Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, page 65
"Down...down the hall, next left. They're in the castle, Commander...but the kids are back, too. Good thing. We've lost...a lot of people." His head nodded, his eyes losing focus. The belt hadn't been enough to do much through the heavy muscles of the young man's thigh, and he was bleeding out rapidly.
"Sinead, go right. Get those pods out. We'll take the left, hit the fight properly." They split up, and he broke into a jog as the shouts and bangs of dueling became louder.
When he finally emerged around the corner into the broad hallway that lead into the entry hall, it was like stepping into chaos itself. At least thirty pairs of duelers were spinning and ducking through the confined space, Death Eaters and defenders - both the motionless dead and the crawling, moaning, writhing wounded - scattered across the floor everywhere, and the thick dust raised by all the careening spells that had struck the already-shaken stones choked the air with a dense fog that rendered the scene all the more impossible.
Lowering his head and roaring out a challenge towards the first unmasked Death Eater he saw, Neville charged into the middle of the fray. A scarlet Stunner shot by his head so close he felt the warmth of it against his ear, striking the wall just beside another Death Eater who had kept his gleaming anonymity. He ignored it, flinging the Venomous Tentacula into the lumpish, heavy-browed face of Crabbe's father.
There was no time to watch the hungry plant reel in its victim. His wand was already in his hand, and he turned, dueling the second Death Eater who had been intended for the Stunner that had come so close to him. A huge crash of shattering glass filled the air as the fight spilled into the entry hall properly, and the floor was suddenly a treachery of emeralds as the last of the giant hourglasses burst. Another crack, a splintering of wood, and Neville barely dodged the two bodies that fell from above as the railing shattered in a cloud of flying, razor-sharp splinters.
One figure was small, a boy who could be no older than fourth year, but the other was a woman's body, and despite the shroud of chalky dust that covered everyone in a uniform pallor, there was no mistaking those purple eyes. Lavender moaned, struggling to rise again with an ominous grating of broken bones that refused to obey her will.
There was a blur of movement, too low for a human being, and then someone - something - else was on her. He could not abandon his own opponent, but Neville saw out of the corner of his eye that it was Greyback, and the werewolf cast a brief, mocking glance up at him as he licked his lips. "Dessert delivered again, I see...."
The grotesque face ducked, and Neville screamed in hate and fury and horror as Lavender stiffened, her back arching as her fingers scrabbled the floor weakly. The Stunner burst from his wand with such power that it plowed through the Death Eater's protections as though they didn't exist, and he wheeled, wand whipping back to strike out with a Killing Curse, but just then, something else flashed through the air, striking the werewolf with a crack and flinging him hard across the melee to smash against the carved marble banister. Greyback began to rise, but something else large and heavy flew down at him, striking precisely between the narrow eyes and knocking him out cold.
Above them, Professor Trelawney crowed in triumph. "I have more! More for any who want them! Here -" She flung another of the heavy crystal orbs, but Neville did not look to see nor did he care who her victim was this time. He dropped to his knees, grabbing Lavender's shoulder and rolling her towards him.
"Lavender! Lave -" But it was too late. His words choked away as he looked down into the mangled crush of her once-creamy throat and the eyes she had been named for that now turned cloudy with falling dust as they stared unseeing at the broken balcony above.
A loud, splintering crash echoed through the air, yanking his attention away from his friend's body, and he jumped to his feet, wand poised as the doors Ernie had so bravely defended for so long were torn off their hinges. Screams rang out, high and thin with panic, and duels were forgotten as the fighters on both sides fled a new and greater fear. The spiders had returned.
Five of the monstrous arachnids were crowded into the doorway in a tangle of crawling limbs and clicking mandibles, and Neville was among the handful who stayed, who tried to return the attack, to hold them off, keep them out...but nothing worked. Even the Killing Curse bounced off their thick carapaces, doing nothing more than enraging them to rear up on their hind legs, showing of their size to its truest and most terrifying extent. Neville did not run, but it was not lack of fear. His legs simply would not move, rooted to the spot as he continued to fire at them, too panicked to panic properly.
"Don't hurt 'em, don't hurt 'em!" Hagrid had appeared at the top of the stairs, brandishing the frilly pink umbrella that he must have rescued from Snape's confiscation as he charged directly at the monsters, admonishing them like disobedient dogs.
"HAGRID, NO!"
Harry's shout came from nowhere, and then Harry himself quite literally, manifesting from thin air in a way that could only mean he had been there all along beneath his Invisibility Cloak. Hagrid had been pulled in among the spiders now, vanishing in a tangle of writhing, hairy legs as thick as saplings, but whether they considered themselves cowed by a master or satisfied with prey, they retreated, pulling the half-giant with them back towards the forest.
Harry followed at a run, still screaming Hagrid's name, and the sight of their last chance throwing himself away like that snapped Neville out of it. He began to charge forward, but his attempt at calling after Harry was struck short by a groaning, creaking rumble.
There was less than a second for him to even guess what it was or where it was coming from, and then he was knocked to the floor, the remainder of the balcony above smashing down around him as a high, shrill, horrible laugh filled the air. Neville tried to get to his feet again, sweat breaking out cold across his face as he recognized it, oh, he recognized it, and he knew the collapse had been no accident.
He was pinned, his wand hand trapped beneath him uselessly, held under a hundred times more weight than the strongest of them could hope to budge. He struggled, but the beams only held him tighter, yet they did not fall in on themselves, never crushing, just holding, confirming his darkest suspicions that they had been cursed. Then the laugh again, and the woman who stepped out of the cloud of dust was the woman who had set him on this path all those years ago, and he screamed her name in raw, throat-grating hate. "BELLATRIX!"
She was there clearly now, her heavy-lidded eyes glittering with the bloodlust that the night's carnage hadn't even begun to sate, and he thrashed even harder, no longer caring if it was futile. "Let me up! Or are you afraid to fight me now that I'm older and have a wand?!"
"Oooh..." she leaned in closely, staring at him like a fascinating, exotic insect she was about to step on. "Iddle Longbottom's aw gwown up, id he? Thinks he can pway now?" She giggled, and it was the sickest sound he had ever heard, then she tapped him lightly on the nose with her wand. "Crucio."
It had been spoken almost off-handedly, but the skill and practice and profound sadistic love behind it were more than enough to elevate the curse to its highest art form. As the blinding, obliterating, all-consuming agony swept him, his last coherent thought was that really, none of them had been Cruciated at all this year. Because this wasn't something you could ever brag about.
This was an Unforgivable, and it was worse than it had been in the Department of Mysteries, because that time she had been holding back, it had been 'just a taster' to frighten Harry, because this time he couldn't scream, he couldn't writhe, he could do nothing but exist in a state of purest torment and feel his mind slowly begin to come apart at the seams, because she wasn't lifting it, she wasn't going to lift it and oh god oh god oh god this was hell hellmakeitstopsorrymothersorryharryohgodohgod.....
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Like the rope snapping on a hangman's noose, the curse lifted. His body begged to release him into unconsciousness, blackness closing on the edges of his vision as he saw, through eyes that suddenly only offered the world in black and white and a very small tunnel, Romilda Vane holding Bellatrix at wandpoint, her chin thrust out, her own black curls tossed back, and something about that seemed wrong for a reason he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Then Bellatrix laughed again, and Romilda was thrown back against the remains of the broken doors, deliberately impaled like a pinned butterfly on a splinter as thick as the young witch's arm that protruded horribly from her stomach. She looked down, both hands gripping it in shock as her wand clattered to the floor, then Bellatrix's own wand came down in a vicious, swiping backhand stroke. "Sectumsempra!"
Romilda screamed as a deep slash appeared across her face, opening her cheek to bone and slicing off the end of her nose. Again and again the wand came down, slashing his would-be rescuer to unrecognizable shreds, pausing only to strike down Ritchie Coote in an almost unthinking flick and flash when he tried to stop her, tried to save the girl who's screams had now become gurgles, sobs, and finally a thin, bubbling rattle.
Neville could do nothing. His body was still reeling, he was still pinned, his mind refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him was happening, and before the darkness finally closed over him in blessed release, the last thing he saw was Bellatrix LeStrange blowing him a kiss.
Yet strangely, his last thought was not of her. Instead, it was of the young wizard he had last seen running after Hagrid towards a tangle of monsters.
Please, Harry...make this all worth it.
Chapter 22: Darkest Before the Dawn
"Commander"Commander! Commander Longbottom!"
His mind had broken under the Cruciatus. It had to have. Because that was Gran's voice, and it couldn't be...but it came again, and this time, the tone was not at all brusque and firm as he was accustomed to, but gentle, tender, trembling. "Neville, can you hear me? I know you're still breathing. Open your eyes, baby...oh, please."
He was sore, terribly sore, every inch of him hurting and aching as badly as it had after the flogging, but he forced his eyes open, and his grandmother's face was looking down at him, the severe features swept with an instant and powerful relief. Neville wondered anew if it was a hallucination, but this was not how he would have imagined her coming to him - dust-covered, her hair bedraggled, one ear twisted into a dark char - and if he was utterly honest with himself, it wouldn't have been her that his mind would have summoned to come to him in his final moments. It would have been Hannah. He licked his lips, and his voice was a rough whisper of confusion. "Gran? What - ?"
She didn't answer immediately, but took a step back, waving her wand, and he felt some of the pain and pressure ease as the rubble of the balcony lifted away. Not waiting to ask questions, he rolled out from under the beams and stones, forcing himself to his knees before he had to stop. Swaying and gasping, he clutched at his badly-bruised ribs, shaking as he fought to get to his feet again.
He could still hear the battle going on, still hear cracks and curses, bangs and screams, and his first instinct was to simply run out and join it again instantly, but he held himself back. His army needed him, but they did not need him to be foolish...if he went out there like this, he'd be lucky to last five seconds. He needed to take a few moments to move around, test himself for deeper injuries so that he could compensate for them rather than be harshly surprised at the wrong moment, find out what had happened in however long he had been unconscious.
Gran's surprisingly strong hands were under his arms now, helping him stand, and he turned to her with baffled gratitude. "Thanks, Gran, I just -"
"No time. You're alive. That's what matters." Her voice was pure business once again, her sharp eyes scanning the wreckage of the entry hall around them. Bodies were everywhere, Death Eater and defender alike, but the heart of the fight had clearly moved elsewhere. "Rumors had been going around that Bellatrix crushed you to death under the staircase."
"Just trapped me. And did that." He nodded towards where the gory mass still hung limp on the door. "That used to be a fifteen year-old girl, Gran. Her name was Millie." A black-hooded figure, maskless but still a stranger to him, appeared at the top of the stairway, and his wand came up before he even realized he still had it clutched in his hand, striking him down to fall headlong down the cracked marble steps. "I'm going to find that bitch and kill her very slowly."
"Listen to me, Neville," he glanced at her as she grabbed his arm firmly, and though he could see that she was disgusted and horrified by what had been done to Romilda, her tone was calm and cold. "That woman is a monster."
He laughed darkly, shaking off her hand as he knelt to check Ritchie's neck for any chance of survival, grimly unsurprised to find no trace of a pulse or breath under his fingers. "I know that, Gran."
"You must not kill her."
It was an order, not a request or plea, and he looked up from where he had been closing the eyes on Padma's broken body, tucked beneath one of the shattered windows with a thick, platter-sized chunk of glass protruding from her chest, flickering almost prettily with the flashes of light from the duels outside. "But -"
"She would be happy to die for her Master. It would be what she wants. Don't kill her, Neville." There was an icy, vindictive smile on Gran's lips now, and her eyes blazed with the hate he had always suspected was there for her as well, but had never actually seen openly. "Make her watch you kill him."
The true impact of that statement took a moment to sink in, and when it did, he actually staggered slightly. "Then Harry -"
"No one's seen him since he went towards the Shrieking Shack after You-Know-Who, and they're still coming. We're all going to be gathering in the dungeons for a last stand. Barricade ourselves and try to hold them off as long as we can. If we can manage another hour and a half or so, we'll have help."
She sent a red jet through the shattered doors, taking down another, and he scanned the room one last time for survivors before he started towards the entrance himself, more than ready now to go back to the fight, welcoming it even as an avoidance of that other possibility. "If any of my officers are -"
There was a pop, faint but coming from all around them, something about it so ominous that it caught his attention even through the sounds of battle drawing nearer now as the fighters continued their retreat, then the cold, high voice that had rung through the Great Hall a thousand years ago came again, and Neville froze, holding his breath. "You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste."
Neville looked down at the darkening red splatters and blotches that covered the remains of his shirt, soaked the knees of his trousers, streaked the exposed and blistered skin of his right arm. He wanted to laugh, or maybe cry that You-Know-Who could say such a thing with any pretence of seriousness. But the announcement went on, and the voice had taken on what he assumed was supposed to be a regally gracious tone, but barely managed patronizing. "Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."
There was a long pause, a drawn breath, and Neville ran to the doors, hardly daring to hope that it wasn't a trick. Yet it was true. Every black-cloaked figure he could see was backing away, lowering their wands, disappearing into the forest, through the breaches in the wall, or even turning on the spot to simply Disapparate. They would be back in an hour, but it was time, time for the reinforcements to come, time for them to breathe, to get water, to staunch wounds, regroup, reassess, prepare for the second wave.
You-Know-Who had not finished. "I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences." All traces of even a fallacious kindness vanished, and the final words came from the mouth of death. "This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."
The cruel warning faded, but before Neville had a chance to fully consider what it meant for all of them, whether Harry was alive or just missing to the enemy as well, another voice came, also magically magnified, but clearly from the grounds outside with the aid of a common Sonorous Spell. McGonagall. "Everyone who can hear me and is capable of doing so, gather in the Great Hall at once. Apparate if at all possible, time is of the essence. Bring any casualties you are capable of, and we shall retrieve the rest when we have a better idea of our numbers. If you are wounded and cannot walk or Apparate, someone will be there shortly to help you. We have only an hour, we must use it well."
Neville turned without hesitation, sprinting the few feet into the Great Hall, and already people were appearing, the cracks like a string of fireworks one after the other. Each new arrival was a thrill and a heartbreak, because it was someone alive, but they bore with them those who had not been so fortunate.
One of the Weasley twins was there - Fred or George, he could not tell - but in his arms he carried his own mirror image, limp and too obviously lost to them. Seamus, blood spattered among the freckles, sandy hair singed away, but weeping openly as he cradled Dean, his dark head lolling across his best friend's shoulder. Ernie, his massive strength having carried him through somehow, but now it allowed him two burdens: Orla and Natalie. McGonagall with Trelawney. Sprout with Morag. Ginny with Rowan. Tiny Flitwick grimly clutching Andrew Kirke by the collar.
For the first few moments, Neville's heart was a turbulent rush of pain and joy, and he ran to each of them with hugs and kisses, shouts and tears, but then there were just too many, and the emotionless, systemic numbness of the battlefield returned. He knew this well now, the price of command was sometimes your own heart and humanity, but he was grateful, because it made them just names for now. The pain would come later when there was time, if there was time, and a part of him almost hoped there never would be, because oh, there were so many names.
