Remus had barely crawled into bed and fallen asleep when there came a tapping on his arm. He opened his eyes and found a creature standing beside his bed with big, round eyes that seemed to glow in the dark and long, bat-like ears that stood up nearly perpendicular. He jumped and rolled away, nearly falling off his bed in the surprise of the sight of the thing. "What in the bloody hell are you?" he whispered.
"I is sorrys sir," the creature said, "I is a house elf, named Libby sir, and I is being sent by Professor Dumbledore, sir, to get you for Professor Dumbledore says he is needing to be speaking with you, sir."
"Dumbledore sent you?" Remus asked as he sat up.
The elf put a long, skinny finger to his lips, "Shh, master Lupin must be quiet so as not to wake the other boys." The elf's high pitched voice would do the trick of that, thought Remus, but he quietly got up out of bed and grabbed his wand from his nightstand. The elf waved for Remus to follow him and they tip toed out of the dormitory and down into the common room. He led the way out of the portrait hole and down the corridor, through several twisting stairways and another long hall and stopped beside a large stone gargoyle. "Mr. Lupin is to be waiting here, sir, while I goes and gets Professor Dumbledore, sir." The elf disappeared with a crack that Remus wasn't expecting and he jumped back for the second time that night, this time backing into one of the suits of armor and nearly knocking it down.
"Do be careful of that," said a voice from behind him as Remus was straightening the helmet he'd nearly tipped off, "It's a priceless antique, you know." The face plate on the armor clanged shut, as though in indignation, nearly catching Remus's fingers.
He turned around and found Dumbledore standing behind him, smiling serenely, beside the gargoyle. Where he'd come from, Remus hadn't even the faintest idea. There wasn't a single door in sight anywhere along the corridor and he hadn't heard any footsteps.
"Come," Dumbledore said, "Let us take a walk out onto the grounds and look at some of the marvelous plants which Professor Viridi has planted this year for her Herbology lessons, shall we?" He smiled and led the way on down the corridor with Remus tagging along in silence, his hands tented finger-tip to finger-tip as he walked along. It was strange, walking with someone whom he'd heard so much about but only ever met once before. Remus kept stealing glances up at him as though he were questioning if Dumbledore was something he'd imagined. And even stranger still, he thought, that Dumbledore had chosen to do this at midnight.
They stepped out into the pale moonlight and Remus frowned. Even if it wasn't the light of the full moon, he still feared the way the moonlight fell upon his skin and he half expected his cells to malfunction and perform the change. How did his body know the difference between the moons, after all? And what would Dumbledore do if he did change and attack him? He'd heard rumors that Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard alive in the entire world. Surely, if he attacked Dumbledore, he would be reduced to powder faster than he could even say the word 'werewolf'. Which would be preferable, he thought, to successfully attacking and coming out of it only to discover what he'd done...
They were some way from the castle doors by now and Dumbledore came to a halt in the middle of the grassy knolls that surrounded Hogwarts. Before them was a tall tree with thick knots in the branches and long vines that hung around the tree, nearly to the ground. The tree sort of twitched and shifted, as though it were alive and asleep. Dumbledore stared at the tree for moment.
"Is that the whomping willow you were talking about at the feast, sir?" Remus asked.
Dumbledore nodded. "Rather marvelous, isn't it?"
It wasn't a bad tree, Remus thought, but it would've been a lot better during the day, when the sun was up and he wasn't so tired and facing a load of classes first thing in the morning.
Dumbledore bent over, picked up a small rock from the ground, and chucked it at the tree like he was skipping stones across a lake. The stone hit the tree's trunk and suddenly the tree came to life, it's branches thrashing wildly about, as though searching for what had struck the trunk, as though if it found the culprit it would have smashed it to ever-loving pieces. The tree slammed some of it's heavy branches to the ground so hard that it seemed a miniature earthquake traveled through the mantle to where they stood and Remus's eyes grew wide as the tree swung fist-like branches through the air for several long moments before seeming to realize there was nobody close enough to whomp on and stood, seeming to pant for a moment, and then returned slowly to the resting state they'd found it in.
"Whoa," Remus whispered.
"Much more impressive now, is it?" Dumbledore asked, smiling down at Remus through his spectacles.
Remus nodded.
"The whomping willow has been planted to help you, Remus, during the times of the full moon," Dumbledore explained.
Remus blinked, and looked up at Dumbledore. "Um... how?" he asked. He wondered if, as a werewolf, he was supposed to have the tree punch him or something.
"By giving you a protective passageway to a safe house that will keep you from coming back out until you are yourself again." Dumbledore took up another rock. "Do you see that knot at the base there in that root?" he pointed. Remus squinted and nodded when he spotted the knot Dumbledore spoke of. He aimed carefully and tossed the rock, hitting the knot dead on. The tree seemed to freeze, and instead of "breathing" as it had seemed to be doing before, it became utterly silent, like a normal tree. "Come along, Remus." Dumbledore walked toward the tree.
Remus hesitated, letting Dumbledore push some of the lower hanging branches aside before following him, afraid the tree would wake up and pummel them, but the tree was truly frozen and Remus scrambled to Dumbledore's side.
At the foot of the tree, by the knot, a door had opened up. Well, door was a generous term for what it was. It was really a hole in the ground that led to a sort of chute into the dark beyond. Dumbledore held his wand aloft and hissed, "Lumos." The wand tip lit up and he sat down upon the edge of the hole and slid down as though we were a child in a playground on one of those great big slides. Remus could've sworn he even heard Dumbledore say 'wee!' on the way into the darkness. He landed at the bottom and all Remus could see of him was the wand light. "Come on then, Remus, before the Willow wakes up again." As though to punctuate his words, the tree began to stir and Remus chucked himself into the hole quite quickly, not keen to wait for the willow to awaken all the way.
He found himself in an underground passageway and Dumbledore began walking, leading the way with his wand light. The tunnel was roughly cut and short - though Remus, who was relatively short for his age, could walk upright just fine, Dumbledore had to hunch over. They'd walked what seemed like eons before Remus asked, "Where are we going?"
"Just a bit further," Dumbledore replied.
Remus trotted along behind him.
Finally, after what had to have been a half an hour, they came to an upward slope and then a short staircase and a door in the ceiling that Dumbledore pushed opened. Remus followed. They found themselves in a dark shack of a house, though it was sparsely furnished. The windows, however, were completely boarded up, and not a drop of moonlight was seeping through them.
"What is this place?" Remus asked, looking around.
"This, my boy, is the Shrieking Shack," Dumbledore replied. "It used to belong to Ogg, the old gamekeeper before Hagrid. Hagrid's needs were much different than Ogg, as he'd come to live at Hogwarts much sooner at a young age and needed to be kept an eye on, and so his home was built on the grounds at Hogwarts, but traditionally this shack was the gamekeeper's cabin. Ogg has passed away, bless him, and this shack has been left unattended for a good many years, unneeded and unused by the staff at Hogwarts. However, when I heard that you were on your way, and with your wolfish tendencies you would need a safe place to go where you would not be bothered by other persons for both their own safety and protection of that very precious human part of you."
Remus asked, "We're in the village? Won't somebody hear me? I'm told I'm quite noisy when I'm a - a... - when I change."
Dumbledore smiled, "I have spent the better part of the last year slowly curating a rumor in the village of Hogsmeade that this shack was haunted. I've set caterwauling charms upon it to go off quite at random or if anyone gets closer than the fence which surrounds the property. The charms sounded rather similar to the cries of the werewolf at the full moon. The people of Hogsmeade will know no difference and you, my boy, will be safely enshrouded here in the cottage until you are well enough to return down the passageway to the school."
It was brilliant, all of it.
"I can't believe you've gone through all this trouble for me," Remus said, touched.
"I am a strong believer in teaching anyone who wishes to learn," Dumbledore explained, "Whatever special preparations it may take to get them here. If a student wishes to be at Hogwarts, and they are of magical properties, then I shall do whatever is in my power to get them here."
Remus decided at that moment that Albus Dumbledore was indeed the greatest wizard that ever lived, just as he had heard. The greatness of Dumbledore, he thought, wasn't even necessarily his magical ability - although he did not doubt for a moment that he was great in that way, too - but in his unabashed persistence in equality. Here was a man who would not judge him, a werewolf, based on his father's restriction act and the fear that surrounded the perception of Lycanthrophy. Here was a man who still saw the human, not the wolf that he sometimes became. Besides his parents, Dumbledore was the first person who knew what Remus was that did not look at him as though he were somehow lesser than he might've been if he didn't have his condition.
"Thank you," Remus said with the deepest gratitude. "I don't know how to ever repay you for your belief in me."
Dumbledore smiled. "Do great things," he said, "And I will be repaid a hundredfold."
With that exchange, Dumbledore led the way back into the tunnel, pulling shut the door behind him, and they walked back through the passageway. Along the way, Dumbledore taught Remus the lumos spell to light his wand for the journeys through the dark tunnel. When they reached the other end, they climbed up the sloping entrance and Dumbledore showed Remus a lever at the top that he should pull that would freeze the tree just as pressing upon the knot would, and then they climbed out of the hole and rushed back out from beneath the long vines of the tree and across the grounds before the tree stirred.
Dumbledore walked Remus right up to the portrait of the Fat Lady, who greeted them sleepily. "Gillyweed," Dumbledore said, and she swung open. "Sleep well, Remus, and I am sorry to have kept you awake, but in the interest of maintaining your secret, you understand why we had to go at this hour."
"Yes," Remus replied. He nodded.
Dumbledore nodded back. "Well, go on and sleep," he said as Remus climbed into the portrait hole, "I'm sure you're quite eager to be well rested for your classes tomorrow. If you ever need anything at all from me, you can ask Professor McGonagall to fetch me. Or, if you'd rather, tell that stone gargoyle we met nearby tonight that you enjoy a bit of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum." He winked, and the portrait swung closed, sealing Remus in and Dumbledore out.