The International Wizarding School Competition
Durmstrang - Theme 1: Fear
Write about a character discovering or facing their worst fear.
Acceptance of oneself
Mistakes
Mandatory prompt: [Action] Hiding
Additional prompt: [First/last line] In hindsight, he was probably Salazar Slytherin reincarnated.
Year: 3
Betas: DebaterMax, KeepSmiling1, mandancie
A/N: This story takes place after the first DADA class in Harry's third year; while canon doesn't change, it's still AU.
Word count: 3083
…
THE THREAT OF A SNAKE
…
In hindsight, he was probably Salazar Slytherin reincarnated.
The conclusion had been heart-breakingly ironic – and bitter, so incredibly bitter.
Neville had never felt more cynical than when he realized that his attempt to better himself would be thwarted by the path fate had taken to make his fear come true.
And there was nothing he could do to change it...
...
Neville was curled up on a windowsill in the Owlery. He had chosen the only window that couldn't be seen easily from the entrance. It was high up in a niche. In order to reach it, one had to essentially scale the walls. Normally, people didn't know the faults of the wall and couldn't reach it without magic – which wasn't an option.
Outside the window, daylight slowly faded to night. Throughout the day, a storm had been threatening to appear, and most of the sky was decorated with heavy storm clouds.
Neville's eyes were trained on Hogwarts' grounds where the Dementors were hunting for a non-existent prey.
"I'm dead," Neville said to himself and closed his eyes as his shoulders slumped. He had known that fact from the moment he had entered the Great Hall for dinner. One look at Snape's furious face and Neville knew it meant his death. He knew that look – had worn it himself once upon a time. He had immediately turned and fled.
Since then, Neville had sat high up on the ledge of an open window, watching the school grounds and sky.
"I'm so dead."
But then, what else did he expect after his last Defence Against the Dark Arts class? Nobody liked to be ridiculed – and Neville had done just that with the dour Professor by not only having him as a boggart but also by putting him into Gran's clothing. Not to mention doing so in front of the whole class…
"He's never going to forget that," Neville whispered miserably. "Forget Dementors, hearing my parents being tortured into insanity, and nearly drowning as a child. Forget the memories of fire and destruction. No, the thing I'm the most afraid of is my potions teacher."
And of course, a boggart took the appearance of the thing you feared most.
"Being afraid of Professor Snape that much," Hermione had said after the class. "That's horrible! Maybe you should talk to Professor McGonagall or your grandmother! There should be a way to –"
"No," Neville countered. "We're not going to talk about it. Snape is my burden to carry."
It was more his sudden sureness that shut her up than anything else.
"Of course, that was before I fled the Great Hall to get away from the man," Neville thought miserably. Now, she wouldn't let it go.
And Neville didn't know how to make her.
"It's not as if she'd understand if I told her," he thought bitterly. "Snape… everything about him makes me want to hide."
Not that Neville was hiding.
"It's his demeanour. It's the way he hates my guts. It's the way he acts," Neville shuddered. "It's his eyes."
Snape's black, fathomless eyes that looked… dead to Neville. As if someone had taken the light out of them and the only thing left was a dead, shrivelled husk.
"Like the abyss just waiting for me to fall," Neville thought darkly. "Like grief that's swallowing me whole. Like the death of everything I love..."
Snape's eyes spoke of burning villages and dying people. They spoke of rage so deep and fathomless that Neville wanted to shrink away from it.
Neville knew what that kind of wrath did to a man, and he had no inclination to be anywhere close to someone who could snap any second; not when he remembered the damage they could bring well enough.
Neville shivered as his eyes searched the sky. Through the clouds, the first few stars could be seen. Soon, the night would be there.
"I'm surprised you are up here, Sire."
The words startled Neville, and for a moment, he lost his balance on the sill, swayed, and nearly toppled. Deeply ingrained instincts – older than Neville himself – ensured that nothing happened. His legs came down on both sides of the window and clamped him into place.
Only when he was sitting securely again, did he see the ghost floating in the Owlery.
"I apologize for startling you." The ghost grimaced.
Neville just sighed, pulling his feet to his chest, hugging his knees with his arms.
"It's alright, Baron," he replied. "I was a bit lost in thought."
"About Professor Snape?" the Bloody Baron inquired softly.
"Him and my whole situation," Neville agreed heavy-heartedly.
"Your situation, Sire?"
Neville's hands clenched, and he gritted his teeth.
"I changed," he said, his eyes searching the sky again. "It took me years of hard work, but I managed to change into someone others could be proud of, I think."
Then he closed his eyes.
"Not that Gran ever was," he added in defeat. "I'm too timid for her. Too afraid of my own shadow."
The Baron snorted.
"You? Timid? Afraid? I can't see it, Milord," he said, observing Neville up and down. "But then, I found you hiding… Perhaps, there's something true about that?"
"Would you prefer me raging?" Neville countered calmly; the Baron looked away.
"Preferably not."
"There you go," Neville said. "I changed. And I changed for the better."
"You're afraid of your teacher," the Baron pointed out.
Neville shuddered.
"I know," he agreed. "It's just… Snape…" He shook his head. "Something about him… it's making me… unstable… desperate… the only thing I want to do is hide… he…"
"You fear what he is capable of," the Baron concluded with narrowed eyes.
Neville hugged himself.
"No," he said. "I fear him. I see him, and… I want to… I want to…" He hugged himself harder, and his voice quietened as he began his confession. "I look him in the eyes, and I see an abyss filled with death. I look at his demeanour and see a reflection of the fury he is hiding deep inside. I see the way he holds himself, and the only thing I can comprehend is the grief that is tearing him apart."
For a moment, Neville hesitated.
"The Professor," he finally said, "is going to break sometime in the future. He'll snap and take everyone down with him when it happens."
"You mean like you did?" the Baron asked, something soft and careful in his voice. "You mean he'll start to rage, and nobody will be able to stop him until everything is aflame? Just like it happened with you?"
Neville shuddered when his inner eyes conjured up the flames of a burning village. He could still hear the screams of the people on fire, and could still feel that deep-seated rage that had been searing inside him back then.
His eyes returned to the sky which had since opened and was now drenching the earth with its tears.
Neville wished he had the tears to show his sorrow.
His inner eye wouldn't stop conjuring up the flames he'd ignited on that fateful day.
Something cold touched his hand, and Neville's gaze spun to the Bloody Baron who was staring at him with concern.
"Sire," the ghost said with a frown. "You shouldn't dwell on the past."
"The past is the reason I am who I am now," Neville countered calmly. "I should dwell on it just to ensure that I never return there."
The Baron's frown deepened.
"You're different now," he said. "Reincarnation or not – you're not the same. Nobody would look at you and see the wrath you had carried."
Neville just sighed.
"No, instead they look at me and see a spineless idiot who fears his Professor worse than the demons in the sky." Neville pointed to the Dementors guarding the grounds. "Do you know what I hear when I get near them?"
The Baron sighed.
"Death, most likely," he said and closed his eyes. "Destruction and flames."
Neville's eyes wandered to the sky and he wished – oh, how he wished! – he could cry.
"No," he said instead, his voice thick with emotions. "I don't hear any of that. I hear my parents while they are tortured to insanity. I hear my mother, begging and crying. I don't hear the flames."
It should have been a relief that part of him was so rooted in his current life. It wasn't.
He pressed one of his hands against his burning, dry eyes.
"I hear my father, begging for my mother's life," he said. "I hear both of my parents begging for my life… but I don't hear the flames."
"I see," the ghost said softly.
"Do you?" Neville asked, turning his eyes towards the Baron. "Do you really?"
At the ghost's frown, Neville leaned forward, his hands still on the windowsill.
"Professor Snape," he said, "is just like that. I know that he'd never hear the crackling of the blaze in the presence of the Dementors. He wouldn't hear the screams of people dying. He wouldn't hear Death taking lives."
The Baron's eyebrows furrowed.
Neville leaned back again, his back brushing against the cool stone as his eyes searched the sky. When the wind turned, rain wetted his cheeks for a moment – a horrible parody of the tears he wished would fall.
His shoulders slumped dejectedly.
"I know that rationally, Snape should be less scary than Dementors to me," Neville said, and for a moment, he met the Baron's gaze with eyes as piercing as they had been a millennium ago. "But the fact that he'd be unable to hear the screams… that's the scariest thing for me."
The Baron opened his mouth to say something when suddenly, the door to the Owlery opened.
Neville immediately summoned the ghost towards him, but lost control of the spell, sending the Baron out of the window instead. After, he curled up into a small ball and didn't dare to breathe.
Heavy steps could be heard on the stone floor below.
"Longbottom," Snape's voice spat; Neville became one with the windowsill.
He curled up further before forcing himself to take a careful look down towards the stone floor.
Snape was storming up and down the room, searching anything big enough for a human to hide in, practically frothing at the mouth.
"You… if I get my hands on you! Ridiculing me like that! Everyone heard about it! I'm going… I'm going…"
Neville swallowed and nearly startled when something cold went through his left arm.
He only held still thanks to old instincts. Turning to discover what was touching him, he saw the Baron leaning on the windowsill with his body still outside. One of his hands had come in contact with Neville's arm.
The Baron met Neville's eyes with an exasperated gaze.
Neville grimaced and returned it with an apologetic look.
"That boy will regret this," Snape raged and then threw another, suspicious look around the Owlery. "The moment I get my hands on him, he'll end up in detention for the rest of the year!"
With that, the Professor stormed back out.
"I guess you managed to make the Professor really angry this time around," the Baron said dryly before swinging himself back inside.
Neville grimaced.
"I humiliated him," he said. "I know his kind. He wouldn't have taken well to being humiliated like that."
"You mean being put into women's clothes and laughed at?" the Baron asked, shaking his head with a sigh. "No, I doubt he or anybody else," he looked pointedly at Neville, "would take that well."
Neville winced.
"I didn't know the spell from… before," he confessed. "I couldn't have predicted what would happen, and Professor Lupin chose to… help me with my imagination."
He sighed, and the ghost hummed thoughtfully.
"I guess Snape will be on warpath a bit longer, won't he?" Neville asked, resigned.
"After what you did, Sire?" the Baron said, obviously amused. "At least until morning."
"Figures." Neville miserably shook his head.
"Do you truly want to hide out here until then?" the ghost asked the boy.
Neville grimaced, and his gaze returned to the storm outside. The wind had strengthened further while the rain came down in sheets, soaking him more and more.
"I'm pretty sure I don't have a choice," he finally said. "Not with Snape patrolling the hallways and searching for me everywhere."
"He is fuming," the Baron agreed. "It'd be best to let him cool off for a bit longer."
Neville threw him an exhausted, half-amused look.
"I'd guess you would know," he said. "How long has he been teaching here, anyway?"
"More than a decade," the Baron countered. "And it's not only him I have experience handling."
Neville shuddered at that answer.
He knew what the Baron was implying, and he didn't like the implication at all.
For a moment, flames danced before him, and his ears seemed to hear pleas for help that wouldn't come.
Then, slowly, the sound of the cries faded back into the howling wind outside. They would always be a stark reminder of the wrath that had burned deep inside him – a wrath that nothing had been able to squelch.
He furled further into himself and shivered – partially due to the weather, but equally from the fear coursing through him at the thought of the Potions Master's temper that so mimicked his memories.
"The Professor is raging," Neville whispered. "Just as I feared."
"You were never afraid of wrath before," the Baron countered, looking at Neville sharply.
"Mayhap," Neville said bitterly, "I'm more afraid of the dragon waking than his wrath."
"The dragon?" the Baron asked with a frown.
Neville hummed and then tapped against his chest.
"The dragon sleeping inside all of us," he elaborated. "That thing inside me that is willing to destroy everything and everyone as long as this school stays safe. It will be the end of me because it contains all the fury, fears and love I hold inside me."
The Baron winced.
"The same thing is sleeping inside Snape – even if for him, it's not for the school that his feelings are centred," Neville continued. "And I fear him."
"You fear waking what you call his dragon," the Baron concluded grimly. "You fear what his longing and wishes are centred around, and the destruction he will bring to keep safe what he might be protecting."
"No," Neville corrected and looked out of the window. The wind and rain made his eyes water and drenched his left side. "I fear him. I don't fear his rage, I don't fear his longing and wishes. I fear him."
The Baron's eyes narrowed at Neville's surety.
"You don't fear people," he countered. "You've never feared people."
"I feared the Muggle-borns," Neville declared.
"You don't fear a single person, though," the Baron said. "And there were reasons for your fears when it came to the Muggle-borns. For Snape, on the other hand, I can't seem to follow your reasoning. You don't fear what he could do. You say you fear him. Why would you fear a single man – no matter how similar he is to your former self?"
For a moment, Neville could smell the stench of burning flesh in the air. Flames flickered in his memories and he shuddered.
"Sire?" the Baron said. "Sire… there is no reason to fear that man..."
And something in Neville snapped.
"No reason?" he hissed. "No reason!"
He looked up, and his eyes met the Baron's.
"You're wrong," Neville declared; his hands started to shake. "There are plenty of reasons to fear him!"
"Why?" the ghost asked. "Because you fear that he will end up like you? In a shallow grave, forgotten and hated?"
Neville smiled at the spectre half-heartedly. His eyes spoke of his embitterment.
"I doubt there was a grave," he corrected the ghost.
The Baron sighed.
"There was," he disagreed calmly. "You weren't left to the crows."
It was cold comfort.
"Snape will end up the same," Neville agreed. "But that's his choice. I don't fear him for his choices."
He balled his hands into fists.
"I fear him for what he is to me… for what he represents," he said and his voice shook when he realized the truth. Outside the wind was howling, nearly hiding his words. "I fear that he will fall, and I fear that he'll burn us all."
"I don't understand."
"I fear that he'll take something from me when he finally falls off the edge," Neville's eyes were burning with grief and fury. "He will fall. I can see it in his eyes. One day, without warning, he will go over the edge – and everything in his path will be destroyed just like it was when it was ME. I know what to look for; I know what I see. He will snap – just like I did. And he will take everything around him with him – just like ME."
"That doesn't mean that you'd –"
"He is here, at Hogwarts," Neville said. "I'd burn the earth for this school. Hell and Fury! I burned a village for this school and don't regret it! I don't lose sleep over it! The Dementors… they feed on your worst memories, but they never fed on the memory of me burning that village."
The Baron gulped.
"I don't regret what I did back then, and I doubt I ever will," Neville said. "But Snape… when he falls and starts to rage the way I did back then… he will take ME. DOWN. WITH. HIM…"
"Why would he –?"
"Because, without much doubt, he'll implode at Hogwarts," Neville replied and his gaze was turned towards the storm. Rain wetted his face and his dry eyes watered thanks to the wind blowing into his face. "He'll destroy it. The moment he does, I will snap. It's my nature, no matter how much I've changed over time."
Neville shook his head.
"No," he said. "He will snap, and he'll take me with him when he does."
The Baron closed his eyes, "so, in hindsight, Snape…"
"Yes," Neville agreed grimly and with desperation. He already knew what the ghost had just realized to be true. It was ironic in its own way considering Neville's previous identity.
"I might have been Salazar Slytherin in my past life, but Snape is exactly how I was back then." Neville grimaced. "Egad! In hindsight, he is probably Salazar Slytherin reincarnated."
...
Well, Neville is Salazar Slytherin... not what I expected to write like ever. lol
Best wishes
Ebenbild