The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

A Particularly Bad Moon

A Particularly Bad Moon

It was a particularly bad moon.

Remus's bones had gotten tighter and tighter the entire night - from when they'd done the map on, he'd been barely capable of moving.

James had looked nervously first to Peter, and then to Sirius, "I dunno if we should be here, Sirius."

Sirius shook his head, "Of course we should be here for him. He needs us."

"It's dangerous," whispered James, so quiet that Remus couldn't hear him.

Sirius looked up at him, his eyes moist at the edges, "It's dangerous for him, too."

They waited nervously and sat with Remus, all three of them trying desperately to cheer him up. James and Peter performed a sort of puppet show, where James changed into a stag and Peter ran about on his back doing rat tricks, using the stag as a stage for his rodent gymnastics act. Sirius tried to build up the act by clapping and laughing as he held Remus in his arms, but every time Remus laughed a spasm went through his back and his laughter would turn into cries of pain instead. Sirius held him closer and rubbed his muscles, unknotting them again and again with the heels of his hands... but as quickly as he worked them out, they reknotted so that even as he was smiling at the stag and rat show, Remus had tears pouring over his cheeks.

James and Sirius both had been needed to help him down the stairs, lifting him off his feet on the steps themselves. Remus had laid on the couch shivering, then, so hard that he'd appeared to be convulsing. He cried harder the more the moon rose in the sky outside and the sun began setting, as the light out the windows turned silver...

James and Peter turned into the rat and stag again as the light began ekeing in through the cracks and crevices in the Shrieking Shack's boarded up windows, as slivers of the silver light crept across the floorboards, making the dust dance like glitter in it's light. Sirius stayed Sirius, sitting on the couch, holding Remus close as Remus's pains increased to the point of him grinding his teeth, unable to speak, locked up by his own muscles. James turned away, unable to watch the suffering of his friend, his antlers knocking against the ceiling rafters, the rat's tail curled around them to stay steady aboard the stag's head...

Remus looked up at Sirius at one point, just before the moonlight took him, and he whispered, "Maybe... maybe you lot should go... inside," he breathed around wincing of the spasms in his muscles, gritting his teeth.

"I'm not leaving you," Sirius answered, "And neither's Prongs, nor Wormtail. We're here."

"Please... don't let me hurt any of you."

"You won't, Moony," whispered Sirius.

"I can't fight this one, Sirius..." he said weakly. He was already scratching at his own skin, even as a person, his fingers scraping his arms, leaving harsh white lines in the skin where his nails scratched. Sirius took hold of his wrists, stopping him doing it.

"I'll fight it for you," Sirius answered.

Remus closed his eyes.

And then, from a crack in the windows above him, a ray of moonlight fell upon Remus Lupin's tearstained face and his eyes opened wide - yellowed and stunned, as though he'd been stabbed in the back by the moonlight...

In his holding cell in the Ministry, Fenrir Greyback had turned and he paced in his wolf form, growling through the barred doors at the guard - a junior ministry official with nervous eyes that flickered across the dungeon. Greyback hissed and paced, his claws clicking on the stone. Snarling, baring his teeth ferociously... scaring the young guard on purpose.