DISCLAIMER: Based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling
The Neville Trilogy thunders towards its cataclysmic conclusion at breakneck pace
NEVILLE FALSUS
chapter eleven
anticlimax
Voldemort was obliterated instantly. His body parts flew off in random directions, with his stray arm impaling Wormtail through the chest.
Neville and the others could only cower in fear as the whole world around them turned white. Neville felt himself being lifted off the ground and flung against the wall. He groaned as he slid down to the floor. He felt something small and warm beside him, and he curled up to protect it. It must have been Ginny.
Eventually the world returned to its usual full spectrum of colours. Where Neville was that was largely black and grey. He got up to look at Ginny, but discovered that he was actually spooning Lupin by mistake. He jumped up, hoping no one else had noticed.
He looked around the room. Everyone else was slowly rising to their feet. Wormtail was over in the corner with an arm buried in his chest. Bits of Lord Voldemort were scattered across the room.
Harry was lying in a heap in the middle of the room. Hermione gave a characteristic shriek and ran over to Harry's body. Neville followed at a slightly more leisurely pace.
"Is he dead?" Ron asked.
"No, he's alive," Neville said, feeling just a tad disappointed. "Just unconscious." It was just typical of Harry to be awake while there was all the fun of defeating the Dark Lord but to be sleeping whenever all the real work like cleaning up the bloody remains of said Evil Sorcerer had to be done.
"Somebody pick him up," Snape said. "Not you, Black, you're too drunk. Longbottom, put that pretty little arse to work and do a levitation spell."
Neville did the spell, though he felt a little self conscious about bending over to cast it on Harry. When he stood upright again Snape and Ginny were both drooling.
Well, with the love of his life impaled by Voldemort's arm Snape probably thought of himself as single now...
And it was comforting to Neville that at least Ginny had a dreamy look on her face as well.
"Well, shall we go then?" Hermione asked. "We've got a bit of a walk."
They were able to leave through the front door. Neville was levitating Harry's sleeping form and Hermione was levitating Malfoy's corpse for some reason. Ron had also picked up what appeared to be Voldemort's left foot and was playing with it while they walked. Once outside they ran into the creepy old man who was their current Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.
"I came when I heard you'd beaten the Elite Four," he said. There was an awkward silence.
"Riiiiiiiight," Neville said at last. "Let's get going then."
"We'll be taking Portkey then?" Hermione asked. "I just thought, why didn't we take a Portkey the first time? If we didn't register one it ought to have been untraceable, and we'd have gotten here so much faster."
Snape was twitching in anger.
"SON OF A BITCH! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?"
###
When they arrived at Hogwarts Professor McGonagall was waiting for them.
"Where have you been?" she demanded.
"Professor McGonagall, we did it!" Hermione squealed. "We defeated Lord Voldemort and saved the Wizarding World!"
"I don't care!" McGonagall shouted at them. "You just took off and left school without any notice. You been skipping classes for the last two weeks and you haven't handed in any of your assignments! You are getting sooooo much detention!"
"B-b-b-b-b-b-," Hermione stuttered. "But we saved the world."
"Well, that's all well and good, but it won't help you in real life situations like your Transfiguration will! How will you ever survive in the working world if you can't turn a badger into a tea set? You'll be losing one hundred points each and a month's detention! And I imagine you'll be totally unprepared for your exams."
"Aw, what?" Harry asked, suddenly giving up on pretending to be asleep. "I would have just let Voldemort kill you all if I knew I'd have to do bloody exams!"
"And you, Severus!" McGonagall rounded on her colleague. "Leading students astray yet again! After that mass poisoning of students you were already on probation! This sort of thing may have flown under Dumbledore, but I'm running a different ship now! YOU ARE FIRED!"
"But, how I will I ever be able to torture young innocent people that don't deserve it?" Snape asked. "And how will I pay for my crippling addiction to hardcore pornography?"
"Have some whiskey," Sirius said. "It takes the pain away. You've been hanging around this school for too long anyway. It's beginning to get creepy. Now, I'm off to see my wife. She's old and may very likely have died in my absence. Or perhaps she's been sleeping for two weeks straight and hasn't noticed I'm gone yet. Come Remus!"
Sirius and Remus both cast an arm around Snape's shoulder and led him out of Hogwarts to his new lift of copious drinking, sleeping on Sirius's sofa and pretending to be deaf whenever Sirius and Augusta had their special time.
"And Mr Malfoy appears to be quite dead," McGonagall said. "There will be more points taken off for this."
###
Neville had waited a lot longer than he felt any boy should have to wait for this. After coming back from saving the world he had been bogged down in homework, detention and exams, but now he was finally free to spend the evening alone in his bedroom with his beautiful girlfriend. He had successfully distracted all of his roommates. Seamus was off in the dungeons doing hard drugs with a couple of the Slytherins, Dean was up in the Astronomy Tower with the newly formed Hogwarts painting class doing a painting of a naked boy and enjoying it all too much and Ron and Harry were playing chess... again.
Kissing Ginny was fantastic as well. Her overly-aggressive style certainly made things very interesting. She was definitely as good a kisser as Hermione had been; probably better since she didn't have the massive breasts hampering her. Not that Ginny didn't have a wonderful set herself. Neville was looking very much to enjoying them more a little later.
He was just enjoying the kissing when Ginny suddenly broke the embrace, adjusted her shirt and stepped back. Neville was a bit annoyed and tried to step forward to kiss her again, but she just took another step back.
"Ginny, what's wrong?" Neville asked.
"Neville, you're fantastic," Ginny said. "And I love you so much. But because our love is so strong that I think we need to take a break."
"Wha?" Neville asked, feeling both confused and outraged.
"It's just that we both have to do our own things. You have a job and stuff and I'm still at school."
"Actually, I was hoping to get the Potions's Professor job so that I could spend the year shagging a young, innocent schoolgirl rotten," Neville pleaded.
"And I think that we need to spend some time apart. Of course, our love is so pure that it stands to reason we won't be allowed to see other people."
"Drat," Neville muttered.
"I love you too, Neville," Ginny said. "It'll be too hard to see you for the rest of the year, so for the next two weeks I'm going to sit in my room being horny and lonely, and you can't possibly get to me because the stairs will turn into a slide."
She touched a finger to her own lips and then pressed it against his. She left the room, leaving him feeling more confused and angry than he ever had before.
###
Neville stood on the battlements flinging rocks at the second years studying below, who were not particularly bright and were pleading with the castle to tell them why it was so angry at them.
At some point Harry came out to join him. He seemed to be unusually quiet as he watched Neville.
"Ginny broke up with me," Neville said.
"Yeah, Hermione dropped me too. Something about getting out, exploring the world, sowing wild oats. I had no idea she was so keen about being a farmer." Harry sighed mournfully. "Yeah, this sucks." Neville kicked the battlement in frustration.
"It just doesn't make any sense to me!" Neville roared. "I mean, we saved the whole damn world! We defeated the most evil wizard who has ever lived! Doesn't that mean that we should get the girl at the end of it?"
"Well..."
"It's just not right! Why bother with all this if we don't even get a happy ending?"
"Still, at least we've got each other," Harry pointed out.
"Oh, a fat lot of comfort, that is," Neville snapped. "I didn't save the world to be stuck with you and Ron Weasley, the ugliest ginger in the world. As a matter of fact I had my eye on a ginger with considerably more cleavage and a lot less penis."
"Just don't get it, do you?" Harry asked.
"What?"
"This thing, this whole thing, it was never about saving the world or about helping everyone be happy. It was never about you and Ginny or me and Hermione..."
"It wasn't?" Neville asked.
"No. It was all about you..." Harry took a deep breath. "And me."
"Er, Harry, what in Merlin's name are you on about?" Neville asked. Harry took a step closer to him, making Neville take a step backwards.
"You can't deny it anymore. It's clear to everyone," Harry told him. "We can't let ourselves be destroyed by our unresolved sexual tension."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second!" Neville backed up a bit more, but found himself now pressed up against the edge of the battlements. "What are you on about? We don't have any unresolved sexual tension; we're just friends... if that!"
"Oh, Neville, you silly boy," Harry said. "I think it's quite clear that we could never be just friends."
Harry's hands suddenly closed around Neville's shoulders in a vice-like grip that Neville found he could not break, and his only escape was behind him straight off the edge of the battlements. With nowhere to run he could only watch in horror as Harry closed his eyes, puckered his lips and leant in, coming closer... and closer... and closer...
Actually, plummeting to a bloody death couldn't be so bad, could it?
... Closer...
The End