Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me. I'm merely borrowing with solemn intent not to make money, and I promise to return everyone unharmed to the box when I'm done.

Note: This was originally written for a 30minutefic challenge on LiveJournal back last fall. I can't remember the number offhand, but the theme was 'Gluttony'.

111

You know this is a bad idea; you always know, of course. Every time you silently creep through Hogwarts' shadowed corridors in the dead hours of the night, you know it.

You vaguely remember your feelings of earlier this evening: the keen anticipation of the passing hours. You counted yourself down from moment to agonizing moment, as the seconds ticked the evening slowly away.

You walked slowly down the corridors. You didn't want to be caught of course, but that isn't why you walked slowly and carefully. The trouble is, you aren't used to walking anymore, are you?

Every step you take now, you have to watch carefully. Before, it was so much easier. You have a vague recollection of striding confidently through these halls. You think that you hadn't even noticed what a complex task it was. But now, your legs are shorter, and the joints don't work quite the same way as you seem to recall. You have a vague memory of falling the first time you had to do this, but the memories don't seem to stick to you the same way anymore, so you can't be sure.

Of course, you could have let your host do the walking. He's used to it, after all. But you want to be able to see where you're going on these few nights when the world is once again your own. Too much of your existence now is spent looking backwards, watching the past spin out behind you as the corridors twist and turn and eddy in your wake. You want to look forward, and that means you have to be in control.

You take a stiff-legged step forward, past the shadows of the trees, and see what you have found.
It stands there, silent, pale. It minces across the moon-drenched clearing like an aurora somehow given shape and form.

Yet it doesn't see you. You don't exist to it. The creatures can detect evil, but cannot even smell your own presence. Your host is the key, of course. Your host is innocent. Perceptive eyes--and there are many besides these light-shadowed creatures who can judge hearts--see only the host. They ignore your own delicate insinuations, like a canker-worm buried deep and undetectable in the heart of a flower until the worm has eaten so deeply of its carrier that the flower starts to fade.

You are a careful guest. It will not do to tip your hand too soon, after all. Who has said you know nothing of a visitor's courtesy?

You step closer still, your hand hovering mere inches from the quivering neck of the beast.

You draw out a knife and slowly, so slowly, make the first cut, so smoothly that the creature doesn't even feel pain. Only when the thick, silvery blood comes running heavily down does the unicorn know its peril, and by then you've whispered the words of binding.

You bend your head, and taste the pure essence of life. This first flow of liquid, freed before the creature is aware, is always the sweetest. Later it becomes richer, more charged with fear and pain, but you like the first blood best of all.

You drink, your lips clamped on the pulsing flow, until the unicorn sinks with a sigh to its knees.

You drink until you can hold no more, until the portion of your host's body that you inhabit is filled to the limit.

For you see, it's not the power of the blood that you crave. It's not the half-life that it grants, that granted you the form you now possess, and the vaporous thoughts that are your only control over your credulous and malleable host. That was done many midnights ago, and the effect is lasting. You need no more.

But what you never anticipated was the taste. It's the taste you need, that wondrous intensity of sensation. You never taste anything anymore. You only feel cold or heat, pain or pleasure at a dim remove. You only see and hear through the muffling fabric of a necessary disguise.

You aren't a wasteful drinker. You don't take it all. This beast will last you many more midnights yet. And when it is finally over, when the creature has no more ambrosia left, well, then you will find another glade to haunt at midnight.

But you know you won't be able to stop until the last unicorn has been brought to its final rest.
Even if you find the desire of your heart, with its red sparkle and promise of immortality, you know that you will not be able to stop these midnight journeys.

For only here, only at midnight in the dark forest, with the blood of a holy creature on your lips, do you truly live.