#ilnightmare

He opens his eyes, and the only thing he can see is nothing. 

He’s reaching out blindly, trying to determine where he is. All he can feel is cold bars at his back, at his front, on either side of him - anywhere he turns, there’s more bars keeping him trapped in. It’s cramped, only enough room to reach an arm in front of him to try and beat uselessly against the metal with his fists until they’re aching, As he realizes exactly where he must be, his breathing quickens, heart starting to race, and he pushes even harder. He has to get out of here. A cry of frustration leaves his lips as he curls his hands in anger, grabbing the bars and shaking them in a futile effort. 

The room around him is completely in shadows apart from one solitary light flickering above his head, and eventually he realizes there’s another figure in the room. Remus feels his heart stop in his chest as he recognizes who it is, taking a step back.

“Dad?” 

His voice is quiet, touched with a sense of broken betrayal - because he’s standing there and not helping - but all Lyall does is acknowledge him with a single look, before looking back down at the paper he’s holding. Without a word, he approaches Remus - approaches the cage - still more interested in the paper he’s reading than in looking at his own son. “Dad,” he tries again, his voice wracked with desperation, stepping forward and wrapping his hands around the bars. If Remus could just reach out and grab a hold of him - maybe... “You have to help me. Please.” 

His father will help him. He has to. Remus knows he will

It takes a moment, but his father finally looks up from the paper, and there’s a strange look on his face - like he’s contemplating something. He looks at Remus, and they stand in silence for a moment, before his father is reaching forward through the bars. Perhaps his father is having a change of heart, but all Lyall does is tug at the collar of his shirt, pulling it down to expose a dark series of letters and numbers now permanently stained against his skin. “015682B,” Lyall reads it off, before he’s back absorbed in his paper, and there’s a vague realization that his father was just using that to speak to him, rather than his own name. “You’re a danger to others. We’ll see how the moon goes, and then decide if you can be released back to the public.” With that, his father says nothing else and walks away from him, and Remus sinks back in defeat, sliding into a sitting position.

He’s buried his face in his hands, until he hears a voice call out “Moony?” from in front of him, and he swears he’s never been more grateful to see James in his life, grinning at him from where he’s standing. “Come on, time for a good ol’ fashioned jailbreak,” he adds, throwing a thumb in the direction of Sirius, who’s already working on the lock.

“Got it,” Sirius tells him, swinging the door open and stepping forward to offer Remus a hand, who takes it and climbs to his feet. “We gotta be quick. Lily’s keeping watch, but who knows what’ll happen if we take too long.” Remus just nods and follows after the two of them as they make their way out of the room, before meeting up with Lily. The four of them make a run for it from what seems to be the Ministry, and they manage to get out unscathed. Lily throws her arms around him as soon as they’re outside, kissing his forehead and cheeks, and telling him that he’s never allowed to leave her again. As he’s about to open his mouth in response, the world around them lurches, the sky plummeting from it’s inky blues into black - save for the perfectly full moon in the sky. 

“Wait, no,” Remus starts, as he realizes what’s about to occur, but it’s too late. He can feel it in his bones, and he’s trying to take a step back, move away from the others, but he can’t move. He struggles against Lily, because he has to get away from her, but she just holds on even tighter, and if she only knew what was happening, she’d be running.

His head starts to cloud, and then there’s nothing. 

When he opens his eyes again, the sun is shining brightly over him where he’s laying on the ground, and he’s vaguely aware of what happened earlier, trying to piece back together what happened before. He doesn’t end up needing to, because as he sits up, he immediately notices James and Sirius with their backs to him. 

And then there’s the flame of red hair cast on the ground. He’s moving to his feet, the question already on his tongue, but they beat him to the punch, James turning to look at him with empty eyes. 

“You killed her.”

No. 

He can’t even react, can’t even breathe or move or think because no. Against his better judgement, he glances down at the ground, and all he can focus on at the claw marks covering her, made by his own hands. Remus takes a step back as he stares at his own hands, because this isn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening. “We should bring him back to the Ministry, James. Let them decide what to do with him,” he hears Sirius say flatly, like he’s not even there, and Remus is already shaking his head. “Clearly they were right. Dangerous to others.” He takes a step forward, trying to put himself between Sirius and James because surely they can’t mean that. They know him.

“He is a monster.” 

It hits him like a punch to the stomach - not because of the meaning, but because of who it’s coming from. Remus reaches out and grabs onto Sirius. “You don’t mean that. You know me. You know that I’m not - that I’d never do anything to hurt anyone,” he pleads, both of his hands gripping on Sirius’ shoulders and trying to shake the sense into him. There’s a moment of silence where Sirius is just looking at him, before he recoils away, and Remus notices there’s now claw marks shredding down his shoulders to his chest. Ones that weren’t there until he touched him.

“That’s enough,” James yells at him, pushing him away from Sirius with his face contorted into an angry expression. Sirius is behind him, and Remus feels his arms being pinned back, before his eyes land on the glimmer that’s pulled out of James’ pocket, brandished forward in his hand towards Remus. Silver knife, he slowly registers. 

It started as a question. A simple utterance of her name with just the slightest upward inflection, as if the speaker was unsure if her name was an undeniable truth. 

     “Alice?”

It came from the trees that surrounded her, flitted through the whispers in the rustling leaves, as if the wind itself was calling her name. She couldn’t quite make out the voice; it was too quiet, too timid. Alice turned in a circle, feet making patterns beneath her on the damp ground. For a moment, she believed that it wasn’t even real. A sigh escaped her, dissipating in the air in a breath of fog. The voice had just been a figment of her imagination, much like it had proved to be over the past months. It wasn’t real; it wasn’t- 

And then there was a scream. 

Piercing, close, shattering the air around her, it was all too real to ignore. It was real, and it was familiar- frighteningly so. The breath was knocked from her as she froze, eyes widening and cheeks draining of all color. She stopped, she waited, she listened. 

        Another scream, then, “Alice, help! Help me!” 

“Frank!” she cried her throat raw and her voice infuriatingly quiet, no matter how desperately she tried to throw her voice, “Frank!” His screams punctuated each step she took as she hurtled forward into the darkness of the trees, branches whipping at her face and vines seeming to lurch up from the ground and wrap around her ankles, slowing her down as she went. She called out to him, but the sound of his voice covered her own, rendered it obsolete in the thick air. She couldn’t reach him; his voice was everywhere, filling her head, filling the air. 

          And then it changed. “Please! Alice, please! Help me! Alice! Alice, help!” 

It was Remus’s voice now, coming from just where she’d run from. Alice skidded to a halt, losing her footing and falling onto her back as the ground seemed to shift beneath her. “Remus?” she craned her neck as his screams, freshly replacing Frank’s without missing a beat, pierced her ears. It was painful; her first inclination was to cover her ears. But she stood, gritting her teeth against the pain, for Remus needed her. 

“I’m coming!” she cried, scrambling forward through a web of vines as Remus’s screams formed her name again, “Remus, hang on! Remus!” 

She plunged forward, eyes searching the darkness, then the sky, which was muddled by clouds and a smattering of jagged branches that looked far too much like crooked fingers to truly be a product of nature. Remus didn’t seem to be growing any closer as she ran, the trees reaching out with spindly fingers to cut at her cheeks and her arms and legs. It wasn’t until the pain of her ankle twisting in a root just to the side of the path slowed her down did she realize that the voice had changed again. 

It was a chorus of voices this time, all female, all crying and wailing as if she wasn’t trying so desperately to get to them. Lily, Mary, Dorcas, Amelia, pleading for Alice to find them, to help them, when she couldn’t even find Frank to begin with. 

“Where are you?” she cried, crawling forward and pulling herself to her feet with a shaking hand on a steady branch, “Lily! Amelia! M-” 

And then the screams went quiet again, leaving her with nothing but the sound of her own voice and the feeling of sweat dripping down her spine in intrusive beads. Alice stood, knees bent and back hunched, poised to spring into action should she need to. But the silence was more of a deafening roar than the screams had been; for a moment, she was convinced that she had simply gone deaf from the strain of it all. 

But then, just to prove her wrong once more, a single voice, this one just as distinct as any of the others, but perhaps just a merciful fraction clearer, rang out from behind her, from whence she had come. 

               “Alice, help me! Help! Please! Alice, please!” 

It wasn’t like him to plead for help; she should have known that something was wrong right away, but her body reacted before her mind could. Stumbling over herself, she turned and threw her weight forward, ramming into tree trunks and tripping over entangling roots as her throat rubber bloodily raw from the screaming of his name. “Alastor!” she shrieked, tears streaking her grimy cheeks, both from the pain of running, of being pulled, of screaming herself silent, and from the knowledge that she couldn’t fucking find him. “Alastor!” she wailed again, hitting away branches as she ran with bloodied fingers, cut to the bone. 

               “Alice, where are you? Please, Alice! Help me!” 

And then her feet dropped from under her, and she was falling, falling away from the screams, away from the thick air, and down into the cool darkness of the ground below her. But she didn’t want to escape; she wanted to keep running, to find Alastor, and Frank, and Remus, and the others. She reached up as she fell, hands clawing at the air, at the quickly disappearing light of the sky above. But then her back made contact with something hard and soft all at once, and with a crunch she came to a stop. 

Her head whipped to the side, and her screams loosed from her throat before she had time to hear them. At her side was Alastor, his eyes staring but never seeing, his jaw wrenched open and to the side at a ghastly angle. Below her was Frank, on her other shoulder was Remus- and Lily- and Dorcas, Mary, Amelia, Emmeline. But her eyes remained locked on Alastor, for his face was close, and pale, and angry in it stillness.