cxlvii. once more unto the breach
The first time Hermione used the Time-Turner, she was not proud to admit she got sick.
The device didn't cause anything to move, precisely, but the world blurred about the edges like ink smudged on parchment, or a whirling, Impressionistic painting made of shifting shadows and pulsing lights. Using it now, if she strained her eyes, she could see people moving in reverse, students passing in and out of the ward, Madam Pomfrey bustling about. Snape stumbled in and dropped Harriet onto her bed, Elara and Hermione arriving with Dumbledore and Mr. Black before that, though the infirmary remained primarily quiet aside from their presence. The sunlight grew in the windows, slanting higher and higher up the walls as the evening clouds thinned and the moon vanished into the daylight.
Steam lifted off the hourglass as the five-hour mark approached, and it became more and more unstable. The rings under Hermione's fingers felt like a hot mug after boiling water was poured into it, steadily heating until it threatened to burn.
It stopped all at once, no bothering to slow down or inch closer, just a sudden snick as the dial stopped winding and the world solidified. Colors bloomed and burst in Hermione's eyes, and she knew Harriet saw them too, given how the shorter witch swayed and blinked, gone pale as new snow. She ducked out from under the Time-Turner's chain and gripped her bruised knees.
Hermione inspected the infirmary, ensuring they hadn't landed where someone could see them, and then she checked the time while Harriet gulped. They had ten minutes before History of Magic let out.
"Harriet," Hermione urged, tugging on her skinny arm. "We need to hurry. We can't stay here."
"Okay, okay. Just let me—." Harriet forced her fingers under her glasses to rub her eyes, standing up. "So that's time travel? Can't say I like it—at all, in fact. Morgana's knickers, when do all the colors stop smearing like that?"
"Harriet—."
"Okay, 'm fine. Where to?"
Hermione knitted the scene together in her mind again, forcing sense out of the mishmash she'd made of time when she'd gone barreling through it. "I need to go to the History of Magic hall. That's where you saw me, yes? Then, I need to send Professor Lupin and Mr. Black out after you, and then I must leave a note for Snape."
"And what about me?"
"I—the jar. Go to the kitchens and get a jar from the house-elves. And your Invisibility Cloak from the dorms."
"It doesn't do anything against Snape."
"No, but it works plenty well enough against everyone else. We'll meet at the covered bridge—and Harriet?" She paused, reaching out for the other witch, pulling her into her arms so they could hug each other. She could feel the rainwater still trapped in Harriet's robes, the moisture tepid, sweat clinging to her messy hair. Hermione breathed in and could smell something herbal on her too, something not from the forest. Snape, she remembered, seeing the Potions Master holding up Harriet's pale, limp form again. For a moment, Hermione had thought her dead.
She let go, and they hurried out of the ward, skirting by Madam Pomfrey's office on silent, tired feet. Hermione had grown accustomed to the sudden, seemingly inexplicable extra hours in her schedule, but she imagined Harriet must be feeling something like Muggle jet lag. By all rights, she needed to be in a bed, recovering from her mad plight through the woods and her encounter with the Dementors—and Hermione hadn't missed the connotations in Headmaster Dumbledore and Snape's conversation. The professor had been using Dark magic, and coming too close to that wouldn't help Harriet's condition at all.
They broke off from one another, sprinting in two different directions, though Hermione kept her pace slow enough to be casual if spotted. There was blood on her face from walking about the forest Confunded, bumbling headlong into trees and bushes and Elara at one point. She wiped at the dried, sticky trails as she hurried, though she knew from her friends' recollections that they'd still see it when she found them. Hermione was lucky they wouldn't try to stop her.
They shouldn't, at least, she reminded herself, mouth set in a rigid grimace. She couldn't say foreknowledge was comparable to fate, that knowing something should happen meant it would, which was precisely why Professor McGonagall had forbade her from ever giving her past-self future information. The paradoxes it incurred—.
The toe of her shoes caught the lip of a step, and Hermione stumbled, a sharp breath catching in her throat.
"It's an experiment the Department of Mysteries has agreed to try with the Headmaster and the Board of Governors," Professor McGonagall said as the last of the chain slipped into Hermione's trembling hand. "It was agreed to use a younger student to make certain any failures wouldn't interfere with later O.W.L and N.E.W.T studies. It took quite a bit of cajoling, but you are a perfect candidate, Miss Granger. It's a lot of responsibility, however, and its usage with be monitored."
"Yes, Professor."
Those final words rang in Hermione's head, and she wondered what the person responsible for monitoring her was thinking as they studied this unsanctioned usage. That she was using the extra time for more studying? Or that she meant to steal precious hours for something more nefarious? Either way, she knew someone from the Department, dressed in their dark, navy robes, would be coming for the Time-Turner soon enough. She wouldn't be allowed to keep it.
Not that I should be, Hermione told herself as she came closer to her destination. What had she been thinking, doing this to herself? Putting herself and Harriet and Elara in this untenable position where they had to weigh the whims of destiny and decide whether or not to trust the cycle? Somewhere in the unknowable depths of time, Hermione must have been desperate. The first Hermione, the one who bucked the rules and splintered the fabric of reality to make another choice, would have understood how badly everything could turn in an instead. Someone must have died. Elara—or Harriet and Snape, torn to pieces by Greyback—.
The hourglass, tucked into her shirt, settled over her heart like a scalding tongue against her skin, like teeth sinking into flesh—.
"It's a heavy responsibility," Professor McGonagall said, tone sharp as she surveyed Hermione over the top of her square spectacles. "I wouldn't have put forth your name if I didn't think you capable, however."
"I'm very grateful for the opportunity, ma'am!"
"You can't discuss this with Misses Potter and Black, however. It's important for no one aside from you, myself, and the Headmaster to know."
Her friends loitered in the hall, Hermione rushing by Susan Bones. Harriet already looked tired; by now, she had to be running on fumes.
"Hermione!" Harriet yelped. "What happened?! Is that—? There's blood on your face!"
"It's nothing. Everything's perfectly fine. I—I got caught up for a moment." She swallowed, and her throat burned with the beginnings of a cold, raspy and sore and not at all pleasant. Harriet protested her shoddy answer, and Hermione stopped her. "Listen. I think—it's very important for you to go to the Sundial Garden. Right now, please."
Merlin, I hope they forgive me for this, she thought as Harriet and Elara, confused and worried, argued with her, and Hermione made her excuses. Regardless of any self-fulfilling, time-traveling prophecies or notions of inevitability, it was Hermione's choice to send them out there, her choice to send them into the waiting hands of two werewolves and a serial killer, if not the one they were expecting.
She watched them leave from the far end of the hall, just out of sight. Guilt tasted like iron in her mouth.
"It's the most logical choice," Hermione reminded herself, wondering if it was a lie, if it was the truth. "It was the best choice. Wasn't it?"
She'd never know the answer, not in this reality, at any rate.
x X x
Harriet crouched in the bushes, peeking through the spindly branches curling around the bridges' slats as she waited for Hermione to appear.
Lupin and Black had already passed—first the dog, then the wizard, pelting along at a much slower clip, clutching a stitch in his side. It was almost funny, but Harriet guessed most anything was funny at this point, that hysterical kind of humor that came hand in hand with exhaustion. The absurdity of sitting outside in the cold, still bleeding and bruised and wet, covered only in her Invisibility Cloak, was more than a bit hilarious.
She turned the glass jar around in her hands, leaving smudged fingerprints. Harriet took out her wand and tapped the glass, muttering, "Simul habere," to ensure it was Unbreakable. She eyed the lid, considering whether or not she should put an air hole in it, if fucking Pettigrew deserved an air hole, and decided against it. She didn't know the spell to make the brass lid Unbreakable too, so she didn't want to ruin the integrity.
Harriet saw Snape before she heard him, and she banged the top of her head on one of the bridge's supports in her rush to get out of sight. He moved as silent as a wraith over the grounds, but his boots echoed loud on the bridge above, the old wood shifting under his weight as Snape ran.
When Hermione arrived less than a minute later, barely skirting the end of Snape's billowing cloak, she gasped and all but flung herself into the bushes when she spotted Harriet's floating head. "I thought I could beat him here!" she squeaked, quickly tucking the Cloak around herself, calming when they both faded into nothing. "I think he saw me but was in such a hurry he didn't realize it was me and not some other student."
"If he figures out we time traveled just to go back into the forest, he'll probably kill us anyway," Harriet replied with a resigned sigh. "Bloody Pettigrew. Bloody Weasley! How could he have that bastard as a familiar all these years and not realize something was wrong?"
She couldn't see Hermione, but she felt her shrug, the Cloak tugging on her own shoulders. "Didn't Fred and George or—someone say it was Percy's before? Rats are rather innocuous, and Pettigrew was apparently very good at making himself unimportant and unnoticeable. I bet they barely thought about him at all." Hermione shifted. "He might have used magic to make it so."
Harriet scoffed. "I should have let Livius eat him."
"It would have killed him. Animagi return to their normal form when they die. It's the Fourth Principle of Gamp's Law, Transfigured matter desires a return to its natural state, and without magic to fuel it—."
"Yes, Hermione, you're right," Harriet grumbled, stalling the nervous lecture. "C'mon, we're going to have to hurry."
They darted out from under the bridge and rounded the side, crossing over it with their arms linked together to keep the Cloak over them both. Once they cleared the Sundial Garden, Harriet stopped at the edge of the bracken, where the ferns turned brown and withered from direct contact with the sun, her feet sticking to the mulch like they'd been hexed. They hadn't, of course. It was just her nerves twisting up inside her belly like living snakes trying to crawl their way out of her mouth, and Harriet grimaced at the imagery, holding her lips shut.
In the distance, she heard her own name, carried so far on the wind, she couldn't tell which of her friends had said it.
"Harriet?" Hermione asked, shifting her invisible hand down to brush her closed fist. "It's okay to be afraid. I'm frightened, too."
But you're willing to go back in anyway. Harriet would suspect Hermione should have been a Gryffindor if the whole lot of them hadn't been a bunch of obnoxious fatheads. Harriet didn't think herself brave; the thought of seeing Fenrir Greyback again made her legs twitch, knees soft as pudding, and her hands were desperately, desperately cold. She remembered going back for Luna in the Aerie, knowing Riddle and the Basilisk waited for them, and how she hadn't wanted to go, how the deepest parts of herself had begged for a way to escape, to go back to the dorm and bury her head under her pillows.
She wanted to leave it to the adults—to wizards and witches much more powerful than herself—but she knew they weren't as all-knowing as they seemed. They didn't have all the answers, either. Not even Dumbledore.
In the distance, a spell went off like a backfiring car, and Harriet thought, Snape, recalling the wild spell he'd thrown at Black and missed.
Hermione tugged on her arm now, breaking leaves under her invisible shoes. "We need to move, Harriet, now—."
Courage or no, they couldn't stand there forever.
Together, they breached the Forbidden Forest for the second time that evening, and Harriet wished she was in the infirmary still, getting pestered by Pomfrey. Having the matron nag her into begrudging obedience was preferable to traipsing after a murderer in the growing dark.
"Here," Hermione whispered as they started to hear voices, the words lost by their proximity. Harriet thought she could spy someone's back through the foliage. "We can wait here."
"No," Harriet murmured, nudging her friend further. "Elara disappears over in this direction—and Greyback comes from somewhere back there. We don't want to get eaten before he even finds us for the first time." She paused. "That sounds so bloody odd."
"Everything about this is odd." Hermione's arm brushed hers again, touching the jar. She took it from Harriet, and she heard the pop and scrape of the lid being removed. "Have you enchanted it?"
"Just the glass. I Charmed it Unbreakable."
"Perfect."
They made themselves as comfortable as they could in their given circumstances, leaning the backs against a thick trunk, pressed close for what warmth the other provided. The arguing voices in the distance popped at intervals, comforting like a campfire, a reminder they weren't entirely alone in this dismal place. "I saw an Acromantula out there," Harriet murmured at length, tentatively looking above them. The tree was empty.
"Oh, Harriet."
"Snape slashed it in half with a spell I don't recognize."
Hermione shifted. "What was it?"
"Something Dark, I think. Everything…everything he used was Dark."
Hermione said nothing else. At length, Harriet thought to say something else, or to move closer to the voices, to check where the conversation was at—and then she spied the shimmering white pelt of Fenrir Greyback moving through the trees. Both Harriet and Hermione held themselves stiff as boards when the werewolf became visible, and he roved on silent paws, attention centered ahead. Once, he flicked a look in their direction, his nostrils flaring, and Harriet almost expired on the spot.
Look away, look away, look away—. Fear scratched at her thoughts like rot nibbling at the edges of old bread. Please, please—.
The noise from the clearing riled him. Greyback shook his head and loped off.
"Holy cricket," Hermione breathed, and Harriet reflected the statement, too relieved to do anything more than slump against the tree. "I thought for sure he'd smell us…."
The bark dug into Harriet's back like fingernails. The pain of it centered her, fighting the coruscating memories stirred by Greyback's reappearance.
"Run, Harriet!"
Her hand copied his movement, blood exploding into the night air—.
The whistle of a silver sword flying—.
Harriet pushed more of her weight into the tree, letting the bark scrape her skin, gritting her teeth. She dug her fingers into her thighs.
"There's—there's somebody else out there?"
Orange light like Dirigible Plums rising from the earth, brilliant and fleshy and glowing like the sun as the fire burst—.
"It appears that way—until they become fodder for Greyback."
Her eyes widened to the size of Galleons behind her glasses, and Harriet Potter trembled as a terrible, terrible thought occurred to her.
"There's somebody else out there?"
"It appears that way."
But there wasn't. There wasn't. There was only her, and Snape, and—.
Harriet shucked the Invisibility Cloak from her own shoulders and threw the loose fabric over Hermione, who sputtered in surprise. "What in the world are you doing?!"
"I—." Harriet swallowed, adrenaline singing in her veins, her stomach turning over like a stone. Or a dead fish going belly up in a river. "I have to go."
"Go?! Go where—?!"
"I'll explain later! I have to go!"
"Harriet—!"
She avoided Hermione's grasping fingers and darted away, her wand clasped in a sweaty, frightened hand.
I'll explain later, she repeated to herself. If I'm not dead.
x X x
Hermione listened to Harriet's fading footsteps and groaned.
Why on earth would she do that?! Hermione couldn't very well follow after her, now could she? "Damn it, Harriet," Hermione breathed, the curse soft by heartfelt, increasing her worry tenfold. Where could she be going? What had she realized while they'd been hidden there, waiting?
Greyback, Hermione recognized with cold, sinking dread. Professor Snape mentioned something—someone—drawing the werewolf off, and Hermione had been so caught up in her own distraction, her own ruminations concerning the Time-Turner, she hadn't considered the mysterious savior being anything more than a poor, unfortunate forest-dweller. Naturally, she hadn't wanted anyone to die—but if her choice was between her best friend and a faceless stranger, Hermione knew exactly which she'd pick, no matter the guilt such a choice bred. Not Harriet. Not her—I won't allow it.
She plucked herself out of the weeds and started after the shorter witch, but then—.
Something small scurried past her foot. Hermione froze, panicking, and almost tripped when a sizable black dog came running after.
Elara!
Hermione followed, not bothering to cover her footsteps, though she was thankful she needn't go far. She saw Pettigrew dip through a furrow of yew and change. Being smaller and better acquainted with his Animagus transformation, the wizard maneuvered himself with surprising grace, nearly stumbling into Hermione hidden under the Invisibility Cloak as he dodged back behind an obliging tree and stopped moving. Hermione could hear his course breathing, could smell the sweat wafting from him as she forced herself to hold still and to not hex him in the back.
She didn't move when Elara changed forms, her transition less seamless, stumbling from one step to the next.
She didn't move when Pettigrew glanced down and found a dead branch, hefting it up in his grubby hands. Hermione's hands tightened into fists against her sides when he struck Elara, and she couldn't stop the small whimper that escaped when the other witch hit the ground.
She's going to be fine, just wait. Just wait.
Pettigrew didn't hear her. He stood over the girl with the branch still held, panting, looking down with unveiled malice, like he wanted to strike her again and again. It was a look of upset, and…greed.
"She loved me!" Wormtail raged. "She loved me, and it's you who couldn't stand it!"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Black started to laugh, that same cackling, sawing chortle he'd used before. "You're just as delusional as ever! Still pining after her. She never loved you!"
He'd loved Marlene McKinnon, Elara's mum, or so he claimed. He'd certainly wanted her, but Hermione didn't think it was love, not as she understood it, because she couldn't fathom a love that would allow a man to set fire to his beloved's home just because he couldn't have her.
Pettigrew finally, finally dropped the branch. He stepped by Elara, treading on her fingers as he reached for her wand and tucked it away in his pocket. Then, with a final leer, the wizard turned and changed into a rat.
Hermione bolted forward, wand raised, the Invisibly Cloak falling from her shoulders. The incantation tripped off her tongue in a breathless rush. "Petrificus Totalus!"
For half an instant, she feared she'd missed, that the wizard had dodged the spell—but no, the gray rat simply laid stunned in the bracken, stiff as a board, and Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. I did it. She picked through the brush until she stopped, neatly bent at the waist, and grabbed Pettigrew by the tail. As per Elara's request, she wasn't gentle when she shoved him into the jar, and after what she'd just witnessed, Hermione didn't feel inclined to be so. She screwed the lid closed and raised the jar up so she could see Wormtail, and he could see her.
"Hello, Mr. Pettigrew," she greeted, lips spreading wide in a smile that was all teeth and no joy. People often liked to make fun of her teeth, and Hermione found she didn't much care how they appeared in this instance. "I wouldn't try changing once that Petrificus wears off, not unless you'd like shattering all the bones in your body. The jar is quite Unbreakable." She trapped the glass, her nail pinging against its side. "Do forgive me if I drop it a few times before I return you to the Headmaster's care. I'm awfully clumsy after the night I've had."
Grinning still, Hermione tucked the jar under her arm and returned the Invisibility Cloak to its proper place. She eased Elara to her back, smoothing her hair from her face, but she did nothing else; her past-self would be along in a minute to assist her with Mr. Black, meaning Hermione needed to make herself scarce. She tightened her hold on the jar and Cloak, nodding to herself.
Now to find Harriet.
x X x
Of all the terrible ideas she'd ever conceived, this had to be the very worst one.
She'd been utterly stupid to not realize it from the first, to not see the situation as a whole and consider just who had drawn Greyback off when she and Snape had been pinned down. They'd been deep in the forest, searching for the perimeter of the wards. No one could find them out there—so of course, of course, it had been her. There was no one else it could have been.
Did Dumbledore know? Nobody had said what happened to the werewolf—the Headmaster asking Snape, "And what of Greyback?" which meant he hadn't been informed. Merlin! What would happen to her? Sanctity of the timeline or no, Dumbledore wouldn't allow Harriet to go back if it killed her—not unless he wasn't aware of that little caveat.
Harriet wanted to transcend reality and find the first Harriet who had the wise fucking idea of chasing after a bloody werewolf on her own and choke the life out of her. She wondered if murdering herself at the beginning of this tangential time-loop would shatter time and space as they knew it, throwing them all into a hapless, blank-slate of oblivion—but at least Harriet would be able to say she didn't decide to taunt a werewolf and hare off through the forest for the second time in one night. Merlin save her.
Maybe it was inevitable, the closing of a cycle, denying Death one too many times and earning the fate she'd flouted the first time she went back in time. There'd be a gross, ironic poetry to dying by a werewolf when saving herself from that very same werewolf, but maybe it was unavoidable. Snape would fucking hate it, but if she could spare his life—.
If I could do just one thing right—.
Snaps and bangs echoed through the dark trees, and Harriet looked up through the thick canopy to see a looming shape swinging close, like a Titan dropped from the sky, her mind not comprehending the sight until—.
"Shit!" Harriet gasped, throwing herself under the cover of a large, sprawling spruce as the massive pine Snape had toppled came falling down. She wasn't close enough to take the brunt of the impact, but she felt the spray of broken pine needles against her face, the crisp tartness of sap bright on her skin. Birds screamed, thrown from their nests, and somewhere Harriet heard the heinous hissing of one of those monstrous spiders, but she couldn't see where it came from. She didn't want to know.
Cursing Snape, Greyback, and herself in equal measures, Harriet coughed against the dust and stepped away from the spruce, stumbling over the limp pine limbs. She studied the landscape and had some passing idea of where Hogwarts laid in perspective to her own position, and so she ran uphill, clamoring up over the rocks to jump as neatly as she could, gaining speed.
Which way? Which way? Where did we run?
Up to higher ground, then down, where the forest was older, where the trees stood in silent sentinel of the dangerous grounds around them—.
What was that spell the Potions Master used? There'd been so many, and half of them had felt like steel against her skin, biting and cold and painful, but the one—.
Gasping for breath, Harriet stopped sprinting, using one hand to balance herself against a tree as she raised her wand. She balanced it on the flat of her palm, uncertain of whether or not she was doing this correctly, and said, "Point Me, Severus Snape!"
The wand almost spun right out of her grip, but Harriet kept herself steady and waited. The seconds felt like hours—millennia—until her wand settled, pointing her ahead and slightly to the left. Harriet picked up her feet and ran.
She couldn't say she was relieved to find Greyback when she finally breached a copse of hawthorn and spotted his haunting figure peering into the ravine. Being relieved would imply latent masochism Harriet did not have, but she did release a loose, shuddering sigh when she found him and realized she wasn't too late. Her body moved without permission, stepping forward, hips twisting to throw the whole of her weight into her arm's motion. "Bombarda Maxima!"
Harriet couldn't remember using a spell of that magnitude before, and never directed at another person. Not even against the Basilisk. The magic siphoned energy from her, a palpable flexion in her body like a muscle held too long. Her spine bent, and darkness feathered her vision, but then new light illuminated the forest—the dawn come early—and Greyback howled as the explosion licked up his back in a singeing wave of flame. He turned to her, one yellow eye piercing the returning gloom, and Harriet—exhausted, injured, and plain furious at the situation—raised a two-fingered salute for the werewolf's benefit and bolted.
His roar rattled her bones.
Harriet was quick. She'd had to be, spending her childhood outrunning Dudley and his budding gang of thugs, chased through playgrounds and parks, back gardens and alleys, skinning her knees and having to get right back up on her feet anyway, lest she wanted to get kicked into the ground. Two years of Quidditch practice and running on the track had refined her skill, making her faster than Professor Snape—faster than a werewolf, or at least she hoped so, because she didn't dare look back. She didn't need to see to know Greyback was upon her.
She hurtled a log, feet crashing into a deep puddle, sliding on the wet clay beneath. The ghost of Greyback's teeth breathed against her robes, the odor of singed fur and ash and blood, coppery and foul, Harriet's heart caught in her throat, so tight she couldn't breathe—.
She aimed a Knockback Jinx over her shoulder and heard a thud, a bark, but nothing more than the continued thump of his pursuing paws.
How long could she run? She had to be past the wards by now, but what did that mean for her? Harriet couldn't Apparate—.
Her feet slid again, coated in slippery mud, and Greyback's claws caught her hem, slashing it. Harriet screamed.
I'm going to die—!
She threw another spell, Snape's spell, the one that prickled in her palm and wrist, and Greyback snarled. She ducked a branch, his muzzle colliding with the thick wood, and Harriet used the momentary leeway to tear into an open clearing. The trampled grass whipped against her ankles, the damp ground uneven beneath the coverage, and still Harriet ran, the direct brunt of the moonlight overhead. Greyback howled.
I don't want to d—!
Her pulse beat like thunder in her ears. It sounded almost like—.
Hooves?
They came down like an angry, rampaging horde, bursting through the forest's borders in flickers of motion, though Harriet didn't dare turn her head. Their hooves beat the earth, bows snapping, arrows singing through the night air—and Greyback snarled again, rounding on the furious centaurs chasing him down. Still, Harriet ran until strong hands snatched her by the shoulders and lifted her up, her feet kicking in useless circles to get away.
"Peace," the centaur who gathered her against his chest said, and Harriet stared into the bluest eyes she'd ever seen, his white-blond hair tangled about his face. She forced herself to breathe, and her frame shook. The arms hooked under her back and knees felt cold after her exertion, her skin sticky with fever and perspiration. "Peace now, child."
But the centaurs didn't want peace. They circled the werewolf, arrows peppering his blackened hide, and as Harriet watched, they lifted their spears toward the heavens with warrior cries. The tips had been dipped in something metal, something silver, and they blaze white in the moonlight, sweeping down like shooting stars before they plunged into Greyback and burst through his torso. The werewolf gave one final, shuddering cackle, and then stilled. His bulk slumped beneath rearing legs and triumphant bellows.
Harriet couldn't look away from the blood that bloomed like red flowers until it bled down into the earth, morphing to cypress leaves, draining into the dirt and clay and broken grass. That one yellow eye still gazed at her, even in death.
Harriet gazed back.
A/N:
Harriet: "Ha ha, what kind of idiot would attack a werewolf?"
Harriet: "…."
Harriet: "Oh no."
Harriet: "Oh nooo."