The Marauders: Year Two | #Wattys2016

The Shrieking Shack

The Shrieking Shack

James's voice echoed through the tunnel. "Bloody hell... we've been walking forever." Really, it had only been about ten minutes. Their wands lit up the dark passageway, roots and stones sticking out here and there from the compact dirt that made up the walls, ceiling, and floor of the tunnel. Peter was looking warily up at the ceiling, as though expecting it to cave in, and kept tripping over his own robes. "How much longer?" James whined.

"Not much," Remus answered. "We're nearly there now."

"Bloody hell, this is the longest tunnel ever," James complained.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Sirius demanded, turning his wand back to light up James's face.

James bat the wand away as Peter ducked under Sirius's outstretched arm. "Don't point that thing at me, Black," he said in a mock angry tone, a smile spreading across his mouth, "Unless you mean to challenge me to a duel?"

"Because you in a duel is such a frightening thing?" Sirius chided him, "I saw you against Snivelley Snape. I'm not worried."

James raised his wand, "Oh?"

Remus cleared his throat.

Both James and Sirius looked up.

"If you lot aren't too busy hexing one another back there, we've arrived." Remus waved his wand behind him and illuminated a trap door that Peter's back end was just wriggling through.

"Brilliant," James grinned, and he leaped past Sirius, headed for the trap door, to follow Peter in.

Sirius smirked as James bounded off, "What lucky timing for you, Potter, just before I was about to blast you to smithereens!" He followed, though, and a moment later all four boys were standing in the little kitchen of the Shrieking Shack.

It was truly a mess in there. A year of being inhabited by a werewolf on the full moon would do that to a place. There was broken bits of furniture and ripped papers and books around on the floor, shattered plates and spots where Remus had bitten himself so hard that blood had been drawn and the blood had stained the floorboards. The windows were boarded up, curtains shredded in strips from having been clawed. There was a small ratty ball of blankets in the corner, covered with big clumps of fur.

"Shedding, are you, mate?" Sirius asked with a nervous laugh.

This was the first time that they'd really seen any actual evidence of Remus's transformations. It was the closest encounter they'd yet had with the werewolf within him. It was quite uncomfortable for Remus, whose face was growing hot as they looked about his "lair". He felt rather exposed and a lump rose up in his throat. Prior, the only person who had ever seen the destruction that he caused in his wolf form was his mother. He stared down at his feet, not wanting to see the looks on their faces. Especially Peter's. Peter looked downright terrified.

Seeing the look of shame on Remus's face, James decided to make the best of things. "This is spiffing!" he declared, looking about the torn up interior of the Shrieking Shack as though it were the Taj Mahal. "I mean, sure, it's a bit gloomy, but for the most part it's rather brilliant. Rather like a clubhouse, really, isn't it?" He bent and stood up a chair that had been knocked over, but not actually broken, and set himself into it, tossing his feet up on another chair and leaning back as though he were in the lap of luxury. "I wouldn't mind coming here once a month!"

Remus scowled, "You might once the moon rises and your skin starts to boil fur out of you and your spine cracks a dozen times and your feet split up into paws and claws and your face feels like it's stretching, or melting, like wax, and you gnaw your own flesh raw as you go insane."