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There’s unicorn blood smeared on the ground. It is like white gold, silver really. It glints under the swaying lantern light, mercurial and dizzying. Unicorn blood is thicker than normal blood, and it has healing properties. It can be given freely, but the trail splashed on the gnarled roots and dusty earth suggests a level of brutality, of violence in the extraction. Whatever is killing the unicorns cares not for the curse that follows. She avoids stepping in it when she can, afraid the bad luck might take her too. Traces of the blood gild the curling ivy leaves that Hermione parts and steps through following Hagrid’s comforting mass and Harry’s nimble quickness with quick steps, uneager to be left behind for even a moment.
She has never had a detention before and even though Hagrid is here it still seems dangerous to go and look for something that is killing unicorns in the dead of night. But wizards are senseless and illogical, and this is more interesting than writing lines, so she says nothing. Whatever it is that is murdering unicorns is something dark and terrible, and her hands are clammy and tensed around her wand as she follows Harry and Hagrid into the shadowed underbelly of the forbidden forest. Though at the very least, her voice and her wand remain steady.
Harry and Malfoy had found the unicorn and the monster, the wraith that must have been responsible for all of the other attacks, too. Malfoy, cowardly and skittish had run off before he had even seen whatever had been drinking the unicorn blood, but Harry had stayed longer, and he could describe the ragged veils of the cloaked figure and horrible way it had moved, craning over the unicorn, and then gliding towards Harry like a specter, like a petrifying sort of ghost. Lord Voldemort, the centaurs had claimed. She had tensed up when he told the story, and her eyes flickered to every wavering shadow as Harry led them to the corpse.
The unicorn is a terrible thing. The most beautiful thing that she has ever seen. Pale, opalescent hair that looks softer than silk. Graceful legs. There are horrible gouges all over it, especially near the jugular. More blood pools beneath it. Staring downwards at the body, Hermione cannot help but think that Draco, all pale hair, fragility, and shining grey eyes was rather clever to run away.
…
By fourth year, she had not forgotten that night, could not. She had dreams about the unicorn, nightmares where clouds of shadows would pool down around the body and then her. However there had been rather greater dangers to worry about. Voldemort and basilisks and forgotten ancient chambers and werewolves and Harry and exams.
So, she had not looked too much into unicorns. They were rare and unlikely to do much harm to Harry. So, she had just looked a little, only enough to better understand their more magical properties— their uses in wand making, the effects their blood or hair had in potions, and only a small peak at the more fantastical stories about them in history.
But then, sometime after the Yule ball, Professor Grubbly-Plank subs for Hagrid during care of magical creatures and she learns all sorts of new things about unicorns, even pets the golden foals that the professor had corralled into pens for the students. And they are so much softer than anything she’d ever felt before and sweet too, pressing into her palm with nudging gentleness.
Normally unicorns don’t like boys, but the foals are less cautious and perhaps she only imagined it but she was sure she had seen Draco Malfoy with his gleaming, sunlit hair petting one in the pen across from hers.
…
In 5th year they discover, with the help of Dobby, the room of requirement, and though it is certainly very convenient and helpful, the theoretical possibilities of the place are stupendous. Given the chance, she would love to spend hours peeling it apart one piece at a time and figuring out how it works. But there is hardly time for that with O.W.L.s approaching. But that is beside the point, and she has finally learned how to produce a corporeal Patronus with help from Harry, and she is pleased.
But then Dobby comes and warns them that Umbridge has discovered them, and they have to run. So, she does, and as she does, she notices that there is a certain tapestry across the hall from the room of requirement. A unicorn chained inside of a cage and perhaps it was only pomegranate juice staining the creature, dripping down from the fruit tree above, but perhaps it was blood. She doesn't check, busy as she is luring Umbridge out of the castle and avoiding the inquisitorial squad and breaking into the ministry of magic.
…
Harry is convinced that Draco Malfoy is a death eater in 6th year, and she is unconvinced at first. But then he proves her wrong.
…
Bellatrix tortures her until she lies gasping and delirious and still and hopeless with pain on the ebony black floors of Malfoy’s childhood home. And she lies and lies and screams until Bellatrix manages to pull half-truths out of her.
Draco, all gaunt and pale had watched it happen. His eyes had locked on hers as she had sobbed and pleaded and lied about the sword of Godric Gryffindor. And he had watched, stiff and unmoving and she might have hated him for it, and she did for a moment.
Draco’s eyes had glinted mercury silver, scared, thick with some emotion that had been too difficult to place. In all the shadows, the color reminded her of the clotted and thick unicorn blood that had shimmered on gnarled roots and ivy leaves so long ago.
But she cannot bother to fixate on that peculiar similarity because she is throbbing with a blistering, sharp pain, and Bellatrix is carving into her with excitement and there is only pain until Harry manages to escape and Bellatrix fixes her silver knife at Hermione’s throat and presses until the sound of some pathetic little sob is wrung out from her.
Dobby drops the chandelier, and it explodes as it hits the floor, a hurricane of crystal and sharp chains and shattering glass. And it lands on top of her and she is bleeding even more now, and Draco is bleeding, too—she notices when Ron drags her and the goblin back towards Harry and Dobby too.
…
“Hawthorne and unicorn hair. Ten inches precisely. Reasonably springy. This was the wand of Draco Malfoy,” Ollivander said.
Harry had won it from Draco, and so its loyalties had shifted according to Ollivander. It is a terrible thing to lose your wand, like losing your hand. And Hermione understands now why Harry had been so upset. Bellatrix’s wand feels dark and nasty in her hand. Malevolent, like it might snap at her if she is not careful.
What will Draco do now, she wonders, trapped as he is at his family home? What will happen to him, to his family? They had called the dark lord. They would be punished she imagined, and something clenches inside of her. Draco had not been eager or excited when the snatchers had dragged them inside. He had been tense and uncertain and afraid. He hadn't lied, but he hadn't told the truth either.
The wand makes the wizard, Ollivander had told when he handed over her wand to her a lifetime ago. Vinewood and Dragon heartstring. “I suspect you will be a fast learner, Miss Granger. Stubborn and a bit temperamental but powerful.”
Hawthorne and unicorn hair. It is disconcerting to know the particulars of Draco’s wand. And now that she does, the sinking sensation of worry somehow wraps its way up towards her throat. Voldemort cloaked in shadows and veiled darkness and gossamer strands of evil, never hesitated; he killed and tortured and maimed and devoured without remorse. Heartless. He killed unicorns, and that is worrying because Draco Malfoy, while hardly a unicorn, is certainly not evil.