James Potter was many things.
A good athlete, a loyal friend, and Gryffindor's golden boy.
For Victoria Atkinson, he was everything she hated in others. He embodied the values that have been impressed on her since she was little. And that's exactl...
the kind of deep suffering the happiest looking people
are able to hide behind themselves
- N i k i t a G i l l
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Victoria had never been inside the shrieking shack. Truthfully, she had never been nearer than at the wire fence that was built last year. The abandoned building in Hogsmead was to her, like it was to most, a mysterium, which she never thought to reveal. For many years, villagers thought it was haunted because they often heard screams coming from inside. She could have sworn that she heard Dumbledore confirm this rumor in their second year when students grew more and more curious. Then she remembered the talk she had with Nearly Headless Nick the same night, in which he told her that not even the Hogwarts ghosts will enter it.
The yells and shouts heard by the villagers were really - it was understandable that people, ghosts or anything kept their distance from it. Victoria had never actually heard the screams, she had only heard tales about it, from students ranking all ages.
Now, she questioned herself if she would have heard them, would she had noticed that it was a werewolf causing them? That it was one of her best friends hurting himself due to a curse which had ruined his whole life. The same friend, half-dressed and relying on the arms of James and Sirius had around him, as they dragged their way towards the building. In front of them, Victoria stumbled her way up the hill, Peter walking close next to her, in fear of the blood lose getting too much.
The rooms and halls were all dirty, covered with dust, and the furniture was moth-eaten and broken. There was a chair in the foyer of the Shack that had one of its legs ripped off. In the foyer, a staircase leads to the second floor. The girl acknowledged that it would have been a beautiful house when not for the years it had gone through.
The wood complaining under them, they entered the largest room the house seemed to hold. A magnificent but dusty four-poster bed stood in the corner of the room, a lamb which was barely standing, next to it. Paper was peeling from the walls; there were stains all over the floor; every piece of furniture was broken as though somebody had smashed it. The windows were all boarded up. The wood was lighter where a carpet once had been, now only cloth scraps left. Only a piano, standing in a far corner of the room seemed a little heal when looked over the pieces of wood that were missing from it.
James and Sirius lead Remus to the bed, the grey-eyed boy letting go for a moment to fetch a blanket as they placed it around him, while Peter directed Victoria near the bed, quickly fetching the bench belonging to the piano. The girl felt their gazes on her as they hurried around, pulling things out from various corners. Remus had stayed there on the bed, searching for Victoria's eyes.
