Stag Night

Stag Night

~ VIII ~

Predator

“And mind the rats,” Sirius called after James’s disappearing back. “Wormtail might have some friends around here and it wouldn’t do to go stepping on any of them.”

“We don’t have to worry about James eating any rats along the way,” Remus said dryly as the light from James’s wand faded away as their friend turned a corner, and they were left in darkness.

“Christ, leave off about the rats, all right? It was only the one time and… dogs do that sort of thing, don’t they?” Sirius said, stopping so abruptly that Remus nearly collided with his back. “You’ve probably eaten worse things, even if you don’t remember.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Remus snapped back.  His headache had gotten worse since leaving Seven Shoe Alley, where the noise and glare had masked the blackness that had been nibbling at the edges of his consciousness all evening.

“You bloody well know what I--Ow! Watch the elbows, Remus! It’s pitch dark and I can’t bloody see a thing.”

“Werewolves see perfectly well in the dark.  Use your wand, if you want to see.”  Remus just wanted Sirius to stop talking, to leave him in peace so he could work out why his head hurt, why he felt so slow-witted, why he’d been chasing a shadow that danced just out of view in the murky limbo between memory and nightmare.

“Nothing worse than a werewolf with a bad attitude,” Sirius grumbled good-naturedly.  “Bloody James goes charging off to rescue Peter and I’m stuck you.” With an exaggerated shrug, he pulled out his own wand

“Lumos,” he cried loudly, although the close walls robbed the sound of an echo, making his voice seem thick and ineffectual.

The spell worked, however, and beam of light shot from the tip of his wand. The narrow passageway was suddenly alive with their shadows, alien black figures dancing on the walls that rose up on either side of them, the mortar haphazardly oozing out between the worn red bricks like icing on a badly-made cake. The charm didn’t usually produce bright light, but they had been in the darkness for long enough so that even dim light was startling, appearing as it did.

As his eyes adjusted, Sirius took in their surroundings; at his feet, the floor of the alley was strewn with the expected collection of odd bottles, scraps of paper and food wrappers, as well as a white tangle of fabric, some discarded item of clothing perhaps; a few stars twinkled weakly in a tiny patch of night sky visible in the narrow opening overhead.

“Do you think those are buildings up there or just walls meant to keep us from poking about?” he wondered as he squinted into the dim reaches above them. His attempt to engage Remus in conversation having failed, Sirius looked down again and sighed, “Never mind. Let’s catch up with the others. James might need rescuing next.”

Remus still wasn’t listening.

“Anything wrong? Not getting cold feet, are you?”

“No--nothing,” Remus mumbled. He was staring intently at the ground, his back against a wall.

“Come on, then,” Sirius snapped after studying his friend’s pale face for a moment, unconvinced by the denial. He turned and followed the path that James had taken a minute earlier.

Remus detached himself from the wall and began walking slowly. He didn’t try to keep up with Sirius and stumbled as the light failed.

A crumpled white heap lying on the ground--the sight of it was a white-hot poker in the gut that left him breathing hard, blindly hugging the wall as he drifted down the alley.

I’m sure I’ll be much safer on holiday than you are at work, he’d carelessly told Sirius only a fortnight ago, at the start of his holiday.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

On the final day of his holiday, he sat with the open journal balanced on his knees and chewed on bread and cheese, thinking about the past fortnight, about all the creatures he’d seen and about those he hadn’t seen. 

The days-old bread, courtesy of the Muggle farmer on the other side of Bodmin Moor, was practically inedible.  With a sigh, he realized that a sandwich had been a bad idea.  There had to be some animal that would be able to nibble or gnaw through the hard crust, he mused as he picked out the cheese and tossed the bread away. 

The cheese had been courtesy of a witch he’d met that morning.  Remus had rid her little farm of an annoying bunch of Pixies as well as reversed a hex on her cow that caused the beast to give green milk.  His reward had been a half round of green cheese and the hint that Keitynys Wood, which bordered on her little farm, might have at its heart a hidden place.

Long before wizards had figured out how to make areas Unplottable or hide the likes of Diagon Alley from prying eyes, there were places deep in forests or high atop mountains with a natural magic of their own, a magic that made such spots impenetrable to Muggles and difficult for magical folk to find.  And, these places often sheltered magical creatures not found elsewhere.  Legend said that ancient witches and wizards had devised the charms for Unplotting by studying the natural magic of these hidden places.  He was puzzled as to why his map hadn’t made particular mention of Keitynys Wood.  The mapmakers might have been ignorant or deliberately obscure.  He would trust the word of a local more than the Magical Tourist’s Guide to the West Country any day.

Remus had set off from the farm with the intention of following a small stream into the forest, knowing that running water had a magic of its own.  As he went deeper into the wood, he wondered with every step if he had crossed into the hidden place that wasn’t on the map.  When his stomach grumbled for lack of both breakfast and lunch, he stopped at a mossy spot next to the stream.

After finishing the cheese, which was quite good despite the color, Remus took out a quill and a bottle of ink, poised to begin writing, but his mind was blank.  Any funny stuff and I want to hear about it, right? He smiled to himself as he remembered Sirius fussing at him like a fearful grandmother. 

He hadn’t been in much real danger, hadn’t met any actual Dark wizards, for example, although he had conversed with a demon beneath the ruins of Redcliff Castle.  He had learned quite a bit about wards and defensive spells from studying the old magic that still clung to barrows and castles, and he’d seen plenty of magical creatures. 

Each day of the trip, he had faithfully recorded every sighting--every Gwyllion, or Red Cap, or Nokk--with sketches and notes on diet and the effectiveness of countermeasures.  The latter came from direct experience in getting himself out of some of those encounters.  None of his experiences had been particularly terrifying; yet most wizards wouldn’t want to fight off an assault by Red Caps or face down a Nuckelavee.  Of course, simply being prepared to meet Dark creatures helped.  It was common sense to have at hand a bottle of spring water that was usually effective against water demons and a steel knife, often useful for repelling the nastier sort of fairies.

Although he’d seen quite a few creatures on this trip, Remus couldn’t ignore the disappointment that he felt at missing out on the larger and more dangerous sort.  No dragons, for one.  Not so much as a tooth, or a bone, or a claw.  And then there was the tantalizing Beast of Bodmin Moor.  If it existed at all, he should have liked to bring back a report on it.  Next time he would bring Sirius with him.  If anyone could find a large black beast, it would be Padfoot.

Next time.

Of course, if he got a job, such freedom would become rare.  A job?  Was that why he had declared himself on holiday, to improve his chances of getting a job? 

Remus put the journal and the writing things back into his rucksack, and then set it behind him on the ground.  He lay back, fingers laced behind his head, and stared overhead where the world seemed to be composed entirely of shades of green and gold, from the greenish yellows of sunshine behind new leaves to the deeper greens of the shadows. 

What was the point of taking such meticulous notes if no one would ever see them?  He had so many ideas and he suspected--no, he knew--that he had much to contribute to the wizarding world.

If only he could find a place.

Since finishing school, he had considered going abroad, perhaps slipping into the great bubbling cauldron of Muggles in Europe or even in America.  But, that would mean turning his back on an increasingly desperate situation at home as Lord Voldemort attempted to take control of the British wizarding world.  No place would be safe, if that came to pass.  He still nurtured a vague hope that he’d find a way to join in the fight; he couldn’t quit England until he’d exhausted all possibilities.  But, would anyone take seriously the proposition that a creature of Darkness, an officially registered beast, would want to fight against Dark forces?  Lately, he was beginning to wonder if even his best friends believed him.

The ever-changing dance of sunlight and leaves hypnotized him as he stared into the trees above.  He might have fallen asleep but for a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. 

He felt an itchy curiosity to look, but knew somehow that he mustn’t make any sudden movement.  Slowly, not blinking and holding his breath, he turned his head.

An infinity of colors hung just out of reach; all colors were united under its mantle of iridescent white. 

He dared to breathe, conscious that this was his first breath since he’d seen it, and wondered if he would count each breath he took from now on.  Somehow it didn’t seem too fantastic to say, “Three hundred and sixty-nine times I breathed while I was in its presence.”

Such madness is not uncommon when one is in the presence of a unicorn.

The creature was a few meters away, separated from him by a scraggly hedge of undergrowth.  He rolled over on his side, trying to make as little noise as possible.  It was facing away from him, its head not visible as it bent down to drink.  But, he didn’t have to see the pearly white horn to be sure because there was something about the way its coat shone as if it took the ordinary light from the sun and turned it into…magic. 

Remus had never seen a unicorn before.  According to their teacher in Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts, unicorns had become scarce since the rise of Lord Voldemort and could rarely be found in the Forbidden Forest; that was why they hadn’t studied them directly.  From the little he knew, he didn’t think he was particularly qualified to approach a unicorn:  he wasn’t a female; he wasn’t a virgin; he wasn’t even fully human. 

When it lifted its head from the stream and arched its neck with a fluid grace that brought tears to his eyes, he forgot his unworthiness.

When it turned its head, he found himself staring directly into its eye--pale, lustrous and rimmed in black--shimmering like an abalone shell, swirling like a perfectly made Euphoria Potion in a cauldron, but with no center, no pupil to fix upon, so that to look into the unicorn’s eye was to dive into a pearly universe of ever-changing hues.

When it flicked its tail, kicked its hind legs and disappeared into the trees, he followed.

The hunt--if you could call it that--was unplanned.  He certainly hadn’t been expecting to find such a creature during the fortnight he’d spent tramping through Cornwall.  Quite the reverse; he’d been poking about ruins that were either formerly inhabited by Dark wizards or destroyed by terrible magic and searching the marshes, rivers and rocky hollows for as many Dark creatures as he could find.

He chased the unicorn for the better part of the afternoon.  The sun was setting when he finally caught up with it.  By that time, it was too late.

The unicorn never let him get closer than twenty or thirty feet.  He walked the forest paths as silently as any four-legged predator, but he knew from the start that the creature could sense him trailing behind it.  Why did he follow?  He couldn’t come up with any good reason, then or later.

Several times, he thought he had lost the unicorn; each time, he was seized by a strange panic that drove him to find it again.  Over several hours, he developed a sense of where and when it would reappear in a flash of white, dazzling against the brown and green background like an exploding firework.  He would stealthily inch forward, getting as close as he dared, until he caught glimpses of the exquisitely delicate legs, flashing golden hooves and iridescent coat.

At some point, he must have crossed into the magical heart of Keitynys Wood where the trees around him loomed enormous and regal, and the forest had the feeling of a hushed, green cathedral far older than the work of humans.  But, the thrill of the hunt sang in his blood and he no longer cared whether or not he was off the map.

As shadows lengthened, it took longer and longer to find the unicorn each time he lost it.  When he did come upon the creature, it bolted quickly and no longer lingered to drink at pools or streams. 

He’d been searching unsuccessfully for three-quarters of an hour when he reluctantly concluded that he had lost the unicorn for good.  He was chasing a dream.  What’s more, he wasn’t sure it was wise to be in the hidden part of the forest when night fell.  There may have been good reasons why the witch he’d met that morning had fingered her amulet so nervously. 

Snap.  He heard a sharp sound off to his left.  He moved closer and heard branches rustling as well as a hissing sound that might have been voices, and then silence.  He went faster, threading his way through thick tree trunks and scraggly undergrowth.  A mantle of grim panic settled over him.

He found the unicorn, but couldn’t save it.  In the end, he wondered if he could even save himself.

A startling flash of white through a tangle of leaves and then a glimpse of black.  Remus stopped short and drew his wand before continuing.  He approached as stealthily as he could, and was grateful for a clump of bushes that screened him from the open space in which a little stream threaded its way between venerable old trees.

A crumpled white heap lying on the ground.  Something was wrong.  In a wild moment of panic, his mind refused to believe it, racing through all the other white things that might be found lying motionless in an isolated forest clearing.  The list was short. 

Two figures in black standing over the motionless unicorn.  Something was very wrong.  His stomach jolted violently.  Still hidden in the brush, he steadied himself against a tree trunk and felt his wand grow slick with sweat.

They were cloaked in black and wore black masks that covered everything but their eyes.  At their feet lay the unicorn, dead or stunned; its legs were bound with magical cords.  Its stillness was an abomination, a monstrous crime against nature. 

One of the men held his wand out, standing guard with a heavyset swagger about him.  The other man bent down over the fallen animal and gingerly placed a black-gloved hand on the creature’s neck   Remus knew they were men because he heard their voices muffled through their masks. They were having an argument.

“You’re a fool, Mulciber,” hissed the second one, taller and leaner than his companion.  The muted voice seemed familiar to Remus, but he couldn’t quite remember where he’d heard it.  “Time is critical for potency.  I must begin now.”

“But the Master said to--”

“Go if you must.  You’re of no use to me,” he muttered and turned his attention to the body.

The first Death Eater Disapparated; the second one paid no notice.

Oh, there was no mistaking that the two men were Death Eaters, Lord Voldemort’s black-clad followers who filled witches and wizards with so much terror that no one--no sane person, leastwise--in the wizarding world would even think of wearing a black cloak in a public place.  Just as people didn’t speak the name of Lord Voldemort for fear of inadvertently conjuring up the fearsome Dark wizard, The Daily Prophet never showed a picture of a Death Eater nor of the luminous green Dark Mark that blazed cruelly in the sky so often these days. Yet everyone knew.  The looks, the deeds, the words of those terrorists in black were whispered in pubs, in shops and even in the Hogwarts corridors.

He had never seen one, only heard jumbled and confused tales from people at school like Neldon McShane whose parents had been killed by Death Eaters while he huddled, terrified, in a dustbin.  The Dark Mark had shone over the village on the night of his father’s murder, though he had not been there to see it.  At home, his mother never spoke the name of Lord Voldemort, and Remus never pressed her.  But in his nightmares, he saw the hateful sign blazing in the nighttime sky; in dreams he saw too the black-cloaked wraiths and attacked them, tearing the hated cloaks to shreds.  They always turned up empty.

Remus wished desperately that he were dreaming now, that the entire afternoon had been a vivid hallucination brought about by eating the peculiar green cheese and that the scene before his eyes would vanish--if only he could remember how to wake up.

The tall Death Eater knelt next to the fallen unicorn.  With his companion gone, he seemed less sure of himself as he fumbled with the drawstring of a leather bag.   Glass clinked inside the bag; the sound was startling--so ordinary, so reminiscent of a far-away world.  The man carefully removed two vials wrapped in cloth.  After spreading the cloth on the ground, he set the glass down.  His movements regained a careful precision as he took off the stoppers and delicately placed them next to the vials. 

Remus thought he heard a sigh as the Death Eater reached into the bag again and removed another object wrapped in cloth.  He didn’t have to see what was inside the cloth; he could feel its power even from a distance.

“Danger!" screamed nerves and muscles and bones.  His first instinct was to flee, but he didn’t move.  If he left now, he would never be free of the death that he did nothing to prevent, never remove the burden of this outrage from his conscience.

The cloth fluttered to the ground.  Remus unfroze as the Death Eater raised the silver knife.

“No!” he roared, stumbling through the bushes with his wand pointed at the kneeling figure.

The man scrambled to his feet, his hard, dark eyes glittering through the mask.  “You--“ he choked back words, and then dropped the knife in favor of his wand, crying hoarsely, “Expelliarmus!”

Remus--his reflexes slowed by horror and revulsion, and by the proximity to silver--felt the wand slip through his sweaty fingers.  The Death Eater deftly caught it, tossing it to the ground disdainfully before pointing his own wand.  Remus roared again and charged, knowing that he must attack even if all he had was his bare hands. 

The curse hit him hard in the gut; he doubled over in pain as he flew backwards.  His back slammed into a tree and he fell to the ground, tasting dirt and leaves and rot as his face hit the forest floor.

Before the Death Eater could curse him again, there was a rush of air followed by the arrival of another black-clad figure.  Remus, numb and barely able to move, looked up feebly and saw a black cloak swirl menacingly in front of the fallen unicorn. He raised his eyes, expecting to see the short, heavyset Death Eater, but the one who stared down at the stricken animal was taller than the one who had cursed him. 

"What is this? What has happened?" came a cold hiss.

Remus had never heard the voice before, yet there could be no doubt as to who had spoken.  Who else would be behind such a monstrous act?

He struggled to get up, but couldn’t move.

Focus on the curse; figure it out from the inside, he thought, amazed at his detachment.  They would notice him soon enough; he’d be at their mercy, and it wouldn’t be a fair fight, far from it.  His fingers were leaden, as if plunged into arctic waters and sheathed in ice; his insides twisted painfully like a wet towel being wrung out; his legs were numb and unresponsive. 

That was it, a Petrificus Minor curse, meant to partially paralyze rather than to stun.  How many times had he let Sirius practice on him, honing his skills for dueling with Slytherins?  Remus felt a bizarre pride at figuring this out and at the thought that his opponent had not cast the spell properly.  He should have been completely immobile from the neck down, but instead his fingers twitched and with great effort he managed to make his arms move.  A major triumph, that.  He might be able to expel enough of the hex to reach his wand, which lay on the ground less than a meter from his nose, though it seemed like three thousand miles at this point.  He hoped there would be enough time to work free before he was noticed by either of the figures in black.

As he struggled to move, he watched Voldemort step nimbly over the body of the fallen creature.  The hem of the cloak brushed over the unicorn’s white coat like dark storm clouds whipping across a plain. 

“You blame it on Mulciber, of course.”  The hiss remained controlled, malevolent power gliding beneath the surface like a shark hunting unsuspecting swimmers.  “Ah, yes.  Your job is merely to collect the goods, not to notice that you are being followed, no doubt trailed through the forest by--”

“Master, I swear that we were careful.  No one could have followed us.”  The Death Eater fell to his knees as the words spilled out, the voice no longer confident or recognizable.

“You deserve punishment, do you not?” Lord Voldemort sneered and lazily stretched out an arm.  Long, inhumanly pale fingers wrapped around the wand that he pointed at the Death Eater, who fell silent and held himself rigid.

To Remus, the words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.  The voice worked its way into his head, like a maggot burrowing into a flesh wound.  He couldn’t see the face, only the back of the tall thin figure, cloaked and hooded.  Was it true that anyone who had looked on that face was marked for death?  He hoped not.

“Punishment will come later when we have determined the full impact of your blunder,” laughed Voldemort coldly in a high-pitched voice that didn’t fit the hard words or the imposing presence. “Now, however, you have a task to complete.  Do not fail me on this, or your life will be forfeit.”

Lord Voldemort stepped aside, his face still hidden by the hood of his cloak, and looked down as the groveling man crawled on his hands and knees to reach the fallen knife.

“Ennervate!”  rasped Voldemort with a malicious note of triumph in his voice.

The unicorn stirred slightly and blinked once.  The creature didn’t lift its head, but its eye--once iridescent, now opaque and gray--searched blindly.  Remus wondered if the unicorn could see him.  His throat tightened and he blinked back tears at the sight of the creature’s dull, unseeing eye. 

He rocked his shoulders, pushed his chin against the ground and twisted his abdomen, fighting against pain like jagged pieces of glass ripping through his gut each time he moved.  He managed to shove himself back and up, swaying into a rough sitting position, but could get no further.  His arms barely functioned and his legs might as well have been lumps of clay anchoring his unsteady torso.

 “I’m here.”  His lips formed the words soundlessly. Tears stung his eyes and he wanted to shut them tightly, but if he did, he would miss the end that was coming, the end that he could do nothing to prevent.

The Death Eater rose to a kneeling position.  He raised the knife to chest-level.

Remus shuddered.  A wave of revulsion swept through him, threatening to knock him down like a swollen river jumping its banks and flattening everything in its path.  He felt dizzy and, in his delirium, imagined that the Death Eater paused, knife suspended over the unicorn’s neck, and stared at him for a long time.  Hours, minutes, seconds?  He couldn’t be sure as they had all of them become unstuck in time.

“What are you waiting for?” shrieked Voldemort, breaking the silence.

Voldemort swiftly bent over, knocked the Death Eater aside and pried the knife from his gloved hand.  And then he laughed--shrill, cold, triumphant--as the knife came down.

The unicorn shuddered as the knife plunged in to the hilt.  Silver rivulets, like liquid metal, trickled across the once lustrous coat, the tendrils of blood oozing around the buried blade. Lord Voldemort wrenched the knife out and the trickles became a torrent, flowing freely, gathering speed as the knife went in again and again. 

Each blow of the knife sent echoes pulsing thought Remus, amplifying the churning black queasiness inside.  He fought off the spasms in his gut, clenched his teeth and tried to keep from toppling over.  His eyes were locked on the abomination; nothing else existed in his world.

The knife came out a final time. Voldemort tossed it aside and thrust one hand into the bloody wound.  Long, spidery fingers the color of bleached bone disappeared, only to reappear an instant later, coated in shimmering silver unicorn blood.

Remus couldn’t hold back his disgust any longer. He retched, spilling his guts as if he too had been ripped open.  He lost his balance, pitched forward, and slammed his head into the ground, face-first in his own vomit.

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