A/N: Little bit of belated Neville birthday fic to cheer you up. Or make you sad.
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Voldemort was dead. Gone. Neville and his parents were happy, celebrating, preparing for winter; but four Death Eaters decided that they would not buy hats or mittens. Of course Neville could not remember this but he still felt sick thinking about the look on his mother's face in his first memory of her. He was three. She was empty. And she was still empty, almost twelve years later.
When he was thirteen and the Dementors came onto the train, he had no one to confide in. Harry and the others would not understand. They were his only friends, but… but he didn't want to trouble them. All year, he was haunted by memories of screaming screaming screaming, and he was crying, and they were laughing—
Neville sat down near the fire in the Gryffindor common room. Everyone was asleep. Their bags were packed, rooms were clean, and in a few hours he would be seeing Gran and summer would go on normally. It'd been over a week since Neville had slept well. He didn't feel well enough to do it; after Mad-Eye Moody disappeared, everyone asked questions, and… and then he found out.
Professor Moody had been good to them. He taught them well, gave them confidence, comforted them even though he was rough, and he cared about them. Neville not-so-fondly remembered going to Moody's (not Moody) office after the unforgivable curses lesson. The tea, the books. Kind words.
Last Wednesday the school learned that Professor Moody had been a Death Eater drinking Polyjuice Potion. It was supposed to be a secret, and it mostly was; nobody knew which Death Eater nor what had happened to him. But Neville heard Harry and Ron talking about it late on Wednesday night when they thought their roommates were asleep. And the Alastor Moody they were taught by was not just some Death Eater. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to have died years ago.
"We don't know anything."
Bellatrix Lestrange's shriek was the very essence of madness. A teenage boy shouted at Alice and she sobbed, falling onto the floor with a sickening thump. Frank, unable to help her with his wand disarmed, took one step back as he realized with a numbing feeling in his mind what was about to occur. He pushed Neville, rather roughly, into the dining room and shut the door before his infant son could watch the horrific event. He started to cry from the other side, calling for his parents.
"Ickle babykins doesn't want to see poor mummy and daddy beg for death?" Bellatrix asked in a sickly-sweet voice. Frank's expression was one of firm, ugly contempt.
"Your Dark Lord is dead. Hurt my family and you'll join him in hell."
"Oh, we plan to join him," snarled Rabastan. "In glory. You see, the Dark Lord is not truly gone."
Neville tossed an old quiz into the fire. The last word he could see on the parchment was "curse." He remembered taking the test; it was a bright Friday morning, and no one was expecting it. It'd been from Moody (Crouch). About the first month of lessons.
"Crucio!"
"Stop! Please!"
The spider had curled up like burning paper. Flames licked the black quiz until it crumbled to the other ash like falling snow.
"Constant vigilance!"
Professor Moody's (no, no, it was all wrong) eyes were hardened by the First Wizarding War, one of them quite literally being hardened. But Neville could still see that forced smile, the comfort of his office, the earnestness behind his books, and of course that bloody Herbology book must have been for Harry's second task, of course…
Neville's books were packed but he stood up in a swift motion and climbed the stairs to his dormitory. Upon reaching door he swung it open silently, bent down to unzip his portmanteau, and ssifted through the books to find it—Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean. And in his rage, Neville brought the book downstairs without even zipping his suitcase and he dropped the book into the fire without a second thought.
"It burns, F-Frank—oh god…"
Bellatrix grinned like the Cheshire cat. She pointed her wand at Alice's struggling body. "Does mummy want to burn some more?" she asked, as if she were offering tea, as if this was okay.
"Y-you're—you've got to stop… we're done with the war. Please… He-Who-Must… not… he's… dead."
"He's not dead!" shouted Barty Crouch Jr. "Crucio! Haha! Our master will be delighted. Master… this is for you. Crucio!"
"Crucio!"
The screaming rang in Neville's ears like they had on that fateful night. His fingers curled up into balls. Even with the Dementors gone, he still remembered the night regularly. It was like the cloaked monsters opened a scar that could now never heal.
"Crucio!"
The book smelt horrid. He could taste a mixture of slimy herbs in the air as smoke rose into the chimney. Neville unclenched his fists when he realized his knuckles had turned white, and he wrung his hands together uneasily. He read that entire books, but now it was just—just nothing.
It was given to him by a man who tortured his mother, tortured his father, into insanity. Right now Neville could not think of the Lestranges. Only Crouch. A teenage boy, not much older than Cedric Diggory was. Crouch. The son of Barty Crouch Sr. Fucked up, completely mad…
Neville didn't know how he felt. He felt sick, angry, furious, and a certain brand of loneliness that he supposed no one else in the whole world knew about. He tried not to cry, but gave in to the tears, welcomed them even.
The floor was cold when he melted onto it. For a long time, Neville sat on the carpet, hugging his knees crying. "Mummy…" he mumbled into his pajamas. "Daddy…"
But how he longed for his mother. When he was three, and she was empty, he remembered asking Gran how long it would be until Alice and Frank got better.
"Stupid boy," she'd said, though her voice was affectionate, was sad. "They aren't going to recover."
"Why do we visit Mummy and Daddy?"
"Because they are your parents, you silly thing. Frank is my son."
Neville hadn't understood because Alice and Frank were boring; they did not speak, and their expressions were somewhat frightening. When he was little, he didn't like to visit St. Mungos. It smelt of medicine and misery. But as he grew up and learned just exactly how normal other lives were, he went to the hospital by himself and sat with his parents for hours, talking at them and pretending to be ordinary. It was… nice. Comforting. His imagination exceeded most other skills, especially magic.
"Dad, I'll be as great as you!" Neville had said when he was nine. But his magic was weak. He only said it as reassurance to Frank. "I'll have your wand. Nothing can stop me."
And at fourteen, nearly fifteen years old, Neville felt about as confident as a wet rag. He looked in the direction of the dormitory, wiping his eyes as he thought of the wand sitting on his bed. Unicorn hair core, ash, 14 ½". He sniffed and smiled. Frank was powerful, Frank was amazing. Frank was gifted from the moment he was born. And Alice was just as clever, just as strong as the other Aurors. So that meant Neville would grow up important. He would also be amazing, even if Gran didn't believe it.
He felt a twisted kind of pleasure remembering what Ron said to Harry last week: "And the kiss… can't believe Fudge let that thing do that to him. Before they got information, of course."
Neville thought of Barty Crouch Jr. without his soul. He wasn't exactly sure what he looked like, but he remembered the voice. Crucio. With a deep breath, Neville stood up and gave his eyes a final good rub. The fire had eaten the book by now and it was crackling pleasantly, like a sleepy kitten.
He realized now that he was tired; tomorrow was a big day. He'd be going home, away from Hogwarts, away from Defense Against the Dark Arts. Finally. The range of Professors these past few years made Neville doubt next year would be any better. Quirrell, who was harboring Voldemort; Lockheart, who was a big joke; Lupin, a kindly but deadly werewolf; and Mad-Eye Moody, who was not really Moody at all.
"Time for bed now, Neville," he said to himself softly, in a voice reserved as his mother's. The playing pretend did not end when he came to school. "You need to sleep tonight. Just for me.
"Okay, Mum," Neville whispered. He took one last look at the fire and then ascended to his dormitory, his tortured anger subdued, with a mind more restful than it had been for a month.