The Young Padfoot *Book One*

The Forbidden Forest

"But what if it can't be saved?" I asked.

"I'm afraid we might have ter put it out of its misery," Hagrid informed us sadly, making me sigh.

"Who cares about that? What if the thing that hurt the unicorn finds us first?" Malfoy asked, fear evident in his voice.

"There's nothin' that lives in the Forest that'll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang," Hagrid assured him. "An' keep ter the path. Right, now, we're gonna split inter two parties an' follow the trail in diff'rent directions. There's blood all over the place, it must've bin staggerin' around since last night at least."

"I want Fang," Malfoy demanded, making us all look over at the ferocious looking boarhound.

"Fine," Hagrid agreed. "But just so you know, he's a bloody coward. So me, Harry an' Hermione'll go one way an' Draco, Neville, Emery an' Fang'll go the other." Hagrid gave me a sympathetic look. "Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we'll send up green sparks, right? An' if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an' we'll all come an' find yeh—so, be careful—let's go."

Neville, Malfoy, Fang, and I all walked in the opposite direction from the others. We were walking in silence for a few minutes before our vision got too dark so I took out my wand and muttered a handy little spell.

"Lumos."

With the extra light now there, we carried on walking before Neville spoke up.

"What do you think is hurting the unicorns?" Neville asked me, but before I could answer, Malfoy spoke up.

"I bet it's like a vicious werewolf," Malfoy told Neville, forgetting about his own fear, and instead trying to scare Neville.

"Oh, shut up, Malfoy," I warned him before looking over at Neville. "Don't worry, Neville. There aren't any werewolves in here."

Ok, that was technically a lie as I am pretty sure there was but Neville didn't need something else to be scared of.

"You promise?" Neville asked.

"I promise," I assured him. "And anyway, if whatever hurt that unicorn finds us first, we'll chuck Malfoy at it and then leg it."

"Hey!" Malfoy exclaimed, but we both ignored him.

"Ok," Neville agreed, a small glimmer of a smile on his face.

Not long later, I noticed that Malfoy was no longer with us, and clearly so had Neville.

"Where's he gone? Do you think the monster got him?" Neville whimpered, stepping closer to me.

"Malfoy! Wherever you are, this is not funny!" I called out to the darkness. "If you aren't back here in literally five seconds, we're leaving with out you and we're taking Fang!"

The dark forest around us remained silent before Neville grabbed my arm and his loud scream echoed around me. Panicked, I fired a red spark into the air and turned to face Neville.

It was clear to me what had happened straight away. Malfoy had jumped out at Neville.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" I accused a laughing Malfoy.

"You should have seen your faces," Malfoy laughed.

Neville was still physically shaking so I linked my arm with his, whistled for Fang and continued walking away from Malfoy, muttering angrily under my breath.

But we had only made it a few feet when the loud thrashing of someone running through the branches occurred. I turned to my left and saw Hagrid running over to us.