AN: Marz1, I know, it was very difficult! I needed Harriet's parents out
of the way, so she could get on with escaping on her own and getting help
from Remus. Those things came into my head before I thought about the
parent situation. I tried to get her parents to seem more realistic, and
did let her mum explain what she thought in chapter one, but then I forgot
about them again. I think that's because of the books. I mean, Harry has no
parents, and we don't hear much about Hermione's. She either doesn't tell
them much, or they don't worry. But I couldn't make Harriet's parents be
dead. Orphans are overdone, and then I have to think about complicated
living arrangements. I suppose I'm just too lazy to think!
Werewolf
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth's Point of View
I was sure that I recognised her, as soon as she opened the door and stepped into the room. Her blue eyes with the long, black lashes seemed especially familiar. She squinted around the room, and then headed towards the reception desk. From the back, I realised what had confused me. Her hair was completely the wrong colour. It didn't go with her skin-tone, and it was so unnaturally blonde that it was virtually white, very different to my own darker, golden form of blonde.
Of course, she wouldn't have hair like mine - nobody does. My hair was originally dark blonde, but now looks a kind of silvery-grey. I'm not old, that isn't the reason for it. I'm only sixteen. Or one-hundred-and- twenty-eight, I suppose, depending upon how you look at it. But anyway, ignoring such technicalities, I look sixteen, despite my silvery hair, which is also translucent, and hasn't grown for one-hundred-and-twelve years, or thereabouts. It could be less. Somebody once told me that the hair on a body keeps on growing long after they're dead and buried. Just thinking about that makes me shudder, and lift my icy translucent hand to my icy translucent neck. Although I've always been curious about everything, that's one thing I don't want to know. I don't like thinking about corpses, especially not my own.
Where was I? Oh yes, the girl. She went up to the desk, and started talking to the receptionist, Mrs Skidmore. I didn't hear what she said, but when I glided over, they had barely begun their conversation.
"I need to speak to the head of the Committee." The girl said calmly. "Please." She added, a kind of afterthought.
"Is it really necessary?" asked Mrs Skidmore. Chances were, that in her eyes, anything less that an earthquake was not important. Basically, she wasn't interested in anything that anyone else could possibly have to say. I never spoke to her. In fact, I never spoke to anyone at that place. You could say I've just just been holding a grudge, for over a century, but I think that's fairly justified after what I've been through. I didn't want anything to do with the Committee, even though I had to 'live' there.
"Yes." Replied the girl. "It's a matter of life or death." She paused for a moment, as if she wasn't sure what to say. Then she pulled an odd face, and said abruptly "It's about Harriet Rivers."
Mrs Skidmore looked blank for a moment, then recognised the name. I knew whom the girl meant from the start. Harriet Rivers was a girl who had escaped from the Committee, that is to say, the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, last summer. I call her a girl, though most people wouldn't, because I understand her, and the situation that she's in, despite the fact that we've never spoken. I saw her briefly on the two occasions that she was here, and nearly went and talked to her the second time. I decided that it wasn't an ideal moment to talk, seeing as she she was sitting in the bottom of a cage, sobbing, at the time. I don't know what to do with people when they're crying, having never been the sensitive kind, myself. The last time I really cried must have been when I was sitting in a similar cage, crying for the same reason. One-hundred-and- twelve years is a long time, and all I remember clearly is thinking that nothing anyone could say to me would make me feel better. And that is the reason I left her alone.
Maybe I should have spoken to her the first time, when she was confused and in shock. But then again, I couldn't have cheered her up, couldn't have told her it would be OK, when I am, and have always been, such a pessimist. I couldn't have given her any hope, when I knew exactly what was likely to happen to her and, having experienced it myself, knew that it was not pleasant. Oh, I'm sorry. I've done it again! I go off on the subject of death and corpses, and before you know it, I've been at it hours!
So. This strange girl obviously had some information about Harriet. I assumed she knew where Harriet had been hiding, so had come to collect her reward. Or maybe I was just being pessimistic again.
One bizarre thing was that apart from the colour of her hair, and the fact that she didn't wear glasses, this girl looked just like Harriet. I hoped she wasn't her cousin or anything. I had seen enough of families turning in their relations to the Committee, in my life. My grandfather worked for the Committee all his life. He signed all the necessary forms and was even a witness at my execution. I didn't want Harriet's family to be like mine.
"Go on then.," said Mrs Skidmore. "It's the first door on the left." She pointed down a corridor.
"Thank-you." The girl said quietly, then turned round, and started to walk in the direction the receptionist had indicated. Suddenly, I think that perhaps I went slightly insane. I swooped, yes, seriously swooped across the hall, and stood in front of her blocking her path an trying to look as solid as I possibly could, with no success.
"Are you going to tell them where Harriet is?" I asked quickly. I knew I couldn't do anything to stop her if she said yes. I mean, I could try to convince her not to, but physically I was helpless. When I said this, the girl looked slightly hysterical, as if she was trying to stifle something between a giggle and a cry.
"No." She was practically hyperventilating. "I'm trying to make the Committee change their minds about - her." I breathed an airless sigh of relief. I was certain that the Committee would never change their minds, but at least Harriet would be safe for the time being.
"Who are you anyway?" I asked, my curiosity having got the better of me. "You remind me a bit of Harriet Rivers, you know. You aren't related are you?" She sort of jiggled up and down on her toes, biting her lip, hesitant. In the end, she decided that she trusted me, leant forwards, cupped her hands, and whispered into my ear.
"I am Harriet."
I had to stop myself shouting out, so instead I contented myself with a loud, angry whisper. "What?!" I gasped. "Why the hell have you come here?" She must be insane. I thought. "You could be caught and killed!" I realised that I had to stop shaking my head so violently, because I felt that under the circumstances it would not be very tactful to Harriet if my head fell off. The mental images that gave me were bad enough, and I was used to it!
`"Anyway," I continued. "Surely life as a werewolf is better than death, though I don't transform now I'm a ghost."
"Ghosts can't be werewolves?" she asked. Then she realised what I had just said. "Ohhh." She looked awkward. "You're. you were a werewolf!"
"Yes, that's right." I replied. "Lycanthropy can only be cured by death. A silver bullet, silver knife, or silver axe." I closed my eyes for a second as I could feel them tinling as if I was going to cry. Harriet noticed these ghost-tears in my eyes. "It's OK." I told her, slipping into the modern language that I had adjusted to over time. "Don't worry, ghosts can't cry."
"I'm going in there now." She said, with determination. "I don't want to hide anymore. I'm so tired of it. I just have to do something. Maybe they'll let me off, or maybe even end up changing the laws, to save other people like me." She strongly emphasised the word 'people'. "Besides, they don't know it's me, so even if I don't achieve anything, I'm still safe from them. I have to change this. I might fail , and then, yes, I know I will lose everything." She was trying to be brave about it, I could tell.
We walked slowly, in silence towards the door to the Chairman's office. Harriet stopped abruptly, just a couple of metres from where we were heading. "I've got one question, if you don't mind me asking." I just nodded. She looked as if she felt I would be upset or embarrased by her question, but I couldn't think of anything relevant that I wouldn't be prepared to answer.
"Did it hurt a lot?"
I winced and shivered, although my 'body' temperature was always cooler than the air, thinking of the cold, yet burning sensation of that silver blade on the back of my bare neck. To a werewolf, silver causes more pain than even the Cruciatus Curse can. I suppose most werewolves are used to pain - I've heard the transformation is very painful. I wouldn't know.
"Yes." I told her frankly. "More than you can imagine. Have you ever touched silver?" she nodded. "Well, it's much worse than that." I wanted to scare her so much that she would go back to wherever she had been hiding, and not take this risk. She certainly looked frightened when I told her this, but something also told me that it would not change her mind. I might as well comfort her a little, I decided. "It was over quickly though." I added.
"Right." She trembled a little. "OK. Thank-you. er."
"My name is Elizabeth."
"Thanks then, Elizabeth. Bye." I was worried. Although I didn't really know Harriet, I didn't want her to go in there. "Don't worry, I'll be careful." She tried to reassure me. Then she turned and rapped clearly on the door three times with her fist.
"Come in." announced a low voice that filled me with dread. Harriet opened the door, and then, slowly and cautiously entered the room. Before the door closed behind her, I followed. Afterall, I thought, They can't kill me twice!
"Yes? What do you want?" asked the head of the Committee coldly, without even looking up. Then he lifted his head for a moment, and spotted me. "And you - werewolf ghost - get out of my office!" I was about to answer back, in a way that I would have never been allowed back when I was still alive. Then I decided that I shouldn't make him angry, because although he couldn't do anything to me, it could affect Harriet. So I moved to the far corner of the room, at the back, and amazingly he left it at that.
"Well?" He asked Harriet, "What are you here for?"
"I.. I wanted to. er. er. " She was obviously nervous, and had no idea what to say. Then she pulled a battered paperback book out of the deep pocket of her robes. "I wanted to find out if you'd ever read this."
He read the book's title aloud. "'Hairy Snout, Human Heart'?" he sneered, then laughed nastily. "Surely you aren't serious about it! As if I would consider reading that." He looked at the book as if it was something particularly disgusting. "It was written by a werewolf, you know, a monster." He glanced in my direction as he said it, and I winced. The old insults still hurt.
Harriet continued speaking. "But from this book, I don't think they are monsters. Surely if you're dealing with werewolves in your job, you should understand them. How can you have werewolves executed, when you haven't even read this?"
"Why would you care about that?" Mr Counter asked incredulously. "Afterall, the more werewolves we destroy, the less there are in the world. So you're less likely to ever be attacked by one, thanks to us. Why on earth does it matter to you?"
"It's because of that girl." She said slowly. "Harriet Rivers." All true so far! "I read in the Daily Prophet ages ago about her, and how if you find her, she'll be...ugh." Harriet was really pretty good at acting. I could have almost believed that she was an ordinary schoolgirl, sickened at the thought of a girl her age being. she searched around for a polite way to say it. "decapitated. I think that's just disgusting!"
"You know absolutely nothing about the situation." He said firmly. "I tell you, that creature is a vicious killer. It must be dealt with!" he spat.
"But she's a girl like me." protested Harriet. "Even if she is a werewolf as well. I'm sure she never meant to kill anybody, she just couldn't control herself." Harriet was also starting to lose control now. Funny, how I'd started to think of them as two separate people, the Harriet who was talking now, and the Harriet she was talking about. I could see that if she carried on at this rate, she might end up revealing who she was. Besides, it was about time I had my say, don't you think?
"She's right." I said, feeling braver, and sort of more alive than I had done for a long time. "I was human. I never bit or killed anyone. For God's sake! I never even transformed - you had me killed within days of the Bite." This wasn't quite how I had imagined the grand confrontation would be, those past hundred years or so, but it felt brilliant. I saw Counter's mouth drop open. "Oh I know you weren't responsible, it was before your time. But you would if the Ministry allowed it. That's what you'd see as a perfect world, isn't it? Someone goes to St Mungo's with a strange bite, and as soon as they're diagnosed, they're taken here. The forms are dealt with, and the next day the poor person is headless. That's what you want!" I wasn't completely sure why I was going on about what had happened to me. It was far too late to change that, although I'd love to see them have to apologise. I changed the subject to Harriet.
"And it's just as bad if you let Harriet Rivers be executed, even though she did kill someone, because she couldn't help it. She's probably going to feel guilty about it for the rest of her life, though she shouldn't because it's not her fault. It's the wolf's nature to prey upon humans, and a werewolf can't stop that. The guilt is surely punishment enough!" I was partly envious of Harriet, because she had escaped before, and they hadn't been able to do anything to her until she killed anyone, whereas I had been killed - murdered - for no reason. But despite my jealousy, I wanted her to have a chance, so she could sow that werewolves could be civilised human beings. "I can't believe you're still even allowed to do this! It seemed more acceptable a hundred years ago, because there was still capital punishment in Britain. But nowadays it can't be allowed!"
"Oh, it's perfectly legal." He said, facing Harriet, making it quite obvious that he wasn't prepared to talk to me. "Werewolves aren't classified as beings, so the Ministry requires us to try them, and execute them if we decide that's necessary. In the last thirty years we have only failed to execute a werewolf we found guilty once, excluding the Harriet Rivers case. It will not happen again. I assure you we will find Harriet Rivers."
Harriet looked as if she was about to start crying, and I probably would have done too, if I'd been able to, and if I hadn't grown used to over a century of that kind of treatment. I still hated it so much. Being called 'it', and regarded as just an object, or an animal, and now as a statistic, a murderous target to be met. I saw that there was no way we could change anything here, so I decided to take Harriet somewhere else I'd heard of, where they might be able to help.
"Come on." I whispered to her. "It's a waste of time."
"But -" she began to protest.
"No. Don't worry, I've got a much better idea." I told her. "Oh, and by the way." I added as we walked out of the door "Even if you do consider werewolves to be beasts, I am not a werewolf. I am a ghost."
Werewolf
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth's Point of View
I was sure that I recognised her, as soon as she opened the door and stepped into the room. Her blue eyes with the long, black lashes seemed especially familiar. She squinted around the room, and then headed towards the reception desk. From the back, I realised what had confused me. Her hair was completely the wrong colour. It didn't go with her skin-tone, and it was so unnaturally blonde that it was virtually white, very different to my own darker, golden form of blonde.
Of course, she wouldn't have hair like mine - nobody does. My hair was originally dark blonde, but now looks a kind of silvery-grey. I'm not old, that isn't the reason for it. I'm only sixteen. Or one-hundred-and- twenty-eight, I suppose, depending upon how you look at it. But anyway, ignoring such technicalities, I look sixteen, despite my silvery hair, which is also translucent, and hasn't grown for one-hundred-and-twelve years, or thereabouts. It could be less. Somebody once told me that the hair on a body keeps on growing long after they're dead and buried. Just thinking about that makes me shudder, and lift my icy translucent hand to my icy translucent neck. Although I've always been curious about everything, that's one thing I don't want to know. I don't like thinking about corpses, especially not my own.
Where was I? Oh yes, the girl. She went up to the desk, and started talking to the receptionist, Mrs Skidmore. I didn't hear what she said, but when I glided over, they had barely begun their conversation.
"I need to speak to the head of the Committee." The girl said calmly. "Please." She added, a kind of afterthought.
"Is it really necessary?" asked Mrs Skidmore. Chances were, that in her eyes, anything less that an earthquake was not important. Basically, she wasn't interested in anything that anyone else could possibly have to say. I never spoke to her. In fact, I never spoke to anyone at that place. You could say I've just just been holding a grudge, for over a century, but I think that's fairly justified after what I've been through. I didn't want anything to do with the Committee, even though I had to 'live' there.
"Yes." Replied the girl. "It's a matter of life or death." She paused for a moment, as if she wasn't sure what to say. Then she pulled an odd face, and said abruptly "It's about Harriet Rivers."
Mrs Skidmore looked blank for a moment, then recognised the name. I knew whom the girl meant from the start. Harriet Rivers was a girl who had escaped from the Committee, that is to say, the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, last summer. I call her a girl, though most people wouldn't, because I understand her, and the situation that she's in, despite the fact that we've never spoken. I saw her briefly on the two occasions that she was here, and nearly went and talked to her the second time. I decided that it wasn't an ideal moment to talk, seeing as she she was sitting in the bottom of a cage, sobbing, at the time. I don't know what to do with people when they're crying, having never been the sensitive kind, myself. The last time I really cried must have been when I was sitting in a similar cage, crying for the same reason. One-hundred-and- twelve years is a long time, and all I remember clearly is thinking that nothing anyone could say to me would make me feel better. And that is the reason I left her alone.
Maybe I should have spoken to her the first time, when she was confused and in shock. But then again, I couldn't have cheered her up, couldn't have told her it would be OK, when I am, and have always been, such a pessimist. I couldn't have given her any hope, when I knew exactly what was likely to happen to her and, having experienced it myself, knew that it was not pleasant. Oh, I'm sorry. I've done it again! I go off on the subject of death and corpses, and before you know it, I've been at it hours!
So. This strange girl obviously had some information about Harriet. I assumed she knew where Harriet had been hiding, so had come to collect her reward. Or maybe I was just being pessimistic again.
One bizarre thing was that apart from the colour of her hair, and the fact that she didn't wear glasses, this girl looked just like Harriet. I hoped she wasn't her cousin or anything. I had seen enough of families turning in their relations to the Committee, in my life. My grandfather worked for the Committee all his life. He signed all the necessary forms and was even a witness at my execution. I didn't want Harriet's family to be like mine.
"Go on then.," said Mrs Skidmore. "It's the first door on the left." She pointed down a corridor.
"Thank-you." The girl said quietly, then turned round, and started to walk in the direction the receptionist had indicated. Suddenly, I think that perhaps I went slightly insane. I swooped, yes, seriously swooped across the hall, and stood in front of her blocking her path an trying to look as solid as I possibly could, with no success.
"Are you going to tell them where Harriet is?" I asked quickly. I knew I couldn't do anything to stop her if she said yes. I mean, I could try to convince her not to, but physically I was helpless. When I said this, the girl looked slightly hysterical, as if she was trying to stifle something between a giggle and a cry.
"No." She was practically hyperventilating. "I'm trying to make the Committee change their minds about - her." I breathed an airless sigh of relief. I was certain that the Committee would never change their minds, but at least Harriet would be safe for the time being.
"Who are you anyway?" I asked, my curiosity having got the better of me. "You remind me a bit of Harriet Rivers, you know. You aren't related are you?" She sort of jiggled up and down on her toes, biting her lip, hesitant. In the end, she decided that she trusted me, leant forwards, cupped her hands, and whispered into my ear.
"I am Harriet."
I had to stop myself shouting out, so instead I contented myself with a loud, angry whisper. "What?!" I gasped. "Why the hell have you come here?" She must be insane. I thought. "You could be caught and killed!" I realised that I had to stop shaking my head so violently, because I felt that under the circumstances it would not be very tactful to Harriet if my head fell off. The mental images that gave me were bad enough, and I was used to it!
`"Anyway," I continued. "Surely life as a werewolf is better than death, though I don't transform now I'm a ghost."
"Ghosts can't be werewolves?" she asked. Then she realised what I had just said. "Ohhh." She looked awkward. "You're. you were a werewolf!"
"Yes, that's right." I replied. "Lycanthropy can only be cured by death. A silver bullet, silver knife, or silver axe." I closed my eyes for a second as I could feel them tinling as if I was going to cry. Harriet noticed these ghost-tears in my eyes. "It's OK." I told her, slipping into the modern language that I had adjusted to over time. "Don't worry, ghosts can't cry."
"I'm going in there now." She said, with determination. "I don't want to hide anymore. I'm so tired of it. I just have to do something. Maybe they'll let me off, or maybe even end up changing the laws, to save other people like me." She strongly emphasised the word 'people'. "Besides, they don't know it's me, so even if I don't achieve anything, I'm still safe from them. I have to change this. I might fail , and then, yes, I know I will lose everything." She was trying to be brave about it, I could tell.
We walked slowly, in silence towards the door to the Chairman's office. Harriet stopped abruptly, just a couple of metres from where we were heading. "I've got one question, if you don't mind me asking." I just nodded. She looked as if she felt I would be upset or embarrased by her question, but I couldn't think of anything relevant that I wouldn't be prepared to answer.
"Did it hurt a lot?"
I winced and shivered, although my 'body' temperature was always cooler than the air, thinking of the cold, yet burning sensation of that silver blade on the back of my bare neck. To a werewolf, silver causes more pain than even the Cruciatus Curse can. I suppose most werewolves are used to pain - I've heard the transformation is very painful. I wouldn't know.
"Yes." I told her frankly. "More than you can imagine. Have you ever touched silver?" she nodded. "Well, it's much worse than that." I wanted to scare her so much that she would go back to wherever she had been hiding, and not take this risk. She certainly looked frightened when I told her this, but something also told me that it would not change her mind. I might as well comfort her a little, I decided. "It was over quickly though." I added.
"Right." She trembled a little. "OK. Thank-you. er."
"My name is Elizabeth."
"Thanks then, Elizabeth. Bye." I was worried. Although I didn't really know Harriet, I didn't want her to go in there. "Don't worry, I'll be careful." She tried to reassure me. Then she turned and rapped clearly on the door three times with her fist.
"Come in." announced a low voice that filled me with dread. Harriet opened the door, and then, slowly and cautiously entered the room. Before the door closed behind her, I followed. Afterall, I thought, They can't kill me twice!
"Yes? What do you want?" asked the head of the Committee coldly, without even looking up. Then he lifted his head for a moment, and spotted me. "And you - werewolf ghost - get out of my office!" I was about to answer back, in a way that I would have never been allowed back when I was still alive. Then I decided that I shouldn't make him angry, because although he couldn't do anything to me, it could affect Harriet. So I moved to the far corner of the room, at the back, and amazingly he left it at that.
"Well?" He asked Harriet, "What are you here for?"
"I.. I wanted to. er. er. " She was obviously nervous, and had no idea what to say. Then she pulled a battered paperback book out of the deep pocket of her robes. "I wanted to find out if you'd ever read this."
He read the book's title aloud. "'Hairy Snout, Human Heart'?" he sneered, then laughed nastily. "Surely you aren't serious about it! As if I would consider reading that." He looked at the book as if it was something particularly disgusting. "It was written by a werewolf, you know, a monster." He glanced in my direction as he said it, and I winced. The old insults still hurt.
Harriet continued speaking. "But from this book, I don't think they are monsters. Surely if you're dealing with werewolves in your job, you should understand them. How can you have werewolves executed, when you haven't even read this?"
"Why would you care about that?" Mr Counter asked incredulously. "Afterall, the more werewolves we destroy, the less there are in the world. So you're less likely to ever be attacked by one, thanks to us. Why on earth does it matter to you?"
"It's because of that girl." She said slowly. "Harriet Rivers." All true so far! "I read in the Daily Prophet ages ago about her, and how if you find her, she'll be...ugh." Harriet was really pretty good at acting. I could have almost believed that she was an ordinary schoolgirl, sickened at the thought of a girl her age being. she searched around for a polite way to say it. "decapitated. I think that's just disgusting!"
"You know absolutely nothing about the situation." He said firmly. "I tell you, that creature is a vicious killer. It must be dealt with!" he spat.
"But she's a girl like me." protested Harriet. "Even if she is a werewolf as well. I'm sure she never meant to kill anybody, she just couldn't control herself." Harriet was also starting to lose control now. Funny, how I'd started to think of them as two separate people, the Harriet who was talking now, and the Harriet she was talking about. I could see that if she carried on at this rate, she might end up revealing who she was. Besides, it was about time I had my say, don't you think?
"She's right." I said, feeling braver, and sort of more alive than I had done for a long time. "I was human. I never bit or killed anyone. For God's sake! I never even transformed - you had me killed within days of the Bite." This wasn't quite how I had imagined the grand confrontation would be, those past hundred years or so, but it felt brilliant. I saw Counter's mouth drop open. "Oh I know you weren't responsible, it was before your time. But you would if the Ministry allowed it. That's what you'd see as a perfect world, isn't it? Someone goes to St Mungo's with a strange bite, and as soon as they're diagnosed, they're taken here. The forms are dealt with, and the next day the poor person is headless. That's what you want!" I wasn't completely sure why I was going on about what had happened to me. It was far too late to change that, although I'd love to see them have to apologise. I changed the subject to Harriet.
"And it's just as bad if you let Harriet Rivers be executed, even though she did kill someone, because she couldn't help it. She's probably going to feel guilty about it for the rest of her life, though she shouldn't because it's not her fault. It's the wolf's nature to prey upon humans, and a werewolf can't stop that. The guilt is surely punishment enough!" I was partly envious of Harriet, because she had escaped before, and they hadn't been able to do anything to her until she killed anyone, whereas I had been killed - murdered - for no reason. But despite my jealousy, I wanted her to have a chance, so she could sow that werewolves could be civilised human beings. "I can't believe you're still even allowed to do this! It seemed more acceptable a hundred years ago, because there was still capital punishment in Britain. But nowadays it can't be allowed!"
"Oh, it's perfectly legal." He said, facing Harriet, making it quite obvious that he wasn't prepared to talk to me. "Werewolves aren't classified as beings, so the Ministry requires us to try them, and execute them if we decide that's necessary. In the last thirty years we have only failed to execute a werewolf we found guilty once, excluding the Harriet Rivers case. It will not happen again. I assure you we will find Harriet Rivers."
Harriet looked as if she was about to start crying, and I probably would have done too, if I'd been able to, and if I hadn't grown used to over a century of that kind of treatment. I still hated it so much. Being called 'it', and regarded as just an object, or an animal, and now as a statistic, a murderous target to be met. I saw that there was no way we could change anything here, so I decided to take Harriet somewhere else I'd heard of, where they might be able to help.
"Come on." I whispered to her. "It's a waste of time."
"But -" she began to protest.
"No. Don't worry, I've got a much better idea." I told her. "Oh, and by the way." I added as we walked out of the door "Even if you do consider werewolves to be beasts, I am not a werewolf. I am a ghost."