| C H E E R A M I D M I S E R Y |
December 24th, 1996
REMUS CONVINCED me to attend the Weasley's Christmas Party. Not that he had to do much convincing; I was pretty much sold on the idea already when I remembered that Harry would be there.
We hadn't spoken very recently, but I knew he was suffering just as much as I was. We had both known loss at such young ages, although I at the very least had been surrounded by love from the very beginning.
Knowing full well that I couldn't go out and get myself an outfit for tonight, Remus and Tonks had gone to get one for me. The dress was a soft crushed velvet, and coloured a plum purple that worked well in contrast to the flame of my hair, which I curled and pulled away from my face. I got ready to go without protest, and didn't show any kind of worry until we'd arrived at the Weasley house.
Their home was a tower, if I had to come up with a way to describe it. I had never seen any structure quite like it. House upon house were stacked until the Weasley home reached the sky. It was an impressive building feat, that was for sure. Looking at it, though, I didn't think I would be able to go above the ground floor.
"Oh, Remus! It's good to see you! And Tonks, good to see you dear!" Molly Weasley bustled out of her home, onto the expansive land it was built upon. She had an apron printed densely with flowers tied to her waist, and her bright flame of hair, not dissimilar to mine, bounced on her shoulders as she came closer.
Remus reached out to me and threaded his fingers through mine. That tiny reassurance was all that I needed to know that this was okay, we were going to have a good time.
After all, I lived before Sirius. I couldn't let his death be mine too.
"And Cassie, dear!" Molly yanked me into a hug, possibly the tightest I'd had in my life. Remus gave a quiet chuckle when I shot him a surprised look over Molly's shoulder. "How are you— oh I shouldn't ask that question! Come inside."
So we went in. Everyone was there. All of the Weasley children, along with Molly's husband Arthur, and Fleur, Bill's girlfriend from Beauxbatons. And of course, the person I was most looking forward to seeing, Harry. He was sitting with Ginny and Ron on the couch, though Ron didn't exactly look to have been invited to sit there. Ginny kept shooting her brother upset glances, while Ron pretended to be oblivious.
My best guess was that big brother duties had beckoned him. Well, he'd probably come to the realization soon enough that his sister was allowed to be with his best friend, weird as it seemed. After all, James punched Sirius in the face the first time he learned that we had kissed but it hadn't taken long before he was cheering our relationship on, along with Lily and Remus.
Harry got up when he saw me. I expected him to just be cordial, since maybe he blamed me partly for Sirius's death, the same way I had blamed him for it in my mind after the fact.
I wasn't prepared for him to throw his arms around me. But when he did, I found myself embracing him fiercely.
"Well isn't that sweet," Molly awed behind us. "Let's all give them a moment. Come along, Ginny. Ron, you as well."
When it was just Harry and I in the living room, I hugged him again, and I was sure some tears escaped from my eyes, though I tried to prevent them. It was hard not to be emotional, when he was taller, his voice deeper, his eyes tinged with sadness that he worked to hide. There was some part of me that resented not being there for him everyday, so I wouldn't be startled by how much he had grown when I saw him. So that I could hear about school and make dinner and be the guardian I had promised 'someday' to when he'd been a baby.
"How are you?" Harry wondered, pushing his askew glasses up on his nose. At least that hadn't changed about him.
I smiled, hoping that he couldn't see the sadness I carried with me. "I'm learning to cope."
Learning through a hundred letters that all say the same exact thing and will never be sent because they have nowhere to go.
"But I want to know how you are, how Hogwarts is."
We sat on the couch, and Harry began to tell me about everything. How he travelled with Dumbledore to retrieve Horace Slughorn, a former Professor of mine. He explained that he saw Draco and Narcissa Malfoy heading into Borgin and Burke's, to talk about a suspicious object. The most disturbing information wasn't even what I should have found surprising, not when Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater and it would make sense for his son to follow that same path.
I didn't push Harry to tell me about looking at Voldemort's encounters through a pensieve of scattered memories. I presumed it to be something he was probably getting asked about enough already.
It felt like we spoke for minutes, when Remus poked his head in to tell us it had actually been close to an hour and a half. I let Harry go off to be with his friends, somewhat reluctantly, and Remus came to stand with me outside.
The sky was it's usual blanket of indigo, but instead of being dark and dreary; it was bright with stars that were slowly coming out of a long time in hiding. They shone with brilliance, and when I looked up at them, I saw hope.
Remus put his arm around my shoulders, drawing me in close, and I leaned in to him with my head tilted up to the sky, taking in each glimmer of a star as a sign that something better was coming — it was just taking a while.
"I know you miss him." Remus began and I had to take a deep breath, to remind myself not to hyperventilate. "But I'm glad you stayed. I'm glad you didn't leave."
Didn't kill yourself. That was what I knew he meant by leaving. I nodded, and searched for the right thing to say back.
"Thank you for saving me when I needed it. Thank you for always saving me." Remus pressed a kiss to the top of my head as if to say 'you're welcome'.
Then all was quiet, and still. I stayed under that starry night, barely paying any attention to the foreboding full moon that loomed above, because I had taken Wolfsbane before coming here.
Remus detached himself from me though, to go find Tonks and take off since the full moon was a concern of his.
In the months following Sirius's death, I had been getting along better with the creature inside of me. We had an understanding that she could turn when it was necessary, but that I maintain control. Besides, I couldn't be afraid of the full moon when my volatile outbursts of animalistic behaviour came from so much more.
I closed my eyes and leaned against the outside of the house, thinking — as I always did — of the curly haired menace who haunted me. "I hope you can see me. I hope you see that I'm okay."
That all is not lost just because you aren't here.
That I have finally learnt I have to bear through the agony, and make it to the other side because people around me need me to.
"He can see you." An eerily familiar voice startled me from my thoughts. "He'll see you die."
Perhaps I could've passed the voice off as a mere hallucination but then I saw the great big black funnel cloud that signalled a Death Eater was here. Two of them, in fact. Immediately, my claws broke out, and I didn't think. I just leapt into the yard, two stories down, and narrowly missed tackling Bellatrix, who I could see laughing through her cloud of darkness. Her tangle of black hair whipped my face, momentarily blinding me before the funnel shot up again and I was on my back in the grass with my heart racing.
I knew what I was going to do, I knew exactly how I was going to rip her throat out, but then the grass caught fire, encircling the Weasley homestead. And then, like something out of a horror movie, I saw the other person Bellatrix had come to taunt — Harry.
Harry racing out of the house, Harry leaping through the fire, Remus chasing after him. I threw myself over the fire, jumping higher than I would've thought possible but the werewolf inside was helping me; lending her animalistic talents. I was yelling Harry's name but just as the rest of the voices behind us were lost to the wind, so was mine.
I knew what he was thinking. Revenge. Murder. Death. It was the same as me, but Harry wasn't a killer. I couldn't let him be a killer.
The fire snapped inward, trying to whip me and keep me from reaching Harry. I could see that behind me, Remus and Tonks were stuck battling with the flames. Whatever magic Bellatrix had called upon was specifically meant to allow entrance only to Harry, and maybe me as well, because we had more cause to try to kill her — to endanger ourselves in trying.
This was, as the prophecy that had led Harry to the Ministry had been, a trap.
"I KILLED SIRIUS BLACK!" Bellatrix bellowed it like some sort of chant and I could feel my rage hurtling to the surface. Everything I had worked at pushing down, until the opportunity arose, was coming up now, choking me. I shook my head as I kept running, the tall grass ripping my dress into shreds. As much as I wanted to lose complete control, I had to help Harry. This was Bellatrix's goal; get The Boy Who Lived off his game and then Avada Kedavra him. The Wizarding World would be without hope and Bellatrix would be Queen of a dark throne, seated beside Voldemort, as I knew she dreamed.
Ginny Weasley sprinted past me in a bathrobe and one slipper, the other seemingly lost to nature. Harry was somewhere ahead of her, I could hear his heart pounding and his chest heaving for breath, and I was about to catch up to them both when something threw me down.
Someone.
Fenrir Greyback; the werewolf who had turned Remus. Although this was our first meeting in close proximity to each other (as in the Ministry when I had lost Sirius, I had been completely zeroed in on Mulciber), I blamed him more for my transformation more than I did Remus.
He backhanded me when I struggled against him, moving to stand. I fell again, hearing Harry shouting and cursing, Bellatrix singing, and Ginny screaming. Every fibre of my being screamed to get to them but Fenrir's claws sank into my side, shredding my skin as easily as the fabric of my dress.
I threw my head forward to collide with his skull, growling, and slashed a clawed hand across his face. Blood spattered all over the grass, his and mine.
Fenrir gained his footing before me. His boot slammed down onto my ribs, breaking more than one, but I refused to let him know I was in pain. I would not give these Death Eaters more satisfaction of knowing they had played a role in ruining my life.
Fenrir laughed, the greasy grey hair he had matted over his skull, draping in thin strands just above his shoulders, rustling in the wind. He was so large with his broad shoulders that he eclipsed my view so I didn't see Remus ramming into him from behind until Fenrir tumbled, landing a few feet away from me with a loud thud.
"Harry." I said and he nodded, brandishing his wand as I did mine. We sprinted in the direction it appeared Harry and Ginny had gone, the muddy ground had Ginny's one footprint and the print of her slipper.
When we reached them, Harry was in front of Ginny, breathing shallowly as he tried to predict where Bellatrix and Fenrir were. The vermin who gave werewolves like Remus and I a bad name hadn't taken long in recovering, he was here somewhere, but it was hard to focus with the sounds of the grass, and everyone shuffling around in a circle, trying to cover as many weak spots in our makeshift defence as possible. I wanted to reach out and grab Harry's hand, to hold onto him and reassure myself that we were getting out of this together, but too much was at stake for my focus to be split.
A curse flew. Light exploded from Harry and Remus's wands. Another curse. More counter curses. I could barely see what was happening as I scanned the grass, I doubted the others could see much either, but I saw when Bellatrix transformed into her Death Eater cloud of dark robes and shot up into the sky, cackling still.
And when the field started burning and Bellatrix set the Weasley home on fire, I watched it happen as clearly as if it were daylight.
~~~
This took me a MILLION years to write. I was going off the scene from the movie, as I haven't read the books in forever, and it was so hard to do! But since I really love the scene I wanted to write it.
Anyway, I neglected doing homework to bring you guys this, since I promised to post back in APRIL 😱🤦🏻♀️. Once again, I'm sorry and I hope it's a good chapter.
I hope you're all well; stay safe from coronavirus!