- all twenty-six acres of it. The size of it alone made him strangely uncomfortable. He'd traversed the many rooms and parlours that ought to have been familiar.
But it wasn't. It was just space. Expensively furnished space. The memories he had were not poignant. They felt like bits of a past that happened to be his.
Home for Hermione was a yellow-stone cottage in Northhamptonshire with a vegetable and herb garden that was buried under three feet of snow and a shingle roof that looked like it needed mending.
A twenty minute walk westward took you to a small Muggle town with roads and a pharmacy and a primary school and a population of eight hundred extremely normal individuals. Forty minutes east was a wizarding settlement where you could get your broomstick serviced while you ate at the local inn (where they served an excellent beef and Guinness pie).
Potter and the Weasleys, respectively, lived within easy broom-flight distance if one chose to travel by air.
Draco could not honestly think of a better location to settle in if you preferred to live on your own without actually being isolated.
He stood just outside the tilting fence of Hermione's property and wondered what the hell he was doing there. It was nine in the evening and Draco was standing up to his shins in fresh snow, his broom harnessed over his shoulder.
The cold was silent and intense. His breath formed a misty cloud in front of him. Overhead, the sky was clear and cloudless and in the absence of city lights it was possible to see thousands of stars if one was inclined to count them.
There was a little red cylinder letter box at the gate and a forgotten ceramic garden gnome in the front yard almost hidden under the snow.
He had just wanted to see where she lived, he told himself. How she lived. It was like filling in the pieces of a missing picture puzzle, so that he could stand back and grasp the enormity of what he had done to them.
On what he had missed out on
This was not appropriate by any stretch of the imagination. He knew this. He would not be reduced to some lovelorn, crazed, stalker.
The light from the two windows at the front of the cottage briefly flickered. She was home. Why the hell did she have to be home?
The warmth and welcome of the place drew him in like a magnet. Without really intending to, he took a step forward.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
It wasn't that Ginny didn't feel confident in her ability to be sneaky. She had, after all, grown up in the same household as Fred and George Weasley.
Despite Molly Weasley's best efforts in attempting to keep her youngest and only female-child on the path of filial obedience, some skills could be picked up via osmosis.
Or perhaps it was just genetic?
She could tell a bald face lie with a straight face (although she rarely had need to do this) and she could be counted upon not to fall to pieces in the event of a being sprung.
But this situation was not a Weasley Twins prank that required a third accomplice. Nor was it any other sort of mission that she carried out with, because of, or on behalf of, Harry.
This was law-breaking, pure and simple and if she was found out, the consequences would be catastrophic.
Ginny arranged her features into a tentative but genuine smile as she exited the lift on the fourth floor of Azkaban prison. She approached the young female guard that had let her into Snape's cell the last time she had visited Azkaban with Hermione.
"Hello, Miss," the guard greeted. She was already standing at attention behind her desk. "Back so soon to see Snape?"
"Bitch of a case," Ginny sighed, putting real irritation into her voice. She swung her heavy satchel onto the desk and made a show of digging through it. "As you can well imagine."
The guard nodded sympathetically. Ginny thanked her lucky stars the girl was new. New, young, inexperienced and a little in awe of Harry. Presently, that awe was transferred to Ginny.
"A tragedy, him turning like he did," said the girl in a sagely manner. "My own Pa was at Hogwarts the same year Snape took on his teaching job there. He was full of stories about what the greasy bastard used to do to latecomers-"
Ginny cut her short. She wished she could recall the guard's name.
"Laura was it? I'm really in a quite a hurry this evening."
The girl went