Ch. 46 Fight and Flight

'There had been a horrible incident the day before, when Hannah Abbott had been taken out of Herbology to be told her mother had been found dead. They had not seen Hannah since.' - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince


Neville

"What – how – your father ?" Neville was aware that it wasn't the most articulate response, but he was still reeling from Hannah's words. He hadn't heard much about Hannah's father, but none of what he'd heard had been bad, so what she'd said just didn't make any sense to him.

Tears flowed freely from Hannah's eyes.

"It was their way of punishing him. The Death Eaters. You know my father is from an old wizarding family, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight? Some of the other pureblood families didn't like it when he married my mother, a Muggle-born, but he did it anyway. He loved her. Then, when You-Know-Who rose again, they kept coming to him – his followers – asking my father for their loyalty. They said they would forgive my father's mistake in marrying my mother if he fought alongside them. But he refused, of course. He kept refusing and it made them – made You-Know-Who angry.

"Then, last year, they came to him again. Rodolphus LeStrange and Walden Macnair. Saying he had one last chance. He still refused. I think maybe he hadn't imagined how awful they could be," Hannah paused, looking away from him, but Neville felt her grip on his hand tighten. She was squeezing it so tightly it was painful. She took a deep, shuddering breath before continuing.

"So they Imperius'ed him. And made him strangle my mother…" Hannah lowered her head and whispered, "You know, it takes several moments to successfully strangle someone. And they struggle – a person really struggles – with all that's in them... They made him look her in the eyes when he was doing it, so it was the last thing she saw. They made it so he could remember it too. And Eloise –" Hannah finally broke down, and finished through a wracking sob, "they made Eloise watch."

Hannah's story turned Neville's stomach so much, he felt like he might vomit. He swallowed the rising bile, and felt the acid burn the back of his throat. "I'm so sorry."

His words felt inadequate, useless, pitiful. But they were all Neville had. He summoned his strength and pulled Hannah towards him, holding her until her tears subsided.

"That's why I didn't come back last year. My father….he – he didn't cope with it well – the guilt and the grief. He found it hard to live with himself. He couldn't forget the memory of looking in her eyes as he made the light die from them …he took to drinking a lot of firewhiskey. I had to stay home to look after him and my sister..."

"How – how is he now?" Neville asked.

Hannah smiled plaintively, her cheeks damp with tears. "Better. I'm not sure if he's completely forgiven himself, but he's stopped drinking, and is able to look after Eloise again. After Dumbledore's death and the Ministry's decree about compulsory attendance at Hogwarts, we all knew I had to come back to school. And I think he knew that if I wasn't around to look after him, he'd have to step up and be there for Eloise...so, over the weeks that followed, he managed to pull himself out of the hole he'd gotten into."

"That's – that's good," Neville said encouragingly. Again, his words felt useless. "You're so strong, Hannah, for dealing with all of that. I'm – I'm sorry that happened to you."

Hannah gave him another sad smile. "I'm sorry for what happened to your parents too."

There seemed to be no more words to say after that, and so they lay in each others arms, hoping that Terry and Padma would soon come with the blood replenishing potion Neville so desperately needed.


Parvati

Parvati sat in Muggle Studies, staring at, but not seeing, the scratchings on the desk in front of her, scratchings of some no-doubt long-forgotten Hogwarts romance: D loves H . Alecto's lecture on 'Muggle-born Diseases' was a muffled drone in the background of her awareness, because she was lost, yet again, in thoughts of Theo.

Things between them had been different since he'd shown her his mark. Different in a really good way. The guardedness in his eyes and face that had been there since she'd known him had melted away. It was like the nervous energy that had previously thrummed from him whenever they were together had dissipated and things felt...easier...more relaxed...as if they'd previously been a muddied river between them that had turned clean and clear, and pure.

On the day that Amycus had sliced Neville open like a furious butcher, Theo had hovered around the entrance to the Great Hall just before dinner. As Parvati had made her way towards the large oak doors, he had subtly gestured for her to follow him. They had crept behind a suit of armour nestled in an alcove under a stairway and he'd thrust a cotton bag at her.

"Here. They're ingredients. For a blood replenishing potion I'm guessing Longbottom is going to need."

"Thank you," Parvati had smiled broadly and pecked him on the lips.

Instead of becoming cagey and guarded at the exchange, as he would have done before, Theo had smiled, his shoulders relaxed. "No worries."

It had been, for once, a purely genuine interaction. There'd not been any pretence that it was anything other than Theo helping her - helping them, in fact. And, to Parvati, it had felt wonderful.

Terry had managed to brew the replenishing potion that evening and Neville had, to everyone's relief, made a good recovery. The DA had then had a debate about whether it was safe for Neville to return to the school, or stay in the ROR and lie low for a while. Some of them had commented that the Carrows seemed to be getting more and more volatile and unpredictable.

But Neville had insisted on going back into the school. "I'm not going to run and hide from them! What kind of message would it give to others if I did that?" he'd proclaimed.

So he'd returned to the Gryffindor Common Room, and to lessons, but everyone felt on edge, as if waiting for something to happen.

Parvati! Parvati!

Padma's anxious voice was suddenly ringing through Parvati's mind.

Padma? She silently answered her twin.

Parvati! They're coming for Neville. Death Eaters. In the school. Now! He needs to get away!

Parvati didn't wait to find out how on earth Padma would know such a thing. She instantly reached for some parchment and a quill, and scribbled a note: They're coming for you. Death Eaters. Run, hide. Now! Padma. She passed the missive behind her to Seamus, who slid it across his desk to Neville.

Parvati watched intensely as Neville opened it. He frowned as he read it, before looking up at her questioningly. She nodded imperceptibly in response, her eyes wide and earnest, trying to silently emphasise the truth of the message, and made an abrupt shooing motion with her head, as if saying: Go! Get out of here!

Neville raised his hand, with the intention of excusing himself, Parvati assumed, just as two men strode into the room. They wore black cloaks and had wands clasped in their hands. The younger looking one had straggly fair hair which fell down to his shoulders; his companion had cropped, dark hair. Parvati recognised them from old 'wanted' posters: Thorfinn Rowle and Antonin Dolohov

Alecto halted her lecture mid-sentence, and looked at the men in surprise, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

"Apologies for the interruption, Professor Carrow," Rowle said gruffly, as he held out an identification card for Alecto to inspect. "We've come from the Ministry to speak with Mr Neville Longbottom. We understand he is in this class?"

Uneasy fidgeting and disconcerted mutterings rippled through the class.

"Of course. We are always happy to cooperate with Ministry business," Alecto simpered. "Mr Longbottom is just over there." She gestured to where Neville sat.

Rowle moved towards Neville but Seamus, who was sat between Neville and the aisle, stood up, his wand held tightly in his hand, and squared his shoulders.

"What do you want with him? Where are you taking him?" he demanded defiantly.

Rowle's eyes flicked to Seamus' wand and he paused, as if thinking. As he was doing so, Parvati noticed Dolohov make his way round the edge of the classroom, so he was on Neville's other side. Without quite realising what she was doing, Parvati slowly rose from her seat, clutching her wand.

"Mr Longbottom, you're to come with us," Rowle said. "There's nothing to worry about, we'd just like to ask you some questions about your grandmother's whereabouts–"

"Expelliarmus!" Seamus cried out at Rowle, at the same time as Seamus' intended victim yelled,

"Stupify!" and aimed his wand at Neville.

As a result of Seamus' spell, Rowle's wand sailed through the air just as he cast his stunning spell, which meant the curse only skimmed Neville's arm, although it caused him to stagger backwards into Dolohov, who reached out his hands to grab Neville and–

"Impedimenta!" Lavender shouted and Dolohov was flown away from Neville and landed on the floor a few feet away.

Parvati noticed that Alecto had her wand out then but it was as if Lavender's curse was a cue for chaos to break out in the room. She, Parvati, Seamus and the other DA members in the class all started aiming various hexes at the two men, who had since got to their feet. Rowle still seemed to be scrabbling for his wand. Other students in the room ducked under tables for cover, whilst a few others – Crabbe, Goyle and Flint being the more enthusiastic ones – started joining the fight on the side of the Death Eaters.

Neville started to scramble past tables, chairs and people to get out of the classroom, as Parvati aimed her wand at Dolohov. "Petrificus –" she started to cry, but something – a curse – hit her on the shoulder and she fell sprawling to the floor.

Her ears were ringing with a high pitched noise and her vision was momentarily blurred. When she could focus again, she saw that Rowle had raised his wand to her, about to cast another curse, but a wisp of red light travelled through the air and seemed to dissolve around his head. The man's eyes glazed over, and he lowered his wand, shaking his head as if trying to clear it.

The interruption had given Parvati enough time to scramble away and duck behind a desk at the back of the classroom to shield herself. She looked back to where she thought the red light had come from and saw Theo casting a stunning curse at Seamus, which missed by about a foot. The Confundus hex was starting to be Theo's signature move, Parvati thought dryly.

Parvati looked to the door of the classroom, just a metre or so from her, to see Neville crouched there, looking back at the chaos and disorder with alarm. What was he still doing there?

"Go Neville, run!" Parvati shouted at him desperately.

Neville's eyes darted to hers. "I cant leave you guys to –"

"Yes, you can! They don't want us, they want you! Go! "

Neville gave her one last, tortured look, before finally turning and running from the room.

Relieved, Parvati raised her head over the desk she was hiding behind, pointed her wand at Dolohov and yelled, "Levicorpus!"


Neville

Neville didn't pause to see the result of Parvati's hex. He ran from the classroom and down several corridors, aiming to get to the stairs that led to the seventh floor, and hence the Room of Requirement. Getting out of the castle didn't seem an option – all the exits were still guarded by Dementors.

He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt as he noticed a man standing at the foot of the stairs to the seventh floor. He recognised him from the battle at the Ministry: Yaxley. Neville swore under his breath, spun on the spot and started running in the other direction. As he turned another corner, he noticed yet another cloaked figure at the end of the next corridor.

Shit - how many were there in the school?

He had no choice but to hurry down the stairs that led to the basement level. Somewhere near the kitchens, he sped round a corner and collided into something – or someone. Pushing the person aside, he was about to keep running but a familiar, honeyed scent and flash of golden hair made him pause.

"Neville!" Hannah cried, looking at him frantically. "Thank Merlin you're okay!" she exclaimed and hugged him so tightly he felt the echoes of the stunning spell in his arm. "We were in Charms, but Snape said something about them coming for you, Padma told Parvati and I came to –"

"Hannah - the castle's crawling with Death Eaters - I need to get out of here!"

She seemed to process this information with lightning speed. "Our common room," she stated determinedly. "It's the nearest place – they wouldn't think to look for you in there, at least not for a while. Then we can get you to the ROR."

Neville didn't think the Hufflepuff Common Room sounded the safest place to hide, given the circumstances, but he realised he didn't have much choice. He let Hannah grab his hand and pull him along the corridor. They came to a halt by a shadowy recess just beyond the entrance to the kitchens, where a pile of huge barrels stacked lengthways on their side.

Puzzlement mixed with Neville's rising anxiety as he watched Hannah give the lid of one of the barrels, which was about the same size as the Fat Lady's Portrait, a succession of rhythmic taps. It then opened and Neville followed Hannah inside it, down a sloped tunnel and into a round, low-ceilinged room, reminiscent of badger's set. Thankfully, the Hufflepuff Common Room was empty – the school was still in the midst of lessons.

"Through here," Hannah commanded, and strode to an arched wooden door leading off the common room.

The room beyond was a cosy dormitory, decorated in black and various shades of yellow, the beds all neatly made with patchwork quilts. Hannah guided them to a bed and, as they sat down on it, Neville started to take in the random witches' paraphernalia that was scattered about the beds, tables and floor. This must be a girls' dorm and he must be sitting on Hannah's bed. He had never been in a girl's room, let alone a dormitory before, and he found himself blushing.

"How come I can get in here? The Gryffindor boys can't get in the girls' dorm," and Neville explained about the jinxed stairway.

"There are some jinxes that can stop people getting in, but the girls whose dorm it is can control them. We can turn them off if we want...maybe the Hufflepuff's are deemed more trustworthy than the Gryffindors?" Hannah suggested playfully, but then her tone turned serious. "I probably have to head back to Charms soon. You need to hide...maybe under the bed? And do a Disillusionment Charm. And...and we just have to hope that they don't search here."

Neville nodded; he couldn't come up with a better idea. As he scrambled under Hannah's bed, he remembered something.

"How did you know?" he asked. "That they were after me? You said Snape said something?"

"Yes!" Hannah said, as she waved her wand over him, reinforcing Neville's Disillusionment Charm with her own magic. "I was in Charms, Snape was covering for Flitwick...I don't know why. And Snape was wandering around, checking our work, making snide remarks like he usually does. And when he remarked on Ernie's charm, which had gone a bit wrong – he said: 'Never mind, MacMillan, you can never be as clumsy as Longbottom,'" – Hannah did an alarmingly good impression of Snape's sneering tone – "then he leaned in so that only Padma and me could hear, and said 'but we don't need to worry about Longbottom anymore, they're coming to take him away. Right now, in fact .'

"It was weird, it was like he was talking to himself but at the same time wanted us to hear. So then I could tell Padma was mind-talking to Parvati, and I asked to leave, to go to the toilet. I just – I just wanted to go and try and warn you myself. I didn't think Snape would let me go – he can be quite unpredictable with that kind of thing – but he seemed distracted, and – and did. So then I was running down the corridor and bumped into you, thank Merlin."

"He probably couldn't resist gloating about the fact they were coming for me," Neville concluded glumly. He looked at Hannah, but now that he was near-invisible, she was gazing at a point over his right shoulder, so he reached out to take her hand instead. "I'll move tonight. To the Room of Requirement. I think the others were right – it's time for me to disappear."


As Neville lay under Hannah's bed, he desperately hoped that Hannah was right and that the Hufflepuff girls' dormitory was the last place the Death Eaters would look for him. His heart started pounding when, about half an hour after he'd run from his Muggle Studies lesson, he heard voices outside in the common room.

Moments later, the door of the dormitory burst open and the muffled voices were suddenly clear.

"Really, I must insist, you cannot go in the girls' dormitory! Males are forbidden!"

Neville instantly recognised the indignant tones of Professor Sprout. He shifted slightly so the door was in his eyeline and he could see her muddied, brown shoes in the doorway, and beyond them, two pairs of black leather boots. Death Eaters.

Neville listened, silently re-casting his Disillusionment Charm, whilst Sprout insisted that males could not enter the dormitory unless they wanted to be subjected to a myriad of ancient magical hexes and a very unpleasant fate. Neville noted with admiration how convincing Sprout sounded.

" I will go in and search," she declared. "You can watch from here ."

As Sprout strode into the room, Neville held his breath as he waited to see what the two black boots in the doorway would do. Remarkably, and to his relief, they stayed put. He followed Sprout's brown shoes as they went over to the window and watched as the bottom of the curtains were brushed aside, before Sprout walked to the nearest bed and peered under it.

When she finally got to Hannah's bed, which was furthest from the door, Neville stayed stock-still, willing himself not to move. As Sprout's head came into view in his peripheral vision, inches from his body, he kept his gaze straight ahead, locked on the slats on the underside of Hannah's bed. She paused for far longer than was probably necessary and Neville was convinced she could make out his blurry outline. But then she rose from her crouched position, and looked into the cupboard by Hannah's bed.

Then, in a quiet, almost inaudible voice, she spoke, as if talking to herself.

"They'll search most of the castle but should be gone by the evening. Do keep safe, Mr Longbottom. I don't want to lose my best Herbology student."

As Sprout moved away to look under the other beds, Neville let out a long, slow breath, feeling a rush of gratitude and affection for his favourite teacher. She made a show of looking in the other nooks and crannies in the room, before returning to the door.

"Nobody there, as I expected, especially not any boys! " she reported, before slamming the door shut and leaving Neville alone once more.


Neville had been hungry before, of course. He had often felt his stomach rumble towards the end of the lesson just before lunch and there had been numerous occasions when he'd started daydreaming about roast chicken and potatoes by the time dinner at Hogwarts came round. But after nearly thirty hours in the Room of Requirement with no food, and seeing nothing of the others, he realised he'd previously had no idea what true hunger really felt like.

Neville had hidden in Hannah's dorm until late in the night, long after the Death Eaters had left the castle, and then crept to the Room of Requirement. As soon as the room's door had shut behind him, a wave of relief swept over him – he instantly felt safe.

The next morning, he'd heard on Potterwatch that, to his relief, his Gran had managed to escape the Death Eaters too. Neville had grinned to himself as he thought of how she'd no doubt taken them by surprise. She was tougher than she looked, his gran. People always underestimated her.

But two days and a night had now gone by without Neville seeing any of the other DA members, and his worry, along with his hunger, had reached an almost agonising peak. The pains in his stomach and the aching longing for food was all-consuming. He had begun to feel light-headed and was finding it hard to concentrate. All his mind seemed capable of doing was to curse Gamp's law and fantasise about various meals.

Thankfully, a drinking fountain had appeared a couple of hours after he'd entered the room – a brass tap in the shape of a phoenix had emerged from the wall – and so he hadn't had to suffer the miseries of thirst. An array of plants had also appeared and it made Neville feel more at home – comforted and relaxed – knowing he had growing things to tend too. But now he was starting to begrudge the fact that none of them were edible.

He was lounging on the cushions, trying to read a Muggle book that had been saved from the Purification, and not get distracted by thoughts of his gran's beef stew, when he noticed a painting appear on the wall.

Curious, he went to investigate. The painting was of a pretty, blond haired girl, who was standing in what looked like a dark tunnel. She smiled kindly at Neville, and he forced a smile in return, disappointed with the room for the first time. What good was a painting of a girl right now? Unless it was edible ... was it edible?

But before he could discover the possible nutritional benefits of the portrait, the girl gestured to him with a 'come hither' motion. She started to walk down the tunnel and turned back after a few steps, as if checking that Neville was following her.

"How am I meant to follow you?" Neville asked, frustrated. "You want me to climb into the painting?"

The girl rolled her eyes and gave an amused smile, just as something rather odd happened. The picture came away from the wall on three sides, swinging open like a door, much like the Fat Lady's portrait. Neville let out a small sound of surprise as a real dark tunnel was revealed behind the painting's frame.

Clasping his wand, Neville climbed up into the passageway. It was big enough for him to walk through if he stooped a bit.

"Lumos," he murmured and the tunnel was illuminated, not that there was much to see: damp stone walls on either side of him and nothing but impenetrable darkness in front.

He started walking. And kept walking. He'd probably been in the tunnel for about half an hour when he thought, not for the first time, that maybe he should turn back. If he'd judged his distance and direction correctly, he would have left the boundaries of the school grounds long ago. But he had faith that the room would not have put him in danger, that whatever was at the end of this tunnel was surely going to help, not hinder, him. Finally, a dim light appeared in front of him and, as Neville approached it, he noticed what appeared to be the back of another painting, and that the light was coming from the crack at its edge.

With his wand held out in front of him, Neville slowly pushed at the back of the portrait and let out a small, startled cry when he saw what was beyond it.

For there, standing in what looked to be a cellar of some kind, was Albus Dumbledore, his face uncharacteristically hostile and with his own wand pointed at Neville.


Notes:

Thanks to Rachael and IKEAwhatyoudidthere for their help with this.

As ever, I'd love to hear your thoughts, they are hugely appreciated.