The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

The Rescue

The dungeons smelled of werewolf so thick that Garm Tyr's nose burned as he clutched his wand, stepping through the doorway and onto the very stairs down which Sabrina had tumbled just two months before. He shuddered as images flooded him, pushing them aside in his mind as harshly as he could. Can't think of that right now, he thought as the echo of Frek's cry for Sabrina to "wait, come back" seared his mind. His stomach turned. If it was for the scent of the dungeons or the memories inside him, there was no telling. 

He could've lived a thousand years without wanting to return to these steps again.

Minerva McGonagall stood at the top of the stairway, peering through a narrow crack left in the doorway, watching for anyone to come their way, her wand held high and glowing with the lumos charm as Elphinstone Urquart led the way down into the dungeons. "Are you alright?" he asked Garm, seeing the way Garm's face looked. He paused. "You don't have to come down if you don't want to. You can stay with Minnie up top there, just give me Mr. Scamander's briefcase." He held out his hand.

Garm shook his head, and continued down the stairs.

Elphinstone Urquart watched him pass, determination on his face now, and he thought that perhaps Garm Tyr would have made an excellent member of Gryffindor house once upon a time - though he'd been a very good fit in Slytherin as well.

Once to the bottom, Garm put the briefcase down and flipped open the latches. The moment he did, Newt Scamander's head popped over the brim and he looked about. He caught the errant niffler just before he climbed out - probably having smelled the pure silver of the werewolves' chains. "S-stay," he commanded, catching her by her feet and stuffing her back down into the case, "You d-don't want to come out h-here; you - you'd make a tasty little sn-snack." There was a pause. "Don't g-go su-sulking about, now. It's for - for your own g-good."

After Newt had come out, he was followed by Ned Veigler, Albus Dumbledore, Queenie Kowalski, and Tina Scamander. 

Queenie looked about as Tina climbed out behind her, her eyes wide with worry. "Oh..." she murmured. The things she was seeing in the minds around her were most disturbing and she shuddered. "This is most awful."

Newt was peering through the bars of one of the cells at a young man, who was asleep on the edge of a hard, rough cot, his arms around himself, laying beneath a threadbare blanket. He turned to look at the others. "De - deplorable..." he murmured, and his eyes were sad, "If I'd k-known then, when I signed the Restriction Act..."

"You had no way of knowing," Dumbledore said gently, "Every man I knew was for the Act - many of the werewolves included. It was supposed to protect the afflicted and non-afflicted alike, the way that it was written. This isn't what it was meant to be - this is a corrupted version."

"Corrupted indeed." Ned looked sick. "It's not even time yet - it's a week away yet..."

"They wanted to ensure the full dosage was administered to each subject without any further mistakes," murmured Garm Tyr. He had yet to tear his eyes from the bottom stair, where Minerva McGonagall's shadow cast a form on the floor that reminded him of his own silhouette, as though his shape had been burned into the place for all of time, like the after effects of a nuclear explosion. His voice was flat. "They imprison them the full week before."

Queenie laid her palm on his shoulder comfortingly. She could see exactly the memories that he was drowning beneath and they weighed heavily on her heart. Surely they weighed doubly heavy on Mr. Tyr's, she thought.

There was a rattling down the corridor a way and some arms poked out from between the bars. "Hullo?" came a voice - a girl's.

Tina walked over quickly. Pressed to the bars was the face of a teenage girl. Her pale face was ashy from the grime of the cell she was sharing with three other teenagers. "Hi there, sweetie," Tina answered her, meeting her eyes. She had a scar across her jaw that made her lips sag slightly to the left. She looked at Newt with tearful eyes. "We've got to get them out of here," she said firmly.