A/N: Thanks for reviewing, now I can post the third chapter! I said I didn't mind bad reviews, so I guess you felt free to post 'em, huh? Well, I still don't mind, keep 'em coming! In answer to a couple of them, though…

SeeStar: I don't really think everyone is happy in the house they are sorted into-- there are some people who aren't going to be happy no matter where they are. Many people actually don't like themselves—don't like their own "purest personality traits", y'know? Eventually the story will address this. And just because my character thinks Slytherin is evil doesn't mean that I do.

AngelFaerieGirl: Thank you for the constructive criticism. I really appreciate that you took the time to read in such detail! I'm really just writing for me, though, so even if I make her a Mary Sue thingy, if it makes me happy, I don't care!

Amber is an American for a lot of reasons. I wanted to start the story out in fifth year, and since Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in the UK, she had to be in some other country for the first four and a half, right? America is easy for me to write b/c I'm from the US and I write and talk American English, and as it's in first-person, it just makes it simpler. Since the story is just for fun, I don't wanna have to do any research on other cultures or anything, other than rereading the HP books, lol. As for her hair… actually, I have hair that is exactly that color, but in RL, I call it red or strawberry blond and my eyes hazel. If I look in the mirror and actually name all the colors that I see in them though, or were going to paint them, those are the colors that are truly in there. For real, look at a red-head's hair sometime, unless it is Weasley red, you'll notice it's not really red at all. And the mom's background is going to turn out to be completely necessary. There's a whole thing with Peter Pettigrew… read on and you'll find out!

Okay, now that the author notes are almost as long as than the update, it's time for a:

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize. No money is being made.

Chapter 3: Castle and Dilemma

Somehow we made it out of the Forbidden Forest.

Probably the spider was too bloated from the mother unicorn's blood to bother with us, but still we ran as though the thing was two feet behind us the entire way. After all, there could have been another one.

We stopped when we reached the castle doors. The run had burned all the adrenaline from the fight right out of me, and I stood shivering, hugging the baby unicorn to my chest. I still didn't feel quite safe, but the other girls weren't acting as if they expected the beast to have been able follow us this far.

Possibly there was some sort of ward that kept the more dangerous inhabitants of the forest from mingling with the students. At any rate, it certainly seemed a good idea after what we'd just witnessed. I resolved to look it up in "Hogwarts, A History" at earliest opportunity, as a positive answer would greatly enhance my ability to sleep at night.

As I pondered possible wards and the magic they might involve, Daphne stopped panting long enough to observe the burden I held in my arms.

"You've still got the baby unicorn!" she accused. At least, it sounded like an accusation to me, and I responded rather sarcastically.

"What did you expect me to do, Daphne? Throw him to the spider so I could run faster?" Unspoken were the words, "Like you probably would have?" but we could all sense them in my tone of voice nonetheless.

I was rather shocked at what had come out of my own mouth. I didn't in a million years actually believe Daphne would throw a baby unicorn to an evil spider, and yet, on some level, that was exactly what I did believe. Wasn't that what Slytherins did, after all? Saved themselves at the expense of others?

Pansy stepped in. "Well, we can't keep him. Let him go, Amber, so we can all get to bed," she said bossily.

This angered me even more than Daphne's tone of voice had. I opened my mouth to reply and Tracey, who was standing beside me, touched my arm. I shut my mouth.

"We can't just put him back in the Forest, Pansy," Tracey pointed out much more calmly than I would have. "He lost his mother only a few minutes ago. That spider could still get him!" Her voice rose at the end as she remembered the frightening scene, and the rest of us hurriedly shushed her. The last thing we needed was someone finding us all outside the castle carrying an animal we could only have gotten from the Forbidden Forest.

"I didn't think about that," admitted Pansy in a subdued tone. "I just want to go to bed and forget tonight ever happened, you know? That poor unicorn…" she trailed off.

I decided I'd been silent long enough. "Well, what can we do about her baby?" I demanded.

"We c-can't keep it." Millicent Bulstrode said hesitantly.

"Why not? Students are allowed to have pets." I said belligerently. I knew this was stupid reasoning, but at this point I was so riled up that I just wanted to argue with someone.

"Yeah, but just little things like cats and toads, not big horses. And besides, unicorns aren't pets, they're wild animals. It should be with other unicorns," Daphne said. This touched off a stream of concerns from everyone else.

"Will other unicorns even take care of it?" "What do unicorns do in the wild, anyways?"

"Bowtruckles won't take care of their babies after humans touch them—the smell is wrong and it scares them."

"Oh, but surely unicorns aren't like that, I mean, they're really smart…"

"Are there even other unicorns in there to find it?" "Do they live in herds or what?"

"What if that spider ate them all?"

We soon realized that none of us actually knew too much about unicorn life in the wild. "You're the ones who had them in class, not me," I said crossly to the other girls.

"Yeah, but who was actually paying attention to the teacher when we had a unicorn to look at?" Pansy pointed out. "And they mostly teach you stuff like what they eat and how to take care of one once it's in captivity, not what they do when they're out on their own."

"What about our textbook?" Tracey asked. "Maybe it could tell us?"

"Excellent idea. Run in there and fetch it out for us, Tracey," ordered Pansy. Of course, Tracey protested Pansy's peremptory tone, which set off a whole other argument, and in the end it was the much put-upon Millicent who ended up sneaking back to our dorms for a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

But we were sorely disappointed by the contents of the slim paperback volume, which proved to contain exactly what the title advertised- and no more.

"There's nothing in here!" Daphne declared exasperatedly. " 'Found throughout the forests of northern Europe- pah! What good is this rubbish? It's not even two paragraphs long!"

By now the excitement from the flight was long gone, drained away by the long minutes of indecision outside the castle. We were simply five extremely tired and increasingly snappish teenage girls, standing around in our nightclothes and sneakers in the chill November air. And my arms ached abominably. The baby unicorn was heavy.

I didn't put it down, though.

The letdown suddenly hit me twice as hard as it had previously, after our run. Merlin, what had I been thinking with this little venture, anyway? If it hadn't been for me, the mother unicorn might still be alive!

"Amber, are you all right? You're shaking!" Daphne broke off her diatribe against the author ("Seventy years in print and this is all the geezer knows!") to exclaim. Through the mental fog that was descending upon me—gods, why did my little ventures always turn out this way? What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I more like my mother?—I heard Pansy tell Daphne I was only cold, we all were. "No," Daphne responded sharply, "she's turning grey, Pansy, look at her—"

At that point my knees buckled and I started to fall, and they all surrounded me, supported me. They tried to take the baby unicorn from me, but I wouldn't let go, and as it seemed to have no inclination to escape my arms, they left it there and began the laborious task of trying to sneak the both of us inside.

Millicent had to practically carry me, as my legs didn't seem to want to work. I could hear Pansy and Daphne up ahead frantically discussing in whispers the spells that would be needed to hide the presence of the unicorn, interspersed with questions about unicorn facts they weren't sure of. ("We'll need an Imperturbable charm now, tonight, to mask the noise." "Do they make much noise?" "Horse noises, I think…")

To Tracey had fallen the unenviable task of shushing me. Did I mention that I was sobbing softly and incoherently the entire time? The horrible, crushing sense of guilt I felt was getting stronger by the minute. Everything seemed to be too much for me to handle or even take in- the voices and the bright torches on the corridor walls overwhelmed me. I was, I admit it, completely falling apart.

"Should still be alive…" I muttered, my head buried in the baby's soft golden coat. It didn't seem to mind, in fact I had the distinct feeling that it approved of my sadness and was, of course, mourning with me, and mourning even more deeply than I was, for it had lost its only mother… "I should have b-been able to stop that monster!" I growled, my anger trailing off into another small sob. I must have gotten a little loud, for Tracey looked alarmed. "Sssshh, Amber!" she said yet again. "We're almost there. We're almost safe."

But safety, it seemed, was not destined to be one of the redeeming features of this night. We were just beginning to descend the stairs of the dungeon, when, below us on the landing outside the portrait hole, a light flipped on. A solitary figure regarded our small group with interest.

"Well, what have we here?"

It was Draco Malfoy.

A/N: Please review! I like reviews, just so I know that someone read the thing! I don't care what you think, but if you write something of substance I'll reply thoughtfully to you in the next chapter! Thank you!