Chapter 4: Gone

Neville appreciated Hermione waiting with him after potions and her overall concern for him. She had tried to cheer him up but he was just too down on himself to accept any kind of positive reinforcement.

All he wanted now was to numb away the intolerable agony he was feeling. He needed to release all of the toxins running through his veins before it poisoned him, before it became the death of him.

A sudden rush of dominant and negative emotions began surging through Neville. He felt ashamed, angry, sad, and humiliated all at the same time and it was gut wrenching. His mind was racing and he rapidly felt a deep sensation of nausea rising through his stomach, threatening to come up at any given second.

The events that had just occurred in potions, while not uncommon for him, was the last straw. Not only had he once again screwed up another potion and lost more points for Gryffindor, he had gotten Harry into trouble and earned both of them detention. Which Neville had already decided that while he deserved his, Harry didn't.

He slowly trudged up to the boys' dormitories, managing to trip twice along the way and flopped down on his bed. On top of everything else that was going wrong in his life he now had to face detention with Snape after dinner. Just thinking about the things Snape would force him and Harry to do made Neville even more sick to his stomach.

For the next hour Neville just lay in bed, pondering his life, reliving every mistake that he's ever made and wishing that things could be different. Eventually all feelings were emptied from his mind, except for one. An intense feeling of sadness that he could not seem to shake still lingered within him.

Dim-wit, pathetic, failure, hopeless, squib. These were all words he would use to describe himself. These words echoed in his brain until eventually they lost all meaning and they were nothing more than just words he happened to know very well.

This past week's events kept replaying over and over in his head. Every stumble, every screw up, every bad grade, every failed attempt to function normally without making a fool of himself. Familiar feelings of shame, anger and humiliation began to wash over him again, it was overpowering. He sat up and slowly reached for the small oak dresser by his bed. He opened the top drawer and pulled out his knife.

For several minutes, Neville just sat on his bed, clutching the knife to his chest not doing anything; in fact he couldn't bring himself to do anything because he kept hearing Hermione's voice in his head. He thought about the conversation they had the night before and what he had promised her.

'But I had my fingers crossed…'

Neville was having some conflicting thoughts and feelings of guilt. Hermione had always been a good friend to him. Always helping him out in classes when she didn't have to; always showing concern for him when no one else did.

After all, it was Hermione who first offered to help him find Trevor on the Hogwarts express in their first year; it was Hermione who yelled for Professor Moody, or in actuality Barty Crouch Jr., to stop torturing the spider in Defense Against the Dark Arts in their fourth year. It was her who had asked Neville, who was so shaken up from having actually witnessed the Cruciatus curse, the curse that did his parents in, performed right in front of him, if he was alright after the lesson.

He scooted up into a more comfortable sitting position and held the knife up so he could examine it up close. He had found the knife years ago up in the attic in a box of his father's old things that his Gran had shoved away to be forgotten.

Neville had always wanted to know more about his parents and what better way to do that than to explore the Longbottom residence where his father had grown up? But that wasn't an option. Neville used to ask his Gran if he could go have a look up in the attic and sort through the stuff to see if he could find anything of interest, possibly something that could give him a feel of what his parents were like. Anything, whether it be photographs, his dad's journals, clothes, books but his Gran wouldn't have it.

She would simply tell Neville that the attic was off limits and not to keep meddling her about such trivial things while suggesting that visiting them at St. Mungo's was enough; but visiting them at St. Mungo's wasn't enough for Neville, that wasn't enough to satisfy him. It wasn't enough to answer his burning questions or his growing curiosity of what kind of people his parents had been before they were tortured.

Neville sighed and rotated the knife in his hands. He wondered where his dad got the knife, if he had bought it himself or if it was a gift. Why he had it and what he used it for.

Neville had asked his Great Uncle Algie about the knife once after his Gran had left to go visit some of her friends and all he said was, "I haven't a clue where Frankie got that knife but he was as attached to that thing as a Dog to a bone…he never left the house without it…"

Neville wanted answers so on a trip to Hogsmeade recently he took the knife to a pawn shop to see if the owner knew anything about it.

"Ahhh, a very fine looking dagger that is you've got there, boy…rare too," the owner of the shop had told him. "It's a Dragon Talon Silver double edged, stainless steel blade with a silver antique finish and a handle made of genuine dragon hide…now tell me, where did you get this, boy?"

If his Gran were to ever find out that Neville had gone up into the attic without her permission, let alone against her wishes since she didn't want him up there in the first place, he would never hear the end of it.

It was a pity too because there were a lot of interesting things up there from what Neville could see. He wasn't up there very long because he was afraid that his Gran would arrive home to find him missing and then if she found out he was snooping in the attic she'd have a fit and he just didn't want to have to deal with that. He had decided that he would go back up there again sometime, when his Gran would be gone and occupied for more than just a couple of hours.

The more he stared at the knife the more inviting it became.

'Use me…' It beckoned to him.

Neville continued rotating the knife in his hands. He could see himself in the shiny blade, he was lost in it. He could literally feel the biting tip of the dagger's tooth slowly piercing his skin. He could feel all of his anguish rise out from underneath his skin and evaporate into thin air. He could see all of his burdens fading away with each drop of blood that spilled from the thin, red cuts he made.

He already felt a tremendous amount of relief just thinking about it.

Neville couldn't help himself, he shouldn't have made a promise he knew he couldn't keep. He took a deep breath, pushed back his sleeves and lowered the knife but before he could do anything he was interrupted by swelling voices just outside of the dorms. Someone was yelling. Neville immediately froze and listened closely.

"YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH- TRAITOR!"

"HA! YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD! Or do you? Well, you might not…but I bet your father would know…"

There was a harrowing moment of dead silence before Dean's voice bellowed out.

"YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH ABOUT MY FATHER!"

"Oh, I see I've struck a nerve."

"TAKE IT BACK SEAMUS!"

"Why should I! You were the one who started all of this by running your damn mouth about my family when you shouldn't have!"

Seamus and Dean continued to holler at one another until there was a loud crash.

"YOU BASTARD!"

Suddenly Seamus burst into the boys' dormitories, closely followed by Dean who leaped and tackled Seamus from behind, throwing him to the floor with a loud thud.

What they were saying was completely unintelligible and was coming out mostly in grunts. They continued wrestling on the floor until Harry and Ron flew in. Harry grabbed Dean, who was still swiping his fists furiously, and yanked him off of Seamus, whose face had drained of all blood and he now appeared almost as pastel as a Weasley.

"Let me go Harry!" Dean grumbled, trying desperately to get out of Harry's grip.

"Ron, take Seamus out of here," replied Harry more simply than one would have thought, considering he was using all of his energy to hold back Dean.

Ron grabbed Seamus and escorted him out of the dorms. Dean then freed himself from Harry's resilient hold and glared at the two remaining Gryffindors, as if challenging them to make a move or to make some kind of remark. Harry and Neville remained quiet.

"And you…" began Dean, slowly advancing towards Neville's bed with his finger pointed at him threateningly. "I've seen the way you look at Ginny…the way you are a little too eager to go up and talk to her whenever she's alone…you just stay away from her."

Neville opened his mouth to reply but the words didn't come out right away.

"Dean, I would never…I-I would never…do that…"

"Yeah, well, see to it that you don't," growled Dean.

With one last furious shake of his fist and a swift punch in the wall, Dean straightened himself and stormed out of the dorm.

"Wow," started Harry, "errr, sorry you had to see that…do you know what it is they were fighting about?" he finished, completely failing to mention Dean's threat to Neville about Ginny.

Neville didn't speak, he couldn't. Just the thought of him almost being caught in the act again had damn near paralyzed him. Also, the fact that Dean had just threatened him didn't improve matters any. Fortunately enough for him, Dean and Seamus were too caught up in their fight to even notice Neville was there at first, which was nothing out of the ordinary.

Harry narrowed his eyes on Neville.

"You alright there mate? You don't look so good…did they getch'a?"

"Huh?" Neville replied clueless, looking up at Harry.

"Dean and Seamus…when they were fighting?"

"Oh, no…it just all happened so fast I didn't even have time to react…I mean I would have tried and stop them but…"

"It's alright," replied Harry, giving Neville a small grin.

Neville mentally scolded himself for not doing anything, for not jumping in. For leaving Harry and Ron to handle everything.

Useless. Another word to add to his list.

"You sure you're alright?" Harry asked again, only softer this time.

"Yeah."

"Right then, I'm going to go back down and make sure Dean and Seamus aren't murdering each other. I'll see you at dinner then. Better make something of it because we've got detention with Snape afterwards."

And with that Harry turned and walked out.

Neville let out a sigh of relief. He didn't even realize until just now that he still had his knife lightly grasped in his hand which lay perfectly still in his lap, only it wasn't in view from where Harry stood or at least he hoped it wasn't.

Now fairly certain that there wouldn't be any more interruptions, Neville brought the knife down to his arm and slowly dug it in.

He drew in a sharp breath as he dragged the blade across his skin. Blood began to ooze out of the cut and it pooled around either side of the blade. He watched in wonder as his blood began to trickle down his arm. It was so red against his pale skin. It was a reminder to himself that he was alive. As long as he bled he was real.

He lifted the knife and placed the blade right next to the cut he had just made. He could already feel any dread subsiding as the sharp tooth of the mysterious dagger bit through his skin again. He made an identical cut next to the first one and then another and another and another until eventually he had a row of five perfectly parallel cuts on his forearm. He loved how they looked against his skin so red and so perfect.

Neville made a few more cuts on his other arm before conclusively deciding that it was time to place the knife back in the top drawer of his dresser.

This was the problem Neville always encountered whenever he was cutting. Every time he started he never wanted to stop. He would almost have to force himself to stop at times by locking his knife away and making sure he was surrounding himself with his peers, where he would forget or find himself momentarily distracted and free from the calling of the blade.

Just one week ago after a particularly nasty cutting session he had stopped himself, not even bothering to tend to his wounds, and entered the common room to watch Harry and Ron play a game of wizard's chess. He knew that if he hadn't of gone out there he would have continued cutting until all of the blood had been drained from his body.

Sometimes this scared him and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes he couldn't care less how much damage he inflicted upon himself. As long as the sight of his own blood continued to ease the suffering he dealt with while simply living each day he would continue.

Once his blood began to spill, it never seemed to be enough and it was because of this that he couldn't even afford to wear short sleeves without the aid of a concealment charm and since he wasn't very gifted with charms, he preferred to just stick to wearing long sleeves.

Although when the weather begins to get hotter he imagined he'd want to start wearing short sleeves because what better way to bring unwanted attention to yourself by wearing sweaters during the summertime? Maybe Hermione would help him out with a concealment charm.

Suddenly, his thoughts took him back to the night before when Hermione had walked in on him cutting himself in the Gryffindor common room. She had been nearly traumatized by the whole thing. It was all his fault and she would probably never look at him the same ever again. She would probably think even less of him than she already did.

One thing he did remember though, was that when she had begun to heal his arms, she didn't look at them in disgust. She had only sighed and looked up at Neville with sad, tear-filled eyes.

He looked down at his forearms, which was where he chose to take out the brunt of his troubles. They were covered with scars. Some were old and scabbed over; some were new and fresh with a glaring redness that stung the eyes.

Neville reached over to his dresser to grab a few tissues, which he soon discovered wasn't going to be enough to clean up the mess. He opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and pulled out a white towel, or at least it used to be white. The majority of it was now stained red with Neville's blood. Some areas of it were pinkish from older stains that had faded with time and other areas were tainted with fresh, dark blood.

He pressed the towel to his left arm and held it there.

'How have things gotten to this point?' he wondered.

Neville removed the towel and placed it on the other arm before putting it back in the bottom drawer. He removed a roll of bandages, which he rarely ever used but he was bleeding enough now to where he figured he probably should.

His left arm was a lot worse off than his right so he decided that he would only wrap it. He ended up using all of the bandages on his arm and even that wasn't enough because he continued to bleed through the bandages a little.

He felt so much better, except for the fact that he had detention with Snape to face in a few hours. His whole mood had been boosted but it wouldn't last. The high he got from inflicting pain onto himself was only temporary and it wasn't very long after that he began to long for the feeling of the blade grazing his skin and ache with the desire to cut over and over and over again, until he was completely numb from head to toe.

Neville, finally feeling calm for the first time that day, fell back onto his bed and shut his eyes.

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Authors Note: Wow, once again sorry for the delay! I just keep forgetting about this story, then randomly I'll remember it and add a bit to it. Forget it again, come back to it! lol…but yeah, as you all can probably tell…this chapter is incredibly depressing but alas, I was in a very depressed mood when I wrote this chapter. Which honestly I think that makes for the better because when I'm upset, naturally Neville is upset…so I'm really getting a feel for how I want to mold Neville's character in this fic. Yeah, anyways I'm going to apologize right now for any more future mistakes I might make in this fic, (basically I forgot to put in the beginning that this is AU, I mean…this obviously isn't going to be anything like in the books…) so yeah which would mean that although Snape isn't potions master in HBP he is in my fic! haha. Anyways, read & review! Chapter 5 is up and ready...:)