Black Orchid

Disclaimer: None of this is mine of course just playing with JK's toys


Black Orchid

Prologue

Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley sat in the cabin area of the 747 taking them to San Francisco. Both girls had tear stained faces, making it clear that this trip was not a holiday, nor fun for either of them. Dumbledore had decided that the two women would be a distraction for Harry in the war effort, and they were being sent to America for their protection. No amount of protests and arguments could get him to change his mind, so the girls decided to take things into their own hands and had made plans of their own. How could they have known that the decisions they would make in the next twenty-four hours would forever change their lives? All it took was getting off the plane in San Diego and getting on a connection to an unknown destination for Hermione and Ginny to vanish for completely.

Healer Sarah Kendall sat at her desk revising her current notes on the Black Orchid project. Even though the war in Great Britain had ended three years ago with Harry Potter emerging as an even greater hero, she knew that there were still multitudes of people who still suffered from the after affects of the Cruciatus Curse, and Sarah had been hard at work trying to find a cure. After years of hard work, she had finally made a major breakthrough.
It was a cool summer night in Brisbane, and she and her partner Emily Mills were working late in their Apothecary. Emily was a mediwitch, and with Sarah being a Potions Mistress, they had combined their efforts and had a successful business together. In the background she could hear Emily going through the motions of closing up the shop and Sarah started finishing up her notes away for the day so that they could go home.

Downstairs Emily was locking up cabinets and sweeping up behind careless customers. Emily jumped at the sound of an unexpected knock at the door. She sighed and went over to see who it was, expecting a customer who needed ‘just one last item’.
It wasn’t a customer. She paled at the sight of the face that greeted her at the door. It was a familiar one, but not at all welcome. She slammed the door shut, warded it quickly and raced up the stairs to Sarah. She rushed into Sarah’s office.
“Sarah, we have to go now. They’ve found us.” She panted.

Sarah looked up from her work and paled when she heard Emily’s words. Standing up, she placed a small portkey on her desk and sent all her research to her home. In her haste, she didn’t notice as two sheets of her notes fell from the desk and drifted slowly to the floor.
"Go home and put up some wards. I’ll get the ingredient and add more wards here."
Emily nodded and went to the fireplace. Sarah waited until she was sure Emily had gone before running down the hall to her lab. She warded the door behind her and recovered the vial from its secret hiding place. She could hear the downstairs door being blown apart and foot steps on the stairs heading to where she was. Quickly she looked around her lab to see if there was anything else she needed before stepping into the fireplace and swirling away in a flash of green flames.
As her lab swirled out of sight, she saw that the wards on the door had been broken, and caught a glimpse of the face of the man rushing toward the grate.
‘Damn! We were doing so well! It won’t be so easy to disappear this time.’


Draco Malfoy hadn’t been expecting to recognize the face that answered the front door. He had been sent by Dumbeldore to find Dr Kendall to ask her to help Severus Snape in continuing her project finding a cure for the Cruciatus Curse. By the time his brain made the connection, the door had been slammed shut and he could hear the wards flying into place. After trying some basic spells to get the door opened, he knew for sure who the woman’s partner in crime was.
'Only Hermione would be able to set up such difficult wards; this is going to take forever .. '

Eventually, he had had to blow up the door just to get inside, and by the time he got past the second set of wards to get into Hermione’s lab, she was disappearing into the Floo.
“Well this just got more complicated.”
Draco looked around the office and didn’t see anything of notice other than some filing cabinets and a desk. Both looked locked. Deciding to wait to break into the cabinets, he left the lab and entered the other. The office looked slightly strange, with a large space in the center of the room and filing cabinets lining the walls. Draco figured a large piece of furniture had been removed. He assumed it was a desk, as there was a chair with no table. On the floor next to the chair were two pieces of parchment. When he picked them up he recognized Hermione’s careful notes from past classes together. With a sigh, he activated the portkey that was attached to his cloak and reappeared in Dumbledore’s office.

The expectant faces of Harry, Severus and Dumbeldore met Draco when he arrived back in Dumbledore’s office. He shrugged and frowned. As he handed the pieces of parchment to Severus to read over, he started to explain.
“ There has been a complication.”
Severus immediately started reading the notes and quickly recognized the handwriting. With a sigh he looked up at Draco and nodded.
“ Apparently.”
Harry looked confused and snatched the parchment from Severus hands; it didn’t take long for understanding to cross his face.
“You mean after all these years they are still alive?”
Draco looked confused at his apparely omniscience not working for him in this situation. The parchment was handed to him. After reading it he nodded seriously and flopped into the nearest chair.
“Ginny is the one who answered. It took me blowing up the door to get the wards down, but by the time I got through the second set of wards outside Hermione’s lab, she was already in the Floo."

Harry sat back, stunned. His mind was swimming with the overload of information they had all just received. For eight years they had believed that Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley had been betrayed and died at the hands of Death Eaters. It was shocking to find out that they were very much alive and had been hiding from those closest to them. Albus walked around his desk and faced the men who sat in front of him.
“So, any recommendations on how to proceed?” asked Draco. "It is obvious they didn’t want to be found, however we need the information that Hermione has obviously developed.”
A sigh came from Severus.
“We have no choice, we have to go after them. Whatever made them run is not more important than this cure.”
Albus nodded.
“Severus, you’ll need to go back with Draco to Brisbane. You need the cure as much as anyone else, and you have the knowledge to help her finish faster than she could alone.”
Severus nodded and rose from his chair. Draco rose from his chair as well, and followed Severus out of the office.
“And so it begins...”

A/N this is my first fic but my muse wouldn’t let it go please R/R I have made some editing and added a prologue that I hope helps. Thanks to my Beta Emily you are Great. Due to HBP this story is now AU