Companion piece to "Wind Beneath", which features Draco and should be read first. No direct sequel yet, but "Dissemination" is set a few years in the future.
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Six months after Trevor crawls out from underneath his polwig's pillow and hops straight into the sombre celebration of a victory, his young polwig's life is far from perfect. Many things are better – he can have contact with his Gran again; there are (almost) no other humans out to hurt him, the Dark Polliwog is gone. Friends who have spent the Dark time in hiding have come home, and the people who surround Trevor's charge think the world of him.
Neville Longbottom is a hero.
The thing is, Trevor knows that being a hero is not as easy as the polliwog's make it sound. He spent years watching the polwig called Harry Potter from the sidelines, battling nightmares and isolation. Now, he spends his nights parked next to Neville's pillow. In this, nothing has changed.
The nightmare creatures come every night. They crowd the bed until Trevor finds it hard to breathe, and no matter how loud Trevor croaks, he cannot wake Neville up.
It never used to be this bad, even during the Dark Time, because even when there was only Seamus, there was always someone else sleeping in the room.
It's not as if Neville doesn't have friends. He has many friends - every day dozens of owls come, bringing messages and gifts as tokens of admiration. It's not as if he doesn't have any real friends, either, people who went through the Dark Times right along with him and were there whenever it counted.
But at the end of the day, now, they are always gone, and Neville is alone.
Trevor hopes that Neville will tell his Grandma, but fears that he won't – not now that Gran is full of pride for her grandson. He hopes that Neville will call on the polwig called Ginny, or Luna, or Seamus or Michael or anyone, but at the same time, he already knows it won't happen.
They see him as a leader, as a hero. There's a part of him that cannot show weakness to them, that cannot let them down.
Night after night, Trevor hisses at the nightmare creatures until he is hoarse, but it is not enough, never enough.
There's an unfamiliar owl that has been circling the place a few times a week. Unlike the other owls, she never lands, just flies by the window again and again. She is big enough that she might be able to eat Trevor alive, but to his surprise, Trevor does not feel threatened. There's something about her, something in the way she circles the air, that says protective of her human, like Pigwidgeon is, like Hedwig was. Trevor thinks she might be searching for something, somewhat how Trevor would gladly brave the world to find something, anything to provide leverage against the nightmare creatures, if he weren't so certain he'd get lost, and where would Neville be then?
So he hisses against the nightmare creatures with all his might, watches in case the owl one day lands on their windowsill, and waits.
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