New Perspective 1
THE CHOSEN
By Bellegeste
A/N: This chapter takes place at Mrs Longbottom's cottage, and follows on directly from chapter 6.
Chapter 7 NOT TRIUMPHANT BUT TRAGIC
Neville read the pages through for the third time, muttering the words under his breath, trying them out, tasting them on his tongue like a new magic muffin mixture, his eyes cutting from the transcription of his own verbal account to Hermione's transcription. Before him lay twin copies of the overheard conversation between Narcissa Malfoy and Healer Smethwyck - identical twins in many respects, but with differences, crucial differences. For one thing, Hermione's version made sense.
"Do you think that's plausible?" she asked modestly, not wanting to seem pushy, but quietly confident in her 'translation'. "I had to guess a bit to fill in the gaps, but it fits with the medical facts, and with what Hagrid told me."
"Oh, this is good. This is it. Gotta be. You're brilliant to have worked all this out, Hermione." Neville was generous with his praise, unrestrained in his admiration. "Obviously, I didn't really think she'd have called him 'You rhinoceros lover', but that is what it sounded like. No, it is! It was noisy - don't give me that pitying look! How was I to know what else it could be? 'Urine or saliva'! I'd never have guessed that!"
"It helps if you have Healers' Herbal in front of you. You told me Narcissa said something about grinding the Datura root, which made me wonder if she was going to use it in some sort of a poultice. So I looked that up. It was handy to have a starting point actually - that plant seems to be used for absolutely everything. After that it all started falling into place. You've never had a cat, have you?"
"Er, no. Why? Should I?" He was positive Narcissa hadn't mentioned anything about cats. Hurriedly he skimmed his eyes over the transcription in case he'd missed a feline clue, then looked back at the girl blankly.
"Well, when Crookshanks has been in a cat fight and gets bitten or scratched - that naughty animal fights all the time; my Mum keeps threatening to put tranquillizers in his cat-food - you can bet your life the bites get infected. Cats' teeth and claws are like little syringes of noxious bacteria, just waiting to jab all those harmful germs into your system. And, apparently, Hippogriff talons are the same only worse, because of them being magical creatures. Get slashed by a Hippogriff and, without the antidote, you're in big trouble."
"How big?"
"Infection; septicaemia if left untreated…"
Neville's mouth soured in distaste as though he had eaten a piece of the putrid flesh. He was squeamish about gory details.
"…weakened immunity," Hermione continued. "The body uses all its resources in fighting the invasive organisms, so you end up being really susceptible to any bugs that are going around. But anyhow, the point I'm making is, Datura root is listed as one of the primary ingredients used in the antidote. On its own it will reduce the inflammation, but for a complete cure you need - "
"A urine or saliva sample from the Hippogriff in question!" chimed-in Neville. "Hey, I'm with you now."
"Or the 'barbs of a quill', or 'fresh hair', or 'two drops of blood' (or again, that might refer back to the samples)," explained Hermione. "You can also use clippings from the talons - I assume that's what Narcissa meant when she talked about 'bowing and scraping' and 'talent'. When she mentions size and weight and age, she must be referring to Buckbeak - though she was being rather unfair, calling him a 'stinking Hippogriff'.
"No wonder she was distraught. She was hoping Smethwyck'd have some instant remedy, and there he was telling her to collect bodily fluids from a wild animal - and not just that, but one that's living at Hogwarts. She must have been at her wits' end."
"She still is," murmured Neville. "The way she's been fussing about those leaves and roots, I reckon she's running out of time. So, Draco got himself clobbered by Buckbeak again? Nice one!"
"Judging from the evidence, I think we can safely say that somebody was wounded." Hermione paused for Neville to pick up the insinuation, but his thoughts had skewed away from Hippogriffs.
"She must love him an awful lot. Funny that - to think about someone actually loving Draco…"
The wistful note was back in his voice. Hermione clicked her tongue impatiently.
"Neville, didn't Harry say that Snape sent Draco running on ahead, before Buckbeak showed up? I'm certain he did. That means Snape was the one Buckbeak attacked. Think about it, Neville - it's Snape who's been injured, not Draco."
Expectant brown eyes challenged him. Everything now depended on Neville's reaction. In her mind she could imagine how Ron would receive the news: 'Serves the greasy git right' he'd say. Or Harry's response: 'One less Death Eater to worry about. Pity I didn't get to finish the bastard off myself.' Or Hagrid's 'He deserves to rot in Hell'.
Neville rubbed his nose thoughtfully.
"He'll be needing the antidote then," he said.
XXX
"I thought you hated Snape?" It was a question Hermione had been wanting to ask for days, ever since Neville had summoned her to the Malfoys' garden.
"So did I. And I did - I mean, I used to, but I don't any more. Or not so much. Even now." Neville's disjointed explanation was the most he could manage, the mutant hybrid of emotion he felt for the man defying all classification. If hate meant subjecting Snape to no holds barred ridicule and vituperation then yes, he hated him. If it meant wishing for a theoretical thunderbolt to strike him down - a crisis necessitating an indefinite absence from the classroom and resulting in a total personality reassignment – then, yeah, he hated him. If it meant withholding an essential antidote so that the man died in agony from Hippogriff-induced blood poisoning, then, no, he did not.
"I hated him in Potions when he showed me up all the time and made me feel stupid and useless. And I was rubbish at it, I can see that now. I wouldn't have wanted me in that class! But this year in Defence Against the Dark Arts he hasn't been half so bad, not to me anyhow. He left the rest of us to get on with it more, and picked on Harry instead. I'm not saying I ever enjoyed his lessons - not like Lupin's - but he was miles better than Umbridge. He taught us some good stuff : resisting Imperius and avoiding Dementors, and all those non-verbal Jinxes - if I could remember them…"
Hermione had to agree: for the first time in six years DADA lessons had born a direct relevance to the dangers they were likely to encounter in the ongoing conflict with the Dark forces. More than once it had crossed her mind that the reason most of them had emerged unscathed from the fight 'that night' with the Death Eaters had as much to do with the defence techniques they had learned in class as with the swig of Felix Felicis.
"There was something else too, summat my gran said a while ago," went on Neville, sounding surprised, as though the act of verbalising the notion of not hating Snape had somehow made it come true. "I must've been griping on about Snape - as we do - and she said, 'That man may have fallen out of the Nasty tree and hit every branch on the way down, but he's no murderer. If that cantankerous killjoy hasn't hexed you to death by now, he never will. So what are you worrying about?' That kind of stuck in my head. He shouts a lot, and he makes me feel about this big - " Neville held up his hand, the thumb and forefinger about a grass-blade's width apart. "But, really, if you think about it, over the years I've probably hurt him more often than the other way round, what with the spills and the melt-downs and the explosions…" He pondered for a moment and added quietly, "And there's another thing too. It's odd, but he's never said anything about my parents…"
"There's nothing odd about that. Everyone respects them, Neville. They made an enormous sacrifice." Reassurance came readily and sincerely.
"No, but if he were a Death Eater, you'd think he might have been tempted to use them to get a dig at me. He can say some pretty mean things when he wants to. Look at the way he lays into Harry about his Dad. Anyway, 'hate' is too strong a word - it's like what you said to Harry about him not being 'evil'…"
Hermione had to think back. She had said that. Even on the night of Dumbledore's death, her instincts had been telling her not to judge too hastily. She'd thought Neville had been asleep. But he had been thinking too.
She'd been afraid that he would be like the others: so blinkered by their loyalty to Dumbledore that they were blind to the alternatives.
"I'm not saying he didn't do it," Neville said. "No one's disputing that, are they? But we only have Harry's word as to what really happened up there on the Tower. And I'm not saying Harry's lying either, but there might be some other explanation that we don't know about. It's not as though Draco's going to come back and talk us through it. If Snape dies, we'll never know."
"I want to hear him say it," Hermione muttered grimly. "To say that he's been working for Voldemort all along, playing Dumbledore - all of us - for fools, taking us for a ride… I want to hear it from his own lips."
"Yeah, like he's going to confess to us, a couple of students!" Put that way, the idea was ridiculous. Neville studied his friend, reading the frustrations beneath the damning words, and suddenly he understood her better than ever before.
"But that's not what you believe, is it?"
Hermione pushed her hair back from her face, smoothing her hands across her skull, as though by flattening the external tangle she could somehow marshal the confusion raging inside her head. She gave a heartfelt, hopeless sigh.
"I don't know what to believe. I just don't know. The evidence is all there, but it doesn't fit. And no one seems to care - that's what gets me, Neville. They've all written Snape off, and nobody gives a damn about finding out the truth." Her eyes blazed with a passion for justice. "That night, Neville, think about it - that night, Luna and I were in the dungeons keeping tabs on Snape - he didn't know anything about it until Professor Flitwick came charging in. Doesn't that strike you as strange? If he was working hand in glove with Voldemort, wouldn't he have known? He should have been a key player in the attack."
"But wasn't it, like, Draco's initiation test - that's the impression I got - didn't he have to do it by himself?" Neville objected.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Draco was being bloody minded about it, I know that. He wouldn't tell Snape what his plan was. He didn't want him to take the credit. Isn't that weird? If the Death Eaters are one big happy family?"
Neville, who couldn't imagine confiding anything to Snape in case it went wrong and laid himself bare to a lifetime of repeated recrimination and belittling, had some sympathy with Draco on this one.
"And another thing," Hermione cried, "Why didn't he kill Flitwick while he had the chance, and me and Luna, and you lot on the stairs? He could have zapped any of us - who was going to stop him? – but he didn't hurt anybody…"
"Except Dumbledore."
It kept coming back to that one, ghastly, incontrovertible fact.
"Alright then, if it's all so cut and dried, how is it you're prepared to give him another go?" she demanded.
Neville fidgeted uneasily.
"I probably haven't thought it all through like you have, Hermione, but for me it comes down to two things. The first being, how could Dumbledore have been so wrong about Snape, and for so long? If he could be wrong about something as important as that, he could be wrong about everything else. All of it. How do we know? He… Dumbledore is - was - what the whole school is about. He's what made Hogwarts the place it is today. As far as I was concerned, Dumbledore was Hogwarts! And, Hogwarts - well, you know what it's like - it's a huge, massive chunk of our lives. And if that's all been based on one wizard's wonky judgement, where does that leave us?"
In the herb garden, desperately pretending nothing's happened, thought Hermione.
"What was the other thing, Neville?" she asked softly.
"Oh, something and nothing. You'll think I'm daft. In the fighting, right, I was down on the floor after I got that Hex in the stomach and, basically, I was trying to keep my head down cos there were all those curses and jinxes whizzing off in all directions… And then Snape and Malfoy came past. I thought for a minute Draco was going to take a swipe at me while he was about it, but Snape was hurrying him along."
"And…? So…?"
"And it was the look on Snape's face. You'd have thought he'd 've been right chuffed that the plan had worked and they'd got rid of Dumbledore. But he looked gutted. Not triumphant, but tragic."
Neither of them was sure what the implications of all this were, but it felt significant.
"So, what do we do now?" said Neville, after a long pause. "Stake out Hagrid's and wait for Snape to come to get the sample from Buckbeak? I can't see Narcissa doing it. Or he might send Draco…"
"He wouldn't risk coming back to Hogwarts - neither of them would. I can't see Draco wanting to go anywhere near Buckbeak. And Snape may not be well enough. There are plenty of other Death Eaters though," Hermione pointed out. "But for all we know, there might be samples already, in his office or in the hospital wing. We can't be in three places at once. Besides - " Here she fiddled in her pocket. "Ta-da! Antidote!" She held up a ring of twisted grey hair for Neville to inspect. "If the mountain won't come to the magic, the magic must go to the mountain."
"What mountain? Where?" Neville had panicky visions of a gruesome quest through Mordor to Mount Doom.(1)
"Oh, honestly! If I'd said, 'Muhammad must go…' would you have understood me then? No? Oh, never mind. I give up. This 'ring' is hair from Buckbeak's tail - don't ask me how I got it; I don't even want to think about it. We can take it to Snape - all we have to do is get Narcissa to tell us where he is."
They had not heard the cottage door open and close, but a dry 'Hmm' had them both starting up guiltily. Augusta Longbottom stood in the doorway, a long and lethal hat-pin in one hand, her vulture hat dangling from the other.
"Am I to understand," the old witch said severely, the hat pin wagging like a sharp, disapproving finger, "that you two conspirators are plotting to extract information from a person going by the name of Narcissa? And that, I take it, would be Madam Narcissa Malfoy?"
They gulped. It was pointless to deny it.
Neville's gran stabbed the pin back into the vulture's bottom. It let out a squawk, flapped over to the hat-stand and hung itself up. Mrs Longbottom began to unbutton her coat.
"I can think of a few choice phrases I might say to that young lady. Leave her to me."
End of chapter.
Next chapter: TRUTH AND OIL
Tempted as I was to have a whole Mrs Longbottom versus Narcissa chapter, I thought the time was long overdue for a confrontation with Snape… Yes! He's actually going to be in the next chapter. (About time too!)
1 ring, Mordor, Mt Doom - sorry, couldn't resist. LotR snuck up on me.