13th August 2011 – South-east England
Thanks to Harry, the Unspeakables had gained access to Hogwarts's List, the list of all magical children born in Britain, which meant that Neville could locate the muggleborns and convey them to the relative safety of Avalon. Despite the takeover, and the radical changes to Ministry legislation concerning muggleborns, little had changed in regard to the age at which the muggleborns were contacted (even if they were now kidnapped instead).
Voldemort apparently preferred to wait until children reached the age of eleven to take them for his camps, since that was the generally agreed upon age at which one could be certain a child wouldn't 'run to Squib', as his own uncle had once phrased it.
No doubt he would be scrambling to correct his oversight, since the Unspeakables now had control over the List and (Neville was under no illusions that the Dark Lord was an unintelligent man) he would quite rightly assume they would move to cut off his access entirely. Despite the atrocity of what he had already done with his eugenics programme, Neville knew there were other, equally bad, things that could be done with magical children.
Black rituals designed to increase the power of the participants, at the cost of the lives and magic of the victims stood out in Neville's mind, but there were other, more abhorrent, things too. For those reasons alone Neville would have wanted to be part of the muggleborn extraction teams, but he also knew that some of the other Unspeakables wouldn't be as—well, patient, he supposed, as he would be.
He glanced down at the next name on the list. He and Unspeakable Songflower had made several trips already that day, ferrying four families to Avalon already that day. They had only a few trips left, if he hadn't underestimated the amount of work they had to do.
"Hey, Songflower. This next one's called Dursley, why is that name familiar?"
"Is it a line that went Squib? It does sound familiar…" came the easy reply.
"Hey, there's two Dursleys down... at different locations, look!" said Neville, scanning the list again. Ellyn Dursley, 6, and Robert Dursley, 3, both in the same general area, but resident at a different address…
"Harry's aunt and uncle. Cousin as well, I suppose," remembered Neville. "They were Dursleys. Is that a common Muggle name?"
Songflower shot him a withering look.
"My blood is only a fraction less pure than yours, Longbottom. If you don't know, I probably don't, either."
"Harry's mother was a witch," said Neville, continuing on without responding to her jibe, "so It's not unheard of… Maybe his cousin divorced and remarried?"
"We shouldn't linger too long," said Songflower, glancing around the street. Neville ignored her: despite her protestation, all Unspeakables had some passing level of familiarity with Muggles and Muggle culture because of the nature of their work, and the pair of them blended in perfectly well with their surroundings.
He was wearing trousers, and a shirt, and what he knew to be a respectable light jacket. Nothing a Muggle would find distressing, at any rate.
"They'll think we're tourists, it's fine," he said. "I'm told Muggles spend rather a lot of money going to the strangest places just to look around and then go home again, not even interesting places. Hermione told me once there's this famous painting that Muggles all around the world come to see, and it's not even that good, it's just this lady. She doesn't even move!"
Songflower looked about to retort, but then shut her mouth suddenly.
"She doesn't… move or talk? Is she naked? What's so good about the painting?"
"Someone famous painted it, apparently. It's meant to be right boring though, and you have to queue for hours to see it."
"Muggles are strange."
"They are a bit," Neville agreed. "Shall we? I think that's number twenty-six," he said, and nodded towards the detached house two houses down. He knew it was number twenty-six, he should have said, but it didn't really matter.
He gestured for Songflower to go first – he was a gentleman, or was supposed to be at any rate – and together they crossed up to the front door. Songflower left him to knock, which was typical really. She'd probably take all the good bits, like talking and explaining, and cock it up as well by saying something normal for purebloods but outlandish for Muggles. Like she'd mention dragons, or werewolves, or tell a story about the time she flew her grandfather's illegal griffin across the Channel.
Fun story, to be sure, but probably not the best one to tell in this sort of situation.
A stout man of about Neville's own age answered the door, and Neville peered at him to see if he looked anything like Harry. Maybe if Harry had got fat, then thin again, then fell face first into a wall, but there was something about the eyes that Neville recognised. The shape of them, the way they sat in the face…
Oh, right, he had a job to do.
"Hello, is that Mr Dursley?" he asked, glancing down again at the sheet. Robert Dursley lived at this address, not Ellyn. Then, "Dudley Dursley?"
"It is," confirmed the man, "And you are?"
"I'm Neville Longbottom," he said, "and this is my colleague Calliope Songflower. We have something to talk to you about which is probably better discussed inside. Would you mind?"
"Is it a police matter? Are you government? What agency sent you?"
"It's none of those things. We're not from any agency, we're not trying to sell you Bibles or Jesus, we just have something very important we need to discuss with you. It's, er, well you remember your cousin Harry?"
Dursley considered it, glancing from one end of the street to the other, and then at Neville and Songflower, before finally stepping aside and gesturing for them to come inside. He'd gone pale.
"Su, stick the telly on for Robert in the play room and come join me in the lounge," he called, shutting the door and locking behind them. "We've got some… some guests," he finished lamely.
"I'll put on some tea," called back a woman, presumably Su.
Neville and Songflower were led into a spacious – for a Muggle house, anyway – lounge, where Dursley took his usual seat and directed Neville or Songflower to sit at one end of a long sofa.
"Su sits there," he said, shrugging apologetically when Songflower tried to sit at the opposite end of the sofa and had been cautioned against it.
Soon enough Su, Dursley's wife (Neville assumed) came back into the room with four mugs, a teapot, and some other things on a tray. She seemed a pleasant enough woman, if a bit on the thin side for Neville, and was pretty enough, he supposed, with fair skin and hair.
"Hi," she said, "I'm Susan. You are?"
"Neville Longbottom and Calliope Songflower," said Neville quickly. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He stood to shake her hand – if he remembered right, kissing of hands had fallen out of fashion among Muggles.
"This is going to be easier than usual," he continued, "because you already know some of it, Dudley."
"Why isn't—I mean, shouldn't Harry—he's not dead, is he?" said Dursley, the last bit almost whispered. "We haven't heard anything in nearly ten years, not since that Mr Weasley came and said he'd been kidnapped, put some spells on the house and…"
"Spells? I don't understand," said Su. "What's this about, Dud?"
"My cousin Harry is a wizard," said Dudley slowly and quietly. "You know, wands and magic and all that stuff, but… it's real, Su, it's really real. I had to get—there was an accident once, this monster came looking for Harry in the summer and—and it nearly ate my soul. Magic is real. Harry's important in their world."
"The most important person alive, I think," said Songflower. "He's been unavailable for a long time. It's related to what we've come to talk to you about. Your son Robert is a wizard, too."
"Not mine!" said Dudley. "You'll not be having him."
"It doesn't work like that, I'm really sorry," said Neville. He was sorry, too. Not about the child's magic – that was something to be celebrated – but he was always a bit sorry to uproot these people's lives. It wasn't their fault, after all. "The madman who killed your aunt and uncle? He took over our whole world. I don't want to trust the old wards on the house to hold up when he comes looking for you," he said. He could feel the remnants of a Fidelius on the house, although it had been broken years and years before.
"All you wizards bring is death," said Dursley. "I never met my grandparents because of wizards, I never got to meet my aunt Lily, and the less said about its effect of my childhood the better, frankly. Magic messed up my mum. I don't want it for Robert."
"I can't deny anything you've said," said Neville, because he couldn't. That was war. "But this isn't normal for our world. We're in a big war, Dudley. The worst of all our wars in a long, long time. This thing is something big, something… it's hard to explain," he ended lamely. Harry could probably do it better.
"Our legitimate government was replaced five years ago by a puppet government controlled by the Dark Lord," interrupted Songflower. "After a protracted civil war. Our faction, which is a bit like your intelligence agency I suppose, went underground at the beginning of the war, protected by an ancient magic which let no intruders into our fortress, but which wouldn't let us out either. In that time we have worked to fulfil ancient prophecies and devise a plan to bring the Dark Lord down. We would have contacted you anyway, Mr Dursley, because of your blood connection to Harry Potter. That your son is a wizard makes the situation even more dire, if I am to be frank. A magical child with such a close relation to Potter is … it could be devastating for reasons I don't understand properly; if I understood the rituals involved I would attempt to explain them to you, but your son is in much danger. More danger, even, than he would be if he wasn't a wizard."
She paused.
"This will not enamour you to magic any more than prior experiences have. I do understand that, Mr Dursley, I really do. The thing is, though, that is how it is. Can't change it. That's the reality of the situation. Your son is a wizard, and you and your wife will have to relocate to our hidden island for the remainder of this war. It would be morally criminal of us to allow you to be captured by the Dark Lord, not to mention the significant practical risk to Potter and the whole of the war effort."
Neville felt like saying something to ease the tension a bit, since Dursley had gone red and his wife had become increasingly confused with every passing sentence, but Songflower had started, and once started, was very difficult to stop.
"You can think we're monsters, that we're just as bad as the Dark Lord, and maybe you'd be right. But answer this for me, if you please: would you rather we whisk you away to our fairy island where you can watch your son grow and mature, or would you rather he murdered you right where you stood, and then used your son in unspeakably Dark rituals to harm your cousin and ensure the slavery of Muggles and wizards everywhere in the world?"
"Those aren't very good options," snarled Dursleys. "Where's the one where you protect our house and let us live here in peace?"
"They are the options we realistically have, Mr Dursley. It isn't nice. It isn't fair. It's about the resources we have, and the resources we are willing to allocate, to protecting you. We need you safe but can't spare guards. You'll have to pack up. It's war."
"We can go to Australia, then. Su's parents still live there, I've got a degree…"
"There is no place on Earth where you will be safe from him," said Neville, deciding enough was enough and Songflower had overstepped slightly, "except on our island with us. He'll track you through Robert."
"This is crazy," said Su. "This is just crazy. You're all nuts, the lot of you."
Songflower took out her wand and charmed an ugly wooden statue tapdance across the lounge.
"We are not crazy. We are merely fighting an existential war against a genocidal maniac who has almost the full backing of our country, and your son, completely unexpectedly I should add, has suddenly become a major weakness."
Neville hadn't really thought of it like that. The Unspeakables hadn't exactly planned for Harry's Muggle cousin to have a muggleborn son. The kinds of blood wards which could be erected based on the boy's blood were intriguing, but Neville knew there were Darker and more dangerous things which could be done with such a close relation to Harry.
"There's another Dursley on our list too," he said softly. "Ellyn Dursley. Is she a relation?"
If at all possible, and Neville thought it must be because it had just happened, Dursley grew even paler with his announcement.
"My sister," he said eventually. Neville raised an eyebrow. To have a six year old sister at their age… that had been a fairly late pregnancy, for a Muggle. "She was a bit of a surprise," confirmed Dursley.
"I think we should go see your mum," said Neville. "Pack up quickly, then join as at your parents' house. Are they in?"
"I—yes, they should be," said Dursley.
"I meant quickly, too," said Neville. "We made a move against the Dark Lord recently, and we are acting quickly to prevent him contacting any of the families like your own."
"Right," said Dursley. "What about—everything? My job, Su's?"
"We can deal with that," said Songflower. "I'll stay here, Longbottom. You get the other one. This situation takes priority now, I should think."
"Right. Mr and Mrs Dursley, Senior," he said, calling up the nearest Apparition point in the area, and disappearing with a loud crack.
4 Privet Drive
Neville had actually been here once before, and had he bothered to check the location of Ellyn Dursley he would have known for a fact that it was Harry's Dursleys before ever meeting Dudley Dursley. The first thing he did before actually approaching the house was check its wards thoroughly. The old blood ward of Dumbledore's still flared bright, charged for a considerable amount of time by an old magic ritual just days before Dumbledore's death, and a dozen or so minor enchantments.
Satisfied that, at the very least, Marked Death Eaters couldn't enter the house itself, Neville strode up to the door and knocked at it confidently. It was early on Saturday afternoon, so he didn't think the Dursleys would be out (and Dudley hadn't thought so), and it didn't seem too unsociable a time to call.
And, he thought, casting his eyes over his nondescript Muggle clothing, at least he wasn't dressed like a wizard. That would have to help.
Mrs Dursley, or a woman Neville assumed was Mrs Dursley since she looked a bit like he remembered if a decade or so older, answered the door. She didn't appear to recognise him; he didn't blame her, since he hadn't been as handsome then as he was now.
"I'm Neville Longbottom. I'm a friend of your nephew Harry."
"Vernon! Put Ellyn in her bedroom, we have a … visitor."
Dudley had certainly been raised by this woman, thought Neville. They had essentially the same reaction to magical visitors: get the children put away and set in for bad news.
"May I come in?"
"If you must," said Mrs Dursley, ushering him inside.
He was directed to the sitting room and shown to an old-fashioned (not that Neville was au fair with Muggle fashions; it just looked old) sofa, where he sat and waited for Mr Dursley to return.
"Neville Longbottom," he said when Dursley returned, and stood to shake the man's hand. "It's a few things, really. You've been told our government has fallen, yes?"
"There was word of that," said Vernon cautiously. "That Weasley man came and told us the war was over, they'd lost."
"Yes, good, that's essentially what happened," said Neville. "Except, you were told that Harry had disappeared?"
"Too right! Scarpered, we always thought. I said, didn't I Pet, 'If he's gone and run off to America, it'll be the first sane thing he's ever done!'"
"You did," murmured Petunia quietly, although from the look on her face (to which Vernon was oblivious) she rather disagreed with that assessment.
"Yeah, well, he didn't run away, he was kidnapped by a rogue Department of the previous government. Long story short, we made a plan to fight the Dark Lord, but we were trapped for nearly ten years. We're back now. We had planned to get you to safety – we believe now that Harry is active again, the Dark Lord will renew his search for his relatives – but there was a, well, It's difficult to just…"
"He's alive, then?" asked Petunia, her tone decidedly less sharp than Neville would have expected. "Harry, I mean."
"Yes. Very alive. Kicking himself about how much time they've, we've, wasted, but we all are."
"You never did say why Harry was so important to them, did you?" asked Vernon suddenly, turning towards Petunia. "I never wanted to know the full story, before," he said slowly, "but I think I might, now."
Petunia sighed.
"There was the letter from Dumbledore, which you read," she said, and sniffed. "But there were the letters from Lily which I never showed anyone, not even you, Vernon."
"Well? What did they say?!" demanded the large man.
"Her husband, James, he had been approached by the Dark Lord and had refused his invitation… and so Lily had been offered a position as well, something unheard of, she made specific mention, because of her … status," continued Petunia, each word sounding as if it caused her real physical pain to speak. "She refused, of course, but when he went to meet with them, they fought him long enough to escape. She said it invoked a prophecy, and that Harry would forever be in danger from him."
"Well, he wasn't, was he? What sort of a Dark wizard gets blown up by a toddler?" said Vernon.
"But that's the point, isn't it?" said Neville. "He didn't stay blow up and there was a prophecy. Harry killed him once. Harry is the only person who is able to kill him."
"Give me a gun and enough brandy and see how far we get," suggested Vernon.
Neville shook his head.
"Won't work. Once, during the first war, someone got a gun near him. Bullets won't touch him, I'm afraid. Every last one bounced off him."
"That's ridiculous."
"It is a bit," said Neville amiably. "That's magic for you. But we think we can kill him, or Harry can anyway, but you're going to be in danger. And that brings me to the other thing."
"What other thing?" demanded Vernon again, and Neville glanced at Petunia just in time to see her sigh in defeat.
"Ellyn is a witch, isn't she?" asked Petunia, although it didn't sound like a question, not really. "I knew she'd painted all over the wall going up the stairs!"
"Was it just that?" asked Neville curiously, and knew he'd hit a nerve because Petunia cringed.
"Not just that," she admitted. "I knew the signs," she said cryptically, "from with Lily, then again with Harry. I checked Ellyn just like Dudley, and saw her floating her toys a few years ago."
"Yes, well, with the war being as it is, you're not going to be able to stay here. Not with the Dark Lord in control of the wizarding world, and Harry Potter an active threat."
Neville really didn't enjoy being the bearer of so much bad news.
"Leave! What does he mean leave?" complained Vernon to Petunia. "Not with house prices like this, you'd be daft to sell up! Barely back where we were three years ago…"
"Yourselves and your daughter will come to live on Avalon with us. It's where Harry is, and where lots of other families like yours live."
"Now, wait a minute! We've worked hard to provide for us and ours, and you'd have us pack up and leave at a moment's notice? For what? So my no-good nephew can be safe?"
"No," said Neville seriously, "so that your daughter isn't stolen from you in the night by murderous rapist xenophobes."
"Why are magical children born to people like us?" asked Petunia, although Neville knew she wasn't asking anyone in particular. He had to laugh, not at her, but because that was a question wizards had been asking for centuries, in much the same tones, but for very different reasons.
"You know," he said, "wizards have been asking that for centuries. It's basically the Dark Lord's battle chant. They don't like it either. But the real answer is getting into philosophy of magic stuff, stuff no one can really prove. In your case we think there might be Squibs present in the Evans line, but there's the theory that muggleborns are what happens when magic makes a choice to go somewhere new."
"Your grandson Robert is a wizard, too," he continued. "Your son should be over very soon, actually."
As if on cue, Neville's pocket started vibrating. He wondered at why Songflower would buzz him for help for a moment until a crash at the front door alerted him to the fact that, unsurprisingly, all was not well and trouble had turned up.
"I'll be right back. Stay inside the house. The wards will hold. It's probably Death Eaters. You'll be safe if you just stay inside."
Leaving the Dursleys to panic in what Neville hoped would be the safety of their blood-warded home, Neville threw up a quick shield charm and stepped into the hallway to see just what damage had been done to the front door.
As it was, there wasn't a door there anymore. He'd fix that later – the Death Eater that had been thrown into it had been bounced back off the wards (Neville assumed this because he didn't see it, but he knew a thing or two about wards), but there was still a fight going on outside (in broad daylight in a Muggle area too) and the younger Dursleys did need to be ushered into the safety of the house.
He went cold when he saw just who had turned up to 'meet with' the Dursleys. The Lestranges, all three of them. They had surrounded the car, inside which the Muggles were trapped. Songflower circled them widely, making liberal use of the Muggle street's many parked cars as physical shields.
Wordlessly he transfigured the ground beneath Bellatrix into ice, then sent a ripping curse at the mad witch's neck. Songflower jumped back into action with a set of Bone-Breakers levelled at Rabastan.
"Go home, Bella," called Neville in between ripping curses. "You won't win."
The mad witch cackled at him, and cartwheeled around the icy road as if it were no hindrance at all. Instead, the ice cracked and broke, and flew towards him like a rain of shattered glass. He grimaced and Banished the ice shards, scattering them harmlessly.
He tried a different approach.
"Your Lord can't be happy with this sort of exposure," he said, silently sending a Bone-Breaker her way. Songflower was managing to keep the brothers busy, at least, so he could spare time to distract the more dangerous Lestrange from her goal (the Muggles in the car). If he could distract the three of them long enough to set up an impromptu Tunnel Ward the Dursleys could escape to safety, and the Lestranges drawn into a wild and pointless chase.
Neville ducked behind the (elder) Dursleys' car to avoid a Hellfire Jinx. He doubted they'd appreciate it, but what else was one to do in this sort of situation?
Grimacing even as he started to make the first wand motion, Neville cast an obscure area-effect charm on the street.
"Despero," he whispered, pushing every last bit of negative emotion he could muster into the charm. If he'd done it right, and he thought he had because he'd suddenly come over all melancholic, Privet Drive should resemble something more akin to Azkaban prison than a well-to-do Muggle suburb.
In most realities viewed through the Reality Mirror (or, realities in which Bellatrix had gone to prison), reminding her in such a visceral manner of her stint in Azkaban was a sure-fire way to catch her off guard.
He pushed his head above the car to see if it had worked and, surprisingly, it had. Although it had perhaps worked a little too well, since although none of the Lestrangers looked capable of advancing on the terrified Dursleys, Songflower wept and the Dursleys had gone into hysterics in the car.
Neville alone was unaffected since it was after all his emotion powering the spell, but he used that to his advantage to bludgeon Rodolphus out of his way. He spelled the car door open (it had been locked), and yanked all three Dursleys out of the car.
He probably didn't have too long until the Lestranges broke through his charm – he saw that Songlower had already overcome her sudden bout of depression enough to advance slowly upon Rabastan who was, unfortunately, resisting the spell also.
Heedless of that, if just for the moment, Neville ushered the Dursleys firmly inside Number 4, told them that they should absolutely not emerge from this house until he personally told them they could (no matter what the other Muggles are doing or saying), and then went back outside to see that Bellatrix had set fire to their car.
"I promised you once I would kill you," said Neville lightly. "I didn't forget that, Bella."
"Lacero cordis," he said calmly, not at all expecting the spell to actually land. They were both too good for that; neither of them was likely to be caught by anything less than an Unforgivable, but that didn't mean they weren't trying. Neville thought it rather more likely he'd get her with some creative transfiguration or charms work than a Dark spell meant for ripping flesh, but that didn't mean it wasn't more satisfying to try with the ripping curses first.
The lunatic bitch had had more of an impact on his childhood than his own parents had. He would end her, and her husband, and his brother.
He shielded then rolled out of the way of a vivid purple curse sent from Rabastan.
"Your parents begged, Longbottom!" crooned Bellatrix gleefully. "'Please, we have a son!' As if I didn't know that! Suppuratio vulna!"
Neville animated a particularly ugly garden gnome to take that particular curse for him (he didn't want to be stuck with a gaping, festering wound if at all possible) and glanced over at Songflower, who was still managing perfectly well to fight off the Lestrange brothers.
Could he manage another Desperation Charm? He didn't think so, not after the strength of emotion he'd pushed into the last one. He'd been trying to capture the precise feeling of a Dementor, but maybe he'd gone a little overboard and exerted himself.
What he really needed to do was get the Death Eaters somewhere less publicly Muggle, not attempt another border-line Dark spell, but how to do that exactly? He knew of a few ways of forcibly transporting someone somewhere else, but none of them were especially practical in this situation except the one he really, really didn't want to do…
He sighed, and sidestepped another violent curse from Bellatrix, and then readied himself.
Apparition Tag was a dangerous, stupid and absolutely insane game played by certain young wizards (and witches) after receiving their Apparition License. Neville had never indulged in the game per se, although Hermione had made it clear to them all that it was a potentially useful skill. Harry and the Weasley twins had played it all across the south of England, of course, but Neville was brave, not stupid, and so he hadn't joined in.
Splinching himself across six separate counties was not something he wanted to try. Still, he could do it. With a loud crack Neville disappeared, but instead of forcing himself out of the magicspacetime vortex miles and miles away, he collapsed into a high-velocity streak of magic and careened into Bellatrix Lestrange.
Apparition Tag differed from regular Side-Along in about a hundred different ways Neville couldn't remember, but the most interesting one was that someone could be forcibly taken up in your slipstream. Once caught up, it was a battle of wills between who gained control.
Neville didn't intend to lose. With another crack and a dispersal of wizardsmoke through the street, Neville and Bellatrix Lestrange condensed into the spacetime gap and disappeared.
13th August 2011 - ? (Wales)
Although they'd reached their destination, Neville didn't let go off Bellatrix quite then. He pulled her close – metaphysically speaking, since they resembled nothing more than a high velocity cloud of dust streaming through the air – and pulled out just moments before he hit a rather conveniently placed rock outcropping.
He left Bellatrix crumple into the rock, then Apparated a short distance away to bind her. He'd chosen the hilltop in Wales constantly watched by a bored Unspeakable responsible for the scrying pools. With luck, someone would arrive to help transport the mad bitch. He snarled when she collapsed into dust and came barrelling at him instead of dying against the stones. He spun into the Apparition vortex and pulled.
They narrowly missed a tree, fading out only at the last possible moment, before Bellatrix wrestled control from him and sent them whirling towards the water.
Frantic, Neville pushed and pulled and wriggled until Bellatrix spun away into the skies, leaving Neville to rapidly corporealise or face splinching himself out of existence. He managed not to splinch himself, but he did hit the water hard.
Whilst at the bottom of the pool he stuck a hand in his pocket, buzzed Songflower with his coin, then pointed his wand down at the pool bottom. He shot out of the water and into the air, then came falling gracefully back to the ground.
He could hear Bellatrix noisily buzzing around the sky, then cast a nonverbal Anti-Apparition Ward. It wouldn't hold against Voldemort, and it would let others in. That wasn't really the point of it – if he'd timed it right, he'd catch Lestrange mid-shift and she'd splinch her wand arm.
He hadn't, but Bellatrix fell from the air with a pleasing enough scream that he didn't really mind. Instead of falling, Bellatrix merely floated to the hard ground and flung a blood-boiling hex at him for his troubles. They traded spells for a while before Bellatrix grew bored, stopped responding, and danced around his spells instead.
"I don't have time for this, Lestrange," growled Neville eventually, ripping a small rock formation out of the ground to act as a physical shield. "You don't have time for this."
She cackled at him.
"Little baby Longbottom grew up!" she said, cartwheeling away from his stunner. "When I bring you back I'm going to ask Him to make you mine. You'll beg for it."
Neville had to admire her, in a twisted way, because at sixty years of age Bellatrix still looked – and fought – like a witch thirty years younger. It meant she had powerful magic at the very least, be then, so did he. He knew that now.
"If I get you put in a cell, Lestrange," he said calmly, "if you leave it'll be because you're dead."
A loud crack alerted him to the presence of another wizard, but he couldn't see who it was because he'd stuck rocks in the way.
"They've got Rodolphus!"
He didn't need any more context to figure it was Rabastan, so he blasted the rocks out of his way and cast a flurry of stunners and ripping curses at the pair of them. Rabastan deflected the curses, and Bellatrix simply sneered at him before grabbing Rabastan close.
Then, as if it were barely any effort, Bellatrix shattered his ward and disappeared.
"Fuck!"
Then, completely and utterly too late to provide any kind of actual assistance, two grey-robed Unspeakables popped into the battle-scarred clearing.
"Oh, she got away," one of them said.
"You've ruined the cadence of magical flow, Longbottom!" said the other.
Neville sighed.
"Okay, well, you guys fix that I guess, and I'll go check on the Dursleys." He readied his wand for a standard Apparition – he didn't think he could manage anything fancy, not after the day's exertions – but the taller of the two Unspeakables stopped him.
"You needn't bother," she said. "We extracted them. They're back on Avalon. If you go quick, you can catch Potter's reaction when we show him Rodolphus and his relatives. They're all in the LMR. He and Granger brought Billy back; it should be a riot."
To Avalon, then.
Caer Tawel Large Meeting Room (Avalon)
'Clusterfuck' was an understatement, thought Neville as he squeezed out of the Apparition and into the – somewhat crowded – Large Meeting Room, but he didn't think there was another word that would fit. At one end of the room Rabastan Lestrange violently pulled against his restraints – magewrought iron shackles, crafted not conjured – and spat insults at anyone and everything, flanked by Agent Songflower, Luna and a burly new recruit who looked like an islander.
At the opposite end, and creating almost as much noise and furore, were Harry, Hermione and Billy the Goatman. He at least wore a wizard's robe, but it wasn't tied shut and effectively hid nothing. He appeared to be alternating between flinging insults at everyone in the room and mockingly appearing subordinate to Harry.
At the centre of everything were the Dursleys, who… well, and Neville couldn't blame them for this because it was a bizarre situation, looked as if they were about to faint (or explode, if one only meant Vernon).
Neville suddenly felt a stiff breeze around his ankles, which moved rapidly up his legs until it reached his testicles, which is when he decided to look down. He'd been wearing trousers, but to his abject horror he looked down to see himself 'wearing' an insubstantial skirt made out of leaves tossed by an ethereal wind. He looked around the room to see he wasn't the only one so affected – about half the people in the room were now in the same state.
"Change them back, Gwilim," said Harry firmly. "We'll have none of that."
That, even over the general cacophony, was enough to rouse Petunia Dursley from her shock-induced silence. She pointed, dumbstruck, but at Harry and not at Billy.
"We'd thought… they said you were…" she said.
"Well, they were wrong. Sorry about that," said Harry easily.
"Filthy, dirty, stupid Muggles!" roared Rodolphus over the din.
"Damn it! I want some fucking order!" screamed Morningstar, her voice augmented by magic. "Someone silence that animal – no offence intended, Gwilim, I meant Lestrange – and get him to a cell!"
"He keeps slipping out of it," complained Songflower.
Luna merely smiled serenely, now the proud owner of an enchanted hat in the shape of a toad.
"Is that man a goat?" asked Susan Dursley suddenly, pointing at Billy, who made a menacing motion with his fingers before Harry stopped him.
"You will not do magic on my … family," he said somewhat awkwardly, but firmly enough that Billy considered it. "And change everyone's clothes back."
"It is as you command, your Infernal Majesty," he said, and bowed. Neville frowned when Harry nearly got his eye poked out, but at the very least he had trousers again, so he wasn't about to complain. Even if his shirt had turned a non-existent colour.
Rodolphus had gone silent, which presumably meant someone had cast the spell on him again, but he didn't succumb to any of the stunners or sleeping charms sent his way. Neville suspected Billy, personally, but didn't voice his concerns because he didn't want to be charmed to speak in ancient riddles again. He wasn't afraid exactly, but he didn't really want to spend a week literally speaking in riddles if he could help it. And he could.
It seemed likely everyone else was suffering from the same issue, because nobody suggested Billy might be responsible for what everyone knew was exactly his usual activity.
"You're alive," said Dudley Dursley eventually, although his skin still looked several shades lighter than a vampire's, so Neville wasn't sure he was actually present yet.
"Yes," confirmed Harry. "These nice wizards in grey robes kidnapped me and trapped me here for eight or so years."
"Right," said Dudley. "My son's a wizard," he continued, as if he were merely imparting some piece of family news in utterly ordinary circumstances.
"Oh, er…" said Harry. "Right. Well. Congratulations," he finished lamely, clearly not having been expecting such a thing to ever come out of his cousin's mouth.
"A fucking disgrace!" crowed Lestrange, apparently no longer under any kind of silencing spell.
"Why hasn't anybody removed him?" said Morningstar. Immediately she became flustered, but Neville couldn't really figure why until he realised she'd usually stomp her foot emphatically, but hadn't.
"We can't move," said Songflower tersely. "Every time this fucker," and she paused only to jab Lestrange in the back with her wand, "slips his silencing spell, it ends up on us."
To his credit, and Neville wouldn't credit Vernon Dursley with much of anything, the man had remained silent up to that point. His skin had spanned a range between deathly white, unbelievably red, and luridly purple (and some colours in between which Neville didn't think had existed before), but he hadn't said anything (probably because he knew better than to say something incendiary in such an environment) until it became clear he was, actually, stuck to the floor.
"This is just an outrage! Taken from my home on a bloody Saturday, my daughter is a—is one of! And then my grandson… and that man is a bloody goat! You will release me at once! I will not stand for this! I am a respectable man, I pay my taxes and did my bloody time! We are going home."
For a bare moment Neville thought Vernon Dursley's sheer indignation and utter outrage would shatter the ancient goatman's magic (if any Muggle could negate such magic with pure outrage Neville thought it would be Vernon Dursley), but it didn't go that way and Dursley remained (in a state of outrage) rooted to the spot.
He kept shouting, but no sound came out, so Neville assumed Billy had silenced him.
Harry crossed to put himself between Billy and the Dursleys.
"All right, Gwilim, you've had your fun. Now let everyone go," he said. Neville attempted – surreptitiously of course – to move his foot. No luck. He supposed only Harry had been left out of the spell.
The old goatman snapped his fingers and Harry, too, became rooted to the spot.
Billy walked briskly past Harry and began to circle the Dursley family. The children had been remarkably quiet throughout the whole ordeal, and remained so even upon close scrutiny by the last living goatman.
"Muggle," he said, dismissing Susan Dursley after the briefest of moments. He turned his gaze to Dudley. "Wasted potential. Too Muggle for its expression…"
He turned to their son, Robert, held in his mother's arms.
"Ah! Yes, that is interesting, isn't it?" he said, turning from Robert and towards Harry, who glared at him. He placed a long finger upon the child's head, said something unintelligible, and a pale golden glow diffused out of the boy's head.
Harry looked about to protest, but (as with everyone else, Neville realised) he had been silenced.
Billy then moved to regard Petunia Dursley, and he did this very carefully. He seemed uninterested in anything physically related to Petunia Dursley, but he did spend an inordinate amount of time observing the spaces around her. After a while, Neville assumed he'd found what he had been looking for because he stood up straight and scratched behind one of his horns.
He looked down at Ellyn, who at six was far more verbal than her nephew, and she opened her mouth to speak.
"Why are you a goat?" she asked. Neville supposed she'd been left out of the silencing spell on purpose, since everyone else seemed unavoidably affected. He couldn't even break it, and he'd tried half a dozen times already, because its construction was… unique.
Billy seemed to consider this question far more seriously than anything Neville had ever seen him asked before, before kneeling down to speak with her.
"It's magic," he said, and placed a finger on her forehead. The same pale golden light diffused out from under it.
"Can everyone do magic?"
"No," said Billy. "But you will be able to learn. Quiet now," he said, and rose to his feet.
Then he turned towards Vernon Dursley and looked him up and down, then sighed.
"You are the most Muggle Muggle I have ever seen," he declared eventually. "You literally repel magic. It is a testament to the—the fact that you were able to not only—I cannot even begin to explain why it is ludicrous that… Your grandson is implausible, but not absurd given the circumstances. The existence of your daughter is something akin to a magical impossibility. And she is your daughter," he continued, apparently unconcerned with the effects of his words, "because I checked. Your daughter represents either the confirmation or the refutation of an extremely ancient philosophical position to an important question, and I cannot decide which of these it is."
Harry had apparently broken through the silencing spell because he registered his complaints in a very vocal manner.
"You've had your fun," he said. "Now let us go. We've got too much to do and no time as it is without playing silly games!"
Billy snapped his fingers, and Neville tried to move his legs again to no avail. Billy snapped his fingers again.
"It's not your conscious magic!" snapped Hermione after Billy tried and failed another six times to set them all free. "You can't behave around humans like you do the elyrch! Pull your magic in."
Billy scratched at his chin.
"We might be here a while, then," he decided.
"You're only warping reality on a local scale," said Hermione. "If you left the castle – no, don't go back to the lake," she said quickly, "go to just outside the main entrance."
"I get your point, Clever Tits," said Billy. Instead of Apparating – or whatever the goatman equivalent was – out, Billy decided to walk out, which entailed moving through sets of staircases, folded wizardspace, and corridors until he reached the castle's main entrance. Because of this it was nine minutes until Neville was able to move his legs again, but he only realised this because Vernon Dursley had (metaphorically) exploded again, Lestrange had started shouting, and Unspeakable Morningstar stomped her foot
"Potter, calm your relatives down! Granger, you go corral Billy; can't have him leave in all this chaos, can we? Lovegood and Songflower if you do not remove Lestrange this instant there will be repercussions! We will regain some kind of order if it's the last thing I do!"
Luna looked almost sad that her hat had disappeared, but moved to complete the orders as commanded.
Neville tried to slip out in the chaos, but Morningstar rounded on him before he managed it.
"Briefing room! Someone needs to debrief, and it's going to have to you, Longbottom!"
He groaned.
"I was going to see Hannah—you know she's here now?" he said, but he knew it was a feeble protest.
"Now, Longbottom!"
He acquiesced.