigh, Draco rolled up his sleeves and ventured closer.
Bugger you, Goyle. Bugger you sideways with a broom.
**
Portkeys were a complicated type of magic involving a thorough understanding of perimeters and confines. To the lay-Muggle, this basically meant you needed to be rather good at difficult mathematics to work out just how strong a spell was needed and where exactly to program your portals perimeters.
They required a great deal of energy to function and for that reason, were not normally located in crowded or magically congested areas, lest the portal malfunction from atmospheric interference.
Malfunctions varied. A user could find him or