"This is your fault."
"My fault? You're the one who was stealing."
"Longbottom left it! It's not my fault he's a hopeless idiot!"
"It's your fault you're an obnoxious git!"
"I'm not the one who turned a perfectly respectable flying contest into a wrestling match!"
"You said 'come and get it', dumbass!"
"And ruined a very expensive shirt in the process, might I add."
"Oh, what a tragedy."
"Boys!" interrupted Hagrid gruffly, "quiet down now, we're goin' inter the Forest an' you don' wanna go attractin' attention."
"We're what?" said Draco in a high-pitched tone of horror, abruptly distracted from glaring at his redheaded nemesis. "You can't make us go in there! There's - werewolves, and things!" Ron snorted, and the Slytherin consciously calmed his tone. After taking a breath, he instead said sharply, "My father will hear about this!"
"We're goin' inter the Forest," said Hagrid implacably, ignoring this threat entirely. "Aren' no werewolves, but there's plenty what's dangerous in there, so yeh stick close t'me, yeh hear?" Then, as Ron and Draco had a very stressed-out and silent contest in which they each tried to pretend not to be as scared as the other, he explained about the dying unicorns, and what they were looking for. The two first-years in his charge exchanged frightened glances, and then realized what they'd just done and glared at each other instead. Evidently, neither could figure out how to complain about this without appearing frightened, so they ended up saying nothing. Nervously, they followed Hagrid into the Forest, with Fang ambling along behind them.
It was an unnerving and quiet half-hour before a flash of silver caught their attention. Ron and Draco both turned and pointed, which spawned a whispered "I saw it first!" "No you didn't, I did!" argument, cut short sharply when Fang made a very unhappy whining noise and backed away several steps. Hagrid stepped through the trees, hefting his substantial crossbow, and gestured to them to follow. The source of the silver soon became apparent: unicorn blood, reflecting the light from Hagrid's lantern. And a unicorn a few feet away, with something dark and cloaked leaning over it.
"Hold this," said Hagrid brusquely, shoving the lantern into Draco's hand. It was larger than his head and caused him to stagger somewhat with its weight; but with eyes narrowed at Ron's smirk, he refused to complain. Hagrid leveled his crossbow at the stranger and said, "Oi! You! Git away from tha poor beast - "
It looked up from its meal, and all they could see of its face were fangs dripping silver blood and glowing red eyes. The thing - for it must have been a thing, not a man - emitted a horrifying screeching noise and leapt. Like a bat spreading its wings it left the ground and arrowed straight for the kids, still screeching, looking very much like a monster straight out of Hell. All pretense of bravery forgotten, Draco shrieked and turned to run. Ron, for his part, tried to duck and draw his wand at the same time, which caused him to tangle himself in his cloak and sent him sprawling unceremoniously to the ground.
For a split horrible second Ron was convinced he was going to die; and then a crossbow bolt the size of a spear thudded into the side of the monster's chest, and it twisted in the air, its momentum thrown wildly sideways by the weapon. The screeching sound turned to horrid gargling and the creature bolted, vanishing into the trees with alarming speed. Hagrid shouldered his crossbow and strode over to Ron, lifting him to his feet and shaking him slightly to dislodge the dirt. "Y'alright, Ron?"
"Um," said Ron, his voice a bit squeaky. He hazarded, "Um, yeah, I, kinda?"
The gamekeeper nodded approvingly, as Ron disentangled himself from his cloak and got shakily to his feet. "Now where'd that ruddy Malfoy go?" grumbled Hagrid, picking up a whining Fang and scanning the trees. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Draco had left with the lantern, and the light was still visible at this distance. Ron, trying to get his breathing under control, followed at a disjointed jog as Hagrid strode into the treeline without much concern for the presence or absence of an actual path.
When they found Malfoy, he was surrounded by centaurs with bows drawn, and looked very much like he would dearly have preferred to stay and be menaced by the mysterious beast Hagrid had shot.
"Is this yours, Hagrid?" said the tallest of the centaurs, a dark brown creature with piercing green eyes and a distinct expression of distaste. He was looking at Draco as if he were an unwelcome dog who had urinated on the carpet. If Ron had not been busy still trying to stop hyperventilating, he would have been better able to express how funny he found this. Still, he made a mental note to tell Neville, who would probably enjoy the mental image. The centaur continued, looking rather annoyed, "Ronan told us you were hunting the great evil that plagues our forest," he shot a red-haired centaur a sharp look, "but he failed to mention that you were bringing foals."
Hagrid sighed. "Yep," he said apologetically, "sorry 'bout that, Magorian, that's my fault, I ought've said summat. Professor Dumbledore wanted 'em given a sharp scare; 'spect he thought we'd not find nothin' tonight." He gave Ron a look that was probably supposed to have been reassuring. Ron mostly still felt like he was in shock, but it did make him feel slightly better that Hogwarts detention did not normally involve being almost murdered by horrible unicorn-eating vampire bat things.
"Ah, but you did find something," said the red-haired centaur whose name was Ronan, looking delighted. "And you're a bolt lighter than usual."
"Aye, shot the bugger," said Hagrid, which made several centaurs look grudgingly pleased. He continued, "with any luck it'll be movin' slow. I gotta take these kids back up ter the school." As he said this, he reached between a few centaurs, who neatly sidestepped. Hagrid caught Draco by the back of his shirt, picking him up and then setting him down next to Ron, who shot him a viciously delighted look that said very clearly I am never letting you live this down, ever. Hagrid bent his head at Magorian; the motion was somewhat awkward due to the enormous boarhound he was still carrying in one arm, but was at least recognizable as a respectful bow. "Lemme know if there's anythin' else I can do ter help, aye?"
"We shall, Hagrid," said Magorian gravely, "your assistance has been appreciated as always."
A black centaur, who had been staring up at the sky for the last several minutes, said, "Vega and Altair are unusually bright tonight, have you noticed that, Magorian?"
Hagrid took this as his cue to leave, shooing Ron and Draco ahead of him and dropping Fang to the ground again in order to retrieve his lantern from Draco. Neither of the kids spoke, but Ron kept shooting Draco rather smug looks, to which Draco responded with glares while unhappily trying to smooth his ruffled hair.
Once they had crossed the tree line, Ron took a deep and amazingly reassuring breath and then said, "What did he mean about the stars, Hagrid?" He couldn't remember which stars had been mentioned, but had at least been paying enough attention in Astronomy recently to recognize the words as names of stars.
Hagrid shook his shaggy head unhappily. "Yeh never know, with them," he grumbled. "Might mean peace an' good huntin', might mean we're all gonna die. Don' bother askin', neither."
"What was that - that thing?" demanded Draco, who had taken slightly longer to regain his voice, but had what he clearly considered a much more pressing question.
"Can't rightly say," said Hagrid, shrugging. "At any rate, I hope you lot've learned yer lesson about breakin' the rules." He nodded to Filch, who was grinning nastily at the rattled first-years. "Off yeh go, then."
As soon as Hagrid turned and left, Ron turned and grinned at Draco as they walked behind Filch back into the castle. "You ran!" he said, entirely delighted. "You ran away, you coward!" No longer in the presence of the terrifying monster, he found it much easier to mock the Slytherin for this failing.
"You would've, too, if you hadn't tripped and fallen like an idiot," complained Draco.
"I was trying to draw my wand!" protested Ron.
Draco rolled his eyes and drawled, "Fat lot of good that did you."
"Didn't get me almost shot full of arrows by centaurs, neither!"
"They were not going to shoot me," said Draco confidently, much more confidently than he might have while there were actually arrows pointed at him. "They wouldn't dare!"
Ron snorted. "The big one looked like he wanted to cut your head off and put it on his wall for a decoration."
"Shut up," snapped Draco snippily, and turned on his heel to head down the steps to the dungeons. Ron shrugged and headed for the stairs, feeling secure in the knowledge that at least if he'd been terrified, he'd been less terrified than Malfoy, and that made him a proper Gryffindor. Let the Hat tell him he ought to be in Slytherin now.
Fred and George caught Ron halfway up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and chorused, "How was detention?", grinning. They'd just narrowly escaped Mrs. Norris and were in much better spirits than their brother, and felt it their filial duty to annoy him as much as possible before he went to bed.
"We had to go into the Forbidden Forest," grumbled Ron. "It was awful. Hagrid was looking for some monster that was killing unicorns, and we found it, and it tried to kill me, and then Hagrid shot it and it scarpered. Pig snout." Then he grinned, as he climbed through the portrait hole. "Bright side, Malfoy almost got shot by a herd of centaurs, we had to rescue him."
To his surprise, the twins did not laugh or even smile as they followed him through the portrait hole. "Killing unicorns, you say?" said Fred curiously.
"In the forest?" added George.
"Um ... yeah?" said Ron.
"Fascinating," chorused the twins, and then were up the stairs and out of sight before Ron could ask them what they meant.