AN: Ladies and gentlemen I have returned! The annoyance that is writers block had decided to pay me a visit, plus my netbook died and I lost the charger... Never mind I'm here now! This piece is for the Title Challenge, so awesome title is not of my making... So enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing, honest! The characters here have just been temporarily borrowed. I will put them back when I'm done.
Neville knew that it was time to fight; he knew that whether they liked it or not the war was coming to a head right where it all started, Hogwarts. This time though everybody was prepared for Voldemort, there were no doubters this time around. They had been waiting all year for this, the chance to get those filthy Death Eaters out of their school, their home, once and for all.
He glanced at his friends surrounding him, all standing with their wands drawn, prepared to fight and so brave. Neville was terrified of the thought that some of them wouldn't get through this, that he would never get to see them again. Unfortunately, Neville was certain that many of them wouldn't. The odds were too great and even if they won in the end many of them would fall, and a lot of them would be his friends and his allies during the last school year.
After all, they were just students, students raised during a war, but students all the same, so what chance do they stand against adult wizards trained in the Dark Arts? This thought would have caused him to despair, if he hadn't known Harry. Harry was the one person that had ever truly scared Voldemort and he had scared him ever since he was a baby. Harry was just a student like them, and if he could face Voldemort, then they could face his followers.
Neville had been tortured for nearly the whole year, and he could honestly say that he knew he was prepared to die for their cause, prepared to die to protect Hogwarts. Although if not dying was an option he would gladly take it. The last year had been hell and he couldn't allow it to continue any longer just because he was scared, and Neville knew that nobody else in the DA would either.
The only students in seventh year who were not in the Great Hall, preparing to fight, were the Slytherins who had been escorted away to the dungeons. Neville knew that many of the Slytherins were on the same side as Voldemort, as did everyone else, which was the reason that they had been forced to leave. However, he had noticed that some of the Slytherins had glanced back at them regretfully as they left, as if they wished that they were able to stay and fight against Voldemort.
He had been forced to learn to read people's faces over the last year, so that he was always able to prepare for punishment from the professors. So whenever the Slytherins in his year had been instructed to perform the cruciatus curse on him he had noticed the expression on their faces as they performed the task. Some of them had looked gleeful whilst doing that, like Crabbe and Goyle and were completely malicious.
However, Neville had noticed that quite a few of the students that came from neutral families looked in pain and apologetic whilst giving out the punishment, as if they wanted to be anywhere else at that time. Neville knew that they were scared for their families and wanted to stay out of the war as much as possible for their sakes, and he understood that. However for him it has never been an option.
Neville couldn't stay out of the war, not while he knew that his parents had been driven to insanity for fighting for what they believed in. To stay out of the war and abandon his friends to their fate would have only disgraced the people that they used to be, and that was something Neville had sworn to himself that he would never do.
So he would stand amongst his friends, amongst the Order and amongst his old teachers proudly, knowing that his parents would be proud of who he had grown into, and who Neville hoped to become. He was faster than before, and certainly thinner and more scared from the punishments he had been dealt, but he was stronger too. Neville knew that the boy he had been just a few years ago wouldn't be able to survive the battle that was about to start, but he hoped the person he was now could.
As Neville surveyed the rest of his classmates, he noticed that they all were staring at the door to Hogwarts with steely determination. They were all ready, all willing to fight despite knowing that most of them could be dead by morning. As he caught the eye of Seamus and Dean he couldn't help but remember all the good times they'd had together, and he prayed that they hadn't had their last.
The three roommates turned their heads at the same time to face the entrance, all of them knowing that for the rest of the night their lives hung in the balance. The events of this day would change the rest of their lives, irreversibly. As the great door that marked the entrance began to shake they all knew that while he might come in the form of a man, it was really Death at the door.
AN: Well that's that done... I'm not completely pleased by this, but honestly I think this is probably the best it's going to get... That's all I have to say for now so...
Peace Love and Chocolate Frogs.
Pottergeek100.