Prince of Unicorns

Chapter One

It was nearly midnight, and despite all the dragons she had tried counting in her head, Ginny Weasley couldn't sleep. She lay in her four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower, staring at the dancing shadows on the ceiling, and sleep still failed to come. It wasn't that she had too much on her mind; she didn't have enough to think about. Listless and bored out of her mind, Ginny was longing desperately, with all of her heart, for some sort of adventure. She knew it was pathetic. To think that a girl like her would rather sleep and have adventures in her dreams than suffer through whatever boring 'adventures' she was likely to find in class on Monday. Grand adventures weren't her thing, not counting, of course, that little incident with the basilisk in her first year. No, adventures of any sort were more likely to be had by her older brother Ron and his best friends Hermione Granger and Harry Potter. Not to be had by boring, little Ginny Weasley, the youngest child and only daughter of a large family. It was daring jobs for Bill and Charlie, brilliant marks for Percy, tricks and fun for George and Fred, and adventures for Ron. But for Ginny, it was…nothing. No dragons, no prefect badge, no funny gags, no saving the world. Nothing but boring classes and knitted jumpers from her mother at Christmas to look forward to.

Wrinkling her nose in distaste and flopping over onto her side with an annoyed grunt, Ginny pursed her lips and stared out the window. She was horrified to find her eyes welling up with tears and she closed them firmly, refusing to let herself cry. Boredom, after all, was hardly worth crying over.

The others who shared the room with her were already fast asleep, their soft breathing the only sound to be heard, and Ginny shot them all scathing, envious looks, before hopping out of bed and moving silently over to the window. She touched the cold pane with her fingertips and looked outside at the grounds. Everything was still and quiet.

She was just about to return to bed when movement caught her eye. Squinting, she tried to figure out what it was. It seemed like thousands of tiny shadows had begun flickering across the snowy grounds leading to the Forbidden Forest. The shadows were all different shapes and sizes, moving at various speeds, and it looked like a stampede.

But why in the world would creatures stampede into the Forbidden Forest? From what she had heard of it, it seemed the type of place for animals to stampede away from.

Still pondering the mystery long after the shadows had disappeared, she returned to her bed, curling up under the covers and closing her eyes. Hours later, sleep finally came, but it was restless, plagued by dreams of stampeding creatures and the Forbidden Forest.

Armed with a rather grudging intention to inform Harry of the strange events of the previous night (he was, after all, Resident Hero), Ginny left the dormitories in no better mood than she had been in before her uneasy sleep. It was Saturday and she didn't have class. Deciding to spend the day studying, Ginny made her way down to the Great Hall.

She glanced around as she entered, looking for Ron or Harry, but the Hall was nearly deserted. Only a few older Hufflepuffs and a couple of younger Ravenclaws were there.

Just as she went to sit at the Gryffindor table, the Ravenclaws, after a whispered discussion, rose to leave the hall. "What's happening?" Ginny called, recognizing one of them as Felicia Travers, who she had taken flying lessons with in her first year. "Where did everybody go?"

Felicia's brown eyes were sparkling with excitement. "I only just heard now," she said. "A few fourth year Slytherins found an ill creature on the Quidditch pitch. No one knows what the creature is; they're saying it's a mutant or something. The whole school has gone to have a look. Hagrid doesn't even know what the poor thing is. We're going to look now, you can come with us if you want."

Wrinkling her nose in distaste at the prospect of watching a poor mutant creature die on the Quidditch pitch, Ginny said, "I think I'll just have breakfast and then go to the library."

"Suit yourself then," Felicia said with a cheery shrug. "I hear the thing is terribly ugly! I bet it's dreadful to look at anyway." She shivered but her eyes were glowing with excitement. They hurried away and Ginny rolled her eyes.

A few minutes later, however, her appetite practically nonexistent and her curiosity sparked more than she would like to admit, Ginny left the castle to make her way to the pitch, telling herself the only reason she was going that way was to find Harry and tell him about the weird thing she had seen the night before.

It did appear as if the entire student body had made its way through the snow to the Quidditch pitch, Ginny thought as she made her way through the snow. Thousands of footprints marched straight ahead of her towards the pitch.

Hugging her cloak tighter around herself, Ginny ducked her head against the frigid air and quickened her pace, her eyes on the footprints in the snow.

She stumbled to a surprised halt before even realizing what, exactly, had struck her as odd. Biting her lip, she inspected the ground carefully before she saw it. Another mass collection of footprints intersected the one heading for the pitch. This path was made up of thousands of different types of footprints as well: tiny ones that looked like kitten paws and large ones that she couldn't even identify. Ginny followed the trail curiously with her eyes. The tracks led straight into the Forbidden Forest.

An idea beginning to form in her mind, Ginny glanced back at the castle, her thoughts confirmed when she saw Gryffindor tower and the window she had looked out the night before, both facing this way. This was the trail the shadows had left behind. But what sort of shadows could leave tracks?

Biting her lip and shooting a quick glance around the grounds, she made sure no one was watching before turning to follow the trail, right into the Forbidden Forest. It was, after all, her mystery, not Harry's. And besides, Harry had gone into the forest dozens of times and he was still alive, so really, how dangerous could it be?

Despite her confident thoughts, Ginny's hand was trembling as she gripped her wand and pulled it out of her robes.

The forest was quiet, the crunching snow beneath her feet the only sound other than the wind, whistling softly through the trees. The prints continued in a straight line, directly towards the center of the forest. Ginny glanced around nervously as she continued into the dark trees.

She had walked for what seemed forever before a voice suddenly rang out, making her scream a little.

"State your purpose!"

Glancing around for the source of the rough, creaky voice, Ginny suddenly wished she had informed Harry of the mystery after all. Surely he wouldn't have screamed at the voice or gone so horribly pale or felt like he was going to faint from fear. "Who's there?" she asked, cringing. Her voice was high and squeaky.

"State your purpose," came the voice again. This time, Ginny saw the mouth from which the voice came. Ahead of her was a huge, ancient tree, whose trunk was twisted and withered, the knots there forming what seemed to almost be a human face. The tree was speaking to her.

"Purpose?" she asked. "I was following the tracks."

The bark lips scrunched in thought. "Following the tracks, hmm? What sort of motivation is that?"

Ginny frowned. "Curiosity, I suppose, sir," she replied.

The branches lowered in a nod. "Yes, curiosity indeed. Who are you?"

"Ginny. Ginny Weasley."

"A Weasley!" The tree's voice squealed in delight. "My, my, you don't say! A Weasley!"

"Y-yes."

"I've heard all about you! A few years ago a creature, the like I've never seen before, came to the forest and talked of nothing else but the Weasleys!"

"A creature? What sort of creature?"

"It smelled of foul liquid pulled from the earth and its eyes glowed brighter than the stars. It was ill when it arrived, limping around on four oddly rounded legs. Talked of a family of Weasleys who had created it." The tree shook, and Ginny had the odd impression that it was chuckling. "Told the most amusing stories as well. About these two Weasleys who looked exactly alike and used to try to lock each other in the boot-"

"Fred and George!" Ginny cried. "How many years ago did the creature come to the forest?"

"Years? Well, about five leaf-falls ago. A most amusing fellow."

"Five leaf-falls? Oh, you must mean autumns! Five years! I'm in sixth year now, so five years ago was my first year. It must have been the car! You've spoken to our car? Ron and Harry missed the train and stole Dad's car-"

"Harry?" interrupted the tree. "Harry…Potter?"

Ginny wrinkled her nose at the tree. "Yes. I suppose he's a friend of mine. Of sorts. A friend of my brother's, really. I used to fancy him, sure, but now I prefer--"

"A friend of Harry Potter's! Well this is just marvelous! You may pass then, Little Weasley! You may pass! Any friend of Harry's is a friend of the Prince, I'd wager!"

Ginny opened her mouth to ask any one of a million questions, but the tree went still, the features of its face melting back into regular bark and knots and no matter how she asked her questions, the tree did not reply.

Tucking her robes tighter around herself, Ginny skirted around the tree and continued following the path, feeling oddly comforted since talking to the tree. At least not all creatures of the forest were bad.

***

"What do you reckon it is, Harry?" Ron whispered, nudging Harry with his elbow.

They, along with most of the school, had gathered on the Quidditch pitch around Hagrid, who was on his knees before the creature that lay nearly still in the snow.

"I've never seen anything like it," Harry replied. Hermione, beside them, was silent.

Harry was studying the creature carefully, because he seemed to recall having heard of such a beast before but could not place where it might have been. The creature was a large, catlike monster with a huge head, a snout that sloped back into delicate ears, thick fur covering its entire body, from its head to its four paws to its tapered tail, and colored in odd purple and white stripes. Two white feather wings lay at odd angles sprouting from the cat's shoulder blades.

"Poor thing," Hagrid was mumbling, stroking the cat's side. The creature's breath was labored and it had hardly moved in all the time since they'd been there. Hagrid couldn't find any wounds.

The students all around were whispering and staring at the strange creature. Harry scanned the crowd, noticing two things. Nearly everyone was there. Everyone, that is, except Draco Malfoy and Ginny. Even Crabbe and Goyle were there, though without Malfoy, they looked lost and out of place.

Harry had just turned to Ron to ask him where his little sister was when Hermione dropped to her knees in the snow beside Hagrid. She touched the head of the creature, stroking it gently. There were gasps of shock and fear when the creature's huge, glassy eyes opened. They were the color of warm champagne and glazed over with pain.

Hermione glanced up at Hagrid. "It's rather like a Muggle tiger, isn't it, Hagrid?" she asked solemnly. "A Muggle creature, except something has happened to it, they aren't supposed to be this color, and the wings…. Do you suppose it's a mutant?"

"A Muggle tiger?" Hagrid asked. "D'you s'pose they're dangerous?"

"Not this one, she can hardly stand," Hermione told him. "But they're dangerous in the Muggle world. What's happened to this one?"

Hagrid never got the chance to reply because Dumbledore arrived suddenly, looking grave. "Students return to the hall for breakfast. This matter will be taken care of without your watchful assistance. Harry, Ron, that includes you. Hurry now. Hagrid and I will deal with the creature."

Reluctantly, the students all began filtering back into the castle. Ron, Harry, and Hermione were the last to go, watching over their shoulders as Hagrid easily picked the huge cat up after a short discussion with Dumbledore.

"How did a Muggle creature get to Hogwarts?" Ron asked as they trudged back to the castle.

"More importantly," Hermione added, "What happened to make it look the way it does?"

"Ron," Harry said, his mind on things other than the strange tiger. "Where do you suppose your sister is?"

"Ginny?" Ron asked, startled. "I guess she's ahead with everyone else."

"She didn't come to the Quidditch pitch this morning. Neither did Malfoy. Don't you think it's weird for Malfoy to skip out on something this huge?"

"Maybe he's off tormenting someone else for a change," Hermione suggested dryly, wrinkling her nose. Draco Malfoy was hardly her favourite person to discuss.

"That's just it," Harry replied. "What if that other person he's decided to torment is Ginny? You know how she gets when Malfoy bullies her."

"Harry!" Ron scolded. "Just because Ginny lost control of her magic once doesn't mean she can't control it at all when she gets angry!"

"Besides," Hermione giggled. "I'll forever remember the horror on Malfoy's face when he suddenly realized she had accidentally transfigured him into a turtle."

"Hermione, he was a turtle. He didn't have an expression on his slimy face." Ron crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.

"But just picture what it must have looked like!" Hermione cried. "It was absolutely brilliant."

"I'm all for reliving Malfoy's humiliation, but I think we need to focus here. Ginny and Malfoy are both unaccounted for. If only we still had the Marauder's Map!" Harry's eyes gleamed as he considered the chance of getting it back.

Hermione, still worried about the purple tiger, said absently, "Ginny probably overslept and Malfoy's probably off pulling the wings off flies or something."

"Maybe. But I can't help feeling as though something isn't right."

"That's just because this is your first year in Hogwarts where you've made it to snowfall and still nothing mysterious has happened!" Ron said brightly. "I bet this is a record."

Harry shot him a dirty look and quickened his pace, hurrying back to the tower to look for Ginny. Any adventure, after all, was a welcome change from homework.

***

Ginny was starting to wish, more than anything, that she was back at Gryffindor Tower, in the common room, playing wizard's chess, and bemoaning her adventureless life. Adventures weren't all they were cracked up to be.

Somewhere in the forest, something screamed and she clapped a trembling hand over her mouth. "That's it," she muttered, turning around. "I'll leave the adventures to Harry, that's for sure. It's back to Hogwarts for me. I'll just follow the footprints backwards and-" She paused, glancing down. It was too dark to see the tracks now. The trees blocked out the sunlight.

Panicking now, Ginny spun in a madly in a circle, looking for any landmark that would point the way to Hogwarts. The trees all looked the same and she didn't know which way to go.

Crying out in fear, she started to run blindly, still clutching her wand. She had run for only a couple minutes before she forced herself to stop, remembering something Harry probably never would have forgotten. "Lumos," she whispered, and her wand started to glow. "That's it then, I'll just follow my tracks back to the animal tracks and then back to school."

She had turned around to do just that when she saw something moving silently through the trees. Squinting to get a better look and hoping against hope that it wasn't something hungry or cruel, she peered at it for a few seconds before gasping softly. Surrounded in a halo of blue light, a creature was carrying Malfoy in its mouth. The most horrifying part of all, however, was that the creature's feet weren't touching the ground. It was hovering a few feet above the snow and drifting, like a phantom.

Without even a single smug thought of out-doing Harry Potter's heroism, Ginny took off after the shadow, her still-glowing wand out. When she judged she was close enough, she called out, as loudly as she could, "Feural Anaglus!" White fire shot from her wand and flew forward, hitting a tree just in front of the creature and exploding in a wave of white sparks that drifted slowly to the ground. As she had hoped, the bright explosion startled the creature and it dropped Malfoy, disappearing with a warbling shriek into the trees.

The adrenaline that had kept her terror under control wore out quickly and Ginny began to tremble. She would have burst into tears except for the fear that Malfoy would see her. She swallowed the impulse to cry and approached him warily.

He lay where the creature had dropped him on his face in the snow. His silver-blonde hair was still perfectly slicked out of his face, not a bit out of place despite being carried through the Forbidden Forest in the mouth of a monster. Even his robes were perfectly clean and arranged around him, almost as if he had planned to fall that way. Ginny snorted, smoothing her own wild red hair out of her face and glancing down at her robes which were scratched and dirty from her trek through the forest.

"Stupid Malfoy," she muttered, glancing down at him. She had never hated anyone as much as she hated him. He made fun of her family, he made fun of her brother, he tormented Harry, and he called Hermione a Mudblood. Despite Ginny's own traitorous feelings of worthlessness compared to her heroic brother and his friends, Ginny did not take kindly to anyone else feeling as though they had the right to think anything negative about them. Especially Draco Malfoy.

She considered leaving him there in the snow. He deserved it, after all. Her conscience would not allow it, however. Worried that he was dead, Ginny poked him with her foot, nudging his shoulder a little. Malfoy rolled onto his back, his face paler than usual. He didn't open his eyes or speak or even move. Dropping to her knees beside him, Ginny called nervously, "Malfoy? Are you dead?" He moaned a little in reply and, startled, Ginny jumped to her feet. She clutched her wand in case she needed self-defense and waited for him to wake up. He rolled his neck a little, whimpering in pain, and then his eyes opened. Cold and gray, they stared up at the trees overhead for a few seconds, looking confused. Then they flicked over to Ginny.

"Weasley," he gasped, his voice sounding strange. "What have you done to me?"

"Done to you? I haven't done anything, unless you count saving your life from that creature who was carrying you off in its mouth, probably going to eat you!" She scoffed. "At least you could thank me, but no, not Malfoy, he doesn't thank anybody. That's it, I'm just going to leave you here, you ungrateful little prat, I-"

Malfoy looked pained. "Shut up, Weasley, you're giving me a worse headache than I had before you started talking." Ginny's eyes started snapping with fury.

"I have never known anyone as infuriating as-"

"And you're the best they can do? Lucius Malfoy's son goes missing, carried off by things, and you're the rescue squad? Wait until my father hears about this. The least they could have done was send Potter, though even he wouldn't have been much help-"

Malfoy had been struggling to get to his feet, and Ginny, her rage blocking out any common sense she might have possessed, kicked him, hard, in the knee. He fell back with a yelp and lay very still in the snow.

"Weasley?" he called warily a few moments later.

"What?" she replied angrily.

"I believe I require some assistance getting up."

"Are you asking me to help you up, Malfoy?"

He considered for a moment. "I don't think I have a choice, really. You seem to have crippled me."

Feeling guilty despite herself, Ginny grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. His face was chalky white now.

"Are you all right?" Ginny asked, frowning. "I didn't kick you that hard, and even if I did, you deserved it…" She trailed off because Malfoy's eyes had fluttered shut and it looked as though he were about to faint. She hurried forward to grab him around the waist, holding him upright. "What is it?" she asked, pulling his arm around her shoulders to keep him on his feet.

"Spell," he muttered weakly, leaning against her.

"Oh damn," she sighed. "Am I going to have to carry you back to Hogwarts?"

Despite his weakness, Malfoy smirked. "Leave me here. I can make it alone." But they both knew it was a lie, and Ginny wrinkled her nose and scowled.

"If only I learned how to conjure up a stretcher or even that spell to make you light so I could carry you," she mumbled. "This is going to take ages, and if any one finds me in the forest, I'll be expelled." Malfoy didn't bother to reply and together, they began the slow process of limping back to Hogwarts.

They had only made it half way when Malfoy collapsed, the weakening spell that had been put on him to help the creature carry him made it impossible to stay awake for very long. Panicking for a moment, Ginny finally pulled her cloak off and Malfoy's too, tying them together and rolling him on top, into a sort of sled. She pulled him the rest of the way out of the forest and it was nearly dark when they finally made it out. Ginny was starving and exhausted from pulling Malfoy, who hadn't regained consciousness since he'd collapsed, and her pace quickened as she made her way over the grounds towards the castle.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, having spent the day searching the castle for her, were just leaving through the front doors to search the grounds when Ginny made it back, freezing in the winter cold because she'd used her cloak to tug Malfoy.

"Ginny!" Ron cried, upon first seeing her. "Mum's gonna kill you if she finds out you went out without a cloak!"

Hermione was the first to notice Malfoy, collapsed on the cloaks behind Ginny. "Oh goodness, you didn't kill him, did you?"

"Of course I didn't kill him!" Ginny cried. "And I was wearing a cloak when I left! I used it to pull Malfoy with!"

"What did you do to him?" Harry asked, approaching Malfoy and nudging him with his foot.

"I… I…" She didn't want to tell them about her trip into the forest and she really had no idea what had happened to Malfoy that ended up with him there as well. "I just found him this way." Ron looked as though he didn't believe her but before he could ask anything else, the doors flew open and McGonagall appeared. "It's far too late to be wandering about," she said. "Off to your dormitories now, the lot of you."

"But Malfoy-" Hermione began.

"I see him, I will bring him to the hospital wing. Ginny, you had better come with me, you're frozen straight through."

Still looking curious, Ron, Hermione, and Harry reluctantly left to return to Gryffindor Tower and Ginny, wishing now more than ever that she had never gone on her ridiculous adventure in the first place, followed McGonagall and Malfoy, who was floating by on a conjured up stretcher.

Ginny was given a warming potion in the hospital wing and then sent off to Gryffindor Tower, after asking after Malfoy's health, which was prodded by her conscience and asked very grudgingly.

"He'll be fine," Pomfrey said. "A weakening curse I think. I did a counter curse and after some sleep and some food, he should be fine. You claim you found him like that?"

Ginny nodded slowly. She wasn't, after all, one to snitch on someone else for being carried away by a creature. And besides, informing anyone of exactly where she had found Malfoy would also be telling on herself for being in the Forbidden Forest in the first place.

Ron, Harry, and Hermione, as was to be expected, were waiting in the common room when Ginny arrived. It was Ron who started talking first as she stepped into the tower. "What have you done, Ginny? You aren't in trouble, are you? Did he expel you? Is Malfoy dead?"

Ginny tossed him a dirty look. "I didn't do anything, I'm not in trouble, I'm a hero, and I saved Malfoy's life. You three aren't the only Hogwarts heroes, after all, you know." She walked stiffly up the stairs towards the girls' dormitories, Harry's speculative eyes following her until she was out of sight.

"She's lying," Ron announced to his friends after she was gone.

"There is a difference between lying deliberately out of malicious intent and lying because you feel whomever asking the questions is doing so in a rude matter and doesn't actually deserve an answer," Hermione said chidingly.

"Say it in English, Hermione," Ron groaned.

"Lying or not," Harry decided. "Something is definitely up."

Upstairs, it was only as she changed into her pajamas that Ginny noticed her wand was missing. She must have dropped it somewhere in the forest. Her adventures weren't quite finished after all. She would, of course, have to go back for it.