The Shrieking Shack sat lonely on its hill as sunrise crept across the mountains. It was a howling night — or it should have been — but the night had come and gone and not a single cry had disturbed the village’s slumber.
The residents of Hogsmeade had noticed that their haunted house had grown quieter over the past year…but not silent. Though it was true you were less likely to hear the howls and horrors that had plagued it for ages, these days, if you listened very closely at the cock crow of morning, you might just hear a few melodic bars of piano, soft as snowfall — a sound which many felt was far more unsettling.
The music drifted in upon the wind just at the moment toes flexed under sheets and eyes blinked open to a fresh day. Some mornings the music was wispy and funereal — exactly the sort of tune you’d expect a ghost to play — but other dawns were disconcerting in their enthusiasm, a ragtime trill of syncopated notes and — if the wind was just right — laughter.
This morning was a quiet one, the cold wind of November’s end stuttering against windows and sneaking through cracks. It curled its way across high street, past the pub and the post office, until it whistled through the boarded-up windows of the Shrieking Shack, sending dust eddies swirling and ruffling the hair of the ghost who played the piano.
He was no ghost, of course, but a teenage boy, who sat straight-backed and proud at the piano, as though he were performing in a grand concert hall, and not a derelict shack. His cheeks blossomed pink from the cold, but his expression was dreamy and distant as his fingers coaxed soft notes from the keys. Quiet, soothing, almost a lullaby.
For not far from his feet, another boy was sleeping, curled into himself under someone else’s cloak, cheek pressed to the crook of his chapped elbow. Dawn cut through the slats of wood in golden shafts, one of which fell inconveniently across the sleeping boy’s face. He stirred, groaned, scrunched up his face in displeasure — and then Remus Lupin opened his eyes.
He had woken here once a month for five-and-a-half years, and yet every morning after a full moon felt like the first time as his eyes in took in the gloom of the shack: the blood-stained wooden floors, the claw-gouged walls, the broken furniture, the glitter of dust in cold beams of light. And more recently: the soft stream of piano notes that danced around the room.
He lifted his head and pushed himself up onto his elbow. The music stopped.
“Good morning,” said Sirius, turning on the bench to face him. “How are you feeling?”
