And the final chapter is here! Thanks to everyone who's been with us for this story, and to those who have reviewed. I don't always answer reviews, but rest assured I read and appreciate each and every one.
In this chapter, it's come down to the final confrontation with Claire Savelle - and it's Neville's desperate plan against Claire's sinister (and sex-filled) plan! Which of them will win?
BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME TO
Based on the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Sensualis Strikes Back
Neville's mind raced. Claire had him at wandpoint, and there was no way he'd be fast enough to pull out his own wand, or do anything else, before she could fling any hexes or curses at him. Luna wouldn't be any help; she was too deep under whatever spell Claire had placed her under. He was still wearing the Weasley bracelet - but then, so was Luna (it was the only thing the girl was still wearing, apart from the ever-present Butterbeer cork necklace), and apparently the bracelet hadn't helped her, so he couldn't count on that.
"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked, trying to stop his voice from trembling, determined to stall her for as long as he could on the off chance that he'd get some brilliant idea. "Are you going to force me to... to..."
"Silly Longbottom," Claire smirked. "I'm not going to force you to do anything. You're going to do it all of your own free will. But first of all, you're going to give me your wand. And no tricks, and no moves I don't like, or this little get-together is going to turn a lot less pleasant. Go on."
"I'm - I'm not carrying my wand," Neville tried.
"Stupefy!" A bolt of red light whizzed past Neville's head, missing him by mere inches. "That was what Muggles call a 'warning shot,'" said Claire lazily. "If you lie to me about your wand again, I won't aim for the wall. Give me your wand now and I promise I won't snap it in two when I take it."
Reluctantly, and noticing that his hand was shaking, he fished his wand out of his pocket.
"Place it on the floor and then kick it over here," she commanded.
"I-if you t-think you can blackmail us with, with this," said Neville as he slowly placed the wand on the floor, "you're wrong. We have just as much on you as you could hope to get on us!" He gave the wand a little kick, causing it to roll across the floor and come to halt beside the bed.
"Oh, but I'll have so much more on you," said Claire with a smile, not bothering to pick up the wand, just staying in the same position. "I'll have proof. Neither you nor the slut here can ever prove that I'vedone anything, but..." She motioned towards the nightstand next to the bed, where Neville now saw a camera almost identical to the one Colin Creevey always carried around.
"This room is amazing," Claire continued. "I only had to thinkthat I needed a camera in order to blackmail you, and there it was! But don't you get any ideas; I still have you at wandpoint!"
"Nnn..." Luna suddenly sat up on the bed and staring at Neville with dull eyes. "Nnneville...! Don't...!"
"Quiet," Claire snapped. Without looking away from Neville (or taking her wand away from him), she grabbed Luna's hand and guided it back to her bare crotch, beginning to manipulate Luna's fingers with her own. "Lover-boy here will be along before you know it. In the meantime, why don't you just masturbate some more... that's it, move your fingers like so..."
"Nnn-n-n..." said Luna intelligently, sinking back down and losing herself in the world of self-pleasure once more. "F-f-ff-fffff..."
It wasn't Neville's intention to stare, but it was incredibly hard not to.
"It's impolite to stare, Longbottom," said Claire, never having taken her eyes off him. "Or have you never seen a shaved cunt before? I noticed that Loony hadn't been very good about shaving down there, so I did her the favour of hitting her with a long-term Hair Removal Charm. She'll be smooth as a baby for at least another week."
For some reason, this sentence struck Neville as important, but he couldn't quite put his finger on just why. True, the last time he had seen Luna naked, several months ago, she had been covered there with curly blonde hair, and now she wasn't, and just how long-term wasa long-term Hair Removal Charm, again? And why was he wondering about that now?
"Well, enough chit-chat." Claire stood up and walked a couple of steps out on the floor, still pointing her wand at him. "Strip."
W-what?" said Neville, startled.
"Don't pretend you're deaf, that never helps," said Claire. "Go on, strip."
"But..." Neville could feel himself going red.
"Aww, are we shy?" Claire's voice became a mocking parody of sweetness. "Don't worry, Longbottom. I'm still a lesbian and won't take any particular pleasure in seeing that ugly body of yours. But look at darling Luna there, all naked and horny and waiting for you to come fuck her. So," and the sweetness disappeared, giving away to a more businesslike tone, "either you strip now, at this very moment, or I Vanish all your clothes."
Neville gulped. "And then what?" he said and hoped his voice didn't really quiver as badly as it sounded to him. "I'm not going to touch Luna, not that way, and not to give you blackmail material. Whatever love potion you've cooked up, I won't drink it. So what are you planning to do, Imperius me? That's an Unforgivable, you know, they'll find out and you'll be thrown into Azkaban for life!"
"STRIP!" Claire roared, thrusting her wand threateningly towards him.
His hands began obeying almost as if they had their own will.
"Better," said Claire, a little calmer, as he struggled with his robes. "And to answer your question, I wouldn't dream of turning myself into a Dark witch for your sake. There are other ways... like I did with the slut here."
Neville let his robes fall to the ground. "What didyou do with her?" he asked, trying to sound casual as he began taking off his shoes. "She's been distant all week... more than usual. Was that your handiwork?" There was that elusive thought about the length of a long-term Hair Removal Charm again... could it be...?
"What are we playing here, Twenty Questions?" Claire snapped. But then she smiled and looked at him with a smug look, and apparently she couldn't resist gloating a little. "But all right, Longbottom, I'll indulge you. You poor Gryffindors are clearly starved for intelligent conversation, not to mention sophisticated magic."
Neville didn't rise to the bait, as she'd clearly hoped, so after a second or two she shrugged and added in a bored tone: "I'll admit I was thrown a bit off when everybody were saying Harry Potter was suddenly Loony Lovegood's boyfriend. Admittedly, Potter's a bit of an idiot, but I didn't want to antagonize him and risk having the entire wizarding world turn on me. Imagine my joy when I found out that he wasn't really interested in Loony, and that you were the only person who was... nobody cares about you. I could do whatever I wanted to you, and nobody would lift a finger."
Neville tried not to feel the sting of her words, but they were just all too easy to believe in - he was a spectacular failure as a wizard, weak and unimportant in very way, why should anyone care about him? But no, he knew better, he had friends, and besides... besides, this was not the time to think about that. Think about long-term Hair Removal Charms instead - there's something important about them, I just know it!
"They say that revenge is a dish best served cold," said Claire, looking at him with an evil smile. "So I decided to go for the long-term plan. First, I tricked Loony into eating one of my special peppermints - loaded with sleeping potion, of course - and then it was the easiest thing in the world to sneak into her dormitory and with Sensualisand a few Dream Charms that she would have nice, erotic dreams about me. That was the start of it... it's so easy to turn dreams into obsessions if you just know the right magic."
Neville didn't know what a Dream Charm was - at least he couldn't remember Professor Flitwick ever mentioning them in class - but it wasn't too hard to guess. How long did theylast, the fleeting thought asked, bringing with it the beginnings of an idea. He slowed down his undressing, hoping that he could stall until Claire had finished her story. "And nobody else noticed?" he said.
"If they did, they never said anything," said Claire with a shrug. "I reckon that if they noticed anything going on, they just thought I was setting up one of the traditional 'Ravenclaw-pranks-against-Loony-Lovegood' that are so popular in our House. Nobody cares about her either, you know."
"That's not true," said Neville, swallowing heavily. "I care."
"And now I'm giving you the opportunity to express your caring in a physical way!" said Claire. "You should thank me, really, this is the only way you'll ever get a woman." She giggled, a cheerful sound that sounded quite out of place. "You lied to me, didn't you? You never fucked Loony, you just let me think that. I should have guessed that you wouldn't have the guts to do anything, no-one with small Quidditch brooms on their underwear would be man enough to try fucking a girl. Oh, or someone who wears silly friendship bracelets - that's the same kind of bracelet that Loony's wearing, isn't it? How sweet."
Neville looked down. He was down to only his drawers, and of course he had put on the ones with the Quidditch brooms, the ones Great Aunt Ermitrude had given him for Christmas. He tried to ignore it, the elusive thought was becoming less and less elusive for every second, and the idea was turning into a plan.
Just keep her talking! he thought. It's better that she focuses on your drawers than your bracelet! "You don't know anything about friendship, do you, Savelle?" he said as defiantly as he could. "It's not about sex, it's about - it's about spending time with people because you like them! Because you enjoy their company! Just because you aren't planning on, on, having sex with someone doesn't mean they're not worth spending time around!"
"What a noble speech," said Claire mockingly. "I might even have taken it seriously if it hadn't come from a boy wearing Quidditch underwear. Which, I notice, is still not off. Strip."
Neville knew he was playing a dangerous game here, but right now it was important to keep Claire talking, to wait for the right moment. He demonstratively grabbed his drawers and pulled them demonstratively a little higher. "You still haven't told me how you got Luna to volunteer for Quidditch Commentator."
"Oh yes, that was a good touch, wasn't it?" said Claire. "It's called 'subliminal suggestion.' Muggle scientists have debated it for centuries. With Loony's resistance to me having collapsed thanks to a nightly diet of dreams and orgasm, it was easy to place her under an enchantment and plant some interesting commands in that kooky little brain of hers. I told her she really wanted to do the commentaries for the next Quidditch match, and she immediately went to Professor McGonagall and volunteered. I knew that Professor McGonagall hadn't managed to find anyone; it seems like most of the students would rather just watch the game than comment upon it. And when I - prized student who always gets top marks in Transfiguration - personally asked her to give Loony a chance, she relented. I imagine she regrets that now, but I reached my goal with it. "
"And, and, the goal was to, to make sure I figured out something was wrong," he said, "so I'd come, come over to the c-commentator's podium afterwards and get told to come here... where you waited for me!"
"Of course. And of course, it was a bonus that Loony managed to make a complete arse of herself at the podium," Claire laughed. "That commentary of hers... Complete humiliation. And the best part was that I didn't tell her anything of what to say! All of it was her own! Loser's lurgy and Hospital Wing records and all!"
"I, I thought she did extremely well," said Neville bravely - and untruthfully.
"You're not even fooling yourself," said Claire. "They'll be laughing at her for years afterwards... almost as long as they'll be talking about the shagging session she had with you afterwards, Longbottom." Her lips curled upwards in a cruel grin. "Speaking of which - drop your drawers now or I Vanish them!"
Neville let his drawers fall to the floor; he was painfully aware that save for the bracelet still on his arm (which didn't cover anything important anyway), he was completely naked under Claire's piercing eyes, and it was all he could do not to curl up and shield himself from her gaze.
"Much better..." Claire smirked. "But I see you're all limp, poor boy... isn't it exciting enough to be naked in the same room as a girl who's eagerly touching herself and waiting for you to come and give her a good fucking? Come over here, and I'll tell her to help you get it up... and then we'll see if it's true what they say, that it gets bigger when it gets harder..."
Neville braced himself. "N-no," he said.
Claire's grin broadened. "Excuse me?" she said cheerfully.
"No!" Neville repeated, feeling his voice grow a little stronger. "I'm not playing along anymore, Savelle!"
"Oh, come on," said Claire sweetly. "She's not that ugly, and you are a teenage boy! You should be jumping at the chance! Don't tell me you have never thought of it? All that time together with her, and you never once even wondered...?"
"That doesn't really matter, now does it?" said Neville. "This is wrong, and I'm not going to do it!"
"Oh, I hoped you'd get stubborn," said Claire, her grin turning evil as she waved her wand at him. "Now I get to do thisto you: Sensualis!"
Neville braced himself, half-expecting the sensations of cruel pleasure that Luna had described to engulf him - but they didn't. Instead, Claire gave a gasp of surprise, toppled and fell down on the bed as if her knees grew weak, her wand falling out of her wand and hitting the floor with a small, dry sound.
Neville didn't waste a second. He threw himself forward and grabbed for the wand before Claire managed to raise herself, immediately finding out why it wasn't a good idea to throw yourself down naked on a stone floor but still managing to get the wand.
"Now," he said, breathing heavily as he pointed the wand at her and tried to raise himself without shaking too much, "now the tables are turned - aren't they? Don't move - or I'll hex you!"
"You - You!" Claire yelped, her voice a mixture of amazement and sheer fury. "What did you do to me? That felt like - it felt like -"
"You're not the only one who can plan long-term, Savelle," said Neville, having finally managed to get to his feet and now struggling to stay up. "I'll hex you, I swear I will, if you so much as move! I don't know that Sensualis one, but I can do many others!"
Claire glared at him.
"You should never have gone after Luna," said Neville, taking a step forward, still pointing the wand at her. "Maybe I am a clumsy and inept coward that doesn't matter in the least and nobody has any reason to care about - but the Sorting Hat put me into Gryffindor for a reason! Gryffindors never, ever, turn their back on a friend!" He took another step forward.
And stepped and slid on his own wand, which was lying just beside the bed. He tried to keep his balance, but it was too late, and he fell on his backside with a huge, painful THUD!
Immediately, Claire was on him, pinning him to the floor, grabbing for her wand and snarling like a madwoman. Neville tried to fight back, but the fall had knocked all the breath out of him, and his back and bum hurt terribly, and he couldn't muster up enough strength to properly shove her off him. Both of them struggled, fighting and wrestling, but Claire managed to get a proper grip on the wand and yanking it out of Neville's hand.
"Now!" she hissed, her eyes flashing with madness and anger.
"NO!" came a loud cry from behind her. And then, like a flesh-coloured, dirty-blonde blur, Luna Lovegood tackled Claire, knocking her off Neville. All the dullness was gone from her eyes, replaced with a fury that Neville had never before seen in the normally gentle Luna. "DON'T - TOUCH - MY - FRIEND!" she screamed.
They rolled around, Luna fighting and hitting and biting like a wild cat, but Claire had the advantage of being bigger, stronger and heavier, and after a short struggle managed to pin the furious naked girl.
"That's it!" she growled. "No more leeway! It's about time you got another lesson, Loony! Sensualis Continuare!" She pointed her wand at Luna...
...and suddenly squealed, losing her grip on her wand and falling back, twitching, moaning and grunting loudly.
Luna slowly sat up, staring at Claire with big, grey eyes as the older girl rolled around and started rubbing her crotch furiously against the floor. "What -?" she began, in a whisper, looking as if she had just fallen down from the Moon - or at least from a cloud. Then, she blinked, and immediately turned towards Neville, crawling over to him at top speed. "Neville! Are you all right?"
Neville managed to sit up as Luna reached him, looking concerned. "I'm fine..." he managed. "Just a few bruises." He didn't get any further before Luna had wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug - which was not at all comfortable against his bruises, but at the moment he found he couldn't care less.
They stayed in the hug for a few seconds, before Neville suddenly remembered that they were both naked. Carefully and gently, he pushed Luna away, murmuring "Better - better go and - make sure Claire doesn't - doesn't... yeah..."
Luna reluctantly let him go, turning back to Claire, who was still lying on the ground, twitching uncontrollably. She had pulled up her robe to over her stomach, and had torn her knickers off, now furiously stroking and fingering herself with long, drawn-out cries of "Aaaauuuugh! Ooooooohhhhhh!" Her wand had rolled a little way away from her, and Neville quickly picked it up, breathing a sigh of relief.
"What happened?" said Luna, looking at Claire with raised eyebrows. "Why is she doing that? Did you get an invisible Whingler to attack her? It must have been an extremely powerful one!"
"No..." Neville averted his eyes and got to his feet, making his way over to his clothes. "It was the bracelets."
Luna held up her right arm and looked at her bracelet. "These bracelets?"
"I got them from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes," Neville explained as he picked up his underwear. "They act as a special kind of Shield Charm. Fred told me that they won't work against the stronger curses, but minor hexes or jinxes or - or charms, they'll not only protect the bearer from them but send them back to the caster, three times as powerful."
Luna looked back at Claire, who was still groaning and touching herself, oblivious to everything else. "So when she cast the Sensualis Continuare on me -" she said.
" - she got a triple dose of it sent back at herself," said Neville, struggling to pull his robes on. "I wasn't sure if it would work first... I mean, er, you know, you were obviously under some kind of spell, and I thought that, that maybe the bracelets didn't work. But then she told me that she'd placed all those charms on you a full week ago, which was before you got the bracelet. So I was hoping..." he smiled sheepishly, pausing in his dressing. "I was hoping that it would work and that she'd cast something strong enough to, er, put herself out of commotion before she realised what the bracelets did."
Luna sat heavily down on the bed. She didn't bother to cover herself up; maybe she thought that since Neville had seen her naked for this long anyway, there was no point in suddenly being shy. "It wasn't just the charm, you know," she said airily. "She fed me some kind of potion too. When she took me here, she got out a potion and made me drink it, and all of the sudden I just felt all dull and sleepy and horny." She shrugged. "I would probably have been perfectly happy lying there and fingering myself for as long as the potion worked, but then I noticed that you were there, and she was threatening you, so I began to fight the potion. When she jumped on you, I suppose that was what made me shake completely free of it."
"Probably saved us both, then," said Neville, trying to smile. "It was your jumping on her that got her so mad that she - yeah, you know."
"I know." Luna was quiet for a while, her face devoid of any emotion as she sat there.
Neville sat down beside her. "Are you all right?" It was an extremely stupid question, but it was really the only one he could ask.
"No," said Luna, still without any emotion. "No, I can't honestly say that I am."
"Look," said Neville. "I'm sorry that I - I mean, I thought, I hoped, that she was still just biding her time. I didn't realise that she was - I didn't even imagine that she -"
"It's not your fault. It's hers."
"But I could have prevented it if I hadn't been so -"
"Oh, just - just stop!" Luna snapped, suddenly angry. "You're always apologising and having a go at yourself and thinking you're not worth anything, and it's driving me - it's driving me loony!"
Neville blinked. "I didn't mean to -"
"No! Don't apologise!"
"Sorry -"
"No!"
And then, without any of them really knowing how it had started, they were hugging again, and crying.
Accompanied by the grunts and frustrated moans of Claire Savelle, who was still lying on the floor and masturbating furiously, they held each other tightly, wordlessly comforting each other as they cried, partly with anger, partly with grief, and mostly with sheer relief that it was all over.
Except it wasn't over, of course - things seldom are. Eventually, they had to let go of each other, and they had to make plans for what to do next. It was Luna who first realised this; she let go of Neville and sniffled. "Well, this isn't getting anything done, is it," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I suppose not." Neville reluctantly let go and turned to look at Claire, who was completely lost in her own world of extreme sexual frustration, screaming and grunting as she rolled about on the floor, trying to stick her entire hand up her vagina. He swallowed and averted his eyes. "What are we going to do about her, though?"
Luna sighed. "I don't know. I suppose we should end the Charm on her. I remember what it felt like, she won't be in any condition to do anything."
And as Luna went to find some clothes, conveniently and characteristically for the Room of Requirement laid out for her on a nearby chair, Neville retrieved his wand from under the bed, noting to his relief that it hadn't been damaged at all by his accidental stepping on it.
"Look!" said Luna, holding up the clothes and actually looking excited. "These are myclothes! The ones Claire Vanished all those months ago! This is my favourite robe - and look! All the things I had in my pockets are here too! And my stockings, and my vest, and my purple bra - they're all here! I thought I'd never see any of them again!"
"So the Room can bring back Vanished objects too..." said Neville. "I didn't know that."
"Neither did I, but it makes sense," said Luna as she pulled on her knickers. "Vanished objects go into non-being, don't they? The Room does too, when it's not needed. Maybe it picks up all Vanished objects while there."
Some of her normal relaxed attitude was returning as she got dressed; while she still appeared shaken, she did look a lot better. "You know," she declared, as if having guessed his thoughts, "I do feel a lot better now. Maybe it's true what they say, that the robes make the wizard. Or, in my case, the underwear makes the witch. I'm feeling in a very purple mood right now."
"...and that's... good, is it?" said Neville uncertainly.
"Of course it is. I like purple."
Together, they picked the wriggling Claire up and placed her on the bed before Neville pointed his wand firmly at her.
"Finite Incantatem," he commanded, and Claire let out a huge wail, spasmed and shook, and kept on spasming and shaking.
"Almost a minute," said Luna when Claire finally calmed down, lying limply on the bed and breathing heavily. "That's not quite as long as it lasted for me that one time, but I was under the spell for much longer, even if it was probably not as powerful in my case."
"Savelle?" said Neville, poking her shoulder with his wand. "Can you hear me?"
There was no answer, but Luna nodded. "She can hear you, she's just a little overwhelmed right now. We should probably get her to the hospital wing."
Neville wanted to say no; there was no way he would lift a finger to help someone like Claire Savelle... but after a second or two, he sighed. "All right. At least she's still dressed. Somewhat," he added with a glance at the torn knickers that lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. Somehow, he really didn't want to spend any time looking for a new pair or dress Claire with them. "I'll support her while you follow us and hold her at wandpoint, in case she wakes up and decides to try something."
Luna agreed, but the plan proved a bit more difficult to follow up on than either of them had really anticipated.
The Quidditch match had been over for ages, and since there were no lessons today, there were more than a few students out and about in the hallways. This made it practically impossible for Luna to cover Claire with her wand without raising suspicion - not that they needed the wand to call on attention as they made their way down various corridors with a delirious Claire Savelle supported against Neville.
Not for the first time, Neville wished that he'd had an Invisibility Cloak like Harry did. It would have saved a lot of time if they could have gone past the students unnoticed instead of going through the same "She's ill, we're taking her to the hospital wing" routine every time they met someone either they or Claire knew. Of course, no Invisibility Cloak in the world could have disguised the occasional string of curse words Claire muttered out in her half-present state of mind, which clearly shocked a few of the questioners.
"Colin! Colin! Did you hear what she said? She said -" Dennis Creevey's voice vanished behind them as they walked on, Neville trying to go as fast as possible in spite of his burden.
"Marietta!" Claire suddenly gasped.
Neville looked up - and true enough, there in front of them Marietta Edgecombe came walking up the hallways, the word 'SNEAK' still faintly visible behind heavy layers of makeup, and a deadpan, emotionless expression in her eyes. When she noticed them, she shot them all an icy glare and sped up to walk past them as quickly as she could.
But Claire, more swiftly than Neville would have given her credit for in this state, wrestled out of his grip to stumble towards her. "I - I need you!" she sobbed, grabbing for the girl and managing to get hold of her robe.
"Let go!" Marietta shrieked.
Claire didn't. Neville grabbed her shoulders and tried pulling her off the unfortunate girl, but Claire clung on as if she had been fastened to Marietta with a Permanent Sticking Charm, both hands suddenly wrapped around the girl, and squeezing her buttocks through her robe. "I love you I love you I love your arse and your face and your tits and your cunt and your..." she babbled uncontrollably, ignoring Marietta's shrill cries of "NO!" and "Let me go!"
"Aguamenti!" came the sudden voice of Luna from beside them, and a jet of water hit Claire, causing her to gasp and sputter, in surprise letting go of Marietta who slid limply to the floor. Neville, not expecting the sudden lessening of weight, pulled Claire back so hard that they both toppled and fell over as well.
"Cold water helps if you're horny," said Luna, the only person left standing, as she stared dreamily at Claire, who was waving her arms frantically and trying to get back up. "I think you should take more cold showers."
Neville got to his feet and dragged the soaking wet Claire up with him. He was panting heavily, his heart seemed like it might jump out of his chest at any time, and he felt that he was getting very close to lose his patience. "We are going to -!" he began, but cut himself off by saying "OOOFF!" when Claire gave him a hard elbow in the ribs.
Heaving for her breath with loud, shrill grunts, and with a manic look her face, Claire began running unsteadily down the corridor, her wet robe whipping around her and exposing her naked backside to them with every other step.
While Luna had dropped to her knees to take care of the motionless Marietta, Neville tried ignoring the pain in his ribs and looked upon in growing astonishment as Claire ran unsteadily down the corridor and collided with Professor McGonagall, who had just appeared around the corner together with Seamus - and as Claire, seeming like she had gone completely mad, threw herself at the Professor and tried to kiss her.
"Mmm! Mmmm! Mmmmgh!" she grunted wildly as she tried forcing her lips against McGonagall's.
For a brief moment, it seemed like McGonagall was completely, and uncharacteristically, at loss for words. But only for a brief moment. "MISS SAVELLE!" she shouted. "What is the meaning of this? Never in all my years...!"
Claire fell back, as if the teacher had slapped her, and as she landed on the floor, her robes whipped around even further and exposed her naked crotch to McGonagall (and to Seamus, whose eyes looked like they would fall out of his skull if they got any bigger).
Professor McGonagall stared. So did Seamus, but a quick look from his teacher made him blush and quickly look another way.
"You lot," said McGonagall after having covered Claire up and checked to see if she was seriously injured, directing her gaze towards Neville, Luna and Marietta. "Can either of you give any reasonable explanation for this - this behaviour?"
"She was trying to force herself on Marietta, Professor McGonagall," said Luna from her spot on the floor, stroking the crying Marietta's hair. "Neville and I managed to stop her, but then she went all strange." She paused, adding in a thoughtful voice: "I thought cold water was supposed to stop people from being horny, not make them lose their minds completely."
McGonagall actually looked shocked. Her eyes looked unusually confused and uncertain as they met Neville's. "Mister Longbottom," she said in a hushed voice. "I trust you to be honest. Is Miss Lovegood telling the truth?"
Neville swallowed and nodded.
"Right," said McGonagall, suddenly all strict firmness again. "All of you, my office. Now."
As it turned out, it was Seamus they could thank for McGonagall's timely interruption.
After things had calmed down on the Quidditch pitch, and he'd been able to fend off the curious Parvati Patil, Seamus had discovered that he had lost sight of Claire, and after searching the area with the borrowed Spynoculars, had discovered that neither Neville nor Luna were anywhere in sight either.
He'd gone back to the castle, in the hope of finding them in the Room of Requirement, but no matter how many times he walked up and down the corridor, no matter how he pleaded or wished, he couldn't get the room to appear for him. It was then he'd grown truly worried and had tried locating Ginny and Dean in order to get their help, but they had vanished off to somewhere, and he couldn't find them either.
After a few minutes' wavering, in which his over-active mind dreamt up several unpleasant things that Claire might be doing to Luna and Neville at that very moment, he sought out Professor McGonagall instead, figuring that with Harry and Ron at the hospital wing, Hermione busy elsewhere, and Dean and Ginny nowhere to be found, the Head of Gryffindor House was the most sensible choice in who to turn to.
"Wasn't that a bit risky, though?" said Dean thoughtfully as he told this part of the story. "She could have entered and seen..." he bowed his head, letting the sentence trail off.
"You don't think she'd have expelled Luna, do you?" said Ginny. "Luna didn't do anything wrong! It wasn't her fault that Savelle - er, that she -" She cut herself off, looking at Luna, as if uncertain whether the other girl wanted her to continue or not.
"Hypnotised me and made me all strange and horny," said Luna helpfully.
"Yeah... that," said Ginny, her voice growing a little stronger. "But - but even what went on before. None of it was your fault, you know that? They couldn't have - they wouldn't have expelled you for it. And if they had, I would have left Hogwarts in protest."
They were all gathered - Neville, Luna, Seamus, Dean and Ginny - in the same empty classroom that Luna had once hid in to escape humiliation from Claire. It had been Luna's idea to gather them all here; she claimed that it just 'felt right to complete the circle this way.'
And she had told them the entire story. Not a single detail was left out in her retelling of her twisted relationship with Claire, or of Neville's discovery of it and subsequent actions to help. Ginny, the only one present who hadn't known about Claire had been rather taken aback, but curiously enough she hadn't seemed nearly as embarrassed about Luna's explicit storytelling as the boys did. Maybe growing up with six older brothers just made you naturally immune to embarrassment.
Seamus, being quicker to recover than Dean, had filled in with the details on how he and McGonagall had come to be in just that corridor at just that point, and he had surprised them by telling it quite level-headedly and with no half-witted attempts at jokes or innuendos.
"Ginny's right," he said with a weak smile. "Besides, you know McGonagall. She might seem like a stuck-up prig who only thinks about rules, but she can't help admiring students who show the traditional Gryffindor spirit of courage and friendship."
"Some courage, running straight to a teacher for help," muttered Dean, but with no real venom behind the words.
"It takes a brave man to admit when he needs help," Seamus returned. "Old Irish proverb."
"It is not!" said Dean with a grin. "You always say that something is an old Irish proverb. You once told me that 'damn it all to Hell' was an old Irish proverb."
"It is. Honest." Seamus grinned, but then grew serious again. "In any case," he said, "I know I would've thought of something if I had to, but it turned out that I didn't need to, since you two were out and about with Savelle under your control," he finished, nodding at Neville and Luna.
Ginny shook her head. "And I never even knew what was going on." She looked back at Luna. "I thought all those rumours about you being a lesbian were, well, rumours."
Luna paused. "You know, I don't really think I am a lesbian."
Ginny stared at her. So did Dean and Seamus, and, Neville realised after the first few shocked moments, so did he.
Seamus was, not unsurprisingly, the first to manage to speak again. "You spend several months having sex with another girl, or fantasising about having sex with another girl, and now you say you're not a lesbian? How the hell does that work?"
"Oh, I still find girls sexually attractive," said Luna, as casually as if she was merely discussing the weather. "But the thing is, you can only be a lesbian if you don't like boys, right? I've been thinking, I might be the same as Mummy. Daddy told me about her this Christmas. She had a few girlfriends while at Hogwarts. I don't know if she ever fucked them, but I think she might have, but she ended up marrying Daddy anyway, and he's not a girl."
"She was bisexual, then," said Ginny, the only person in the room who seemed unfazed by Luna's account of her mother's sexuality.
"There's a name for it?!" Luna looked genuinely surprised. "All right then, that's what I am as well. That's all right, isn't it?" She suddenly got an anxious look on her face, as if afraid they would tell her that it wasn't.
Ginny's eyes widened for a moment. Then she smiled, a little sadly, and Neville wondered if she, like him, had suddenly felt part of Luna's lonely life and was feeling for the girl. "Oh, Luna," she said. "We don't mind if you're a lesbian or a bisexual or whatever you are. We like you. As a person."
Luna beamed. "I didn't know I had this many friends... I'm going to need a bigger ceiling!" Whatever she meant by that, Neville didn't find out, because now she was hugging Ginny, Dean and Seamus and thanking them for helping to protect her
"It was all Neville, really," said Dean, still seeming a little embarrassed. "We didn't do all that much."
"No, but you would have," said Luna. "And that's what counts! I think that's what Claire never understood. With Marietta and all that... she probably did love her on some level, but she didn't really love her."
There was a slight pause while the others tried to make sense of this statement.
"What did happen to Marietta anyway?" Ginny finally said.
"She's still at the hospital wing," Luna answered. "I went up there to see Harry earlier, you know, to see if he had recovered after that Bludger. He'd already left, as it turned out, but Marietta was there. She didn't want to talk to me, though. I think Claire's assault, on top of everything else, proved to be too much for her. Poor girl."
"Poor girl?" said Dean. "This is the same Marietta who sold us out to Umbridge last year, remember that?"
"Yes, but still. It's not easy getting on that side of Claire. I should know. I cried almost all night, you know," said Luna solemnly. "Did you do that, Neville?"
"Not exactly, but... I didn't get much sleep either," said Neville.
Luna nodded. "It was probably just a delayed reaction or something like that - I think that's what it's called, anyway. I know Claire's gone now, but I couldn't stop thinking about what she did to me, and what she almost did to you."
They fell silent.
Of course, Claire had been expelled from Hogwarts the same day. If attempted rape of a fellow student hadn't been enough, trying to force herself on a teacher would definitely classify. The next morning, McGonagall had informed Neville that miss Savelle had left Hogwarts and was probably looking at a longer stay at St. Mungo's, since it appeared that the girl had quite lost her mind. Neville couldn't help wondering if this insanity was a side-effect of the bracelet reflecting that Sensualis Charm on her, and had promised himself to ask the Weasley twins whether they had added some extra features to the bracelets the next time he saw them.
"By the way," said Seamus after a while, looking at Dean, "where were you two while I was looking for you?"
"Nowhere," said Dean hurriedly. "It's not important."
"Not important!" Ginny huffed. "I'll tell you where we were! This insensitive lout here kept laughing about how McLaggen had almost killed poor Harry with that Bludger -"
"Oh, come on -" Dean began.
" - so I took him aside to tell him exactly what I thought of such behaviour," said Ginny hotly.
"I keep telling you, I wasn't laughing about that," said Dean. "I was laughing about how McLaggen looked when Professor McGonagall told him off afterwards..."
"And then you said it was almost worth Harry nearly dying, just to see McLaggen like that!"
"I didn't say it like that!"
"You meant it!"
Neville sighed as Ginny and Dean began arguing again. He still couldn't shake the feeling that he'd contributed to the wedge between them by inadvertently planting the idea that Ginny was a lesbian in Dean's head, but he couldn't think of anything to say or do to repair the damage to their relationship.
As these unpleasant thoughts churned around in his head, he felt a soft and warm hand beginning to stroke his hair. He looked to his side to stare directly into Luna's eyes.
"Don't," she said solemnly. "I'm not blaming myself for anything, so you shouldn't either."
He couldn't help but laugh again. "That obvious, was it? All right, I'll try not to. Thank you, Luna."
She nodded, satisfied. Her hair tickled slightly as it brushed against him. "You know, I think I'll ask Professor McGonagall if I can keep the job as Quidditch Commentator," she said softly.
"Really?" said Neville, surprised.
"Really. I know I originally just did it because of Claire. But I did actually enjoy it while I was up there. And I talked to Professor Dumbledore earlier today, when he gave me a note to deliver to Harry, and he said that my commentary had been very unique and enjoyable, and that I should by all means continue if I wanted to. Not to mention, when I talked to Ron after that, he said he'd loved my commentary - apparently he could hear me from the hospital wing. So I thought, well why not? I'll continue doing it. But this time I'll do it because I want to, and not because anyone told me to."
Neville smiled.
"And the Ravenclaw chasers are flying in some form of triangle," Luna said into the megaphone, "but I'm not sure if that means anything, because it's Gryffindor who has the Quaffle, and the weather's lovely today, the sky is a very nice blue - just the sort of day for flying, in fact. I like flying, but I'm not as good at it as Ginny. I rode on a Thestral last year, and that was very interesting, and very quick, you know, Professor Hagrid says that nothing's faster on the wing, except for maybe dragons, but I think he's forgotten about the Stripe-spotted Burglegumps, because they can fly halfway around the world in a minute. That's why nobody's ever managed to catch one, because they're too fast -"
"Seventy-ten to Gryffindor!" McGonagall interrupted, her voice resigned.
"Oh yes," said Luna. "Nice shot, but the triangle didn't work. I think maybe the Ravenclaw Chasers were forming it so that the Gryffindor Chasers would get distracted and forget to score. I was distracted by a triangle once - did I ever tell you that story? It was like this..."
The stands were filled up with students who were partly laughing and partly groaning in frustration as Luna continued her story.
At one point, she looked down to see Neville sitting just beside the commentator's podium. He happened to look up at the same time, and as their eyes met, he smiled and gave her a 'thumbs-up.'
Luna's heart soared.
"You know, the 'thumbs-up' is a very interesting gesture," she said happily into the megaphone, hearing her own voice echoing across the stands. "Here in England, it's a sign of encouragement, but in Sweden it means 'I hope your donkey explodes.' At least I think it does, but I might be remembering it wrong. But since we aren't in Sweden now, it's a very encouraging gesture! Oh, look, Cho Chang is threatening Ginny Weasley with something, I can't hear what she's saying, but it's something about... sex? No, wait, it's Snitch. Well, that's good, because I have it on good authority that Ginny doesn't like girls that way. Now Cho's face is going very red, and she's glaring at me, so maybe she didn't like hearing that... Ronald, if you don't stop laughing like that, you'll fall off your broom, you know..."
Far away, in a closed ward of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, a young woman was lying in a bed and pondering her future.
She was being kept for observation, they'd said, which she was bright enough to realise probably meant they thought she was completely off her rocker. This was clearlynot the case - if she really had been insane, she would obviously have been the first one to know about it - but when it came down to it, she was probably better off as "insane." In fact, her supposed insanity might be the only thing keeping her out of Azkaban at this point, because the proof against her was overwhelming.
Attempted rape. Illegal sexual magic. Trying to assault a teacher.
Her parents had been very shocked, and had immediately agreed, as her next of kin (even though they were Muggles) that their daughter should be kept at St. Mungo's for the time being.
Nobody would listen to her if she told them how justified she had been in everything. Well, except for the way she had treated Marietta, she admitted to herself, she had quite clearly lost control there. She hoped Marietta would be okay.
She herself, however, was going to face some difficult times. She might have escaped imprisonment, and if she played along with the Healers they would probably release her from St. Mungo's eventually, but the fact remained that she had been expelled from Hogwarts. They had taken her wand, and she didn't know if it was still in one piece or not, but rather suspected that as soon as they thought she could handle it, she'd be informed it had been snapped and she would forever be forbidden from doing magic ever again.
If that was the case... well, it didn't matter. After all, she was of age, that stupid Trace was gone from her, so they couldn't stop her from practicing magic in secret. Because she would have her revenge on Longbottom and Lovegood.
And next time she wouldn't try to be smart, and she certainly wouldn't fall for the temptation to gloat. As soon as she had them in her grasp, she'd strike, and hard.
Feeling a little better, she closed her eyes and lost herself in highly pleasant dreams of her revenge... which eventually turned into highly pleasant dreams of Marietta returning to her and declaring her love and forgiveness...
EPILOGUE
On August the 1st, 1997, four months and twenty-one days after Claire Savelle had been admitted to St. Mungo's, Death Eaters took over the Ministry of magic and began their relentless pursuit of Muggle-borns. All wizards and witches whose blood was found to be impure, including long-term hospital patients, were rounded up and either shipped off to Azkaban prison, or - in the case of the dangerously insane or terminally ill - executed outright.
As the patient records of St. Mungo's were destroyed by hospital staff wanting to protect innocent Muggle-borns (and who paid dearly for it when their "treachery" was discovered), it's impossible to say whether Claire Savelle was still in the hospital at the time.
Neville Longbottom, during his brief career as an Auror, made several attempts at finding out exactly what had happened to Claire, but all anyone could say for certain was that she hadn't been among the many Muggle-borns released from Azkaban after the war ended, and nobody could remember when she had last been seen.
Was Claire one of the Muggle-borns that were executed during the reign of Voldemort? Or did she manage to escape, perhaps going abroad like she had planned? Or did she, as Luna Lovegood theorized, shed her human form and become a Whingler?
The truth is out there.
THE END!
Author's Notes: And it's done. This was the first Harry Potter fanfic I ever finished, though as previously mentioned it's now gone through two revisions. This second one is fairly minor; I cleaned up a few awkward-sounding sentences, changed some dialogue to make it flow better, cut some superfluous explanations and rambling, and added a few new parts.
The epilogue, for example, is completely new - the previous drafts just ended with Claire in the hospital, but looking at it I thought I needed to at least address what happened later on. I did keep Claire's ultimate fate ambiguous, though, because... Well, maybe I'll tell you another time. *innocent whistle*
Now, I know that some of you are wondering whether that last conversation between Neville and Luna means that they are in love. Well... in truth, and you may not believe this, Because She Told Me To was never meant to be a Luna/Neville romance. While their relationship was a central theme to the story, I was more interested in showing them as friends, and how they ended up being a positive influence on one another.
There's also the fact that I recently got a review who pointed out that the story can be seen as a rather unfortunate "white, straight male defeats evil lesbian and rescues her poor victim, curing her of her homosexuality" story... an icky implication that I in no way intended but can certainly see how might be inferred. And going for a Luna/Neville romance would be an extra slap in the face there; Luna does not need to be "cured" (and I hope I do show that she did not become a heterosexual at the end - in my mind she was always bisexual) and is certainly not a "reward" for Neville for defeating the Wicked Lesbian.
I am actually pondering a rewrite of this story with some slightly less unfortunate implications... but that'll have to wait for another time, as I'm currently busy writing the (not at all adult-rated) multi-parter Weasley Girl, an AU in which Ron Weasley was born a girl.
Final note, in case you were wondering: Once again, Luna's somewhat dubious source of Swedish culture has given her faulty information - 'thumbs-up' means exactly the same in Sweden as in England. The 'I hope your donkey explodes' meaning is, in fact, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - and this in itself is a parody of some real-world cultures where the 'thumbs-up' gesture has a negative or insulting meaning.
And now, there is nothing left to say, except: Thank you for reading.
