BS"D
Don't own.
Okay, I know it's been a flippin' long time. But here it is! I could go on and on about excuses as to why I haven't been able to get this finished before now, but quite frankly, I've been having a really nice day and I really don't want to think about the past two months. Sufficed it to say, if it had been pleasant, this thing would've been done a lot earlier.
Dedicated to: all the wonderful, wonderful people who read my stuff and are nice enough to like it, my content-editor who didn't read this chapter, and my extra comma editor who did- while I stood over her shoulder and was very annoying. love you guys!
Chapter 8
And Therein Lay the Snag
Rita could not remember the last time she had enjoyed an assignment half as much as she did watching Harry Potter. The puzzle of the two boys' situation and the thrill of being undetected sparked just the sort of curiosity in her that had led her to journalism in the first place. Her beetle body was quickly becoming her favorite form, a thought she chose not to worry about as she adjusted her many legged body further up the Harry kid's book bag strap.
The boy was in the library after hours again. He had been sneaking into the darkened halls of the library every night for a week now, pulling out everything from restricted-section materials to old copies of Daily Prophets. Had Rita been having any less fun, she would have complained about the ungodly hours that the boy was keeping. It was all well and good for him, wasn't it? He simply slept through class. Rita on the other hand…
But the stuff she was picking up! The boy was looking into books of possession, of magical existence, of abstract alternate transifigurational theories, arithmancy, curse breaking. He would scribble down reams of notes, crossing out pages and pages, writing, rewriting… obviously thinking on paper. And all the time the notes led back to a single topic: Horcruxes. Sufficed to say, this was no class project. She had to admire the kid's persistence. He sat researching deep into the wee hours every night, but even Rita could see that he was going in circles. She hoped the boy didn't crack under the strain; she'd be stuck following Longbottom then. Perish the thought.
The boy- Potter, not Longbottom- seemed to have finally succumbed to the sleep he had been visibly fighting off for the past two hours. His head dropped onto his arm as his fingers limply released the quill he had been furiously scratching away with. Rita waited a few minutes to ensure that he stayed asleep, then pushed off from her perch on the bag that had been carelessly deposited under the library table. She flew to a spot several feet out of the way of the desk, and resumed her human shape. She conjured a roll of parchment and pulled an electric-green quill from her sleeve. Licking the quill tip and setting it at the ready, she quickly scanned the books that the boy had pulled out tonight, trusting her faithful quill to copy down the titles as they passed through her thoughts. Bending carefully over the slumbering boy, she extracted the page he had been poring over. The quick-quotes-quill raced across its own roll of parchment as she scanned the page, producing a perfect, if not more legible copy of the oblivious boy's notes. There again was the word Hrcruxes-which she assumed he had spelled wrong in his haste. Below was a random list of words, connected by arrows and lines that probably were supposed to make sense to Potter: H cup----diadem, locket-------sword----basilik(again, spelled incorrectly) and, underlined at the bottom of the page lay the word Hat.
In the margin of the page, set sideways as if the paper had been turned at some point was a shorthanded timeline of sorts, which Rita recognized as that of the very war which currently gripped the British Wizarding world. As a reporter, she'd have to be drunk or concussed not to recognize the dates and events for what they were. The list of names beside the timeline, too, were those of prominent fighters and death eaters. Here and there, some of the personalities were peppered with question marks, or even boxed off. Lucius Malfoy was headed only by the name Bellatrix Lestrange. Severus Snape was question marked, as well as someone named Lily Potter- the only name Rita didn't recognize. But James Potter was there too, closely followed by the famous auror: Sirius, and Remus. Tonks, Mad-Eye, Kingsley. Order members. And the boy used their preferred names, too. Dumbledore would be fascinated.
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The common room had emptied long ago as the Gryffindor students had finished their homework and games of exploding snap and drifted up to bed. The silence was now only broken by the occasional pop of a log in the dying fire. Even the portraits had fallen asleep. Only one student was still awake, trying to keep himself from drifting off in the chair closest to the flickering flames. Neville's head snapped up for the sixth time in two minutes. He rubbed at his aching eyes, wondering if he should just give up and go upstairs to bed. It was well past three in the morning after all. He cast an eye towards the portrait hole once again, though he hardly expected it to open. It honestly looked like Harry wouldn't be returning to the common room any time before dawn.
Still, the lurking concern for his friend prevented Neville from simply packing it in. In the last week Harry had spent more time in the library than even Hermione, whom Neville had been grateful to see was just as diligent and school-driven as ever. Harry though- it wasn't normal. Neville stared down at his wringing hands, wondering at what Harry could be searching for so desperately. A way home? Though it was the only thing he could think of, it puzzled Neville nonetheless. Why, having been given the chance to finally escape the nightmare that was their previous year, would Harry want to immediately return? Why return to a world in which Dumbledore was dead? Where Death Eaters ruled the ministry and were destroying the school? It had been a relief to Neville to slip back into the façade of real life. True there were differences: he was still disturbed that his friends didn't recognize him, and he missed his Gran's stern weekly letters. But if he squinted- chose to overlook these details, it was as if everything he had spent countless nights wishing for had come true. He watched the fire die slowly, even until the last winking ember had faded into blackness. He was just checking his watch in the graying light of early dawn, when the portrait hole let out a creak that seemed to echo after so many hours of quiet. Neville jumped and whirled around. There was no one there. The portrait hole was drifting shut but….
"Harry?" Neville asked uncertainly into the apparently empty room. There was a pause then Harry seemed to step out of thin air, just about dead on his feet, scrunching a silvery invisibility cloak into his pocket.
"Neville, what are you doing up?" Harry asked, his voice hoarse from exhaustion and lack of use. Neville shrugged uncomfortably.
"Potions essay," he lied. Harry raised his eyebrows, clearly unconvinced, but didn't comment. "Anyways, it's the weekend," Neville added almost defensively. Harry merely shrugged, too tired to respond. Neville waited while the silence stretched then turned towards the dormitory stairs. He had reached the third step up when he realized that Harry had not followed him. He turned to see his friend settled into a table by the window, flicking through an ancient restricted-section book. He plodded back down to the common room, frowning.
"You're not going to bed?" Harry raised his eyes from the cramped text.
"I didn't finish downstairs," Harry explained, "Anyways, it's the weekend." He added, echoing Neville's words. Neville shifted on his feet for a few moments. Tired as he was, and, as much as a very large part of him wanted to pretend life was normal, Harry obviously needed help.
"Can I help?" he finally asked. Harry looked up, startled. After a few seconds, he answered.
"Sure."
It took Harry nearly a quarter of an hour to explain to Neville all that he knew of Voldemort's horcruxes. Once he understood, however, Neville wasted no time in diving into the research with the same vigor that had filled him when working in the D.A and during his last year at Hogwarts. Though he should've been surprised to learn that Harry had been researching ways how to defeat this world's Voldemort rather than trying to simply go home, Harry's determined face dispelled all such presumptions. Having known Harry for the last seven years, he could well understand why.
Harry had said that he had found that certain events in their own history were different from this worlds'. Considering this, the two decided that the best way to start would be to find out more about the war and Voldemort's life.
By this time the sun could be seen peeking over the distant mountains in the tower windows, and both boys could barely keep their eyes open. Bone-tired, they decided to call it a morning and dragged themselves upstairs, falling fully dressed into their respective beds. The last thought that crossed Neville's mind before he sank into oblivion was one of satisfaction. He was once again part of something important.
In the week and a half that followed, Neville found himself immersed in hundreds of old Daily Prophets, recent Dark Arts history books and nearly a dozen auror memoirs. He and Harry were plotting a timeline of the past twenty or so years, and both were quickly becoming experts on recent history.
For the most part, the two wars- the first war that had taken place in Neville's world and the war of their current location- were roughly the same. Tom Marvolo Riddle had disappeared after leaving Borgin and Burkes- something they had surmised from a wanted ad for the shop, buried deep in a daily prophet dated two days after the obituary of Hepzibah Smith, heir of Helga Hufflepuff, had appeared in the papers. Nearly two years later Riddle had reappeared bearing a new name, and sparking a surge in Pureblood propaganda and a slew of replacements in the hierarchy of the ministry. In the years that followed new restrictive laws were written, "non- wizard, part-humans" were rounded up and tracked, and the obituary pages got longer and longer. To Neville, it was akin to watching a broom crash in slow motion. The war had started slowly, seeping into Wizarding society like a disease, and suddenly there were reports of outright attacks on muggles, half bloods, and public Wizarding sites – Hogsmeade, 's, and Diagon Alley.
Hogsmeade had been first, and incidentally, this attack was one of the few deviations in this world's history from Neville's own. One memoir, an old Hogwarts student who apparently now worked as an auror had described it in great detail. It had been a quiet, cloudy Saturday afternoon in late May. It had been a school weekend and the streets bustled with students shopping for graduation, out on dates, and trying to forget that exams were closing in upon them.
Then, all at once the laughter, shouting, and chatter were broken by the cracks of apparition. Dozens of Death Eaters had apparated simultaneously onto the scene, all over the tiny village and began firing curses in every direction. It was a tactic that would become common practice in the next decade. In all, fourteen students died, and twenty more were wounded before the fledging Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry's Aurors could arrive. The next year saw a drop in enlistment in the school- parents frightened to send their children away- and a massive rise in the number of applicants to the Auror's Academy.
But a larger Auror force had not stopped the Death Eaters from continuing attacks in public areas, and the Wizarding world from being plunged into fear and paranoia. Voldemort continued to gain power. The Ministry and Dumbledore's army of loyal fighters were losing ground.
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"It makes things much easier, you know," Harry was saying over dinner the next Wednesday, speaking only just loud enough to be heard over the bustle of the Great Hall. "If Voldemort was using horcruxes, then we are better off- we already know how to get rid of them."
Neville frowned over his beef stew. "You said it was some kind of venom, right?"
"Basilisk venom," Harry confirmed. "All we need is to get Gryffindor's sword."
"Yeah?" Neville dipped his spoon into his bowl, stirring his stew idly, and thinking.
"Yeah, apparently goblin-made swords like that soak up whatever might destroy them. And once we find them, all we'd need to do would be to stab the horcruxes with them." Harry spooned up some stew and had it halfway to his mouth before Neville's next question stopped him cold.
" Harry, if you never fought the basilisk here, then how would the sword have been filled with venom?"
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Ron didn't fancy himself the eavesdropping type on normal occasions. Usually, he was very good at leaving others to their own business and not interfering. And had the subject of Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom remained as innocent as fleeting curiosity concerning their unexpected arrival, he was sure that he'dve been able to ignore them and get on with his life and let them do likewise. But no, he thought with some regret, as he furtively leaned in a little closer to hear. The two boys were holding yet another conversation littered with You-Know-Who and something called "horcruxes". He honestly wasn't being vindictive. But anyone who upset his sister, needed to be watched. It had started like that anyway.
He had taken to following Harry around three weeks ago, after watching the boy and Ginny both leave the Great Hall one night in distress. And although a small part of Ron's mind did agree that perhaps he was being irrational, but he had had to find out what happened. He had to find out how the git had hurt Ginny. It had been surprisingly easy to tail Harry; he never noticed when he was being watched. It was almost like he was so used to being stared at that he could ignore it completely. Which was fortunate for Ron; he was terrible at spying on people.
What he had learned while watching Harry was fascinating. Maybe not the act of spying itself- Harry spent hours upon hours in the library and if there was anything more boring than reading the ancient and obscure texts which filled the restricted section, it was watching someone read them. With nothing else to do in the long hours in the oppressively quiet stacks, Ron had begun taking notes on what Harry was doing. He fancied it made the whole business more official. Although he would've preferred not to be using Granger's blank diary- it felt ridiculous to be writing in a diary- but such was life: He had no spare notebooks which he could carry around as discreetly and Granger hadn't wanted it back.
But after more than two weeks of spying, Ron was steadily growing more in awe of Harry Potter. He had never imagined that a person his own age could involve himself so deeply in the war efforts. At first he had thought that Harry was just something of a history nut with an obsession for information to rival Granger's. But no, he was actually considering killing You-Know-Who. Personally. The closest Ron had gotten to helping fight the war was not telling his mum that Bill had joined Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix.
Bending down on the pretense of picking up his dropped spoon, Ron pulled out the diary, scribbled in "Basilisk venom-----sword?" and watched appreciatively as the words faded into nothingness on the paper. It was some sort of privacy enchantment he supposed; the words disappeared until he wanted to see them again, bleeding back into visibility just the same as he had written them. Right brilliant idea, really. He shut the book and went back to his stew.
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Sometimes, Harry's ideas really scared Neville. Really. It wasn't that he had a problem plotting the murder of the most dangerous and murderous wizard of the age. That, Neville was fine with. Fighting Death Eaters? No problem. Possibly going deep into the bowels of the school to battle what several textbooks had described as The King of Serpents? Bring it on.
But breaking into Dumbledore's office to steal the sword of Gryffindor? Now therein lay the snag. And yet here he was, out at midnight, crouched with his friend under Harry's invisibility cloak, and edging inexorably down the hall towards the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore's study.
"Neville, I know." Harry said placatingly for the seventeenth time, hearing his friend hyperventilating in agitation. "I know it's…" He searched for a word to properly surmise the entire plan, but could not find one. He shook his head, "but it'll be quick. We just grab the thing and run. Dumbledore is out at the Order meeting anyway."
"I know," Neville said, nodding jitteringly. "And it's very important to get the hat," he recited, trying to calm his nerves. "I haven't been this nervous since Snape tried to kill Trevor," he giggled hysterically, before clamping down on his tongue to get himself to stop. "Sorry."
"C'mon Neville." Harry said bracingly, ignoring the outburst as they stopped in front of the grotesque face of the statue. "You've stolen the sword from Dumbledore's office before."
"That was different," Neville mumbled, embarrassed. "That was Snape. This is Dumbledore, you know?"
"Yeah," Harry replied. "I know. Sugar quills." Neville started as the gargoyle sprang aside, leaving the entrance open. "Let's go."
Dumbledore's office was dark, lit only by the moonless sky outside the open windows. There were more magical contraptions strewn about the office than Neville remembered, all whirring, twisting or, in several cases, emitting occasional puffs of smoke. The sorting hat however was exactly where it had always rested on the shelf behind the headmaster's desk. Harry ducked out from under the cloak, leaving Neville to pull it off himself, and made a beeline for the hat. He grabbed the hat, sent up a silent prayer of relief and headed back to where Neville was waiting by the door.
Neville smiled tightly in relief as well and the two them wrapped themselves back in the cloak. It was just lucky that Fawkes wasn't here, he supposed. As much as he liked the bird, he doubted it would've taken kindly to the two of them sneaking around Dumbledore's office like this. But they had spoken too soon. With a sudden flash of blinding flame, the phoenix exploded into the room with a screech loud enough to wake half the castle. Neville, blinded and ears ringing, felt a talon scrape the back of his neck as it wrapped around his and Harry's collars. The bird tugged upwards and the office disappeared in a burst of golden flame.
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Lots of Neville in here, but then, he makes me happy. Hope you enjoyed.
