Neville Longbottom. There are demons on the base. Fucking demons. You know I hate to reiterate, but Neville. Fucking. Longbottom. These. Were. Fucking. Demons. Fucking demons.
"I will not let you spike my dreams with madness!" yelled Neville in his dreams. He woke up with a start and sat up, trashing in bed.
The walls of Gryffindor farted in his general direction. Tears filled Neville's mahogany wood eyes. "Merlin's fucking transvestite beard!" he screamed in agony and confusion. He lunged back, crying harder when he realized the thing he had just said.
He began to dress.
Neville had been having nightmares.
Each night, he trashed horribly in his sleep, thinking of the awful things that had happened. His parents. The Dark Lord, wasting away and plotting his horrible vengeance. Worst of all, he thought of Bellatrix Lestrange.
It wasn't just during the night. He thought about these things during the day, too. He could rarely muster the enthusiasm to think of anything else.
His marks were diminishing in quality.
Luna Lovegood would say, "Neville, you're not smiling."
Luna. She was the only one who had ever cared. At times Neville wished that more people- Harry, Hermione, Dean, Seamus- would pay attention to him. But it was just Luna.
He would walk through the halls like one of the Hogwarts ghosts themselves. Always drifting. Like Caesar's body that was full of knife wounds as he fell sadly before the statue of Pompey in Julius Caesar, he was full of holes. Fucking holes. Now he drifted on his way to the Great Hall.
Harry, Ron and Hermione barely respected him. Of course, they were polite to him. That wasn't the same as respect. To Malfoy and his droogs, he was a laughing stock. To everyone else, he didn't seem to register. Or he was a curiosity, not a wizard. He wasn't a wizard. He was a curiosity. To everyone but Luna. And maybe his Gran. And Snape. He was a wretch to Snape.
It was Harry Neville was faced with when he took his seat in the Great Hall. Neville wanted to talk to them, but he knew that was the last thing he could do. They didn't really like him or want to get to know him. He wasn't one of them. He was the disfunctioning Nimbus to their Muggle jalopy. The Snivellus to their MWPP.
He failed at life.
After breakfast, Neville walked through the hall. He walked to the dungeon. His first class that day was Snape. Neville hated Potions Professor Snape.
Harry and his friends were in the dungeon together, laughing. Neville looked at them with longing. No father. No mother. No real friends. He was silly fat Neville.
Snape walked into the room with insecure authority. He snapped out a few nihilistic instructions silkily. Neville obeyed his his words half-heartedly. This, that, this that. The concoction he was mixing underneath bubbled with failure. Snape's nihilistic monotone turned into yells, directed at him. Suddenly, the concoction exploded. Oh no. Neville blacked out.
He thought of a song he had never liked by the Wyrd Sisters. Some of the lyrics came out wrong in his head.
"I'm not onnnnne you, and I'l never be/I'm the brooooooooomstick to your jalopy/I'm the fucking Snivellus to your MWPP."
He woke up. He was in the Hospital Wing. Snape stood beside the bed. His black fucking eyes were focused on him, full of Slytherin concern.
"The foolish boy miscomprehended my instructions and just fainted because of his potion' disastrous results," he was telling McGonagall, who stood beside him. When he saw that Neville had woken, his eyes snapped to the weak teenager, and focused on him intensely.
"Neville," he said slowly.
There were demons on the base.