Sinope's Fiction: Unicorn Blood

Title: Unicorn Blood
Author: Sinope at (no spam!) gmail dot com
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Luna/Hermione
Warning: Rape
Summary: 'I remember what cannot have happened, and forget something that is happening to me now.' - Lady Amalthea, in The Last Unicorn
Author's notes: Many, many thanks to stiletto and switchknife for extremely helpful betaing and advice.
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work. No profit was made; no ownership is implied.

Luna always wore a vial of unicorn's blood around her neck; silver and opaque, it glittered darkly in the firelight during nights when she and Hermione stayed up talking, lit by a fire charmed to shed light no further than their faces. Hermione, who knew all the practical facts about unicorns - those who killed them became cursed; their horns could be ground for a potent curative; only a virgin could touch one without diminishing its glory - listened raptly as Luna whispered tales of beauty beyond human imagining.

Luna told her about the Great Hunt of 1520, when a thousand virgin youths perished in the quest to capture one magnificent unicorn stallion, brighter than the sun in his glory; and when the lone youth of purest virtue finally stumbled into the unicorn's grove, he fell to the ground and wept in awe, forsaking the world of man. She told of the island of unicorns, the sole remnant of an ancient archipelago many days north of Atlantis; every other island, at the touch of a man's boot, had crumbled to fine gold dust. But on the darkest nights, when every mountain in Harris looked like the shadow of the Dark Lord's dragons, Luna told Hermione about the origins of unicorns. "Countless aeons ago," she began, "the very first dragon woke from his shell, hungry. Now, every dragon craves above all the tenderness of a virgin, whose purity is an affront to his insatiable hunger. So this dragon caught scent of a virgin girl, crouching in her muddy hut, and he flapped on new-grown wings to devour her. But the moment he rent her flesh, dazzling light burst forth from her: and in her place stood the first unicorn, who shook her shining horn and drove him from that land." Afterwards, Luna would stroke the teardrop-shaped amulet, and Hermione would close her eyes and pretend to believe in fairy-tales.

(Luna clutched her amulet even while sleeping, whispering unintelligible dreams with lips chapped and mesmerizingly pink. Her nails always looked chewed-on, with faint lines of strawberry-red where she'd bitten them to the raw, and as lonely night followed lonely night, Hermione had to bite her own hands to stop from reaching over, cradling the other young Auror's palm, and soothing the split skin with a kiss. By the light of morning, though, the shivery urges were easy to dismiss.)

Every day, the deep mud-tracks smeared with sheep's blood grew more frequent. They told each other that they were surely getting closer, that they'd find the hideout any day, that then they could leave this rocky island with its perpetual gray rain. And at last, on the first day of May, the rain broke and they found the damp remains of a wizarding cigarette - mere days old, and an easy task for Hermione to magically trace.

All they needed before they could return, then, was a location; as they walked, they whispered excitedly of clean plastic ferry seats and Nutella on melba toast from the Tarbert grocer's. Hermione vividly remembered Luna's last "- and then we can floo back to London, and first thing I'll -" and then the dragon was upon them.

In a heartbeat, both had their wands out, Apparating to nearby hills. The dragon, an enormous iridescent beast that shimmered with reflections of the sky's gray, reared in fury and charged straight at Luna's hill, billowing red flames that singed the grass a split second after her sharp pop of Disapparation to a hill near Hermione. The dragon whirled around with terrifying grace, extended his leathery wings, and began to fly toward Luna again, still ignoring Hermione, and Hermione kept waiting for Luna to Disapparate again but she didn't, she didn't. Finally, Hermione desperately aimed a piercing spell straight at the dragon's eye, glancing over at Luna, who had started scrambling down the hill and into the rocky valley. "Somebody put up a shield against Apparating!" she said, then ducked behind a cluster of boulders.

Hermione looked up at the dragon; he had fallen to the ground with a roar, and was now stumbling on foot, blindly but surely heading toward Luna. Whoever had cast the shield was still out of sight. Hermione cast another piercing spell into the dragon's other eye, a third at the hollow of his neck, and a forth at a large boulder across the valley, which burst into an explosion of rubble. The silvery dragon, now bleeding a blackish fluid out of both eyes, let out a mournful roar and turned back and forth as though unsure of his direction.

Meanwhile, Hermione rushed down the hill, stumbling on grass-knolls and finally ducking down beside Luna, her mind racing. "Are you a virgin?" she said suddenly, frantically.

"Yes, I suppose so, but -" Luna began.

"That's why he knows where you are!" Hermione began to speak rapidly and intensely. "Look, he's blind and the pain should keep him stunned for a few minutes, but not forever. We can't Apparate out of here, and two people can't fully Stun a dragon that big. So I'm sorry, Luna, but we've got to - well -" she twisted her mouth strangely, then fixed her jaw - "well, we've got to have you not be a virgin any more."

Luna's eyes widened like a cornered, twitching rabbit's. "No. No, we can just run, we'll - Hermione, we'll think of something else."

"It's the only way," Hermione repeated, trying to keep her voice from breaking.

Luna, her lips frozen and white, glanced at Hermione, then turned suddenly and began to run out of the hiding place. Quicker still, Hermione grabbed Luna's arm, closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and muttered I'm sorry. A Stunning Spell later, Luna lay still on the ground, her eyes still staring open in accusation.

Hermione could hear the dragon's bellowing roars, still approaching but slowly. Her eyes darted around on the ground, finally fixing on a small oblong stone, which a rapid incantation transfigured into a longer, thicker phallus. Still listening for the approaching dragon, she unzipped and yanked down Luna's muddy trousers, pushing aside the thin cotton knickers to the sound of tearing elastic. Hermione slipped one finger between Luna's legs, then cursed softly. "I'm sorry, Luna, but I don't know any lubrication spells. So I'll have to - well - I'm sorry."

Hermione bit her lip hard, trying to avoid the blank, wide eyes still staring at her. She pushed her hand back beneath the knickers, feeling around for Luna's clitoris and stroking it rapidly with trembling fingers. She could taste a smear of blood from her bit lip, but she kept stroking, moving her hand mechanically back and forth over the tender thin skin, teasing her fingers over the lips of Luna's vagina. Half without thinking, senses still focused on the dragon's approach, she set down the phallus and slid her other hand into her own underpants, rubbing back and forth with the same rhythm and mechanically trying to think of arousing thoughts: dark-nippled breasts, lips suckling at her neck, thighs - oh God Luna's thighs spread open so helpless so white untouched pale mine penetrated mine - and Hermione was rocking with overwhelming orgasm as dragon wings began to flap in the distance and tears trickled down her cheeks.

She pulled her fingers out of Luna and grabbed the phallus, smearing it with the slickness of her own come, then pulled Luna's trousers down further and placed its tip into the lust-red crevice of her vagina. Her other hand kept stroking Luna as she began to push it in, slowly but firmly, wiggling and nudging it in whenever it seemed to stop. Luna's lips, Hermione couldn't help seeing, were frozen half-open in protest, and her wide eyes reflected the blank sky, and at the moment that the phallus slid as deep as it could go the amulet of unicorn's blood burst over Luna's chest in a puddle of dead, tarnished gray.

Now, Hermione told herself as she heard a loud bellow of confused-sounding fury. Again she aimed her wand at a boulder across the valley, shattering it with one spell, and the dragon turned and began to lumber in that direction. Hermione looked back down at the phallus in her hands, slimy with whitish come and smudged with scarlet blood, then hurled it abruptly away from her, as hard as she could throw.

Carefully, tenderly, she pulled Luna's knickers back in place, drew up her trousers, and zipped them in place. Ennervate, she said softly, and Luna jerked to life, turning her eyes away without saying a word.

Luna said nothing about what happened as they hurried out of the shield and Apparated to Tarbert, and she said nothing on the field report, save a quiet request to be partnered with Ronald Weasley on her next mission. When they sat together on the ferry from Harris to Skye, Hermione noticed that Luna wore a plain silver chain around her neck, but Luna herself: she fixed her eyes on the furthermost waves and whispered unintelligible dreams.

finis.