Disclaimer: I don't own any rights concerning Harry Potter. No money is being made with this story.
AN: This is an entry for the "Why?"-Challenge at the Bellatrix Lestrange: The Dark Lord's Most Faithful-forum. "Basically, the first word of the challenge has to be 'Why'. It can be a reason, a question or anything else you like, but you have to build a story around the word 'Why'."
Why?
Why?
"Your parents won't get better, Neville."
Neville is almost three. He doesn't want to stay with his grandparents in this large, cold house forever. He wants his Mommy and Daddy. When he's ill, he gets better again. If it's really bad they visit Saint Mungo's and the Healers give him something so he's better again. Why isn't it like this for them?
"Why?"
The old woman sighs, a hint of impatience in her voice. "Not every illness can be cured, Neville. You're not old enough to understand."
At age five, Neville is allowed to visit his parents at Saint Mungo's for the first time. They don't remember who he is, they can't speak to him. Neville cries all day. Why? Why are they like this? He cries this question out to the night in his beloved garden.
His grandparents tell him that "bad people who did bad magic" are responsible for his parents' sickness. He learns that there are bad people and that there is bad magic.
At age five, he also learns the meaning of the word Squib.
Magic won't come to him as it should. His grandmother doesn't say so openly, his great-uncle Algie does. They are disappointed. The Longbottoms are an old wizarding family. A Squib in such a family would be highly shameful.
Neville almost drowns when his great-uncle throws him off a pier.
Shortly after his sixth birthday, Neville's grandfather dies. From a weak heart, his grandmother says. Neville cries at the funeral even though a proper Longbottom boy does not cry in public. A proper Longbottom boy isn't scared and a proper Longbottom boy has magic.
Neville is not a proper Longbottom boy. "That's all that's left of this great family now; old people and a child that's not quite right."
Not quite right. Neville often feels that things are wrong. He fears the darkness and the dreams that come at night. His grandmother wants him to sleep alone and in the dark.
If his mother was still with him, she might let him sleep in her bed. Or she'd comfort him at night. Neville's mother isn't with him and all she can do is give empty bubble gum wrappers to him at every visit. Neville keeps them all in a box beneath his bed. In those nights, he cries himself to sleep, asking himself the same question again and again. Why, why, why?
Neville fears something bad lurking somewhere in the shadows. He fears almost anything.
Shameful. A Longbottom boy knows no fear.
When he is eight, Neville shows magic for the first time. His grandmother cries tears of joy. She seems to forget that her brother-in-law once again almost killed her grandson.
Neville tells his parents the happy news but they, as always, don't even seem to notice he's there. Neville's mother gives him another bubblegum wrapper and walks away again, lost in her own world.
"Why?" he asks once again and his grandmother tells him about Lord Voldemort who's called "You-Know-Who" because he doesn't deserve his title to be used and the past war. His parents have fought valiantly and suffered for their cause. For the first time, he hears the words "torture" and "Cruciatus curse."
His grandmother also tells Neville the names of the people who made his parents so ill. There are no pictures in the household and Neville doesn't picture them as people but as the demons he fears might roam the countryside on stormy nights. Lestrange, not a normal name but one belonging to demonic creatures or so he thinks.
At age eleven, Neville receives his Hogwarts letter. The family is happy and great-uncle Algie buys him a toad called Trevor. Neville is a proper wizard after all.
When he sits at the Sorting, Neville wants to go to Hufflepuff with people who love plants as much as he does. His Gran hopes for Gryffindor, the house of the brave but Neville knows that bravery isn't his strongest trait.
The Hat however disagrees and after a heated argument, sends him to Gryffindor after all. Neville doesn't understand. He runs off with the hat still on his head, embarrassing himself in front of everyone for the first time.
It won't be the last time. If Neville's life at home has been full of failures, it's nothing compared to this. Nothing goes right. Neville keeps having accidents, his magic doesn't work, he's scared of anything and the brave Gryffindors of course want little to do with him.
No teacher wonders why or even cares.
When he's fourteen, Neville learns what the words "torture" and "Cruciatus curse" mean. Moody asks him for tea and tells him the same old stories about his parents' courage. It's not the stories that comfort Neville; it's the simple knowledge that someone cares enough to notice. Neville isn't used to people, especially teachers caring. Lupin in his third year was the only one who did.
For the first time, Neville sees a photograph of the torturers when he looks up the articles in the library. They do not look like demons. Bellatrix Lestranges almost resembles Neville's great-aunt Callidora. The others are all perfectly unremarkable. Neville wonders why they did this. How can anyone do this to another human being? What made them think they were right? Did they even do so or did they want to do evil for the sake of evil?
At age fifteen, Neville experiences first-hand what the Cruciatus curse is. He meets Bellatrix Lestrange when he accompanies Harry to the nightly Ministry. Neville is a member of the DA now, a secret organisation teaching them defence, founded by Harry. Neville can barely believe it but he isn't much worse than anyone else here. He wants to learn, he has to learn. They have escaped and he has to prevent them from harming anyone else. They can't run around freely and enjoy their lives while his parents would never do so again.
At the Ministry, his newfound knowledge is little use. The effects of this curse are absolute. They turn him back into the helpless, sobbing child he used to be.
The woman with her shrill laughter and baby voice seems to be completely mad. Is this the answer? Madness for madness? She no longer looks unremarkable; Azkaban has made sure of that. Madness for madness.
When Neville is seventeen, evil comes to power.
From a hidden threat lurking in the darkness, the Cruciatus curse turns into learning material or so the Carrows say.
Neville can't believe what's happening. Everything's turned on its head. Evil becomes good and good becomes evil, according to those in power. One thing however is more unbelievable than any of that. Neville becomes something of a leader in the DA. Alongside with Luna and Ginny, he's the one people turn to for direction. The thing he never believed possible happens. Other people see true a Gryffindor in him.
Neville faces the pain the Carrows deal out with his head held high. You get used to everything, even the Cruciatus curse. He never tells anyone the truth. Neville hasn't become any braver. Voldemort and his supporters merely made sure of one thing: Pain, injury and death are no longer the things he feared most. Being forced to torture and kill others, turning traitor, is so much worse. What are scars on his body compared to a damaged soul?
Neville comes close to his death but Harry returns in time and he survives. The mother of a classmate kills the Lestrange woman in a duel, Harry kills Voldemort.
Eighteen-year-old Neville is lauded as a hero. Sometimes, the discussions touch the death of Bellatrix Lestrange. So many people seem to believe that he has to have an opinion on that. Is he happy? Is he angry at Mrs Weasley because he wanted to be the one who killed her?
Every time Neville hears such a question, he dons his brave face and calmly tells them that of course he's glad because she won't harm anyone else.
Most of the time, the others don't notice how he distances himself. Why are they so interested now, all of a sudden? Why do they claim they care now? They never cared when Neville needed them. Back, when he was alone and friendless, an untalented coward.
He doesn't understand why they think this woman should be so important to him either. She was one of four, nothing more. Her death doesn't help him or his parents anymore than it helps anyone who's opposed to Voldemort and his ideas. The press might obsess over her because she's a woman and was beautiful once but why would Neville? No one asks him about the fake professor who lost his soul, about the brother who was killed by Voldemort himself and by the other one who's still alive in Azkaban.
The last three years have taught Neville that the idea of ever asking them for a reason was foolish and childish. And yet, when Neville sees his parents, still as pale and lost as always, he can't help asking himself the same old question. Why?
Two are dead, one has lost his soul but the fourth Death Eater is still alive in Azkaban. With Harry and Ron in the Auror Department, Neville would be allowed to visit, no problem.
Neville did not intend to do so. He had no desire to hear mockery or sweet lies from a desperate man hoping to improve his situation.
Neville knew that no one could give him the answer he desired. Just like no one could for the people who had cared about Professor Lupin and his young wife, Ron's brother and all the others.
They've suffered and died for the safety and freedom of everyone else as Neville would have done had it been his fate. This is the only answer he will ever get and the only one he will ever need.
Not the perpetrators and their motives are important but the ones who have sacrificed so much.