"Do you have to provoke the Carrows?" Fay asks sharply. She casts Episkey to reset Neville's broken nose. He looks away from her.
It's becoming an imbrication; Neville seems to spend more time in detention then out of it these days. He always comes back to the Room of Requirement, walking gingerly with a grim expression on his face. But it seems like he's constantly provoking the Carrows now that Ginny and Luna have disappeared.
She summons the bruise removal paste and rubs it into the bruises forming around his wrist. He hisses at the pain but does nothing to stop her.
"Someone has to," he says after she moves to rub the paste onto his other wrist. "If they're busy dealing with me or Seamus, they don't have time to focus on anyone else."
Understanding rushes through her. "You're protecting everyone else."
He looks back at her, his eyes far too haunted for someone so young. He gestures around the Room of Requirement where so many hide, "They are just children. They don't deserve to know what the Cruciatus spell feels like. Not when I can do something about it."
Fay bites at her bottom lip and drops her gaze to her lap. She may be a Gryffindor, but she doesn't know if she would make the same decision as him. Shame rises in her throat at the thought. The Carrows are torturing children and she doesn't think she would step in to take the torture herself. What kind of Gryffindor does that make her?
Neville takes her hand in his own. "Just because you aren't getting yourself tortured to save others, like I do, doesn't mean you're not brave. Bravery isn't just the big fights; it's the little ones too. This right here—you healing me and Seamus—that's brave too."
She takes a deep breath and gives Neville a shaky smile. "You should go see if there's still some pain potions left. I bet your body is aching."
He gives her a smile and stands up and slowly makes his way to the corner of the Room of Requirement they sectioned off to be their corner of healing potions and pastes. She watches as he talks to Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot, the unofficial potion brewers. Despite the pain he's in, he is always making sure the others don't lose hope that there is a end to this hell.
She takes a deep breath. Maybe it's time she showed a different kind of bravery.
Hogwarts, Assignment 9, Home Economic, Task 4: Write about someone tending to another person's wounds wc: 415
Yellow: Room of Requirement
365: 148. Genre - Hurt/comfort
Insane: 405. Imbrication - (Overlapping and forming a regular pattern