A/N: My first-ever story! Please Read and Review. I'll be updating about once per week.
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. No money is being made.
Chapter 1: Forest and Unicorn
"Gods, Care of Magical Creatures was awful today, wasn't it?"
The speaker was a petite blonde named Pansy Parkinson. She had a cute upturned nose, but the expression on her face was habitually hard. She was not one to cross and all of us nodded in agreement with her, though I, for one, did not think Professor Hagrid's lesson had been all that bad.
Sure, it would've been nice if I could have seen the thestrels rather than just heard about them, and maybe Hagrid wasn't the most eloquent speaker in the world, but I couldn't see that he merited the amount of abuse my fellow Slytherins had been heaping upon his teaching ever since that afternoon. Of course, I'd only met the man once, and everyone else here had endured his class for the past two years, so maybe they knew something I didn't.
"I wish Professor Grubbly-Plank was staying," said Tracey Davis sadly. "Remember last year when she brought us the baby unicorns?"
A sort of collective wistful sigh echoed around the room. And, fifteen-year-old girls or not, these were not the sort of people I'd have pegged as wistful sigh-ers. I watched with interest as Pansy's hard face softened, and Tracey's eyes grew distant and misty. Even Millicent Bulstrode, the resident hag, looked halfway decent when her eyes went all wide with recalled wonder, and Daphne Greengrass (the prettiest girl in the dorm besides myself) became darn near beautiful when she let her shiny lips part like that, not that I was interested in girls or anything.... I looked around to see that Pansy had noticed me watching all of them.
"I forgot," she said, her face gone hard again, "Amber wasn't here last year. She didn't see the unicorns."
Amber is my name, Amber Lyonness. What my parents were thinking when they gave me said name, I don't know. Well... yes I do. It was my mother. She's always been one for theatrical gestures- she once confided to me that half the reason she'd married my father was because she liked his last name so much. Her own name, which she hated, was the perfectly ordinary "Mary". Her maiden name had been Smith.
And I have to admit that Amber suits me. It's descriptive. My hair and eyes are both the same rich, honey-like blend of orange, red, brown, and gold as the stone for which I am named. Sometimes in the sunlight my entire head seems to blaze golden. Right now, in the flickering firelight of the underground Slytherin common room, the red in my hair (which I sometimes privately thought of as my "mane") was predominant.
"No, I've never seen one outside of books," I answered Pansy. "We don't have them in America."
America. How I missed it, and I'd only been gone two weeks! Most of it was that Hogwarts and Scotland were nothing like I'd expected. I felt that I was homesick nearly as much for my lost UK dream-world as for the land I'd left behind.
You see, I wasn't supposed to be where I was right now; I wasn't supposed to be with these people, these companions. I should have been sorted into Gryffindor, dammit!
I wondered again how things could have gone so badly wrong. The Sorting was supposed to have been a simple formality. My mother had assured me I'd get into her old house. After all, weren't we both descendants of Godric Gryffindor through her mother's bloodline? (No wonder the name "Smith" had rankled her. No wonder she'd jumped at the chance when my father, muggleborn Henry Lyonness, had asked for her hand in marriage.)
I even looked like a lion, what with my golden eyes and red-gold mane. Heck, my patronus was a mountain lion (not as good as a genuine African lion like my mother's, but close enough). It was unthinkable that I was now residing in the House of the Snake. I knew I was brave. So what if I told a lie or two occasionally? Doesn't everyone? What was the problem?
Maybe I hadn't killed a basilisk or single-handedly defeated Voldemort like famous Harry Potter, the quintessential Gryffindor according to my mother (besides herself, of course), but, really, not everyone in the House had "brave deeds to their name", did they? I mean, surely there wouldn't be enough basilisks to go around? And anyway, Potter hadn't even done most of those things until he got into Gryffindor. It was so unfair!
My mother wasn't currently speaking to me, convinced that I'd somehow spent the first fourteen years of my life hiding my evil, villainous nature from her and my father. Dad had contacted me only once in the past two weeks, and the conversation had been distant and stilted.
I suppose I sort of understood. After all, my parents had crossed the ocean to fight the very people whose children I was now hobnobbing with. Mother was from the UK, originally. She'd been in school here at Hogwarts when Lord Voldemort began his first rise to power, but had graduated in time to join a society dedicated to causing his downfall and fight against him.
She used to love to tell me stories of those times. She'd go on for hours, until I almost believed that I'd been there with her and her best friend, Lily Evans, running around battling the Death Eaters with Lily's soon-to-be husband and his three friends, all of whom, to hear Mother tell it, had been in love with her. She said the only reason she hadn't married any of them was that she'd dedicated her life to fighting evil and didn't want to cheat any of "the boys" out of her fullest love. Of course, she then met my father and his irresistible last name.... Anyway, the point was that all of them had been in Gryffindor.
And now I wasn't.
I looked around at my fellow Slytherins, my expression slightly twisted by the loathing I felt for them. Unfortunately, this only made me appear to fit in there. I gave myself a mental shake; negative emotions wouldn't help me.
I had to do something, take some action, so I could stop thinking about the past. Action—something bold and heroic. Something Gryffindor-like! Yeah, that was it! Maybe if I acted brave enough, they'd see that a mistake had been made and put me in Gryffindor where I belonged.
I jumped up. "Come on, girls, what are you waiting for? Let's go!"
"Go?" Daphne echoed in amazement. "It's ten-thirty in the evening. Where on earth do you want to go at this time of night?"
"Maybe she has a boyfriend," sniggered Tracey Davis. "No, she'd hardly want us to come along for that—or would you, Amber?" The room dissolved into laughter.
Oops. I had forgotten that none of them had been privy to my thoughts of the last couple seconds. Sometimes my mind just worked too split-second fast for others to comprehend.
"I've never seen a unicorn, and I want to," I explained patiently. "So let's go." That shut them up quite effectively.
"But, Amber," Tracey ventured after a few seconds, twisting her mouse-brown hair nervously around her finger as she spoke, "All the unicorns around here are in the Forbidden Forest."
"Yes, and it's conveniently close to the castle," I said helpfully.
"Oh, this is ridiculous!" That from Pansy. "We are so not going into the Forbidden Forest at night!"
"Well, they'll hardly let us go during the daytime, will they?" I pointed out reasonably. "Our only option is to sneak out."
"I heard there are werewolves in there," came a soft and husky voice from behind me. I looked around in surprise. Millicent Bulstrode rarely spoke.
"The full moon is weeks away," I reassured her. "We won't be meeting any werewolves tonight. And they aren't supposed to be roaming around free anyway; I doubt if there are ever really any of them in there at all."
It took a lot more logic and convincing, and a little bit of bullying— I'm ashamed to say I lost my temper once or twice—but eventually the five of us were on our way to find a unicorn.
The path was soooo much darker than I had anticipated it would be. And spookier. There were weird rustling noises in the woods all around us, and sounds as though very large animals were moving in the undergrowth right outside the circle of light provided by Daphne's wand. After we'd walked for about five minutes, eerie howls joined the symphony of night noises, and even more unnerving, some of them were now coming from behind us. I tried not to wonder if this meant we were cut off from the castle.
When we reached a small clearing a couple of minutes later, I called a halt. "Let's do it here," I said. I didn't want to risk going any deeper into the Forbidden Forest. "Now, how exactly does one go about calling a unicorn?"
Daphne giggled; the girlishly high and cruel sound seemed out of place in the deep darkness. "You have to have a virgin," she explained. "Good thing we brought Millicent along, isn't it? Unless you've finally managed to seduce Gregory Goyle, Millicent?" Millicent blushed, her entire ugly face turning an unattractive dull brick red. "I thought not," Daphne continued shrilly. "Millicent's been mooning over Gregory for years and years, but somehow he's just never succumbed to her charms..."
Pansy and Tracey were staring at Daphne in disbelief. The girls of Slytherin house might mock nearly everyone else in the school, but they always stuck together and defended each other. Always. It must be fear that was making Daphne behave this way. Fear. Yes. As someone who aspired to Gryffindor, I couldn't let fear rule me. I stepped forward.
"I'm a virgin," I declared. "Show me what to do."
"Erm," said Tracey, "I don't think you actually have to be a virgin, you just have to sort of, um, think pure thoughts—you know, sort of project them... oh, and you have to be sitting down, so as not to frighten the unicorn..."
"Oh," said Daphne, sounding embarrassed. I think she'd only just realized how hysterical she'd been a moment ago. "Well, um, virgins can't hurt, can they? I thought I'd read..."
"No, virgins can't hurt our chances at all," said Pansy, taking charge. "Amber, you and Millicent sit here on the ground, and Daphne and I will just step back a little this way, and..." her voice trailed off as she looked over at Tracey, who sat down on my other side without saying a word.
"Right then," said Pansy briskly. "Now let's all think pure thoughts."
We were there for long enough that I considered calling it all off and going back to the castle. Indeed, I was amazed that one of the others hadn't suggested it already. I wasn't about to be the first to speak, though, so we continued to sit until it happened...
The unicorn stepped forward, trembling. It was gorgeous, a gleaming white so bright that it appeared to glow, and much larger than I had realized it would be from the pictures I'd seen in books. It stood at the edge of the clearing for a moment, and then slowly advanced as we all held perfectly still. I thought of pure snow just as hard as I could.
The unicorn walked right up to me and laid its head in my lap!! I was beyond amazed. I carefully lifted one hand and stroked its smooth, velvety-soft forehead. It lay down on the ground beside me, and Tracy and Millicent dared to caress it also.
Now I could see why the other girls hadn't given up! This was worth waiting for.
"What do I do now?" I whispered aloud.
"You've captured it," Tracey said softly. "It trusts you now and will stay with you until you release it, so it should be safe for Pansy and Daphne to come over." The two moved close enough to sink onto the ground next to the beautiful beast and begin petting it. The unicorn uttered a loud whinny, which alarmed us, until we heard an answering higher-pitched noise from outside the clearing.
"She has a foal!" Millicent said, her homely face shining with delight. The baby unicorn pranced out into sight. It was entirely golden, hooves, horn, hair, and all, and much less shy than its mother had been. It romped around, letting everyone play with it a little. Its presence seemed to relax the mother unicorn even more, and eventually all of us relaxed enough to begin talking quietly.
"Are you really still a virgin, Amber?" Pansy asked. I couldn't believe that she sounded so disbelieving!
"Well, there was this one guy, back in America, my boyfriend... we went pretty far, but we never actually, you know..." I blushed. "So, um, you really have?" I was, I admit it, insanely curious. All my American friends and I had talked about what it might be like, but none of us had actually done it.
"Well, yeah," answered Pansy as though I'd asked an incredibly stupid question. Her tone of voice made the unicorn in my lap start a little.
"With, um, Draco?" I asked, Draco being her incredibly hot blonde boyfriend with no brains whatsoever (I'd asked if he had Veela blood the first time I met him). It was probably rude, but she'd brought it up. Oh, now I was getting bad mental images, gaak! I was never going to be able to look either of them in the face again!
"Yes," said Pansy coolly. "Draco and I have been going out for three years, and it seemed like the logical thing to do. I don't want him looking at other girls, after all." Her matter-of-fact tone astounded me. Any means to achieve their ends, I thought with a shudder. The mother unicorn snorted softly.
"So, did you just do it... once, or what?" I asked. Hey, she seemed willing to talk! The other girls were paying close enough attention that I thought they might not have heard all the details before either.
"No, we try at least once a week," Pansy responded. Seeing the looks on our faces she quickly added, "try and find a time to do it, I mean; we have to wait until Vincent, Theodore, Blaise and Gregory are out of his dorm and Draco is sure they're not coming back or anything. We usually manage about twice a month."
"How is it? Do you like it?" Tracey pushed.
"It's not like anything, really. It's messy, though, and the charms you have to cast beforehand are annoying and take way too long, but it's actually pretty quick."
Daphne choked and had a horrible coughing fit just then, and I, who was closest to her, could have sworn I heard the words "twitchy little ferret" embedded within the coughs, though I had no idea what they meant.
We talked for a bit longer, but after a while we remembered that we wanted to get at least a couple of hours' sleep before classes the next morning. I asked the unicorn to please get up, and she did. My legs had fallen asleep and I had to get help from Millicent to stand, and then I hopped around for a few moments while circulation returned to them in painfully ticklish pinpricks of feeling.
After I finished dancing around like a madwoman, I told the unicorn that I released her, and she was free to go. It was as if a spell had been lifted; her comfort with us immediately vanished. She backed away quickly, and snorted to her young one to follow. She began trembling again, just as she had when she'd first approached, but she didn't turn and run. It probably would have been better for her if she had.
We were all backing away so as not to miss seeing even the very last glimpse of our inspiring magical mother unicorn and her sweet fuzzy golden baby, so we all saw it happen. The unicorn had just turned to enter the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing from whence she'd come when a huge black shape dropped upon her from the tree above. The unicorn let out a horrible squeal!
We all saw simultaneously that it was a giant spider, huge as a nightmare come to life. Its monstrous legs were wrapped completely around the mother unicorn, who had collapsed to the ground, one of her legs sticking out at an unnatural angle. She'd managed to impale the spider with her horn, but he was so large I doubted it would kill him.
There was no thought involved as we all drew wands in defense of our friend.
"Impedimenta! Stupefy! Stupefy! Impedimenta!" The spells were simply bouncing off the horrific beast!
"Expecto Patronum!" I called up the patronus my mother had taught me last year, and in a streak of silvery golden glory the mountain lion flew past me, the sight of him lifting my spirits as it always did. But even that was no use; his incorporeal claws simply slashed through the spider without damaging it at all, so I called him back to me. I noticed as I did so that the stab wound from the unicorn's horn was healing up as the spider drank her blood.
If the spider continued to drink the unicorn's blood it would soon achieve short-term invulnerability--if it had not reached that point already. We had to act quickly!
"Stop!" I yelled to my fellow Slytherins. "Stun with me on three! One! Two! Three-- Stupefy!" All five of us performed the spell at pretty much the same time, and at last, it had an effect; the giant spider lifted its ugly face from its meal and regarded us. I saw with stunned sorrow the mother unicorn's head droop limply when the spider released it, her eyes glazed with unmistakable death.
As the spider climbed off its prey, I realized we might be in trouble. The thing looked capable of moving fast. Then I saw where its gaze was directed.
The baby unicorn was just a few yards away from its mother. Its fuzzy golden head was lowered, horn pointed towards its mother's killer. It pawed the ground with its diminutive front hoof, readying itself for the attack. That tiny baby was about to charge right into the jaws of the monstrous spider!
Acting on pure instinct, I pointed my wand. "Accio baby unicorn!" I screamed. With a thud, the baby hit my chest almost before I'd had time to get my wand out of the way. I closed my arms around it .
"Run!" I screamed. And we ran.
A/N: My first-ever fic! Please r&r. I'll be updating about once per week, if people review. All it takes is one review to make me happy!