The wolves didn’t know that it was late November and didn’t care. They knew it was cold. There was still snow falling, but only in light flurries. It was the wind that stung and burned. The new snow was whipped through the trees like cold thistledown. The old snow froze into a white shell over the ground. The wolves had hunted the Forest for a place to get out of the wind.

Rosie led them back to the tunnels where Weiss had been. There were only five left with her. There had been 20 in the beginning. She had killed three of them and driven away the rest. Now they roamed the corridors, sniffing at the weird magical scents and shying away from the magical fire that still burned in Weiss’s little room. Rosie had refused to enter that room, but she had stood silent and staring in the doorway a long time.

The contents of the room were still in piles from where Harry, Sirius, and Esme had ransacked the place looking for the World’s Door. The omega of Rosie’s pack, a small quick wolf with dark quick eyes, crept around the pile and sniffed at a bundle of old feathers. It had been a feather duster before half of it had been torn off to be an ichling’s tail. The enchanted fire popped and the wolf flinched. He jostled the pile and a few things on the top fell to the floor with a smash.

Poor Quick panicked and ran. He bolted for the door again and found Rosie there. He flattened his lean frame to squeeze past her in the doorway without touching her. She let him go. The picture of Weiss’s granddaughter slid from the pile and hit the floor with a crunch that sent fracture lines spiderwebbing through the glass. The long dead little girl smiled through the broken glass at the huge wolf. Rosie’s green eyes narrowed and her lips twitched into a half snarl. The fire sent up some more crackling red sparks and she finally turned away.

Quick was cowering at the far end of the tunnel with the other four wolves. They were nervous, unsure of her mood. They were hungry, but there was nothing to eat in the stone tunnels. It was a relief to be out of the wind, though. The second strongest of the pack was Gray. He watched Rosie for any hint and when she gave none, he laid down and curled up. The others followed his example, Quick piling up over them in his eagerness not to be left out. He was snarled at and knocked over, but was allowed to nestle in between Gray and the cold wall.

Rosie watched them for a moment. Gray kept a careful eye on her. In her past moods she would have easily attacked him or any of the pack for daring to settle in without her. She didn’t act the way any alpha he’d known before and was certain he’d be forced to fight her eventually. So far they hadn’t gone hungry for long and she’d led them to safe dens, but she had also turned on the other pack members and set them against a hippogriff. The deer that wasn’t a deer had shaken them too. Something wasn’t right. She’d killed his last leader and he wasn’t sure he could win against her yet. So, he played the beta and waited.

Rosie felt his eyes on her. She didn’t care. She could tear out his throat as easily as she had his brother’s. Energy burned through her body. There would be no sleep for her, especially snuggled up with the others. She didn’t like them touching her. She turned from the pack and jogged down the corridor towards the opening. She’d hunt again, for whatever it was that haunted her.

There was something she needed, Rosie was certain. Her thoughts were usually keen as her teeth, short and sharp. She didn’t like having to think, to try to remember what it was that she didn’t have. She tore out of the tunnels into the winter woods. Snow crunched under black paws as she sent. Steam swirled from her jaws. She stopped to snap up a small rabbit and gulped it down, but then was on the move again.

It was there, driving her on. A half memory was working through her head, like a worm eating its way free of an apple. There was something she had to find. Things would make sense then. She had tried to drown it with the taste of blood, and the howl of the wind, but it lingered. She slowed to a trot and looked back and forth through the trees. Something wasn’t where it was supposed to be. She had to find that something.

What was it though? At her best, Rosie had never been patient. Frustration made her kill things. She ran harder and faster, snapping her teeth together. There was something that needed finding. She couldn’t remember what it looked like or smelled like or if she had ever even known what it was. Her memory had always been clearer when she would change. She remembered that much. Her body stretched, half-trying to shift back into her human form. She stopped a second later and forgot why she had wanted to change anyway.

She had stopped in a clearing. Uncertain which way to go, she turned around a few times. Something like fear touched her feral heart then. She howled out a long call and waited with her ears perked for any reply. Her pack was far away underground and didn’t answer. Rosie began to run again, desperate now for any sign of something familiar. She bolted through the underbrush without watching her feet.

What was it?? What did she want and why? She wasn’t hungry, she had a safe place to sleep, and a pack to hunt with. She was the strongest among them with nothing to fear. So what did she need so badly that it wouldn’t let her sleep? Her animal mind couldn’t bring up any sort of vision for her to focus on. So she ran mindlessly through the woods, until the snow and the trees blurred around her.

Then the trees fell away into open ground and she slid to a stop. She had charged straight from the Forest to the grounds of Hogwarts. The castle stood like a mountain as the snow fluttered around it. Something clicked in Rosie’s head. The faint voices of a Magical Creatures class walking back from Hagrid’s house reached her ears. The worming thought burst into the light.

It was here. She could find it here. And she would know it when she saw it.