I. The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
Chapter I. “Lighting of the Lamps”
Six o’clock.
The church bells in the distance echoed through the streets of Wolverhampton, muted by the sleet threatening to drown the city. The sound of them was enough to hasten Remus Lupin’s footsteps. Soon, night would fall. Soon, the moon would rise.
Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes were fixed upon him, alive with concern”concern that always made Remus feel guilty. “Are you quite certain you don’t mind, Remus?”
“I’m the only one who can do it,” he said resolutely. “I know what I am.”
Halfway down Tower Street, he found what he was looking for.
The decrepit old tenements had been built slap-up against the decaying city walls, perhaps to save the expense of constructing one side of it. The brick façade might have once been painted a warm shade of grey, but if so it was impossible to tell for all the layers of grime and graffiti. Some of the shutters were half-hanging off their hinges; the clatter of wood on brick as the wind roared through the narrow streets was a constant reminder of the seemingly eternal storm of winter. Old newspapers and dead leaves clung to the wet pavements, soggy and surreal as the smoke rising from the crooked chimneys that permeated the sleet with fog and an aura of fatigue.
The door was tucked away behind the large generator in the stout alley between the tenements and a neighboring café. Remus wrenched it open and slammed it behind him, making as much noise as possible. In places like this, it was unwise to take anyone by surprise.
Dumbledore hesitated. “They’ll recognize you as one of them, Remus, but…they will also recognize immediately that you are not like them.”
Remus shrugged”a stab at indifference. “I’ll have to be convincing, then.”
The tight hallway opened into a little lounge on the left. A broad desk with a rotting counter had been pushed into a corner, and small bits of plaster littered the couch and armchairs; a plate with a few scraps of raw meat was sitting on the coffee table. A young man with a shock of dark hair was lying across the back of the couch. He sat up when Remus came in, and staring hard at Remus, called “Darkthroat!”
He hardly had time to see the man springing at him over the desk before he was pinioned against the wall, and glowing, black eyes were a foot away from his face, looking intently into his steady chocolate-coloured ones.
After a moment, Darkthroat released him. “You’ll need a room, I suppose, werewolf?” It was more a statement than a question.
Remus nodded. “I suppose.”
Darkthroat vaulted over the desk again with inhuman grace and settled back in his chair. It didn’t take him long to fish a key from one of the drawers, which he tossed underhanded to Remus. “Room 403. Do you have a name, werewolf?”
“Remus,” he said simply.
Darkthroat was already bent over a scroll of parchment, invisible behind the desk as he growled, “Keelan! You know what to do!”
The young man jumped up from the couch. “Darkthroat”"
“Damn you, hurry!”
Keelan dodged the paperweight Darkthroat hurled at him, muttered darkly to Remus, “Come on!” and scampered out of the room. Perplexed, anxious, and determined not to betray himself of either emotion, Remus followed.
“This will be incredibly dangerous, Remus,” Dumbledore reminded him.
“Professor,” Remus interrupted, shaking his head, “You need not worry about me. I will manage as I have always done”the best I can.”
Keelan led him back into the alley and up one of the many fire-escapes (for there were many, many fire-escapes, crisscrossing the building like a pair of malevolent dragons, wings spread wide and spouting flame.) They stopped on a fourth-floor landing outside a pair of full-length, narrow windows. The glass was an inch thick, and someone had fastened a little brass plaque to the right one with the numbers “4-0-3”. The window-latch had been fitted with a key-hole.
“Well, come on, then,” Keelan urged.
Remus wrestled the key into the keyhole, and the window swung open, almost catching him in the face. He lifted away the broken blinds and stepped inside. The room inside was woefully small. The bed was in the corner to his right, the wardrobe to his left, and a table with a few dusty chairs on the far side. The bathroom door faced the table and chairs. Remus tossed his bag onto the tattered rug beside his bed.
Keelan had closed the window-door behind him and locked it while Remus was considering his room, and seized Remus’ arm, dragging him into the bathroom. There was another door by the sink that had the look of a towel closet about it. When Keelan flung it open, there was only a flight of stairs on the other side, so steep it was practically suicidal to descend into the darkness.
Keelan explained quickly, “You can get from your room to the Bur Sceadugenga from here. It will be locked in less than twenty minutes, and Greyback will be angry if we’re not there. We’ll have to run.”
“What?” Remus asked dumbly. “Bersky-what?”
“Run!” said Keelan, and shoved him down the steps.
He slipped halfway and hit the bottom on all fours. He had only just got back up when Keelan came tearing down the stairs, grabbed his arm again, and took off down the tunnels. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, his feet to the downward slope of the stone beneath his feet, and then the tunnel opened onto a wider one, from which smaller ones branched out. Water leaked from the ceiling, and the blackness was hazy, but Keelan plowed on through, yelling, “fifteen minutes!” His strength and energy reminded Remus strongly of another teenage boy, and he wondered how Harry Potter was doing, if he was okay”
His breath caught in his chest. He knew it wasn’t exhaustion, could feel the venom rising in his throat, knew that they were running out of time, and he lengthened his stride. He could hear the ticking of an imagined clock in sync with the beating of his frantic heart, his muscles tautening as the sun slipped away, as the moon approached…
“Here!” Keelan cried. The tunnel had split in the wall before them, and where the straight-way stopped, there was a steel door several feet thick, and a man standing beside it, wand out, ready to seal it. “Scabior, wait!”
The man paused long enough for Keelan and Remus to dart through, and slammed behind them. Remus could hear the click and snap of many, many locks, and the ‘thud’ of a deadbolt.
Dumbledore rose and vanished the purple armchair with a wave of his wand. His face was grave”not pitying, never pitying”but distressed and gentle as ever. He bowed his head slightly, and whispered, “Then, Remus…good luck.”
It was an enormous room, rimmed with colonnades and strewn with broken furniture. The only source of light in the room was a hole in the ceiling two or three inches squared, and covered with a grate. The shimmering haze of the rising full moon through the sleet made the shadows swim, like reflections of light in moving water. All around them, others were standing, waiting…waiting…
“Bur Sceadugenga,” Remus murmured, suddenly understanding.
“Yes,” Keelan nodded. “Chamber of Nightcrawlers.”
Remus swallowed. “Keelan, is this…”
Keelan grinned. “A werewolf is only a danger to people.”
“You can’t possibly think”no one ever?””
Keelan laughed, but it turned into a growl. “The weak ones sometimes die in the fighting, but we almost never kill each other. It makes us stronger…prepares us for what we’ll do for Greyback, when we’re ready.”
Remus closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He had been a werewolf for almost thirty years”had he ever known what that meant? Had it ever been like this?
Please, he begged silently, please, please, don’t let me hurt anyone”
The full moon broke the horizon and shone radiantly through the sleet. Suddenly the room was lit as though by a thousand lamps, or perhaps by the blackness of a thousand cursed souls. In some corner of the vast chamber, a werewolf raised its head to the distant moon and howled.