Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, page 56
Neville had tried sending messages on the Galleon, but there had been no answer, and he was increasingly terrified that the entire D.A. had been captured. Was he the only survivor? Was there any way to tell without being captured? Was he their last hope? Was this what the prophecy had been intended to come down to? Him hiding out until everyone else had fallen, then being left to find a way to carry on and avenge them? How would he know?
He paced the little room in growing agitation, his empty stomach gnawing painfully at him and only increasing the feeling of helplessness. Several times, he had tried to call the house-elves to bring him something, but either Dobby's absence had left none of them brave enough to come help, or more likely, the loophole Snape had closed when he banned non-human Apparition after Michael's stunt prevented them from using their own brand of magic to reach him. Desperately, he had even summoned Mimsy, knowing she was bound to come to him if there was any possible way and that Gran would never have ordered her to abandon him, but she did not answer either.
Neville did not even consider trying to open a door to the kitchens. It was too basic, to elementary to think that they would not have set up spells to alert them if he re-appeared in the castle. No, he was stuck. Stuck until someone came for him or he gave up and came out again, but what would he find if he did that? Could he dare? Certainly not this soon. Maybe in a few more days, if there was no word, but in a few more days, if he still had not found food, his strength would be ebbing, his reflexes slowed....
With a low moan of frustration and defeat, he sank to the floor, sliding down the smooth wall beside the bookcase as he closed his eyes. Everything. Months and months of work and trying and risks and pushing himself and nearly dying a half-dozen times, and it all came to this. Trapped in the room that was supposed to be their salvation, cut off from his friends and comrades, and forced to choose between starvation and surrender. It wasn't right.
His head dropped forward into his hands, and he sighed deeply. There was no urge for tears. There was no point to tears. They wouldn't turn into a sandwich either. I'm just so hungry, he thought despairingly, I just really, really need something to eat. Then at least I could think straight. It's making me too edgy. All I need is a way to get to some food without the Death Eaters getting me or finding out. That's what I need.
There was a faint sound like a stone being dropped into a pool of water, and Neville's head shot up in alarm, his nerves stretched tight after the silence of his own solitude for almost two days. He looked around, and for a moment, nothing seemed different. Then he saw it.
Across from the hammock, in the place where the door had once been, there was a painting. Neville got to his feet, frowning, and crossed to examine it.
The frame was simple, gilded wood, and inside, an old-fashioned oil painting showed a pretty young girl in a white dress that dated back to the beginning of the century. She had a sweet, innocent look about her, with long blonde hair in sausage curls over her shoulders, but her eyes were oddly distant, almost vacant, like Luna's when she was at her most dreamy, but different in that they lacked his friend's spark of lively brilliance. At first, she was almost as motionless as a Muggle photograph, then her eyes slowly turned to his, and she smiled vaguely.
"Hello," Neville said cautiously. "Who are you?"
The girl did not answer, but she continued to stare at him, then her hand floated to her mouth as if by accident, and she raised her eyebrows questioningly. Neville pressed forward, fighting the urge to seize the frame in eagerness as he nodded. "Yes! Yes! Hungry. I'm very hungry! Do you know where I can get food?"
His shout seemed to startle her, and she cringed back, hiding her face in her arms like a toddler, and he forced himself to back down, offering her his gentlest smile. Now he understood. There was something wrong with her mind. Some trauma had destroyed her, driven her deep inside herself and left her a high-strung, cracked-crystal version of herself. He smiled. This he knew how to deal with.
"I'm sorry," he said softly, speaking carefully as he would to a particularly hysterical Fainting Fichus, "I'm not mad at you, pretty. I just haven't had anything to eat in a couple days, and I got excited. It made me dumb. I bet you feel kind of upset sometimes and do dumb things too. I didn't mean to scare you. I don't like to scare people. I try to be nice to everybody. Can you forgive me and let me be your friend?"
Gradually, one bright blue eye peeped out from behind her arms, and she studied him warily. Neville spread his hands wide, tucking his wand into his back pocket out of sight, and smiled again. "See? I don't want to hurt you."
Her gaze was focused uncertainly on his palms, and he glanced down, realizing that she was looking at the round scars from the thorns. "These?" He pointed to the scars, and she nodded gingerly. "I got them because I was with two of my friends - pretty girls like you - and some bad monsters tried to hurt us. I stopped them, and it kind of hurt me, but that was okay, because I didn't let them hurt my friends."
She had uncurled now, and was staring at him with that same open, sweetly bland look, as if they were starting from scratch. Neville took a deep breath. "Love, can you show me where I can get some food?"
The girl nodded, then turned away, but instead of stepping out of her portrait and coming back with something to eat, or even pointing him in a particular direction, she just seemed to walk further into the background. Now that he looked, he saw that unlike most paintings where the backdrop was a garden, a sitting room, or somewhere else that would be appropriate surroundings for the subject, the girl had been painted in front of a long, dark, ominous-looking tunnel that seemed to lead away to forever.
There was no point, however, in wondering at the artist's reason for this choice, because she was quickly fading into the shadows, and he reached after her instinctively. "Wait...."
His voice cut off in a gasp of shock. Instead of butting against the canvas, his hand had passed through as if it didn't even exist, and he felt the cool dampness of the tunnel air beyond. As if she had heard him, the girl paused and turned back, regarding him placidly for a moment, then raising one dainty hand in a beckoning motion.
Oh, Merlin, I hope I'm doing the right thing....
Closing his eyes, Neville took a deep breath and climbed into the painting to follow this strange, shattered flower towards the unknown.
Behind the painting, he was surprised to find a set of smooth stone stairs that led neatly down into the tunnel itself. Far from being a crude burrow, it looked long-established, even ancient, with smooth, hard-packed earthen walls and floor, unmarred by roots or stones. The walls were studded at intervals with little brass lamps that cast an eerie, flickering light that was just enough for him to see the little white-clad figure that continued to float gracefully ahead.
Now that he was inside the portrait world, he could see that there was something unnatural about her that went beyond her vacant eyes and frail-minded manner. No matter how she turned or moved, she was never actually three-dimensional, and she cast no shadow in the lamplight. He shivered, wondering what he had gotten himself into, following the brush-stroke image of a mad young girl along a tunnel so long and deep that he knew he had to be crossing far beyond the castle grounds by now. But the Room of Requirement had never lead him astray before, so he crossed his fingers, trying to fight the increasing worry as the passage continued to stretch on and on before them.
Finally, they reached a second set of stone stairs that went up to a little door, and the girl walked up them smoothly...and then into the door, which, as Neville looked at it, he now saw to be the canvas and wood-slatted back of a second frame. Taking a deep breath, he climbed the stairs and placed his palm against the back of the painting, pushing carefully. It swung outward a few inches, and he peered through the opening, not having the slightest idea what he expected to see beyond.
It was a little sitting room, shabbily furnished with a threadbare rug and a rickety table flanked by mis-matched, wobble-legged chairs, and an old man was sitting alone, a plate scattered with crumbs at his elbow and a candle dripping messily onto the pockmarked wood as he peered over a roll of parchment that seemed to be full of lines and figures. His hair and beard were wire-gray, long and stringy, and a pair of dirty spectacles were perched on the end of his straight, narrow nose. At the faint creak of the portrait's hinges, he looked up, and his eyes were a vivid, piercing blue that seemed oddly familiar, though Neville couldn't quite place them.
"Ariana?" The wizard stood, adjusting his glasses as he crossed to peer more closely at the portrait. "What have you...hello, there!"
The portrait was thrown open, and abruptly, Neville found himself staring at the end of a wand that was being held only inches from his nose. "And who are you?" the wizard demanded harshly. "What are you doing spying on me?"
Neville raised both hands, taking a step back on the stone stairs. "I didn't mean to cause trouble! If you don't want me here, I'll go. I never saw you, I don't know where this place is, I'll not say anything to anyone!"
"Well and good, but you didn't answer either one of my questions, boy." The blue eyes narrowed suspiciously as they took in his appearance more thoroughly. "Why...you're a Hogwarts kid, aren't you? What in the name of Cleopatra's asp happened to your face?"
Startled, Neville touched his cheek. He had almost forgotten in the hunger and isolation about the deep gouges that slashed across both sides of his face, and he had a strong feeling that the eye he still hadn't been able to open since Crabbe hit him probably didn't look too pretty either, despite undoubtedly being very colorful by now. "I, uh...." he hesitated, unsure what side this stranger was on or what was safe to say. "I had an accident. Got in the way of a spell, you know...er...a couple times."
"Hmmph." The wizard snorted in obvious disbelief, then gestured him through into the little sitting room. "So what's the clearly most accident-prone boy in Hogwarts doing in my pub, and are you going to give me a name before I have to check and see if your mother writes it in your shirt collar?"
Neville hesitated, then replied with the name of Lavender's older brother who had graduated Hogwarts during their second year. "Robert Brown, sir. I'm Gryffindor...but...your pub?"
"I'm not blind, I know you're Gryffindor...unless you're wearing that sweater and tie because you think red and gold look good with a beating." He waved a hand at the door that lead out of the sitting room. "My pub. The Hogshead. And if you don't start answering questions, you're going to see the front door of it quick enough. What are you doing here, and what happened to your face? And don't give me that load of dragon dung about an accident."
"I followed the girl," he admitted. "I was...trapped in a room in the castle, and I was really hungry, and she kind of - well, she didn't say anything, but she seemed to act like if I followed her into her picture, I could find something to eat."
"People who trapped you in that room wouldn't be the same people who tried to re-arrange your head, now would they? And they wouldn't happen to be a pair of the ugliest trolls who ever wore the Dark Mark, just maybe?" He raised his bushy eyebrows in mock innocence, and Neville decided to tell the truth. There didn't seem much point in lying, and the barkeep of the Hogshead seemed like a man who was accustomed to dealing with people who were much better at it.
"Yes, sir. It was the Carrows. We're - I'm not really popular with them right now. But if this is a pub, sir...." He fished in his pocket, pulling out a small handful of Sickles and Knuts, but leaving the charmed Galleon hidden safely. "I'd like to buy some food, please. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. I'll really take whatever you've got."
Nodding with a grunt of satisfaction, the wizard waved away the money as he crossed to the door. "You stay here, I'll get you something. And keep your coins, Brown - or whatever your name is - I don't take money from one of my brother's old students what's in need because he crossed those two."
"Your brother!" Neville exclaimed. Suddenly, he remembered where he had seen eyes like that before, and a fragment of Dobby's letter flitted through his memory. Dumbledore had told the elf his brother owned a pub in Hogsmeade.... "Then you're -"
"Aberforth Dumbledore," he spoke almost as if it was a confession, rather than a point of pride to be related to the greatest wizard in modern history. "Go ahead and call me Ab like everyone else. You look close enough to grown to stop worrying about 'sir' for everyone. 'Least you're tall enough to pass for it."
"I'm of age," Neville confirmed, and Aberforth gave a dry chuckle.
"Well, that much is clear enough. Nothing's quicker to say it than a seventeen year-old. Think they're all of a sudden grown bloody adults because the calendar's flipped one little page and they've got their own watch. But you sit down, Mister Brown, and I'll get you something to eat if you were keen enough for it to follow Ariana all this way."
"Thanks, Ab."
Aberforth left, and within a few minutes, he had returned carrying a plate on which sat a half-loaf of bread and some cold chicken, a flagon of mead in his other hand. He sat them down on the table, and Neville tore into it with such gusto that the barkeep laughed. "Watch it, there, Neville...you're eating like -"
"A seventeen year-old who's had nothing in two -" he stopped, blinking, his mouth still full of the heavy wheat bread. "Wait a sec, what'd you call me?"
"Neville Longbottom. That's the same's your mother calls you, am I right?"
"But how did you - ?"
"Got a notice downstairs." The gray head nodded back towards the door. "Says I'm not supposed to serve alcohol to Mssrs. Neville Longbottom and Ernest Macmillan. I was getting the food, and I saw that and said to myself 'Ab, if you took about fifteen pounds off that boy and dragged him through hell tied to the back of a thestrel, I figure it'd be the same kid you've got upstairs.'"
"But you...?" Neville motioned towards the mead.
"Well, I don't get most of my clientele because I give a flying shrivelfig about rules. Never have." He reached into his robes and pulled out a long pipe, clenching it between his teeth as he lit it with a tap of his wand. Sweet, fragrant smoke began to rise immediately, and he blew a series of smoke rings lazily, studying Neville as he ate. "I guess you're the one what's been driving the Death Eaters up the wall and down again up there."
He replied with the proudest smile he could manage around a mouthful of chicken leg. "Mmm-hmm."
The satisfied look on the wrinkled face turned immediately stony. "So my brother had himself an army of kids he's set up to fight his battles, did he?" He gave a snort of disgust. "Typical."
Neville frowned, feeling himself grow defensive on his old Headmaster's behalf. He swallowed, gesturing firmly with the stripped bone of the chicken. "Professor Dumbledore didn't set us up for anything! We formed ourselves with Harry about two years ago and -"
Aberforth's bright blue eyes widened in sudden realization. "I'll be a Grindylow's underpants! That's right, you lot did it right here in the Hogshead, didn't you? 'Bout twenty-odd of you, including both those Weasley boys who've kept me so nicely in Galleons for my help with import regulations."
He nodded. "Yeah, well, it was just a class then. But we've kept it going, and we're a real army now!"
This pronouncement was met with a low, humorless chuckle. "Oh, are you?"
"You've heard how much trouble we've given them!" He thrust his chin out proudly. "They want me dead, you know...tried a couple times."
"Congratulations." Aberforth replied sarcastically. "You've made enough schoolboy mischief that some of the foulest wizards on this earth want you dead." He wagged one long finger at the younger wizard. "First, that's not saying so much, boy. Those lot don't have the greatest respect for anyone's life but their own. And second, that's damned foolish of you, much less that you're proud of yourself for it. You're seventeen. You don't have the first idea what you're doing."
"I have a perfectly good idea what I'm doing!" Neville felt himself begin to flush, and he knew it was more than the half-flagon of mead he had drank. "I can't tell you much more than I have, because we've been smart enough to use some pretty strong protective magic, but we've got some things planned that are going to do a lot more for getting rid of You-Know-Who than just 'schoolboy mischief.'"
"And these plans...." Aberforth crossed his arms, taking another deep drag of the pipe as his bushy eyebrows raised. "They wouldn't just so possibly happen to be some of my brother's brilliant schemes, now would they, hmmm?"
"Actually, no." Neville wiped the last wad of bread across the plate to catch the dribbles of juice that had fallen from the roast chicken. "They're ours, and honestly, I don't think I ever got a chance to actually even talk to your brother one-on-one. We're doing this all ourselves, and because we want to - no, because we need to. Risking our lives or not, it's the right thing to do, and we're not about to knuckle under just because we're young. That's how people like that get a real foothold, you know? If they can get you to grow up going along with things, then it's a lot harder to make yourself fight later, not to mention they'll be dug in deeper. I mean - " Neville shrugged, "sure, we all know Dumbledore had something planned with Harry, but we don't know what, and we're not waiting to find out. If Harry can stop You-Know-Who first, that's brilliant. But these are our freedoms too, and we're not sitting back and waiting on someone else's plan."
He stopped, surprised at himself for the little speech, but Aberforth seemed rather impressed. The barkeep was looking at him as though seeing him for the first time, and a small, grim smile appeared around the stem of the long pipe. "Well, aren't you something."
Neville laughed. "My Gramps used to say that, and my great-uncle Algie would always give him this look and say 'Certainly, Trev, but let's not say what, shall we?'"
Aberforth gave a surprisingly boyish laugh. "Let's not!" He reached into the pocket of his robes and added another pinch to the pipe, then nodded to the empty plate. "You want seconds? For half a chicken and half a loaf of bread, that didn't last two minutes."
