You don't know why you're here.
The Shrieking Shack: The most severely haunted place in Britain, yet not home to a single ghost.
Except, as you make your way up the tunnel on a crisp autumn afternoon, you can't help but wonder if maybe there are ghosts, just not the ones the villagers love to gossip about. The shadows of the past. The shadows of people who have gone.
Quiet ghosts.
Ghosts of the good times. Ghosts of the bad times. Ghosts that raise a small, sad smile to your lips.
You left the castle to escape the ghosts, so you don't know why you're here, of all places. Two months since your return to Hogwarts and the ghosts are suffocating you. Every direction, wherever you turn. The loss tints your happiest moments and makes your worst ones blacker.
You had decided to leave the castle for a breather. To talk to Hagrid, maybe, or just sit by the lake and watch the water. But your feet found themselves walking to the willow. Your hand reached into your pocket of its own accord and levitated a stick to freeze the tree. As you walked in, you wondered why you had chosen this place, of all places, to forget.
Forgetting. You have spent the last ten Hallowe'ens trying to do just that. Blocking out the memories, even the good ones. But maybe, you reflect, standing in the Shrieking Shack, maybe this year you want to remember.
Why else would you have chosen this spot, the one that has the most ghosts of all? The splatters of old blood on the walls. The claw marks. The smell of your own misery.
There is a stain on the floorboards, dark brown, the colour of old blood. You realise with a jolt that was where Madam Pomfrey found you after your first full moon at Hogwarts.
You were eleven years old. The maths takes half a second, and you have completed the sum before you even realized you wanted to know the answer. That was twenty-two years ago. For some reason, a smile worms its way to your lips. Twenty-two years. A lot has changed.
You briefly dwell on the horrible nights you spent in this place. The tearing of skin. The cracking of bones. The howls and shrieks that terrified the locals. But somehow they seem insignificant. They were long ago. For some reason, you feel hopeful. There are potions now. The potion. Easy and regular access to the Wolfsbane potion has changed your life. You will never again have to endure the anguish that led to you clawing your own body.
Your mind turns to the happier times. It surprises you a little. For twelve years you have struggled to think of anything but the torturous things, the things that burnt when you touched them. Even the good times ached. But today they don't. Today they fill you up.
You look away from the marks of misery in this room, and at the marks of the happier times. Harder to find, but still present. The loose floorboard where you and the boys hid bottles of Butterbeer, and later flasks of Firewhiskey. You prise it open and see that the empty bottles are still there, whiffing slightly of alcohol. Over there, by the skirting board, Peter scratched initials with the tip of his claw. MWPP. You can still see them, tiny, cramped letters, only noticeable if you know what you're looking for.
That boarded up window that came loose, acting as a cat-flap for the four animals to leave the confines of the shack. Peter, Sirius and you had always got through without much difficulty, but James had always struggled to fit his antlers through. You chuckle absently to yourself at the memory of one time, when his antlers had refused to budge…
You freeze suddenly. You are laughing, laughing on Hallowe'en. Laughing at a memory which should sting. You suddenly feel disrespectful- dirty. Laughing. Twelve years to the day since Lily and James had died and you were laughing? You sat down on the bed and ran an anxious hand through your hair.
James never stopped laughing. He laughed so loudly, sometimes people would turn and stare. He laughed from the stomach, hearty and full. Lily laughed too. It was harder to get one from her, but if something really tickled her she might laugh for hours. She laughed fast-sometimes she laughed too fast and snorted by mistake.
They had all laughed. They had laughed in this very shack, as humans and animals (well, as well as animals can laugh, anyway.) They wouldn't have minded.
The good times were for remembering, you decided, then and there. For reliving. Or what else have you got? Lily and James's corpses. The finger that was all that was left of Peter. Sirius rotting in a cell in Azkaban. James would have thought you were ridiculous. "You're so miserable, Moony. You need to lighten up."
You lift up your chin and look swiftly around the room, then make your way down the tunnel. You smile and nod to the ghosts as you pass them. The ghosts of the four of you trying to escape are over there. The ghost of you after the first full moon you spent with your friends is in that corner. You briefly remember how great you felt, how you were uninjured and happy and how your friends had taken such incredible risks to make it happen, and how well those risks had paid off.
You emerge into the sunlight that seems warmer and friendlier than it did before and cross the grounds. Passing the lake, you watch the ghosts of James, Sirius, Peter, Snape, Lily and yourself, all sixteen, bullying Snape, lifting him upside down, Lily defending Snape, Snape calling her a mudblood. We were all idiots you think to yourself.
The castle abounds with ghosts that evening, but they don't make your eyes prick with tears. The ghosts of Lily Evans, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black. They are all in Hogwarts once again that evening.
You fall asleep after going down to the Hogwarts feast and you dream of pranks and jokes and late-night visits to the kitchen and hours spent in the library cramming for OWLs, cramming for NEWTs, leaving Hogwarts, Lily and James's wedding, Harry being born, the last Christmas with them all together.
Happier times.
But you had the memories.
And the ghosts.
(And of course, Sirius Black who visited the castle that night: he was flesh and bones and blood and sweat and certainly not a ghost at all)
(Not forgetting Peter, who had been there all along)