[Chapter Size: 2200 Words.]
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Swoosh, swoosh
An arrow sliced through the air with a sharp whistle. A dense rain of arrows poured down on them.
Pat, pat.
Hooves thundered against the ground, producing a loud, resounding noise.
Voldemort turned and flicked his wand, deflecting every arrow that struck the transparent barrier.
"Those irritating creatures are back again."
A long, piercing whistle rang out as the centaur leader charged forward with bow in hand, shouting commands.
"Leave!"
This sparked an impassioned roar from the centaurs.
"How dare you, how dare you!"
"Get out!"
"Get out! This is our territory!"
Voldemort laughed coldly and continued hurling spells at the charging herd.
"You filthy, despicable bastard, how dare you give me orders…"
The centaurs raced through the forest, nimbly dodging the green beams of light Voldemort fired while loosing arrows in return.
While Voldemort is focused on them, I'll take advantage of his distraction. Amanda turned and pushed herself upright, gripping her wand in her other hand.
She glanced at her left hand, numb with pain and slick with blood, apparently broken. But what mattered most right now was…
She cast a quick look toward the open clearing where Draco lay, then crouched and carefully retreated until she was beyond Voldemort's control.
She hurried toward the edge of the clearing. Draco lay motionless on the ground, still curled up like a child.
"Draco! Draco!"
Amanda crouched beside him, gently shaking his shoulder and patting his face.
But Draco kept his eyes tightly shut. His face was as white as parchment, and he remained utterly still, completely expressionless.
His lips had turned a grayish white, and if not for the faint warmth lingering in his body, he would have been indistinguishable from a corpse.
Amanda lowered her head and pressed her ear against his chest. His heartbeat was weak, intermittent, so faint she could barely hear it.
Draco might be close to death.
Amanda's fingers were icy, her lips trembling slightly.
"No, there has to be another way! Unicorn blood can prolong life…"
Amanda looked toward the unicorn lying in a pool of blood not far away.
She crouched and approached it silently. Sensing her presence, the unicorn opened its eyes and looked at her with gentle, moon-white eyes. Its long silver lashes were wet with shimmering tears, giving it an appearance both beautiful and sorrowful.
To kill a unicorn and drink its blood is to suffer an eternal curse.
"Episkey."
"Episkey."
Amanda murmured the spell softly, and after repeating it twice, the unicorn's wounds began to knit together, its strength gradually returning.
Using her wand with her right hand felt unfamiliar, so she repeated the healing spell several more times until the unicorn's injuries faded almost entirely.
The unicorn gazed at Amanda with clear gratitude.
Fortunately, its wounds were not severe. While treating it, Amanda realized the main reason the unicorn had been unable to move was that both of its hind legs were broken.
Amanda let out a breath of relief.
She had cast too many healing spells in quick succession, draining a great deal of her magic, and was thoroughly exhausted. Gathering what strength she had left, she collected a small pool of silvery unicorn blood from the ground.
Even if it's off the ground, at a critical moment like this, Draco wouldn't mind.
Amanda pinched Draco's chin and slowly fed him the unicorn blood.
As the silvery liquid slid down his throat, Draco's face gradually regained its color, life slowly returning to his features. Even so, his eyes remained tightly shut, showing no sign of waking.
Amanda looked around. The centaurs appeared and vanished throughout the Forbidden Forest, where flames, spells, and flickering shadows filled the air.
"We need to find a safe place." she thought.
The unicorn nearby suddenly stood up, walked over to her, lowered its front legs, and knelt before Amanda. Under the unicorn's gentle gaze, Amanda understood its intention.
Using her elbows, she dragged Draco up by the arms and hauled him onto the unicorn's back with all her strength, her broken left hand felt completely useless, then climbed up herself.
The unicorn cast a final glance at Voldemort and the centaurs battling amid the raging flames, then bolted toward the far side of the Forbidden Forest.
It ran at lightning speed, leaving everything behind in the blink of an eye. Towering flames, the centaurs' roars, and Voldemort's incantations, all of it vanished within a minute.
The unicorn finally stopped beside a stream. It crouched, turned slightly, and gently set Amanda and Draco down on the grass by the water.
It stepped into the stream and lowered its head to drink. Moonlight bathed the unicorn, making it shimmer like a spirit of the forest.
Amanda stepped forward and stroked its long, silver-white horn. "Thank you."
The unicorn seemed to understand and nodded in response.
Then it shook its dazzling white mane and disappeared from Amanda's sight like a flash of lightning.
Draco seemed to have finally woken up.
Lying on the grass, he slowly opened his eyes. "Ah… Amanda, what are you doing here?"
"Am I already dead… or am I dreaming?" he murmured.
Amanda hurried over and knelt beside him to check on his condition. She rested her head against Draco's chest, listening to his heartbeat.
Unicorn blood truly possessed extraordinarily powerful magic. Not long after he drank it, Draco's heart resumed a steady, strong rhythm.
Once she confirmed his heartbeat had returned to normal, she covered her mouth and hugged him tightly.
"That's good… that's really good."
Draco was nervous and at a loss, managing only to raise a hand and give her an awkward, comforting pat on the back.
"Amanda, is it really you? What are you doing here? Where's Voldemort? Where are we?"
He seemed to calm down a little and quickly fired off a series of questions.
But after escaping danger and confirming Draco was safe, the tension holding Amanda together finally gave way.
She felt dizzy and couldn't think clearly after hearing his voice; her eyelids grew so heavy they felt as if they might close at any moment.
Draco frowned and tried to sit up, letting out a breath as he managed it.
"Your hand?"
Amanda suddenly realized that in the chaos, she had forgotten to heal her left hand.
She raised her wand and murmured to it, "Episkey."
The spell drained the very last of her physical and mental strength.
She watched as the flesh of her left hand slowly knit itself back together, and then darkness closed in, her consciousness sinking into chaos.
Hooves thundered against the ground, shaking the earth with a deafening roar, while the furious bellows of the centaurs echoed all around.
Firelight.
Firelight was everywhere.
Flames stretched endlessly toward the sky, crackling and popping, filling the air with a thick scent of smoke and burning. Yet amid the chaos, there was a clearing bathed in cold, blue moonlight, pale as snow.
Draco lay motionless at its center.
Her limbs felt as heavy as lead as she moved toward him step by step. Draco's body was cold, his skin tinged with an unnatural bluish white.
His gray pupils were unfocused, like rain clouds and mist before dawn.
"Merlin…"
Voldemort spoke her name in a hoarse voice.
She spun around abruptly and came face to face with a pale, unfamiliar figure. On that corpse-like face, its pupils glowed red, like freshly spilled blood.
In an instant, her left hand felt as though it had been stung by a thousand bees, numb, itching violently, as if the flesh were about to be torn from the bone.
The face twisted grotesquely, like the surface of a lake rippling under raindrops, and let out a shrill, sinister laugh.
"Hahahaha!!!"
"Ah!!"
Amanda gasped, her heart pounding, and snapped her eyes open.
"Uh, Amanda… you're awake."
Draco, who had been sitting beside her, looked startled and quickly released her hand.
"Cough…"
Only then did Amanda realize that Draco had been holding her hand the entire time. She slowly sat up and raised her left hand to examine it.
Aside from the slight misalignment of the ring finger, it was almost completely healed.
"Draco, were you healing me?"
"Um… You fainted right after finishing the healing spell last night. I haven't learned healing magic yet, I just heard you recite it, so… I tried to keep it going a little longer."
Draco looked worn out. His eyelids were red, and he was breathing heavily as he spoke, as if he had exhausted every last bit of strength.
"You didn't keep it up all night, did you?"
Amanda looked at him with a mix of amusement and tenderness.
Draco turned his head away awkwardly. "How could that be? I just woke up."
Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Right."
She lifted her hand and cast another healing spell on her left hand.
"Episkey."
As a warm, gentle light flowed down, her ring finger straightened with a soft crack, completely healed.
Amanda pulled out a thick stack of rock cakes, ones Hagrid had forced them to eat the day before and handed a few to Draco.
"Let me have some first. I'm starving."
"Uh…"
She had underestimated the power of rock cake; one bite nearly cracked her teeth.
Soon, though, the two of them chewed in silence, no longer complaining about Hagrid's terrible cooking as they had the day before. They had lost far too much energy and desperately needed to replenish it.
It was already broad daylight when Amanda finally looked around. Judging by the shadows cast by the trees in the sunlight, it must have been around noon.
They had caused such a commotion the night before that it was impossible not to have drawn attention beyond the Forbidden Forest. It seemed the professors still hadn't found them.
The unicorn must have guided them deeper into the Forbidden Forest, to a place it considered safe.
"Um… can you still walk?" Amanda studied the direction of the stream.
The stream most likely led to the Black Lake. If they followed it, they should be able to reach Hogwarts before nightfall.
"It should be possible." After saying that, Draco took a deep breath and tried to stand.
The moment he did, his legs trembled uncontrollably, like overcooked noodles, and he couldn't summon any strength at all.
The Cruciatus Curse is one of the three Unforgivable Curses because it is profoundly evil, cruel, and terrifyingly powerful. The Cruciatus Curse exists solely to torment its victim, inflicting unbearable pain.
The night before, Draco had been tortured by two Cruciatus Curses cast by Voldemort, and Quirrell had also forced him to drink a potion of unknown origin.
If not for the unicorn blood from the previous night, Draco likely would not have survived.
Amanda helped him up, and they managed only a few difficult steps before giving up. Draco no longer cared that his robes were filthy. He collapsed onto the grass and let out a helpless sigh.
"At this pace, it would probably take us days to get back."
Amanda sighed, sat down beside him, and absentmindedly fiddled with her wand.
"At noon, if I sent a spark into the sky now, would it be visible from far away? And more importantly, if a professor didn't see it and it attracted Voldemort's or Quirrell's attention instead… that would be disastrous." she thought.
"Let's rest for a while."
Under the warm autumn sunlight, the depths of the Forbidden Forest no longer felt as sinister or terrifying as they had the night before. They sat on the slightly yellowed grass, and aside from the sound of running water, there was nothing else to be heard.
Amanda briefly recounted what had happened the night before.
Draco lowered his gaze, silently watching the stream not far away, his eyes shimmering with an emotion that was hard to name.
After a long silence, he finally spoke. "Amanda… thank you."
"But don't take risks like that again, or you might…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Amanda shrugged. "I'm fine…"
"No."
Draco clenched his fists, his face faintly flushed, as if he were holding something back.
"Amanda!! Draco!" Suddenly, a clear boyish voice rang out in the distance.
That voice.
"Harry!"
Amanda sprang to her feet and shouted toward the source of the sound. A handsome centaur came galloping toward them from the edge of the forest.
He had platinum-blond hair, a pale golden horse's body, and a long silver mane cascading down his back.
As he drew closer, Harry leapt down from his back and thanked the platinum-haired centaur gratefully. "Thank you, Firenze!"
Firenze dipped his head, his striking blue eyes serious. "These are troubled times… You should leave this place as quickly as possible."
Amanda sighed. "But Draco still can't stand."
Harry then noticed Draco behind Amanda.
Draco was sitting on the ground, his face pale, offering Harry a weak smile, he looked so fragile it seemed as though he might faint at any moment.
Harry exclaimed in shock, "Draco? What happened?!"
He shouted as he rushed over to check on him.
Amanda turned to Firenze. "Um… Firenze, could I ask you a favor?"
Firenze's blue eyes shone like brilliant sapphires.
"Have you seen our professors? If so, please tell them we're here. Thank you."
"Of course."
Firenze turned and galloped swiftly into the forest, disappearing from sight in moments.
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