Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, page 51
There was a rustle of straw, and he looked up to see Ernie kneeling beside them, and he touched one filthy hand hesitantly against her shoulder. "Hannah?" She gave no indication of having heard him, but he took a deep breath, glancing up at Neville before he went on. "If I could - if either of us could do anything, you know we would, but there's another mother over there who's trying to bring two little pups into the world, and I think she would appreciate your dainty hands a lot more than these great mitts of mine if you'd be willing to help a bit."
Neville shot Ernie a fierce scowl, unable to believe that he would invade on her grief to try and get her to help with farm work, but to his surprise, she sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and pulled her head away from her knees with an expression as if he had offered to undo it all. "But I don't know anything about..."
"I'll talk you through it," Ernie promised. "Come on...I've got everything we need in here, and it's really not that complicated. Nature knows what she's doing, we just need to work out the kinks. It'll be bloody and messy and smelly and hard, but if you're up to it...."
Hannah nodded quickly, uncurling herself and pushing up the sleeves of her robes. "Where is she?"
"Over here." He motioned her towards the squirming dent in the straw, and she knelt, still shuddering, the tears still flowing down her face, but her jaw was set, and her eyes were no longer anguished, but soft and caring. Ernie guided her hand to the animal's invisible back, and she stroked it tenderly.
"You poor thing," she murmured, "it'll be okay, he's going to show me how to help you."
For over an hour, Neville sat in bemused silence, watching his two friends work over the laboring animal. He knew they had been close friends since their first year, Prefects together, but for the first time, he found himself jealous. At the end of the day, Ernie still understood her in ways he couldn't, still shared something in his basic nature that had seen them sorted into the same house while Neville went to Gryffindor.
He wondered if, given time, he could ever really know what would make sweating and covering yourself with slime and lying on your stomach with your arm buried to the elbow in an animal you couldn't even see into something that would make such pain better. But then, would she ever really know why he had taken the loss of the D.A.'s command so hard? She seemed to think it was just that they had turned on him, but it wasn't.
There was a part of him that wanted to lead, not just fight, that, if he was willing to admit it to himself, reveled in power, hungered to see them look up to him, to know that if he could pull this off, his name would go down in history, that there might even be a monument to mark where he had fallen. It was a hard thing to face, and it seemed so strange when he had so long shunned the spotlight, but he knew if he was honest that he hadn't been afraid of the attention, he had been afraid of not being worth it - or worse, of people deciding he hadn't been worth it after the fact.
And yet they balanced each other. In the past week especially, he had discovered that beyond their love for one another and the physical attraction, he and Hannah made a wonderful team. His own impulsiveness was checked by her tendency to be more down-to-earth. Her stubbornness could be prodded into action or brought to heel by his drive. His ambition, her common sense. Her willingness to work, his willingness to sacrifice. He had once overheard Gran say that when Gramps died, she lost her other half, and even though it had been a family puzzle for decades before he was born, he knew now why the formidable Augusta Dorsett had married a Hufflepuff.
There was a cry of triumph from Ernie, and to Neville's amazement, Hannah's bright laughter filled the cozy little barn. She had tumbled back into the straw, sticky and filthy, her hair dark with all manner of things besides sweat and plastered in tendrils to her face, but she was beaming as she turned to him. A tiny gray creature, soaking wet and covered in fragments of cloudy membrane was squirming in her arms making snuffling, mewling noises as she held it out to him. "Neville! Look! We did it!"
Ernie had the other one cradled against his own broad chest, and there was the same look of radiant joy on his face as he lay it against the dent in the straw, where it began to root and nuzzle immediately against its unseen mother. "She was brilliant, wasn't she?" he said. "Tougher than I thought for a while there, but they're just as healthy as you could want - two fine bucks - and they'd have both died and probably the dam besides if we hadn't done something."
Neville crossed the barn to sit beside Hannah, reaching out to carefully stroke the pup's tiny head. It nuzzled at his finger, then latched on with surprising force, and she giggled at his look of shock. "He's hungry," she informed him, as though she, not Ernie, had been doing this for years. "Isn't he adorable?" Her eyes were bright with tears again, but although the grief was still there in part, it was only a shadow of what it had been. "I did it, Neville," she whispered, "isn't it wonderful?"
He nodded, though he knew that she meant more than just the birth of the two Demiguise pups. "Yeah...and he is pretty cute."
"All the bad..." she murmured, fingering one miniature paw gently, "It's not really that deep, is it? I mean, they can lock people up and wreck houses and write on graves and make a sham out of their own laws, but all their power and all their cruelty can't stop two tiny, helpless little lives as long as there are people willing to do something."
"They can't stop Victor from being willing to fly all night to risk his life for us, or Percy from having a conscience under there," Neville agreed, "or Colin's friend from being willing to face things he didn't even know existed, or Renny from sending us those robes even as they came to kill him." He smiled at Ernie. "Or you and Susan from falling in love and giving yourselves to each other. I think I remember some rich boy who was a lot cleaner than you making a toast about fifty years ago to that effect."
Ernie laughed, taking the pup gently from Hannah's hands and raising it into the air. "To hope and love, and damned if You-Know-Who can stop us in either!"
OOO
"UNDESIRABLE #1 BEHIND INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST MINISTRY!"
The headline of that evening's edition of the Daily Prophet blared up at Neville from where Ernie's father had thrown it onto the kitchen table. "Ye've made the paper, laddie," he said gruffly, "but I dinnae see no keepin' with the tale ye told us."
Neville picked it up, his breath catching as he saw the photograph on the front page. Viktor Krum was being held down by no less than five burly Ministry guards, his hooked nose badly broken, blood running down his face from one eye that was swollen completely shut as they wrestled him to the floor of the Ministry's vast entry hall. "Hannah," he cried, "they got Krum!"
"No!" She leaned across the table, her eyes scanning the article along with his. Mr. Macmillan was right. The Ministry version of events bore less than no resemblance to what had actually happened.
According to this, two young students from Hogwarts had been "detained for questioning" after "behaving oddly" in Diagon Alley on the evening of the 19th. Investigation had found them to be under the Imperius Curse, attempting to gather information to help Potter and his "dangerous accomplices," and they were to have been released the afternoon of the 21st, but Krum had broken into the Ministry after "brutally assaulting" a young clerk, Percy Weasley, and helped them escape, causing "serious property damage and callously endangering the lives of hundreds of innocent employees" in the process.
The two unnamed students, according to the article, had been in no danger, but Mr. LeStrange of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement gave his opinion that Potter's people had been so worried about what might be revealed of their "nefarious plots against the wizarding world" that they had risked the "wholly unnecessary" breakout, thus proving how badly frightened they truly were of the "Ministry's true might." It was claimed that the identities of the students were being withheld to protect their families from embarrassment or being "unfairly connected" with Potter, but the Prophet assured its readers that they were not going to be punished in any way for being "victims twice over: first of the Imperious Curse, and then of Krum's reckless scheme."
Under international law, the Ministry was forbidden to try or execute foreign nationals, but the Minister of Magic had found a loophole under the clause of espionage or acts of war, and Neville let out a low moan as he read further. "They..."
"At least we got something that pretended to be a trial." Her voice was a shaky whisper, and she trailed her fingers over the picture with a sadly ironic chuckle. "I think more people are going to mourn him than even Dumbledore. My Dad always said he was incredible, but now that I've seen him fly, I can't imagine what he must have been like on the Pitch."
"The Bulgarian Bombshell," Ernie nodded, raising his glass respectfully. "Once he goes off, the game is finished. Only professional Quidditch player I've never heard anyone question the salary for."
"We had lousy seats for the Cup," Neville said, "but I'll still never forget it." He raised his own glass to join Ernie's, and around the table, the rest of the Macmillan family and Hannah all did the same. "To Viktor Krum," he announced, "and the hope that You-Know-Who remembers that even if you catch the Snitch, the other team still sometimes wins."
A half-dozen voices chorused their agreement, "To Viktor Krum."
They drank, and Hannah smiled softly. "Best Seeker in the vorld."
OOO
Despite the tragic news of Krum's brutal execution, the Prophet's article had contained something wonderful as well. Neville had thought that he and Hannah would be unable to return to the wizarding world at large, and had been trying to find a way that they could possibly try to contact Harry and Ginny and join them on the run, but now that the Ministry had been forced to exonerate them to cover its own failures, they were free to return to Hogwarts.
Still, however, he was not willing to press his luck. Walking around openly would just be begging to be re-arrested on any possible trumped-up excuse or even just murdered outright, so they decided to remain at Loch Cibeirdraoid for the rest of the holiday. Once they were back at Hogwarts, they would be in no more danger than they ever had been from Snape and the Carrows, and Neville was quietly hoping that he would be allowed to re-take his command, though he did not dare express that openly to his friends.
The life there was like nothing he had ever experienced before. The senior Mr. and Mrs. Macmillan - who insisted almost immediately on being called Duncan and Fiona - were more than willing to let them stay, but no one took a bed or a meal at the farm without working for it.
Every morning, Neville awoke with Ernie and the other men - Duncan and eight farmhands whom he had been told were fellow Clansmen come to help with the spring lambing and pupping - long before the sun hit the edge of the mountains. Fiona, Hannah and Susan had strong coffee, bread, eggs, porridge and sausages on the table, and then they would head to the fields, where the tasks never seemed to end, no matter how long or hard they worked. Walls to mend, animals to move here, there, and back again. Births to assist, newborns to count and tag, water to haul, forage to carry and spread, holes to fill with rocks so that animals did not disappear into the ever-shifting landscape.
He had been confused at first as to why they were struggling like Muggles with such simple jobs, but Ernie had laughed and suggested that perhaps he would like to try using his wand to lift the stones into place on a section of collapsed wall. Neville had done so, but the amount of effort saved by the Levitation Charm had been nothing compared to the amount of effort it was to retrieve the fifty sheep that had panicked and stampeded. Neither sheep nor Demiguise, Ernie explained, were the bravest or brightest animals nature had ever produced, and although the latter simply vanished when startled by magic, the former reacted in far more time-consuming and occasionally self-injurious ways.
At noon, they would all come in for lunch, and then it was out again, working until there was barely enough light left to get back to the house. All three witches were excellent cooks - as well as overseeing the business side of the operation and tending to the sick, injured, and orphaned animals while the wizards were doing the more physical labor - and Neville's body abruptly seemed to remember that he had barely eaten during the last month. The appetite that had vanished when Whitby was taken returned with a vengeance, and he was putting away second and third helpings of everything at each meal, something he noticed was not at all unusual among the workmen, among whom Ernie's strapping build was the rule, not the exception.
It was hard, exhausting work, but it was completely different from the way he had been pushing himself in the Room of Requirement. It was slower, steadier, no one task overly tiresome in itself, and he was rarely out of breath or struggling with the effort, but at the end of each night, he did not so much fall asleep as his bed hit him with a powerful Stunning Spell, knocking him into eight solid hours of restful oblivion.
By the time they were ready to return to Kings Cross, Neville had changed. The eyes that looked back at him from the mirror were no longer sunken and darkly shadowed, but bright and clear. The hollows of his cheeks had filled in somewhat, his ribs were no longer so harshly outlined on his sides, but most importantly, he felt completely different. Instead of feeling stretched, drained, desperately driven, he felt energized and strong, ready to take on whatever Snape, the Carrows, and even You-Know-Who himself were going to throw at them in the final three months of the term.
He thanked the Macmillans deeply for their hospitality, promising Fiona that he would not let himself stop eating and sleeping again and re-affirming the plan with Duncan - who had come around to his daughter-in-law quite abruptly after hearing the magical incantation Grandchild - to get Susan out of the line of fire when the battle began. Then they had Apparated into Inverness itself, where they met the Knight Bus for King's Cross, and Loch Cibeirdraoid was left behind them to vanish like a myth into the Highland mist.
When they reached Platform 9 ¾, Neville looked around eagerly for the other members of the D.A., and he let out a shout of welcome as he spotted Seamus, uncharacteristically sitting away from the bustling crowd on his trunk against the far wall. The other young wizard was slumped forward with his elbows on his knees and his head cradled almost gingerly in his hands, and Neville felt a surge of worry for his friend. Breaking away from Ernie, Hannah, and Susan, he shouldered his way quickly through the crowd, dropping to his knees at Seamus' side. "Are you -"
"Do not speak ta me. Do not look at me. For the love of friendship, Fearless Leader, do not make any noises in my direction, and if you'd care to be a true darlin', see if you can kill the bloody lights." The freckled face was a sickly ashen green between Seamus' fingers, one eye badly swollen and blackened, and Neville's frown of concern deepened.
He waved his wand, casting Muffliato around them, as well as a Shadowing Spell that dimmed the light over where they were sitting. The magic was greeted with a sigh of profound relief, and Neville dropped his voice to a whisper. "What happened to you?"
"Six counties." His voice was a low monotone as he recited the litany, the words still slightly slurred and the accent thicker than Neville was accustomed to. "Eight fights. Two jus' plain Muggle-style brawls without spot o' magic. Kicked out o' eleven pubs. Don't know how many pubs went to. Don't know how many drinks. Don't know how many witches, but me back's killin' me and I don't know who Shannon is, 'cept her name's tattooed on me right hip now." He looked up, and to Neville's shock, he was grinning broadly. "Don't remember much at all really, but oh, Fearless Leader, did I have a lovely time o' it."
Neville laughed, shaking his head in amazement. "Seamus, have I told you you're insane?"
"Aye, and I've told you the same, so we're both mad and both even, and I fancy that's why we're mates." He lowered his head into his hands again, massaging the temples with the utmost care. "What about you?"
"Oh, went home for a few days, then up to Blackpool to visit my family, go to the pier with Hannah, have some ice cream, you know," Neville shrugged casually. "Then we found out that Harry'd been captured by the Malfoys and gotten away, rescuing Luna in the process. Got a message from her on the Galleon, says she's fine. Ginny's had to go on the run, but we didn't know that so we tried to disguise ourselves as Death Eaters and go to Knockturn Alley to find her. Captured by Amycus, sentenced to death, rescued by Viktor Krum, who was executed in our place, spent the last week learning how to work on a Demiguise farm. Pretty boring, really. I mean, I don't have any new things I can't explain."
Seamus blinked slowly. "That's it, Finnigan, m' darlin'," he said, "you're goin' ta wake up t'morrow on the floor o' the gents in a pub in Kenmare, and this be jus' your mind's way o' tellin' you Fearless Leader won't be none too pleased you missed the train."
"No, it's Fearless Leader's way of telling you that he fully intends to be Fearless Leader again, and that the first D.A. meeting's going to be pretty interesting...oh, and that you're now the Gryffindor Lieutenant and overall Second-in-Command, as soon as I've decided you're completely sober."
The train's whistle blew, and Seamus winced painfully, slapping his hands to the side of his head, then looking like he regretted that even more than the sound itself. He reeled, and Neville wrapped one arm under his friend's shoulders, hauling him to his feet and grabbing the handle of the battered trunk with his other hand. "Come on...we've got a lot ahead of us, and the first thing is going to be putting your head in a bucket of ice water and getting Terry on a Troll-strength hangover cure."
Chapter 18: Suffer the Little Children
"You were all told I took a temporary leave of absence." Neville looked out over the faces of the D.A., taking a deep breath. There was no turning back now. "It's not true."
Jimmy Peakes looked as if he had been punched. "You're not leaving us, are you?"
"No. But I'm not coming back as your leader without telling you the whole truth. I was relieved of command by the officer corps. They thought I had become dangerous, obsessed with vengeance, that I was driving myself to death, that I was going to collapse or have a nervous breakdown at any second, and that I was giving orders that put people in needless danger. And they were right." He let the words hang in the air, watching the looks exchanged, the nervous shifting in seats, hearing the whispers of those who had never guessed and those who had known all along.
Neville shot Ernie a fierce scowl, unable to believe that he would invade on her grief to try and get her to help with farm work, but to his surprise, she sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and pulled her head away from her knees with an expression as if he had offered to undo it all. "But I don't know anything about..."
"I'll talk you through it," Ernie promised. "Come on...I've got everything we need in here, and it's really not that complicated. Nature knows what she's doing, we just need to work out the kinks. It'll be bloody and messy and smelly and hard, but if you're up to it...."
Hannah nodded quickly, uncurling herself and pushing up the sleeves of her robes. "Where is she?"
"Over here." He motioned her towards the squirming dent in the straw, and she knelt, still shuddering, the tears still flowing down her face, but her jaw was set, and her eyes were no longer anguished, but soft and caring. Ernie guided her hand to the animal's invisible back, and she stroked it tenderly.
"You poor thing," she murmured, "it'll be okay, he's going to show me how to help you."
For over an hour, Neville sat in bemused silence, watching his two friends work over the laboring animal. He knew they had been close friends since their first year, Prefects together, but for the first time, he found himself jealous. At the end of the day, Ernie still understood her in ways he couldn't, still shared something in his basic nature that had seen them sorted into the same house while Neville went to Gryffindor.
He wondered if, given time, he could ever really know what would make sweating and covering yourself with slime and lying on your stomach with your arm buried to the elbow in an animal you couldn't even see into something that would make such pain better. But then, would she ever really know why he had taken the loss of the D.A.'s command so hard? She seemed to think it was just that they had turned on him, but it wasn't.
There was a part of him that wanted to lead, not just fight, that, if he was willing to admit it to himself, reveled in power, hungered to see them look up to him, to know that if he could pull this off, his name would go down in history, that there might even be a monument to mark where he had fallen. It was a hard thing to face, and it seemed so strange when he had so long shunned the spotlight, but he knew if he was honest that he hadn't been afraid of the attention, he had been afraid of not being worth it - or worse, of people deciding he hadn't been worth it after the fact.
And yet they balanced each other. In the past week especially, he had discovered that beyond their love for one another and the physical attraction, he and Hannah made a wonderful team. His own impulsiveness was checked by her tendency to be more down-to-earth. Her stubbornness could be prodded into action or brought to heel by his drive. His ambition, her common sense. Her willingness to work, his willingness to sacrifice. He had once overheard Gran say that when Gramps died, she lost her other half, and even though it had been a family puzzle for decades before he was born, he knew now why the formidable Augusta Dorsett had married a Hufflepuff.
There was a cry of triumph from Ernie, and to Neville's amazement, Hannah's bright laughter filled the cozy little barn. She had tumbled back into the straw, sticky and filthy, her hair dark with all manner of things besides sweat and plastered in tendrils to her face, but she was beaming as she turned to him. A tiny gray creature, soaking wet and covered in fragments of cloudy membrane was squirming in her arms making snuffling, mewling noises as she held it out to him. "Neville! Look! We did it!"
Ernie had the other one cradled against his own broad chest, and there was the same look of radiant joy on his face as he lay it against the dent in the straw, where it began to root and nuzzle immediately against its unseen mother. "She was brilliant, wasn't she?" he said. "Tougher than I thought for a while there, but they're just as healthy as you could want - two fine bucks - and they'd have both died and probably the dam besides if we hadn't done something."
Neville crossed the barn to sit beside Hannah, reaching out to carefully stroke the pup's tiny head. It nuzzled at his finger, then latched on with surprising force, and she giggled at his look of shock. "He's hungry," she informed him, as though she, not Ernie, had been doing this for years. "Isn't he adorable?" Her eyes were bright with tears again, but although the grief was still there in part, it was only a shadow of what it had been. "I did it, Neville," she whispered, "isn't it wonderful?"
He nodded, though he knew that she meant more than just the birth of the two Demiguise pups. "Yeah...and he is pretty cute."
"All the bad..." she murmured, fingering one miniature paw gently, "It's not really that deep, is it? I mean, they can lock people up and wreck houses and write on graves and make a sham out of their own laws, but all their power and all their cruelty can't stop two tiny, helpless little lives as long as there are people willing to do something."
"They can't stop Victor from being willing to fly all night to risk his life for us, or Percy from having a conscience under there," Neville agreed, "or Colin's friend from being willing to face things he didn't even know existed, or Renny from sending us those robes even as they came to kill him." He smiled at Ernie. "Or you and Susan from falling in love and giving yourselves to each other. I think I remember some rich boy who was a lot cleaner than you making a toast about fifty years ago to that effect."
Ernie laughed, taking the pup gently from Hannah's hands and raising it into the air. "To hope and love, and damned if You-Know-Who can stop us in either!"
OOO
"UNDESIRABLE #1 BEHIND INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST MINISTRY!"
The headline of that evening's edition of the Daily Prophet blared up at Neville from where Ernie's father had thrown it onto the kitchen table. "Ye've made the paper, laddie," he said gruffly, "but I dinnae see no keepin' with the tale ye told us."
Neville picked it up, his breath catching as he saw the photograph on the front page. Viktor Krum was being held down by no less than five burly Ministry guards, his hooked nose badly broken, blood running down his face from one eye that was swollen completely shut as they wrestled him to the floor of the Ministry's vast entry hall. "Hannah," he cried, "they got Krum!"
"No!" She leaned across the table, her eyes scanning the article along with his. Mr. Macmillan was right. The Ministry version of events bore less than no resemblance to what had actually happened.
According to this, two young students from Hogwarts had been "detained for questioning" after "behaving oddly" in Diagon Alley on the evening of the 19th. Investigation had found them to be under the Imperius Curse, attempting to gather information to help Potter and his "dangerous accomplices," and they were to have been released the afternoon of the 21st, but Krum had broken into the Ministry after "brutally assaulting" a young clerk, Percy Weasley, and helped them escape, causing "serious property damage and callously endangering the lives of hundreds of innocent employees" in the process.
The two unnamed students, according to the article, had been in no danger, but Mr. LeStrange of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement gave his opinion that Potter's people had been so worried about what might be revealed of their "nefarious plots against the wizarding world" that they had risked the "wholly unnecessary" breakout, thus proving how badly frightened they truly were of the "Ministry's true might." It was claimed that the identities of the students were being withheld to protect their families from embarrassment or being "unfairly connected" with Potter, but the Prophet assured its readers that they were not going to be punished in any way for being "victims twice over: first of the Imperious Curse, and then of Krum's reckless scheme."
Under international law, the Ministry was forbidden to try or execute foreign nationals, but the Minister of Magic had found a loophole under the clause of espionage or acts of war, and Neville let out a low moan as he read further. "They..."
"At least we got something that pretended to be a trial." Her voice was a shaky whisper, and she trailed her fingers over the picture with a sadly ironic chuckle. "I think more people are going to mourn him than even Dumbledore. My Dad always said he was incredible, but now that I've seen him fly, I can't imagine what he must have been like on the Pitch."
"The Bulgarian Bombshell," Ernie nodded, raising his glass respectfully. "Once he goes off, the game is finished. Only professional Quidditch player I've never heard anyone question the salary for."
"We had lousy seats for the Cup," Neville said, "but I'll still never forget it." He raised his own glass to join Ernie's, and around the table, the rest of the Macmillan family and Hannah all did the same. "To Viktor Krum," he announced, "and the hope that You-Know-Who remembers that even if you catch the Snitch, the other team still sometimes wins."
A half-dozen voices chorused their agreement, "To Viktor Krum."
They drank, and Hannah smiled softly. "Best Seeker in the vorld."
OOO
Despite the tragic news of Krum's brutal execution, the Prophet's article had contained something wonderful as well. Neville had thought that he and Hannah would be unable to return to the wizarding world at large, and had been trying to find a way that they could possibly try to contact Harry and Ginny and join them on the run, but now that the Ministry had been forced to exonerate them to cover its own failures, they were free to return to Hogwarts.
Still, however, he was not willing to press his luck. Walking around openly would just be begging to be re-arrested on any possible trumped-up excuse or even just murdered outright, so they decided to remain at Loch Cibeirdraoid for the rest of the holiday. Once they were back at Hogwarts, they would be in no more danger than they ever had been from Snape and the Carrows, and Neville was quietly hoping that he would be allowed to re-take his command, though he did not dare express that openly to his friends.
The life there was like nothing he had ever experienced before. The senior Mr. and Mrs. Macmillan - who insisted almost immediately on being called Duncan and Fiona - were more than willing to let them stay, but no one took a bed or a meal at the farm without working for it.
Every morning, Neville awoke with Ernie and the other men - Duncan and eight farmhands whom he had been told were fellow Clansmen come to help with the spring lambing and pupping - long before the sun hit the edge of the mountains. Fiona, Hannah and Susan had strong coffee, bread, eggs, porridge and sausages on the table, and then they would head to the fields, where the tasks never seemed to end, no matter how long or hard they worked. Walls to mend, animals to move here, there, and back again. Births to assist, newborns to count and tag, water to haul, forage to carry and spread, holes to fill with rocks so that animals did not disappear into the ever-shifting landscape.
He had been confused at first as to why they were struggling like Muggles with such simple jobs, but Ernie had laughed and suggested that perhaps he would like to try using his wand to lift the stones into place on a section of collapsed wall. Neville had done so, but the amount of effort saved by the Levitation Charm had been nothing compared to the amount of effort it was to retrieve the fifty sheep that had panicked and stampeded. Neither sheep nor Demiguise, Ernie explained, were the bravest or brightest animals nature had ever produced, and although the latter simply vanished when startled by magic, the former reacted in far more time-consuming and occasionally self-injurious ways.
At noon, they would all come in for lunch, and then it was out again, working until there was barely enough light left to get back to the house. All three witches were excellent cooks - as well as overseeing the business side of the operation and tending to the sick, injured, and orphaned animals while the wizards were doing the more physical labor - and Neville's body abruptly seemed to remember that he had barely eaten during the last month. The appetite that had vanished when Whitby was taken returned with a vengeance, and he was putting away second and third helpings of everything at each meal, something he noticed was not at all unusual among the workmen, among whom Ernie's strapping build was the rule, not the exception.
It was hard, exhausting work, but it was completely different from the way he had been pushing himself in the Room of Requirement. It was slower, steadier, no one task overly tiresome in itself, and he was rarely out of breath or struggling with the effort, but at the end of each night, he did not so much fall asleep as his bed hit him with a powerful Stunning Spell, knocking him into eight solid hours of restful oblivion.
By the time they were ready to return to Kings Cross, Neville had changed. The eyes that looked back at him from the mirror were no longer sunken and darkly shadowed, but bright and clear. The hollows of his cheeks had filled in somewhat, his ribs were no longer so harshly outlined on his sides, but most importantly, he felt completely different. Instead of feeling stretched, drained, desperately driven, he felt energized and strong, ready to take on whatever Snape, the Carrows, and even You-Know-Who himself were going to throw at them in the final three months of the term.
He thanked the Macmillans deeply for their hospitality, promising Fiona that he would not let himself stop eating and sleeping again and re-affirming the plan with Duncan - who had come around to his daughter-in-law quite abruptly after hearing the magical incantation Grandchild - to get Susan out of the line of fire when the battle began. Then they had Apparated into Inverness itself, where they met the Knight Bus for King's Cross, and Loch Cibeirdraoid was left behind them to vanish like a myth into the Highland mist.
When they reached Platform 9 ¾, Neville looked around eagerly for the other members of the D.A., and he let out a shout of welcome as he spotted Seamus, uncharacteristically sitting away from the bustling crowd on his trunk against the far wall. The other young wizard was slumped forward with his elbows on his knees and his head cradled almost gingerly in his hands, and Neville felt a surge of worry for his friend. Breaking away from Ernie, Hannah, and Susan, he shouldered his way quickly through the crowd, dropping to his knees at Seamus' side. "Are you -"
"Do not speak ta me. Do not look at me. For the love of friendship, Fearless Leader, do not make any noises in my direction, and if you'd care to be a true darlin', see if you can kill the bloody lights." The freckled face was a sickly ashen green between Seamus' fingers, one eye badly swollen and blackened, and Neville's frown of concern deepened.
He waved his wand, casting Muffliato around them, as well as a Shadowing Spell that dimmed the light over where they were sitting. The magic was greeted with a sigh of profound relief, and Neville dropped his voice to a whisper. "What happened to you?"
"Six counties." His voice was a low monotone as he recited the litany, the words still slightly slurred and the accent thicker than Neville was accustomed to. "Eight fights. Two jus' plain Muggle-style brawls without spot o' magic. Kicked out o' eleven pubs. Don't know how many pubs went to. Don't know how many drinks. Don't know how many witches, but me back's killin' me and I don't know who Shannon is, 'cept her name's tattooed on me right hip now." He looked up, and to Neville's shock, he was grinning broadly. "Don't remember much at all really, but oh, Fearless Leader, did I have a lovely time o' it."
Neville laughed, shaking his head in amazement. "Seamus, have I told you you're insane?"
"Aye, and I've told you the same, so we're both mad and both even, and I fancy that's why we're mates." He lowered his head into his hands again, massaging the temples with the utmost care. "What about you?"
"Oh, went home for a few days, then up to Blackpool to visit my family, go to the pier with Hannah, have some ice cream, you know," Neville shrugged casually. "Then we found out that Harry'd been captured by the Malfoys and gotten away, rescuing Luna in the process. Got a message from her on the Galleon, says she's fine. Ginny's had to go on the run, but we didn't know that so we tried to disguise ourselves as Death Eaters and go to Knockturn Alley to find her. Captured by Amycus, sentenced to death, rescued by Viktor Krum, who was executed in our place, spent the last week learning how to work on a Demiguise farm. Pretty boring, really. I mean, I don't have any new things I can't explain."
Seamus blinked slowly. "That's it, Finnigan, m' darlin'," he said, "you're goin' ta wake up t'morrow on the floor o' the gents in a pub in Kenmare, and this be jus' your mind's way o' tellin' you Fearless Leader won't be none too pleased you missed the train."
"No, it's Fearless Leader's way of telling you that he fully intends to be Fearless Leader again, and that the first D.A. meeting's going to be pretty interesting...oh, and that you're now the Gryffindor Lieutenant and overall Second-in-Command, as soon as I've decided you're completely sober."
The train's whistle blew, and Seamus winced painfully, slapping his hands to the side of his head, then looking like he regretted that even more than the sound itself. He reeled, and Neville wrapped one arm under his friend's shoulders, hauling him to his feet and grabbing the handle of the battered trunk with his other hand. "Come on...we've got a lot ahead of us, and the first thing is going to be putting your head in a bucket of ice water and getting Terry on a Troll-strength hangover cure."
Chapter 18: Suffer the Little Children
"You were all told I took a temporary leave of absence." Neville looked out over the faces of the D.A., taking a deep breath. There was no turning back now. "It's not true."
Jimmy Peakes looked as if he had been punched. "You're not leaving us, are you?"
"No. But I'm not coming back as your leader without telling you the whole truth. I was relieved of command by the officer corps. They thought I had become dangerous, obsessed with vengeance, that I was driving myself to death, that I was going to collapse or have a nervous breakdown at any second, and that I was giving orders that put people in needless danger. And they were right." He let the words hang in the air, watching the looks exchanged, the nervous shifting in seats, hearing the whispers of those who had never guessed and those who had known all along.
