it begins

[wolfymcwolf]

It is either very late at night or very early in the morning depending on your perspective, and anyone with the smallest amount of sense is asleep.

A man with a distant look in his eye walks calmly down the streets of muggle London and stops before a residential building. Stepping into the alleyway beside it, he pulls out his wand, charms away the nearest window, and casts an incantation.

A pillar of flame shoots out from his wand with a deafening roar and into the building, the fire taking on the shapes of beasts, shifting every few moments. Then, there are screams. There are cracks of Apparition, right in the middle of a muggle street, parents carrying children in their arms, wizards and witches clutching their muggle partners tight to themselves. Some, unable to Apparate, jump out of windows, and a few people on the ground step up quickly to magically control their descent. Beasts of flame leap from the windows, soaring up every floor of the building. There's no time for worrying about being seen, not with no warning, and the fire too out of control for any one person to handle. Most everyone is in their bedclothes, many without any sort of foot covering out in what would be a freezing December night, were it not for the intense heat put off by the flames.

In the chaos, the man escapes.

Comments

at the apartment building → doghouse

[wolfymcwolf]

[Remus is one of those sensible sleeping people, but fortunately for him, the loud roar of the Fiendfyre as it hits the ground level of his apartment building wakes him immediately. For a moment, he's only confused, wondering if someone's tried to break in, but then the heat hits him, and he practically leaps out of bed, snatching his wand off the bedside table.

He could just Apparate himself out, but there's so many other people living here who can't. He runs out of his apartment to his neighbor's, wasting no time to blast open the door. Mr. Mccullough, an elderly man, was making his way to the door and gives a terrified shout. Remus knows him to be a Squib.] Sorry, sorry about that, we need to get out!

[He rushes towards him as he speaks, already thinking about the couple a few doors down; the woman's a muggle, and pregnant, and the man works nights. Luckily, Mr. Mccullough understands the danger, and allows Remus to take him on a Side-Along out onto the street.

Without a word, he Apparates back in, running from one flat to the next to repeat the process, shouting for anyone still in the building to come towards him and he'd get them out safe.

It's a wonder no one ends up Splinched, but Remus' focus is singular, and the distance traveled short. He makes it all the way to the topmost level flats, and the smoke is thicker than ever. In the first flat he gets to on that floor, there's a toddler screaming and wailing. He scoops the child up, carefully setting her down before a coughing fit overtakes him. He takes deep, gasping breaths, trying to clear his lungs as quickly as possible, straightens, and is about to Apparate back to the topmost level when a hand grabs firmly onto his shoulder and stops him, another gesturing for him to look at the building.

It's entirely enveloped in flames now. There's nothing more he can do.

He feels dizzy, staring up at it.

Remus can't bring himself to look away, even as the last human screams from inside the building fade into the roaring din of the fire. His breath fogs in front of him, but he doesn't feel the bite of the cold.

It feels like an eternity until the aurors arrive, and that's when Remus Apparates one last time for the night, directly onto the doorstep of Sirius Black and James Potter.

He knocks at the door, then leans against it, finally starting to shiver in the cold. All he's wearing is an old jumper and a worn thin pair of pajama pants, his wand loosely clutched in his hand. It's doubtful anyone's even awake to hear him, when dawn hasn't even broken yet.]