39. Transformations and Happy Surprises
Neville groaned inwardly into the chilly morning air and snuggled farther under the blankets once he had disabled the time charm that awoke him at 6 a.m. He dreaded today for more reasons than the six mile run that awaited him. After holding out as long as he could (only two days), Neville had realized that his early morning runs with the Snapes had become more important to him than his obsession to lose weight. He was now far enough under 200 pounds to breathe easier, despite the fact that lately his weight had been stable. June claimed it was because as he lost fat he was gaining muscle. He didn't know if it were true or not but he had found he couldn't stand another day of not running - besides, he had been getting pretty hungry and was drowsy in all his classes. It was strange that he was more tired when he didn't run. June certainly was pleased to see him rejoin their running group.
The thought of June made him retreat even farther under the covers. The marathon was the Saturday after next and June would no doubt spend the entire run describing her plans and racing strategies for an event her father wouldn't let her attend. She was driving Neville absolutely mad. Of course, he did have to cut her some slack: within the space of two weeks she had had her boyfriend attempt to murder her father, discovered that everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie, recalled her entire dismal past life, and started her period. The thought of the last occurrence made him laugh and he finally pushed away the covers and lumbered across the room and down the stairs to the bathroom. He'd rather wake on his own - it had been his misfortune to discover that the Snapes were extremely unique in inventing personalized wake-up calls for those who attempted to sleep through morning runs.
He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror for a long time. Although there were still small rolls of fats around his waist, his stomach no longer hung considerably over the waist of his pants. He actually looked semi-normal, an idea that last year would have been inconceivable. It even looked like his abs were in the process of becoming a six-pack, at least if he stepped back into the shadows and squinted heavily. He flexed his arm and was pleased to note that the muscle to fat ratio was in his favor. All those pushups and crazy weight training was paying off. He examined his rounded face carefully, searching for a remote sign of the handsomeness that had characterized his father before. . .
He looked considerably older, he found, as he peered even closer at his reflection. Afterall, today was his birthday - and it promised to be the worst day of his life.
Today was the day he had to publicly apologize to Professor Snape for wrongfully accusing him of Trevor's death. All this despite the fact that he was still in mourning for Trevor. Damn Snape! 'Maybe the git will drop dead,' he thought gleefully. It would solve a lot of problems and make school more enjoyable. But then he thought of June's horrified face and immediately felt ashamed. Snape deserved to be beaten, starved, and cursed with the Cruciatus, but he didn't deserve to die. He closed his eyes and tried to convince himself of this. It was going to be a long day.
Neville pushed away from Harry and Hermione as they started to enter the Great Hall for breakfast. "Gotta pee," he lied. The thought of facing Snape was suddenly unbearable. He started down the west corridor to avoid running into June, only to find himself face to face with Eliza and Llian.
"Where are you going?" Llian asked. He knew about Neville's Snape issues.
"Bathroom," Neville answered quickly.
"The bathroom's back that way," Llian said, pointing over Neville's shoulder. He didn't move. "Come on, buddy, it won't be that bad once you get it over with. Papa isn't any more evil than I am." This wasn't much assurance. Llian grabbed his arm and began the arduous process of dragging Neville to breakfast, where fate waited to mock him. 'I love being humiliated,' Neville thought. 'I should see about making it a career.'
They turned the corner to find a group of students gathered around Draco, who lay moaning and twitching on the floor. Several of the younger Slytherins were wailing in fright.
"What's wrong with him?" Pansy demanded. She looked around frantically but no one could answer her. "He just suddenly dropped to the ground! Oh, Merlin, Draco? Draco!" She shook him roughly, but he only snarled at her and continued shaking violently, clutching his head miserably with his clenched hands. "Why is he doing this?" she shrieked.
"Because I cursed the bastard!" a harsh, cruel voice announced. Everyone turned to find Llian standing at the end of the hallway, looking positively sinister with his wand outstretched towards Draco. Eliza and Neville stared at him in shock. "It will take a while to wear off. You may have to take him to the hospital wing." He sneered and put away his wand, shrugging as if it were all inconsequential.
All the noise in the hall had attracted the attention of the teachers. They now flowed through the doorway. Professor Snape pushed back the Slytherins gathered around Draco. "Give him room to breathe. Don't touch him!" he growled.
"That bloody fool cursed him!" screamed Pansy, spitting with rage as she pointed towards Llian. Snape's head snapped up and he nodded. "You three can come with me," he demanded of Llian, Eliza, and Neville. Neville was about to protest, but pushing Snape in his current mood wasn't a very smart thing to do. "Everyone else proceed to breakfast - including you, Miss Parkinson!" Several more students ran out into the hall and were quickly ushered back in by Fleur, Bill Weasley, and Florean. Several students slipped through the crowd going back in to breakfast. Hermione, who had her hands clamped over her mouth, inched forward behind Snape's shoulder; she didn't look surprised, just worried. June moved immediately to Snape's side. Oliver, who sat terrified on her shoulder, his sharp claws digging into her shirt, scurried away when she approached Draco. He launched himself at Neville and climbed up the length of his robes before setting, trembling in fear, on his head. The rest of the teachers forced the children away as June and Llian, under Snape's direction, each grabbed one of Draco's arms and staggered down the hall with him in between them. He continued to mutter and froth at the mouth.
They turned a corner, and after a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, Snape ushered them down the steep, slippery staircase towards the dungeons.
"You didn't curse him!" Neville accused Llian. "You didn't even have your wand out."
"Of course Llian didn't curse him!" Hermione exclaimed, who was following right behind Neville. "Look at his eyes." He did so to find that they were glowing an animal-like red. "He's coming into his Veela powers. That's why he's in so much pain - he's been trying to stop himself from attacking his friends."
"How did you know?"
Hermione looked flustered. "Well, with Professor Delacour around and...well, I just read about it, that's how. I'm sure June and Llian can tell us it's similar to the Volari?"
Llian nodded. "I remember that it was painful; I was so confused I accidentally hurt my friends because I lashed out in pain. So you didn't think I was the culprit even for a second?" he teased.
"Nope. Besides," Hermione continued, "if you had actually cursed him it would have to be pretty powerful to last so long, and Llian would have used his Volari magic - so he wouldn't have needed his wand."
"That's right, Volari don't use wands, do they?" Eliza said. But June has a wand, Neville thought. She brought it with her to every class.
"I also know that Llian didn't curse Draco because if he had he would have either done it openly in the first place, or else done it in total secrecy and not be stupid enough to announce it to the world afterwards."
Llian grinned sheepishly. "She speaks the truth," he admitted. Despite his honesty and openness, Llian was perfectly capable of being as devious as a Slytherin when he thought he was acting on the best intentions. Neville remembered the story of how the young Snape tried to outwit the sorting hat; Llian had revealed the entire story in detail once while in stupor during a three hour run in the middle of a hot afternoon when they had run out of water after thirty minutes.
"So why is it," Neville asked incredulously, "that Hermione knows the answer to everything?"
"Maybe she's actually one of a set of quintuplets, and they switch off depending on who knows what," June suggested.
Malfoy gave another moan, reminding them of their situation. They had reached the dungeons finally.
"What do we do now?" Eliza asked, always the pragmatist.
"First, we get him away from humans," Snape answered. He opened a door to expose the dark interior of a large, circular dungeon. "You three in here," he commanded. Llian and June obligingly pulled Draco inside, who was starting to grow long claws and what looked like a kind of beak. His head rolled from side to side and he struggled to keep his sanity in check for one minute longer. "I'll place a ward on the door so that it can only be opened from the outside. I'll return shortly." He set up the wards quickly, heaping advanced magic onto the heavy wood and iron door with a light flick of his wand. "You three come with me," he said to Neville, Eliza, and Hermione. "I have a potion to prepare. You are mostly ridiculously dismal potions students, but your help will cut the preparing time in half."
They followed him into his personal quarters, where his real lab was. It was there that they would find the illegal ingredients necessary for most vampire potions.
He set them to work immediately: Eliza measuring out the water and phoenix tears, Neville pulverizing the liverworts into a mash, Hermione counting the dragon scales. Snape fluttered throughout the potions lab setting up various apparatus with a frenzied grace that made his motions resemble a post-modern dance. Dumbledore poked his head in five minutes later.
"Is he contained?" the headmaster asked.
Snape nodded curtly, not looking up from the cauldron. "It would probably be best to have Poppy set up curtains around a bed in the hospital wing to give the impression to the students that he is recovering there. Let it be known that Mr. Malfoy will be receiving no visitors for the rest of the day. He is with June and Llian in the Keep. I will leave Llian with him for the day - the students will think he is being punished so his absence won't be questioned."
Dumbledore nodded, not disputing the younger man's directions. He would know best how to handle the situation, being a vampire himself. "I will see that his teachers excuse him for the day." He glanced at the three students. "I thank all of you for helping Professor Snape." He started to leave but ducked back in the door. "Eliza, would you care to join me for tea this afternoon after your last class?"
Eliza peered out at him for a second from behind the curtain of blond hair that fell in her face as she added blood to the potion before finally smiling sweetly and saying, "I would like that very much, Headmaster."
He turned to leave. Neville didn't like the way Eliza's eyes burned into Dumbledore's back. He glanced at Hermione to see if she noticed anything unusual, but she was too upset to focus on more than the dragon scales in front of her. Oliver had jumped down onto the table and kept trying to poke his pink head in the scales, forcing Hermione to continually push him away.
"Shouldn't we notify his dad?" Neville said suddenly. "Would he be able to help?"
Everyone in the room paused. Snape answered, "Do you actually use you brain, Mr. Longbottom, or does it just sit in your head for balance - except it doesn't do that very well neither." He viciously cut up the root in front of him. "Mr. Malfoy would no doubt be extremely displeased with his son drawing attention to his unnatural condition. His mother would be better suited for such things, and contacting her would no doubt inadvertently notify his father as well."
Neville noticed that Hermione paled at Snape's words. She and Draco were all chummy now, Neville recalled. He supposed that Hermione didn't know everything after all.
Snape finished the potion less than ten minutes later and sent the three students on their way. There was still enough time to grab a piece of toast or half a bagel before going to class. Neville left heartened that he wouldn't have to face Snape. Dumbledore was sure to have forgotten. Both Eliza and Hermione were subdued and unusually pale on the way back up to the Great Hall, but Neville was too deep in thought to notice.
Even though he knew better than to hope otherwise, Neville was still disappointed when Snape arrived on time for fifth year potions later that morning. The potions professor paced back and forth while calling roll, as if debating with himself. He started to prepare the table in front of the class to demonstrate a particularly nasty type of healing potion. He put the cauldron down on one side of the table and then moved it to the other. It was so uncharacteristic of him to let his emotions show through the mask he hid behind, that the students started muttering amongst themselves until he called for silence. Everyone knew he was probably fretting over the fact that his son had just cursed his favorite pupil.
He began to explain in detail the methods and materials required for the new potion. Neville found his attention begin to wane as the instructions became more and more complex. As his vision blurred, a new image replaced the sneering Snape: himself, running. He saw his stride, smooth and efficient, his newly slimmed arms pumping steadily. He felt the cold wind bite through his hair, the tickling of the dry air in his lungs. He imagined himself finishing the end of the marathon all by himself, even in front of June, sprinting up the last hill, his heavy feet pounding into the pavement while the swarms of crowds cheered from the side of the road.
His reveries were interrupted by Snape's sarcastic voice. "You do not want to add the ermine hairs before the wyvern claws, as Mr. Longbottom will undoubtedly do, or this may happen." Snape threw a pinch of white fur into the cauldron and a cloud of thick blue-gray smoke erupted from it. Oliver, who had moved from Neville's shoulder back to June's, squeaked in fright and hid in the depths of June's bookbag. Snape looked down into the cauldron and suddenly put on a look of mock-surprise. "And what is this?" he asked. The students looked at each other nervously. What the hell was he doing?
Then he reached into the cauldron. . .and pulled out a small, red squirrel. It was just a baby, but it was missing a back leg and its paws seemed to be slightly deformed. The most disturbing thing about it was that there was a pink bow wrapped around its neck. Snape extracted a slip of paper from the bow, looking confused. Neville could swear though that the professor was trying his hardest not to burst into maniacal laughter (because obviously any laughter coming from Snape's lips would have to be maniacal). Snape smoothed the crumpled paper and began reading:
"My name is Lacy. I can no longer live in the Forbidden Forest and would like to find a home at Hogwarts. I would appreciate it if Neville Longbottom would look after me. I am extremely sorry for the death of his previous pet, Trevor. Perhaps we can be friends."
Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste at the last bit. He looked across the room at Neville. "Well?" he snarled. Neville blinked. "Are you going to come take your stupid squirrel or should I chuck it out the window?" June pushed Neville up to his feet. He stumbled down to the front of the classroom and squinted down at the squirrel. It must have been in some kind of accident. It backed away from him at first, but after he let her smell his steady hand she didn't squirm too much when he picked her up. He held her up to his face at looked at her small black, yellow flecked eyes. He wrinkled up her nose and he couldn't help giggling. He loved squirrels.
"May I continue with my class, Longbottom, or will you be requiring more of my time?" Snape asked sarcastically. Neville started to protest when Snape cut him off, "Five points from Gryffindor for not obeying orders directly." He continued lecturing as if nothing had even happened as Neville made his way back to a beaming June.
"You wrote that note," he accused. Neville held the small baby in his lap. They watched Oliver poke his head out from his hiding place and watch Lacy curiously.
She looked surprised, then suspicious. "How would you know what I did or didn't write?" Oliver started to climb up the chair.
He snorted and rolled his eyes. "It had your cute qualities written all over it. 'Perhaps we can be friends'. Hmpph!"
She frowned. "I'm not 'cute'. You love squirrels, and this poor one's just a baby and it got attacked by a werewolf and it'll die on its own!" Oliver sat in Neville's lap and started to sniff Lacy. The red of her fur clashed with the pink of his.
"Whu- you mean she's part werewolf?" Lacy let out a small yip and Oliver scurried away again.
"Well, technically. . ." She stopped trying to explain immediately when she saw his pained expression. "Look, she's the sweetest thing ever and you're going to keep her and that's that!"
"It seems so soon after Trevor. . . I don't know if I can. I don't know how to take care of squirrels. What do they eat?"
"Uh, grass? Wait, no - that's cows. Acorns, huh? Maybe it'll even go for a spot of tea," June joked. "Oh, wait, this one's different - I think it'll only be satisfied with human flesh."
"You're hopeless," Neville exclaimed. "And it is a she, and her name is Lacy, remember? Snape must have named her, because if you had her name would be something stupid like Popkin. And how in the hell did you coerce Snape into being the one to give him to me?"
June shrugged. "Actually, he was the one who found it. Her. It was his idea to give it to you in the first place."
"WHAT?"
Everyone in the room turned to look at Neville. Lacy started squirming frantically, disturbed by his random outburst. "Longbottom, I will NOT have you continue to disrupt my class. That will be twenty points from Gryffindor. I've had enough! Please remove yourself and your things from this classroom."
Neville was only too glad to pack his schoolbag and leave the worst class ever known to wizard-kind. He slipped Lacy into his chest pocket and strode defiantly to the door. He turned at the doorway to address Snape. "Thank you for Lacy. It was very considerate of you to think of me. I'm sure we will be friends." He put on his largest, most sickeningly sweet smile and fled from the classroom snickering softly before Snape could retaliate with his fury.
--------------------------------------------------
Eliza entered the bathroom. She was alone. It was almost time. A few short weeks. She settled in front of the mirror again, watching intensely for what messages it would reveal. Myrtle moaned softly in the background. Eliza watched the colors swirl black and red, and watched the flames leap from reflection to reflection. It was her special time; she would tell no one. These secrets were for her understanding alone.
------------------------------------------------
"Neville, we have to decide what to run!" June exclaimed during dinner, spilling some water from her goblet on poor Lacy, who was curled up contently in the middle of the table in Neville's empty salad bowl. Neville stifled a groan. She was starting again.
"I don't really want to run," he said quickly. "I'm not ready yet."
June pouted. "But it would be a shame not to since I finally convinced Papa to let us go." Neville nearly choked on the lima beans he was stuffing into his mouth. "We'll have to use different names, just incase, but as long as Papa comes with us to chaperone we can go! Hurray for marathons!"
"You can't be seriously thinking about doing the entire thing?"
June winked at him. "I'm kidding. Let's do the half, just me and you? It'll be fun."
"Fun," he muttered to himself. Was he, Neville Longbottom, truly considering such an impossible feat? How could he even expect to finish? Everyone else would have already left by the time he was only half way through. Was he really willing to embarrass himself so thoroughly? Did he even really want to do this? "Yes, I think I'd like that. Let's do it!"
June let out a whoop and hugged Neville fiercely. "Eliza, Harry, Llian, and Cho are going to run the relay. I was hoping you'd run with me. We're gonna rock! Hurray for half-marathons!"
----------------------------------------------
A/N: My friend, CastleRock claims that I am not Slytherin, as I have been boasting. I must say I dissent. Aren't my stories all bloody and dark? Aren't I completely obsessed with Snape? Surely everyone else agrees that I am Slytherin at heart? I will continue to think so. . . I will continue to think of myself as an evil, devious Slytherin (okay, I completely lack of ambition of any type, but the evilness make up for it, right?). CastleRock is just jealous, because she is an unworthy Ravenclaw. She even dared to insult me further by saying I was not evil, but rather "cute". How dare she? I will show you my true evilness, yes, just wait and see what happens to Eliza (the character based on CastleRock) now.heh, heh, heh.
Next chapter: am I really going to make poor Neville run a half-marathon? It'll be tons of fun and have absolutely nothing to do with the main story. So be excited! And read it!