Lily Luna's Story

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The next day, I rose from my bed before anyone in the dormitory – and probably the whole school – was awake. I couldn’t be around people, my family in particular. Part of me was embarrassed at my outburst but the other part of me felt adamant that I had a right to feel like that. And I did. After years and years of containing my frustration at my brothers, it just burst today. It was completely normal… right? I tried to persuade myself of that because it helped me feel like my actions were justified, but deep down I knew it wasn’t that. Something had changed inside me, just before we came back to Hogwarts, and I had no idea what it was.

The grass was wet with morning dew as my feet subconsciously carried me to a place I had known about forever but had only ever entered once. It was a place someone I knew very well used as an escape. He told me – and only me – that whenever he was feeling upset, he went there. It made him feel closer to his father who he had never met.

Teddy Lupin was as much a brother to me as Albus and James, with the small difference of us not actually being blood related. Dad is Teddy’s godfather, and when Teddy’s parents died in the war when he was just a baby, Dad gladly took on a more serious approach to his role in his life. I grew up believing Teddy was my actual brother, not because my parents told me so, but because Teddy was such a constant in my life. Even after he left Hogwarts and started working, he came over for dinner pretty much every night.

Once when Teddy was babysitting me, he took me to Hogwarts to visit his girlfriend and my cousin, Victoire. He could tell I was quite uncomfortable around the two of them, so excused us. I knew how much spending time with Victoire meant to Teddy, so I felt eternally grateful that he would put me before both of them.

 Teddy took me somewhere and made me promise not to tell anyone about the place. He said I knew about it, but it was special to him - more special than any other place in the world. He led me to the Whomping Willow, which I drew away from. I was scared of the swinging branches, but Teddy wasn’t. Calmly, he hit the knot in the tree with a stick and the branches froze. He led me down the tunnel and showed me around, telling me stories of his father and how he went there every full moon to transform into his werewolf self. He told me stories about the Marauders and how my grandfather was one of them. That was a day I knew I would remember forever because it was the day I grew closer to Teddy and felt for the first time what friendship was. To this day, I still know he hasn’t taken anyone else in there, not even Victoire, his now fiancée. As we left that day, he told me it would always be our secret place. The place we went to if we ever needed a friend or someone to talk to. I hadn’t been back there since that day, feeling like it was ‘Teddy’s place’ and I had no right to go there without him. But he told me I could, and right now I needed a place to escape and to talk to a friend, even if Teddy wasn’t there.

I stood in front of the massive tree, oblivious to the branches swiping past me, extremely close. I pulled out my wand and hit the knot at the base of the trunk with a stick and the branches seized, just like they did for Teddy all those years ago.

I scurried through the damp tunnel quickly, my feet occasionally slipping on the mud that slicked the ground. The tunnel was exactly how I remembered it and I wondered if the Shrieking Shack was as well.

It was. The Shack was very, very old. So old that my grandfather, James, started school here at Hogwarts the year the Shack was built.  

To someone who didn’t know better, this would be a place of terror and fear. There were wooden slats on the walls that were coiled away from the frame and deep scratch marks were etched into nearly every surface. But to me this place signified something more. It signified friendship because it was where mine and Teddy’s started and from the stories he told me, I knew it was proof of the friendship Teddy’s father and my father had when they were at Hogwarts.