Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling

The epic Neville Trilogy continues

NEVILLE DEXTEROUS

chapter seven

tortures beyond imagination

Neville knew from experience that gossip in Hogwarts could travel very quickly. He had learnt that the hard way when last year he had turned down Cho Chang's offer of "a quick tumble" to wake up the next morning to a number of similar offers from various members of the male population of Hogwarts. The morning after Harry and Hermione's break up he arrived in the Great Hall to find everyone already talking about the confrontation and the "mysterious" disappearance of Cedric Diggory.

It had bothered him that the student body managed to notice the disappearance of a professor who didn't even eat with them at mealtimes by the next morning and it had still taken him the best part of a week to notice Ginny wasn't following him about anymore. He sincerely doubted that she had the ability to play it cool with him for any real length of time, so the only other solution was that she was probably dead.

It was just typical. You finally got quite attached to the idea of a girl following you around like a lovesick puppy and then she went and died.

Still, he thought he ought to at least see if she was at breakfast before starting a panic in the school. Of course, he couldn't sit through a breakfast without being attacked by Hermione as she wept.

"Please, Neville, let me find comfort in your manly arms!" she shrieked.

Neville had had quite enough of this, and shoved her off of himself. Harry seemed to be ignoring her as well, which Hermione probably regarded as the worst punishment imaginable. Ron either did not notice her antics or did not care about them as they did not involve the revolver he was still carrying about. He seemed to treat the thing with an odd sort of reverence.

Neville eventually managed to get Ron and Harry alone in the Common Room later that evening.

"Ron, I don't want alarm you," Neville said, all the while feeling like nothing save for suddenly finding gold coins in his excrement could possibly alarm Ron. "But I think you're sister may be missing."

"Nah, she's in France studying, remember?" Ron said with a casual wave of his hand.

"Since when?" Harry demanded.

"No, she came back at the start of the year. And no one's seen her all week," Neville tried.

"What? She's back? Since when?" Harry asked.

"What, so she's been abducted by a basilisk?"

"No, I doubt she'd be stupid enough to do that again."

"Trapped underwater by mermaids?"

"That was you."

"I know. Wasn't I awesome?"

"Ron! This is serious!"

"Okay, okay. Let me think."

Neville didn't really think such a course of action was much of a good idea. The Trio was a group where someone as hysterical as Hermione was considered the brains of the operation. He dreaded to think what they would have gotten themselves into if they had been forced to rely on Ron's intuitive thinking when they had faced Lord Voldemort.

"It must have been Snape!" Ron proclaimed at last.

"What possible evidence could you have that it could be Snape?" Neville asked. Ron merely shrugged.

"Well, if I just accuse Snape of everything that goes wrong around here then I'm bound to be right eventually."

"I agree," Harry said. "Snape is obviously working for Voldemort. This isn't Snape's plan. It's Voldemort's."

Harry pulled his Marauder's Map and Invisibility Cloak out of his bag. He no longer bothered to carry around such unnecessary objects like textbooks to his classes, but instead brought the items he thought most useful should the Dark Lord attack him in the middle of Charms. This included the two aforementioned items, a hip-holster for his wand (which he kept in his bag, for some reason), a picture of Bruce Willis (who, Harry claimed, was the expert in fighting bad guys), several knives of varying sizes and a pair of mittens in case it got cold.

While Ron and Harry formulated a half-baked plan Neville tried to come up with a single reason why Ginny would ever be of use to anyone, particularly an Evil Wizard bent on world domination. So far he was drawing a blank.

"Right, and then the third cavalry charges in from the right flank," Harry was saying to Ron, demonstrating using a collection of battle figures he'd pulled from his bag. "Caught completely off guard, the enemy will have no choice but to surrender and free the beautiful maiden."

"But Harry, we're not trying to save a beautiful maiden. We're trying to save my sister."

Neville ignored them. He was too bust focusing on the curious movement of a dot on the map.

###

"I spy with my little eye something beginning with... c."

"You were right. You are subjecting me to tortures beyond my imagination."

"Well, excuse me for trying to find someway to pass the time! Who would have thought kidnapping a young, innocent girl could be so... boring?"

"Well, when Tom Riddle did it in my first year he managed to amuse himself just fine! Sure, he tried to suck out my soul, but at least he didn't make me play stupid kids' games with him!"

Ginny was now at the point where she was so desperate to be rescued she'd settle for Colin Creevey, the only Gryffindor people cared even less about that her (or so she thought. Actually, in the days since she had been captured Colin's voice had broken and he now boasted the sexiest voice in Hogwarts. Sure, those girls had made him wear a paper bag over his head, but when you're Colin Creevey you can't afford to turn down a proposition like the one those three girls had made him).

Ginny was just starting to give up hope on being rescued when the door swung open. Only it wasn't Colin. Or Neville. Or Harry. Or Malfoy, Ron, Justin, Terry, Dean, Michael, Seamus, Cedric, Remus, Sirius, Snape, Hagrid or any of the other men she'd hoped would save her.

It was Lavender Brown.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked.

"Ha! I am Baron Luther Von Evilly!" he shouted, standing up to point his wand at her. "This is my secret lair where I have kidnapped this young maiden, and now you too have walked into my clutches. Surrender now and I might go easy on you!"

Lavender just looked straight at him.

"In that case, things might start to get a bit more interesting," she said.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them they weren't quite the same shade of blue they always had been. They were more of a glowing red.

###

Neville's imagination had led him to expect the worst. So it was quite a relief when he reached the Shrieking Shack to find just a man and a werewolf locked in a battle to the death while Ginny was tied to the bed.

The man seemed to be just firing spells off at random. His most successful spell proved to be summoning a plate of food from the kitchens of the Three Broomsticks. That distracted the werewolf for a few seconds.

"Harry Potter!" the wizard exclaimed in triumph. "You have indeed stumbled into my trap, hoping to save your captured friend. Well, Baron Luther Von Evilly has you in his clutches now!"

"You have one of my friends?" Harry demanded, grabbing the man and shaking him. "Is it Ron? Where is he?"

"Um... no, I mean the girl tied to the bed," the Baron said meekly. Harry looked at the bed. Neville silently pleaded with him not to say something horrible that would make Ginny cry.

"Well, have you hidden her underneath Ginny or something?" he asked. Just as Neville had predicted, Ginny started to cry.

"Oh, Ginny, don't cry. He's just being an ass," Neville said. He made a move over to the bed, but the werewolf's head snapped up. Apparently it had finished its dinner. Neville just had time to notice that it had not, in fact, eaten its greens and would not be getting any dessert before he realised that the beast appeared to view him as the perfect dessert.

"Damn," he muttered as he sprinted out of the shack with the werewolf in hot pursuit. "Why did I have to look so delicious? I couldn't have stayed ugly and fat. Noooooooooo. Where's the fun in that?"