Chapter 23: He Was Their Friend

Severus was more than a little surprised when, upon sweeping into Lily's sickroom at St. Mungo's one cold winter's afternoon, he was confronted with a wall of newspaper type. The corners of the Daily Prophet crinkled as its reader set the paper down. Lily now smiled radiantly at him.

"Good morning, Severus." Only by the fact that the smile didn't reach her deep hazel eyes could Severus tell: something was troubling her.

"Well, at least we're showing demonstrated progress on our reading," he chuckled drolly, setting his carpetbag down and taking his usual seat at her bedside.

His pretty companion didn't reply, her bow lips now having dimmed into a curious frown. Her one finger was pointing authoritatively at something within the Prophet's A pages.

"I know them…. how do I know them?..."

"Know who, Lillian?" Severus asked, even as he rose out of his seat and peered over her shoulder to follow where her finger was pointing.

It was at two pictures: moving, so he knew they were magical. But it was the subjects of these photos – no, mug shots, that made his blood chill.

Severus bit his lip, and he fought to keep from even glancing at Lily out of his periphery. He wasn't sure how these two figures had resurfaced in the first place (even if a quick scan of the article would tell him that well enough), but regardless he knew either of them, if not both of them at once, stood a real chance of triggering Lily's memory. In any other context, with any other subject, he would ordinarily consider that a good thing, but this…..

Severus bit down hard on his lip, also acutely aware that anything he did or said might trigger recognition of these ne'er-do-wells in Lily also. He patted her on the head. "I wouldn't fret on it, my pet. The Ministry and Dementors will take care of that matter well enough."

Inside, however, he wasn't so sure: in posting the Dementors at Hogwarts, Azkaban would have diverted much of its resources, and he had it on good authority that Cornelius Fudge wasn't exactly the best Minister for Magic in a time of crisis.

He would have to speak to Dumbledore about this. But first, to set aside such worries, for that was what visits with his beloved girl were supposed to be for. So thinking, Severus pulled up his chair, opened the book he had brought and began to read.

"Severus?"

"Hmm?" he glanced up absently to where Lily was combing her fingers through her lustrous auburn tresses.

"Will you read aloud to me?"

He smiled softly at her. "Of course. I imagine you would know Jane Austen?"

Lily bit her lip prettily. "I may have read her…. once…."

Severus's grin broadened, pleased that in trying to remain close to her by studying her Muggle heritage, even for pleasure, he was doing something right. "No doubt you would have. Very well, then."

And for her benefit, he restarted at Chapter 1.

The screeching of the owls came long before anyone saw them. Hearing their call the following morning at breakfast, Ron looked up almost absently. "Ah. Mail's here!"

The students in the Great Hall watched as a huge flock of birds swooped in from an open transom in the ceiling, not quite dive-bombing their quarries to deliver care packages, foodstuffs, Daily Prophet subscriptions. Ron seemed pleased when good old Errol flapped to a rest in front of him, clutching a carton of Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans in his talons.

"Guess it's my turn, then."

"Honestly, Ron, do you and your siblings really have to share an owl?" Hermione shook her head, voice exasperated in contrast with the amused smile playing at her lips. "With all the food orders you place by yourself, why not just get one of your own?"

Ron shrugged as he untied the carton of beans from Errol's claw. "Percy will be gone by the end of the year, so that will free up Errol's load. Believe me, if anyone is hogging the family owl, it's that stuck-up git." He breathed in deeply while setting the Bertie Bott's carton upright. "But what about you? Surely your parents would want to send you something! And it's not as though the orange throw rug could be useful in delivery! It's not useful in anything!"

Hermione's amused smile quickly simmered down into a glower as she absently stroked Crookshank's fur. "The orange throw rug – it…. has a name, and he is useful for things!" she spluttered.

Ron snorted. "Not in mail carrying, surely?" He winked at Neville, who worked to keep the muscles in his face carefully neutral, lest he appear partisan to one side.

"Crookshanks is a comfort animal!" Hermione sniffed, upturning her nose.

"I'd be better comforted if the animal would croak and die already! We'd all save on cleaning the common room of cat hair!" Ron stage-whispered loud enough for Hermione to hear. She let out a gasp of horror and affront.

"THEY'VE BEEN SIGHTED! THEY'VE BEEN SIGHTED!" Seamus's thick and distinct Irish brogue rose up amongst the chorus of chatter, followed by the rest of him, as he barreled round to the head of the table and plunked down a spread of newsprint as if in triumph. "The Azkaban escapees!"

"Azkaban escapees?" Ron sounded awed, and not at all bothered that Seamus's usurpation of space for his paper had nearly upended the Bertie Bott's Beans into his lap. "Azakaban is supposed to be escape-proof!"

"Not anymore, it ain't!" Seamus crowed, eyes gleaming with excitement and the Trio and many other Gryffindors crowded around, heads muscling in as some even tried to read the headlining article upside down.

"When did this happen?" Neville asked curiously.

"Skeeter thinks weeks ago, and the Ministry and the media has been trying to keep quiet about it! Dumbledore and the faculty too!"

Ron and Neville shared a look, both of them wondering if this was the reason those Dementors…..?

"DUFFTOWN?!" Hermione cried. "That's not far from here!" Heated whispering arose.

"Where exactly is Dufftown?" Neville wondered.

"In relation to Hogwarts? It's basically the same distance as Hogsmeade, except in the other direction," Ron quipped. He frowned. "Still…. gee. That's awfully close." A stricken look descended upon his face. "You don't think the teachers will cancel…?"

"Oh, honestly, Ron, at this point, which do you think is more important?" Hermione admonished. "Our lives, or the next Hogsmeade trip?"

Neville peered down at the type and accompanying images. A pair of mug shots stared back at him, magically moving, their subjects looking quite insane. He squinted to make out the captions. SIRIUS BLACK and BELLATRIX LESTRANGE were their names.

"Skeeter thinks they may have been involved in a duel in the burgh," Seamus reported rapturously.

"Honestly, Seamus, you shouldn't believe everything you read…."

"'Mione, if you're that intent on acting like everybody's mum, I shudder to think what will become of your own children when you have them," Ron groaned.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him balefully. "That is awfully presumptuous of you, Ronald, not to mention misogynistic…."

"Hey: you were the one telling us about what you'd name your daughter in Herbology….!"

"Shut it," Neville clipped, causing both of his friends to jerk up out of their squabbling and blink at him dumbly. He was now trying to skim what little of the article he could from where it now sat in his line of vision, inverted. But he was still mostly preoccupied by the pair of mug shots. If Seamus was right and these two inmates had been dueling…. were they working at cross-purposes? And if so, what was that purpose? And since the sighting had occurred so close to the castle…. was Hogwarts now a target?

He didn't know any of the answers, but he did know this: he wouldn't be surprised if Hermione was right, and the Hogsmeade trips for third years and above were discontinued for the time being.

It was much to Neville's surprise when the Hogsmeade trip that had happened to be on the books for that very Saturday week was not scrubbed. Ron seemed relieved; Hermione was leery, and only consented to board the threstral carriages when Ron personally asked her to. "Village isn't any fun without you," Ron had admitted to her honestly. In truth, Hermione had seemed pleased, despite her reservations.

As for Neville himself, he slept in that Saturday morning, and decided to only board the final carriage into the Village at the last minute. Ever since the start of term, he had felt a big-brotherly crisis of conscience to stay and keep company with Harry, who was always left behind. Hogsmeade trips required the signature of a parent or guardian, and the only guardians Harry had were his horrid Muggle relatives who probably would try to keep him from returning to the castle completely every summer out of sheer spite, never mind let him go on a school field trip. Neville only departed for the Village when Harry told him he would be all right.

So here Neville was, rumbling into the wizarding village late and with his two best mates already well ahead of him. In between the bustling shoppers and carousing Hogwarts students across five whole years, he would hardly have a hope of finding Ron and Hermione, and perhaps he shouldn't try. Ron hadn't said as much in so many words but the way he had pleaded for Hermione to come made it sound like a sort of date…. At the very least, the redhead hadn't bothered to wake Neville up on time to tag along, even as a third wheel.

Neville allowed himself a small smirk. He wondered if Hermione interpreted her day alone with Ron with any kind of…. romantic undertones, or what she would say, if he were to even hint at it in jest.

Neville disembarked from the threstral carriage, nodding to the creature pulling it in front. The few outings he had gone on before with his friends, neither Ron nor Hermione had appeared to notice them. It was probably just an overthinking of things, but he wondered why that was so. Maybe it was a taking for granted sort of thing and not that his best mates couldn't see what pulled the carriages to and from the castle every weekend.

… Was it?

Huh. This whole Sirius Black-Bellatrix Lestrange, Azkaban prison break thing was starting to make him paranoid.

"You're not going mad."

The dreamy, singsong voice nearly in his ear made him spin about so fast, he almost slipped in the snow. Wearing a fur beanie that made curly strands of her blonde hair stick out, Luna Lovegood smiled at him serenely. "I can see them too. You're just as sane as I am."

He blinked, stuttered into stillness by her. She merely cocked her head like a curious puppy and blinked at him, much as she had whilst studying him in the greenhouse after Herbology that one day. "Hullo, Just Neville."

Neville chuffed out an awkward, indeed bashful, laugh, that she would remember their last conversation just as vividly as he did. "Hullo, Luna Lovegood."

"Oh," she brightened, her voice lilting slightly into something…. bouncy. Even gay. "Are we back to full names now?"

Now he full on chuckled. "You were the one that was insistent on using my full name."

"And why shouldn't I?" she chirped, matching him step for step as they fell into an amiable stroll down the snow-covered streets. "I happen to think yours is a fine enough name, Neville Longbottom."

He side-eyed her, bemused. He was altogether uncertain if she had uttered such a thing with genuine seriousness or if she had meant it as a joke. Whatever her intent behind the comment, he averted his gaze downward and kicked at an errant drift. "Sometimes, it doesn't always feel that way…." he murmured with unusual vulnerability. "Hermione likes to say fear of the name only elicits fear of the thing itself. I don't know if I've ever made her aware that fame does too."

Luna merely peered at him as though she could see directly into him, and Neville marveled at how someone's eyes could be so enigmatically unsettling and yet comforting all at once.

"And you think people fear you because of your fame, Neville Longbottom?"

He snorted. "Where were you for much of last term?"

He was shocked at how she would answer the teasing jibe so literally. "Alone, mostly, trying to make friends. The Prefects in Ravenclaw say that if you can't make it through first year having made at least one good mate, well, then you're pretty much bollocksed."

Neville blinked, a swell of sadness for her coursing through him. He suddenly felt a crazy urge to reach for her hand.

"Well…. maybe stop listening to what your stuck-up Prefects say and start…" he faltered, caught in the beam of her oddly entrancing silver eyes. Tried again. "There's no expiration date on making friends, Luna. You and Ginny and Harry are mates, aren't you?"

Her bow lips upturned into a pleased, almost proud smile, her blond hair trying to work free from its fur beanie as a gust suddenly blew through, so that some of her blonde strands came loose and a curtain of hair fell into her face. Neville reached out a hand and plucked the beanie in his fist before it could blow all the way off her head and back down the street. "Someone was certainly paying attention in our last conversation…."

"Well…." Neville rumbled, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. "You're kind of hard to forget." Luna simply looked delighted by what she clearly took as a compliment. Neville imagined he had meant it as one. In truth, he wasn't sure. He already knew that talking to Luna wasn't like talking to Hermione, even as he knew, some parts of it felt just as effortless…. but in an entirely different way.

"I'm hope I'm not holding you back, Neville Longbottom."

"Hardly. I'm glad I ran into you. And it's just Neville. Friends tend to only address each other familiarly, just with first names." He watched as her lips upturned into a small smile.

They were walking at a crawl now, leisurely, talking quietly. "Where are you from, anyway?"

"Devon. Dad and I are neighbors of the Weasleys actually; we live just over the next hill," Luna explained.

"I didn't hear you mention a Mum in there," Neville floated.

"Oh, my mum died when I was nine. Wandwork accident." She sounded incredibly at peace with the explanation even though, Neville surmised, it couldn't have happened more than three years ago.

"That's awful! I'm sorry. I…. I know what it's like to grow up without a parent." He hesitated a bit. "I…. I lost both of my parents when I was just a year…. well, you probably know the story."

Once again, and in a refreshing way, Luna didn't immediately give any sort of reverence or deference to his obvious legend. Neville deduced it felt incredibly liberating, to have someone speak to him as just a person – something that only Ron and Hermione had only been able to do, and even then not consistently. "Oh, it's all right. After all, I've got Dad."

"Yeah. I've got my Gran."

They were walking slowly enough that they came to a halt in the eaves of one shop front. Luna's attention was suddenly preoccupied to something above them, and her easy smile floated onto her round face once more.

"Mistletoe," she murmured quietly. Neville followed her gaze up into the awning where a sprig of mistletoe did indeed dangle. He snapped his head back to her face, suddenly feeling shy and wondering if she was going to kiss him. Or, that she might expect him to kiss her. He flushed rouge.

Luna was merely trapping him in that gaze that made him feel like she could peer into his very soul. She still seemed supremely at peace, unbothered. "You're not impotent, Neville Long – Neville," she corrected, and here, her silver eyes fluttered a little, as though she might actually be as shy as Neville felt. And here, for the first time, she seemed to allude to the fame that followed him everywhere as she pointed out, "Given your record, I can't imagine why you would feel that way…"

Neville nickered through his nose bitterly. "You'd be surprised…"

"I probably would be," she replied, once again literally. "Interesting people are usually the last ones who should feel invisible."

He blinked at her. Almost without thinking, he blurted out. "You're interesting. Yet you seemed to go through all of last term feeling invisible." His heart ached for her.

She grinned at him softly. "Maybe…. but I don't feel invisible. Not anymore." His cheeks turned pinker, if possible. They were still standing under that mistletoe, and from how she was still pondering him expectantly, Neville wondered if he should lean in. If she recognized his intent, he'd leave it up to Luna whether or not she pushed him away.

Again, it was like she could read his thoughts. "Mistletoe can keep away the Nargles, insomuch as they like to burrow in their leaves. So if you find yourself under a sprig, beware! Nargles can put foolish thoughts in your head."

"Foolish thoughts like kissing?" Kissing anyone had always seemed like something foolish, crazy, mad, and that perception was all the more pronounced when he imagined doing something so right daffy with the girl now before him.

Luna shrugged. "The most spontaneous actions in life always seem the most crazy. I suppose that's why they're also the best." She beamed at him, and Neville felt so lost in that smile that a little monster inside him was telling him to do it, just pull this girl close and snog her, Nargles be damned.

Instead, he stammered out, "What…. what are Nargles?"

Before Luna could open her mouth to answer, a pair of raised voices floated on the air over to them. Tearing his gaze away from the entrancing Ravenclaw, Neville zeroed in on the source of the commotion and wanted to groan: Ron and Hermione were standing in the center of the Village Green, smack dab between Honeyduke's and Madame Rosmerta's pub, the bickering pair nearly nose to nose. If this was a date, it wasn't going well. He'd have to break it up. Now that he thought of it, he'd be better served luring them both under this awning and its mistletoe and hope that one might kiss the other, if only to shut the other up.

Neville cringed, embarassed. "I…. I gotta go." He waved lamely. "Thank you for the walk, Luna."

She smiled at him in that way that made him feel like he mattered, and not just because he was somebody famous. "OK. Thank you…. Neville." Turning, she dashed up the street; Neville watched her blond curls bounce under her beanie fur cap and out of sight before he turned with a sigh to face the music.

That music being the rather discordant chords of Ron and Hermione in another row. "….. Chocolate Frogs are dangerous to a cat's health, Ronald! Don't you know anything about pet care?"

"That was the idea!" Ron bit back, rather cruelly. "Your cat is a menace, Hermione. Choking on chocolate would put it – and all of us – out of misery!"

"Enough," Neville moved between them. "If this is a version of a lover's quarrel, I daresay I don't want to know what a true row would sound like."

He was smugly satisfied at how both his best mates gawked at him, Hermione's gaping mouth being particularly hilarious. He was almost disappointed that he wouldn't get to use the mistletoe as a strategy of détente after all.

"You're as daffy as a duck, mate!" Ron scoffed, doth protesting too much. His ears were now the color of his hair, and not, Neville wagered, entirely due to the cold.

Hermione blew out a raspberry through her lips, the sound tossing some of her errant brown curls out of her face. "Honestly, Neville…..!"

"OI! Look, you lot! Are there ghosts in this village, or my eyes going right nutters?"

Ron's abrupt point made both Neville and Hermione glance towards the pub, just in time to see the front door open and close by itself. Peering closer, Neville could discern footprints, booted ones, appearing in the snow, left by no owner.

"Either that, or someone's invisible." At his statement, the Trio immediately shared a concerned look.

"Harry." Upon their chorused assessment, Neville, Ron and Hermione gave chase, keeping their eyes to the ground and on the boot prints hurrying away to the outskirts of the Village, their path taking them through a group of carolers without anyone noticing. Wizards in robes tumbled back and cried out in shock, Hermione performing the perfunctory apologies and 'Happy Christmases' on behalf of them all.

They didn't stop until they came to a wooded clearing in the foothills of Hogsmeade. The ownerless boot prints had halted right at a boulder, and even against the whistling of the snow flurries, Neville thought he heard the sound of sniffling.

Biting her lip prettily, Hermione drifted over to the seemingly unoccupied boulder. Lifting a trembling hand, she felt about on the air until she came to grip something invisible and pulled.

There was a rustling as the Invisibility Cloak fell away, revealing a hunched and sobbing Harry. It took a moment for him to glance up, eyes bloodshot.

"Harry, what happened?" Hermione prodded gently.

Neville figured that a lad in a less precarious emotional state might start with how the hell he had snuck out of the castle, even while under a magical object like an Invisibility Cloak, and clearly walk all the way to Hogsmeade, which, though near, was no small distance on foot. But Harry didn't bother to explain this, instead dropping them all in the proverbial middle of the woods similar to the literal wood in which they were all standing.

"He was their friend…. and he betrayed them… He was their FRIEND!"

Neville had never seen this kind of anger, this will to fight, in little Harry before. In any other circumstance, it might have pleased him, that the boy was finally starting to shed some of the impotence he, Neville himself, felt sometimes, even as the Boy Who Lived.

"I hope he finds me," Harry was breathing hard. "Cause when he does, I'm gonna be ready! When he does, I'm gonna KILL HIM! And she…" he chuckled bitterly, in a way that, from how Hermione shrank back a little, seemed to frighten her as much as it did Neville. "She's next!"

Harry didn't bother to clarify whom he meant by 'he' and 'she'….. yet Neville had a sinking feeling he knew.

The mug shots of two prisoners danced behind his eyelids….