Once again, JKR and other varies entities own Harry Potter. I don't make
any money off this idea.
Author's Note: Thank you to Jobrill, Thundergal4, catmeat, and Essy for the suberb help with titles! Thank you to my "Focus Group" for reading what I put in front of you and giving back great feedback. To my fellow N/G shippers, this is for you! -Lar
Chapter 2
Lost and Found - Again
"I can't walk this road without you You cannot go it alone We were never meant to make it on our own When the load becomes too heavy And your feet too tired to walk I will carry you" - Rebecca St. James
The quiet of the library washed over Ginny as she sat her bookbag down on the table in her favorite corner. With a sigh of contentment, she got out the materials she needed and went hunting for the books she was currently hunting through. If anyone had asked Ginny, all those years ago in a much simpler time, what she was going to be when she grew up, she never would have thought she would be stuck in a Muggle library doing research for a Muggle firm. But it kept her sane and paid the bills and, most importantly, kept her hidden.
From somewhere nearby, she heard a book drop. The muffled curse implied that it was a rather large book and had fallen on a sensitive spot. Ginny couldn't help the giggle that came out.
"I heard that, you know." The whisper was right behind her. She whirled around and promptly dropped the book she was carrying on the man's feet.
"Bloody hell! That was the same foot I dropped mine on," he grimaced, not keeping his voice down this time. A chorus of "ssssh" came from all over.
"What are you doing here?"
"Aren't you going to say hello to your old chum? Don't I get a 'Gee, Neville. It's great to see you' just for old times sake?" Neville reached out a rather unsteady hand and stroked her cheek. "You're so pale that I could probably count all your freckles if I had the time."
Ginny flinched and scurried back to the table that she had come to see as her safe haven. "Go away," she muttered. "This isn't the best place to talk."
With sudden movement, Neville's wand was in his hand and he muttered a word while doing a perfect swish and flick. A gossamer bubble surrounded them, shivering slightly as it kept time with the air around it. "Now we can talk without anyone bothering us."
Ginny was momentarily stunned into silence by the magical bubble. It had been a long time since she seen magic and she was impressed by Neville's skill and his ever-correct swish and flick. As it dawned on her just how wrong this situation was, her head snapped up. "Neville! What are you doing? This is a Muggle library. You're going to get in trouble."
He just smiled at her for a minute, taking in her tired eyes and dull hair dragged into a bun. "Who's going to tell the head of Muggle Affairs that he can't do magic in a public place?"
"You? Head of Muggle Affairs? But I thought you wanted to work with plants?" Ginny was trying to cover up her confusion. The last four years had moved slowly for her as she lived entirely in the Muggle world, letting the humdrum existence she eked out hide her from the comings and goings of the wizarding world. Obviously they had been able to reconstruct the Ministry after the destruction of the governing body six years ago. She had personally helped her father destroy files and artifacts. "Never mind. I don't want to know. You're going to have to leave now. There are plenty of things that I need to work on." Taking out a notepad, Ginny clicked her pen and began to write anything that came to mind. She completed her shopping list for the next day and was starting on balancing her checkbook when she realized that Neville hadn't left his chair and the bubble was still in place.
"I need to know that you're okay before I leave, Ginny. There are a lot of people who are worried about you. You've hidden yourself pretty effectively here but you had to know that we would find you eventually. We all miss you."
"Don't tell me that, Neville. I left because it was time for me to put all that behind me. I needed to start a new life. I needed to get away."
"Getting away means a trip to France or Majorca. Not leaving in the middle of the night. Not completely giving up magic so that we can't trace you."
"I made a decision and I stuck to it. I'm happy. Go away."
He slid his hand across the tabletop and pulled the notebook towards him. The flat ink made him smile. "You remember the ink that Harry always liked to write with? It changed colors." He noticed that Ginny turned a shade paler and pressed her lips together but he continued. "He let me borrow it one time so that I could write my mum a letter. Gran would never let me buy anything as frivolous as Ever-Changing Ink."
Neville looked back up at Ginny, a single tear sliding out the corner of his eye. "Gran died last March, my mum six months before that. I watched both of them suffer for a long, long time. Before she slipped away, Mum didn't have a spark of life left in her. Even knowing that we had taken care of Voldemort didn't help her. She finally got too far for us to reach her. I'm not sad that she's gone because it was for the best. Gran, too. It's never easy seeing your loved ones suffering."
Ginny watched, transfixed, as Neville wiped at the tear that was still coursing down his cheek. She noticed the scar by his ear. She had helped patch him up when part of a rock wall had come down on him, knocking him unconscious. He had told Hermione that he wanted to keep the scar as a reminder that he was still alive. Everyone had laughed, ribbing him about wanting to look like Harry. She had laughed harder than all of them when she had told him that his looked like a rain drop instead of a lightening bolt. Seeing the scar again after all this time didn't make her laugh anymore.
"I'm sorry about your family, Neville. Please, can we do this some other time? I don't have much time before the library closes to get this done."
He pulled out a small pendant shaped like an hourglass. "There aren't many arguments you can use that are going to deter me from this, Ginny. Would you like me turn back time one or two hours?"
He looked so much like Harry that, for a minute, all Ginny could do was stare at him. The same dark hair, a tad unruly now after the scuffle with the book. The same piercing eyes - Neville's were a regular blue color instead of Harry's green, but there was the same laughter behind them, the same intensity. If both of them had grown to see true adulthood, they would have looked enough alike to make complete strangers wonder if they shared a bloodline.
"I'm sorry I lived," he whispered, seeing the pain in her eyes and deducing where it was coming from. Her emotions had once been on her sleeve. Now they were a little harder to read after years of hiding. "I'm sorry I agreed to the plan. Please come home. We miss you."
"How can they? I'm sure no one remembers me. I'm not important."
With another swish and flick, a book fell onto the table in front of Neville. She could just make out the title from where she sat.
THE LAST GREAT WAR - A History behind the demise of Voldemort and his followers
By Professor Terry Boot - Second Order of Merlin, Golden Wand of Bravery, Sergeant of Arms of the Wizengamot, Honorary Academician of the Conservatoire Francais des Arts Magie
He opened it to a page and pushed it towards her.
The chapter was entitled: Laughter through Tears - The sacrifice of the Weasley Family and she noticed her name quite a few times in the paragraphs that followed. On the next page, her family waved at her. She stared at herself, standing proud in her Gryffindor school robes and waving with all her might. Stay young! she wanted to scream at the 14 year-old image. Scanning her family, she realized it was the last complete picture that was ever taken, right before her third year when Charlie and Bill had been home from their foreign posts. Percy, his arm around Bill, was smiling broadly as he watched Charlie set his Ministry of Magic badge on fire. Ron seemed to have gotten distinctly red in the face from the unexpected punch to the stomach that both the twins had just given him. Hurriedly, she flipped past her family's picture, not able to look at her parents. It was a reminder of all she had been lacking these past years.
The book fell open to another picture. Harry smiled and blew her a kiss with a cheeky grin. She slammed the book and shoved it angrily back across the table. Tears filled her eyes and she swiped at her face with the back of her hand. "Go away," she hissed through clinched teeth.
"You can scream at me, you know. This is sound-proof." The opalescent bubble swayed as he poked at it.
"If I scream at you, will you go away and leave me in peace?"
"What peace? Have you even started grieving, Ginny? Have you mourned for Percy? Have you mourned for H-"
"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" She stood up; her head held high and started shoving things back in her bag. "If you won't go away, then I will."
Neville rounded the table and turned her roughly towards him. His fingers bit into her upper arm, keeping her from running away from him. "Tell me to go to hell but don't tell me to leave you here. I've just found you. I'm not leaving you again."
"I can't go back." Her whisper was broken as sobs began to wrack her body. "I can't face them. How can you live there day after day, knowing that what we did killed so many people?"
"What we did saved lives! You saved lives, Ginny. You kept people safe. Hundreds of wizards and witches live happy lives in gratitude of what you did. No one blames you for anything. No one expects you to be the Merry Widow."
Ginny sagged, his hands the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground. The ring on her right hand burned with a fire that she only felt in her dreams. "I didn't get to be a widow," she cried. "He promised me a wedding that day. He promised me a future."
"He gave you a future. He gave us all a future."
"You don't understand," she muttered bitterly.
"Ginny, look at me!" he commanded, shaking her slightly. "I lost members of my family to that fight. I found out right before Gran died that my mother had been pregnant when she was tortured and lost the baby. I understand better then most. I don't have a real home to go back to because there is no one there." Neville pulled her into his chest, wrapping his lean arms around her delicate frame. "Harry's dead but you're alive. Don't regret his sacrifice."
She cried then. Sobs that she never cried when those around her had been grieving came pouring out of her with a vengeance that only time can build up and only time can help ease. She cried for the children that they had been, the childhood they had left behind on the battlefield. Tears cleansed her soul as she remembered the faces of the friends who had died friends who had lived. For the first time in four years, Ginny yearned to feel her robes billowing behind her as she soared through the air on her broom, the feel of her wand in her hand as she performed simple spells. She remembered that it was buried in her back closet under a pile of old clothes in a box of keepsakes.
Neville could feel every tear she cried and it soothed and scalded his heart at the same time. Let it all out. Make room in your heart for me, he wanted to say out loud. "Let me take you home," he whispered in her ear.
Pulling from his embrace, she stiffened her spine and sat back down in her chair. A calmer Ginny looked back at him, but a Ginny with many hurdles still to cross. She knew he wasn't talking about her brownstone walkup.
"I have a job to do. I should get back to work."
"I have a job to do, too. I'm not leaving until I accomplish it." He seated himself across from her and conjured up a mug of butterbeer and a thick book that looked an awful lot like Hermione's ragged copy of Hogwarts - A History.
Narrowing her eyes at him, she sighed. "Get rid of the bubble, get me a mug of that stuff and you can stay." Until she had seen his frothy mug, Ginny had forgotten how much she missed the warming brew. Nothing in the Muggle pubs compared to it.
His smile brought back memories of the first time she had met him. No one could look thankful like Neville could, she remembered. Any sign of friendship had been rewarded with his slow smile, his heart glowing through his eyes. With a nod, he did as she wished then sat back to enjoy the afternoon in the presence of the most beautiful girl he had ever lost and then found again.
***
The house was silent as Neville Apparated into the front room. It was his favorite room - the only room he liked in his grandmother's house. He could never think of it as his house. None of the antiques and knickknacks that cluttered so much of the other rooms where evident here. The light from the large picture window was perfect for the plants resting on tiered shelves and the couch was long enough for him to stretch comfortably out to his full length.
"Kippie!" he hollered, rotating his shoulders. The kink that had started to twinge two days ago was yelling quite loudly today. Maybe Hermione could come up with a good potion for him to take.
His small house-elf ran into the room, carrying a steaming cup of dark brew. "Kippie is glad that you are home, Master Neville."
"Neville," he reminded the elf. Hermione had decided that they all needed to start slowly with the house-elves. For the last three months, he had been trying to get Kippie to call him Neville instead of the uncomfortable title that he had held since birth.
"Yes, yes. Kippie is sorry, Master Ne-" the creature began to hit is head on the sofa, not caring that he threw the mug into the air.
"Kippie, stop!" he commanded. This latest tactic of Hermione's was going to be the end of him and his furnishings. It wouldn't be so bad if Kippie knew how to make regular coffee but he had decided that, if he was going to make his master something with such a horrible substance as caffeine, he might as well add some good things. Good things to humans were not the same as good things to elves. Neville drank as much of the new "choffeet" as he could stand without it bothering him but it was lethal to any fabric it came into contact with.
"Kippie is sorry. Kippie will try harder to remember to call Master Neville just Neville. There is so much for Kippie to remember." The house- elf shook his head, the fringe of grey hair hanging past his eyes swaying with the vigorous movement.
"What! What do you have to remember?" Remembering important things had never been a particular gift of Neville's and he had used the house-elf in the past to remind him of events he needed to attend or deadlines that he needed to meet. Was there something important coming up that he had completely forgotten?
Kippie wrung his hands in agitation. "There is so much to remember. So much to remember."
Knowing that Kippie would not tell what he needed to remember until it was too late, Neville gave up and threw himself on the couch. What he really needed was a long walk but he decided to brood in the darkness instead.
"Let Kippie light a lamp." The house-elf jumped up and moved to the nearest table. Neville sighed. He was going to have to talk to Kippie about his infernal straightening and cleaning all the time. It was irritating. It reminded him of the down side of living all those years with his domineering grandmother.
"Leave it, Kippie."
"But Master -"
"Leave it!" He lowered his voice as the tiny creature jumped. "It's fine, Kippie. I'm going to sit here in the darkness for a couple of hours. Why don't you come back in a couple hours? By then, I'll be good and depressed and you can cheer me up by telling me how my Gran has been giving you orders from her portrait in the hall again."
"Good plan, Master Neville. Kippie will go think of all the orders the Mistress-in-the-Picture-Frame has been giving and pick out the best to cheer you up." He scurried out the door, eager to be of service.
At long last, Neville had completed his mission. He had searched high and low in the past four years, now almost five, for the elusive Miss Virginia Weasley. He had followed every lead, every whisper, every hint of a bright vivacious redhead with a stunning smile and beautiful freckles. The dull, lustrous hair and pale, pinched face were not what he had been looking for. He wasn't happy with what he had seen today.
He had not been in love with her during school or even the years after. She had been the best friend he had ever had at Hogwarts; no one could make him laugh like Ginny could. She had been in love with the other person he called a friend and that relationship had been just as precious. In one single event, he had lost both of those friends. One was gone forever. One was waiting to be rescued. With any luck, he wouldn't lose this one again.
Author's Note: Thank you to Jobrill, Thundergal4, catmeat, and Essy for the suberb help with titles! Thank you to my "Focus Group" for reading what I put in front of you and giving back great feedback. To my fellow N/G shippers, this is for you! -Lar
Chapter 2
Lost and Found - Again
"I can't walk this road without you You cannot go it alone We were never meant to make it on our own When the load becomes too heavy And your feet too tired to walk I will carry you" - Rebecca St. James
The quiet of the library washed over Ginny as she sat her bookbag down on the table in her favorite corner. With a sigh of contentment, she got out the materials she needed and went hunting for the books she was currently hunting through. If anyone had asked Ginny, all those years ago in a much simpler time, what she was going to be when she grew up, she never would have thought she would be stuck in a Muggle library doing research for a Muggle firm. But it kept her sane and paid the bills and, most importantly, kept her hidden.
From somewhere nearby, she heard a book drop. The muffled curse implied that it was a rather large book and had fallen on a sensitive spot. Ginny couldn't help the giggle that came out.
"I heard that, you know." The whisper was right behind her. She whirled around and promptly dropped the book she was carrying on the man's feet.
"Bloody hell! That was the same foot I dropped mine on," he grimaced, not keeping his voice down this time. A chorus of "ssssh" came from all over.
"What are you doing here?"
"Aren't you going to say hello to your old chum? Don't I get a 'Gee, Neville. It's great to see you' just for old times sake?" Neville reached out a rather unsteady hand and stroked her cheek. "You're so pale that I could probably count all your freckles if I had the time."
Ginny flinched and scurried back to the table that she had come to see as her safe haven. "Go away," she muttered. "This isn't the best place to talk."
With sudden movement, Neville's wand was in his hand and he muttered a word while doing a perfect swish and flick. A gossamer bubble surrounded them, shivering slightly as it kept time with the air around it. "Now we can talk without anyone bothering us."
Ginny was momentarily stunned into silence by the magical bubble. It had been a long time since she seen magic and she was impressed by Neville's skill and his ever-correct swish and flick. As it dawned on her just how wrong this situation was, her head snapped up. "Neville! What are you doing? This is a Muggle library. You're going to get in trouble."
He just smiled at her for a minute, taking in her tired eyes and dull hair dragged into a bun. "Who's going to tell the head of Muggle Affairs that he can't do magic in a public place?"
"You? Head of Muggle Affairs? But I thought you wanted to work with plants?" Ginny was trying to cover up her confusion. The last four years had moved slowly for her as she lived entirely in the Muggle world, letting the humdrum existence she eked out hide her from the comings and goings of the wizarding world. Obviously they had been able to reconstruct the Ministry after the destruction of the governing body six years ago. She had personally helped her father destroy files and artifacts. "Never mind. I don't want to know. You're going to have to leave now. There are plenty of things that I need to work on." Taking out a notepad, Ginny clicked her pen and began to write anything that came to mind. She completed her shopping list for the next day and was starting on balancing her checkbook when she realized that Neville hadn't left his chair and the bubble was still in place.
"I need to know that you're okay before I leave, Ginny. There are a lot of people who are worried about you. You've hidden yourself pretty effectively here but you had to know that we would find you eventually. We all miss you."
"Don't tell me that, Neville. I left because it was time for me to put all that behind me. I needed to start a new life. I needed to get away."
"Getting away means a trip to France or Majorca. Not leaving in the middle of the night. Not completely giving up magic so that we can't trace you."
"I made a decision and I stuck to it. I'm happy. Go away."
He slid his hand across the tabletop and pulled the notebook towards him. The flat ink made him smile. "You remember the ink that Harry always liked to write with? It changed colors." He noticed that Ginny turned a shade paler and pressed her lips together but he continued. "He let me borrow it one time so that I could write my mum a letter. Gran would never let me buy anything as frivolous as Ever-Changing Ink."
Neville looked back up at Ginny, a single tear sliding out the corner of his eye. "Gran died last March, my mum six months before that. I watched both of them suffer for a long, long time. Before she slipped away, Mum didn't have a spark of life left in her. Even knowing that we had taken care of Voldemort didn't help her. She finally got too far for us to reach her. I'm not sad that she's gone because it was for the best. Gran, too. It's never easy seeing your loved ones suffering."
Ginny watched, transfixed, as Neville wiped at the tear that was still coursing down his cheek. She noticed the scar by his ear. She had helped patch him up when part of a rock wall had come down on him, knocking him unconscious. He had told Hermione that he wanted to keep the scar as a reminder that he was still alive. Everyone had laughed, ribbing him about wanting to look like Harry. She had laughed harder than all of them when she had told him that his looked like a rain drop instead of a lightening bolt. Seeing the scar again after all this time didn't make her laugh anymore.
"I'm sorry about your family, Neville. Please, can we do this some other time? I don't have much time before the library closes to get this done."
He pulled out a small pendant shaped like an hourglass. "There aren't many arguments you can use that are going to deter me from this, Ginny. Would you like me turn back time one or two hours?"
He looked so much like Harry that, for a minute, all Ginny could do was stare at him. The same dark hair, a tad unruly now after the scuffle with the book. The same piercing eyes - Neville's were a regular blue color instead of Harry's green, but there was the same laughter behind them, the same intensity. If both of them had grown to see true adulthood, they would have looked enough alike to make complete strangers wonder if they shared a bloodline.
"I'm sorry I lived," he whispered, seeing the pain in her eyes and deducing where it was coming from. Her emotions had once been on her sleeve. Now they were a little harder to read after years of hiding. "I'm sorry I agreed to the plan. Please come home. We miss you."
"How can they? I'm sure no one remembers me. I'm not important."
With another swish and flick, a book fell onto the table in front of Neville. She could just make out the title from where she sat.
THE LAST GREAT WAR - A History behind the demise of Voldemort and his followers
By Professor Terry Boot - Second Order of Merlin, Golden Wand of Bravery, Sergeant of Arms of the Wizengamot, Honorary Academician of the Conservatoire Francais des Arts Magie
He opened it to a page and pushed it towards her.
The chapter was entitled: Laughter through Tears - The sacrifice of the Weasley Family and she noticed her name quite a few times in the paragraphs that followed. On the next page, her family waved at her. She stared at herself, standing proud in her Gryffindor school robes and waving with all her might. Stay young! she wanted to scream at the 14 year-old image. Scanning her family, she realized it was the last complete picture that was ever taken, right before her third year when Charlie and Bill had been home from their foreign posts. Percy, his arm around Bill, was smiling broadly as he watched Charlie set his Ministry of Magic badge on fire. Ron seemed to have gotten distinctly red in the face from the unexpected punch to the stomach that both the twins had just given him. Hurriedly, she flipped past her family's picture, not able to look at her parents. It was a reminder of all she had been lacking these past years.
The book fell open to another picture. Harry smiled and blew her a kiss with a cheeky grin. She slammed the book and shoved it angrily back across the table. Tears filled her eyes and she swiped at her face with the back of her hand. "Go away," she hissed through clinched teeth.
"You can scream at me, you know. This is sound-proof." The opalescent bubble swayed as he poked at it.
"If I scream at you, will you go away and leave me in peace?"
"What peace? Have you even started grieving, Ginny? Have you mourned for Percy? Have you mourned for H-"
"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" She stood up; her head held high and started shoving things back in her bag. "If you won't go away, then I will."
Neville rounded the table and turned her roughly towards him. His fingers bit into her upper arm, keeping her from running away from him. "Tell me to go to hell but don't tell me to leave you here. I've just found you. I'm not leaving you again."
"I can't go back." Her whisper was broken as sobs began to wrack her body. "I can't face them. How can you live there day after day, knowing that what we did killed so many people?"
"What we did saved lives! You saved lives, Ginny. You kept people safe. Hundreds of wizards and witches live happy lives in gratitude of what you did. No one blames you for anything. No one expects you to be the Merry Widow."
Ginny sagged, his hands the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground. The ring on her right hand burned with a fire that she only felt in her dreams. "I didn't get to be a widow," she cried. "He promised me a wedding that day. He promised me a future."
"He gave you a future. He gave us all a future."
"You don't understand," she muttered bitterly.
"Ginny, look at me!" he commanded, shaking her slightly. "I lost members of my family to that fight. I found out right before Gran died that my mother had been pregnant when she was tortured and lost the baby. I understand better then most. I don't have a real home to go back to because there is no one there." Neville pulled her into his chest, wrapping his lean arms around her delicate frame. "Harry's dead but you're alive. Don't regret his sacrifice."
She cried then. Sobs that she never cried when those around her had been grieving came pouring out of her with a vengeance that only time can build up and only time can help ease. She cried for the children that they had been, the childhood they had left behind on the battlefield. Tears cleansed her soul as she remembered the faces of the friends who had died friends who had lived. For the first time in four years, Ginny yearned to feel her robes billowing behind her as she soared through the air on her broom, the feel of her wand in her hand as she performed simple spells. She remembered that it was buried in her back closet under a pile of old clothes in a box of keepsakes.
Neville could feel every tear she cried and it soothed and scalded his heart at the same time. Let it all out. Make room in your heart for me, he wanted to say out loud. "Let me take you home," he whispered in her ear.
Pulling from his embrace, she stiffened her spine and sat back down in her chair. A calmer Ginny looked back at him, but a Ginny with many hurdles still to cross. She knew he wasn't talking about her brownstone walkup.
"I have a job to do. I should get back to work."
"I have a job to do, too. I'm not leaving until I accomplish it." He seated himself across from her and conjured up a mug of butterbeer and a thick book that looked an awful lot like Hermione's ragged copy of Hogwarts - A History.
Narrowing her eyes at him, she sighed. "Get rid of the bubble, get me a mug of that stuff and you can stay." Until she had seen his frothy mug, Ginny had forgotten how much she missed the warming brew. Nothing in the Muggle pubs compared to it.
His smile brought back memories of the first time she had met him. No one could look thankful like Neville could, she remembered. Any sign of friendship had been rewarded with his slow smile, his heart glowing through his eyes. With a nod, he did as she wished then sat back to enjoy the afternoon in the presence of the most beautiful girl he had ever lost and then found again.
***
The house was silent as Neville Apparated into the front room. It was his favorite room - the only room he liked in his grandmother's house. He could never think of it as his house. None of the antiques and knickknacks that cluttered so much of the other rooms where evident here. The light from the large picture window was perfect for the plants resting on tiered shelves and the couch was long enough for him to stretch comfortably out to his full length.
"Kippie!" he hollered, rotating his shoulders. The kink that had started to twinge two days ago was yelling quite loudly today. Maybe Hermione could come up with a good potion for him to take.
His small house-elf ran into the room, carrying a steaming cup of dark brew. "Kippie is glad that you are home, Master Neville."
"Neville," he reminded the elf. Hermione had decided that they all needed to start slowly with the house-elves. For the last three months, he had been trying to get Kippie to call him Neville instead of the uncomfortable title that he had held since birth.
"Yes, yes. Kippie is sorry, Master Ne-" the creature began to hit is head on the sofa, not caring that he threw the mug into the air.
"Kippie, stop!" he commanded. This latest tactic of Hermione's was going to be the end of him and his furnishings. It wouldn't be so bad if Kippie knew how to make regular coffee but he had decided that, if he was going to make his master something with such a horrible substance as caffeine, he might as well add some good things. Good things to humans were not the same as good things to elves. Neville drank as much of the new "choffeet" as he could stand without it bothering him but it was lethal to any fabric it came into contact with.
"Kippie is sorry. Kippie will try harder to remember to call Master Neville just Neville. There is so much for Kippie to remember." The house- elf shook his head, the fringe of grey hair hanging past his eyes swaying with the vigorous movement.
"What! What do you have to remember?" Remembering important things had never been a particular gift of Neville's and he had used the house-elf in the past to remind him of events he needed to attend or deadlines that he needed to meet. Was there something important coming up that he had completely forgotten?
Kippie wrung his hands in agitation. "There is so much to remember. So much to remember."
Knowing that Kippie would not tell what he needed to remember until it was too late, Neville gave up and threw himself on the couch. What he really needed was a long walk but he decided to brood in the darkness instead.
"Let Kippie light a lamp." The house-elf jumped up and moved to the nearest table. Neville sighed. He was going to have to talk to Kippie about his infernal straightening and cleaning all the time. It was irritating. It reminded him of the down side of living all those years with his domineering grandmother.
"Leave it, Kippie."
"But Master -"
"Leave it!" He lowered his voice as the tiny creature jumped. "It's fine, Kippie. I'm going to sit here in the darkness for a couple of hours. Why don't you come back in a couple hours? By then, I'll be good and depressed and you can cheer me up by telling me how my Gran has been giving you orders from her portrait in the hall again."
"Good plan, Master Neville. Kippie will go think of all the orders the Mistress-in-the-Picture-Frame has been giving and pick out the best to cheer you up." He scurried out the door, eager to be of service.
At long last, Neville had completed his mission. He had searched high and low in the past four years, now almost five, for the elusive Miss Virginia Weasley. He had followed every lead, every whisper, every hint of a bright vivacious redhead with a stunning smile and beautiful freckles. The dull, lustrous hair and pale, pinched face were not what he had been looking for. He wasn't happy with what he had seen today.
He had not been in love with her during school or even the years after. She had been the best friend he had ever had at Hogwarts; no one could make him laugh like Ginny could. She had been in love with the other person he called a friend and that relationship had been just as precious. In one single event, he had lost both of those friends. One was gone forever. One was waiting to be rescued. With any luck, he wouldn't lose this one again.