02. Unspoken
The name was Ginny's idea. They all ran with the joke, manifesting the Ministry's own worst fears, but it was Ginny's idea first. That mattered.
/
After the first DA meeting, Michael went back to Ravenclaw tower with Sidekick Two. This freed Ginny up to leave with Neville. Michael had been boring, too reluctant to put up a real fight, so it'd be better to pair off with someone else in the future.
She got Neville talking about Charms, ranking her own favourite spells by how many different colours they made, while Neville recounted his most baffling spell mishaps. He was more Hermione's friend than hers, really, but he always had books on crazy plants and amphibians to show off.
A double act forced a diversion, nearly shouting down the hall. "So, which one was Michael Corner?" crowed Fred.
"Maybe someone who looked easy to hex if necessary?" George added. They were shorter than Ron this year, but they were catching up fast.
"Let's go, Neville," Ginny said darkly. He sped up with her. Fred and George merely flanked them in the wide hall.
George smirked. "Hey now, where's your sense of unity? If we're comrades in arms-"
"With my boyfriend, Michael Corner," Ginny interrupted. They were not going to use her joke against her.
Fred eyed her and tried what must have been a change in tactic. "How you like Harry's teaching, Neville? Better than Snape?"
Neville stuttered a nervous laugh. "A-a bit, yeah."
"It's a crying shame, but the kid two years under us-"
"Might just be the best educator Hogwarts ever provides us for Defence too."
"Not to speak ill of Lupin, but he always looked like one good hex could snap him in half-"
"-from the blowback."
"Took the fun out of trying new spells when we were always worried about hitting him."
"Moody turned out better, really." Neville flinched in revulsion and George relented. "Alright, he turned out to be a Death Eater."
"No one knew, and it's not like he did a lot of Death Eater-ing," said Fred. "'Cept to Harry, s'pose."
"Just showed us all the unspeakably evil curses he was so good at and how to deal with them," George said. Neville clung to his bag in a way that made Ginny feel bad for him. He had a way of getting caught up on details.
"He. . .Crouch, he was nice to me," Neville told them tentatively. "Gave me a book."
Nevermind.
"A book?!" Ginny demanded with dread. The last time a Death Eater passed a kid a book, black ink had seeped into a page that ate her words and left nothing, filling her mind with kindness that never betrayed its intent. She did not look at her brothers looking at her. Ginny's family's attention bordered on stifling, and still they failed to see the real problems.
"A field guide on water plants. It told me about gillyweed," Neville explained, oblivious to everything but himself. "Crouch wanted me to make sure Harry got a good score on the second challenge. He ate it and got to the bottom of the lake first and everything."
"Oh," Ginny said dumbly. The relief was so palpable it left her off balance. "Well, that was horrid. Using you to get to Harry."
"So he researched Harry's mates? Creep," Fred tried adding.
Neville didn't respond to that, simply going sullen. "That's the third time a Death Eater has gotten in, isn't it?"
"Third?" Ginny asked, overcome with wonder. Her brothers echoed this astonishment with their eyebrows stretching for the ceiling.
"Have you been attending Hogwarts in years we haven't?"
"Have you been repeating last year in your head?"
Neville set his brow. "First was Quirrel-"
"Didn't count," the twins denied in unison.
"And third year it was my fault Sirius Black got in the tower and almost killed Harry!" Neville finished dramatically.
The Weasleys met each other in devastating silence. Sirius Black had never wanted to kill Harry, but they weren't allowed to tell anyone about that. Neville had never put anyone at risk by making a list of passwords. The group slowed and Ginny and George ended up a couple steps behind on the stairs.
Fred clasped Neville's shoulder. "Well, despite your best efforts, Harry's clearly still alive and kicking You-Know-Who in the-"
Ginny succeeded in punching Fred's elbow. "No one blames you for that, Neville," she tried. "Harry's never mentioned it."
"Yeah, and it could have happened to anyone," George said before Ginny gave him a 'do better' glare. "Or, well, odds are someone stole it as a joke and lost it for you-"
Ginny sneered wryly in exasperation and George shrugged at her, throwing his hands up. Fred was still forcing a grin at Neville.
"That's not the point," Neville said firmly. "The ministry says Hogwarts is safe, and the teachers are always saying it, too. But we were never safe here. We won't be."
A weight suddenly lifted from Ginny's chest. For four years, she had returned to Hogwarts with an unease she'd felt completely alone in. Ron and Hermione seemed to nearly die every year and they talked about the school like it was untouchable. She could've hugged Neville if she didn't think it would humiliate him. Fred and George were still trying to joke that he should be more worried about Snape impersonating the OWL examiners so he could fail all the Gryffindors.
"Neville's right," Ginny contradicted them and shoved past Fred to grin at Neville supportively. "That's what this is all for, yeah? Next time a Death Eater shows up at Hogwarts, we'll kick them out ourselves!"
"U-us? How?" Neville gaped at her.
"Harry's gonna teach us loads, you'll see. We're going to learn how to fight whether the Ministry wants us to or not. Then we'll at least have a chance next time anyone tries to mess with us," she told him with the necessary confidence.
/
Michael Corner ended up being a loser. A loser who couldn't take losing a Quidditch game and still be her boyfriend. She dumped him along with his loser posse and hung out with the Gryffindor chasers. They were so happy to have her they'd train her in any position she wanted, even outside practice hours.
Three guys asked Ginny out in the next week. The first two made every conversation about themselves no matter how many times she interrupted, and the third couldn't even keep his eyes at face level.
On a whim, she asked Neville which guys could act like decent friends on top of dating her. Since Hermione was still on good terms with Ron, somehow, he was frequently alone. This turned out to be a genius idea; Neville existed around boys as a boy and had more accurate observations on them than Ginny could get. He also had surprisingly good taste. Of the boys whose personalities he vetted, Neville and Ginny agreed Roger Davies and Dean From Quidditch Tryouts were the most 'handsome,' a word Neville stuttered over. He dove into the debate with enthusiasm when Ginny didn't dwell on it.
Davies was attractive, but more likely to inspire Quidditch tensions and came with an unknown social circle. Dean was quiet but kind, funny, a Gryffindor and had a better jawline anyway. Neville introduced them properly, Ginny asked him out, and they were friends in no time. Ginny kissed Dean and had fun with him too.
Whenever Ginny greeted Neville from next to Dean, there was something in Neville's smile. Not jealousy, really, but strain, like he was tired. Or maybe Ginny was seeing what she wanted to see. The more Neville talked to her about boys, the more she'd wanted to know if she could tell him about the girls on the Quidditch team.
/
"Neville," Ginny greeted him, "are you fucking scared of Loony Lovegood?"
Neville looked up at her from his book, eyebrows stitched in confusion. Probably because he'd been minding his own business by the Great Lake when Ginny confronted him on a whim. His cheeks were pink, but he enjoyed the lake enough that he always had some colour of the sun in his face.
"No," Neville said in a small voice.
"That's funny. Because you're training to fight fucking Death Eaters and you still look at Luna Lovegood like she has poisonous fangs every time you see us together."
Neville looked helplessly at her and Ginny wondered if he really did prefer plants and toads or whatever with poisonous fangs to Luna.
"Just because she's, I mean, a bit delusional-"
"She is not delusional. She's just," he interrupted urgently. "She's just, having fun, saying, whatever she wants, no matter-"
Ginny crouched next to him with her best condescension. "Is that the scariest thing you can think of? Someone who says whatever they want?"
Neville tightened his face in distress. Ginny rolled to the ground and laughed as quietly as she could manage.
"You're laughing at me." He was hurt, but he was also being a prat and that took priority.
"I am utterly laughing at you," Ginny said, thick and smarmy so he knew he deserved it this once, "for being afraid of a girl who talks about the crumple horned snorkack!"
"I can't tell when she's having me on," Neville whined. "She's in Ravenclaw, not like us. But she talks about smart things like she talks about-do I even want to know what a snorkack is?"
"I don't know and I probably never will." It took Ginny a bit to process that Neville had grouped her in his own intelligence zone over Luna's, but he'd moved on.
"How am I supposed to know if she's making it up?" he begged.
Ginny spread out on the grass and found it pleasantly cool, only a little damp in the dirt. The wet marks would dry off her skirt quickly. "I don't think she makes anything up, Nev. I think she lets other people do that and jumps on the train. Like, every train."
He considered that. Slowly. "Okay."
"Can you not tell when people are having you on." Neville didn't respond to Ginny's genuine concern, so she pushed her chest upright. Maybe they needed a change of topic. A different perspective.
"You know, for my first two years here, I didn't talk to a single girl in my dorm."
Neville's eyebrows went aghast. "You?"
Ginny smirked. "Every time I was there and they were talking to each other, this panic would go all the way from my lungs to my ears and my jaw would go stiff." Neville was enthralled, a good audience as usual. Ginny flipped her hair. "I'm fine now, but only because I spent a couple years being awkward and just going with it. Turned out all the girls I thought were prettier and smarter than me liked me fine that way. Being weird made me more interesting."
"Wow." Neville stared at their splayed feet. ". . .I don't think there's a single guy at this school who thinks I'm interesting. Just awkward."
Ginny's eyes stung. She knew that kind of insecurity so well, it hurt to see it in someone else. "Well, if they don't like you, it just means they weren't worth your time. Luna's one of the only girls I hang out with now."
"What happened to those girls who liked you?" he demanded in horror, as if it were the crime of the century that there were people who didn't like Ginny.
"They believed that rubbish in the Prophet. The most popular girl in Gryffindor laughed at my family for being loyal to Dumbledore. Until they see the light, I'm going to hang out with someone who isn't a purposefully oblivious moron," Ginny stated firmly, with a show of crossing her arms.
"That's wild," said Neville in toneless awe. Probably referring to Luna.
Ginny stopped long enough to consider the consequences of how she could breach her next topic. They hadn't hung out a ton this year. At the DA she'd ended up with Angelina; Ginny got hexed a lot, but she got fast, too. She'd offered Neville passing encouragement but at most she'd gotten back a groan of "don't lie."
"Whaddya mean, Luna's not delusional?"
He hesitated and Ginny waited. Neville returned to his book, only to absently close it between his hands. He held it there, upright.
". . .delusions are more emotional." He studied the lake. "Luna doesn't like it when people argue with her, but it doesn't destroy her day. She doesn't rely on them. The fact we can even argue her about them shows they're not delusions."
"What's a delusion, then?"
"They're not fairy stories exactly." Neville tugged his legs up to his chest, book stuck between his knees. "A lot of the time they're built around an emotion like. . .vanity, or fear. They can rationalise what someone is already feeling, or just be their exaggerated perceptions of reality. Delusions can cause a need for irrational rules, or reduced ability to, um. Function independently."
Ginny did not flinch. He wasn't looking at her quite directly, but he'd still see a good bit peripherally. She knew the tactic. "I dunno. Sounds like a game for dealing with reality."
Neville frowned and shook his head. "Everyone does stuff like that. Hobbies and things. A delusion is. . .it's a delusion because you can't choose to let it go."
Finally they sat and watched the lake, Neville resting from his reading and Ginny letting herself slow down from Quidditch. This happened long before Ginny met time in a room and Neville stood by her at the stone entrance to death.
She didn't always talk to Neville, but when she did, she remembered why she counted him as a friend.
/
In the Department of Mysteries, Neville discovered something invisible.
He found it when Harry shook Hermione by the shoulders and begged her to wake up. Neville found Hermione's pulse by touch and showed Harry she was still there. Hermione and Neville were good friends, too, but Harry was so shaken thinking her gone he looked like a lost kid. Harry'd had people ripped from him, saw a boy murdered, and it did something to him that the quiet peace of an old man's last rest never did to Neville.
That was the moment Neville knew he'd do anything for Harry, anything to protect him. Anything to protect the people they cared about.