Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise.

Challenges Listed at the Bottom

Word Count: 2434

WARNING: Murder, Suicide, alcohol abuse, mentally unstable character due to grief/breakdown.


Alone. Adrift. Unmoored.


The gates clanged as they opened, the sound echoing until it reverberated in Neville's head. He scowled as they clanged again when they were shut, but didn't say anything.

Green eyes stared at him for a long moment, and then Harry sat down facing him.

"I told them it wasn't necessary to restrain you," Harry said, pointing to the chains that held Neville in place.

Neville shrugged. He didn't care much about being chained down. Harry was correct, they weren't necessary. It wasn't like he was going to attack the one person who'd done his best to help when it was important.

Harry shuffled parchment and quills and a recording device around on the table, and then leant forward. "I know you've gone over this a thousand times already, Nev, but I need everything. Front to back, no missing things out. If I'm going to get your sentence diminished, I need reasons."

Neville chuckled humorlessly. "You're good at your job, Harry, but I don't even think you're that good. They're going to question me under Veritaserum and throw me through the veil before you've even got a chance to object."

Harry sighed, but he shook his head. "It won't be the veil. If nothing else, I can stop a death sentence."

Not that it mattered to Neville, but he nodded. In truth, he wasn't sure if he wouldn't prefer the death sentence to years in prison with no hope of ever getting out.

Azkaban may be better without the Dementors, but it was still a hell hole.

Harry tugged his wand from his pocket and waved it at the table, a look of concentration on his face. A tray appeared, followed by teacups and saucers, and two small plates.

A moment later, Kreacher popped in and filled them with tea and biscuits respectively.

"I thought we weren't allowed—"

Harry smiled innocently. "I'm still Harry Potter, Nev. Besides, you might get parched, what with all the talking we've got to do. It would be inhumane to make you go so long without refreshments, wouldn't it?"

Neville smiled back, and for just a moment, they were two friends, chatting over tea and biscuits and everything was normal.

The moment didn't last long. The moments never did last long now.

He sipped at the tea awkwardly, having to bend in uncomfortable ways to get his chained arm up to his face. Harry rolled his eyes and with another wave of his wand, extra links were added to the chains.

"Thanks, Harry."

Harry nodded. "Alright. Start from the beginning," he said, clicking the recording device as a quill stood to attention above a piece of flattened parchment.

"The first murder—"

"Nev. The beginning," Harry prompted. "Start with Hannah."

"We'll get you looked after, Sweetheart," Neville promised, soothing his wife with his fingers stroking through her hair.

They were in Saint Mungo's, and he had to concentrate on her because the white walls and sterile environment brought back nothing but bad memories of hours sitting in his parents hospital room, wishing they knew who he was.

"They don't know what's wrong with me," she replied, words catching on sobs as pain sent tremors through her entire body. "They might not be able—"

"They will," Neville assured her. "I promise you, you'll be fine."

"Nev—"

"You'll be fine."

"Except she wasn't," Harry murmured, when Neville broke off, tears filling his eyes.

Neville shook his head. "No. No, she wasn't."

"I'm afraid we can't cure your wife, Mr Longbottom. The illness, we're not sure how she got it, but we don't have the facilities nor the abilities to cure her in time."

"You can't just let her die!" Neville shouted, fear and horror striking him deep inside like a black hole that was growing by the second. He couldn't lose her, he couldn't. He'd lost so much, but Hannah had always been there.

He didn't know who he was without her anymore.

"Mr Longbottom—"

"Where does have the facilities and the abilities to fix her? I can take her anywhere, I have the resources to do it."

"Perhaps North America," the healer said, and a spot of hope arrived, only to be cruelly tugged away. "But she's too weak to make the journey. Portkeys and Apparition are magically taxing, she'd never make the trip."

"What about Muggle travel?"

"Mr Longbottom… I'm so sorry, but your wife isn't strong enough to be moved, by any means. We don't believe she's going to last until morning."

"They didn't even try, Harry. They could have let me take her. We could have gotten a jet to America. Hermione told me about Muggles that go there for treatment for things and get better. They wouldn't let me save her."

"Nev…"

"I've never heard of it," Hermione admitted, after Neville burst through the Floo, begging her for help on a cure. "I can research it, but… I don't think it'd be in time, Neville."

He'd left, without another word.

"You want us to help you break into the hospital to steal your wife?" Seamus and Dean had both stared at him like he was mad.

When he'd nodded, they'd refused him.

"I'm sorry, Mr Longbottom," Poppy said, shaking her head sadly. "But I don't know anything more than the healers at Saint Mungo's. In fact, I likely know less, given the rare nature of the illness."

And his last hope had died.

"I know you'd tried to get her help," Harry said, nodding his head. "Because you came to me next."

Neville nodded, looking at the table. "You were the only one who tried to help."

"Mr Potter, it's highly unusual," the healer said, shaking her head. "But I suppose, given the… situation… we can allow it."

Harry had smiled at the healer, and turned to nod at Neville. "Prep her for transport, Nev, you can take her home."

"But she didn't make it out of the hospital," Harry prompted gently, when once again, Neville stuttered to a stop. "She died before we could leave."

"Because they wouldn't help her," Neville said, a spark of fire in his eyes again. "If they'd figured it out earlier, been more invested in her, she'd still be here."

He was still wearing suit robes of midnight black—his funeral clothes—when he snuck into the alley beside Saint Mungos.

It was so simple to silence the healer as he stepped out of the building. It was so easy to bind him and levitate him into the darkness of the alley.

It was a rush of vengeance to plunge the knife into him over and over and over again.

Neville stepped away, covered in blood, feeling better than he had since the first time Hannah had told him she didn't feel well.

"That was Healer Kline," Harry said softly. "The first Healer Hannah saw, the one who sent her away without further tests?"

Neville nodded, biting his lip. "He was so snide about it. Said she was worrying over nothing. If he'd ordered more tests, we'd have had time to save her."

Harry said nothing.

Neville couldn't shake the anger.

He wasn't sleeping, and when he was, he was sleeping on the sofa, because the thought of going to bed without his wife was against everything he knew to be right.

He was drinking heavily, hoping for the oblivion that others had spoken of, particularly after the war. Neville had had Hannah back then, to keep him sane.

He didn't have her now.

Oblivion, however, was fleeting when he could grasp it, and the alcohol only fed the rage he was feeling until he snapped.

Harry paused the recording. He was pale, and Neville tilted his head slightly.

"If… if I'd managed to get through to you," he said, tone stilted and no longer professional. "If I'd made you stop drinking—"

"You couldn't have stopped this, Harry," Neville said, realising what was going through his friend's mind. "As wrong as it was—and I realise it was wrong, even if I don't… well, I realise it was wrong—I was always going to do it. The alcohol didn't make me do it. I needed… I needed to make them pay. They needed to pay with their lives for making me lose mine."

"Yours?"

"Hannah was my life, Harry. Without her, I'm nothing. My dreams were gone with her. I lost sight of everything else."

Harry pressed record again, and asked, "Why Seamus, Nev?"

"You didn't help me. I asked for your help."

Seamus turned around and breathed a sigh of relief. Neville had been waiting in his apartment for him, the wards letting him in without issue.

Neville was a friend after all.

"Nev… I'm really sorry you lost Hannah, mate," Seamus offered, a touch awkward, but no less sincere. He'd been at the funeral too, and had offered similar sentiments then.

They didn't mean anything.

"You could have helped me get her out of the hospital," Neville pointed out softly. "I could have saved her."

"Nev—"

"Diffindo!"

"Was the switch of the weapon intentional?" Harry asked. "Were you trying to throw the Aurors off your trail?"

Neville shook his head. "I didn't really think about it. I wasn't worried about being caught. The thought never really crossed my mind."

Harry just nodded.

Neville stayed while Seamus bled out on the floor. He'd tried to escape, but Petrificus Totalus was an easy spell, and it didn't freeze blood. Neville didn't particularly care for the mess, but then, he didn't have to clean it, so he didn't care.

He thought about staying until Dean came home, but he thought it was fitting to leave Dean in the same boat Neville was now in.

Alone. Adrift. Unmoored.

"That caused some confusion after you were caught," Harry admitted, looking at his file. "That you left Dean alive."

Neville shrugged. "I didn't set out for murder, Harry. I set out for revenge. In whatever way I could get it."

The three healers Neville killed next were the ones involved with Hannah's care during her last stay. He made their death's quick. This wasn't about torture, it was about them living while she did not.

He wasn't Voldemort, he wasn't a Death Eater.

He used Avada Kedavra on each of them, quick, simple and easy.

His task was nearly over.

Only two left.

"You had a predetermined hit list," Harry said, looking at his notes. "I suppose that should have been obvious really, but it isn't in the case notes."

"It wasn't… predetermined," Neville offered. "None of it was, not really. I just… did it."

Harry clucked his tongue but nodded for Neville to continue.

The head healer in charge of Hannah's case… Neville despised her. He truly did. And he wanted her to suffer.

Nothing could ever make her feel the way he did, not unless he took from her what she'd taken from him.

He followed her home. He killed her husband, and then he laughed as she sobbed over his body.

"You did this to me," he snarled at her, when she asked "Why why why!"

He thought about leaving her alive, but he couldn't make himself do it. She didn't deserve to live. Not when his Hannah was dead because of her.

"And Hermione?" Harry asked, when Neville stopped talking. His tone had a steeliness to it that it hadn't had since he'd arrived, and Neville knew why.

He'd expected as much, even, because Harry loved Hermione in a way that only a brother could love a sister. With exasperation and fondness and the fiercest desire to protect that a human could feel.

"I didn't kill her," Neville offered.

"No," Harry agreed. "But you intended too."

"What are you doing, Neville?" she asked, looking up at him with a disappointed air that reminded him so fiercely of Hannah that it hurt.

His hand shook, where he pointed his wand at her.

"You didn't help me," he said, soft and pained and oh so tired of hurting.

She tilted her head. "No," she agreed. "But if there had been anything I could have done, I'd have been there in a shot. You're one of my best friends. Hannah too. You're not the only one who lost her, Neville."

"You have no idea what—"

"What you're feeling?" she asked. "No, I can't imagine how much pain you're in. But this… this isn't you, and it isn't what Hannah would want for you."

"SHE'S DEAD!" Neville exploded, the words pushing through his lips in a scream of anguish. "She's dead and gone and never coming back and YOU DIDN'T HELP ME SAVE HER!"

"Nothing could have saved her, Neville," she replied softly. "The only cure has to be administered before the welt appears on the skin, or it doesn't work."

He shook his head, but she took the moment to disarm him, and he sank to the ground, tears pouring down his face.

He didn't move until the Aurors came to take him away.

There was a long pause between them as Harry checked his parchment and turned off the radio.

"I'll keep them from sentencing you to the veil," he said, leaning back in his chair. "And, perhaps, one day you'll see the outside of a prison cell."

Neville shrugged. "What's the point?"

"Nev—"

"I'm already in prison in my head, Harry. I might as well be dead. Death might even be… at least then, I'd be with Hannah."

Harry bit his lip for a moment. "As your lawyer, I have to make you aware of everything that's going to happen in the trial. I don't know if they'll bother with Veritaserum, honestly, you've given a full confession already, I don't see the point, but… the root of Hannah's disease is going to be read out."

Neville sat up in his seat, the chains clanking noisily. He ignored them. "They know how she caught it?"

Harry nodded. Had Neville been more aware of anything but news of Hannah, he'd have noticed the reluctance in Harry's green eyes, his pale face and the way his fingers nervously fidgeted together.

Eventually, he said, "There's a plant, only found in North America. The Whispering Willow."

"No."

"You were in—"

"NO! NO, NO, NO!" Neville screamed, pulling at the cuffs. He didn't kill her, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't…

Neville tied the sheets together to create a noose.

The last of the people responsible for his Hannah's death would die at Neville's hand.

Just like the rest.


Written for:

Bromance to Romance: 10. Crime

Written in the Stars: 2. Neville Longbottom

This or That: 1. Committing a murder

Showtime: 6. Disappointed

Film Festival: 30. Getting revenge

Elizabeth's Empire: 10. Revenge

Angel's Archive: 7. Midnight Black

Amber's Anime Adventure: 14. Neville Longbottom

Entitled: 9. Vengeful

Lyric Alley: 4. Lost sight of my dream

Artist Appreciation: 30. Lawyer

Buttons: O3. Knife / P2. HannahNeville

Other:

Fight Club: Competitor: Angst

Gobstones: Brown Stone: Crime / Accuracy: teacup / Power: Wand / Technique: Snide

Auction: Day 3, Auction 3: Serial Killer!AU

Southern Cookout: 5. Hot-dog: Prison!AU

365: 189. Neville Longbottom

Fantastic Beasts: 6. Alpha Scorpion: Serial Killer