My muscles ached. I had no idea how long I had been crouching behind the tree. My knees begged to be moved. My neck was throbbing with the weight of holding up my head, and it took all I had not to flinch at the sound of leaves moving. This was the moment I had been waiting for all day. The rustling stopped and my already tense fingers tightened around my wand. Maybe this was it. The end of my mission. The end of camping and tracking and searching. I didn't want to think hunting. The new Ministry had not hired me to hunt. They hired me to search. Search for the man that could answer so many questions. The rustling stopped and brought me back to the issue at hand. With a leap I landed in front of my prey. Except it wasn't what I was expecting. The deer froze at the sudden movement and I took a moment to appreciate its beauty. I sighed and waved it off, and with graceful bound it was gone.

With the peace already disturbed, I stretched and my joints began popping. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was getting late. I had already been here a week longer than I anticipated. A month in the woods with no outside contact had begun to eat away at me. But I understood that owls in and out of the woods would be a dead giveaway that he was being tracked. If he didn't know it already. I circled the tree I had been hiding behind. The trail I had been tracking led me to a clearing just beyond the tree, but then it stopped suddenly. I had assumed the trail was wrong and he was somewhere around the clearing, it was a matter of waiting for him to think I had gone. So I hid and tried to wait him out. Clearly that strategy didn't work.

I pulled a piece of fabric out of the bag I had left by the tree. I pointed my wand at the fabric the Ministry had given me and whispered "Vestigium." A light red trail appeared on the ground leading to the right and left of where I was standing. I put the fabric back into my bag and followed the trail into the clearing once again. It was dimmer than this morning, meaning it had been more time since he had been here. I walked through the clearing to the other side, looking for a spot where the trail picked back up. I began going around the entire clearing looking for the trail, holding back panic.

He couldn't have apparated. He didn't have a wand and the Ministry had placed a spell on the whole woods to keep people from apparating in or out, so he couldn't have had help. There was no other reason his trail would have disappeared. I took a deep breath as I completed encircling the clearing. There was a solution. I just had to think of it. Soon.

Author's Note: Found the idea for this story in an old notebook. Not sure where I was going with it before, and not entirely sure where I'm going with it now. It just feels awesome to write again. Feel free to make suggestions on the plot. I'm going to try to keep chapters short so I can churn them out at the rate I'd like to.
MissBookwormMalfoy