Who: Bill Weasley What: Dreaming becomes nightmare Where: Shell Cottage When: the evening of September 7 Rating/Warnings: High; Violence against children, death
“Bill! Bill, wake up already.” An urgent tug on his arm woke Bill up and he blinked his eyes, rubbing them sleepily. It took a moment for his vision to focus and when it did, the first thing he saw was a pair of blue eyes, then a patch of neatly trimmed auburn hair a shade darker than his own.
He sat up, wiggling ten toes that were smaller than they had been for years. When he touched his face, it was smooth.
“I really don’t know why you have to take so long to get up,” Percy grumbled as he climbed up in the bunk next to Bill. “Morning is the best time of the day.”
“Especially breakfast,” Bill said. They were the same age. It didn’t quite seem correct. “Where is everyone?”
“Mum’s visiting Great-Aunt Muriel with the babies, Dad and Charlie went off to buy a new set of robes. Dad said he figured we were okay on our own but not to tell Mum and no one would be any wiser.” Percy’s face scrunched up on the last sentence. “That’s where I think they all are at least. Someone’s charmed the clock again.”
Bill grinned.
“Since it’s just us, I was thinking we ought to do a bit of tidying up. Mum would like that and—”
Bill groaned loudly and buried his head in the pillow to drown out the rest of Percy’s sentence. “Oh, bloody hell, Perc—”
“Bill—” Percy tugged on the pillow.
“Just stop talking.” He tugged back. “Don’t you ever want to have adventures?”
“No,” Percy said. He reached out and pulled harder. The pillow was beginning to stretch under the strain. Bill yanked back, laughing at Percy’s growing scowl. “Adventures are for idiots.”
“They’re for people who like to have fun!”
“Careless people, maybe.”
“Brave people.” Bill yanked back.
“People who are dead,” Percy’s hand ripped the pillow. The fabric opened and feathers flew up, high into the air between them, creating a light rain of down that fell upon them both. The feathers tickled Bill’s nose and he started giggling and sneezing all at once, rolling on the bunk and knocking Percy into the wall.
“Now you’ve done it,” Percy said but he was laughing like Bill had never heard him laugh. Wild and joyous and…free.
The two boys laughed until the snot was trickling out of Bill’s nose, water from his eyes, and he didn’t think he could laugh anymore. He rolled himself off the bunk while Percy wiped his glasses with the tail of his shirt. Glancing up at his brother, Bill said, “We should have an adventure.”
“You’re still in pajamas,” Percy reminded him.
“I’ll change,” he said.
“Your idea of an adventure probably just means reading Ginny’s diary,” Percy muttered. “But if you must.” He continued to pout while Bill rummaged in the drawers, ignoring most of the clothes that the dresser threw at him until he found an old t-shirt and a pair of trousers with unpatched holes on both knees. A sniff came from behind him as Bill shrugged the ensemble on. He just grinned and ignored it.
Then the house began to creak.
“What was that?” Bill asked.
“The house is having an adventure,” Percy said in a dry tone.
“Maybe someone is trying to get in.” Bill’s eyes lit up.
“Like who? The milkman?” Percy said.
“He probably just came to visit his son.” He stuck his tongue out at his brother.
“Ha. Ha.” Percy rolled his eyes, doing an admirable job of it behind the thick frames that he wore. Bill grinned again. “Fine. Let’s go see who came to rob us.” The younger redhead stood up, glancing around the tiny bedroom that they shared. He kicked a pile of dirty socks, sending one flying toward Bill. “Not sure what they’re going to get.”
Bill caught the sock, sniffed it, then put it on. Percy sighed deeply, then opened the door.
The two boys stepped out into the hall. The timbers above them shifted, sending a shower of dust down on their heads. Bill coughed it out while Percy took it in stride, simply shaking his shoulders and walking on. As they walked, Bill glanced at the photographs on the wall. There was something about them that he couldn’t quite place, then he realized— “Perc, the photographs.”
“Yes?” Percy stopped, edging his glasses up his nose with his middle finger.
“The wall’s moving. Not the pictures,” Bill said. It was, the flowers on the wallpaper inching ever so slightly toward the rafters.
“That’s not true. Some of the people in the pictures are moving just fine.” Percy snapped. He reached over Bill’s head and plucked a poorly framed picture from the wall, dropping it in his hand. Bill glanced down at the image. His mother stood there, cradling an infant Percy in her arms while Bill cartwheeled around them. His image moved so much that he expected to see Molly reaching out to stop him. But she remained still, her body silent in the middle of a gently moving scene, holding a child who remained motionless as well.
“You and Mum—”
“We’re adventurers, Bill,” Percy said, shutting him up. He kept walking.
Bill looked again at the picture again, rubbing the glass with his finger. The spot over his mother’s heart was wet and cold. He set it down and wiped his hand on his trousers, then followed Percy down the hall.
The living room looked no different than it usually did. A pair of boots kicked off by the door, someone’s jumper tossed carelessly on the floor. Rumpled doilies and old blankets covered the worst spots of the sofa but there was nothing suspicious about them. Percy poked his finger under one, lifting it as if he expected to find a boggart. “I don’t think your intruders are anywhere near here,” he said.
“Oi, don’t be such a prat,” Bill told him. “Don’t you want to have something exciting happen? Just once?”
“Not particularly,” Percy muttered. But he walked over to the window regardless, adjusting his glasses and peering out the windowpane. “Oh, look, there’s a full moon out.”
“Full moon?” Bill said. “But it’s hardly past breakfast.”
Percy shrugged. “Don’t complain to me. I didn’t steal the sun.”
Bill came over to the window. Sure enough, the sky had darkened and the white moon had risen, its shadow covering the lawn outside and turning Molly’s flowerbed into strange, scraggly dark limbs rising from black earth. He shuddered and with him, the house shook. He glanced over at Percy who was tracing a lightning bolt in the condensation on the glass. “Did you feel that?”
“What?”
“The house,” Bill said.
Percy shrugged a second time. “It started doing that when Mum left.”
Bill pressed his nose against the glass, squinting to see if he could catch a glimpse of his returning mother behind the yew tree in the lane. But there was nothing but shadow. A sudden urge came to open the window and breath in the night air and he cracked the window open an inch before Percy stopped him.
“As long as you don’t open the windows or the doors, I can stay,” Percy said. Bill opened his mouth to ask what Percy meant but he was interrupted by a low and quiet moan from outside. He pulled his hand from the window, listening for a second sound. It came. This time in the form of a howl.
He slammed the window shut, his eyes wide. “Percy, I think it’s a werewolf.”
Percy said nothing but his skin was prickled in goosebumps and his cheeks were turning blotchy red.
“Percy, what do we do?” For once, Bill found himself turning to his brother. Always the practical one but more importantly, the one who always knew what was right and insisted on doing it…even when it felt wrong. “Percy!”
The other boy was growing paler by the moment, but he stiffened his chin and said, “I guess we should find some armor.”
Bill nodded as Percy began moving through the room. They worked together in silence, gathering items. Bill pulled one of Arthur’s worn jumpers on his head, feeling instantly safer as it fell to his knees. He looked for the other things that would protect him, slipping a chess piece and a dragon statue in his pocket and a piece of chocolate in his mouth. When he looked at Percy, however, Percy had done nothing. He looked the same.
“Give me your sock, Bill,” Percy said.
Bill shook his head. “That won’t work. I can’t protect anyone.”
“That’s not true,” Percy said.
“I won’t do it.” He curled his toes up, clutching the wool between them and ignoring how it itched. The door began to shake, a wild howling battering the wood and rocking it on his hinges. Percy trembled as he stared at it and Bill hid his arms inside the sleeves of the jumper, crossing them over his chest like a shield. The howling continued and Bill felt his heart pound harder.
He took a step toward the sound.
“As long as you don’t open any windows or any doors, I can stay,” Percy said. “Promise me, Bill.”
“I can’t,” Bill whispered. “Can’t promise anybody anything.”
And he crept closer to the door.
“As long as you don’t open—” Percy’s voice grew higher and faint underneath the sound of the howling. But Bill couldn’t stop. His feet were moving faster than his mind and he found himself standing in front of the door.
“—any windows or any doors—” His left hand peeked out of the sleeve and grabbed the knob. Percy had taken off his glasses, weeping and rubbing his eyes. The howling was almost unbearable now, so loud that it was deafening him, the echo of it throbbing in his eardrums.
“—I can stay. Please, Bill!” Percy cried as Bill’s hand turned the knob.
The door opened.
There was nothing there.
“Look, Percy, look!” Bill laughed with joy as he turned back to his brother. “There’s nothing there!”
But Percy had gone still and white, his knuckles red as he clutched the rim of his glasses, stabbing them out in front of him like a sword. Bill froze, then slowly turned, looking back over his shoulder.
There was still nothing there.
“Percy?”
“Bill,” Percy croaked hoarsely, still brandishing the glasses. It was then that Bill felt it—a tearing, like there was something in his skin trying to claw its way free from the flesh. “It’s you.”
Fast, fast, faster… his body twisted and pulled, claws slashing their way free from his hands and teeth baring and snapping as he changed. He felt his mouth stretch and grow until he felt like nothing more than tooth and claw and an unbearable hunger. The scent of Percy filled his nostrils, all soap and dirt and bits of butterscotch and old leather, and he breathed it in as he walked toward his brother.
Percy whimpered and shoved his glasses into Bill’s chest, now gone to hair and muscle. The shredded jumper lay on the floor in a crumpled pile.
Bill laughed and yanked the glasses from Percy’s hand so hard that he heard a bone break.
Percy fell to the ground, clutching his knees to his chest as the beast stood over him.
“Close the door, Bill,” he whispered. “The windows…”
And Bill, instead, took Percy’s eyes.
And skin.
And heart.
And when the blood trembled from his mouth and his stomach was filled with flesh, Bill felt himself shrinking again and becoming boy.
The house shook then, groaning with his screams as the timbers began to rot.
--
Bill awoke.
The first thing that he felt was the quivering of his body. Sweat dripped down his forehead, dribbling against his lips. He licked a drop of sweat away as he trembled, feeling the cold air around him and the sensation of the dream. His eyes watered as he slipped out of bed and stood on the floor.
First, he went to the windows.
Then he went to the door.
And he locked each and every one of them, his hands shaking so hard that he could barely manage the latches as he stared at his own fingers, wondering whether they would turn into claws.