Chapter 5: Shrieking Shack
Warning: This story may contain traces of: OOC-ness, spoilers, tortures, magical spells, AU, swords, powerful spells, badly written but still very awesome duels, family, severitus, spouts of random insanity now and again, rambling author notes and minor character bashing. Engage at your discretion.
THE OTHER WARNING: This author is currently not very busy, bored out of her mind and suffers from severe cases of bad humor. Take the WARNING seriously, just not the author in general.
Remus Lupin was very grateful for the unnecessary bed placed in the main room of the Shrieking Shack.
It's a heavily damaged four poster, with a leg or two missing, chipped headboard and scraped posts. The sheets were rough and the pillow had already been torn into scraps of cloths and feathers that looked almost no different to the drown dust blanketing the shack. Remus took off his shoes and outer cloak, they were his last ones, he could not risk tearing them again, and threw them haphazardly on the floor. It had been fun to watch needles pierce other people's skin, but it's diabolical when he had to suffer the same fate.
He heaved a small sigh and sank back into the sheets. He hoped with all his heart that he had gotten away with lying to Severus just then in the corridor. Lying to a Slytherin was generally one thing everybody knows that you just don't do. Since people from other houses don't usually associate with Slytherins, and the snakes deceiving among themselves occurs everyday, there was not much to worry about.
But since Severus Snape was currently Remus' one of three friends and the only one in their little group that could match his debating and studying habits, it felt really really wrong lying to him. Not to mention Severus was one of the best Slytherin out there, which means he was a practically lie detector and a deceiving machine. At least to the 96% of the student body.
The fact that he couldn't help but feel Severus had figured him out long ago did not quell his unease anymore a acromantula in a china shop would just stop when you tell it to.
Hopefully he won't have to spin some sort of excuse/sob story tomorrow if Sev caught him in the infirmary, if the Slytherin haven't already. Sometimes he had to remind himself to relax and just forget about everything that has nothing to do with the current situation.
The current situation was for him to wait for the full moon to stop eating the raspberry scones at a tea party with the stars and the clouds and get on with transforming him into a ravenous beast. The waiting was giving him a huge migraine and not helping him in anyway what so ever with the current situation.
Remus heaved another sigh. He should have gotten used to this by now, the waiting, the loneliness. He had more than once wanted his three friends to know his deepest and darkest secret, but that idea was nipped in the bud as soon as it made itself known. There had been many cases of him telling a 'friend' about his curse and they either ran away screaming bloody monster or ran away screaming his secret that the top of their lungs to anyone within earshot. Then he and his parents would have to move house. Again.
He didn't understand why prejudice existed, why did people call him a monster when he's only a small boy caught in a bad situation? He's just a boy, a normal boy that has friends and play pranks and lose house points, a normal boy that changed into a monster every month. A monster that still wants a friend.
For once, for this one time only, he finally asked something from Father Christmas. His family had struggled through every holiday, trying to make him feel happy and child-like. But Remus was very mature for his age and did not complain when he had gotten beautifully handmade but still rather shabby gifts compared to the other children's shiny new toys. He never asked for things people could not or would not gift him, but for just this once, he asked for something.
He learned long ago to make the best out of anything, but this time, he finally asked something that Father Christmas and another person thinks was long overdue.
He asked for a companion, a friend, a guide, a guard to help him through his werewolf frenzy moments. To let him run wild but also keep him in check, to make him tame in his rampant hours. He finally mustered enough courage to ask the wish the he desired for a long long time to the stillness of the rusty and stale air.
Father Christmas heard his wish, but did not grant it. Because Remus made his wish a little too late...
It was already here.
A sudden canopy of noise, something whipped through one of the three boarded up windows in the main room, startling Remus out of the bed and scrambling madly for his wand in the midst of the black fabric on the dusty and broken floor. When he finally found the damned stick, he rose up and faced the loud adversary.
Only to get the greatest shock of his life thus far.
The thing that broke through the previously closed window was not a drunken teenager in a dare, not a grouchy new caretaker of the Hogsmeade grounds, not some curious foreign bloke just having a look around, or even human.
It was a raven.
A large glistening black raven with a wingspan that trumped most eagles and hawks stood on a demolished dresser, stretching its impossibly large wings, tainting the glossy feathers blue and violet with the weak light the night allowed this part of the world to have. Sharp beak and sharper feathers, Remus gulped when he saw the slice marks the bird made when it came crashing in.
"Hello," Remus whispered nervously. The bird could make a good companion to a wolf, but an eleven year old boy?
The raven inclined his head, he caught a glimpse of a pair of gleaming black eyes and wondered briefly about where had he seen another pair like that before. The eyes were so cold, like black tunnels, with an odd violet glint at the end. He made a note to bring candles next month, in the bad lighting he couldn't decipher much at all. If the raven was still here next time he came.
Remus beckoned with his hand for the raven to come closer, and it did, surprisingly. It glided to his lap without fully opening its large wings and allowed Remus to brush his fingers across its black feathers, mindful of the sharp knife blade like edges.
He brushed away a stray tear in his eyes with his other hand, "Thank you," Remus whispered. The raven gave him a curious look, as if asking why. "You see, I made a Christmas wish, for the first time. I asked Father Christmas to bring me a companion to help me through the times when I'm actually a werewolf. Thank the gods he listened tonight." He wiped more tears away from his eyes, the raven scooped closer to his body, as perhaps a way of comfort.
"So who are you then? I doubt you are an actual raven, as not any species I've read have knife blade feathers, magical or not," He gave a week chuckle while the bird glared, again, that look was so similar! Remus knew the person's name, it was on the tip of his tongue and the foremost of his minds, he just couldn't place it. "So an Animagus then?" He asked, hoping for an answer.
There's a pause, a hesitation to answer on the black bird's part, then finally it nodded. Remus felt himself smiling, werewolves don't hurt animals, so animagi were safe from its jaws, but the risk... "Again, thank you, for taking this strange sort of an adventure for me." The bird gave him that look again, looked behind him at the now broken window, shrieked a warning call and flew off towards the cross beams.
Finally the tea party was over, who knew the moon takes so long in just smelling the aroma of Earl Greys and peeling the skin off marble pastries. Well, the Sirius star's lemon scone leaves a lot to be desired, Orion star's chocolate sponge cakes were not that much better. Thus earning the lecture of the importance of baking at the right temperature and not going nuts with the sprinkles.
Remus breathed heavily, gathering as much of the dusty oxygen and the raven's scent in the room as possible, forcing his brain to label that scent as a companion or a friend's in such a short period of time so as to not let the wolf attack his 'savior,' in a manner of speaking.
Remus groaned and fell off the bed onto the dirty floor, and groaned again. His body was rigid and shaking tremendously. His back arched, as he grew longer and broader and fur sprung from his skin, claws ripped from his fingers and his teeth lengthened into pure, sharp canines.
A werewolf in all its horrendous glory now stood in the middle of the Shrieking Shack, jaw open and showing its fangs, daring anyone to come close.
A huge growling werewolf, who scanned the room with amber eyes that focused only on hunt and bite and kill... but when its eyes looked up and met a pair of violet black ones that looked back calmly, the werewolf's single mindedness wavered, and he suddenly looked uncertain.
The raven jumped down from the beam, black eyes asking if the Remus inside the wolf still remembered. It softly pecked its muzzle, brushed its wings across its chest, as if reassuring that the humanity inside the wolf could trust the bird to keep it in line. The wolf blinked and inhaled, catching something familiar with the scent. Of finally a companion in all those lone years, of a friend.
A friend...
The wolf bowed its head, showing it recognized the raven for who it was meant to be. The bird pecked at him again and motioned him to the exit out of the house.
The wolf was finally out of its cage and into the wild freedom of the night. The ethereal light of the pale flat moon, the scent of grass beneath its paws. It looked up again, the last shreds of Remus' conscience echoing in his mind, of not wanting to hurt the innocent, confirming that the raven was still with the wolf. The black bird finally opened its wings to the fullest, a silhouette against the beautiful moon, warning and showing off its knife blade feathers.
The wolf howled once to the sky, unleashing his sorrow upon the moon, giving it wings and fly away and leave the bad feelings behind. When nothing was left but the joy and wonder, and carried it with everything it has, as it ran beneath the moon into the thick forest, and into the dawn hours of the next day. For the first time in a long while, the wolf, and the human inside it, was undeniably happy under the spells of the beautiful full moon.
Because, for the first time in a long while, they were no longer alone.
(^%^)
The next morning came, Remus woke up on the damaged bed in the Shrieking Shack. He surveyed the room in close scrutiny. There weren't any destroyed dressers and banisters to speak of, well not anymore than last month's. Beside the painful ache all over his boy that a night under the full moon always gave him, there were no visible gashes or bloody marks on his person. But how?
He doesn't remember anything from a full moon, as was the curse of lycanthropy. Sometimes it was really annoying when you killed one of your bad tempered aunt's dog and she blames it all on you and wants an apology along a month of slave work while knowing full well that you can't control anything you do once the bloody full moon is up and finished arguing over raspberry pie with another random star.
He shifted his arms and felt something softer than the rough cloth that served as the mattress. With great difficulty he pulled it out from its hiding place with his other arm, wincing as he did so. It's a black feather, long and glossy, with sharp edges that most definitely could be used as a weapon, if the situation calls for it. Then he remembered, the raven.
Then Remus smiled, his mind finally stopped worrying over his confusing pitiful state of existence as he toyed the feather between his fingers, mindful of the sharp edges and corners.
Thank you, he thought, a week show if gratitude for the animagus that helped him, whoever he is.
Guess who? Have any of my readers seen Rise of the Guardians. Yes? Father Christmas is like North, he listens to children's Christmas wishes and grants them in the best of his abilities. I know ravens are not that big like I described, but hey this is Hogwarts and this is my story, I do whatever I want, within reason of course, but still! Magic!
Pay attention to detail, is my advice to all of you reading.
Do any of you have any suggestions on what to call Severus Animagus form? Review please!