Rating:
PG
House:
Schnoogle
Characters:
Draco Malfoy Ginny Weasley Harry Potter Hermione Granger Ron Weasley
Genres:
Action Romance
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire
Stats:
Published: 07/19/2002
Updated: 10/20/2002
Words: 46,936
Chapters: 10
Hits: 26,478

Prince of Unicorns

Cinnamon

Story Summary:
Nothing lasts longer than a Malfoy's thirst for revenge. Nothing, that is, except for the memory of a Garden Gnome, and Ginny is about to become tangled in both as she searches for her own adventure in the Forbidden Forest.

Chapter 04

Chapter Summary:
Nothing lasts longer than a Malfoy's thirst for revenge. Nothing, that is, except for the memory of a Garden Gnome, and Ginny is about to become tangled in both as she searches for her own adventure in the Forbidden Forest.
Posted:
09/08/2002
Hits:
2,097

Prince of Unicorns
By Cinnamon
Chapter Four

The purple winged tiger looked up at Hermione with wistful eyes, scratching at the floor and sighing before resting her heavy head in Hermione’s lap. Hermione scratched her ears absently, watching as Harry paced the hut again and glanced out the window towards the forest. It was still snowing heavily and there was no sign of Hagrid.

“The sun’s setting,” Harry said, clearly worried. “What would Hagrid be doing in the forest in the dark?”

“Should we go after him?” Ron asked, joining Harry at the windows.

“I can’t believe he’d just leave Sasha here with broken wings and obviously in pain.” Hermione stroked the tiger gently.

“Sasha?” Ron glanced over and rolled his eyes.

“I named her Sasha,” Hermione replied defensively. “I think we should bind her wings like we learned in Care of Magical Creatures.”

“If Hagrid couldn’t do it, we certainly can’t.” Ron tried not to look nervous at the idea. Large purple cats, for some reason he couldn’t define, made him unaccountably nervous.

“She was terrified before, she’s calm now. She likes me. And she’s in pain.”

“Did you try healing her with magic?” Harry asked, leaving the window to kneel beside Hermione and the cat.

“Of course I did,” Hermione snapped. “She has some sort of an anti-magic shield. It was almost like it sucked the magic out of my wand. It had no effect. I wonder what sort of creature she is.”

There were bandages laying scattered across the floor from Hagrid’s failed attempt to bind Sasha’s wings before he had left and Hermione gathered them into a pile. “I can keep her steady if you want to set the bones and wrap them,” she said coaxingly to Harry.

He sighed. “I suppose I can try, but if she bites off my hand—”

“She won’t, I promise,” Hermione swore with a bright smile. She handed him the bandages and started stroking Sasha’s head again, cooing soothingly to her. Harry started gently moving the bones back into place, wincing every time the cat flinched. Hermione kept her soft words up and the cat didn’t make a sound, though it must have been painful.

There was a large, dusty book under a pile of parchment that had been scribbled on and tossed aside in Hagrid’s sloppy writing. Ron slumped dejectedly at the table and, out of curiosity, began exhuming the large book. “We should go after Hagrid,” he said over his shoulders as he pushed the papers off the book.

“We’ll be in enough trouble if we’re caught out of bed after dark,” Harry said calmly, not wanting to startle the tiger. “We don’t want to add being in the forest to the list of rules we’ve broken.”

Ron dusted the dirty cover of the book off with his hand, reading the title on the worn leather cover out loud. “When Muggle And Magic Mate: Mixed-Breeds In The Animal Kingdom. I guess Hagrid was trying to find out what sort of creature that thing is.”

Hermione glanced over, her eyes lighting up. “Did he find anything?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t here when he looked,” Ron said, growing steadily more irritated. This whole situation just didn’t feel right to him. He flipped the book open to a random page and the picture there nearly made his eyes pop right out of his head. The picture, as all wizard pictures do, was moving. The caption below the picture proclaimed the creature to be a gnomingo, which turned out to be a creature that seemed to be half garden gnome and half pink flamingo. It stood awkwardly on two tall, skinny legs, it’s round body covered in bright pink feathers and its pointy face was right pink. It was blushing indignantly and when Ron realized why, he snapped the book shut with a muffled, “Sorry.” The creature had been in the midst of getting dressed.

“Well?” Hermione asked, as Harry carefully wrapped bandages around the creature’s delicate wings. “Did you find out what she is?”

“I’ll try the index,” Ron said, still feeling awkward over having seen the naked gnomingo.

He flipped to the back of the book and, instead of an index, the words “Describe creature:” appeared instead. It appeared to be waiting for him to speak.

He cleared his throat and said clearly, “Cat; large; female; purple; wings.”

There was a gentle whirring sound and Ron waited for a short while before the book replied. “One similar case on file: page 124.

Ron flipped to page 124, glancing at the picture. A cat very much like the one Harry was just finishing bandaging lay sprawled beneath an exotic looking tree, its tail twitching arrogantly, its ginger-coloured eyes watching Ron patiently.

“Here’s another one,” he cried, scanning the information written under the picture. “They’ve only ever seen one of these things before and haven’t even given them a species or anything. Only one other animal is on file looking anything like this, and it says that it is believed to be the result of a mating between a tiger and a violet snapping dragon. I’ve heard of those, they’re found mostly in the arctic, which is why they’re covered in purple feathers, to keep warm. They’re all purple, except their wings, which are white. Very rare. No one’s even seen one in years. Why would a very rare dragon mate with a tiger?”

“Well, you said it yourself, they’re very rare. Maybe it was lonely.” Hermione shrugged. “Is there a picture?”

“Yeah. It says it’s a male, but it looks just like this one.” Ron held up the book and Harry took it from him to read it over, having finished with the wings.

“But I wonder what she was doing in our Quidditch pitch,” Harry wondered out loud. No one got the change to reply, because at that moment, the door flew open and Hagrid stumbled in, looking frozen and worried.

“Hagrid,” Hermione cried, jumping to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Fang, that’s what,” Hagrid cried. “He’s gone and run off, right into the forest! I tried to go after ‘im but I lost ‘im. I’ve just been searchin’, but it started to snow and I lost ‘is tracks.”

“Why would Fang run into the forest, Hagrid?” Harry asked.

“Maybe he just don’t like livin’ ‘ere anymore,” Hagrid sighed. He was furiously blinking away tears.

“I’m sure he’ll come back, Hagrid,” Hermione said, patting Hagrid’s hand.

“No one would want to stay outside in that blizzard,” Ron added, gazing out the window.

Sasha let out a mournful cry and started scratching at the floor again.

***

“You make such a pretty princess, Weasley.”

Ginny sucked in a painful breath through her teeth, letting it out slowly before she said, “Malfoy, you don’t understand.”

“You called me Draco enough times while plotting my death a few minutes ago, what’s so different now?”

She stiffened, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “There were two Malfoys around, I didn’t want to get confused. And besides, the only time you’ve ever called me by my first name was when I was being tongue-bound to a madman.”

“You weren’t being tongue-bound, you were kissing him, Weasley, I’m smart enough to know the difference,” Draco replied coldly, and Ginny felt a flash of hurt. “If I’m to be murdered later tonight, I would have appreciated it if being forced to watch a Weasley snogging was not one of the last things I had to witness. That the guy she was snogging happens to look very much like me only made it that much more disturbing.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered again.

“Oh, I think I do. You don’t think us Malfoys wouldn’t act the same? Life or death, Weasley, I’d choose the same as you. Life. Anyone would. It’s not like I blame you.” His tone clearly implied that he did.

Ginny heard a nose in the corridor and she stiffened but it didn’t come again and she relaxed, shooting a dirty look at Draco. “You honestly think I’d murder you?”

He snorted. “When it’s murder me or die yourself, yeah, I honestly think you’d murder me. Besides, you get to live forever in the bargain. And be a princess.”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “If I wanted that, why would I have come back for you?”

“To gloat?” he suggested coldly.

“You seem to have mixed up what I would do with what you would do in my situation, Malfoy,” she said calmly unlocking his shackles with her wand. “I didn’t come here to gloat.”

He rolled his eyes, even as he began rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. “If you didn’t intend to gloat, why did you make him stay where I could hear him tell you his plan?”

Ginny grew irritated. “So you could hear it all and I wouldn’t have to waste time retelling the story and instead I can plot with you about how we were going to escape, that’s why.”

Draco was still scowling. “This whole thing is mad,” he said.

“Think of the solution, not the problem,” Ginny scolded. “Thinking about how impossible this is won’t help, and Copper will be back at any moment.”

Draco studied a moment, scowling when he realized she really did look like a princess in the strange dress with her red hair all freshly combed. It didn’t fit his image of the somewhat clumsy youngest Weasley who had sent that ridiculous valentine to Potter in her first year and had turned him into a turtle that one time. “We could sneak away,” he suggested.

“We can’t do that, he’ll come after us. Didn’t you hear him? Running won’t stop him from coming after you again.”

Draco shrugged easily. “Let him kill me. I know you don’t particularly care if he destroys my family; you’ve got to hate us. So what do you care?”

Ginny, her violent temper starting to boil, growled, “I’m not just going to let him, Draco, so stop even thinking that I will. Whether or not I like you and your family has nothing to do with it! He’s a mad man. It’s wrong. Murder is wrong. So stop trying to make me leave you and start trying to come up with a solution before he returns!”

“What do you suggest?” Draco said, rolling his eyes. “I haven’t got a wand and even if I did, you’ve seen how powerful he is. We can’t kill him.”

“We’ll have to trick him. You know some Dark Arts stuff, don’t you? You can teach me something that will help, can’t you?”

Draco looked startled. “I can’t just go off teaching you dark magic, Weasley.”

“Well, why not?”

“It’s very difficult, you can’t just mumble the words and hope it works.” He looked uncomfortable at the idea, so Ginny didn’t press it.

“Well, we’ve got to somehow make it seem as though you’ve been killed, so that Copper trusts me and I can get back to Hogwarts and tell Harry about his plan to—” her tongue suddenly felt like it was trying to speak through a mouthful of sticky sweets and she made a soft choking sound.

“Are you alright?” Draco asked, hurrying to her side. He studied her face worriedly for a moment; she was opening and closing her mouth and gasping, trying to speak but the words wouldn’t come.

Finally, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, they were flashing with irritation. “I suppose it’s a damned good thing I made him stay here to tell me the plan, Draco, because I just tried to mention it in passing to you and my tongue went all sticky.” She didn’t notice that she’d slipped into using his first name again and neither did he. “Time’s running out, Draco, what are we going to do?”

“We obviously can’t handle this alone, we need help. We’ll have to make it look like I’ve died so that he’ll take you back to Hogwarts with him, then you can get help. He’ll catch us if we run away and I don’t think we can kill him.”

Ginny thought for a moment before she smiled brightly. “Fred taught me a spell that makes a sort of copy of someone, so that he could be in two places at once. It came in handy any time he wanted to slip out of the house and go somewhere when Mum had grounded him. It’s a picture of the person that can move a little bit, but not much. Fred always used it to copy himself looking like he was asleep. He’d leave the copy in his bed and sneak out, no one ever suspected until one night I tried to wake him up and my hands passed right through his copy. It’s not real, it only looks that way.”

Draco was shaking his head before she’d finished. “It won’t work, how will you kill something that isn’t real? Your hand would pass through it. Besides, it would have to look like it was dying, so when we copied me, I’d have to look like I was walking for a ways, as Copper brought me to wherever the sacrifice will happen, and then dying. We don’t know the timing.”

“I suppose. We’ll just have to do a Romeo and Juliet thing then,” she said thoughtfully.

“A what thing?” he asked, frowning.

“Oh,” she said, flipping a hand in dismissal. “It’s a Muggle thing, Hermione lent me the book. In it, Romeo is banished and Juliet wants to be with him but doesn’t want her father to know, so she takes a potion that makes her seem dead but the plan is for Romeo to steal her out of her burial vault. She’ll wake up a few days later.” She trailed off, becoming lost in thought, trying to think of anything that could possibly work that way.

“Did it work?”

She blinked at Draco. “Did what work?”

“The plan. Did Romeo and Juliet get to be together in the end?”

“Oh. No. He thought she had really died and bought a potion from a wizard and drank it in her burial chamber. She woke up and found him dead and stabbed herself with a dagger. It was terribly romantic, in a tragic way.”

He smirked a little. “Let’s hope our plan works better than that one did.”

“We don’t even have a plan now,” Ginny reminded him.

“Well, I’m betting he’ll want you to stab me. Typical sacrifice procedure. You could use Fred’s spell to quickly copy the knife and stab me with the copy. I could make a brilliant show of screaming and flopping about.”

Ginny grimaced. “There wouldn’t be any blood.” She thought for a moment. “But he did say himself that he doesn’t understand wand magic. I mean, the monks taught him another way to command magic without it, so he won’t understand how our type of magic works. He does seem to be rather lenient with me, I could just tell him I’d want to kill you with my wand. If I have to kill you, it’s only decent that I do it the way I choose to.”

“Death by knife or wand, Weasley, it’s still death.”

“I know that, but I’m saying he wouldn’t know if I really killed you with magic or not. I could do a tickling spell or something, make it look magical and deadly, and you could lay really still and he’ll think you were dead.”

Draco laughed a little, rolling his eyes. “A tickling spell?”

“He wouldn’t know the difference,” Ginny said defensively.

“I’m sure dead men don’t roll around and giggle, Weasley, which is the result of most tickling spells.” He paused for a moment, tilting his head a little and watching her face thoughtfully. “There is a spell I may be able to teach you,” he said finally. “I read about it in one of my father’s old books in the library at home about the old witch trials. Some Malfoys were caught, of course, and one of them left a diary. She claimed to have been burned at the stake six times. The trick, she claimed, was a spell that made it seem as if the body died, though it was really the body processes just slowed to such an incredible degree that the heartbeat and breathing weren’t noticeable. Any damage done to the body, anything less than beheading and stabbing through the heart anyway, isn’t deadly. The body rhythms are slowed so much that it doesn’t matter what you do to the body. That’s how she could be burned. Her body would show the scorch marks. The people would leave her, and then she would heal. A few days after the burning she would awaken from the trance, move somewhere new, and go about her life.”

He shrugged. “I thought it would be a handy spell to learn and practiced on the house elves. I’m sure I could teach you how to do it on me without killing me.” He smiled lazily. “Reasonably sure, anyway.”

Worried that Copper would be returning at any moment, Ginny asked, “Is it hard?”

“It’s like a weakening spell. Pretty simple, swish the wand and say the words, make sure your thoughts are full of death images. Graves, skeletons, whatever works. It takes a few moments to work, I slowly lose consciousness and then you can stab me. Try not to slash my throat, I’m not sure I’d survive that. A nice stab to the belly would be good, I shouldn’t need that while I’m out.” He grinned, an attempt to calm the nervousness he could probably see on her face, but he failed. “I wake up two days from then, just like your Juliet, only hopefully not to find you poisoned with a convenient dagger for me to stab myself with laying around.”

Two days?” she cried. “Then you won’t be able to escape and come back to Hogwarts to tell everyone what Copper’s trying to do!”

“I suppose you’ll have to keep him busy for those two days,” Draco told her. “You can’t tell anyone what’s going on, so expecting you to run to Dumbledore isn’t reasonable. I’ll wake up, escape, make it back, tell Dumbledore, the madman’ll be arrested—”

Ginny couldn’t help it; she giggled. “Why do you keep calling him the madman? His name is Copper.”

“We don’t say that name in my family,” he said stiffly, but his eyes were sparkling. “But we haven’t got much time. Before he makes you kill me, you’ve got to convince him to let you do the spell. Tell him it’s to numb the pain or a wizard’s death prayer, anything. He doesn’t know our customs, he’ll probably believe you. Besides, he seems to already understand that you’re softhearted, so it’ll be all right. After I lose consciousness, stab me in the stomach. Then you’ll have the blood evidence and he’ll drag you off to become a princess. Afterwards, you’ve got to convince him to leave my body. Don’t let him bury me or burn me. Leave me here and get him out. I’ll come to Hogwarts as soon as I can to deal with him.”

“It doesn’t seem like a very sound plan,” she said doubtfully. “What if he doesn’t let me do the spell? What if he insists on watching your body burn?”

He wrinkled his nose. “If he wants to watch, it’ll be gross and uncomfortable, my body will char up enough to convince him, but I’ll heal. And you’ve got to get him to let you do the spell.”

She could hear footsteps coming down the hall and, panicking, motioned him back to the shackles, locking them up tight. “What are the words?” she hissed.

“Mortifer Appareo,” he replied, and with a worried glance over her shoulder, Ginny dashed back out of the door, locking it behind her, and running back into the room across the hall, just as Copper turned the corner and walked into sight.

Ginny ran to the mirror to check her appearance, hurriedly smoothing her dress and fixing her hair. When Copper threw the door open, she was staring at her reflecting in shock. Draco had been right.

She did make a pretty princess.