Chapter 15: It Takes One to Know One

Today had been one of those days at Hogwarts – rare though they were – where things went from bad to worse for Neville.

He somehow had gotten in trouble with Snape during Potions without fully understanding what offense he had committed. Ron had appeared more affronted on his behalf, and encouraged him to try and contest the punishment. Snape, however, had refused to budge after class. Neville was only really saved (if it could be called saving) by Professor Lockhart, who offered to supervise him as he served his detention.

Honestly, if it had been left as a choice between serving detention with Snape or serving it with Lockhart, Neville pondered as Ron walked him down to the blonde boob's office, he would have to… very, very, very weakly pick Lockhart.

The boys were only hindered when they nearly crashed into Filch, coming out of a broom cupboard. Spotting something flutter to the floor, Neville stooped down to pick it up. It looked like an envelope.

"Mr. Flich….. you…. you dropped this."

Filch angrily snatched the thing out of the boy's grasp as though Neville's touching it was burning it away and stormed off with a sweep of his trench coat. Neville and Ron moved on, the latter dropping him off at Lockhart's door.

"Think you can stand an hour with the man?" Ron asked. "I'd love to know what a punishment from him looks like!"

Punishment, it turned out, came in the form of Neville assembly-line helping Lockhart answer all his fan mail, of which there was apparently a lot.

That was where, sitting in Lockhart's dark office and actually working by candlelight, of all things (Hogwarts was magical, but they at least followed Muggle advancements like electrical lighting), he first heard it: a kind of hissing sound.

"What?"

"Sorry?"

"I…. I thought I heard something."

"Happens when you're quiet, Neville, my lad," Lockhart smiled, happening to glance down at his watch. "And Great Scott! Look at the time! We've only been here nearly four hours."

Incensed that most of his night had been taken up, Neville started to make his way back to the Gryffindor Common Room. By now, he would have to hurry if he didn't want to be docked points for being out of bed past curfew.

He heard it again, that hissing voice. It sounded like it was coming from inside the walls. Pressing his ear to the stone, he moved along it, almost as if he was following something hidden inside the crevices.

Neville was nearly running down the length of one corridor when he almost crashed into Ron and Hermione, who had obviously risked curfew to come and look for him.

"Neville!"

"Did you hear it?"

"Hear what?" Ron frowned, puzzling over his best mate practically hugging the wall, he was so close to it.

"That voice."

"Voice? What voice?" Hermione's breath hitched nervously.

Neville could still hear it, though, sliding away from him. "It's moving…." He breathed. "I think it's going to kill…." Now he broke into a run, leaving Ron and Hermione to pelt after him.

"Kill?" Ron's voice leapt a little.

"Neville, WAIT! Not so fast!"

The trio came to a halt along a new stretch of corridor, the soles of their feet suddenly muffled in their tapping by a light layer of dampness. Water.

Ron chanced a look outside. "It's not raining. No monsoons or flash flood warnings…"

"Maybe… maybe a bathroom sprung a leak nearby," Neville mumbled. "Aren't we close to the loo where we rescued Hermione?" As he understood it, the wreckage that bathroom sustained just about exactly a year ago was close to being fixed.

Hermione was beginning to nod when her head shifted and she sucked in a gasp. Neville followed both the sound and her gaze, to take in how the wall in front of them was defaced, floor to ceiling, in red dye. A message was scrawled where the streaks of red met to form words:

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware. It's written in blood." Hermione nearly gagged.

Something caught Neville's eye just then, hanging from a torchlight sconce. The shape was small and had a tail, from which it was dangling off the stantion. It was a cat.

"It's Filch's cat!" he called back to the others. "It's Mrs. Norris!"

Suddenly, Neville realized they weren't alone. A large crowd was beginning to form, taking in the gruesome sight the way one might witness a car accident. Madame Pomfrey had a hand to her mouth. Dark eyes sweeping the scene, Snape's gaze finally landed on Neville with curious intrigue. Harry scampered towards the Trio and Hermione tucked him into her side for a moment, before passing him off to an older Gryffindor.

"'Enemies of the Heir, beware'?" Malfoy's smirk held all the admiring, pleased ecstasy of a wannabe fascist. "You'll be next, Mudbloods!" and he sneered at Ron and Hermione.

"What's going on 'ere?! Come on, make way – make way!" Filch grumpily pushed to the front of the throng, clearly perturbed at having to clear castle congestion this late.

Neville clearly detected the moment the caretaker saw Mrs. Norris. Filch's entire face went ashen, and he staggered closer a step, two. Shocked grief visited the dirty man's face as though he was bearing witness to the death of a lover, rather than a pet. "Ms…. Mrs. Norris?"

Neville shouldn't have been standing so close to the sconce, for how it might have looked. The optics of the tableau certainly seemed to be misconstrued by Filch, whose beady eyes sharply rounded on Neville.

"You….. murdered…. my cat!"

A stunned Neville could only manage a choked "No!"

"I'll kill you…." A kind of deranged smile broke out over Filch's crooked teeth, and he actually seized Neville by the collar of his robes and lifted him off his feet, shaking him. "I'll KILL YA!"

"Argus!" Dumbledore burst onto the scene in the nick of time, swaying to a halt as he took in the ghastly sight before him. Both McGonagall and Lockhart were at his back. There was a moment of tense silence.

"Everyone…. will return to their respective House dormitories immediately!" There was almost a traffic jam as students made to get away and Dumbledore had to shout out: "Everyone EXCEPT…. you three." He pointed between Neville, Ron and Hermione.

The trio shared nervous glances and hung back. After what had happened last year, none of them hoped they were gaining a reputation for being troublemakers. Should that be the case, it was a pretty fair bet that Hermione would die of shame.

Ignoring the three hapless students for the moment, Dumbledore drifted closer to the bloodied wall, studying Mrs. Norris's body judiciously.

"She's not dead, Argus," he finally declared, eliciting from Filch a kind of childlike whimper. "She has been merely petrified."

Merely? Neville thought it was hard to determine a distinction between dead and petrified, from the way Mrs. Norris was dangling, impossibly still.

"…. But how she has been petrified, I cannot say."

"Ask him!" Filch pointed the finger literally at Neville, his voice choked with bitterness. "It's him that's what's done it! You saw what he wrote on the wall!"

"It's not true, sir, I swear! I never touched Mrs. Norris!"

"Rubbish! He saw my Quickspell letter!" Filch spat. "He knows I'm a….. I'm a Squib! After all, it takes one to know one!"

Ron looked like he was ready to make a furious move towards the caretaker; recalling all too painfully what happened the last time his best mate had shot off the cuff from his wand, Neville held him back. Though the boys still shared an interested look – so that was the envelope Neville had retrieved after Filch had dropped it!

"If I might speak, Headmaster…" Snape drolled. "Perhaps Longbottom and his friends were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time." The Potions Master stalked closer. "However… the circumstances are suspicious. I, for one, don't recall seeing Longbottom at dinner."

"I believe that's my doing, Severus," Lockhart vouched. "You see, Neville was helping me answer my fan mail."

"For hours on end?" Snape blinked, clearly skeptical. "I seem to recall, Gilderoy, that I passed the boy's detention sentence off to you for only one hour…."

"We ran late!" Neville offered up.

Hermione nodded fervently at his side. "That's why we went looking for him, Professor. We just found him when he said…" Her voice trailed off, glancing to Neville as if asking him for permission.

"Yes…. Miss Granger?"

"… when I said I wasn't hungry!" Neville finished, bullshitted. "We were heading back to the Common Room when we came across Mrs. Norris."

A tense silence rose up from the gathered faculty. Dumbledore leveled his opinion. "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus."

Filch looked incensed, emotion choking off his voice. "My cat…. has been petrified….. I wanna see some PUNISHMENT!"

"We will be able to cure her, Argus. As I understand it, Professor Sprout has a healthy store of Mandrakes, which can be used to make a potion which will revive Mrs. Norris." Dumbledore assured him.

Sprout and Snape glanced to each other and nodded with the cordiality of colleagues who would be collaborating closely in the near future. Dumbledore turned back to the three students.

"You all are dismissed. Return straight to Gryffindor Tower." Neville and his friends hurried out of there, quickening their pace when it appeared as though Filch was going to argue the point and come after them.

"What's a Squib?" Neville asked as they mounted the rotating stairs.

"It's…. someone born to at least one or both magical parents who nevertheless develops no magical prowess," Hermione recited.

Neville frowned. "So it's sort of like a slur, then? Like what… what Malfoy called you?"

"Unfortunately, saying Squib isn't as taboo as saying that…. that other word," Hermione spat. "Most people think of it as a lower class. A Squib is stuck between two worlds – not belonging to the magical one, yet not exactly belonging to the Muggle one, either."

"Damn libel, it is!" Ron grumbled. "To think that the Boy Who Lived might be a…. a Squib! Filch is just jealous!"

Neville wasn't so sure. Even after more than a year, he was still growing comfortable with his wand. He hardly ever pulled it out unless he needed to do so for lecture, and even then, he always braced himself. While nothing critically injurious had happened, he still struggled to wield magic confidently. Perhaps Filch was right, at least on that point.

He thought back to the crime scene they had walked in on. Mrs. Norris… and what had led them there. That voice…. "Do you think I should have told the others? Dumbledore, I mean?"

"Are you mad?!" Ron ogled. Hermione, as usual, appeared contemplative.

"No, Neville, even in the wizarding world, hearing voices isn't a good sign. You hear this voice, one only you can hear, and suddenly Mrs. Norris ends up petrified? It's just…. strange." She turned on her heel and hiked up the steps, leaving the boys to follow her.

Severus was delayed leaving the staff debrief following Mrs. Norris's…. petrification. Still, when he did finally reach his happy place in St. Mungo's and in Lily's sick chambers, he was unable to fully deprogram from his castle duties and just be with her. Most evenings, removing himself from the inner-goings of the school was easy and welcomed, for just a few hours. But tonight…. his mind raced to dark, foreboding thoughts.

It didn't help that it happed to be Halloween night, the anniversary of the Dark Lord's fall and the attack on the Longbottoms. Which also meant that he and Lily were about to silently observe the anniversary of her torture and James' death.

It wasn't as though he had ever placed any special emphasis on his visit to mark that day in early November. In moments when Lily would ask why she was here again, he would simply tell her she was quite sick, but that they were going to make her better. He feared any more detail than that would inevitably lead to questions about what had happened to her…. questions he couldn't bring himself to answer, not until he judged that Lily was ready. And that readiness hinged on her regaining enough of her memory. As far as he knew, she had never experienced recall regarding her late husband; she had never asked about James, or where he was.

Tonight, at least, he had tried to cheer up Lily (and, coincidentally, himself) by taking another clandestine photo of Harry, in the hubbub of everyone discovering Mrs. Norris. At least this time, he hadn't needed to use a Muggle flash camera, capturing the moment via magic instead. The Polaroid, just developed down in his dungeon potion stores, depicted Harry tucked into a side-hug by Ms. Granger.

The brainiac girl returned his thoughts to Longbottom and just what the hell was going on with him. Severus would readily confess, even under Veritaserum, that he didn't trouble himself with thoughts of the boy as much as he did with Lily's son, or might have if little Harry had instead been the Boy Who Lived of prophecy. It was mostly from a sense of deference towards Dumbledore that in moments like this he now worried….

Severus tended not to take much stock in whatever Argus Filch had to say. What the caretaker had postulated about the Longbottom boy's abilities amounted to slander. And yet still….. even slander can have a grain of truth in it.

The thought that Neville might be a Squib actually caused Severus to clench with fear. If this was true, what were they to do? By virtue of demonstrative ability (or lack thereof) had Voldemort marked the wrong baby? Only the recollection of Neville's lightning scar and how he had gotten it pulled Severus back from the brink of his darkest thoughts, if only just barely.

From where she was holding his hand while fawning over the Polaroid of Harry, Lily must have sensed the stress, the tension, in his palm, for she now squeezed it lightly.

"Sev… Severus?" He jerked to hear her croon of his name, and he wasn't sure whether she had meant to say what had always been his pet name for her, or it if it had just been a bobble in her voice. "What is it? Are you all right?"

He gave her his best, tired smile. "Perfectly fine, darling. Do you like your new picture?"

"Oh, I love it!" Lily bubbled, turning back to it with pure joy in her eyes. The brightness in her hazel irises dimmed a bit, clouding over with what Severus by now recognized was a struggle to recall. The proper term the Healers used was aphasia – the struggle to summon words and memories. "Now who…. who is that again?" she pointed to Harry's jet-black curls.

Severus maintained the patience of Job as he grinned at her compassionately. "That's your son, Lillian."

There was something novel about watching Lily's expression of wonder with each new discovery, even if said discovery had been made more than once. "Blimey…." she breathed. "I've always wanted a son…"

Severus rumbled out a chuckle, and when Lily looped her arm though his so she could rest her head on his shoulder, he thought he might die from something he otherwise didn't find much of in his hard life: contentment.