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Neville Longbottom & The Halfblood Princess
Prologue:
"Avada Kedavra!"
The story begins here.
It is July 29th, 1999. A high, cruel laugh precedes a sickly green curse that ends the life of the Chosen One. His enemy's triumph complete.
Tortured, humiliated and defeated in both body and soul, that was the Neville Longbottom whose life met that abrupt end. On his knees before the Dark Lord, surrounded by his jeering followers and what was left of the Order of the Phoenix.
Fate. The driving force behind many a would-be/underdog hero of yore. Fate was strings pulled and pieces set in place in order to grant an individual an opportunity. An opportunity to succeed. To grow. To thrive. And, ultimately, to fulfil a goal far greater than themselves. For better or for worse.
THAT. Is what is Fate is.
Regardless of whether their destiny is that of great good or incredible malice, Fate exists to provide a path to those endings. And it is the responsibility of those Chosen individuals to capitalise on those majestic opportunities.
Opportunities Neville Frank Longbottom squandered at EVERY opportunity.
He was not, exactly, born of luxury. But he did indeed grow accustomed to it.
An errant comment from an impertinent (and long since deceased) Death Eater meant the Dark Lord was questioned in his choice targets when he revealed the contents of the prophecy to his closest followers. That challenge leading to the proud wizard needing to save face.
Thus, instead of targeting the Potter's, his focus fell upon the Longbottom's.
With both families hidden beneath the Fidelius Charm, it took Voldemort years to infiltrate Longbottom Manor. Constantly teased by the knowledge that he could annihilate the Potter family at any moment (through his spy in Peter Pettigrew). Yet knowing that doing so would be considered the 'easy way out' by even his most devout.
As such, he bided his time. With careful investigation, bribery and torture he eventually he made his move.
The night before Beltane, maypoles and bonfires took centre stage in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade for the celebration of May's Eve. Disrupted as a slew of the Dark Lords finest took to executing the soon-to-be crowned May Queen and turning their wands on the assembled crowds.
Under the cover of chaos, Lord Voldemort entered the foyer of the Longbottom manor to execute the three-year-old only son of Frank and Alice Longbottom. The couple hand in hand, united in their defiance, when he ordered them to step aside.
As expected, the defenders of the Longbottom child (grimly aware of the reason for the incursion) fell. Dying in a vain attempt to halt the Dark Lords march towards the nursery.
He entered, beheld the sight of one of his would-be killers, and lazily slung the Killing Curse at the wide-eyed toddler.
The miraculous survival of the soon to be Boy Who Lived set the world ablaze, skyrocketing this crying babe into a spotlight he would never have held otherwise.
A spotlight that would blind him from the opportunities Fate had set out for him. Allowing himself to soak up the accolades and praise he… arguably, did not deserve, he missed opportunities to train. To learn. To grow.
Ginevra Weasley's skeleton would forever remain within the Chamber of Secrets.
Dementors took the soul of a howling Remus Lupin.
Had Professor Dumbledore not intervened, the Philosophers Stone would have remained firmly in Quirrell's back pocket when he announced his resignation in July.
So many more opportunities, both massive and minor, sticking in Neville's head in 1996 when the Dark Lord arrived at Longbottom Manor once again. His dear Nan, the hard headed (yet soft hearted) woman who'd raised him, eviscerated at his feet. All modes of escape lost to him.
He entered his final battle with the Dark Lord hoping for a miracle. One he would never receive.
His death was slow, filled with pain and the sights of all those he had failed.
The year is 1997. The date is the 29th of June. A dark wizard experiments in a classroom on the Seventh floor of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
That wizard is Harry James Potter.
15 years ago, he was announced to the world as the Boy Who Lived, the child responsible for the Dark Lords demise. And he very much didn't expect another miracle this time.
Though it was a clever trick, playing on the heightened emotions of his target, Harry Potter blamed himself for the horrific mess that was the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. Despite it being his enemies plan all along.
As horrible as he felt for thinking such a thing, he was grateful only Sirius had died.
Luna and Ginny had escaped with scratches and bruises, the girls coming out of the impromptu altercation the best of the six.
Ron had been assaulted by an odd tentacled brain; much of his memories and higher motor functions now lost to him. A cruel irony had his room at St Mungos next to one Gilderoy Lockhart. The redhead laid out on a bed most days, attempting to relearn the names and faces of the people he loved.
Hermione had been the only one in the room when Harry had sent a dark blasting curse at pursuing Death Eaters. The spell pinging off a luckily casted shield and into a display of Time Turners.
With a pop, she vanished.
Though the Unspeakables were able to bring her back, claiming her own previous interactions with the devices as the only reason she wasn't scattered and smeared across time itself, she would never leave that room again. Forever cursed to a life of solitude and experimentation in the bowels of the Ministry.
Neville was arguably better off. Holding his mind long enough to slit the throats of Rudolphus and Rabastan Lestrange when the brothers held him under the same curse that drove his parents mad.
In a way, like Frank and Alice, he did snap and fall to pieces under the strain of their torture. The confidence he had built within the DA was a shadow that only appeared in his violent moments of mania. The rest of the time he was silent, limping through the halls and jumping at shadows. His paranoia leading to injuries, his wand eventually removed from his person, before he was removed from the school all together…
Unbeknownst to Harry, burying himself in work to drown out the ache, the Dark Lord himself was moments away.
His newest servant, the son of the disgraced Death Eater: Lucius Malfoy, has been slaving away on a broken Vanishing Cabinet up the hall in the Room of Requirement. Revealing to his Master that his great nemesis had made a makeshift lab in a classroom nearby, often so distracted from the outside world that he failed to sleep and eat.
On the day he tasked his underlings with the assassination of the school's headmaster, he too entered the old magical academy. Prepared for a final showdown with the boy who had embarrassed him one too many times.
He encountered a girl on his slow stalk to the room. Dirty blonde hair and earrings shaped (and coloured) like radishes. She fell to his green curse before a scream could pass her lips, her killer striding over her warm corpse to enter the room she had hastily vacated. A disinterested glance given to her glistening wet cheeks.
He was rewarded, as Draco had reported, by a lab. Sterile and unnaturally bright; sections of the room divided by painted lines on the dusty stone. Desks were elongated into work benches pressed against the walls, said walls and benches buried under layer after layer of inked parchment. Equations, runes, incantations… as intricate as they were numerous, cat like ruby's wide as he recognised the depths of Potter's work. The academic in him, the small part that (once upon a time) had genuinely wished to guide new generations to mastery of magic as the Defence teacher, was thoroughly impressed at the detail of the notes.
Though tongues of fiery rage lanced from his core whenever he reminisced, he could begrudgingly admit the boy he had set himself against was not unskilled. Perhaps, had he been given the right time and correct instruction, he could have stood somewhere close to his magnificence.
Instead he hid himself away, bent over a desk as he made careful, precise movements of his wand. Small balls of orange flame bouncing around his scalp like a fiery halo,
"Well, well, Harry Potter. I must say I am impressed!"
Those words doomed them both.
For the next 18 months, the Seventh floor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was entirely uninhabitable. Cordoned off with powerful wards that took the last of Professor Dumbledore's strength.
The Dark Lords arrogance, and desire for pomp and spectacle, had ripped through the tenuous concentration Harry had on the spell he was casting. The teens head snapping back to the intruder, eyes widening as he beheld the snakelike visage of his parent's murderer.
His anger swelled, and so did the size of the flames under his command. Blooming into great balls of heat that caused both wizards to start in surprise. Harry's surprise quickly gave way to panic, the fear fed upon by the hungry flames who snatched control away from him, in order to enter its rampage.
An experiment gone tragically wrong.
In an instant, the two fated rivals were consumed by the errant Fiendfyre. A moment later the corpse of Luna Lovegood was swallowed by the rapidly advancing flames; blown into the air by the dark magics concussive force then scorched and swallowed alongside the debris. The Death Eaters (having failed to even reach the main staircase) were vaporised by the unholy fire before the entire floor was drowned in a blaze that looped around the corridors to find more to feed upon.
Unlike decades before, it would take weeks to realise the Dark Lord had died. Focus initially on the containment of the disaster before any real thought was given to the how or why. Conclusions were obviously jumped to, but it wasn't until some captured Death Eaters later revealed he had indeed infiltrated the castle that night to face Harry once again that a consensus was agreed upon.
It was given he had fallen.
As no one knew the specifics, an untainted legacy was what awaited Harry. Left a hero in the eyes of history, as his headmaster coordinated the hunt for his enemy's soul anchors from his deathbed. Said foe fleeing as a shade to parts unknown.
Voldemort passed on some years later, after Nagini fell at the hands of a vengeful Neville Longbottom (leading the charge as part of his late headmaster's final request).
Human error was very much the cause of both unsatisfactory results, something (like many cases in the relative past) it would not allow to slide. Unlike many other cases of failed destiny, Fate refused to allow the Dark Lord Voldemort to reign victorious. Pleased with ones accidental fulfilling of the Prophecy and utterly repulsed at the prospect of allowing the others total failure…
So, as he snivelled and wept in the cold of Limbo, Fate approached with a deal. One of potential redemption and repaired pride.
An opportunity Neville could not refuse, so to speak.
But Fate was no fool. It saw into the heart of its champion, as it hurtled him through time and space. Holding little faith that the second chance it was giving him would amount to much more that the results of the first.
In a display of both kindness and cruelty (for all parties involved) the soul of this failure was accompanied by another 'recently deceased'. Plucked from his world to act as… insurance. Someone who, in his own pitiful way, had succeeded where Neville Longbottom had failed.
However, in this world, there was no Harry James Potter for this foreign soul to inhabit. For the oldest child of the Potter clan…
…was a young girl, named Harriet.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Based off a prompt I left on the HPFanfiction Subreddit, this is a project I have wanted to work on for a while but haven't had the time to.
Define Normal will still be my priority, and I cannot guarantee regular updates to this story, but do let me know if you are at all interested in seeing me continue.