Chapter 36: Fight the Big Lie

Neville didn't see Luna again until a week or so into the start of term. He had already gotten into a squabble with Umbridge, Fudge's plant from the Ministry now installed in a teaching position. Hermione hadn't sugarcoated it when she had deduced the Ministry was interfering at Hogwarts, an institution with its own customs and rules. But Neville hadn't realized how severe the implications of this were until that ugly toad dared to refute him – and then gave him detention for speaking the truth! Ron had grumbled quite a few choice phrases after that, not the worst of which included that clearly no one ever shagged a bird who looked as though the Hogwarts Express had thundered right into her face, and why was Fudge installing some dumbshit broad who could only squawk about Neville's deadly encounter being fake news? Hermione had merely rolled her eyes at Ron's shock-jock language and chided him not to underestimate the woman. Neville supposed his detention would help him discern just how dangerous an enemy this cow was.

Still…. it stung to think that no one just automatically gave him the deference he had always been due. A more introspective Neville might have wondered if that said anything about arrogance, but right now he felt disheartened. Even without taking Voldemort into the account, he had still seen a classmate die right in front of him… and even if everyone believed that Cedric really had died, if not so much how he had died, the fact still remained that no one was listening to him! He wished he could tell someone how much pain he still felt for his part in Cedric's death, but so far, not even Ron and Hermione had cared to ask.

It truly felt awful, to be alone. He felt trapped, which is why he'd figured that an early morning walk along the grounds might give him some space to think.

The moment he encountered Luna, her back was to him, petting the snout of one of those threstral things. Her feet were bare, in the soil and mulch, and she didn't even turn her head as she clearly heard him approach.

"Hello, Neville." Her voice still sounded as though it was trying to float its way out of her body. It may have sounded almost creepy before, in that greenhouse where they first met his third year, but in this moment, Neville basked in what sounded to him like a peacefulness that he didn't feel. She turned to him, blissfully serene, her stare awesomely calm. The way she looked at him was almost omniscient, like she knew him before she'd even…. well, known him.

Blushing, Neville glanced down at his shoes, noticing how her toes wiggled in the mulch, as though they, along with their owner, didn't have a care in the world. Perhaps that was also just Luna's way.

"Your feet… aren't they cold?"

"A bit," she conceded. Every word of her voice sounded melodious. A song only she and he could hear. "… Unfortunately, all my shoes have mysteriously disappeared. I suspect Nargles are behind it."

Even after what he supposed was a good two years of friendship, Neville still wasn't sure how much of…. Luna was for real. And she still hadn't satisfactorily explained to him what Nargles were, despite Hermione assuring him there was no such creature. As for him, he was more likely to suspect students pulling a prank by way of explanation for her lack of footwear. They watched as the threstral she'd been petting wandered away.

"People avoid them because they think they're a bit…"

"…. Different," Neville finished her sentence, heavily. A charged beat as they glanced to each other, and in that moment, something passed between them: a connection. Or some sense of a common destiny. Up ahead, a baby threstral was trying to find its feet, and they shuffled towards it. "But why can't the others see them?"

"They can only be seen by people who have seen death," Luna explained.

Huh. Well, he'd seen plenty of that, so he was more than qualified. Only now he felt like he was part of a club no one else wanted to join. Then he worked through what Luna had said.

"So….. you've know someone who's died, then?"

"My mum. She was quite an extraordinary witch, but… she did like to experiment, and… one day, one of her spells went badly wrong. I was nine."

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, shifting his eyes briefly to her. He seemed to recall that she had mentioned this before, back on a trip into Hogsmeade in third year, soon after they met. Then and now, there was nothing to say, except to internally be slightly envious. At least Luna had known her mother – and still had her father, presumably. Neville had no memory of either of his parents.

They were now near the threstral, wriggling unsteadily in the leaves.

"Yes, it was horrible. I do feel rather sad about it sometimes. But I've got Dad."

She reached into the saddlebag at her shoulder and procured an apple. "We both believe you, by the way." She turned to look at him meaningfully and Neville felt an odd jolt at how she seemed to look right through his soul. He hoped that whatever she saw in him, she judged it to be good, or at least honest.

The baby threstral let out a hungry shriek and staggered closer, eyeing the fruit. Neither of the students appeared to notice, holding each other's gaze.

"That You-Know-Who is really back, and you fought him, and the Ministry and the Prophet are conspiring against you and Dumbledore."

The way she said it made it sound like a conspiracy theory, so crackers enough that it must be true. Umbridge certainly wasn't doing anything to disprove such a notion. What was more disturbing was that most of the student body, outside of maybe the Gryffindors (a lot naturally skeptical of authority, but even there, some like Seamus didn't believe him), seemed to be willfully blind to what was happening. "Thanks," he huffed bitterly. "Seems like you're about the only ones who do."

"I don't think that's true," Luna stated mildly as she rolled the apple towards the baby threstral. The creature sniffed it, then lifted its head. "But I suppose that's how he wants you to feel."

"What do you mean?" Neville asked, startled by her analysis.

"Well, if I were You-Know-Who, I'd want you to feel cut off from everyone else, because if it's just you alone…. You're not as much of a threat."

She smiled at him, and Neville was quite shocked to discover how attractive it made her look. It made little dimples along her round cheeks. Her face was oval-shaped, smooth. Pleasing enough to look at. And right, maybe she was a little odd, but she also seemed like one of the few people in this school who was…. authentic. Real. Best of all, it felt so, so good that there was one person here who believed him.

He was disturbed about her theory that maybe Voldemort was orchestrating some large psy ops against him. That it likely wasn't Umbridge or even Fudge in control – they just thought they were. It was Voldemort all along, the real puppet master pulling the strings of underlings who foolishly believed they themselves were the puppet masters.

Well…. he'd faced worse from the Dark Lord…. He hoped. And he had won. Plus, right now, safe in the knowledge that there was at least one person on his side felt like quite the victory.

Luna's kind smile broadened, making her sapphire eyes twinkle, and Neville couldn't help it: he allowed himself to smile too, if only slightly. Her words were like a strange balm on his soul, and he watched as she pulled from her saddlebag a hunk of meat and fed it to the threstral.

Neville served his detention with Umbridge. He shouldn't have been so shocked that Hermione's hunch regarding the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher's formidability – that the Ministry was interfering at Hogwarts - proved to be correct. His punishment resulted in him writing lines, which would have been normal fare as a disciplinary action… except for the fact that the line he was forced to write – 'I must not tell lies' – was literally burned into the back of his hand, spasms of pain going through the cut with every repetition he jotted down.

Naturally, fiercely protective Hermione took this as an insult, especially when Neville initially tried to hide it from her. "What's that on your hand?"

Neville stuffed his palm into his robes and showed her the un-defaced other. "Nothing."

Hermione merely huffed, not fooled. "Your other hand!" And she actually yanked his bleeding hand out of his pocket, horrified by what she found and even more so when Neville admitted to her what had happened. "It's abuse, Nev!" she chided him when he tried to brush off her mother-henning and insist that he was fine. "Not to mention the fact that she is failing to fulfill her duties, which is to teach us how to defend ourselves against the Dark Arts!"

"If she, Fudge and her stooges at the Ministry don't believe You-Know-Who has returned, then what would be the point of teaching us anything defensive?" Neville pointed out despondently.

The following Saturday, they were seated in a threstral carriage, bound for a weekend jaunt out to Hogsmeade. At least those had remained in place following Umbridge's appointment, serving as a sort of escape. Squeezed alongside them were Ron, Harry, Ginny and Luna, the latter of whom had her nose stuck in the latest edition of her father's magazine. Neville shifted his gaze over to Luna, wishing that her reading didn't hide her face. He did a double take: her copy of the Quibbler was upside-down. Ron, seated next to her and just as befuddled as he was, haplessly shrugged.

"So, to sum up: so far in DADA, we've had an imposter, a fraud, a parasitic host, and a werewolf," the redhead rattled off on his fingers. "And now we've crossed the Rubicon since the Ministry has installed their own fascist!"

Hermione glanced up from her book, quite shocked by Ron's colorful analysis of the situation. "Those are strong words, Ronald!"

"Yeah, I said it!" Ron glanced around to everybody, waiting for someone to back him up. He got some grim head nods from both his sister and his best mate. Hermione, however, seemed to be making an attempt to remain... maybe not neutral, but quiet in her disapproval over Umbridge. "Oh, come off it, Hermione! That's what she is! Someone's gotta say it like it is!"

"Hmm," Hermione demurred, closing her book softly before fixing Ron with her piercing brown eyes. "You were also the one who, when she wrote out the OWL acronym on the board, made a crack about finally having a DADA professor who could spell. Then, when she made us put our books away..."

"... which you hated," Ron interjected. "Tell me you didn't hate that! You'd marry books if you could!"

Hermione blushed, but pursed her lips and pressed on: "... when she made us put our books away, you just had to tell her she needed to, and I quote, 'get new material. We've already had a professor who didn't crack a book!'"

Ron shrugged. "It's the truth. The only book we read under Lockhart was the one he wrote about himself. I was just trying to give the old toad complete information."

Hermione huffed. "You came off sounding like a smartarse and you're lucky she didn't serve you with detention, same as Neville!"

"You're not saying you like having this authoritarian... cow," Ron caught himself in the nick of time from saying a worse word when Hermione gave him a look. "... bully students? Tell us what we can and cannot read? What we should and shouldn't learn?"

"Of course not!" Hermione slammed her book down into her lap, and a storm cloud of anger came across her lovely face at the injustice of it all. "But I'm equally stressed as it is trying to keep you from saying something that could get us all..." she shook her head. "Ronald Weasley, that snarky mouth of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble someday!"

"You like my snark," Ron smiled like a dopey puppy dog as he peered at her, intensely enough that Hermione ducked her face down to hide a blush.

"Sometimes," she admitted softly. "When it doesn't require me cleaning up the mess of your gaffes."

"… and as if we didn't have enough to worry about, Malfoy and his goons are throwing their weight around again!" Ginny complained.

"Thank Merlin they aren't Prefects with us," Hermione huffed. "I think I'd resign on principle."

"Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't know which end of the badge gets fastened to their robes," Neville cracked.

While of course concerned for his friend and his mistreatment at the hands of Umbridge, Ron had mostly responded to the outrage by attempting to buck Harry up, even if that meant unintentionally making light of what had occurred in detention. The two strands of conversation now melded together in his head. "You know, that gives me an idea: Malfoy and his gits in Slytherin might not be Prefects… but we are…"

"Ronald:" Hermione scolded warningly. "Just because we see a professor abusing her power does not mean we can abuse ours as Prefects…"

"I know, 'Mione. It's just that I'd actually love to know what spell Umbridge used on Harry. Then I could catch Goyle for something and make him write lines! It would kill him! He hates writing!"

"Ronald!" Hermione gawped, though her bow lips were struggling not to upturn in amusement.

"Can he even write?" Harry spoke up, not quite above a mumble. Ginny smirked.

"Not bloody likely, but it would be a right laugh to see him try it!" Ron chortled, running away with his own imagination. Scrunching his face up, he dropped the register of his voice in a fairly decent impersonation of Goyle. "I…. must not look like… a baboon's…. backside."

Suddenly, Luna nearly threw her Quibbler copy across the carriage as it spun from her hands, which now clutched at her sides as she howled with laughter. Everyone else in the carriage jumped, studying Luna warily as she laughed and laughed until she cried. Ron's lips twitched into a smile as he studied her reaction to his joke.

"Bloody hell's the matter with you, Lovegood?"

"Bab…. Baboon's…. backside!" Luna howled, tears of mirth slipping down her cheeks.

Ron gave an awkward chuckle, grinning brightly as he shook his head at her, almost in wonder. "You are a funny one, aren't you?" He seemed not quite sure what to make of her.

Wiping her eyes, Luna smiled at him brightly, with sincerity. "That amounts to nothing when up next to you. I've always loved your jokes, Ronald Weasley."

If it were possible, Ron's smile broadened, pleased as he leaned back in the carriage, arms folded in vindication. "Well: bloody nice to know someone appreciates my sense of humor!" His eyes fell onto Hermione, who merely rolled her eyes with a chuffy breath of scorn before stowing her book back into her handbag.

The carriage slowed to a stop just on the outskirts of the Village and the six tumbled out. Ron gallantly stood post just off the steps and gentlemanly helped down the ladies: first Ginny, who sisterly slapped his hand away, then Luna, who grinned, touched.

"Thank you, Ronald Weasley," she murmured shyly as she accepted his offered hand.

"Just Ron," he chuckled at her formal addressing of him.

"OK... just Ron."

Neville followed Luna down, Ron clapping him on the back. "Wonderful bird, if also a bit dodgy. Bring her along more often, will you? Now there's a woman who has character! Good value!"

Hermione was last of all. When Ron gentlemanly offered her his hand, she twittered out a disbelieving laugh, but accepted his chivalry, if only just barely.

The group ended up huddled in the Three Broomsticks, commiserating over Umbridge and her failure to give them the proper tools as students. It was a redundant conversation they had had before, one that seemed to cause them to waste more and more precious air each time it was told.

Finally, sighing heavily, it was clear Ron had had enough. Lightly slapping the table, he postulated in what he must have thought was a rhetorical, even facetious, manner, "Since Umbridge hasn't even bothered to crack a lesson plan, why doesn't Neville teach us? He knows more about fighting the Dark Arts than the Toad does in her little finger."

Hermione's lovely face suddenly brightened with a revelation. "Ronald…. You're a genius!"

And all at once, their bookish friend was out of her seat, dashing for the door, though she paused to double back and give Ron a rather wet and exuberant kiss on the cheek. Ron blinked dumbly, the spot where her lips had pressed into his skin glowing an odd shade of pink.

"What the bloody hell is she on about, that woman?"

But Hermione was already gone. Neville and his other friends stumbled out to find Hermione flitting about from person to person, whispering clandestinely, briefly, in ears. Tellingly, Neville noticed that the kids she shepherded were from every house, except for Slytherin, which was probably wise.

Hermione finally dashed back over to the other five, all of whom were staring at her with rather bemused expressions, though Luna's slightly less so. That was nothing compared to Hermione, who was now practically buzzing with excitement, looking effervescent.

"We'll have to come up with a better system in the future…" she was prattling almost to herself. She suddenly wrapped Neville in a hug, hissing along his earlobe. "I told people to come staggered, in twos and threes. We should all be meeting at the Hogs' Head in about thirty minutes."

Neville had only vaguely heard of the Hogs' Head pub, though he'd never set foot in there. Underage wizards weren't allowed to drink until they turned 17, but so long as none of them were buying… he hoped the barkeep would allow them to congregate for this meeting Hermione had apparently, haphazardly thrown together.

30 minutes later, Neville was sitting at a long table up against the Hogs' Head's fireplace without fully realizing how he got there. The pub was filled with at least half of Hufflepuff, a smattering of Ravenclaws (Luna among them) and nearly all of Gryffindor. Neville even picked out Fred and George, which informed him that if the silly twins were here and primed to listen, this truly was serious. Just what had Hermione promised them all? That he would lead where Umbridge wouldn't? It would have been moving to see how many people actually did still believe in him… if it also wasn't so bloody scary. He wasn't a teacher! Aside from a handful of private Dementor lessons with Lupin third year and those tutor sessions with Hermione before the First Task last term, he'd mostly taught himself and much of that gainful experience had come to him through sheer, dumb luck.

No. If Hermione had organized what he suspected she had, this was a truly bad idea. All that it might lead to – nothing good could come from it, and more likely danger would. He refused to lead any student into a situation remotely like the one he had led Cedric into.

He rose to speak, and a hush fell over the crowd. The sea of faces, all looking to him expectantly, further informed Neville that it was better to kill this now, before anyone got hurt. He knew Hermione only meant well, but there had to be better, safer ways to oppose Umbridge. "Um…" he cleared his throat. "Look, I don't know what 'Mione told you, but I am the farthest thing from a teacher and the last person you should be taking lectures from, so the lot of you clear out! Come on, Hermione, let's go; they'll just think I'm some sort of freak…."

"Neville, wait! –" Hermione was hissing through clenched teeth, when an airy voice cut through:

"Is it true you can produce a Patronus charm?"

Everyone's gazes snapped to Luna, who appeared only mildly interested. At this moment, Neville welcomed her placid façade. Basked in it, even. He tried to smile appreciatively at the pretty Ravenclaw; it likely came off as more of a grimace. Even in less stressful situations, he had never liked to speak of his supposedly great feats even casually.

Hermione, however, wasn't so bashful. "Yes!" she latched on quickly. "He could do it when we were only in third year!"

"Well…. that was…" Neville stammered. He took a deep breath, tried again. "Look: I know some of you think of me as some sort of hero. Recently, some of you might be willing to listen to all the tripe and take me for a liar. Fine. View me in whatever light you want. But I didn't get to be where I am, I didn't learn what I know, based on skill. Mostly, it was based on luck. Sometimes, I've been in a situation where I don't know what I'm doing and I've been left to muddle through. Umbridge seems to think that the rest of you can manage this way too. She's wrong. It's not easy. When you're…. fighting for your life, or watching a…. a friend die before your very eyes…. you don't know what that's like." At the mention of Cedric, he averted his eyes away from Cho Chang, the deceased's girlfriend, though it was a difficult thing to manage since she was seated right next to Luna.

"No, Neville, we don't," Hermione stepped into the breach of silence. "Which is why you need to teach us! Umbridge doesn't think we need to be ready. You can help us be ready."

Hermione's proposal was clear and simple in scope: create a secret organization to fill in the curriculum Umbridge refused to provide them. To Neville's mind, this student club appeared structured as Defense Against the Dark Arts class and the old Dueling Club incompetently overseen by Lockhart their second year all in one. The difference, of course, was that the club would have to remain a secret.

One by one, students from three whole houses stepped forward to sign their names to the parchment manifesto Hermione had hastily but thoroughly drafted.

"What should we name it?" Luna pondered breezily after affixing her name to the document.

Ginny shrugged, a smile almost perverse in its mischief tugging at her lips. "How about…. Dumbledore's Army? That fat toad hates the Headmaster. It'll be our first thumb in her eye!" A couple of throaty cheers went up at this.

But it was Hermione's that, to Neville's shock, seemed truly wicked. Sickly so. "That sounds marvelous!" And she scrawled the newly christened Hogwarts club's name atop the sign-up parchment.

Their band of six – Neville, Ron, Hermione, Harry, Ginny and Luna – strode with purpose across the Covered Bridge onto grounds reinvigorated.

"First, we'll need a place to practice," Harry began laying out his first orders. "Someplace secret that Umbridge isn't likely to find."

"I know a place," Luna lilted in her trademark singsong.

He blinked at her. "You do? Where is it?"

Luna merely smiled at him brightly. "You'll see." … Wait... was she teasing, even flirting with him?

For her part, Hermione seemed the most flushed of the bunch. It did not go unnoticed by Ron, who studied her with an intrigue somewhere between leery and mirthful. "You all right, love?"

If not for the overcast clouds, he might have picked up on how the slight pink in his best mate's cheeks wasn't entirely due to the winter's chill. "Well…. it's sort of exciting, isn't it? Breaking the rules!"

Ron gawked at her in wonder, astonished and laughing. "Who are you, and what have you done with Hermione Granger?!"