A/N: Thank you so much to reviewers! I love you all. Mid-January. Draco is late, and he has to swing into rescue-mode! Sort of melodramatic and cheesy, but there ya go.

Disclaimer: I am not lucky enough to as smart as to invent these characters myself. They are not mine. Too bad. –pout-

The Stone Speaks

Chapter Twenty-Five: Saving the Day and Other Extreme Sports

DRACO

A pair of smouldering scarlet eyes stared at Ginny, and a long, scarred nose was pushed down the dip. She screamed as it snarled, inches away from her face, and she began clawing madly at the dirt to get away – pain was ripping through her arm, through her legs, and then suddenly she was out, into past the rock, and she squirmed out of the dip.

She stopped, glanced over her shoulder to see how much time she had before the creature caught up, pointed her wand to her throat, whispered "Sonorus", sucked a deep breath… "DRACO!"

…

"Damn it," Draco muttered, crossing the gloomy grounds. He had set his wand to poke him at 9:50pm until he woke up, but, unfortunately, the wand had been confused by the bed-curtains. After ten minutes of his wand poking the curtains, Draco finally woke up – because his curtains collapsed on top of him. He was hell late, and Ginny would not be pleased.

"Lumos," said Draco, lighting up his wand. Hagrid's Hut was totally dark, and the half-giant always went to be late. Draco was behind schedule for his own meeting. Great. He broke into a jog, as he neared the forest.

It was terribly dark, and Draco hoped that he could actually find the meeting place to start with. There! The old oak with the face. He stood in front of the majestic tree, and waited impatiently. He was late, so why wasn't Ginny already here? "Ginny?" he called, shining the light at the end of his wand around.

No-one answered. And then his wand-light fell upon the scattered footprints from a light, feminine trainer – and, more importantly, the huge, deep, paw-print that he had been trained to recognize only a few weeks earlier in Care of Magical Creatures class. A large European beast with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a dragon's powerful tail; only ever been killed once by any human being; highly destructive and blood-thirsty; chimaera.

"Oh God," Draco said in horror, his face draining of what little colour it usually maintained, "oh, God, no." He moved his wand to follow the feminine footsteps… they turned and moved away, in longer paces – running – and the chimaera pawprints behind it – chasing – "Ginny!" Draco yelled, heading off after her, keeping his wand low to follow the footsteps.

"Hell – er – abraxus… god, what was it -" Draco muttered desperately, "-abraxus merranite!" A faintly glowing white line fell from his wand and pursued the Slytherin's chase (hopefully, it would prevent Draco from getting lost). He cast his wand around, searching desperately for his enemy, his friend, and his first love.

"Ginny!" he bellowed, squinting through the dense gloom. "Ginny, are you there, can you hear-"

"DRACO!"

Draco's blood ran cold as the highest, most anguished scream he had ever heard tore through the Forest, sending a thousand startled birds shooting away from the noise. Follow the birds to the start of their flight. He broke into a sprint, ripping through the Forest, running under the fleeing owls and crows. "Ginny!" he yelled, and as he waited for her response, still running, images were flashing through his mind:

Ginny, lying on the ground, blood dripping down her face, not breathing –

Ginny, tattered and gasping his name with her dying breath –

Ginny, being ripped apart –

"Ginny!" Draco shouted. He ran in front of a tree and flashed his wand-light around, frantically searching for the fiery hair that he knew so well. No-one there. He raced forwards again; the flow of birds was slowing down, and soon he would have no lead as to where the hell she was. A terrible, deafening roar, like a thousand steam-trains bawling past, came to Draco's ears, and he was ready to start screaming, don't eat her, don't eat her, when a small, dishevelled figure burst out of the undergrowth.

Draco didn't have time to gasp or call her name, he just instinctively reached out and she staggered into him, stumbling in his arms and then falling against his chest. She was coated in mud and leaves, as well as – he felt a growl of anger rise in his throat – her own blood.

"Draco," she cried, her voice raw and wheezy from shouting, and he began to run with her, one arm around her fragile, shaking shoulders to steady her. A snarl pierced the Forbidden Forest's hush, and Draco did not need to turn to see where the chimaera was.

"Go," he told her, spinning and shoving her, quite violently, back in the direction of Hogwarts castle. "Follow the white line." Ginny stared, horror-struck at him. Draco's white face reddened with anger, "GO, you idiot! Do you want to die?!" he shouted.

Behind fear and despair, hurt appeared in Ginny's hazel eyes, and, for some totally peculiar reason, Draco found a sudden urge to pull her back to him and kiss her. Shocked by his own thoughts, he turned back and drew his wand. "Abraxus chimaera!" he muttered, sketching a long line that the chimaera could not cross.

It lunged forwards, lion claws flashing, dragon tail swinging, and sharp, deadly fangs bared and dripping Ginny's blood. The chimaera slammed into the boundary, and snarled, howling furiously, and then it was tearing the line apart, each razor-sharp claw slicing through layer after layer of fat magical border line. Draco knew that his time was running short: "Stupefy!" he yelled, brandishing his wand madly, and then, the creature rearing back with a wail of agony, he took off after Ginny, dissolving the line after him.

Draco was racing so fast that he almost ran past Ginny. He wheeled around and returned to where the bedraggled, blood-stained girl was gasping, clutching her side; Draco saw blood seeping between her slim fingers. She was struggling to keep her eyes open, slumped onto a tree.

"Come on, Ginny, come on," he said, taking hold of her and helping her stumble out of the Forest. Draco pushed her forwards, "head to the Hospital Wing," he commanded, and then slammed his palms heavily on Hagrid's door, alerting him to the chimaera. Draco ran towards the Hospital Wing, and, halfway to the Entrance Hall doors, saw Ginny sitting in a heap on the damp grass. "Oh, for God's sake," Draco muttered, and, with some difficulty (having never carried a copiously-bleeding sixteen-year-old girl before), scooped her up and stumbled towards the doors.

"Get off me," Ginny snapped, feebly hitting his shoulder and growling at him in a way uncannily like the chimaera, so that Draco actually glanced over his shoulder to check that it wasn't still pursuing them. "I'm fine, Drakonus Ophius.. Ophius… merhhhph," she moaned, and buried her face into the material of his black hoodie.

Draco felt extremely protective as he hurried up the grand stairs, vaguely aware that he was dripping mud and blood all throughout the castle, and then burst through the Hospital Wing doors. It was silent and dark – Madam Pomfrey had already gone to bed. Good, thought Draco, we don't want her asking questions as to why we're turning up at half past ten, muddy and blood-soaked.

Draco slid Ginny onto a bed and began to check her injuries. Mud, leaves and blood stains… "Scourgify." Minor cuts on her face… "Episkey." Nasty cuts on her legs… "That'll need a potion…"Quite nasty cuts on her arm… "Delemtrionus." Her side… Draco gagged, and hastily left to get some potion ingredients. He had broken into the Hospital Wing store before, when he had been cursed by the Dark Lord, and he didn't want Madam Pomfrey nosing in about why he had Dark Magic inflicted on his stomach.

Bezoar… diluted phoenix tears…crushed occamy shells… pickled murtlap essence… mooncalf liver… powdered unicorn horn… dragon claw… sliced ashwinder scale… three pints of water… turn cauldron heat to two hundred… "flagrate"… and mix well… Draco let the cauldron simmer while he took a flask of water and gingerly cleaned her side. The blood crackled and fell off, and then he carefully doused some of the potion onto the wound, before mumbling, "ferula," and wrapping a bandage around her slender waist.

As he knotted the soft, gauze fabric beside her hips, he felt his face reddening, and Ginny murmured softly, "it's only a damn hip, for heaven's sake." Draco's head snapped up, and colour rushed in and out of his face as a million emotions swirled through his mind.

"Are you okay?" he whispered, mixing up some of the potion into a goblet. "Here, have this." Ginny sniffed disdainfully at it, and screwed up her nose; her reluctance was apparent. Draco sighed, "just take it, Gin, it's a healing potion."

Ginny weakly accepted the goblet and gulped it down, scrunching up her face at the foul taste. "How do you know all of this?" she asked, her voice low and croaky.

Draco blushed. "Er," he lied, "I pay attention in Potions." Ginny gave him a raised-eyebrow-oh-yes-is-that-so look. Draco blushed further. "Well… I sort of… I sort of want to be a Healer when I'm older," he muttered, ducking his head to hide his shame. Being a Healer was a girl's dream, not a guy's – kind of like a boy wanting to be a unicorn tamer. A guy's dream was to be an Auror or the Ministry of Magic… not a Healer.

Ginny didn't say anything, and when Draco looked up, she was watching him intently, with a look of pure respect shining in her hazel eyes, moonlight glinting on the Stone of Montol and reflecting on her pale face. "You'd be really good," she said softly, "and I think it's really good that you're choosing to do your own thing, instead of copying everyone else's dreams."

Draco nodded, still feeling ridiculously embarrassed.

"Are you going to try out at St. Mungoes when you leave Hogwarts?" Ginny inquired, and Draco's heart plunged. No, he answered in his head, because I'm a Death Eater, all that my future holds for me is murder and Azkaban.

But he didn't say this; instead Draco said, "Maybe," and left it at that. There was a silence, and, as a pathetic attempt to break the quiet, he asked, "What do you want to be when you're older?"

Ginny turned redder than her hair, and tried to hide behind it instinctively, as she always did, but her hair was in a ponytail, and she merely looked abashed and uncomfortable. "Nothing," she said hurriedly, "I don't know yet." Draco didn't push it further, but he was wounded that he had told Ginny his secret and she wouldn't tell him hers. Then, she said quietly, "I can't tell you. But I might… show you. One day."

What needs me to see it? Draco wondered. Professional Quidditch player? Gardener? Unicorn-tamer

A terrible thought hit Draco, and he realized what had basically happened to Ginny. "Er," he started, "you know… Ginny, you do know, don't you, that… I didn't … I dunno… set you up, or anything like that," he finished lamely. Ginny had basically gone, trustfully, to meet him, and had been attacked by a blood-thirsty monster.

Ginny gazed at him levelly. "I know," she said simply, her eyes not leaving his face, and Draco felt his face burning again under the watch of those glittering brown-green eyes. Then, suddenly, her eyelids drooped, and she stifled a yawn, sinking back onto her pillow.

"Ginny," Draco repeated, knowing in his heart that he desperately wanted to say something meaningful before she fell asleep, "you know, don't you, that I lov -"

"I know," Ginny murmured again, and before Draco could demand what she knew, she was asleep. Does she know that I love her? Draco wasn't sure if this idea made him happy or not.

A/N: Lol. Unicorn-tamer. Heh. Anywho, please review. HEY! THAT RHYMED! –happydance-