Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, page 19
They were still outdoors, certainly, but the eerie, deep-shadowed silver light of the full moon had been replaced by the warm glow of dawn. The air was soft with morning mist, his breath just barely fogging in the early chill, but the knotted trees, the precipice, the monstrous creatures that had been attacking them were gone. Instead, they seemed to be inside a strange domed structure of some kind. It was about the size of a large tent, without windows or doors of any kind, the walls and ceiling tightly woven in a wild, haphazard snarl of what he gradually realized were living thorn briars, still deeply rooted in the soil on all sides of them.
Gradually, more of his last moments before losing consciousness came clear, and Neville raised his hands in front of him, staring at the deep puncture wounds that stabbed his palms in a half-dozen places. Slowly, he curled his fingers into fists, feeling the injuries throb in protest, somehow needing to prove to himself that they were real. Then he felt a hand on his arm, and he turned, seeing Ginny beside him.
She looked just as tired as Luna, and she was staring at him with that same cryptic expression. When she spoke, her voice held the attentive concern that Neville associated with someone addressing a seriously ill loved one. "How do you feel?"
"Did I -" he motioned around at the bizarre shelter, "Did I do this?"
"Luna and I thought it was over. I'd decided to jump, take the spiders over the wolves - I thought it would be over quicker - but then you...you grabbed the briars, and they started growing, just shooting up so fast and thick...and then you opened your eyes, and there was this light pouring out of them, and I had to look away it was so bright," she shook her head, as if still not quite believing her own memory. "The next thing we knew, the briars had wrapped over us and knotted together into this place, and it just kept getting thicker and thicker until you sort of jerked back and collapsed."
Neville reached out a hand, running the tip of one finger along a long, dagger-like thorn. "And it kept you safe?" It wasn't really a question, their living presence in front of him proved as much, but he still half-expected to hear that their salvation had come from something else, some fortuitous last-minute intervention.
Luna got to her feet and crossed over to them, nodding. "We could hear them all night. They tried to get through, but the thorns were too thick. It was pretty horrible - we think they were fighting each other for a while - but that stopped a little before it started to get light, and it's all been quiet since. I think they're gone."
"I just..." he closed his eyes, thinking of how he had called out to his parents, the desperate last hope, the plea for something, anything. "I don't know what I did, really."
"You saved us." Luna's voice was matter-of-fact, but it was so far from that simple.
He shook his head as if trying to dispel a dream. "I don't even know what spell would do this if I meant to!"
She shrugged. "You've always been good with plants, Neville. I think you reached out towards where your strength lies instinctively, and they just responded to what you needed...something to keep those -" a little shudder went through her, "--those things away from us."
"Just because I get high marks in Herbology doesn't mean...." He trailed off. One of the vines had untangled itself from the wall and reached out towards him, brushing over his hand like a dog sniffing its owner. The leaves quavered a moment, then an entire section of briars began to unweave, unfolding themselves from their protective barrier to form an opening in the side easily large enough for them to step out into the forest again.
Not quite believing what was happening, Neville stepped through the newly created doorway, and the girls followed close behind him, so near that he could almost feel them at his sides. The moment they passed through the magical thicket, there was a loud rustling, and all three whirled around only to see that the shelter was dissolving, whipping apart into independent vines and brambles that were shrinking down into the earth once more. Within moments, all sign of their fortress had vanished, the underbrush there no thicker or stranger than it ever had been before.
They were standing on a battlefield. Blood and ichor were sprayed and splashed everywhere, even gathering in half-clotted pools where it had not just been spilled but gushed. A dozen spider's legs and twice as many pieces of them littered the earth like branches after a windstorm; hairy, twisted, and as thick as saplings. Neville took a single, hesitant step forward, and something squished beneath his feet. He looked down, and saw that he was standing in a pile of offal, a pale loop of intestines coiling wetly beneath his shoe.
Recoiling in horror, he suddenly recognized the remains of Greyback's fallen, less easily recognized than the spider's legs, but left behind in chunks and splatters only for the same reason. The ground surrounding where their shelter had stood had been torn up in great heaps and gashes, the underbrush crushed flat, the rim of the valley collapsed back several feet from the edge, and everywhere, not only the signs of a ferocious struggle, but of things being dragged. Both sides had eaten their dead.
His eyes fell on a hand that lay half-buried in the leaves, the fingers slightly gnawed, but still recognizable as having belonged to a young woman, the nails filthy and long, the palm callused, yet still as dainty as the hands that had coaxed him awake. Neville looked back at his two friends. Hate and disgust at the wanton savagery was clearly twisted into Ginny's face, but Luna seemed only saddened and resigned, though her normally pale complexion had faded to the color of ash.
He felt horrified and slightly ashamed as he thought of what the night must have been like for them, huddled together beneath their shield next to his own unconscious body as this battle raged mere feet away. For all their beauty and the delicacy of their bodies, they were both so strong, so brave in their own very different ways, and he was filled with a new respect for them.
Then a twig snapped, and all three of them jumped, every nerve and muscle firing to alert. Ginny moved like a cat, snatching up the sharp and shattered end of what had once been a human thighbone and holding it in front of her like a sword, Neville's fists raised to fight, as Luna seemed to produce a rock from thin air, her arm cocked and ready to hurl it towards the first enemy that presented itself.
There was a heartbeat of terrible silence, then the auburn muzzle of a fox appeared through the underbrush at the edge of the forest, the golden eyes regarding them placidly before, with a whisper of leaves and a flash of white at the end of its bottle-brush tail, it wheeled and vanished again into the morning mist. The trio let out a deep sigh of relief, and Neville turned, unclenching his fists and wiping his sweating palms on the thighs of his trousers. "We should get out of here before something bigger comes back."
The girls nodded, and without further discussion, he took his bearings off the newly risen sun, and they set out, still alert for any sign of the creatures they had barely escaped the previous night, or anything else the forest might have lying in wait for them. For the first few minutes, they traveled in silence, picking their way through tangled bushes and stepping carefully over roots and fallen logs, but after the embattled clearing had fallen far enough behind that they had begun to relax a little, Ginny pulled up beside him, and he saw that the oddly cryptic look from earlier had returned to her face.
"Neville?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yes?"
"There's something I need to tell you." There was such a tone of regret to her voice that he paused, turning to look at her more directly.
"Were you hurt?" His eyes scanned over the filthy, shredded remains of her uniform, but he could see no evidence of anything worse than the scratches that crossed all of their limbs from the headlong flight away from the pack.
"No." She shook her head, then resumed walking, using the obstacles to avoid his eyes. "But when we were in the office, Dumbledore wanted to talk to me."
He nodded. "I remember. I assumed it was about Harry or Ron."
"Sort of. He said - " She took a deep breath. "He said that I needed to understand and be prepared that Harry, and maybe even all three of them might not make it. That they had been given a task that would ensure You-Know-Who's defeat, but it was very dangerous, and there was no guarantee they could manage it alive, especially Harry."
Neville frowned, then spoke cautiously, not wanting to seem callus or uncaring. "But we already knew that, Ginny."
"Then he said -" she went on as if he had said nothing, "--that I needed to watch out for you in case Harry failed."
"Watch out for me?" he asked bemusedly.
"Neville, there were two of you." Ginny grabbed his arm, and he stopped, shocked by the intensity of her blazing look. "The prophecy...Snape heard it, he told the Death Eaters all those years ago, and it was about both of you. You and Harry. You-Know-Who chose Harry, but that's why they went after your family, because he could just as easily chosen you."
Neville felt like he had been punched. His voice was dead. "They thought something about me...."
She nodded, and now her eyes held only a deep, sorrowful sympathy. "You're the backup plan, Neville. It's why Dumbledore let you just flounder, so no one would suspect. If Harry fails, you're the only other one who can kill You-Know-Who, because Dumbledore said 'only to give one's self and soul can be a sacrifice as great and powerful as the gift of a life, and that gives him a strength and protection almost equal to Harry if he is willing to use it.'" Ginny swallowed hard, looking away now. "I didn't believe it. I'm sorry. I knew you had guts, but your magic's been pretty weak, honestly. I thought he was trying to make me feel better, you know, not feel like everything was riding on Harry and them. But last night...I think it really might be true."
Slowly, Neville sank down to the damp leaves of the forest floor, his legs no longer able to support him. It was ridiculous, it was impossible, he was stretched to and beyond the absolute limits of anything he had ever imagined of himself just with the D.A.. If taking on Harry's role as a leader at Hogwarts was so nearly too much to bear up under, how was he possibly supposed to...there was no way he could...he shook his head, trying to banish the entire ridiculous concept. The very idea that he could have anything in common with Harry besides being a Gryffindor and the little coincidence of sharing a birthday....
His mind was spinning. The protesting evidence of his entire life - almost a squib, the school joke, the fiasco of broken wand, nose, and prophecy at the Ministry, twice being captured already in his attempts to lead the D.A., and how hard it was, and if he was supposed to be some great hero, shouldn't leadership come easily - pushed against other things; other, fainter voices from deeper places in his memory that had only surfaced in the blinding light among the screams of his parents he had never even known he remembered.
Where have you hidden the other one?!...Tell us what it is!...What does your brat have in common with the Potter creature that could possibly harm my Master?!...We know the prophecy, Longbottom, we know there were two...we know there were two...we know there were two...we know there were two....
Neville buried his face in his hands, feeling as though an impossible weight had just been laid across his shoulders. He was shaking, though he barely felt the morning chill. He wanted to argue that she was wrong, that Dumbledore was wrong, that it couldn't be true, but he knew better, even as he knew with equal certainty that the task would be too much; that if it came to him, he would let down not just his parents, his Gran, or his friends, but the entire wizarding world, maybe even the entire world at large. "I can't," he whispered.
Luna knelt on the ground in front of him, gently pulling his hands away from his face to meet his eyes with her serene, sky-blue gaze. "You can. You found what you're really capable of last night, the magic that's always been there, and it's still there. I can feel it. Don't push it away again." She reached down into her sock and pulled out a faded chocolate frog card, the wrinkled picture barely recognizable as the wizard Nigel Gamp. "I still have the last thing my mother gave me, even if it's silly. Don't throw away what your parents gave you."
"But, Luna, I'm scared." He made no effort to conceal the tremor in his voice. "Harry's not afraid of You-Know-Who. I am."
"Nonsense. Harry's terrified of him." Ginny tossed her tangled red hair, "He just knows what he has to do. The question isn't if you can, Neville. Dumbledore knows you can. The question is what you will do. Are you going to disband the D.A. and run off to hide somewhere, or are you going to keep fighting and be ready to take this as far as it has to go, whatever that means?"
He thought of Seamus, hot-tempered and steadfast. The trusting, innocent Creevey brothers. Parvati and Lavender, willing to throw aside boys and gossip for pain and danger. Ernie and Susan, putting their love and future on the line for a battle that could tear them apart. Hannah's gentle green eyes gleaming defiance under a black scarf. Runcorn risking everything to turn traitor on his own father to do what was right. Luna and Ginny, with him now after lying awake all night through a nightmare he had led them into. There was only one answer he could live with, and he nodded. "I'll do it, then."
Getting to his feet, Neville brushed the leaves from his knees, and stood, a wry smile on his lips. "But I'm going to be rooting for Harry like you wouldn't believe."
Ginny grinned back at him, but there was relief in her eyes. "That makes...well, all of us, I think." With a quick squeeze of his shoulder, she set off again through the forest. "Now come on, I want my damned wand back!"
OOO
"...as you already know, which, although severe, we felt to be appropriate given the extreme nature of their infraction. However, it is with the deepest regret that I must inform you that someone did not feel the same way. Our gamekeeper believed that a month was too much, and last night, he abused the privilege of the keys which his position allowed him, and attempted to release Mr. Longbottom and his companions. They were last seen being taken by him into the Forbidden Forest, presumably to hide. However, they became separated..." Snape's voice sounded clearly through the double doors into the entry hall as Neville pushed open the front doors of the castle.
He had wondered why no one had come to greet them, but now he saw a black swag of cloth hung over the Hogwarts banner, and the three of them exchanged a look as Snape's speech echoed into the chamber. Ginny's cheeks flushed. "He thinks we're dead, and he's trying to blame it on Hagrid!"
Even Luna seemed offended by the audacity of the former Potions Master. "I think that was the plan all along."
Neville felt a mischievous smile begin to spread slowly over his face, and he made a show of brushing off his sleeves, though the cloth hung in tatters and crackled with blood, dirt and sweat. "Then I think a correction is in order. Ladies first?"
Ginny gave a haughty sniff, her own brown eyes sparkling. "Mr. Longbottom, didn't your grandmother teach you a gentleman always opens the door?"
Taking a deep bow in reply, he led them to the doors of the Great Hall, then took a deep breath and seized the handles in both hands and pulled.
The colorful house hangings had been replaced with black, just as they had after Cedric's death, and Snape stood at the Staff Table, his mouth falling open in shock mid-sentence as the crash of the doors being flung open sounded through the Hall. Hagrid was standing next to him, his immense wrists shackled together by iron manacles as thick as anchor chains, a gag like a bedsheet wrapped around his mouth, and he had clearly been crying, the floor at his feet spattered with huge droplets, his eyes red and swollen. At Snape's sudden silence, he looked up, and his eyes lit with a pure and wonderful joy.
Every eye was on them. Neville had cringed under such attention before, but now it filled him with a vindictive thrill as he looked around, his gaze searching hungrily for the faces of those he had missed so much in the past weeks. They were there, they were all there, alive and well, if struck dumb with shock to see him standing in front of them after being told their leader was dead.
Then, at the Gryffindor table, a gangly, sandy-haired boy stood, and Seamus stepped out into the aisle as he drew his wand, raising it in front of him and then snapping it neatly to lay diagonally across his chest. "Gryffindors!" His voice rang out, crisply disciplined even as his eyes burned with elation, "Salute!"
There was a loud scraping of benches, and then every Gryffindor, from their fellow seventh-year D.A. members to the tiniest first-years who had no idea such a thing existed were on their feet. Wands came out of sleeves and pockets and from inside robes to join Seamus, but before they had even finished standing, Ernie Macmillan was on his feet, and Terry Boot at the Ravenclaw table, and within moments, all three houses were arrayed in a half-dozen lines as precise as a military parade in a show of honor and defiance that made Neville's breath catch in his throat.
Then another figure stood. For the first time since the doors had opened, all eyes turned away from Neville and his two companions. A stocky boy with a shock of chestnut hair was standing at the Slytherin table, his own wand raised in a salute that mirrored that of the other three houses as his fellows stared at him in a mixture of disbelieving shock and open horror. He did not flinch, but rather regarded them with open disdain. "My father is a Death Eater," he announced boldly, "and he has told me the Dark Lord values courage. I share those values, don't you?"
Silence met his words at first, then to Neville's amazement, Gregory Goyle stood, raising his own wand and crossing it over his barrel-like chest, his piggy little eyes fixed on Neville. "I don' like you none," he announced in a voice that was surprisingly soft for such a massive youth. "But Professor Snape says there's werewolves and all sorts of monsters out there, and I reckon if you faced 'em wandless, that's sumthin.'"
Slowly, reluctantly, Slytherins began to stand, first in twos and threes, and then more, until the entire table was on their feet and had joined the salute. Neville was speechless, but beside him, he heard Luna's almost inaudible murmur. "...for our Hogwarts is in danger from external deadly foes, and we must unite against them, or we'll crumble from within...."
