A.N: This is, to its core, a fem Neville story, but you will see P.O.V's from Hermione, Harry and Ron, inside and outside Hogwarts.
There will also be a lot of mentions about the pureblood society, and the pureblood children that are in Neville's year (Draco, Pansy, Millicent...etc).
There will also be no more mention of life before Hogwarts other than this first chapter, excluding flashbacks and memories.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The Malfoy Manor' ballroom was magnificently decorated; mammoth-sized chandeliers were spilling the room with sharp opaline shards of light and the smooth timber floors were glinting a pearlescent shine. A grand serpentine staircase was on one side of the room, the doors above it gold and handsome. There was no door to arrive through. Only a multitude of fireplaces that illuminated the ballroom in a swirling golden light, momentarily flashing green as a new addition arrived.
It was Draco Malfoys' farewell party, as he would be leaving to Hogwarts in two months or so with all his fellow 11-year-olds around Great Britain.
Neville was regretting having come, and while the food stacked to the fives on a long, limber table was patiently waiting for her, the foreboding stone of utter stress was heavy in her saggy belly. It usually only came when she was being hung out a window or having metal bowls hurling towards or her Gran storming at her with a very severe lip, then when she was finally allowed to mingle as a fully-awakened witch, it lengthened to being pummelled into dust by Millicent Bulstrode's 'fists of steel' and having her brains picked out by gargantuan words spat out of Daphne Greengrass's puckering pink mouth.
And she knew now why the stone of stress had come back into residence.
Millicent and Pansy Parkinson were practically skipping directly to Neville. They were grinning manically, as though they were still spinning with the thrill of murdering an innocent. They both had mirroring robes, a sweeping assortment of ruby-red undergarments and shifts and folds of pure silk. Pansy was idyllic in it, her small pale face beaming, her velvety mane of coal-black hair milling about her shoulders demurely.
But it didn't look as picturesque on the heavyset, bigger Millicent, the folds of silk gathering around her neck and catching on her thick feet. Her lips were thin and painted a scandalous rouge, though it didn't look it on her, and there was the soft sparkle of purple glitter on her bulging eyelids. Her hair did look quite handsome though, a bob of delicate brown hair framing a red, freckled face.
Neville didn't have enough time to skitter away to wherever Gran had vanished to, or to hide behind some strangers back wide enough to effectively hide her from them. But, alas, the world is unfair, and a Neville Longbottom world is expected to be.
There were the dull but speedy footsteps of large feet behind, the patter of much smaller ones too, then a sausage-fingered hand was clamping down on Neville's and another delicate hand gripping her other.
"Nelly!" Pansy drawled welcomingly while Millicent spun her around to face them. Neville was even more weary now, her cheeks flushed with fresh fright. She'd known there was no use. She'd get pummelled whether she spoke or not, anyway. It was lucky she knew how to travel with the Floo. "I've missed you dearly since the last time we saw each other. Oh, you've gotten a little…a little bigger now haven't you."
The last part was said so disapprovingly and so sweetly it could have been mistaken for something a cheeky mother would say supportively to her rod-thin child. And the last time they had been together had been during the monthly mingling circles, congregated for that month at the Parkinson Manse.
The circles went on for two full days, usually held on a weekend. Its purpose being children from 6 to 17 to be introduced into the tight society of the pureblood, to learn, befriend, and last and perhaps the most paramount, to intermingle and form worthwhile connections (Or in other words, find a husband or wife).
The circle at Parkinson Manse had been as typically disastrous and miserable as they all were. In the first day she had been pushed into a thorn bush, Mr Parkinson having had to levitate her out, of course with a few exclamations of I-fear-for-my-wands-welfare! and oh-so-heavy antics. That night Pansy herself had accidently spilled a jar of Uranian Horned arachnids on her, and on the second day, it had been clear and sunny and full of Neville checking behind her shoulder, and then some fourth-year at Hogwarts upended a bucket of frog guts over her.
It was finite that the nostalgia was not likewise.
"Like an oversized troll," Millicent said, snickering an ugly chortle.
Pansy tutted and smacked Millicent softly on her arm, but she still tapped her cheek thoughtfully. "No," she murmured, "it's more of how she resembles extra elephant than toad now. I guess our Nelly's growing up."
They both howled in ecstatic laughter, and Neville was feeling a little too proud to not try at a reply. The problem was she just didn't know what to say. "W-well, at least I-I don't sneak in the showers t-to watch D-Draco b-bathe." She squeaked in a voice too high to be respectable.
The laughter stopped in a sharp gasp, heads turned, Pansy was leering at her with searing molten lava in her dark eyes, and it seemed Millicent was seeing Pansy in a completely new light. Neville's head spun with a weird sense of triumph, at actually having said something that accurately hit the bloody mark, which then also meant Pansy was enraged, and the rage of Pansy Parkinson was in a world most wouldn't blink an eye at fleeing.
Neville did not have that luxury.
Pansy smiled at everyone who had noticed kindly, spewing a thousand apologies at their feet, and grabbed at Neville's arm with a vice grip. "Oh, is that so?" Pansy hissed too quietly, too saccharinely. "What about a little visit to the gardens, hmm? There's something there I'd very much like you to see, Nelly."
A cold dread filled her bones till they felt as though they were overfilling with it and was leaking into the rest of her very slowly. "The Malfoy's s-should b-be coming out about n-now—" Neville tested wearily.
"Oh, it won't be for long." There was a malicious glint in Pansy's eyes. I've seen that too often to be healthy, Neville thinks. "Don't want you to miss anything now do we."
For the first time in 10 years Neville did try to flee, to fight Pansy's freakish clutch, but then Pansy was reaching into her robes, a wand of rich brown delicately held in nimble fingers, then when she had raised it to the base of Neville's jaw so as not for anyone to see, the fires in the hearths dimmed to a near darkness and a green light was flashing at the top of the stair-case.
And in the eerie green light stood the lean figure of Draco Lucius Malfoy, hair glimmering a fiery-silver and his eyes ardent and grey, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy behind him, rod-backed and preening with an arrogant pride, as though their belief of their son being the greatest was nothing less than true.
Neville was still indecisive on if she would have given him a hippogriff as a present that day or just bloody gifted him with a thanking kiss, whether he wanted it or not.
And where in Merlin's realm had Pansy Parkinson gotten a wand from?
She was sitting disturbingly quiet in the dense silence that had permeated the drawing room in her house, her parents watching intently on Hermione's movements.
John Granger was a slight, thin but towering man, he wore thin clear spectacles poised on the delicate bridge of his brown nose and his front teeth were gleaming ivory and jutting forward, not unlike a rabbit's. But Helen might have been the polar opposite of her husband. She was strapping and sinewed, but considerably shorter than Mr. Granger, with skin the colour of deep, sopping soil and an immense mass of bushy dark brown coils.
They both weren't very beautiful people, and Hermione thought she had enough of a blended look that didn't make her look completely like a black beaver. She had her mother's hair and skin, but her father's soft, dainty features, still bearing a wide, narrow-nostrilled nose, with the main component, of course, being her white, jarring rabbit teeth.
She wasn't pretty, but she didn't have time for that. That was all but dead to her.
Mother and Father had just informed Hermione of her Grandmother Maryam's death. The crone had been turning 64 in a few weeks, and they had been praying she might live to see her birthday, because she had been grievously ill from two years back, then was diagnosed with a terminal illness a year before.
"Oh honey, I know it might be a shock, and a little too much to take in now, but we're here for you, and I think that's very important," her mother was saying, something knowing and a little too perceptive glinting sadly in her dark eyes.
"Gran did always love you, so much, dear." Her father added, perhaps out of genuine comfort, or to hide his disconcert at the abysmally blank look in his daughter's shrewd eyes.
"If you talk to us, we can help you to our best, and I absolutely understand that a young little woman like you would have your chest of secrets, and I'm not telling you to open it up for us to mill through, but…help us out a bit, eh?"
Hermione's thin brows rose, and her plump lips twisted in an irritable grimace. She was beginning to suspect mother was no longer speaking of old, dead Grandmother Maryam, that she was speaking of something Hermione had kept so secret and so hidden, she was almost aghast with the idea of her parents knowing. They must have been spying, Hermione thought resentfully.
She had once called them 'super-powers', but 'abilities' was what she thought now, at 10, a level more sophisticated and label-correct. They weren't anything so admirable, not really. When she would be reading a book, the page would flip to a new at the same moment she would finish it; when she tripped or fell, not a single scratch marked her body; the light in a room she was in would turn on before she stepped a foot to the switch. It was as though someone were thinking a few steps before her and finishing off the action part for her.
But every time her 'abilities' came into play the feeling of pure, untouched, sterling euphoria would bubble from the pointy tips of her toes to the very last strand of her hair. It was as though someone had plugged her with an electric cord, and the currents of blue lightning were leisurely crawling through the long paths of her body. Then it would be gone as fast as it came.
And for a moment she would miss it, long and plead silently for it, as though she were a floundering fish for oxygen, as though she were in a deadly, heart-wrenching pain.
But that's just plain stupid, she would think, and she would continue reading the new page of her book, or pick herself up and stalk away, or relax back into the chair that was suddenly brighter now that the light is flashing awake.
Her mother was still looking at her with those sharp, protuberant eyes, probing for something Hermione was not ready to let out. Father had his hands patiently set on his knees, a miserable smile stretching frozen lips.
Her father had loved his mother like no son would possibly manage. His father had died when he had been seven, and through the grief and fights and brawls and arguments, his mother had been the only steady one, straight-backed and proud and unquestionably fierce. But Hermione's father had once told her that if you looked very closely at her grandmother, you could still see the age-old, yet seeping wound that her husband had left for her.
Hermione was, for once, at a loss for words. She scowled softly and glanced at the white ceiling and intricate, Victorian ceiling coves. She peeped at her mother for an instant and saw the same searching eyes and a deeply-seeded warmth. She really ought to tell her. To tell them both. She had thought she would have a definite, tangible, legitimate reason to why she had been growing colder and quieter for the last few months. But now, I'm ten and me and my abilities are none of your concern sounded off-kilter and unbalanced.
"I'll be okay mum, dad. But I do think you two should get a little rest," Hermione said with a disapproving look at her surprised, but relived parents. There little 'Mione was still there, diplomatic and far too old for her age. "You've been up past midnight!"
"Y-yes we…we have." John murmured hesitantly, "But Hermione, dear—"
"No, no! you sit here, both of you. I'll go fetch some tea."
Hermione pounced from the couch—her mother was chuckling appreciatively and her father still muttering half-pleas. She imagined she might use the new camomile tea-bags Mrs. Bridget from next door had given to her. And she imagined she might set a few of the chocolate dipped biscuits, a handful of shortbread biscuits and the ones filled with strawberry jam on a plate too.
She would have never imagined, however, a tawny, ostentatious owl to be perching on the sill of an open window as it stuck a bony leg out, a creamy letter clasped in its tapered claws, with the word Hogwarts calligraphed gracefully and a blue and red, yellow and green wax seal, the colours magically swimming slowly together.
A.N: So…that was nice.
Just informing my few readers that uploads will be a little slow, as I am in my second last year of school and Math Methods is a really cool, interesting pain in the ass.
Please write me reviews and healthy feedback so I may improve my skills and this tale I hope to finish...whenever I finish it.
Thank you for reading.