Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The wind screamed outside with the sounds, the whispers, the intentions of the night.
"How do you feel?" Asked James.
Remus looked up with eyes that felt too big for their sockets. He was dressed in a scratchy sweater that swallowed his arms in its brown sleeves and, with his shoulders slouched, reached past the hem of his sweatpants. They were too short, the sweatpants. Remus rolled the bottoms to make it seem intentional, but it wasn't. The cuffs hardly reached the top of his socks, leaving a space of skin for the wind to pierce and invade his bloodstream.
"Cold," Remus answered shortly. James nodded, likely unsure of how to respond.
"We'll meet you there, alright?" Sirius said, sliding a jacket over his arms. Remus nodded.
"See you then," he said, turning immediately for the door.
His legs moved agonizingly slow, like the ground was coated in meters of snow and he had to take large steps to move only centimeters. Not to mention the ever increasing pounding in his head, ticking away the seconds to the moon.
It was around now when Remus began losing his mind. Muffled senses, fuzzy conversations, faded grey time where the wolf pressed for control. He hardly noted what he was doing. He knew he was in the corridor, in the hospital wing, out the doors, across the grounds, and then he was there.
The shack.
There was a twin bed, shoved up against the back wall with thin sheets and a single pillow, coated in dirt. The floorboards were grey in the dusk lighting. Heads of nails ripped their way through the wood and there were spaces between them, spaces of black, like in Remus's mind. And the walls were chipped, the paint falling in flakes between the cracks in the floor.
Fit for a king, Remus thought. It's what James said the first time they joined him for a moon.
Madam Pomfrey was speaking to him, likely the same speech she always gave.
Bed is there... Extra blankets in this cupboard... Sorry about the bars on the windows... Far too much like a prison... So sorry... Back when the moon sets... Be safe...
And then she was gone. And there was only Remus.
The wind still screamed and the floorboards cracked and Remus sat on the twin bed, whose springs squeaked with his weight.
The sun was far from gone by now, and suddenly there was a new light: cold and white and full.
Remus's spine cracked and his hand slammed into the mattress for support. He scrunched the blanket in his fist, but his nails stretched to claws and there was a tear.
Not the bed.
He fell to his knees and one of the nails in the wood sliced through his sweatpants.
