Werewolf Woes
In another world, another life — one where I never became Asteria, perhaps — the story would have ended, already. I would have returned to James with my tail tucked firmly between my legs, and they — James, the Marauders, the Light — with the excuse that I was clearly mad and not responsible for my betrayal, would have taken me back.
I imagine that it would have been...hard, those first few months. But we would have gone out of our way to become a family again, like we were in fourth year, when the Marauders were my brothers in all but blood. We would have flown together and done our homework together, bitched about Snape and how the very existence of the slimy little greaseball was offensive together.
I would have been with them for the November moon, which... Well, I'd like to think that it would have made a difference, if I'd been there to run interference from the start. It could have been the beginning of a different, wilder and more reckless Marauder tradition, sneaking out of the Shack and roaming the forest. It would have been exciting, running around with a werewolf unrestrained, the only thing stopping him from running off to attack someone being my teeth and James's prongs. Terrifying, yes, and horribly dangerous, but we were young and fearless, with the unshakeable confidence of youth on our side.
But this isn't that life, and we don't live in that world. As things turned out... Well, Remus considers the full moon of November, Nineteen Seventy-Six to be an unmitigated disaster, one of the lowest points in his entire life. Which, given that he's a bloody werewolf, and spent years living in abject poverty, exiled from human society, wanted by the British Ministry for a capital crime, unable to contact his family or friends lest his whereabouts might have become known, I think that's saying quite a lot.
Granted, this night did play an instrumental role in the development of that sequence of events, it might be a pivotal moment on par with being bitten by Fenrir in the first place. But when he says it's one of his lowest points, he's not talking about that. He's talking about the fact that he — that Moony — became, for the first time, the monster Remus had always secretly feared that he was. That he became the pivotal moment in someone else's life, dragging her into the same hell as himself.
And the most annoying thing about it is, he still doesn't blame James! (Not for this at least.) It's like he thinks he should have been able to stop himself, as though he would be the first werewolf in the history of ever to master the Curse through sheer force of will, honestly.
Remus, if you're reading this, know that no one blames you. You were as much a victim of this confluence of idiocy as anyone.
"Siri! Sirius!" Aster startled at the sound of Pete's voice on the other side of the curtain-wall. She'd been reading one of the old Ciardha Monroe books (she'd mentioned them to Evans, and so been reminded that they existed, and she had nothing better to do tonight) and trying to pretend that the full moon held no significance whatsoever. She hadn't really expected it to work, but the last time she'd read these, she'd been maybe ten? And she knew a hell of a lot more about cursebreaking, now, so they'd actually somehow managed to become more engaging and entertaining. "Marley! Where's Siri?!"
"Pete? How did you get up here?" Why was he up here, was the better question. He, unlike Aster, did have someplace better to be. Well, more important at least.
"THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT MARLENE WHERE IS SIRIUS?!" he shouted, sounding borderline hysterical.
She poked her head out of the door-flap to see he looked just as overwrought as he sounded. "In here, Pete," she said, grabbing him and yanking him into the partitioned space. "What's wrong?"
"It's— It's Remus. Moony," he said, horror and fear and disbelief mingling in his voice, the same mix of emotions currently draining all the blood from Aster's face, turning her stomach and—
"What. Happened?" she bit out. There were only two options, really, that could make Pete sound like that. Either Moony had ripped Prongs's throat out — no wolf would attack a stag alone in the wild, but Prongs was kind of shite at things like instinctively knowing how to defend himself — or he'd escaped.
Rather than answer, Pete's eyes flicked over to Evans, doing something boring over at her desk. Potions homework, she thought, she hadn't checked. The prefect raised an eyebrow at him, her expression entirely unreadable.
"She knows, Pete!" At least, Aster was pretty sure Evans knew that Moony was the werewolf who had almost killed Snape. She hadn't told her, but it wasn't terribly difficult to put it together, if you knew that there was a werewolf around, in the school, somewhere, who it might be.
And even if she didn't already know, it was hardly important, at the moment.
"He— He got out— Got past us, you know, the ward gate, and— Prongs couldn't follow him, not in the tunnel, he wouldn't fit, and if he changed back— So he's trying to break out of the Shack, sent me to find you and Dumbledore, and— We need to find him, Siri— Aster, I mean! Before he hurts someone!"
And they needed her to find him, because she was the only person they knew who could track a werewolf by scent, and they hadn't thought to get a fur-sample or something to use as a focus for a tracking charm, because there hadn't been any risk of Moony getting out before James went and put that stupid ward-gate in. And then they needed to be able to capture him, somehow, and that was going to be a huge fucking problem, because she might be able to fight him to a stand-still, maybe — Moony was bigger than her, and much more vicious than Remus, but she was more stubborn — but that wasn't going to put him down unless she completely tore him apart, and he'd do at least as much damage to her in the process. And werewolf wounds were cursed, they'd still be there when she shifted back and resisted healing, so that might actually kill her. Bad fucking plan.
And even if she did manage to stop him running off to attack any humans, they'd still need someone to cast something to subdue him, and they were resistant to magic, so just using a sleeping charm or something wouldn't do it. Pretty much all the light spells she knew with the stopping power to disable a werewolf would cause major, lasting harm to the target. Which generally wasn't a problem, since if the Aurors were trying to take down a werewolf, they wouldn't care if it were maimed or killed. They could try something environmental, make a trap of some sort, but Moony was smart, there was no guarantee that he'd wouldn't avoid it, and that would take time, anyway, and probably a whole team to get it set up and get him in the right spot to spring it. So that wouldn't work either.
Which just left...
"Evans, can you cast the Imperius?" she asked, digging her dueling knife and training gear out of her trunk. Hopefully she wouldn't need to use it, she wasn't planning on being anywhere near Moony in human shape — Bella might be able to get away with running with Greyback's pack as a human, but Aster wasn't Bella — but if she did have to fight him with magic, she'd need every advantage she could get. If they could use that to knock him out, or even just get him somewhere no one would hear him howling, she could sink him up to his neck in a couple tonnes of dirt like Bella had done to her the other day, completely immobilise him.
Evans didn't answer, though Pete made an awkward choking, squeaking noise. Like he couldn't decide between gak and eep. "Evans!" She looked up to see Evans was looking at Pete in much the same way Pete had looked at Evans before saying anything about Remus. Oh, right. "It's only Unforgivable to use Unforgivables on humans. Werewolves don't count." Especially not in wolf-form.
"Well, that's fucking stupid..."
"Evans! Can you do it?!"
Evans bit her lip. "I don't know, I've never tried it! I might be able to, but—"
"No, this is not the time to try to figure it out on the fly. Go tell Cissy there's a rogue werewolf in Hogsmeade and convince her to get her arse on a broom and come Imperius him for me. I'll track him, she can track me—" She popped into Padfoot's form and yanked a few hairs from the tip of her tail, then popped back to tie them together with a human hair and hand the whole thing to Evans — she wasn't sure whether she could be tracked as Padfoot without a Padfoot focus, best not leave it to chance. "—and if all goes well, no one dies." If all went really well, no one would even be bitten and turned, but when had Remus Lupin's luck ever been that good?
"Pete, do not tell Dumbledore or McGee or anyone, because they will kill Moony to stop him if he gets anywhere near a human."
"But James said—"
"I don't care what James told you to do, James is the fucking idiot who went and poked a hole in the thrice-cursed wards for his own fucking convenience! Evans..." Well, she wanted to say call Bella, not because she really thought they needed her to take care of Remus, but just because Aster would feel a hell of a lot better if she weren't the most competent person here right now, and also, she was only about eighty per cent certain that Imperiusing a transformed werewolf would stop him. Of course, Bella might be out with her own werewolves at the moment, but— Fuck it, couldn't hurt. "Tell her to call Bella, first. He'll probably be somewhere in the Forest or Hogsmeade, I doubt there's anyone out on the grounds to hunt on a night like tonight." It was raining, cold and miserable, which was probably the only bit of good luck they were going to have tonight — everyone sane would be inside, less opportunity for Moony to attack someone.
Evans nodded, already heading for the door. "Anything else?"
"Take Pete with you. Keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."
"Easier said than done," she grumbled, grabbing him and dragging him out of their little false-walled room with her. "Come on, Peter."
Aster followed maybe thirty seconds behind, taking the time to throw on one of Bella's reinforced, enchanted corsets and the cingulum she almost never used — the heavy, weighted, skirt-like leather segments spelled to protect her legs in much the same way the corset did her torso (all of her dueling-style over-robes, like the one she'd worn to Evans's house, were purely decorative, not properly enchanted) — over the dueling trousers and blouse she'd been wearing all day (because it was Saturday, why shouldn't she be comfortable while lazing around feeling sorry for herself and the fact that she had nothing on tonight?) and double check her wand holster and the sheath for her dueling knife — nothing worse than having them come loose in the middle of a fight. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging on the inside of the open wardrobe door as she moved to leave the room, hard-eyed and grim-faced and dressed for battle; almost startled at how much she looked like Bella; and turned on her heel to grab a rain-repelling hat and cloak to maybe try to hide that resemblance, just slightly.
...And then cast an attention-deflecting charm on top of it all, just in case. She really didn't have time to waste arguing with anyone who tried to stop her before she even left the bloody Tower, wanting to know why she was dressed like a bloody gladiator. (Because given the option of attempting to subdue a fucking lion or a thrice-cursed werewolf, she might take the lion, honestly. At least lion bites could be healed...)
She was glad she'd thought to grab the cloak as soon as she stepped out of the Castle, it was bloody well pissing down, and fucking cold. She had to focus extra hard to keep the extra clothing with her when she transformed, especially since it was enchanted, but even disregarding the protective spells, it would be worth it to be able to warm up as soon as she changed back.
Of course, it didn't stop frigid water seeping into her fur in the meanwhile, or icy mud squishing up between her toe-pads. The only thing she could do about that was run, keep herself warm by moving. She raced across the open ground to the Whomping Willow — Moony had been confined to the tunnel to that point — and caught his scent, the trail leading almost immediately into the Forest. It was marginally less wet under the trees, though most of them had already lost all of their leaves, so only marginally. And footing was more difficult. Moony hadn't exactly been sticking to a path. (Not that there really were paths, whatever.) He'd wandered apparently aimlessly for a while, his meandering trail leading out and around the lake, roughly paralleling the road to the gates until he'd passed beyond the wardline, where he'd apparently spotted the lights of the town, and headed straight for them. Because of course he had. Bloody werewolf...
At a dead sprint, Padfoot could cover the two and a half miles between the gates and the outskirts of the town in less than ten minutes, even in the dark and the rain. Moony almost certainly hadn't had quite the same sense of urgency coming down, but he still had enough of a head-start it wasn't at all surprising that when she finally spotted him he was already stalking a potential victim, or rather a pair of them, a young couple who'd apparently just left a restaurant, huddled beneath a single rain-shield spell, probably just for the excuse to snuggle close to each other. The werewolf crouched in the shadows, creeping from one doorway to the next until they turned a corner and left the well-lit highstreet behind.
She actually spotted him as he darted across the road to follow them. She was still too far away to stop him when the witch screamed, the wizard bellowing out an impedimenta, which almost certainly had no effect whatsoever, if he'd even managed to hit Moony, in the dark and the rain. She moved as fast as she could, it almost felt like flying, like her paws didn't even touch the ground, but the woman's screams took on a more pained note before she caught up.
She was on the ground, the scent of blood heavy in the air — he'd gotten her, he had to have done — Moony advancing now on the man, who backed away, throwing stunning charms at the increasingly angry wolf. (Stunning charms were about as effective on werewolves as a bloody stinging jinx.) The cutting curse he tried next was barely any better, opening a shallow gash along Moony's left shoulder.
Aster charged him side-on, didn't even slow down as she rammed into him, sending both of them tumbling and immediately monopolising his attention. For a brief moment, she thought the wizard was going to curse her, too, but after that brief, shocked moment, he seemed to realise that this was his chance to run. He edged around to his lover, careful not to take his eyes off the circling canines, and hauled her to her feet, apparating them both away with a clumsy crack.
Good. One less thing to worry about.
Though, Moony obviously didn't think so, growling at her more fiercely as he seemed to realise that his prey, the human he hadn't managed to infect with the Curse, had escaped.
This might, she realised abruptly, have been a very bad idea. Picking a fight with a werewolf, deliberately pissing him off — they'd scrapped before, of course, but that was just playing. This — he was angry, now. But she couldn't let him go back to hunting humans. In fact, now the first woman had gotten away, she really, really needed to get him out of town — if the man had any brains at all, he'd take her to St. Mungo's. They'd recognise a werewolf bite immediately — well, a large canine bite, tainted with dark magic, and it was the full moon, so — and send word to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, who would have someone here as soon as they could scramble a team of hit wizards, which meant she had...maybe fifteen minutes, before all hell broke loose?
Fuck!
Moony had apparently sensed, somehow, that her mind wasn't entirely on the fight, leaping at her as she considered how best to get him out of here, assuming it would take at least a few minutes for Cissy to get her arse in the air—
Teeth snapped at her neck, circling around, trying to grab her, force her onto her back. She hopped to her right, spinning to keep her own barred teeth in the way, making as though to jump at him with a strike of her own, but only feinting, so that she could dodge again the next time he came at her.
After two or three little exchanges, she tried to run, lead him away from the town, but he wasn't invested in her enough to follow more than a few houses. Just stopped, all smug that he'd run her off, and went back to skulking. Which was annoying. An actual dog (or wolf, presumably) would have made sure she wasn't coming back, maybe paraded around his territory marking it a bit to remind her what she was in for if she came this way again. Werewolves, though, had a mission. Protecting his territory and asserting dominance over an interloper like herself was secondary to his need to spread the Curse, to find humans to bite.
She charged at him again, but she'd given up the element of surprise. He leapt aside and spun faster than it seemed reasonable for a hundred and forty pound animal to move, teeth closing around her neck. She became abruptly aware how much larger Moony was than female Padfoot as he worried her a bit — her fur was thick enough there, he didn't really cut into her, wasn't in danger of really hurting her at that angle — yes, he could rip her throat out, but he'd have to let go and reposition to do so. He tried, flipping her onto her back with his sheer size and weight advantage, but she was expecting it, paws up to claw at his face even as she twisted and scrambled back to her feet.
He lunged, grabbing her back left leg and grinding down — that, unlike worrying her scruff, was going to leave a mark, she could feel teeth sinking into her, grinding down to the bone, tearing, jerking side-to-side to do more damage and pulling her back to the ground again, using his leverage to flip her belly-up, which was possibly the worst position to be caught in, especially when he was already at her rear, it was all too easy for him to snap at her soft, unprotected stomach. She managed to get a lucky scratch in, flailing at him and trying to regain her feet, but not before he bit down on her side, just to the fore of her pelvis — he backed off for a moment, shaking his head, a deep claw-mark scored across his nose and muzzle. Of course, that only made him angrier, but when she began backing away, trying not to put too much weight on her injured hind leg, he let her go.
Snapping and growling, of course, and he followed longer, that time, but still, after about a block or so, he turned dismissively, back toward the centre of town.
Clearly, this wasn't working. And she had no idea how long they'd been at it, but at this rate, they weren't even going to need the witch to report them, one of the humans in the houses around them would hear them and call someone to stop them.
Which meant it was time to do something really fucking stupid — she popped back to her human form, wincing as the gouges in her calf and side and the scratches on her neck asserted themselves on this body as well. (Why the Curse didn't persist across transformations too, she had no idea, she'd spent the entire month after their first full moon worrying that she'd caught it in dog form, playing a little too rough.)
The rain covered the sound of her transformation, and she was downwind, so he didn't immediately recognise the scent of human blood on the air, which meant she had time to tighten the corset just a bit to hopefully keep the tears between her ribs and hip bone from bleeding too badly, and the laces of her left boot to do the same for her leg. Testing it, she found she could at least put weight on it. Running was going to be difficult, she wouldn't be as fast as she normally was, but she couldn't outrun him, anyway, the plan was to get as far as she could, then pop back to Padfoot's form. She had at least fifty meters' head-start, she could do this.
She threw a rock at him. Her aim was slightly off, it bounced off the cobbles to his left, but it still got him to look around.
You want to hunt a human, well, here's a human for you, she thought giddily, turning on her right leg and pushing herself as fast as she could toward the darkness on the outskirts of town.
Moony was faster. Not just faster than her, she'd expected that, but faster than she'd thought he was, even. It probably wasn't even five seconds before he was snapping at her cloak, her sign to change back, damn it, but she hadn't anticipated him catching her cloak, choking her and yanking her backward off her feet.
Fuck, fuck, FUCK!
Actual wolves, if they were trying to take down a human (which they wouldn't) on their own (which they wouldn't), would go directly for the throat, much like a dog fighting another dog. It's pretty much the way they approach taking down any animal they happen to be attacking. Werewolves, on the other hand, aren't trying to kill their victims. They do, occasionally, but out of a hundred human werewolf attacks, at least fifty-seven will have the initial wounds, the first real bite, somewhere fleshy and thickly muscled. Somewhere it's probably not going to kill you. Mostly the hips and arse, upper arms. Then (in order of preference), lower legs, like the calf wound she'd already sustained, lower arms (if they happened to catch a flailing arm), torso, and only then shoulders and neck.
Slightly stunned by the fall, coughing and flailing at the clasp of her traitorous cloak, she rolled, feeling the heavy, unpleasant pressure of jaws closing around her upper right leg with bruising force, but in this form, she had armour — his teeth didn't break the skin.
He tried again, a chomp that would have taken a solid chunk out of the back of her thigh if it had gotten through the leather panels covering her arse down almost to her knees — there were only a few inches of unprotected leg between the cingulum and her high-laced dueling boots, all boney, not an attractive target for a werewolf — there was another one, her right ankle, bloody hell, she hoped he didn't break her leg, worrying it like that. She tried to kick him in the face, but that did absolutely no good, she couldn't get the angle, and all things considered, it was probably better if he spent a few minutes trying to bite through dragonhide, rather than realising that her arms were, well, not completely defenseless, there were protective enchantments on her sheath and holster which extended to her forearms as a whole, but they were much less effective than those on her boots and cingulum, and her upper arms were entirely vulnerable.
That said, it would really be better if he weren't in danger of biting her human self at all. She managed to twist around so she could sit up, wrenching herself into a pike, stabbing at him with her dueling knife even as she cast a shield charm to hold him off. She actually managed to connect, scoring a line almost parallel to the scratch she'd gotten on his muzzle earlier, driving him back to circle warily as she scrambled to her feet, carefully not taking her eyes off him.
From somewhere behind her, there was a slow clap.
Bella. It had to be Bella. (Thank all the gods and Powers.)
Sure enough, half a second later, right around the point Moony apparently decided that Bella, who was neither hiding behind a glowing shield nor armed with anything sharp, looked like an easier target, she said, "Congratulations, Aster. I think this might be—" She paused to spin out of the way as Moony leapt at her, dozens of runes lighting blue along her arms and hands, even down to her fingers, to punch a fucking werewolf in the face (which, damn that was hot), then continued. "—the single stupidest thing you've ever done. Which is saying—" A feint and an open-handed smack this time, whapping the (now slightly warier) wolf upside the head as he darted in, snarling. He stumbled, apparently slightly stunned. "—quite a lot, really. Not the plan, that was actually quite good, Cissy will be along in a few minutes," she said lightly, grinning as she circled around Moony, who was actually giving off defensive body language, now (which was both slightly absurd and also entirely reasonable). "Actually attempting to engage a werewolf in combat, as a human, on the full moon, though? Who does that?"
"Um...other than you?" Aster had to point out, because there was a certain irony in the situation, she felt. Being lectured about doing something Bella was doing right this second. Unfortunately, this seemed to remind Moony that there were two of them, and as it turned out, Bella wasn't the easier of the two targets. She yelped as he leapt at her, pinning her to the ground beneath her own shield charm, the impact knocking her knife out of her hand.
"Yes, other than me, obviously." She closed the distance between them in a matter of steps, tackling Moony off of Aster with a flying leap in much the same way Padfoot had bowled him over earlier, apparently just because she could. Her momentum carried the two of them off to Aster's left, a furious, rolling tangle of dark fur and pale limbs. She was pretty sure Moony landed on the bottom, but by the time they stopped tumbling, he was on top, lunging at her face and neck as she held him up by his front paws, giggling madly, looking probably as happy as Aster had ever seen her, with a wolf at least half again as heavy as she was pinning her to the ground, two inches from biting her nose off.
It didn't really register until she was pinned and "vulnerable" that she was horribly under-dressed for the weather, let alone for fighting a fucking wolf in hand-to-hand combat — barefoot, in a light under-blouse and knee-length bloomers, plastered to her body and practically translucent from the rain. Her hair was actually tamed for once, plaited back, probably because it would be a sopping rat's nest (like Aster's) if it weren't. She had a simple, silver locket around her neck — Aster was fairly certain it contained her communication mirrors, one for Narcissa and one for de Mort — and her wand-holster strapped to her left arm, but aside from that... What the hell had she been doing before Cissy called her? Aster hadn't even known that Bella owned anything in white...
"Not to, you know, criticize, or whatever, but why don't you just immobilise him? I mean, I don't know any spells that would work, but..." But she assumed Bella did.
Sure enough, "Oh, there's about half a dozen or so, one of them's even neutral enough I could probably teach you. But they don't hold very long, maybe a minute or two — plenty of time to finish a wolf off, but not long enough to get him to a safehouse. And this is more fun."
"Fun?! Bella! We don't have time for fun! We need to get him under control, or at least out of town, before Regulation and Control shows up with a squad of Hit Wizards and people start dying!"
Maybe sending for Bella had been a bad idea. Yes, watching Bella fight Moony was a hell of a lot less painful than doing it herself, but if they didn't get out of here quick enough, she was almost sure to consider fighting a load of comically under-prepared Hit Wizards (prepared to deal with a werewolf, or even a whole pack of werewolves, was not at all the same as prepared to face a battlemage defending a werewolf like a bloody lunatic) even more fun. Before she'd shown up, Aster's concern had been that they would kill Moony. Now she was more worried that Bella would kill them.
"Oh, come off it, Cissy will be along any minute now. Besides, if I can't play with my werewolves tonight, I have to entertain myself somehow."
"So sorry to ruin your evening, with my stupid ex-friends letting a fucking werewolf loose on the bloody town."
"Yes, speaking of— Oh, fine, you big baby," she muttered, apparently at Moony, who seemed to be less aggressively angry, now, and more defensively angry, no longer lunging and snapping at her face, but whining and growling as he twisted in her grip, trying to nip her fingers and get his front legs back. She pulled a knee up to her chest, planting a foot at the base of his left hind leg, and pushed, throwing him off her and rolling to her feet before he could recover. Not that it mattered, he retreated to circle them warily about ten feet away, rather than get too close and get punched in the face again. "Speaking of which, how, exactly, did this sequence of events come about? Cissy and Asphodel just said you were off chasing down a rogue werewolf, and would I please make sure neither you nor he got yourselves killed before Cissy could come rescue you."
"Oh. Right. Well, remember how I told you that Pete and the King of the Toerags put a ward-gate in the safehouse where Moony was supposed to be staying? As it turns out, they apparently just poked a hole in all of the wards. Including the one to keep werewolves in, not just the one to keep humans out. So, I'm not entirely sure, but—"
Her explanation was interrupted by a near-translucent spell-glow, expertly aimed at the werewolf in question from a spot some ten meters up and to Aster's right. Narcissa sank lower, glaring at them through the rain — it had slacked off a bit, but it was still drizzly, the moon still hidden behind thick clouds. "There, one werewolf, Imperiused. You owe me. What do you want me to do with it?"
Aster looked to Bella, who smirked at her. "This is your show, duckie."
Aster scowled. Fine. "Can you make him stay calm and follow me? Follow my instructions, I mean, even after you're gone."
"Can I instantly tame and train a bloody werewolf? Oh, sure, no problem," she said, with an unnecessary degree of sarcasm. "Simple concepts, Asteria. Ones that don't directly conflict with the Curse's drives, or it will overwhelm the command as soon as I break the connection."
Well, bugger. "What about just putting him to sleep? Oh! And can you, I don't know, make it so we — Bella and I — don't register as human to him? So he won't attack us if he wakes up."
"I...think so?"
"Don't worry about that part, Cissy. I'm immune to the Curse—" Cissy looked for a moment as though she might have something to say about that claim — not that Aster doubted it, she knew Greyback's pack didn't see her as human, it wasn't surprising she couldn't be turned, either. Or that Bella had (probably) let them try it, just to see. "—and Aster can just stay a dog, or go back to the school or whatever. Were you planning on fixing the wards on the safehouse?" she asked, watching Moony swaying gently, growing obviously more tired before their eyes. After a few seconds, he curled up in the middle of the street, his eyes drifting shut.
"Well..." She hadn't really thought that far ahead, honestly. But she certainly wasn't up to trying to fix the wards herself. She honestly wasn't feeling up to much more than taking a blood replenishing potion and going the fuck to sleep. "No. Can we just break into the Cottage and hole up there until morning?"
Bella shrugged, nodded, retrieving Aster's cloak and casting a few spells to obscure their presence, vanishing any traces of her blood from the cobbles and so on.
Fantastic.
"Does that mean I'm done, here? I can go back up to the school, inside, where it's warm and dry?"
Honestly, Cissy was such a cat sometimes... It was just water. Really cold, annoying water, but. "Yes, Cissy. And yes, I owe you. Thank you." She carefully levitated the sleeping wolf off the cobblestones, pulling him over to float beside her. "Bella, you can let us in, right?"
"I don't think anyone actually bothered to remove you from the wards. You are still a Black, so..." she trailed off, headed down...Tulip? Were they on Tulip? Aster had completely lost her bearings in the fight. Anyway, she presumed Bella knew where she was going, following her seemed like a perfectly fine plan to Aster.
...Gave her loads of time to think out what to do next.
She was probably going to have to talk to Dumbledore, she realised.
Bugger.