I tried to carry on as normal for the rest of the day, but my encounter with Voldemort had left me in a foreboding mood that even music couldn't dispel. I still felt upset when I met the rest of Bloody Tears of the Fallen for band practice. We're a blackened Gothic power metal band that sounds like a cross between Cradle of Filth, Sirenia, and Dragon Force with a touch of Nightwish. I'm the lead singer and bassist, and the other members are Luna, Ginny, Ron (who goes by Loki nowadays), and Colin Creevey (although we call him Morgoth now). We perform a mixture of covers and original material. Ginny's arm was still a little sore from a Quidditch injury, so we took a break to work on some new material.
Ginny and I were working on the lyrics for "I Deep-Condition My Hair With the Blood of My Enemies" and trying to think of good rhymes for "decapitation" when the stress of the day finally caught up with me, something within me just collapsed, and I could feel that I was on the verge of tears.
"Freyja! Are you all right?" Ginny asked.
"Yes, of course I'm all right! And Baldr's alive and well in Asgard, the Muggle zoo in London just hatched its first dinosaur, and the Axis won World War II!"
"Dinosaurs?" said Luna, who had been looking over her new keyboard part and missed most of the conversation, "I wonder if they've had any luck with Snorcacks?"
"I was being sarcastic, Luna," I explained.
"That would make more sense," Luna said. "You seemed awfully upset for someone talking about a new advance in zoology."
"Sorry I snapped at you, Gin, but it's been one of Hel's own days. I ran into Voldemort in the forest, and the pasty noseless bastard told me I had to murder Harry for him. Now, as a matter of principle I refuse to help some sociopathic pseudo-Goth with his dirty work – let him murder his own damn teenagers if he's so fearsome and mighty – and besides, I like Harry, even if he did break Neville's heart last summer. But if I don't do it, Voldemort says he'll kill Neville!"
"Wait – Harry's gay?" said Ginny.
"Bi, I think..." I said, a little confused about what this had to do with anything.
"Oh, that's all right then," said Ginny, more to herself than to me.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Luna asked.
"About Neville and Harry? Because I just found out today."
"No, about Voldemort! We're your friends, we'd all help you. Right, guys?" Luna said. Everyone agreed.
"Thanks, everyone," I said. "Ginny, how's your arm doing?"
"I could punch out a troll if I had to."
"That's reassuring," I said.
We practiced for another hour and were just finishing a cover of "Through the Fire and Flames" when Dumbledore stormed in.
"Do any of you know where Neville Longbottom is?" he asked.
"He's not in the Gryffindor boys' rooms?" I responded.
"No," he said sharply. "He is nowhere in the castle, and no one I asked in Hogsmeade has seen him either."
"No!" I screamed. "Neville!"
"I take it that he isn't out gathering herbs in the Forbidden Forest, then," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. He took out a small paper bag with little pentagrams on it out of the pocket of his robe and held it out to me. "Care for a licorice skull? Muggle scientists say that the brain needs sugar to work properly."
I took one and started sucking on it. It was good, although I had to be careful not to let the little spikes stab me in the palate. "Thanks. These are really good. I didn't know sweets could be this brutal."
"Brutality can be found in the smallest of things, Miss Explosion," Dumbledore said, with an odd little Zen-master smile. "Now, what's the problem?"
"To be honest, sir, I was hoping my friends and I could settle this ourselves, but since you asked...
"I took a walk in the forest this afternoon and ran into You-Know-Who, or at least someone with an astonishing family resemblance. He threatened to kill Neville if I didn't murder Harry Potter for him, although he didn't tell me how or when he wanted it done. And he claims to have knowledge of what goes on inside Hogwarts, which is how he learned that Neville and I are going out."
"Not necessarily, Freyja," said Dumbledore thoughtfully. "He could have been bluffing. You and Neville did spend the evening together in Hogsmeade not long ago. Let us hope this is so."
"But if Voldemort doesn't have a mole in the castle, what became of Neville?" I said.
"Have another licorice skull. You look like you could use it. I'm going to conduct some investigations and try to find out whether Neville left the castle and grounds under his own power, or if he was removed by a third party, or anything else useful. If any of you notice or remember anything that might be a clue to his whereabouts, please, tell me, even if it seems insignificant to you. And in the meantime, I've always found that this came in handy." He handed me a Muggle-style business card that said "DON'T PANIC" and walked briskly out the door of our practice room.
We ran through a couple more songs after that, but we were all too worried and stressed to really get into the music, and band practice broke up soon after.
"Oh, Odin," I prayed, as I went back to my room, "Please let Neville be all right."
When I got to my room, I put a Black Sabbath record on my gramophone (which had no electronics in it so it worked at Hogwarts), poured myself a glass of mead, and ran myself a bath with dragon's blood scented bubble bath. I took my wand and my seax into the bathroom with me – if there were kidnappers running around the school, I wanted to be prepared. Freyja Explosion does not go down without a fight.
I was soaking in the tub and painting my nails when I noticed a couple of figures on broomsticks outside my window. At first I'd assumed they were practicing Quidditch, but then I noticed that they weren't moving, and one of them was holding something that wasn't a ball. Odin's missing eye, was that a camera?
I threw on my red and black bathrobe with the chainmail trim and spiky shoulders, grabbed my wand and seax, and looked out the window. It was Crabbe and Goyle! "Expelliarmus!" I shouted. The camera flew from Crabbe's hands, but Goyle dove after it with more agility than I would have ever expected from him. "What in Hel's name is wrong with you two? Did all the Slytherin girls threaten to hex your toes off if you got within twenty feet of them, so you start perving on me instead? So help me, if Malfoy put you up to this, all three of you are going to be giant squid food!" I noticed Goyle flying away with the camera, so I hexed him and he fell off his broom and fell into some very thorny rosebushes. They broke his fall, but he was bleeding in about a dozen places from the thorns, and the little spurts of crimson blood made a rather striking contrast to the white roses. "Brutal," I said. Then I remembered something I wanted to tell Dumbledore, so I flung a black towel with a flaming skull design over the bathroom window so that no more people could spy on me and got dressed in a hurry.
The door to the Headmaster's office was shut when I got there, and I could hear people talking within, although even my Valkyrie senses couldn't tell exactly what was being said or who was saying it. I supposed in these troubled times Dumbledore wanted good soundproofing. Finally, the door opened. "Come in," Dumbledore said, "Severus and I have a few things to wrap up, but you might as well wait in comfort." I sat down and watched one of the odd little magical machines on one of the end tables while Dumbledore gathered up some of the papers on his desk into a pile and handed them to Snape. Snape walked toward the door and opened it, but before he could exit, Colin Creevey rushed up and gasped "HeyeveryoneweneedtotalkIthink..." he paused to catch his breath "that I saw something!"
Snape was not amused, especially since Colin was standing right in the doorway. "You see a lot, Mister Creevey. Have you considered teaming up with Professor Trelawney on that front, or would that interfere with your career as the school paparazzo?"
"I MAY BE THE SCHOOL PAPARAZZO..." Colin paused indignantly, "BUT I AM ALSO A VIKING!"
"Could have fooled me," said Snape dryly. "Where's your horned helmet?"
"Actually," Colin said excitedly, "the stereotypical horned Viking helmets are actually historically inaccurate. Real Viking Age helmets were-"
"Creevey, if I wanted to listen to an obnoxious Gryffindor show off their grasp of trivial information, I'd offer to help Hermione Granger study for her N.E.W.T.s. In case it has escaped your notice, one of your housemates is potentially in great danger, and the Headmaster and I have more than enough to occupy our attention at this time."
Dumbledore looked up from the papers on his desk, handed Snape a couple of odd pieces of parchment and what looked like a scroll in a case, and said, "Now, then, do you two have something you'd like to tell me?" We both nodded.
"I saw a rat snooping around the Gryffindor common room this morning," Colin said. "It didn't seem like it was looking for food, more just... exploring. It might just have been somebody's pet, but I don't know anyone in Gryffindor who has a rat that looks like that. Oh, and it hid under the furniture when it noticed I was watching it. I thought it might have actually been an Animagus or something."
"Thank you, Colin, that could be very relevant. Now, Freyja, did you have something?"
"Nothing that important. Just – he doesn't flaunt it, but Neville has a flying Muggle car. It's a black Volvo P1800, with a vanity plate that says MJOLLNIR. I just thought you might like to know because he or whoever took him might have used that to get away from here, since you can't Apparate on the school grounds."
"Really?" said Dumbledore, intrigued. "How does it run?"
"Very well, in my experience, although I've only taken it as far as Hogsmeade."
"Excellent!" he cried. "Thank you both, this could be very useful. Good day!" Colin and I took that as our invitation to leave.