Every Flower's a Funeral
Title: Every Flower's a Funeral
Author: hobnailedboots
Length: ~1200 words
Type: Neville-centric, genfic, 7th year
~X~
Predictably, Neville is in a greenhouse. This isn't just any old glass box, though; it's his favourite. More than tripled in size since Snape became headmaster, the temperature varies as you travel from thicket to glade. Neville's in his own private world, and he can't tell he's trapped because the walls are covered in vines.
Look.
There are the high purple bells of the Aconitum. Monkshood, wolfsbane, whatever you like to call it. The flowers resemble hoods, a small pocket of sartorially conscious Death Eaters underneath a labernum. Very effective: the ancient witch Medea tried to poison Theseus with it.
The pink stars crinkled on the ground beside him, their white centres bleeding out into nothingness. Naked ladies dancing on a patch of grass by a small stream. Powerful women, their unpredictable petals emerging not in spring but in autumn: still, there are spells which identify them easily.
Hark! An angel's trumpet. Hundreds, rather. All silent as they hang, motionless, from their flat wide leaves. Neville lifts one in his hand – it is light and insubstantial. Eating some can cause visions at best, and at worst it can condemn you. So much for hope.
Hemlock. Socrates took that: it's painless. Neville walks onwards. He sees the giant hogweed loom in the distance, killing the light with its heads like clouds.
He's into the trees now. The black locust, with its beautiful white flowers hanging down. The confringilate beside it, its flowers little bursts of red, pink, and gold. One drop of its essence and you shatter.
Neville veers off track, being careful to watch out for the stinging palm. There's the elder trees nestled behing a large bush, which looks as though its flowers have teeth. Standing well back, Neville considers the elder trees. They seem to be considering him too, and he frowns. Suddenly he wonders if wands are made with elderwood.
Neville sighs, loudly, and wishes he hadn't when the tooth-flowers of the hulking bush swivel towards him and begin to chatter. A good few hundred little voices, all clacking accusingly. Neville's not as scared as he used to be of Professor Snape. He talks back to him in class. He gets punished for it, but someone needs to. But the flowers are the only noise and somehow the greenhouse seems very small. He runs.
If only Professor Sprout were here, he thinks, running blindly, caring not for the deceptive palm-like ra'tang. But she's Banished from teaching, allowed only to hold her house together. Neville's not out of breath yet, nor is he back on the path. Who says Hufflepuff are idiots? he thinks angrily, feet pounding one two three. She gave me duplicate keys weeks before she had the real ones taken from her. Neville runs.
He runs right into the suicide tree. A few of the white flowers drift slowly onto his head; Neville sifts his hand through his hair, watching them float to the floor. The suicide tree stands alone. He takes a step back. The tree is tall and summery, the clean petals swaying from the impact he made upon it. Neville turns on his heel to walk away.
He reaches a pool he's never seen before; blue algae make patterns on the rocks beside the edge. Suddenly Neville realises his face feels hot. He squats and gathers some water into his hand. Harry will come back, he thinks, as droplets run down his neck. The day will be saved.
All the same, he can't just wait. To wait is to say: I'm useless. I give in. You've beaten me, Mrs Lestrange. And that wasn't what Neville was taught by the DA.
~X~
It's Christmas, and Neville doesn't go home, through for the first time his gran seemed to actively want him there. The situation is getting worse: the Carrows had been stopped from using Unforgivables on those in third year and below, probably, Neville assumes, by the teachers. But it seemed like the Carrows were getting carried away with Christmas cheer: even the Slytherins weren't safe.
Neville knows that as unofficial leader of the resistance he should tell some of the othe rs about his access to the greenhouses. He means to. But he gets so distracted, once he's out. There's the Room of Requirement to sort out, and then there's the potions he's stealing from Pomfrey: though she takes care never to lock the cupboard, he can't take more than five at a time because they're so heavy. So he's always scurrying down there to steal hundreds of small, dense bottles so that the younger ones can get to sleep. He wonders absently if Snape still does the brewing for the medical supplies.
Neville runs his fingers up and down the baubles of the foxglove as though it is an instrument. He'll tell Luna, he decides. When she gets back after Christmas, he'll tell her.
~X~
If they thought that taking Luna was going to stop him, they were wrong. He'd had a mother and a father taken from him. Now Luna. And his family – all of them, even all the cousins – were in hiding. Nothing could make Neville angrier.
And there was Bellatrix Lestrange, a 'special advisor' to Snape, who could come and go when she chose. It was funny, Neville thought, how little Lestrange and Snape liked each other: Severus Snape – out of favour in both the camps he had served. Only ever trusted by the boss.
Neville sits in the room where every flower is a funeral, and wishes he could use some of the other rooms to help his friends. But Neville couldn't ever do potions. Anyway, there always seemed to be enough at Madam Pomfrey's.
No, Neville wasn't going to show any of the DA the garden. But he did have a use for it now, after all.
Neville sees his reflection in the pool and hardly recognises himself. He has his own scars, now. Where was Harry?
The rest lived in hope, but Neville saw the reality. He knew from experience that the Death Eaters were vicious and ruthless. They weren't the bumbling idiots others liked to think of them as either. They were good at their job. Luna was probably dead – Lestrange had said as much the last time she was there.
The 'trio', as everyone was calling them, was probably still alive, otherwise it would be everywhere. One thing was certain – Harry wasn't going to come storming into the castle to liberate the students when You-Know-Who was still at large.
So it was up to him. Sweets for my sweet, he thinks, as he seizes the hooded flowers in his hand.