Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 15

"Hagrid, we have to get rid of that dragon," I told him after Malfoy had run out of sight.

"I can't get rid of Norbert!" Hagrid said, looking as though he would burst into tears.

I glanced at everyone else, hoping I could get some kind of support. There was no way that the dragon could stay at Hogwarts if Malfoy knew about it.

"Emily's right," Ron spoke up. "Malfoy is probably going to turn you in, Hagrid."

"I can't just let him go!" Hagrid said. "He's just a baby!"

"Well, we could send him to my brother, Charlie," Ron suggested. "He takes care of all kinds of dragons in Romania."

"That's fantastic!" Hermione smiled. "That way he can be with his own kind!"

Hagrid frowned and looked back at the small dragon. Knowing that we were right, Hagrid began to sob.

"B-but he's so s-small! What if the other ones eat him!"

"They aren't going to eat him, Hagrid!" Ron said.

After we left Hagrid's house, we decided that it was best that Ron send Charlie a letter telling him about the situation. We found it extraordinarily odd that Malfoy hadn't turned us in immediately. We figured that he might use it as blackmail or that he might be waiting for the "right" moment to turn us in.

Within a few days time, Charlie replied to Ron's letter about the dragon. He said that he would be happy to take it and told us that Norbert would be perfectly safe with the other dragons in the area. We told Hagrid all about it, which he responded with tears. However, Hagrid decided that it was best that Norbert be sent away to live amongst other dragons. It was decided that we would sneak Norbert off to the Owlery on Saturday night where he couldn't be seen.

However, we ran into a problem after Ron's hand was bitten by Norbert and he was forced to go to Madam Pomfrey when the bite began to swell until it became twice the size of what it usually was. Fortunately, Ron was able to convince her that he was bitten by a dog.

"It's okay, Ron," Hermione said. "It'll all be over on Saturday night…"

"Bloody hell," Ron said, sitting up quickly.

"What is it?" I asked him, startled by his outburst.

"The note - it's gone!" Ron exclaimed. "The one from Charlie! Malfoy came in here asking for one of my books and it was the one that had the note in it! He's going to know about everything!"

"Ron, we have the invisibility cloak," I said to him. "Malfoy will never find us."

"We can't change the plan anyway," Harry said. "We already told Charlie that we would send him on Saturday."

Saturday finally came and Norbert appeared to be a lot bigger than when we last saw him. Hagrid had a cage all prepared for him. However, Ron could not come with us because he had to stay with Madam Pomfrey.

"I put some brandy in there," he cried. "And a teddy bear so he don't get lonely."

"It's going to be fine, Hagrid," Harry reassured their friend.

"Yeah…" he sobbed. "I'm just gonna miss 'im!"

After Hagrid said his goodbyes to the dragon, we threw the invisibility cloak over ourselves, which proved to be rather difficult considering the number of us, and were off to the Owlery.

We had almost made it up to the tower, when we were stopped at the sight of Professor McGonagall. She was in her nightgown and was pulling Malfoy along by the ear.

"Detention, Mr. Malfoy!" she growled. "And twenty points from Slytherin!"

"But, Professor," Malfoy begged her. "The Potters are coming by here, I swear it! They have a dragon!"

"What is this nonsense!" McGonagall said. "Just come with me."

After they had moved along, we continued to make our way to the Owlery. When they got up there, they met four people on broomsticks awaiting there arrival. We waved them off as they took Norbert off to Romania.

We walked out of the Owlery practically glowing. The dragon was finally gone, Hagrid wasn't going to be in any trouble, and Malfoy had detention. Nothing went wrong!

"Well, well, well," Filch said coming up behind us. "Look what we have here."

Filch smiled from ear to ear, catching us in the act.

We had left the cloak in the Owlery…

Filch brought us to McGonagall's office. However, she wasn't there at the moment, so we at least had a little bit of time to come up with some kind of excuse for themselves.

Moments later, however, my mind went blank when I saw her come into the room. Behind her was Neville.

"Emily! Harry!" Neville shouted. "I'm sorry! I was trying to find you two. I heard Malfoy telling people that you were trying to get rid of a dra-"

Neville stopped in his tracks when he saw each one of us practically glaring into his very soul in attempt to make him stop talking.

"So, I see what we have here!" McGonagall fumed. "You were trying to get Mr. Malfoy in trouble by telling him some ridiculous story about a dragon and somehow, Mr. Longbottom overheard the conversation and was trying to help you. Feel good about that, do you?"

I looked at Neville, feeling terrible as I watched his face fall with what he heard. I wanted to tell him that what she had said wasn't true, but I couldn't without revealing what had really happened.

"Each one of you will receive detention!" McGonagall said angrily. "And fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor."

We all gasped, knowing that those points would take us out of the lead.

"Fifty points each!" she said.

"But, Professor-" Harry started.

"I don't want to here it," she cut him off. "Now, off to bed all of you!"

When we got back to the common room, I saw noticed that Neville was looking extremely upset as he sat down in an armchair.

Everyone else went up to their beds, not wanting to talk about what just happened.

"Neville," I said. "Listen, what she said wasn't true."

He glanced over at me, his eyes were filled with tears, and he shook his head.

"I'm serious, Neville," I told him. "It was a lie! We really were trying to get rid of that dragon! You would have helped us a lot if you could have found us."

He looked down at the ground in shame.

"I'm sorry that we got you in trouble," I said sitting down next to him.

"Well…" he mumbled, sounding miserable. "At least I know that it wasn't completely worthless…it's just that people already hate me because I lose points all the time. Now, I've lost so many points that no one will ever talk to me again."

"Neville, people won't hate you, and they don't now anyway," I told him.

"Yeah, okay," he said with sarcasm. "I lose points all the time and I've noticed the other Gryffindors getting annoyed with me…"

"Don't worry about what other people think," I told him, putting an arm around him. "I'm sure that in a week, no one will even remember this."

He smiled, but I could still see tears in his eyes.

"Besides," I said. "You could blame me if you want to, tell people that I forced to go with us."

He laughed, "I wouldn't do that to you…"

The next morning, people noticed immediately that the points had dropped. They were also informed who lost the points. So, in other words, we were shunned from our houses for a while.

"Oh, they'll forget about it!" Ron said as a group of Gryffindors walked by glaring at them.

"Sure…" I said when I received a death glare from a fourth year.

"This is terrible…" Neville said, walking up to me with a large boil on his face.

"What happened?" I asked looking at the boil.

"Well…" he said. "One of the fifth years came over to me and did some spell on me and…this is what happened."

I frowned, but couldn't help but stare at the boil.

"Well, it looks rather…dashing on you, Neville," I laughed.

"Very funny," he said seriously, but couldn't help but smirk.

Harry walked over to Ron, Hermione, Neville, and me. He apparently had attempted to resign from the Quidditch team, thinking that they wouldn't want him to be a part of it anymore.

"He told me that it wouldn't do any good…is that a boil?" Harry said looking over at Neville.

"Some fifth year did that because of the whole point-loss thing…" I mumbled.

"You should probably have that looked at…" Harry said looking half-concerned, half-repulsed.

That night we had to go to detention - the second day in a row that I had received detention. Filch led Harry, Hermione, Neville, Malfoy, and me outside of the castle.

"Where are we going?" Malfoy asked Filch.

"You'll see that in a moment boy," Filch said.

We walked a little further and then I caught sight of Hagrid.

"Is that you Filch?" He asked. "Hurry up, we need to head out into the forest soon."

"The forest?" Hermione asked nervously. "As in the Forbidden Forest?"

"That would be the one," Filch said with an evil grin.

Neville walked up beside me, looking incredibly scared.

"We can't go into the forest," Malfoy said. "Aren't there…werewolves or something in there."

"There's more than that in there boy," Filch said. "You'll be lucky if you find just that."

Neville's eyes widened and he went very pale. However, he wasn't the only one. Malfoy stopped walking immediately, his face as white as the moon.

"You're kidding, right?" Malfoy asked.

"I wish I was," Filch chuckled evilly.

Hagrid walked over to us, Fang next to him, and was carrying a large crossbow.

"Thanks Filch, I'll take 'em from here."

Filch turned around on the spot and made his way back to the castle.

"Okay, we're gonna go into the forest 'n-" Hagrid started.

"I'm not going into that forest," Malfoy interrupted.

"You will be if ya want ter stay at Hogwarts," Hagrid said.

Malfoy frowned, but didn't respond.

Hagrid motioned for us to follow him to the edge of the forest and held up his light for us to see. Right in front of us was a large pool of silvery liquid.

"See that," Hagrid said. "That's unicorn blood. Now, we're gonna try 'n find the poor thing. I found a trail of blood in the forest, so we should be able ter follow it."

"What if something finds us first?" Malfoy asked, sounding like he was panicking.

"No one will bother ya as long as yer here with Fang and me," Hagrid said.

"Then I want Fang," Malfoy said.

"Fine, but ya should know that he's a bloody coward…" Hagrid said handing over Fang's leash.

We started to walk into the forest, but I noticed that someone wasn't walking. Neville stood at the edge of the forest, pale and with eyes the size of dinner plates.

"It's okay, Neville," I told him. "Come on."

He looked slightly hesitant and still terrified, but he walked on. We followed Hagrid into the depths of the forest, still following the silver blood. Neville, beside me, was shaking a lot and jumping at just about any noise that was made.

I held out my hand to him, hoping that maybe he would calm down. He smiled nervously and grabbed my hand. We walked through the forest further, Neville's grip on my hand tightening with every noise, but he seemed to be a little calmer.

"Okay, we're going to have to split up," Hagrid said as the trail split into two paths.

Hagrid looked around at all of us, noticing that Neville was hanging on to me for dear life and then told us where to go. He decided that it was best that Draco, Neville, and I went one direction, while Harry, Hermione, and himself go the other.

"If you run into anything, just send some sparks up into the sky, okay?" Hagrid told me.

When we split up, I noticed that Malfoy was just as nervous as Neville judging by the way he freaked out anytime he heard a noise.

"This is ridiculous," Draco said. "If my father knew that I was-"

"Stop being such a little girl, Malfoy," I told him,

Malfoy shot me a look, but didn't say anything. Suddenly, something cracked in the woods and Malfoy tripped backwards. Neville gripped onto my hand, but relaxed when he noticed that Malfoy had fallen.

We both looked at each other and started laughing quietly.

"Think that's funny, do you?" Malfoy spat, his face starting to grow pink as he stood up.

"Well, I'll go look to see what it was…" he continued.

We stood there in silence for a moment after Malfoy had left.

Suddenly, I felt someone jump up behind me and grab me by the shoulders. Neville jumped forward, pulling me with him and with his wand, he shot red sparks up into the air. When we turned around, I saw that it was Malfoy with Fang and he was laughing.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I growled and dropped Neville's hand.

I walked over to Malfoy at a fast pace and shoved him backwards.

"That wasn't funny!" I yelled at him.

Suddenly, Hagrid came running over to us.

"What happened?" he said frantically.

"Malfoy jumped out behind us and Neville thought that it was something else," I told him.

Hagrid glared at him and then motioned for us to follow him. We made our way over to the other group and Hagrid explained what happened.

"Harry, you go with them, Neville stay here with us," Hagrid said.

Harry, Draco, and I returned to the trail that we had been following earlier.

After a few minutes of following the trail, we found something.

"Look," Harry said.

In front of us sat a large, white unicorn and it was lying on the ground. It was dead. Suddenly, from out of the bushes, a figure emerged. It was dressed in a large, black cloak and it crawled over towards the animal. The man bent over in front of the unicorn and began to drink its blood.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Malfoy screamed and began to run in the other direction along with Fang.

The figure rose its head, which the hood concealed, and appeared to look in our direction.

Suddenly, my scar felt as though it was on fire. Both Harry and I fell to the ground, trying to move backwards in a sorry attempt to get ourselves away from the figure. Our scars hurt so badly that we were practically blinded by pain.

The figure started to move towards us, and I figured that moments from now we would both be dead.

Then, suddenly, someone came out of nowhere and ran at the figure.

I hope that everyone liked this chapter! I want thank all of you that have commented so far on my story, it really does help me a lot. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to put it in a comment! Please review!