I can honestly say that this forest is the scariest place on the planet. As Hagrid, Draco, Ron, Hermione, my brother, Fang, and I are walking through the Forbidden Forest, I look around our surroundings and they are very bare. The only thing around us is eighty-foot tall trees and dead grass underneath all of our feet. Hard crunching noises are made as we step on dead leaves and sticks that for some reason are still here since autumn. A dense fog is keeping me from being able to see further than thirty feet in front of us. Even with Hagrid carrying a large lantern, the fog stays around the forest and keeps us from catching glimpses inside of it. The fog isn't the only natural phenomenon that makes this forest creepy. In fact, the complete pitch black darkness is another factor that makes me want to run all the way back to Hogwarts. In order to feel some security, I push myself into my big brother's side as much as possible and he wraps his left arm around my shoulders as we continue to walk behind Hagrid.
We keep walking in complete silence until we reach a more lively part of the forest. By 'more lively' I literally mean where there are some green bushes and some green grass. For the most part, however, everything is still dead and still creepy. Hagrid stops a few feet ahead of us and sets his crossbow next to a turned over dead tree, also known as a log with its roots still attached. I pull my heavier cloak closer around me as I watch the half-giant kneel down on the ground. Confusion crosses over me as I notice that Hagrid's body is blocking my view of what he is looking at. Stepping away from my brother's side, I move to the right side of the group to only stop and cover my mouth with my hand as a gasp escapes my lips. There is a giant pool of silver liquid on the dirt floor! I know that that doesn't sound scary or sad but my mind instantly goes back to the book that I just recently finished. The book was about unicorns and apparently in the wizarding world…they…are…REAL! Godric, I was so excited over that fact so I read the entire book in two days. The unicorn is the purest being in the world.
"What's wrong, Ana?" Draco worriedly asks me and momentarily I forget about what transpired earlier. I hug him tightly as I try to force the horrendous thoughts and images out of my head. There can be only two possible reasons as to why there is unicorn blood on the ground in that large of quantity, and they are two possibilities that I don't want to think about.
"Hagrid? What is that?" I hear my brother ask the man, as I feel someone's presence coming closer to me. The feeling of someone's hand rubbing slow circles on my back makes me look over and I realize that it is my brother. He continues to watch Hagrid as I hear the man standing up from his kneeling position by the crunching of the leaves.
"This is why we are here. See this? This is unicorn blood," Hagrid says and I feel my brother's hand stop its movements while Draco's arms tighten their grip around me.
"Is this why you're crying, Ana? You knew it was unicorn blood," Draco whispers in my ear and I nod my head. Pulling away from him, I wipe away the tears that I didn't know I shed and look at my fellow Slytherin. Suddenly, all of the scenes that transpired earlier that made us come here in the first place comes running into the front of my mind. Quickly, I turn away from Draco and walk over to Hermione, who still has her mouth opened after learning that the liquid is blood from a unicorn.
"I found a dead one a few weeks back," Hagrid continues his reason for us being out here, "This one appears to be hurt badly."
Right as he finished that sentence, I hear some rustling of bushes but it isn't coming from the light breeze that is passing through. I turn my head to my right I notice a dark outline of a cloaked figure walking through the trees. Jumping a few inches in the air, I look around to see if anyone has seen what I just saw. Thankfully, I notice that my brother is looking over in the same direction that I was previously looking. He turns to look at me with wide green eyes and I nod my head slowly as a silent way of saying that I saw the same thing.
"It is our job to find this creature," Hagrid says while he looks over in the direction that my brother and I were looking for earlier when I noticed our facial expressions. I nod my head quickly after he says that because I have to stay optimistic and hope that the unicorn is alive, "Now, Ron, Hermione, you will come with me."
"O-Okay," Ron says with fear clear as day in his voice. I feel some sympathy for him because it is a creepy forest with a potential unicorn attacker on the lose. Honestly, I'm most likely as scared as him but the thought of a wounded creature makes my fear get replaced with determination.
"Harry, Anastasia, you will go with Malfoy," Hagrid says and I nod my head while moving over to my brother's side. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that my brother and fellow Slytherin give each other a disgusted kind of look. Oh, for the love of Salazar! Please, don't have my brother and my friend fight the entire time. After they give each other that disgusted look, my brother looks back at Hagrid and gives him a small nod.
"Alright, but I get Fang," Draco says and I smile as I look down at the old dog. I start to pet him on the head while Hagrid agrees with Draco but also tells us that the dog is a coward. Well, even though the dog isn't brave he can still give us some more support while we explore the forest, as the saying goes, 'there is safety in numbers'!
My twin, Fang, Draco, and I walk in the opposite direction than the others. Before Hagrid left us alone, he gave Draco a lantern and told us to yell if anything happens. I don't know about everyone else but this seems highly dangerous and unsafe. How is the school allowing this?
"Wait until my father hears about this," Draco sneers while holding up the lantern. I look over at my best friend and a sudden wave of fatigue makes me realize that I honestly don't want to fight with him. He is my best friend and maybe he had a good reason for telling Professor McGonagall on us. If I had brought my notepad I would have asked him about it right now but I didn't bring it nor do I think that this is a good time to ask him. Nudging him in his side, I give him a smile when he looks over at me. Draco gives me a hesitant smile as if he is unsure if I actually forgive him or not. At the moment, I don't forgive him for ratting us out but like I said maybe he had a good reason for doing that. After a few seconds have passed, my blonde friend finally gives me his usual happy smile that I have grown used to.
"If I don't know better, I would say you were scared," my twin brother says to the blonde boy as we continue to walk. My friend's smile quickly disappears and is replaced with a deathly glare aimed towards my big brother. I sigh when I realize that my wish didn't come true and it appears that they are starting to argue with each other. Shaking my head in disappointment, I fall behind them and start to pet Fang, who starts wagging his tail slightly from happiness.
"Scared, Potter," Draco spites out at Harry when suddenly a low moaning sound appears behind us. Quickly as possible, we all turn our heads toward the noise but we end up not seeing anything. After not seeing anything for a couple of seconds, we all turn around and continue heading straight down the path. As if he was offended by being called out as being scared, Malfoy walks a few feet ahead of us and I sigh with relief when I realize that they aren't arguing anymore.
We keep walking until we reach an area that has a lot of tree roots on top of the earth instead of inside it. Thankfully, the fog has thinned out a little bit so now I can see a little bit more of our surroundings. By this time, Draco has fallen back with my brother and me while Fang went in front of us. Just to make sure that these two don't start arguing again, I decide to walk in-between them so that way they aren't too close to each other. The path starts to descend a little bit and turns to left after a large tree. Without any caution, we turn the corner and end up in a medium-sized open area.
As we enter the area, Fang stops walking and stands very still. Draco, Harry, and I stop right behind him as we look around the forest. Fang's deep growling makes all of us snap our attentions towards him as we try to figure out why he is growling. Glancing up, I notice that Draco is looking straight ahead of us and not even glancing at the growling dog. Finding that curious, I look down at Fang to realize that he is also looking straight ahead of us. My mind goes into high alert as I slowly look up towards the other end of the open space. A horror filled gasp escapes my lips when really I want to scream out in sadness and anger.
"Sister? Fang? What's wrong?" my brother asks before he looks up as well and realizes what we are all looking at. A dark cloaked person is bent over a pure white unicorn and drinking its blood from its neck. Big fat tears cascade down my face as I realize that this pure creature is being killed right in front of me. Anger flares up inside of me out of nowhere, and I quickly start to look around on the ground. Finding a good-sized stick, I pick it up and chuck towards the horrible person that would kill something as beautiful as a unicorn just to live a little longer. Yes, that is correct. A person that kills a unicorn and drinks its blood can live longer but they would live a cursed life. Apparently, I have a really good throwing arm because the stick smacks the person right in the head.
Right as the person looks up with a snarl, my brother lets out a pain filled gasp before holding his hand up to his scar. If I look really close I can see silver blood dripping out of the man's mouth. As suddenly as it appeared, the anger that flared up inside of me disappeared and all that is left is my body shaking very badly with fatigue clouding my mind. Draco screams and grabs my arm before running away with Fang hot on our trail. Assuming that my brother is following behind me, I follow along with Draco and run but surprisingly making my legs move is really hard to do. The more steps that I take the more tired my body becomes which makes it harder for me to keep up with my friend.
I force my head to turn around behind me to see if my brother is following us but to my sheer panic, Harry isn't behind us which means that Harry is still back there with that unicorn killer! My feet finally give out and I fall to the dirty forest floor. Painfully slow, I make my right arm go up and push my body so that way I am now looking at the dark clear sky above the forest. As I continue to stare up at the sky, my vision starts to blur like I need to blink my eyes but instead of wanting to blink my eyes, my body starts to slowly close them. My conscious starts to slip away as my brain shuts down from all of the fatigue. The last full thought my brain makes is, "Is my brother going to die out here alone? Am I?"
Draco's POV
As I am running away from that thing, I manage to grab Ana's hand and drag her behind me. Apparently, the dumb dog, Fang, had the same idea as me because he is running ahead of us. Finally, I stop yelling but I continue to run with my best friend. Unfortunately, as we are running I feel Ana's hand get yanked out of my grasp and I look back to see the sight of my only friend laying face first on the dirt path. I quickly stop and rush back to her but she doesn't respond to me.
"Ana! Ana, you have to get up!" I practically shout at her but she doesn't move. However, right as I lean down to grab her shoulders I notice that her arm is slowly coming towards her side before pushing her onto her back. A sigh of relief escapes me as I realize that she is alright, "Ana, you had me worrying there for a second." She continues to look past me towards the night sky above us, "Ana?" I wave my hand in front of her face but she doesn't even flinch or anything. Worry fully consumes me as I notice that she is slowly closing her unusually gold eyes.
Realizing that I can't help her on my own, I start to call out her brother when I realize that he isn't here either. Oh, Godric! Potter must still be back there with that thing. Honestly, even though that boy drives me bonkers, I still like him and want him to be my friend. Unfortunately, I have a dumb way of showing that I want to be friends with him. I mean, I got all of us into this situation because I told on my best friend and the one other person that I want to be friends with. There really wasn't a reason behind doing that but I simply told on them because that boy does annoy me. I didn't even notice that Anastasia was there as well!
Shaking my head, I look down at my best friend and I realize that she is knocked unconsciousness. Urgency runs through my brain as I look around frantically hoping that someone will appear. Or in our case that big half-giant that I didn't care to remember its name.
"Hold on, Ana! I'll go get someone," I tell her unconscious body and head in the direction that we split up from the rest of the group. During the entire run there, I yell for the rest of the group. Hearing barking up ahead, I run even faster and quickly the light of a lantern rapidly approaches.
Stopping in front of the half-giant, I bend over and try to suck in air that my flaring lungs desperately need. With gasping in-between, I try to explain to the others what happened and surprisingly they believe me. Honestly, I was expecting I would have to show them where the Potters were before they would believe me but apparently not. After I finish explaining what had happened, we immediately run in the direction that I came from.
Literally, a minute later we all see a small figure lying in the middle of the path. Even though that means that Ana is still unconscious, I'm glad that she is at least still where I left her. Every one surrounds her and I hear that muggle-born, Hermione, gasp when she sees how pale her friend is. The half-giant kneels down and checks Ana to make sure that she is alright. Well, alright in the sense that she doesn't have any external injuries. Once he is assured that there aren't any external injuries, he gently picks her bridal style while still holding onto the only weapon we have in the forest. I hope my best friend, and honestly my little sister, is going to be alright.
Quickly, we arrive at the place that I left the other Potter at. Right as we arrive, the adult man holds up his crossbow just in case, but then puts it back down when he realizes that there is no danger. Harry Potter is standing in front of a centaur and is completely unharmed. The dangerous cloaked creature is no gone but the body of the unicorn lays untouched, well, from us anyway.
"Ah, Firenze! I didn't see you there," the half-breed calls out to the centaur with blonde hair and blue eyes. He carefully gives the bow to Ron and gets a better grip on the unconscious girl. He nods his head towards Potter while saying, "I see that you have become acquainted with our young Harry Potter."
We are too far away to hear what the centaur says to the brunette boy but he gallops away after saying it. Harry turns toward us and slowly walks our way. His eyes widen from behind his glasses when he finally notices his sister in the giants arms. He runs forward and looks at his sister while talking frantically.
"What happened to her? Is my sister alright?" he asks everyone as he lays his hand on her pale, cold cheek. No one could answer those questions nor could anyone reassure him. I put my hand on his shoulder as we continue to stare at the innocent looking girl who is the sweetest person on the planet.
"I hope that she will be alright," with that thought said, we all head towards the school while I continue to hold onto Harrys shoulder. Surprisingly, the brunette boy doesn't seem to mind and in fact huddles a little bit closer to my body. Maybe, just maybe, he can still become my friend as well.
