Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter forty two

Black gloves stretch across her fingers and hands as she stands cutting up tiny pieces of aconitum. Her hair lays in a thick, ponytail against her neck, while heat bubbles up from the cauldron beside her.

She's in the back room of Slughorn's tiny office, filled with his own potion supplies. The air smelled thick of pineapple and black licorice when she entered an hour ago, now it smelled of rich herbs pulled from gardens and the earth. She almost preferred this over the intoxicating juice of pineapple, it always made her have the sudden urge to sneeze.

Harry sits across from her, flipping through a comic book. While she had insisted on pulling him to Theo's party, it also meant pulling him to her brewing station. At first, Slughorn had been inside with them, buzzing like a tiny child as he watched her cut and stir, but mostly he just paid attention to Harry like a fruit fly.

When it became quite clear to him that nobody was quite interested in speaking, he excused himself with talks of making calls to another famous student he taught. Winnie was beginning to become tired of hearing it all, but she laughed when he laughed for the still purpose that he wasn't whispering words around the school of her infliction or treating her poorly for it.

She gathers up the tiny pieces, sticking them in the cauldron that is already bubbling with the rest of the ingredients. The liquid hisses as she pulls off her gloves, tossing them into the waste bin near the entrance.

"Are you supposed to just leave it here?" Harry questions, closing the comic book in his hands. She sees the title Spider-man on the front, making her slightly confused on how a spider could be a man. But she simply shakes it from her head as she sighs, nodding her head with a penned expression across her eyebrows.

"I suppose," she murmurs, though she doesn't feel quite comfortable with doing so. Originally, she had planned to stay the entire brewing time, looking over homework, write to Remus, ( he hasn't replied to one of hers letters yet, making her increasingly concerned. ) or just stare at the cauldron. But with Theo's party, she can't do either. "Dumbledore said Slughorn wouldn't touch it but," she pauses, frowning as she glances over at Harry who nods his head.

"I get it, it'll be fine though. What's the worst that could happen?" He means it in a joking way, of course, with the tilt of his shit eating grin and the shrug of his shoulders. But Winnie is stuck imagining the worst that could actually happen.

The Wolfsbane could be tampered with and she could go completely wolf on everyone and tear everyone to shreds!

She could lose herself completely the next full moon and not remember a single thing that happened that morning!

"Okay you have that 'oh fuck,' eyes going on right now, so clearly what I said made you worse," Harry frowns, snapping his fingers in her face as she comes back to reality. Finding him now standing next to her with his eyes staring down at her face.

"Well no shite!" She screeches, throwing her hands up in the air. "Potter, anytime someone says 'what's the worst that could happen?' the fucking worse thing in the whole world happens!"

"I think you're being a little overdramatic," Harry snorts, while she shoots a glare his way.

"Oh cause you're on to talk, 'Cordelia breathed in the same direction as Draco! They must be dating,'" she lowers her voice, trying to mimic his own voice while he simply stares at her with his lips pressed into a line.

"That wasn't funny," he mutters, causing her to snort as she reaches forward to shove slightly on his shoulder.

"I think it was hilarious actually," she grins, before looking back at the cauldron, smoke wavering its way in the air in tiny swirls as it shimmers. "Oh come on, I can't stare at this thing anymore, I'll drive myself mad."