Story Title: Just Begging for a Little Change
School: Durmstrang
Theme: The Library - Restricted Section
Year: 4
Main Prompt: Betrayal
Additional Prompts: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." - Walt Disney; Better Son
Wordcount: 1683
AN Slight AU as concerns seventh book events; mentions of family trauma; OoC Goyle with explanation; theme explanation: each main character took something unconventional from their time at Hogwarts
Just Begging for a Little Change
Sighing, Neville stared at his reflection, the mirror mercifully silent at his angry visage. He had had the dream again. During the day, Neville could stand tall, proud of his accomplishments and confident that he stood for the side of good. Nights were a different story, however. After the last Nox was voiced, the dream could surface as a reminder.
It was always fairly similar. Seated at the supper table with Grandmother, Great-Uncle Algie, and Great-Aunt Enid, a younger Neville would await the first course provided by Grandmother. "If my Frank could see this," here, she would gesture to her grandson as though the rest needn't be said.
"Eh, Frank, shmank. The facts are that your son and daughter-in-law are at Mungos and not going to get better," Great-Uncle would pipe up. "We need to start looking at more distant relatives. A Squib, sorry, near-Squib ought not be the face of our family. Perhaps we could blood-adopt one of the Weasley lot in. With enough training, we should be able to get any bad habits out." Neville might have not even been in the room for all the care Uncle Algie put towards his words.
Great-Aunt Enid considered him equally repugnant but felt that marriage was the best answer. "He needs a strong woman with proper breeding, of course. She'll be able to steer him right."
The insults might vary somewhat, but the beginning of the dream always stayed along those lines. Neville knew how his family felt about him and his abilities before the war had proven him a worthy heir. He was just thankful that his dream never went so far as action. The first segment generally ended with one family member or another offering up the sage advice, "The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing."
The second half was at once better and worse. Again, he would be at a family dinner with insults hurdling faster than he could respond. This time, however, the abusers weren't the eldest Longbottoms. It was his mother and father, sane and healthy. They appeared so different; he could hardly recognize them although the dream was not an uncommon visitor. The Neville in the dreamscape would always feast his eyes hungrily at his parents while they bemoaned his weight, his life choices… anything really.
By dawn, the only thing Neville could be confident in was his status as a horrible heir and son, yet reality would filter in soon enough with the never-ending love of his little one, now nine. Eric Elia Longbottom was the product of an impossible union. In the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, Neville had worked laboriously to help mend the ravaged forest. Sickened by the culture that would cause grown men to battle on school grounds without seeing anything wrong, Neville had needed the quiet respite of the woodland. There, he had met the wood-elf, Sindara. He disappeared off the map for a while after that… love making him do crazy things. He might have been lost to the wizarding world forever had tragedy not struck. Shining Sindara had blessed him with a child, an abomination by her family's reckoning. They remained there for a season, but it soon became clear that they would need to leave to protect their son, Eric Elia. Knowing her husband would be better able to help Eric navigate his new world, Sindara sacrificed herself when others sought to stop them.
Neville was determined to be the best papa to his boy, for all that their life was in a kind of status quo at the moment. Eric would never know what it was to be a disappointment or failure. He would always be the best son in the world to his Papa.
As Neville finished his preparations for the day, an owl flew in with a letter….
-R4-
Susan Bones had been quietly defying expectations since she was nine-years-old and had survived an attack by would-be Death Eaters using "accidental" magic. The death of her parents had been traumatic; the inability of the experts to explain how she'd avoided joining them was almost moreso. "Accidental magic isn't to be questioned," she had been told.
"What if it isn't accidental?" she had replied. Apparently, such was not possible before the age of eleven.
For years, Susan's O-average at Hogwarts was focused on finding out how she'd survived and how adults like her aunt could tap into the potential. She wanted to be a better niece than she had been as a daughter.
Dumbledore's Army gave her a new sense of purpose as well as an opportunity to meet others with similar stories. Oh, she was the only one who didn't buy the "accidental" line, but twenty-three other students also admitted to using magic before Hogwarts with varying degrees of intent.
History of Magic proclaimed wordless and wandless magic to be exceedingly rare and limited to only the most powerful. What if that wasn't strictly true? Such questions were not encouraged, but Susan was glad that she began the extra-curricular study of wordless/wandless magic when a Death Eater unarmed her in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Her studies after Hogwarts continued along this vein; she could hardly do anything else. Whenever she got into a snit about the establishment that she was sure purposefully hid information, her beloved aunt would tell her to quit talking and start doing something about it. With her death, the necessity to prove herself strengthened.
Shortly after graduation, however, a lover decided to 'help' her by submitting one of her articles for publication… to The Quibbler. The few backers and interested parties she had had evaporated into thin air. He considered this a good thing since she could focus on raising a family. She made sure to deliver a swift kick to the family jewels before dumping him.
Although funding with such a history was hard to come by, Susan persevered. She had to be careful as the Ministry enforced more laws restricting "radical" actions, but she had found her life calling. Little changed as the years passed until a beautiful owl left a card.
Leaky Cauldron
11 P.M. Tonight
Turning it over, she was met with a signature that she hadn't seen in years.
-R4-
Contrary to popular belief, Gregory Goyle was not an idiot. An incident with Grandfather Goyle when he was a lad had made extensive speech difficult for him, and familial expectations had forced him on the wrong side of the whole Voldemort conflict.
His lack of academic success had less to do with ability and more to do with the extensive amount of effort necessary in keeping Malfoy alive to rule another day in Slytherin.
Throughout the Dark Lord's reign of terror, he kept his head down, doing the bare minimum to remain on the psychopath's less bad side and waiting for Potter to finish whatever he was doing to stop him. He figured only the truly idiotic of his generation legitimately believed the cock-and-bull story that Potter had run away because he was afraid to face him. Hogwarts' gossip grapevine was too effective for that.
For all that Hogwarts had failed to help him become especially magically literate, it did teach him two things: previous generations were inept at keeping its future safe, and Potter had the potential to be a formidable opponent.
Over a decade had passed since the final battle. Greg was out on parole and happily working the night shift when he walked in. Surprised and somewhat wary at seeing the former classmate out and about, a tentative discussion began. Apparently, he had booked the back room for the night and several other former classmates would be coming shortly. If the brush of legilimency could be felt during those first few minutes, Goyle wasn't going to complain. One's right to privacy is limited in prison, even within the sanctity of your own brain. Whatever Potter saw caused him to open up somewhat. Apparently, he wasn't the enemy that was expected.
Slowly, hesitantly, Potter began to tell a tale under the protection of some charm that apparently stopped people from listening in. Goyle didn't recognize it but could tell that it meant him no harm at least. Since the last battle, Potter had found himself at loose ends. For all that he had hated the publicity and struggles that came with going up against Voldemort, at least he had been a fairly tangible enemy.
Since the war, his eyes had been opened to the idea that not all monsters wore masks. A fire burned in him at seeing the injustice his godson faced. People saw nothing wrong with treating the little boy poorly simply because his father was a werewolf, and because his hair changed color. It didn't matter what side of the war his parents had fought on or even who his godfather was (though few indeed were brave enough to speak against Teddy within Potter's hearing). Potter knew of several other former classmates who had a beef with society in its current form. It was time for them to stand together to force change. He wasn't content with stopping Voldemort; Potter refused to give his children a cesspool as their inheritance, and it was up to him to lead the fight.
As the others began to trickle in, the man left for his meeting with a long-forgotten glimmer in his eye. Former classmates and strangers continued to enter the back room for forty-five minutes. Their backgrounds ranged from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich. Muggleborns and purebloods entered with barely a pause. If Potter was right and all of them had an issue with society and were willing to follow him, he could create his own army.
Greg was almost sorry to put a stop to Potter's plans, but he was a law-abiding citizen now. He had seen the harm that could be caused by a radical with an army and had to report this before it could become too big to stop.