The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

The Whomping Willow

Remus had barely crawled into bed and fallen asleep when there came a tapping on his arm. He opened his eyes and found a creature standing beside his bed with big, round eyes that seemed to glow in the dark and long, bat-like ears that stood up nearly perpendicular. He jumped and rolled away, nearly falling off his bed in the surprise of the sight of the thing. "What in the bloody hell are you?" he whispered.

"I is sorrys sir," the creature said, "I is a house elf, named Libby sir, and I is being sent by Professor Dumbledore, sir, to get you for Professor Dumbledore says he is needing to be speaking with you, sir."

"Dumbledore sent you?" Remus asked as he sat up.

The elf put a long, skinny finger to his lips, "Shh, master Lupin must be quiet so as not to wake the other boys." The elf's high pitched voice would do the trick of that, thought Remus, but he quietly got up out of bed and grabbed his wand from his nightstand. The elf waved for Remus to follow him and they tip toed out of the dormitory and down into the common room. He led the way out of the portrait hole and down the corridor, through several twisting stairways and another long hall and stopped beside a large stone gargoyle. "Mr. Lupin is to be waiting here, sir, while I goes and gets Professor Dumbledore, sir." The elf disappeared with a crack that Remus wasn't expecting and he jumped back for the second time that night, this time backing into one of the suits of armor and nearly knocking it down.

"Do be careful of that," said a voice from behind him as Remus was straightening the helmet he'd nearly tipped off, "It's a priceless antique, you know." The face plate on the armor clanged shut, as though in indignation, nearly catching Remus's fingers.

He turned around and found Dumbledore standing behind him, smiling serenely, beside the gargoyle. Where he'd come from, Remus hadn't even the faintest idea. There wasn't a single door in sight anywhere along the corridor and he hadn't heard any footsteps.

"Come," Dumbledore said, "Let us take a walk out onto the grounds and look at some of the marvelous plants which Professor Viridi has planted this year for her Herbology lessons, shall we?" He smiled and led the way on down the corridor with Remus tagging along in silence, his hands tented finger-tip to finger-tip as he walked along. It was strange, walking with someone whom he'd heard so much about but only ever met once before. Remus kept stealing glances up at him as though he were questioning if Dumbledore was something he'd imagined. And even stranger still, he thought, that Dumbledore had chosen to do this at midnight.

They stepped out into the pale moonlight and Remus frowned. Even if it wasn't the light of the full moon, he still feared the way the moonlight fell upon his skin and he half expected his cells to malfunction and perform the change. How did his body know the difference between the moons, after all? And what would Dumbledore do if he did change and attack him? He'd heard rumors that Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard alive in the entire world. Surely, if he attacked Dumbledore, he would be reduced to powder faster than he could even say the word 'werewolf'. Which would be preferable, he thought, to successfully attacking and coming out of it only to discover what he'd done...

They were some way from the castle doors by now and Dumbledore came to a halt in the middle of the grassy knolls that surrounded Hogwarts. Before them was a tall tree with thick knots in the branches and long vines that hung around the tree, nearly to the ground. The tree sort of twitched and shifted, as though it were alive and asleep. Dumbledore stared at the tree for moment.

"Is that the whomping willow you were talking about at the feast, sir?" Remus asked.

Dumbledore nodded. "Rather marvelous, isn't it?"

It wasn't a bad tree, Remus thought, but it would've been a lot better during the day, when the sun was up and he wasn't so tired and facing a load of classes first thing in the morning.