Disclaimer: Still not my little puppet people.

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Chapter 8: The Lassie of the Horse World

When they got there it was all over. Dust from the aftermath rose and hovered in tiny motes, caught by nearly horizontal light threading and weaving through a few loose boards in the wall. The light played tricks on Harry's eyes, making it harder to see shadow. He concentrated harder until he saw the darkest, slowly moving shadow. It was blood, a slow, spreading pool trickling out of the open doors of the loosebox and seeping into the dirt floor. An equally dark shape lay half-in, half-out of the doors, crumpled in on itself. One foot twitched.

At first Harry thought it was Draco in his black Hogwarts robes, and his stomach lurched. "Stay back," he ordered the three girls hoarsely. Not bothering to check if he'd been obeyed, he drew his wand and crept forward.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the figure on the ground wasn't Draco. It wasn't even human, he thought, although the body was so battered it was hard to make a snap judgement. When he peered around the door to check the head, he had a brief glimpse of something thoroughly pulped into the straw and, apart from its position at the top of the torso, otherwise unrecognisable as a head; then something reared high over him and lashed out.

Harry ducked back just in time as the horse crashed back down to earth.

His wand hand was shaking – the horse had only recognised him at the last moment before it would have struck him with its front hooves. Could Madam Pomfrey mend a smashed skull?

He didn't want to try her skill that badly.

He was shaking all over. Harry breathed deep. Funny – he'd dealt with dragons and blast-ended skrewts, not to mention Fluffy and Aragog, and now it had almost been a Muggle pet which finished him off. After that scare he was tempted to hex the animal back into the Forest.

He took another deep breath and wished he hadn't. The dead creature stank. But Luna said you had to be calm when dealing with horses. What would Luna do now?

"Steady, boy," Harry said quietly, putting his wand away. He edged around the frame of the door, carefully not looking down at the shattered creature lying in the straw, and even more careful to whip back behind the door if the horse attacked again.

The horse was standing in the centre of the loosebox. Its head was high and its ears were back, and it was shaking slightly as it watched him.

"You too, huh?" Harry said. "So something scared you… and now you've just scared me." He was babbling, but Luna had told him it was important to let your tone of voice tell the horse how you were feeling. Hopefully his tone of voice was a good liar, because Harry didn't feel particularly calm. After being utterly creeped out by Slytherin House (not unprecedented, but not usually over breakfast) and confronted with a dead monster and a horse on the warpath, Harry was a long way outside Calm. With a bit of luck the horse wouldn't find that out. "Steady, now… I'm just going to come in and check you're all right…"

"Potter? Is that you?" The voice was high and shaky, but definitely Draco's. Harry realised, amazed, he'd completely forgotten why he'd come out here in the first place. "Be careful – there's a monster out there."

"Um, actually it's under here," Harry said, deliberately keeping his eyes above the ground. He was uncomfortably aware of the stickiness sucking at his sneakers as he ventured another step into the stall. "How about you – are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Draco replied, but Harry, looking through the dim morning light filtering in through a high, dusty window, could see the other boy looking paler than he'd been since the spider bit him. He was standing in the manger, pressed as far into the corner as he could possibly wedge himself. "How's my horse?"

Harry didn't say, He's not your horse, Malfoy. Instead he moved forward a little, raising his hand to the horse's nose to make sure it knew who he was and – hopefully given that – not attack. "Hey there," he whispered. "So how are you? That was a hell of a wake-up call you must have had this morning. Hmm? Let's see, now…"

"Well?"

Draco sounded more anxious than self-important, so Harry replied softly, "He's covered in gore… all over his front legs and chest, anyway. Steady…" He reached out and put his hand on the head collar to hold the horse's head still while he looked closer. The horse twitched its head, but when Harry didn't yank back, it stilled with a sigh. Harry thought it looked relieved. "Okay… let's see… Lots of blood, but I don't think any of it is his own. Oh, hang on…"

"What?"

"Try to sound calm, Malfoy. Remember what Luna said… the horse nearly kicked my head in when I arrived, and I want to keep him happy."

"Oh. Because that would have been such a disaster. What, pray tell me, is wrong with my horse?"

Sarcasm, but at least it was sarcasm delivered calmly. "There are some scratches on his neck. I think that creature might have been…" He took a closer look at the pattern of clawmarks. "I think it was a vrikolaki. The clawmarks look similar to what was on his flank yesterday. Hagrid also said that once a vrikolaki marks its prey it will keep hunting it down. I guess it was a bit too stubborn."

"Huh. And where is it now?"

"Um. Kind of… next to me. Some of it's under me. Some of it's out of the door. And some of it – sorry, boy – is on the horse." Harry used a stalk of straw to brush a clinging bit of membrane off the horse's knee. "There we go. But you're going to need a bath."

"Well, I have spent the night in a stable; what do you expect?" Draco said huffily.

"Not you; the horse."

"I take it the monster's not a threat right now."

Harry looked down for a second. And looked up again as his breakfast threatened to come up, too. "Nope. Not ever, I think. Do you know what happened?"

Draco paused for a moment. "The horse woke me up. I could smell something nasty. Still do, for that matter. Then we stood up and the horse – it's time he had a name, don't you think? – then he pushed me into the corner here and something opened the door. Then…" Draco frowned as if there was some poison in the memory. "Then something came in and I… and then the horse started screaming and roaring and... I thought it was going to… And then there was this banging and crashing and something else was screaming, too, but not angry like the horse… it was just… just… screaming. And then it stopped and I kept hearing something thumping on the ground, making it shake. And then that stopped, too, and you came in." Draco wrapped his shaking hands in folds of his robes.

Hell, thought Harry. "Couldn't you have done something? Sent out a message or something? Or just a flare…"

Draco's blind face twisted as he glared at Harry. The pale eyes seemed to fix on Harry's face as he hissed, "And how would I do that, Potter? You don't think they'd let a blind wizard keep his wand, do you? He might do something stupid, like, oh, I don't know… defend himself."

"I… didn't know. Sorry." Harry turned back to look at the horse. It dropped its nose to rest on his shoulder for a second. "Let's get out of here," he muttered. "Wait a tick."

The leash – Harry couldn't remember what Luna had called it – was hanging on the outside of the door. He clipped it onto the ring under the horse's chin – he didn't want it running off out the open door; Luna would kill him – and went over to help Draco out of the manger. "Here. Put your hand on my shoulder. Good. Let's go. I want some sunshine…"

"Is it sunny out?"

It seemed like the most inane of conversations as they stepped over and through the mangled remains of the vrikolaki, but Harry needed something from normal life – vrikolakis might technically be normal life for Harry Potter, but all in all he'd rather talk about the weather. "Yes. It looks like being a lovely day."

"Super. Let's have a picnic."

"With tomatoes and lettuce?"

"And lashings of pumpkin juice."

Harry could only pray Malfoy had never read Enid Blyton.

With Draco on his left and the horse prancing nervously and snorting on his right, Harry carefully led them along the wide central aisle of the stable, and out into the rising sun. He breathed in deep, filling his lungs with the cool, dewy air gratefully. Then suddenly remembered:

"Bulstrode, put your wand away, please."

"Why?" Millicent was standing to the side of the sliding wooden doors of the barn with the two younger girls tucked behind her.

"The horse doesn't like wands," Draco said, turning in her direction. "I can hear him fidgeting. Besides, the monster's dead."

The horse was fidgeting. Harry put a hand on its neck to soothe it, but the horse shook its head when Millicent put her wand back into her robes. The horse relaxed a little again, then swished its head in a long arc, tugging Harry away from the barn.

"Uh – I think he wants to keep going…"

"Fair enough," said Draco, and shivered. "It still stinks out here."

"What was it?" asked the littler girl.

"Potter thought it was a vrikolaki. Is that Trudi?"

"Yes," said the girl, blushing with pleasure. "Daisy's here, too. We wanted to know if you were all right because we couldn't get out of the dormitory to find you last night – nobody could. They locked us in, can you believe it? Well? Are you all right? Vrikolakis are meant to be really nasty."

Draco was looking a little happier from Trudi's information. "I'm fine. The horse defended me."

That was true, Harry thought, looking sideways at the horse, which was still trying to tug him away from the barn. You could have run away out through that open door at any time, but you stayed and fought. And Draco said you pushed him into the corner to keep him out of danger. Are you the Lassie of the horse world or something? "Come on – let's go around to the tap."

The horse didn't want to be anywhere near the barn, but grudgingly obeyed when Harry insisted on going around the corner. It stood and swished its tail resentfully as Harry fixed a hose to the tap and washed off the worst of the muck. He ignored the shivers as the water ran through the cuts, and wondered how to clean them -

"Hello, what are you doing out so early?"

Luna. Well, that solved that problem.

"We found Draco."

"I can see that. Did you get a good night's rest, Draco?" Luna asked. Harry braced himself for the answer, but Draco seemed to be feeling a bit more relaxed after his near-death experience.

"It was fine until my wake-up call. Thanks for getting me back to the castle, by the way."

"Sorry. I thought Hooch and Hagrid would make sure you were safe. Why didn't you say anything when we left?"

Draco looked a little embarrassed. "I must have fallen asleep. I've been doing that a lot lately."

"Oh. Well, now that I know, I can be a bit more careful."

"Thanks. Luna – Potter says my horse was injured. Could you have a look at him?"

"What?" Luna's bulging eyes fixed in accusation on Harry. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing! The monster was already dead when I got there!" Harry felt he was fast losing control of the situation. Again. Off to the right Millicent and the first-years were watching the scene act out. What was it with Malfoy and Lovegood? Somehow it ended up with Harry being the villain of the piece, and all because he'd had the impulse to do a good deed.

No good deed goes unpunished.

"Look, Luna," he sighed. "The horse was attacked, but seems to be able to defend himself. There's smelly, squashed proof inside if you want to check. But first, could you see to the cuts on his neck?"

Luna fixed the cuts in a jiffy, and wanted to go inside to see the monster ("A vrikolaki? They were thought to be a myth, you know, like the punk-tot…" Draco: "The punk-tot is a myth, Lovegood."), but the horse, as soon as it saw where she was going, whipped the leadrope out of Harry's hands so fast he nearly got a rope burn and trotted over to get between Luna and the door. When she tried to slip around it, she was nipped for her disobedience.

"Ouch. All right…" Luna rubbed her shoulder. The horse butted her away from the door and out towards the meadow. As soon as it reached grass it began snatching mouthfuls then lifting its head to stare around and into the Forest, the black hide quivering on its withers as if there were flies bothering it. Harry could see it was still upset. He must have said something aloud, because Luna replied quietly, "That's normal behaviour. When horses are upset they comfort-eat. It's almost human, isn't it?" she added, smiling up at him.

Harry smiled back, not really hearing what she said. He was distracted by the way the morning sun brought out the faintest pink bloom in her cheeks, and how well it contrasted with the blue of her eyes. She had just asked him a question. "Sorry? Oh, yes. You're right."

She beamed at him. It was quite captivating how her lips curved. There was something about the finely formed upper lip set against the softness of the lower lip that was positively artistic, and -

And she'd just asked him another question. "Oh. Of course," Harry mumbled.

Luna startled him by clapping her hands. "Oh, how wonderful. Daddy will be so pleased to have you come and carry the equipment on our next trip to Siberia!"

"What?"

With a hurt look, Luna walked off towards the horse, saying over her shoulder, "Honestly, Harry. You haven't listened to a word I've said." She clucked to the horse, which had pulled the leadrope out to its full extent to better get to a stand of tall grass. "Draco, have you eaten anything yet?" she said, dragging the horse over to where Draco was sitting on his bucket by the tap.

Harry stood there feeling like a complete idiot. What was wrong with him? Luna of all people, thinking he was daft… now there was a pot/kettle situation. And now she was arm in arm with Malfoy and pulling on the leadrope for the horse to follow. The three Slytherin girls followed along to Draco's left, Millicent giving Harry an unreadable look. And Draco was saying to Luna, "Not terribly. I never had dinner last night, so you'd think I'd be starving, but for some reason I'm not hungry."

"Well, having a monster squashed in front of you must make quite a good appetite suppressant."

Draco chuckled. "There's something for all those who want to go on a diet. Not a method I'd recommend, but there's always someone willing to give the craziest fads a go. No, it was the smell that put me off food… Ugh. Change of topic, please."

Harry paused, feeling like an outsider all over again. What the hell was Luna doing chatting so comfortably with a complete git like Malfoy? She was flirting with him, he'd swear it on Godric Gryffindor's grave.

The horse paused, giving Harry a measuring look, and refused to move when Luna tugged on the rope. Harry realised it didn't want him near the stables. When he started after the others the horse twitched its ears and looked a little less tense. Harry wondered again how smart horses were – this one was too aware of students near a place it considered dangerous. Amazing – in less than a day it had gone from attacking people to making sure they were safe from monsters. Well, Harry would go along to make sure the horse was all right, that was all. If Luna wanted to be chummy with that snake Malfoy it was her business. Harry would be magnanimous when she came back crying and saying how Malfoy had treated her so badly. Harry would heroically refrain from saying I told you so. Hell, he'd survived Voldemort. He could stop himself from saying I told you so. And in the mean time he'd… keep an eye on the horse.

He walked around to the right hand side of the horse and put his hand on its shoulder as they walked, feeling the lean muscle slide under fine skin and over strong bone. "How about finding a nice place for that picnic?" he asked idly.

"Sounds like a plan," Draco said. Luna smiled at Harry over the horse's back.

Harry pretended not to notice.

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