Cimmerian: very dark, gloomy, deep.
January 7, 1976
Remus had never been in the Shrieking Shack during the day. He arrived under cover of darkness and was retrieved (or limped back on his own) in the faint gray light of dawn, and he had never spent much time looking around. Even in the middle of the afternoon the gloom was thick, the edges of the room foggy with shadows, but the weary light that managed to push its way through the cracks threw the room's scars into much sharper relief.
It was hard to tell what damage had been his and what had already been here. It had never been new, built only five years ago already falling apart. There had never been glass in the windows, the doors never made to open, the hearth never to be lit. It looked like a place that had once harbored life and warmth, but he knew better.
He had almost killed someone here, two someones, he thought, tracing long gouges in the rotting wood with his fingers. One of them one of his best friends. It wasn't supposed to happen, he knew, would never have happened if Sirius hadn't…. But he had, and if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else, something else. Because Remus had been foolish and reckless and deluded.
For all but a few hours a month, this house was not a dangerous place, but that didn't mean anyone could live here, and, as the locked doors attested, it didn't pretend otherwise.
Remus took a deep breath of the stale, dusty air and forced himself to face a truth he had long been avoiding. He was a monster. It was not all he was, in fact he was much, much more human than monster, but that did not change the fact that he was still a monster. And he would have to earn his humanity every day for the rest of his life.
A/N: So this is an old tune, but I thought I'd sing it anyway since we're in the marauders' epiphany series. Hopefully not too angsty for you? I feel like the Shrieking Shack is the perfect metaphor for Remus in some ways, the way the damage shows so much more during the day, the way it keeps its doors and windows boarded up. At the very least I think he sees it as a metaphor for himself.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed and thankyouthankyouthankyou for the responses for last chapter! You guys are amazing :)