Written for Hogwarts' DADA Assignment: Write about a character overcoming numerous obstacles to reach their goal, Boggart.
Also for the Sherlock Holmes Challenge: (spell) Alohomora, the Writing Club: Character Appreciation - (word) Dumbledore's Army, Showtime: Epilogue - (dialogue) "Take me there.", Lyric Alley: And I heard your voice, Angel's Arcade: Luigi - Neville Longbottom, (setting) Hogwarts, (color) green, Photography Month: Conceptual Photography - Write about a bright idea, Cooking Club - Almonds: Luna Lovegood.
Word count: 1591
face your fears
"Did you find it?"
Before him, Ginny and Luna exchange a nervous look. "Yes," Ginny says, nodding. She bites her lips, her brown eyes kind as they burrow into his. "But you don't have to do this, Neville.."
Luna nods. She stares at him in silence, her globulous eyes wide and uncharacteristically serious.
"I know," Neville replies, smiling back at them. It's as though his heart could burst from the fondness he feels for these girls. Where would he be without them? "But you're wrong. I do have to do this." His mouth twists into something like a scowl, like he's swallowed something bitter. "I need to do this," he corrects himself. "I have to be brave — I have to know that I can be."
Ginny opens her mouth to protest but Luna silences her with a shake of her head. Ginny doesn't look happy about it, but she relents. "Fine," she says, her eyes flashing. "But you be careful about it, okay? Being brave doesn't mean that you go look for trouble, and the last thing we need right now is to lose you too to some stupid quest."
"And that's exactly why I need to do this now. I can't — Snape's Headmaster now. I can't just be terrified of him like I've always been."
"But sometimes the things that scare us are the things that make us brave too," Luna replies, looking at him gently.
"Thank you," Neville replies, touched, but he shakes his head. "But that hardly helps if I freeze whenever he looks at me."
"You wouldn't," Ginny retorts, crossing her arms. "You came with us to the Ministry, there's no way you'd just freeze if Snape came at you."
Neville swallows. "Maybe so," he admits, if only because he knows Ginny well enough to tell that he's not going to win this one. "But we can't take the chance that I might."
They can't. How is he supposed to help lead this resistance if he's too scared of the enemy to act? He can't, that's the answer, and they can't afford that.
Evidently, the girls agree, because Ginny sighs and Luna nods. "Alright," Ginny replies. "But we're coming with you."
"You don't —"
"We're coming with you," Ginny replies, her gaze unyielding.
"It's what friends do," Luna adds, smiling serenely.
And that's what does it. The word friends. "Alright," Neville says. "Take me there, then."
He follows them through deserted corridors, where they still carefully check to see that none of Hogwarts' new additions are there to stumble upon them. It's still way before curfew, but in the few weeks since school started again, they've all already learned that rules such as curfew didn't matter much when it came to what the Carrows did — which was basically whatever they wanted.
He doesn't recognize the place they end up in, but that doesn't really surprise him. Between the both of them, the two girls probably know Hogwarts better than almost anyone else.
They stop in front of a small wooden door. It looks ancient, and its size is closer to the one of a closet than a proper classroom door, and it is closed. As Neville watches, it suddenly starts to shake, a loud banging coming off from the other side.
Nerves tie up his stomach in knots, but Neville steps up to the door with steady hands. "Is it in here?"
"Yup," Ginny replies, popping the 'p'. The levity of her tone is betrayed by the narrowing of her lips, but Neville appreciates the effort anyway.
He takes a deep breath. "Alright then," he says. "You can do this, Neville, you can do this," he mutters to himself.
He must have been louder than he'd meant to, though, because Ginny chuckles and punches him in the arm — gently. "You'll do great, you'll see. And we'll be there if not."
"Thanks." Neville offers her a shaking smile before raising his wand to the door. From the corner of his eyes, he can see Ginny and Luna take a step back, but Neville focuses instead on how he'll change his Boggart into something he can laugh at.
Unbidden, the image of Snape wearing his grandmother's clothing comes back to him. His lips quirk up into a small smile and he forces himself to hold onto that picture.
It worked perfectly the last times he had used it, there is no reason for it to fail now.
(Except that Snape is so much scarier now, when he's killed Dumbledore and given monsters free reign of the school. Before, he had been a bully, someone who threatened with pain but never quite followed through.
Now, however, he was a killer and a monster, and his threats were very much real.)
"Alohomora." The door opens with a click.
He sees the hand first, gripping the edge of the wall, slender fingers clenched tightly around the stone. And then the legs, slowly stepping out of the inky depths of its prison — and for a moment Neville is brought back in time.
Suddenly, he's thirteen again, watching with shaking limbs as his greatest fear steps out of a wooden wardrobe.
He freezes, mind blank, heart hammering in his chest. The spell dies on his tongue, and Snape steps out of the room completely, looking exactly like the Headmaster they saw at lunch only a few hours ago. Looking just like he had four years ago, stepping out of that wardrobe.
Only this time he's also holding his wand like he's about to curse someone, and it looks so real that Neville forgets can't really use magic.
Snape barely spares a glance toward the girls before focusing his attention on Neville. His sneer only deepens when Neville doesn't appear to react. It's nothing Neville hasn't seen a thousand times on his face already, but it still sends his heart racing in fear.
Snape scoffs and starts to open his mouth — a scathing remark no doubt on his lips — but before he can say or do anything, a sharp voice cuts through the white haze that has taken over Neville's mind.
"Come on, Neville! He's just a Boggart, you've dealt with worse! You can do this!" Ginny yells, and just like that Neville remembers where he is.
He's not thirteen, and this is not a classroom filled with mocking students. He raises his wand again, the image he had conjured earlier firmly back in his mind.
"Riddikulus!" he shouts, and with a swooshing sound, the Boggart now wears his grandmother's clothes. The green dress looks as ridiculous on him as it had back then, and Neville starts to chuckle, nervously at first but then more freely.
"I did it!" he breathes. "I did it!"
"Never doubted you would," comes Ginny's voice from behind him, seconded by Luna's softer tilt.
Before he can turn around, he hears a click. From the corner of his eyes, he sees a bright flash of light, and he spins around. "Did you just take a picture?"
Smirking, Ginny nods. She's holding a camera that's still pointed toward the Boggart and she takes another picture. "It's Colin's," she explains. "One of his older models — he lent it to me last year, said we might need it. I figured it'd come in handy if you were going to do this. Looks like I was right — everyone's going to love this."
Luna leans over a little, looking more closely at the camera and then back at Neville. "Think you can give him a wig too?"
Neville laughs. Behind him, the Boggart whimpers. It looks pitiful like this, and it has already started to retreat back into his room. "Another time, maybe," he replies, already thinking about it. With a spell, he shoves the Boggart back into hiding and with another, locks the door.
He turns back. "You know we can't use these though, right? They'd probably kill us," he says, nodding toward the camera.
Because it's true. It's one thing to rebel during the classes and run interference outside of it, to train and protect everyone, but it's another to distribute these, especially when everyone would know where they came from. It's not a risk worth taking, not when the only thing it'd bring would be temporary satisfaction.
Grimly, Ginny agrees. "But we can keep it in the Room with us." She smirks. "Make it a hall of fame thing, maybe. It'll help everyone keep their spirits up."
Yes. It would, wouldn't it? Neville can already picture it — those photographs would serve as a reminder that their tormentors are humans too, and can be beaten.
That they are stronger than anything the world will throw at them, and that they'll survive this.
Merlin help them, but they will survive this.
"It's a good idea," he says out loud.
"I know," Ginny replies, smiling. "Now come on, let's go develop these so we can show them off to the rest of Dumbledore's Army. Unless you'd like to take another go at your Boggart?" She shakes the camera gently. "Plenty of film left in there if you do."
Chuckling, Neville shakes his head. "I'll be fine, thanks." He sighs, casting one last look at the closed door, now rattling off at its hinges again. "I did what I came here for."
And he turns around one last time, toward his smiling friends, turning his back to his fears.
It may be just his mind playing tricks, but he could swear he feels lighter for it.