Vitality [ Harry Potter ]

|| Ch. 1: The Moon

Ch. 1: The Moon

Twelve Years Later:

It was a cloudy night outside, the large sky a dark navy blue shade. However, these clouds were not the normal white and fluffy ones you'd see during a bright summer's day. No, these clouds were thin and very dark in color. They were a dark grey, almost black, and they kept the waning gibbous moon hidden from view as she stared out of her window.

She was sat at the edge of her bed, staring up at the sky and everything within it. In just two days' time, she and her uncle would be experiencing a full moon. She noticed that there were more stars up in the sky than normal, and they were brighter, too.

She couldn't help but wish on the brightest star that she could find; her birthday was coming up, after all. Her emerald eyes gleamed in the light from the moon and did not falter from their position as a knock sounded on her bedroom door. When she didn't answer the knock, she heard the door swing open with a creak.

"Everything alright in here, Grace?" Her uncle, Remus Lupin, asked her as he entered the room. The moon lit up his scarred and sunken face. She was always fascinated by the way the light danced off of his scars.

"The full moon is coming up," she said, not daring to answer his question. He was always asking her if she was alright, but she never knew how to answer. Grace wasn't alright, and she knew that, but she didn't know how to form the words to say so.

Grace was lonely. Her Uncle Remus had locked her up in his house ever since she was able to remember, and she never understood why. She never understood why she couldn't go outside or go to school like the kids she could see through her window, walking away from their homes and families. She never dared, however, to ask her Uncle Remus why, afraid of getting into trouble with him.

To be quite honest with herself, she was scared of her uncle. When she was little she could hear him scratching up his walls and trying to break down his own locked bedroom door every time a full moon came around. That's why she started keeping a moon chart in her bedroom so that she could keep track of when the next full moon would be rising. She never stopped wondering what those noises were or why they would only happen during the full moon. It intrigued her immensely.

However, that didn't stop her from being afraid of him. It didn't matter to Grace that she wanted to know what was going on with Uncle Remus. What mattered to her most was making sure he was locked away safely so that neither of them would hurt one another.

There had been one instance about a year before where she had fallen asleep before getting the chance to lock him up in his bedroom and he roamed the house all night. She had woken up late that night to the sounds of her Uncle Remus' large feet stomping around in her bedroom. She could hear his breathing, as it was heavier than normal. She had shut her eyes tight, not wanting to look at him.

"That's not what I asked, Grace," Remus responded, though he, too, couldn't help but stare out of the window at the moon above. "I know how badly you want to go outside..." he sighed, running a hand through his mousy brown hair. "You should get some sleep. We'll talk in the morning, yeah?"

She nodded at her uncle, finally tearing her eyes from the sky just to let them rest on his face. He always looked more sickly and sunken whenever the full moon got closer and she wondered why that always seemed to be the case with him. He gave her a sympathetic grimace before turning and walking back out the door, making sure to close it behind him.

With a sigh, she laid flat on her uncomfortable bed. Her Uncle Remus always had a hard time keeping a job, so the furniture of the house and their meals suffered. Everything they owned was either second-hand or slightly damaged, and every meal they ate was somewhat bland. She pulled her dark grey comforter up to her chin and rolled onto her side, letting her eyelids slip closed. She didn't feel all that tired, so she stayed awake for what seemed like hours.