A very weary Minerva McGonagall half-walked, half-shuffled into Dumbledore's office, a cup full of a potent mix of wit-sharpening potion, wideye potion, and concentrated coffee in her hand. Interestingly, she was holding the cup upside down, as gravity had apparently decided that it would rather not deal with something of that potency. And despite nursing a very potent potion that would definitely keep her head up and eyes open, metaphorically and literally, McGonagall visibly fought to stay awake.

Dumbledore immediately recognized the condition she was in. Wordlessly, his magic pushed her down into a chair and pried the drink from her hands. "Minnie, please. You must stop pulling these serial all-nighters."

Despite her weariness, McGonagall gave her mentor and friend an almost manic smile. "I've almost got it. I'm so close! Even after the latest setbacks, I can almost taste it."

"You're going to give yourself a stroke," Dumbledore cautioned. "You need to rest. Mr. Potter can wait a few more days."

"But I've got the list." She held up the sheet of parchment she'd been clutching in her other hand.

"You didn't have to do that just yet," Dumbledore implored.

"I wanted to!" She suddenly snapped. Her head bobbed, and the rage was gone almost as fast as it had come. "Sorry. Let me fill you in, then I can sleep."

"I'd much prefer you get some shuteye now, but if you insist..." Dumbledore allowed.

"I do. I got a letter regarding a newly discovered facet of human transfiguration, and while it does simplify the work that Harry will have to do, it also presents a number of issues. Albus, I don't think this is going to work as well as we want," McGonagall replied. "There's still a slim chance, though, and I've spent the last two days straight teasing out improvement after improvement to get those odds up." She smiled, weary, yet proud of herself.

"And what are his odds?"

"Before we take any measurements on them and adjust accordingly? One-in-ten that it goes perfectly, roughly seven-in-ten that they achieve half-transfigured but serviceable forms, and roughly two-in-ten that their animagus forms come out crippled and disfigured. That's per head; it's entirely possible one is crippled while the others come out fine," Minerva reported. "And the longer this takes, the worse off his odds are going to be."

"How long do we have?" Albus frowned.

Minerva shrugged. "Months, I hope. We're working on the timescale of Harry's memory and subconscious; how well he remembers being human and how much he wants to become human have a big influence on the result. The more time he spends as a dragon and the more he accepts being a dragon, the harder this is going to be for him to change back. His Form Stone might be more of a blessing than we realized."

"I assume if we were to try to extol the value of being human again, it would help them through that transition?"

"Ye—" The transfiguration professor cut herself off as she re-evaluated her answer. "Yes and no. It depends on the head and how they react to our efforts. If they accept it, sure, it would help. But if they reject it..."

The threat of crippling Harry needn't be said. Both understood the consequences.

"Perhaps we should wait until after we perform the tests on him," Dumbledore suggested. McGonagall nodded in agreement.

"Where are they anyway?" she asked.

Dumbledore tilted his head slightly as if he were listening to something McGonagall couldn't hear. "About twenty kilometers south of Glasgow by now."

McGonagall opened her mouth, then closed it. She did that again. The third time she opened her mouth, the confused expression on her face had vanished. "Oh, right. You were going to send him off to avoid the dementors." She exhaled slowly. "I still think that's a wee bit foolish of you, sending him off without accompaniment."

"Perhaps originally, but there was an incident last night. Harmless, physically speaking, but they needed an outlet — not to mention the turmoil our conversation brought them. I suspect Hagrid and I would not be pleasant company for him right now, and no offense, but I don't think you could help him with this either."

McGonagall bristled slightly but didn't contradict him. Eventually, she forced herself to relax. "You at least have a tracking spell on him and the house-elves watching?"

"I do."

Minerva nodded once.

"And Minerva? Since they are not here at the moment, there is nothing you can do right now. Please, get some sleep."

Hedwig was a genius bird. Originally, we'd planned to simply follow her to Hermione's house, but after only a few minutes of flying, it became evident that her max speed and my minimum airspeed didn't quite match up. Before I could even think of a solution that didn't involve me carrying her in my claws or in my mouth, she settled down in the crook between Blue and Yellow's necks and grabbed onto a ridge of scales with her talons. After a minute of wordless experimentation, she even figured out a system to steer us by pecking at Blue or Yellow, depending on which way she wanted us to go.

It was quite clever.

As she settled in for the long flight, Blue caught sight of her hooting strangely with her eyes squinted oddly. Occasionally, as she started to relax, she'd squeeze her talons again and start the hooting all over again. She was laughing, we realized.

Red got the joke first. "I THINK WE'RE THE BIGGEST PACKAGE TO EVER BE DELIVERED BY OWL!"

"Hedwig is definitely going to have the best bragging rights among the mail owls,"Yellow quipped, adding to our amusement.

"Hedwig, Queen of the Mail Owlsss, Rider of Dragonsss, Empressss of the Cloudy Sssky," Green added, much to Hedwig's delight.

"You lot are going to give that bird an ego so big, she won't be able to fly anymore." Blue good-naturedly stuck out his tongue at the others.

Grey didn't add anything, but he smiled anyway. Hedwig was still the only one that could make him happy enough to smile naturally and without malice.

Far down below us, another city slowly slid into view. Despite it being daytime, we weren't really that scared of being seen for a couple reasons. First, people rarely looked up. Oliver Wood drilled that into our heads during quidditch practice, citing that almost half the time, players failed to score or catch the snitch because they didn't look up when they should have been. For non-quidditch players? We'd be surprised if more than a handful of people looked up high enough to see us.

Then, there was the fact that we were so high up, higher than we'd ever been on a broom. Even with all five of us combining our vision to look at the same spot, we could barely make out people, let alone their cars. And if we couldn't see them well, then it stood to reason that they couldn't see us well either. We'd just look like a bird or something.

And if they did recognize that we were a dragon, they'd probably either imagine that they're going a bit crazy, or they'd try to tell and would get obliviated.

Landing would be a bit tricky, but we already had a plan for that. When we finally got to the area where Hermione's house was, we sent Hedwig ahead to find a relatively empty and secluded spot. When she returned, we took note of where she was coming from.

Then we dove. Putting our wings into overdrive, we descended faster than a free-fall, gaining every bit of speed we could. Then, when we were about halfway to the ground, we activated our form stone. Clutching the satchel that had been in our claws tight to our chest, we curled up into a little ball and braced.

We slammed into the ground hard. We bounced, we rolled, we slid...

And then we got up and dusted ourselves off.

If we'd been transfigured the normal way, we'd have broken every bone in our body. But we were shell-transfigured, and for all that we looked like a normal human, we still had scales of mithril and bones of adamantium. At worst, we'd need some bruise cream, but we doubted even that would be necessary. Better yet, since we had nigh-indestructible skin, our altered form's clothes (which were actually fused to us) were similarly tough. There was no way a t-shirt would have survived that otherwise. It was a shame that the shell wasn't nearly as tough magically as it was physically.

Our satchel was a little scuffed-up though, but it was nothing a reparo couldn't mend. Better yet, nothing had fallen out. We weren't carrying much, but if we'd lost our vault key, the cloak, or the letter we'd forgotten to send to Hermione the other day, we'd have been quite upset.

Giving the satchel one last dust-off, we looked up to orient ourselves. We were in a small park and, thanks to the threatening clouds above, we were almost alone. Not completely, as it turned out, for there was a woman running towards us. And, if the Walkman clipped to her running shorts was any indication, she was a muggle.

"Holy crap, kid! Are you alright?!"

"We're fine," we said. Internally, Grey hissed, catching our mistake. "Excuse me, I need to get to my friend's house."

"Wait, no, hang on! You just fell from the sky!"

"Did I?" Grey asked. He made us look up. "Huh. Knew it was getting a bit windy out. Anyway, I need to go before it really starts raining."

We jogged off in the direction of the tree Hedwig was sitting in, ignoring the baffled woman behind us. Hedwig, the clever bird, flapped to a different tree as we approached, letting us adjust course without being obvious that we were following her. Perhaps intentionally, she led us away from the jogger and into the neighborhood that was strikingly similar to Privet Drive.

'Nice job, Grey,' Blue complimented sincerely.

'that was scary,' he admitted. 'i hate lying. makes me feel gross.'

'And yet you're better than any of us. I know I would have messed that up badly.' Yellow's statement came with a packet of flustered emotions shared across our consensus.

'still hate it.' But he hated almost everything, so that was basically normal for him. Still, we repeat: only Hedwig can get Grey to smile.

And speaking of Hedwig, it only took us three more tree hops to get us to Hermione's street, whereupon she glided down to the small, wooden gate in front of Hermione's house. We'd never been here before, so we took a second to find the house number and the street name, just to confirm that it was her address. It was, and we strolled up to her front door, Hedwig hopping onto our arm as we passed her.

We rang the doorbell.

We waited.

We rang it again.

We waited some more.

"Hedwig," we eventually asked our owl, "could you fly around and peek in the windows to see if Hermione and her family are home?"

With an enthusiastic hoot, Hedwig took off. It didn't take her more than a minute to return. The disappointed "woo" and a slump of her shoulders told us exactly what we suspected.

"SO, WHAT NOW?!"

'Well... we could always take the Knight Bus to London,' Blue thought, also picturing the leftover coins we had from last year and the borrowed wand we'd procured from the Room of Requirement. 'We go to Gringotts, get some muggle Pounds, and then investigate why Dudley likes the cinema so much. How does that sound?'

'We could wrap Hedwig in the cloak, too,' Green added enthusiastically.

'I like this plan.' With Yellow's support, it officially became our plan of action, even before Red and Grey had weighed in. (For the record, the vote was unanimous.)

We took a second to do something else first. From our bag, we withdrew a letter that we'd meant to send the other day and shoved it into the mail slot on the front door of Hermione's house. That accomplished, the five of us departed.

We stopped a short distance later and stood on the edge of the sidewalk. Though we weren't entirely sure what we were doing, we followed Dumbledore's advice and raised our temporary wand.

A second later, there was a whoosh followed by a loud horn that made us jump and Hedwig screech irritably. A second after that, a massive, purple, triple-decker bus rolled to a stop in front of us, the words "KNIGHT BUS" boldly proclaimed on the front.

As it rolled to a stop, the man standing on the back staircase announced, "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. I am Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor for the day." Stan tucked away the paper he'd been reading from and looked at us. "No cage for yer owl?"

"Didn't bring it," we replied. "Can we get to the Leaky Cauldron on this bus?"

"Sure can. A ticket's eleven Sickles."

We stepped up, reaching into our satchel for the money (which we had to remind ourselves not to eat). Trading it for a receipt printed from the device strapped to Stan's chest, we hopped onto the bus.

It was not like any bus we'd ever seen before. There were a whole bunch of random chairs, and absolutely none of them were strapped down in any way. Some of them were even upside down.

'THIS LOOKS LIKE FUN!' Red's loud thoughts bellowed in our head.

He was right. It was. It was very, very fun.

Well, not for Grey, but that was only because he was desperately trying to keep us from falling on Hedwig. If she hadn't been there, he still wouldn't have had fun, but he'd have had less not-fun.

Even with only two eyes at the moment, having five minds worth of brainpower meant we could simply notice more things at once. Yet even with that advantage, Diagon Alley still threatened to overwhelm us with the explosion of colors and shapes that made up the massive array of shops and the crowds that flowed like water between them. (Funnily enough, we remembered wishing we had eight more eyes the first time we came here. Now, if only we could use the eight new eyes we now had...) The smells similarly threatened to overwhelm us; between the countless apothecaries, pet stores, restaurants, and food stalls, we were basically salivating within minutes of walking in. And then the people... bloody hell!

It was bad enough that we ended up blowing the rest of our money on snacks, partially out of hunger and partially to distract ourselves. And sure, the snacks tasted great, but considering what we normally ate, they didn't even fill us up in the slightest.

It made us wonder just how much it was costing the school to feed us. Sure, much of our food was magically multiplied, but even then, it had to be a lot. Worse, we were still growing, and that meant so were our food expenses.

We were already holding back our appetite as much as our body would allow and supplementing the rest of our diet with rocks until we were sick of them. If our body had its way, we'd be eating a whole bunch more meat. Thus, the idea of eating even less struck us as rather unpleasant. As if agreeing, our stomach rumbled a bit, and we wondered when the last time we'd felt properly full was.

'INSTEAD OF SCARING THE DURSLEYS, CAN WE JUST EAT THEM INSTEAD?!' Red half-heartedly joked.

Vernon would probably taste like that pig we had last night. Dudley would taste like marshmallow. And Aunt Petunia? Lean horse meat. At least, that's what Grey pictured.

'We can't eat them.'

Grey perked up. 'and why not?'

"We just can't. It would be bad."

'bad as in wrong? or would it be troublesome?' Grey mused.

"Bad," Yellow insisted without clarification.

We dropped the topic, instead choosing to move on to address Green's and Red's other contributions to our current emotional state. Namely, their rather sudden infatuation with basically everyone age thirty and younger.

For as near perfect as our transfiguration was, it was missing a particular piece of anatomy — the same piece that had gotten caused the incident with Hagrid this morning. Given the circumstances, that was... fortunate, to say the least. 'Could you perverts please tone it down?!' Blue demanded.

'It'sss mossstly Red'sss fault,' Green insisted.

'You say as you're staring at some bloke's arse.'

Green hesitated. 'It'sss a nice arssse.'

'A bloke's arse!'

'SO WHAT IF A BLOKE HAS A NICE ARSE?! AN ARSE IS AN ARSE!'

'I am confused...'

'I think we all are. Aren't blokes supposed to like girls?! Not other blokes? That just not normal.' Blue paused, then did the mental equivalent of snapping his jaw shut as something occurred to him, then the rest of us. We swallowed. 'So, um, I'm actually going to make an executive decision here: we're going to the bookstore to see if they've got anything about growing up before we continue to trust anything Aunt Petunia told us. Still don't like it, though...' He thought that last sentence more quietly as if muttering.

'WHY DOES IT MATTER?! I'M JUST LOOKING AT PEOPLE'S ARSES—'

'And titsss.'

'—AND TITS—'

'And armsss.'

'—AND SHUT UP GREEN! THE POINT IS, IT'S NOT HURTING ANYONE! DOES IT MATTER WHAT GENDER THEY ARE?!'

'But it's gross! Sex is gross! And there's only one hole down there on guys, and you know what comes out of there!' Blue shuddered within us. 'You're both disgusting!'

Green and Red both scowled, but Yellow metaphorically stepped in between us. 'Bothers, stop it! Red, Green, you are making Blue uncomfortable. Blue, there is no need to insult them. All three of you need to just shut up!' Yellow gave an authoritative snort of disdain. Chastised, the three of us he'd named slunk back deeper into our headspace. 'Grey, get up here with me. We're driving for now. And you three — for the next hour, nobody thinks about food or sex! Think about something productive, and if you can't do that, imagine the Queen if you need to!'

There was a moment of relative silence in our headspace.

'I BET HAGRID HAS A BIG, MEATY ARSE!'

'You sick little bastard! I'm going to strangle you!'

'SHUT UP! SHUT UP! A MILLION TIMES, SHUT THE BLOODY HELL UP!'

As he said they would, Yellow and Grey walked us towards Gringotts bank. For as tall of a building as it was, it was odd seeing something so crooked remain standing so strongly. But then again, every building on this street was slanted diagonally and oh my god we just got the joke.

Note to selves: Facepalming with glasses is not fun, though Hedwig certainly seemed to think it was funny. Prat. On the upside, facepalming-with-glasses was something to think about other than the thunder of hormones echoing through our head at the prospect of being surrounded by people who weren't old and wrinkly.

And you know what else there was to think about? Money.

We stepped into the bank, only to be almost overwhelmed by the scent of gold, silver, bronze, marble, gemstones, and — strangely enough — raw meat. That last one was probably the smell of the goblins themselves, and like all the other smells, it just made us hungrier.

"I'm Harry Potter," Yellow said once we'd made it through the queue and to the teller. "I'd like to make a withdraw from my vault, number 687." We produced our tiny golden key, a little piece of metal smaller than one of our scales. An idle thought: we wondered how the money locked away by this key compared to the value of our mithril scales. Dumbledore said the metal of our scales was extremely valuable; was it possible that our own flesh was worth more than our family fortune?

"Someone will escort you down in a moment." The teller called out, summoning another goblin to escort us down. We followed behind.

The cart ride was much the same as the last two times, a flurry of motion as the cart dove into the depths of Gringotts. Unlike those times, we weren't alone in experiencing it; the five of us screamed in delight as the cart raced ever lower. Even Hedwig, who was sitting on our head, sounded like she was enjoying the ride.

As we raced down, a brief flash of light caught our eye. It was gone almost before we could tell what it was, but with five minds looking, the source of the familiar sight was obvious to us: fire. And in Gringotts, that meant one thing: dragons.

We arrived at our vault. As soon as the door was open, we resisted the temptation to devour our treasure, grabbed some of the gold, failed to keep resisting the temptation, swallowed a human-sized handful of coins (to the utter horror of our goblin escort), and then bagged up more than enough for our Hogwarts shopping and a day or two of muggle fun. We especially made sure we'd grabbed plenty of sickles for riding the knight bus around London.

Before our vault closed, Yellow asked the goblin, "Excuse me, is it possible for you to take me down to see the dragons on the lower levels? I've never seen a real dragon before." Cue a round of internal laughter from the rest of us, minus Grey.

'we're gonna get in trouble for this...' Grey warned.

"That would be quite improper, gold eater," the goblin snapped. "If you are done..."

"Not even if we gave you a couple Galleonsss?" Green inquired. He scooped up another small handful of coins. It barely made a dent in our pile.

The goblin's eyes turned shifty and he looked about. After a second, he snatched the gold and pocketed it so seamlessly we almost couldn't tell he'd moved. "Gringotts is not liable if you get yourself set on fire or eaten." He almost sounded like he wanted us to suffer those things. The predatory grin on his face said much the same.

This time, the cart ride was even faster. More twists and turns, even loops and rolls that were fast enough to press us into the seat despite being upside down. It was definitely as good as any roller coaster ride (not that we'd been on a rollercoaster before).

The track shot out into an open area above a great chasm, where it dove and spiraled back towards the cliffside. For just a moment, we had a fantastic sense of just how deep Gringotts actually went. So entranced by the depth of these caves were we that we only had a second to notice the waterfall spilling onto the track ahead of us.

We had no time to react, even if we'd known what it was.

Like every time we transformed, the shift and split in perspective was instant, though not terrible disorienting. But never had we transformed involuntarily, nor while riding a minecart while hurtling towards a hole in a cliff that was suddenly much too small for us.

Metal shattered below us. Our shoulders slammed into the rock, painfully jarring our entire body. For a second, nothing happened, but then we slid backwards.

Twisting and tumbling, we fell into the abyss. Once, twice, thrice we slammed into the wall, each impact sending us spinning in a different way, until finally, with a literally earth-shattering crash, we came to rest.

"BLOODY HELL! WHAT WAS THAT?!"

His voice gave us a collective 'oh shite' moment. Yellow grasped at his neck for the pendant. It was there, but his touch did nothing. We didn't turn human again.

Our form stone was broken, and we were god knows how many miles deep underground under London. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

"Oh, ssshite! Hedwig!? HEDWIG!?" Green cried out. Our blood went cold as ice.

A distant hoot came from far above. We looked up. There, orbiting the single, distant source of light, was Hedwig. She slowly descended down, spiraling and wobbling through the air without flapping her wings. Her landing was ungraceful and undignified, but aside from being wet and having some feathers askew, she didn't look too upset.

"Good. You're not hurt. That's a relief."

"But what about the goblin that was with us?!" Blue suddenly realized. We looked about, but there was nobody else with us, and no body to be found. We were alone. "Shite! We're dead. We're very dead."

"i told you so. i told you that this would be trouble. but did you listen to me? of course not," Grey spat.

"How on earth could we have predicted a magic waterfall would break our pendant?!" Blue spat.

"i just meant trouble with the goblins for paying one off, but this is worse. i was still right." Grey huffed and rolled his eyes. His head started turning around searchingly. "anybody see our stuff?"

"How can you be so bloody calm?! We might have just killed somebody!"

"wouldn't be the first time." Grey shrugged. "nor the second, nor even the third, fourth, or fifth."

"Grey... what are you talking about?"

"professor quirrell, diary-riddle, those acromantulas. they can talk, so..." Again, Grey shrugged, as if he wasn't just informing us of our budding serial killer habit. "what's one more body?"

"Why are you so bloody calm about this?! We're killers! You... your insane! We're not like this!"

Grey lazily spun around and looked Yellow right in the eye. Despite the softness of his voice, his reply cut through the quiet air. "bullshite. we are, and we always have been. you know as well as i do that i've always been in the back of harry's head, one voice among many." He blinked and looked to the side. "oh, there's our bag."

Our dark head made us lumber over to the edge of the ledge we'd landed on. He bent down and picked up our satchel, then placed it on our back and affixed it with a sticking charm. Grey did all this despite the storm of anger and revulsion coming from the other heads — from all of us as one.

"Enlightening," Green muttered, despite his upset. "Perhaps that'sss why the Hat pussshed Ssslytherin ssso hard."

"How can you possibly approve of this?!" Yellow demanded.

"I don't. I jussst sssaid I underssstood." Green glared at Grey, then looked upwards. "More pragmatically, what now? Climb, or wait for help?"

It was a good question. We were who knows how deep underground, in territory held by possibly angry goblins — and god knows we need another goblin rebellion to listen to Binns drone on about. We could send Hedwig to get help, but that would take who knows how long. And how we'd get out of the bank as a dragon, nevermind out of Diagon Alley or London, was a mystery.

Did Dumbledore know? He'd put that tracking charm on us, so it was possible, but would that let him know we were down here? Would the goblins even let him come down here? And could he get us out, or would we have to wait until we got another form stone?

We had too many questions and not nearly enough answers.

"Hedwig, can you fly back up?" Hedwig hooted affirmatively. "Good. Wait in somewhere where you can see the people coming and going from Gringotts. If you see Dumbledore, go to him, but if Gringotts closes before we get out, fly back to Hogwarts and wait there. Got it?" Blue instructed.

Again, Hedwig hooted a yes. She took a second to finish straightening out her feathers, and then took wing. Like the reverse of before, she slowly spiraled further and further up, leaving us alone in this deep abyss.

A pained, almost pleading, screech-like roar cried out from above as Hedwig passed. It was a sound very much like our voices, and though wordless, we could feel the suffering contained within it.

"i have a bad feeling about this..." For once, we all agreed with Grey.

Without any debate, we walked over to the wall and started to climb. It was hard; the rock was fragile, and one wrong move would cause the stone to break away under our immense weight. And wrong moves we made; several times, we lost grip with one or two of our limbs, and twice, we fell back to the ledge below. But we couldn't give up; no matter how strong our magic wings were, there simply wasn't enough room in the abyss to build up the speed for vertical flight.

But, now that we think about it, there are other ways we could use our magic. "Yellow, Red, Green, Grey, each of you take a leg. Use your magic to make it stick, but release when I try to move it. Got it?"

Of course we did. We saw Blue come up with the idea. And of the ideas we'd had so far, it didn't sound like a bad one.

Left foreleg, right hindleg, right foreleg, left hindleg, repeat...

Slowly but steadily, we started climbing again. This time, now that we were able to stick to the wall rather than hang from it, pieces broke off less frequently, and usually only one leg at a time. It was slow going, but with every step, we closed the gap between us and the open sky. Each heave of our muscles lifted nearly five hundred tons of dragon further and further up.

It took us ten long, painstaking minutes to climb up to the next ledge big and strong enough to hold our bulk. The ledge was similar to the one we'd just left, save for the fact that there was an obvious path leading into another part of the cave system. It'd be a bit of a squeeze, but we figured we could fit down it, not that we'd planned to go down that path. Instead, we'd wanted to climb further up, but the same screeching roar came from the path, along with an irritating clanking sound.

'You know? I don't think I want to sssee the dragonsss here anymore,' Green thought to us. There was an unspoken but implicit in his tone.

'BUT WE NOW NEED TO!' Red reluctantly agreed.

Course set, we squeezed our way through the narrow gap. It wasn't far; the gap opened up into a wide, goblin-made chamber. And there, at the heart of the chamber, was a dragon.

Its scales were a dull grey-white, while its eyes were a pale, milky pink. Around its neck, digging into its skin, was a heavy, rusty, metal chain. And across its body, blood wept from festering, half-healed wounds.

Against the goblin with the noisemaker, the dragon recoiled in a very familiar way. We'd seen it on Dobby. We'd done that ourselves in fear of an angry Vernon.

Pain was coming, the dragon whimpered. Pain was coming, screamed its body. Pain was coming, howled its soul.

Suddenly, the death of a goblin didn't weigh down upon our heart nearly as much as it had. In fact, you could say it didn't bother us at all anymore. You could even go so far as to say that there was exactly one emotion we could feel at the moment:

COLD, CALCULATING RAGE!