She was crying. There on the steps, sherry bottles littering the ground around her. Glass shards glimmered in the candlelight down the entire staircase. Neville imagined, in a sudden moment of clarity, that this must be the extent of Professor Trelawney's life. No matter where she stepped, her feet would be cut. Because she carried the glass with her, inside her. Her heart threw shards upon the ground and expected her to step on them.
Her long, grey hair was falling out of the bright red scarf she had wrapped it in. Neville moved toward her quietly, hands behind his back, head bowed. The worn, brown slippers he wore trod on crunchy, tiny pieces of glass, the sound unavoidable.
Her head jerked up, a long swath of her hair dislodged itself from the scarf, hanging down the middle of her face. The glasses were gone and her eyes were wide and watery from crying, an intense green color one normally didn't notice. For a moment, she was rigid with shock at being discovered, but visibly relaxed as she recognized who had found her.
"Ah, there you are hic Neville," the Professor smiled too widely in her drunken state. "I had a dream about you."
Now it was Neville's turn for shock. "You had a dream about me, Professor?" His voice cracked.
The woman peered at him for a moment, and then let out a raucous laugh. "Not that kind of a dream, dear boy. Most definitely not. But I did, in fact, have a dream. About you." She kept on laughing and Neville resisted the urge to shuffle uncomfortably.
"What kind of a dream did you have then? If it wasn't, well, one of those." His cheeks flamed. I'm talking about dirty dreams with my divination professor at two in the morning!
Her eyes cleared a bit, seemed to sober up slightly. "Just a normal one, I suppose." She rose, grasping her wand in her right hand, and gestured with it at the glass carpeting the steps. "Reparo." Neville felt the tiny shards dislodge themselves from his slippers and rejoin the bottles they belonged with. A row of about twenty bottles lined the step below her. She turned to Neville again. "You're locked out of your common room, aren't you?"
Embarrassment flooded the boy, like he was so used to, and he nodded, waiting for the ubiquitous lecture on his forgetfulness. Instead, the woman smiled at him, pushing the stray hair away from her face.
"As you can see, I'm having a bit of a problem getting rid of these…ahem…bottles. If you help me, I suppose I won't have to take away points from Gryffindor for being out after hours."
Neville looked up, feeling better than he had in weeks. Teachers were never lenient with him. Snape couldn't stand his soft-spoken manner, McGonagall hated his constant ineptitude and Flitwick abhorred his clumsiness. Only Professor Sprout gave him compliments, and he did his best in the greenhouse in an attempt to make up house points lost elsewhere. Aside from the occasional hint from Trelawney about his grandmother's demise, he fared just as well as the majority of his mates in divination and the professor let him be. This simple act of kindness brought a genuine smile to the boy's face.
"Of course, Professor," he said, moving forward to pick up some of the long-necked sherry bottles. Trelawney fairly reeked of the sickly-sweet alcohol, but Neville hardly noticed. She had been kind where she could have been harsh. That was enough for him.
The tall woman giggled suddenly, and began gathering bottles in her arms. "But, Neville, if I don't tell about your being out, you can't tell about my…um…bottles. To anybody." She laughed again, as if it was all some glorious secret.
"Yes, Professor." Why wouldn't he agree? She drank far too much sherry, yes, but there were worse things she could do, in his opinion.
Somehow, they both balanced ten sherry bottles in their arms, hobbling down the remaining stairs as carefully as possible, the woman beside him giggling every few moments about something only she understood. At the foot of the stairs, she motioned him down a corridor to their left. Trelawney leaned in closer to the boy, struggling underneath her awkward burden.
"The suits of armor are perfect hiding places. I don't think I've used the suit of Arathorn in a while, so it should do fine." Her words slurred together and she stumbled lightly as she walked. Neville hoped she wouldn't trip. They walked a little longer in silence, weaving in and out of hallways until a dark figure glimmered about ten yards away from them.
"Here he is," she said delightedly as they reached the old suit of armor. Propping open the faceplate, she methodically threw each bottle in with practiced ease. When their arms were empty, she faced him again.
"I really did dream about you. I know what you could have been."
The words puzzled Neville. "What I could have been? How can you know that?" He blanched. "Did you…See…it?"
She frowned. Without the glasses, every facial movement, which used to seem so exaggerated and phony, became delicate and subtle, even as drunk as she was. "No…yes…not exactly. Seeing isn't dreaming, but dreaming can sometimes be apart of Seeing. That's what this was." Abruptly, her knees gave out and she fell awkwardly to the floor.
"Professor, are you all right?" He had taken her arm, trying to steady her, but instead, he ended up on his knees on the floor with her.
She looked directly into his eyes, the startling green encompassing his vision. They were all seriousness now, urgent and sad. "You could have been him. All that he is and more. I think it was supposed to be you."
"But who is he? Who do you mean?" Neville scooted backwards on his knees, trying to restore some of his lost personal space.
Professor Trelawney sighed, a great whoosh of air that blew full force into Neville's face. Now he couldn't ignore the sherry smell all around him, making him sick to his stomach.
She moved closer to him again, their noses almost touching. "Harry Potter." Her voice was nothing more than a quavering whisper. "I keep having these dreams about you, how it should have been you in his place. You-Know-Who didn't pick the most worthy opponent; he kept the one capable of defeating him from coming into his own." Wide, intense eyes bored into his own. Neville couldn't believe what he was hearing. Her hands gripped his shoulders with surprising force and shook him, as if to emphasize her words. "If I hadn't let this happen, things would be different. It's my fault. But I can change you. I can fix you, Neville. It is within my power to do so."
Footsteps echoed from the other end of the corridor. Trelawney stood up suddenly, bringing Neville to his feet as well. "You run back to your house, now. Don't let anyone else see you. I'll take care of whoever this is. But don't forget what I said."
Neville stood rooted to the spot. The force and strangeness of her words had stricken him dumb.
"Go, now," she whispered fiercely, shoving him in the opposite direction of the footsteps. "Run, if you don't want to get caught."
He ran all the way back to the portrait of the Fat Lady without stopping.
"You remember the password?" she asked, irritated but used to Neville's forgetfulness.
As if the run had shocked his memory, he remembered. Hermione Granger, as a prefect, had used some muggle saying because she thought it was clever.
"Seeing is believing," he said. The portrait swung open and he climbed inside, ready for nothing more than sleep. But he lay awake behind his closed draperies, wondering what it would mean to be like Harry Potter.