wow, i haven't written a fic this long, like...ever. XD it started out as a simple dystopian fic, but i didn't feel right just leaving it with no resultion, so i took it all the way to the end. basically, i thought about how tons of people were doing voldemort-won dystopian fics, so i thought about taking it a step further, and did grindelwald won. which reminds me, prompt was dystopian.
hope you like it!
Growing up, there was one thing Neville Longbottom wanted to do, and that was to kill Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Tom Riddle had killed his parents.
Neville had learned Riddle's real name from his father, not his real father, but his adopted father, the man who'd taken him in in secret and raised him from the day his parents had been slaughtered. Remus Lupin, Neville knew, was a kind man.
When Neville was nine he sat Neville down and told him about how it had all started, about Grindelwald's defeat of the brave Albus Dumbledore in 1945 and how he had nurtured the young Tom Riddle as his heir, raising him to be as ruthless and cold as he was. He had suffered a setback when Neville's parents were killed, said Remus, becoming little more than some sort of wraith. But it had not been long before Grindelwald had found him and brought him back, dashing the hopes of the entire Wizarding community.
No, amended Remus then. Dashing the hopes of the entire world.
"Grindelwald does not fear death," Remus had said. "But Riddle does. That's why he killed your parents. He wants to be immortal. Riddle was after you, the night your parents died."
Neville did not know how his father knew these things, but he trusted that they were true. Riddle had fallen the night he'd killed his parents, Remus said, and no one knew where he'd gone. Neville was determined to find him.
Neville did not go to Hogwarts. Remus taught him how to hold his wand, cast spells, and recognize the difference between a kneazle and a cat. When the subject was one that his father couldn't teach him, he brought in his mysterious friends, people who were always happy to see him, even though Neville was plump and pale and stuttered around people he didn't know.
A woman named Dromeda, who had beautiful chestnut curls and deep scars marring half her face (from her bitch of a sister, Remus had said, his face contorting in a uncharacteristic snarl) taught him Charms and Potions. James, their Secret Keeper, taught him Transfiguration, secretly promising him that he'd teach Neville how to be an Animagus when he was older (a prospect Neville found terrifying). Dedalus Diggle, who always dropped his top hat around him, taught him how to shoot fireworks, although Neville wasn't sure Remus had told him to.
His favorite though, in his heart, was Herbology, taught to him by an actual Hogwarts teacher, Pomona Sprout. Even though he knew it was no good, not in a battle to the death against Riddle, he loved the plants. He loved watching them grow, and swore to himself that if he survived his battle, he would return to them forever.
When Neville decided he was old enough and strong enough to find Riddle and kill him, he would keep himself brave with pictures and memories. He would take out the picture he had of Andromeda Black when she was young, full of laughter and joy, and the way it had been marred just because she'd loved a Muggle. He would remember the nights his father had come home from work with bruises and broken teeth, all because he was a half-blood, because he wasn't a Death Eater. He thought of all the Muggle deaths, the fear as news of magic and might finally seeped out to them, the way they huddled in the streets as they shopped for fear of what a passing bystander might do to them. He would run his fingers over the glossed photographs of his parents, wishing he could have known him, wishing a man named Gellert Grindelwald had never been born.
When Neville was seventeen, he joined Dumbledore's Army, named after the first man to stand up to Grindelwald. Neville hoped they didn't end up the same way. There, his father and the others told him what they'd discovered about Riddle, how they thought he had created a Horcrux, starting in the days of reopened Chamber of Secrets.
So that's what Neville went after, his father by his side. Together they combed Europe, checking every place Riddle was known to be attached to, every nook and cranny. At first, it wasn't hard; Riddle wasn't expecting anyone to know about his Horcruxes, for anyone to have a real chance at defeating him.
The ring was surprisingly easy to find, buried in the remains of a hovel, rotting wood surrounding them as Neville plucked it from the ground. They destroyed it with Remus's carefully placed Fiendfyre, and Neville was sickened by the echoing scream.
They found Helga Hufflepuff's cup in a vault at Gringotts. It took months of preparation before they were able to sneak in, but the satisfaction of revenge was enough to sooth the dragon burns. After they destroyed it, Neville didn't throw it away at first, tucking it into a box in one of their safe houses. Even broken and defiled, Neville could feel some of the original warmth of the owner seeping through.
The locket was in the Black family house, decrepit after the deaths of both its heirs, Sirius and Regulus Black. Remus had been friends with Sirius, but all Neville remembered of him were vague flashes of memory; the purr of a motorcycle, a bark of laughter. They coaxed the information out of the ancient house-elf, and this time Neville cast the horrible flames. He wasn't very good at it, and the house burned down.
Neville went to Hogwarts for the first time to search for the next Horcrux. He was filled with a strange hollow feeling upon seeing it, wishing he could have gone there so badly he lost track of almost everything else for a few moments. They snuck in with the help of the last surviving Dumbledore and Remus guarded the halls while Neville convinced the Gray Lady to divulge her secret through an unwilling baring of his soul, telling her of the death of his parents and the desperation that now haunted him.
They found the diadem in the Room of Requirement and there, they destroyed it.
Riddle knew. He began to search the country for them, his rage prickling against Neville's skin, causing him to rub the scar on his forehead in pain. He knew, and it was all Neville could do not to scream.
The diary was the hardest. They regrouped in Aberforth's pub before deciding what to do. The diary was kept in the Chamber of Secrets, where the ink version of Riddle controlled the basilisk, sending it through the pipes on daily excursions to make sure all Hogwarts students did as they were told. Remus was at a loss for what do do.
Neville wasn't.
Neville knew he could speak Parseltongue.
That night, Neville sneaked back onto the castle grounds and found the ghost of Moaning Myrtle where she lived in the Black Lake, using a fistful of gillyweed to get him there. She hid there because Riddle had tried to get rid of her, afraid someone would use her to get to him. Riddle was right to be afraid.
She told him, bawling, how to get to the bathroom where she'd died. She told him what she'd seen and cried her hope that he'd prevail over the Dark Lord-to-be. When Grindelwald was dead and he was in power, Myrtle sobbed, things would only get worse for all those poor boys and girls up at the school, and she'd never be able to return to school.
Neville privately thought that any school that used a basilisk as a hallway monitor couldn't get much worse.
Neville made his way into the Chamber of Secrets and dueled sixteen-year-old Riddle, knowing that if he fell here, the real Riddle would never die. The basilisk attacked, and a hat hit him on the head, carried by a phoenix. It was a heavy hat, and Neville opened it to find a sword.
Neville killed the basilisk and stabbed the book, and then was healed by the phoenix.
Luck, he thought in a daze. The greatest luck one could ask for. He wondered who could have sent it.
He would never find out, not as long as he lived.
He returned to Aberforth's pub, where Remus was beside himself with worry. Neville cried, apologizing for leaving with no note and forgetting to mention his heroic deeds until Aberforth dryly pointed out the sword in his hand.
After that, there was just Tom Riddle.
If he had been Grindelwald, he would have gone into hiding. Comfortable hiding, perhaps, but hiding nonetheless. But he was not Grindelwald. Although obsessed with immortality, Riddle forgot it in his rage and anger to defend it.
He brought an army with him.
Neville and Remus had expected it. They brought their own.
Nearly seventy years of oppression had not beaten down wizarding society. It had instilled a fire in them, and when Neville Longbottom came to them and cried for a revolution, they rose. All the people Neville had fought for turned it around and fought for him, fought to bring down the tyranny. Andromeda Black faced her sisters in battle. When Neville tripped, he was helped up by two pairs of identical arms, flashing him quick grins before rejoining the fray. He saw James Potter run past him, hollering in rage for his dead Muggle-born love.
Tom Riddle was not fighting in the battle, Neville found. He was hiding in the woods.
Something told him to go alone. He didn't want to. He wanted to grab his father's arm and pull him along. Remus had been there with him every step of the way. He wanted to shout charge at the woods and watch the stampede, watch someone else kill Tom Riddle.
But he didn't. A force, perhaps the same one that had summoned the phoenix and the hat, drew him towards the woods. And when he got there, Neville liked to believe it was that forced that stopped Riddle from ordering someone else to kill him.
Riddle raised his wand. Neville didn't.
In a flash of green light, he was dead.
It was very white. Neville got up slowly and looked around.
He was naked. The moment Neville began to blush, a pair of clothes appeared next to him. He pulled them on.
Everywhere was white. There was a white table, and as Neville approached it, he heard something whimpering. He checked under it and gasped in shock. A red, ugly thing was whimpering under there, clutching itself.
"You cannot help it."
Neville whirled around and was face to face with a man he'd next met before, but had seen in pictures. Someone he had never expected to see.
"Aren't you...?"
"Dumbledore," said the man, stroking his auburn beard. "It took so long. I didn't think it would take so long, you know."
"I'm sorry?" managed Neville.
"You marvelous boy!" said Albus Dumbledore, spreading his arms wide and grinning at Neville. He was maybe forty years old, but for some reason Neville had imagined he would be much older. "That's not what I'm saying at all. Thank you, Neville Longbottom, for doing what I could not."
"You didn't fight Tom Riddle," said Neville. "You died fighting Grindelwald."
"So I did," said Dumbledore. "But what's one tyrant from another, in the long run?"
Dumbledore explained that there was a Horcrux inside him, explained to Neville that by letting Riddle defeat him without a fight, he had destroyed the Horcrux inside him, that now there was only the real Tom Riddle left. He explained, shamefully, about Grindelwald and how he had risen to power and tried to blame himself for the rise of evil, which Neville wouldn't have, and told him so.
When he'd finished, Dumbledore looked around. "Where do you think we are?"
"Don't you know?" asked Neville.
"This is, as they say, your party."
"I think," said Neville slowly. "We're in a greenhouse. There's no plants, though."
Dumbledore made a noncommittal noise.
"Where would I go if I left?" asked Neville.
"Left the greenhouse?
"Yes."
"On," he said simply.
Neville considered it. "I want to fight Tom Riddle," he said. "Thank you, Mr. Dumbledore."
"Call me Professor," said Dumbledore as he began to walk away.
"Wait," called Neville. "Is this real, or is this happening inside in my head?"
"Of course it's happening inside your head, Neville, but why on earth should that mean it isn't real?
When Neville woke up, he pretended to be dead, and wait until Riddle presented his dead body to the masses before making his move.
In five minutes, Tom Marvolo Riddle was dead.
At the end of the battle, when the Death Eaters had been defeated or scattered in fear, when they were counting the bodies and resting from exhaustion, Neville found himself among the survivors.
"Now we just have Grindelwald left," said a red-head near him, pulling the identical man next to him in for a hug. "Should be easy."
"He won't put up much of a fight," said a familiar voice. Neville had never been happier to see his father in his life. "He's been a figurehead for years. He might even be glad Riddle's gone."
Neville no longer had to live for revenge. Now he could start a life, and, thinking of the greenhouse, he knew where to begin.
Neville looked up and saw fireworks spark into the air. He smiled. Dedalus Diggle had survived.
He raised his wand and let the sparks join them. Soon, the air was full of them.