Chapter Text
She was ancient, she knew. How old exactly, she wasn’t certain but She had been in that forest since its conception. She was the crash of sea water and foam upon the rocks, the whisper of lovers between their sheets. She was the crackling of synapses being connected, the sigh of snowflakes as they made their descent from the night sky. She was Magic—or at least the evidence of it. She was a unicorn.
She had taken this form to better understand her world for she could no longer find her way through it. There were far too little people who believed in her. Those who remained pulled her into their plane and she spent the eons living just out of their grasp; observing them as they came to her forest to seek her out. They rode their thundering horses and sent their dogs to flush her out. They even chained maidens to trees, offerings to an altar that had no deity to preside it.
She lived in her woods for eons, content to play and bask in her own glory.
But one day, a maiden came to her seeking help for the thestral in her care. This maiden’s name was Luna and she had been running from a faraway land where the king was as beautiful as he was cruel. His tongue was a sword, his teeth its gilded cage. “We are cousins,” Luna had explained to the unicorn. The maiden’s voice had a sweet lilt to it, as if she were already dreaming and she wore a dress of butterfly wings, all wild colors and bold lines in the darkening twilight.
She was respectful, this Luna. She did not try to touch the unicorn or hold eye contact for too long. She only followed like a mote of dust in a shaft of light. “You are the last, you know,” the maiden said one evening as she caressed her thestral’s flank. “The last of his unicorns.”
The unicorn lifted her head and flared her nostrils. The immortal Her knew this to be false, but to be told such a lie to her face was tantamount to betrayal. She spoke. What do you mean? I cannot be the last, because what they are, so am I. And I am here. So, there in the world they must be.
When they were done walking, the kind maiden changed the subject, her dreaming eyes finally closing when she lay on a bed of gomphrena. “The dragon will come to roost, and who shall he find in his cave? A red knight coveting his golden flame.”
While Luna slept, the unicorn kept watch. How am I the last? And if I am, where did they go? She looked up at the night sky, the stars winking silver like the flecks in a dragon’s eye. Perhaps they can be found if they have left only so long ago.
The unicorn looked around her then. The lavender shadows lovingly shielding the creatures who slept. All was still. But on the sound of an owl’s snowy wings, the unicorn stood and ran after its ghostly feathers. Perhaps the owl bore a message from lands far away.
And before she knew it, they were at the end of her wisteria woods. She could follow it out. If she wanted.
I do not have to be gone for long. Perhaps they are searching for me while I hide.
The next town over was not so far. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but surely there would be signs of the others. If the unicorns were not in their woods, then they must be on the wind or in places yet touched by sunlight.
~*~
The first human she encountered spoke in a simpering, crooning way. He clicked his tongue as he held a rope in his shaking hands. “Come over here, sweet thing. A pretty mare, aren’t you?” He was bald, and rattish with large teeth. “You’ll be the bell of the ball come auction time. They’ll not laugh at Peter when I get my due.”
He lunged for her clumsily, throwing the rope at her. With a wet schluk, he fell into the mud.
You dare? She shook her head indignantly and stamped the ground with her cloven hooves. I am the song of a lioness, the fire that begat the world! I, a mare!? She ran, leaving him to wonder in the filth.
What has come of the world that man cannot recognize me? Are they all so blind to the magic I am? The travesty I could wreak upon their kind? Perhaps they are all like the king Luna told me about.
~*~
As day turned to night and night into day, the unicorn had yet to find her quarry. So, she found a place to rest. It was not like her woods, filled with wisteria and gomphrena, but it was covered enough and green in its infancy.
It was here in the copse that Madame Lestrange found her. Madame Lestrange was a devastatingly beautiful woman. Her hair was inky and dark. It twisted this way and that, shadowing the pale skin of her viper sharp face. In her hands was a wand of wicked intent, the conduit for her magic.
She beckoned her assistant close. “Look! What do you see, Potter?”
The boy in question looked down. His black scruff of hair fell over his glasses as he lied. “A mare. A white mare.”
“You don’t say?” The witch cackled. “She’s too precious to bleed, but I’ll make galleon or five with a bit of magic!” She waved her wand and violet sparks flew from the tip to place a glamour on the unicorn’s brow. Another horn glowing softly atop her crown. Madame Lestrange snapped her fingers in Potter’s gaunt face. “A cage of iron shall be her fate, but build it around her lest she wake. We’ll make camp here and send word to all the towns that a unicorn’s been found.” The raven-haired witch danced and cawed with glee. “We’ll charge a galleon a wish!”
~*~
The unicorn stood within her iron prison. It was the morning of opening day. She had been with Madame Lestrange for weeks now, and she had tried all she could to leave, but her magic was stayed by the iron. A simple bombarda maxima would not do, and she could not bare to touch the damned bars.
“You’ll stay with me for a time.” Said Madame Lestrange as she pressed herself dearly to the cage. The black coals of her eyes blazed with lusty greed. “Make me a fortune to live my days in ease!”
You may be right, but like myself, most things will outlast you, witch. The lives you steal and hoard will not give you their years.
Madame Lestrange chuckled, caressing the flaking iron with manicured nails. “Think what you like, but it is not I who must be glamoured so I can be seen for what I am. There are almost none who would know you now” She left her till evening, singing a song of the deathly hallows.
~*~
Later the boy came to her too, his glasses were broken, and often fell apart, though he could have easily used magic to repair them if he thought about it. His meadow green eyes looked sad, but curious. “Why?” He was a wizard, the unicorn remembered. “Why did you rest there? She’ll never let you go, now. She’ll carve her name into your horn to immortalize herself!”
She balked at that, rearing and stamping her cloven hooves. Her sins will swallow her soon. Her Death lies in one of these cages.*
Across the circus grounds was the veela Narcissa. Clothed in nothing but her hair, Narcissa was lithe and ageless. An immortal like the unicorn herself. The elegant shape of a woman covered in feathers dipped in moonlight, but where hands and feet should have been, talons clutched the perch inside her cage.
There she is. The unicorn said.
“Narcissa was the wife of a prince once—Prince Lucius. Their love burned so bright they say she gave birth to the dragon in Wiltshire. They also say that Narcissa’s the sister of Madame Bellatrix Lestrange, and that her love drove Bellatrix mad with jealousy… so when an opportunity arose, Bellatrix put a deadly curse upon him.” The wizard cleaned his glasses with too large, dirty robes. “As Lucius lay dying, he paid the witch to keep Narcissa safe. But she betrayed them both. Now Narcissa will never fly again.”
The unicorn tossed her head, uninterested in these fables. And you? Why are you here now, telling me these tales?
“My name is Harry, Harry Potter.” He spared a glance around him, whispering with urgency to the unicorn. “Tonight. After the show, I’ll come to you again and set you free. She should never have done this to you. To the veela! Or these other poor sods.” Harry Potter pulled the gnarled brown hat off of his head. It seemed to grin at her in the firelight. “I’m no great magic weaver, or curse breaker, but I’ve some tricks in this hat and I’ll do what I can to set you free.”
So you’re a wizard after all, Potter.
“It’s Harry. Just Harry.”