A/N: Hi, everyone. I know I haven't posted anything here in years -- and I haven't written anything in years, until now. I decided to write a fic about the Shrieking Shack incident, something I've always wanted to write about but that I've never been satisfied with the results of when I've tried before. This is not the full first chapter that I'm intending, but I thought I would post what I've got so far since I haven't been here in so long.
Remus Lupin was shaking as he woke.
A soft whimper escaped his cold, numb lips. He was freezing in the early morning winter air that entered the cramped little house even through boarded windows. There was a deep pain at his side, and he could see the dark bruise clearly through weakly narrowed eyes. He could feel the stinging of urine on his legs and he could feel the dry blood on his back.
Waking the next morning was always the worst part of the transformation. He could barely remember the nights of misery, ramming against walls and tearing through himself in a frenzied need for blood. The nights were only echoes, blurry pictures and faint primitive feelings, but the mornings stayed. The mornings would stay forever.
Remus did not want to rise, nor did he want to slump down again on the cold, unsympathetic floor; he did not want to think or feel. He did not want to bother getting up and dressing. He did not want to bother going back to the school. He closed his eyes again, breathing in deeply, but also taking in the horrible violent smells of the Shack. The overwhelming odor filled his nostrils and his heart thumped painfully.
His head ached, the wave of nausea coming over him as it usually did; he was forced to rise slightly and lean forward, retching brutally. He coughed limply, the head pains gone but a new awful smell and a new emptiness in his stomach. He did not want to move and he wasn't to what degree he could. He waited for Madam Pomfrey restlessly, feeling pathetic, but with no desire to assert himself as anything else.
What was the reason for this particular horror of a morning? He hadn't found himself in this sort of state for months now, because of the help he received from his friends in their Animagi forms. Hadn't they been there the night before? The memories were unfocused, vague – rage, lusting vicious for blood; the injuries he boasted now were far worse than they had been recently. Had he just unexpectedly gone berserk? If James, Peter, and Sirius had been there, they certainly would still be in the Shack. For his comfort, they stayed as long as they could before Madam Pomfrey appeared.
None of this connected.
Suddenly, he was near hysterical in fright. Had one of his friends been careless, stayed in human form too long? For all he knew, a murder could be on his hands. What else would have warranted such damage to his own body but the denial of human flesh? He tried to calm himself; he was probably jumping to conclusions. Maybe they hadn't arrived, and the lack of their presences was what brought him to massacre himself to such a level.
Where was Madam Pomfrey?