“I knew it,” Hagrid murmured. “There’s summat in here that shouldn’ be.”
They went after where the rustling sound had come from, with Hagrid in the lead and Tracey and Draco both gripping their wands at the ready, but they found nothing, despite searching in a widening circle with their ears straining for the faintest sound.
They walked on through the dense, dark trees. Draco kept looking over his shoulder, a feeling nagging at him that they were being watched.
They had just passed a bend in the path when Tracey yelled and pointed. In the distance, a shower of red sparks lit the air.
“You two wait here!” Hagrid shouted. “Stay where yeh are, I’ll come back for yeh!”
Before Draco could say a word, Hagrid spun and crashed away through the undergrowth.
Draco and Tracey stood looking at each other, until they heard nothing but the rustling of leaves around them. Tracey looked scared, but trying to hide it. Draco was feeling more annoyed than anything else. Apparently Rubeus Hagrid, when he had formed his plans for tonight, had not spent even five seconds visualizing the consequences if something actually went wrong.
“Now what?” said Tracey, her voice a little high.
“We wait for Mr. Hagrid to come back.”
The minutes dragged by. Draco’s ears seemed sharper than usual, picking up every sigh of the wind, every cracking twig. Tracey kept looking up at the moon, as though to reassure herself that it wasn’t full yet.
“I’m—” Tracey whispered. “I’m getting a little nervous, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco thought about it a bit. To be honest, there was something… well, it wasn’t that he was a coward, or even that he was scared. But there had been a murder at Hogwarts and if he’d been watching himself in a play, having just been abandoned in the Forbidden Forest by a half-giant, he would currently feel like yelling at the boy on stage that he should… Draco reached into his robes, and took out a mirror. Tapping the surface showed a man in red robes, who frowned almost immediately.
“Auror Captain Eneasz Brodski,” the man said clearly, causing Tracey to start with the loudness in the quiet forest. “What is it, Draco Malfoy?”
“Put me on ten-minute check-in,” Draco said. He’d decided not to complain directly about his detention. He did not want to look like a spoiled brat. “If I don’t respond, come get me. I’m in the Forbidden Forest.”
Inside the mirror, the Auror’s brows rose. “What are you doing in the
Forbidden Forest, Mr. Malfoy?”
“Looking for the unicorn-eater with Mr. Hagrid,” Draco said, and tapped the mirror off, putting it back in his robes before the Auror could ask anything about detentions or say anything about serving it out without complaining.
Tracey’s head turned toward him, though it was a little too dim to read her expression. “Um, thanks,” she whispered.
The few leaves which had emerged on their branches rustled as another, colder breeze blew through the forest.
Tracey’s voice was a little louder when she spoke again. “You didn’t have to—” she said, now sounding a little shy.
“Don’t mention it, Miss Davis.”
The dark silhouette of Tracey put her hand to her cheek, as though to conceal a blush that wasn’t visible anyway. “I mean, not for me—”
“No, really,” Draco said. “Don’t mention it. At all.” He would have threatened to take out the mirror and order Captain Brodski not to rescue her, but he was afraid she would consider that flirting.
Tracey’s silhouetted head turned from him, looked away. Finally she said, in a smaller voice, “It’s too soon, isn’t it—”
A high scream echoed through the woods, a not-quite-human sound, the scream of something like a horse; and Tracey shrieked and ran.
“No, you numbskull!” yelled Draco, plunging after her. The sound had been so eerie that Draco wasn’t certain where it came from—but he thought that Tracey Davis might, in fact, be running straight toward the source of that eerie scream.
Brambles whipped at Draco’s eyes, he had to keep one hand in front of his face to shield them, trying not to lose track of Tracey because it seemed obvious that, if this was a play, and they got separated, one of them was going to die. Draco thought of the mirror secured within his robes but he somehow knew that if he tried to take it out one-handed while running, the mirror would inevitably fall and be lost—
Ahead of them, Tracey had stopped, and Draco felt relieved for an instant, before he saw.
Another unicorn lay on the ground, surrounded by a slowly widening pool of silver blood, the edge of the blood creeping across the ground like spilled mercury. Her coat was purple, like the color of the night sky, her horn exactly the same twilight color as her skin, her visible flank marked by a pink star-blotch surrounded by white patches. The sight tore at Draco’s heart, even more than the other unicorn because this one’s eyes were staring glassily right at him, and because there was a—
—blurring, twisting form—
—feeding on an open wound on the unicorn’s side, like it was drinking from it—
—Draco couldn’t understand, somehow couldn’t recognize what he was seeing—
—it was looking at them.
The blurring, seething, unrecognizable darkness seemed to turn to regard them. A hiss came from it, like the hiss of the deadliest snake which ever had existed, something more dangerous by far than any Blue Krait.
Then it bent back over the wound in the unicorn, and continued to drink.
The mirror was in Draco’s hand, and it remained lifeless as his finger mechanically tapped at the surface, over and over.
Tracey was holding her wand now, saying things like “Prismatis” and “Stupefy” but nothing was happening.
Then the seething outline rose up, like a man rising to his feet only not so; and it seemed to scuttle forward, moving with a strange half-jump across the dying unicorn’s legs, approaching the two of them.
Tracey tugged at his sleeve and then turned to run, run from something that could hunt down unicorns. Before she could take three steps there came another terrible hiss, burning his ears, and Tracey fell to the ground and did not move.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Draco knew that he was about to die. Even if the Auror checked his mirror this very instant, there was no way anyone could get here fast enough. There was no time.
Running hadn’t worked.
Magic hadn’t worked.
The seething outline came closer, while Draco tried, in his last moments, to solve the riddle.
Then a blazing silver ball of light plunged out of the night sky and hung there, illuminating the forest as bright as daylight, and the seething outline leapt backwards, as though in horror of the light.
Four broomsticks plunged out of the sky, three Aurors with bright multicolored shields and Harry Potter holding his wand aloft, seated behind Professor McGonagall within a larger shield.
“Get out of here!” roared Professor McGonagall—
—an instant before the seething thing gave forth another terrible hiss, and all the shielding spells winked out. The three Aurors and Professor McGonagall fell off their broomsticks and dropped heavily to the forest floor, lying motionless.
Draco couldn’t breathe, the most intense fear he’d ever felt in his life gripping all through his chest, sending tendrils around his heart.
Harry Potter, who had remained untouched, silently guided his broomstick toward the ground—
—and then leapt off to stand between Draco and the seething outline, interposing himself like a living shield.