IWSC Writing School
Beauxbatons
Year 7
Show, don't tell - I tried to show, not tell what was happening. Is that what it means?
[object] shower curtain
Wordcount: 868
Ooh. Scary.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
.
James jolted upright, shaking. The house was cold and quiet, a gentle breeze wandering in through the clay lump walls and the shadows swarming in the corners. Something new laced the air with a tang of danger. Lily lay beside James, skin pale and hair lying in a mane around her face. She was so still; it was almost as if —
He struggled for breath, feeling a clammy pair of hands close around his heart and squeeze. A bolt of pain in his chest. "Lily," he whispered.
The bed creaked as he leaned over her, studying her face, trying to discern a twitch of the cheek or movement under her eyelids.
"Lily."
His heart rate doubled.
"LILY!"
She stirred, eyes bleary and voice unpractised. "What? James, it's so early —"
"Oh, thank Merlin. Bloody hell. I'm a wreck. I thought… I really thought…"
Her eyes were half closed and she was lit only by the moonlight through the gap between the curtains, but at that moment she was the most beautiful thing James had ever seen. For a moment, he had thought…
"Breathe, James. Just … calm down, okay?"
"Yeah, I … there's something wrong. Can … can you not feel it?"
She sat up, blinking into the darkness. The rough slide of the duvet on the mattress rasped into the silence.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
James stayed very still. There was something riding on the air, like a crackle of static on Muggle televisions, only in his mind, and silent. Something dangerous lay between the gaps in the floorboards and in the space under the bed, and in the door frames. Something hung from the rafters and covered the house in the tangible stench of …
What was it? What was it that James could feel? When he raised a hand out in front of him, it was as if the tiniest mouse was nibbling the ends of his fingers.
"I can feel something, Lily. Something's here." He kept his voice to a whisper.
"Here?"
"In the house. In…"
Something was in the corner of his eye. There, but not there. A sense.
"The bathroom."
He wasn't looking at Lily, but he knew she'd be sitting up further and scrunching up her brow. "What?"
"In the bathroom. I can … I dunno. It's in the bathroom. I can feel … something. It's coming from there."
She put a hand on his shoulder and he flinched. "James, we've been locked up for weeks now … you could just be … paranoid. Are you sure—"
"Yes. Something's there and it's not human." He didn't even have to think about it. "Where's Harry?"
"In his room."
"Good."
James stood, wincing at the sounds the bed made when he left it and shivering from the cold that wrapped itself around him as soon as he was standing. His eyes didn't stray from where he knew the bathroom door to be.
He could feel Lily at his back, following.
They crept across the carpet, through the shadows, with the chill around their ankles and the moonlight at their backs. When he pushed the door, it made no sound. His feet made quiet slapping noises as they stepped across the cold tiles. Finally, they stood in the bathroom.
The window was pushed all the way open and James and Lily's breaths curled into the cool air. The shower curtain was pulled all the way across, and from beyond it, the tap dripped a constant metronome.
"The curtain," James muttered, almost to himself. "It's on the other side of the curtain."
His nerves were set alight. For weeks, he had been cooped up and now his chest ached to feel the swift release of real magic again. His fingers, in his pocket, tapped on the handle of his wand.
James stared daggers into the curtain as if with his eyes he could rip holes into it and see what was on the other side. He half expected it to twitch or rustle, but the breeze through the window wasn't strong enough, and this wasn't some cheap muggle horror movie like the one Lily had shown him last year. Everything was still and silent but for their own breath and the drip, drip, drip of the tap.
Harry, he thought to himself. This is for Harry.
The stress from the last few weeks had built and built and now here he stood, on the tipping point, waiting for it all to be over for better or worse.
He looked at Lily, and Lily looked back at him. Together, they ripped the curtain aside.
The world froze for a moment before everything crashed down and landed a little offset to before.
"Bloody hell, Padfoot," James choked out. Unsteadily, he brushed a tear from his cheek. "You idiot. I thought we were going to die." He was shaking and he was crying and he'd never been so terrified in his life and Sirius Black was lying in his bathtub, tongue lolling from between his canine teeth and a guilty look in his grey eyes.
James's heart was still pounding when Sirius transformed back and said, "I just came to check in. Do you want a drink?"