All The Time In The World
Chapter Four
Neville knew before she did what had happened. He doesn't know whether to stop her or not, he can hardly keep the truth from her forever. She already has tears in her eyes.
"Fred," she says, as she runs up to him. "Someone said that Fred was killed?"
She pushes past him into the Great Hall and sees the Weasleys' gathered about Fred's body. George is hanging onto his twin, his body convulsing in great shuddering sobs, but with no trace of a tear.
"Impossible," she whispers as Neville slips his hand in hers.
And then she sees their bodies. Her father and Tonks, lying side by side. Her face is suddenly hot and sticky with tears, her mouth sagging. She turns to him as if he can deny what she is seeing and he shakes his head.
"Dad," she gasps and wrenches her hand free, darting across the hall to her father's body. "Daddy!"
She clutches at Remus's shirt so violently his body lurches into the air. When Neville gets to her there is a dark wet stain on the front of Remus's shirt. Neville stares down at her. She has her head on her arms, leaning on her father's chest.
Neville sits behind her and places a hand between her shoulder blades. They sit like that for a long while. She sits up suddenly, scrubbing at her face.
"Who did it? Do you know who did it?"
"Dolohov," he replies flatly.
"And Tonks?"
"Bellatrix Lestrange," there is a wealth of bitterness in his voice as he says the name. He has loathed Bellatrix Lestrange all his life, this is just one more reason to continue doing so.
Jem she nods and starts to get up. Her legs have gone to sleep and she struggles onto her knees. Calmer now, the sort of calm that actually scares Neville a little bit, she straightens her father's shirt and jacket and smoothes his hair back from his forehead. She drops a kiss just between his eyebrows and Neville hears her whisper, almost fiercely, "I love you."
She turns next to Tonks, stroking her face before kissing her too. Her legs have come back to life and she gets up.
"Where are you going?" he asks.
"To help," she replies firmly, striding to the door.
They meet McGonagall in the entrance hall and she gives Jemima a stricken look.
"Jemima, I -"
Jemima turns her head sharply away, breathing in hard to shore up her tears.
"How can we help?"
Professor McGonagall is no sentimentalist, least of all in the midst of a crisis. She nods, understanding and reels off some directions about shifting some of the debris from the door. But outside there are bodies and they both think their dead are more important than debris.
Jem has her hand pressed to the chest of a young Hufflepuff girl, she shakes her head at Neville and as they move to gather up the body, Harry appears. Neville jumps.
"Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me a heart failure!" They both notice the Invisibility Cloak clutched in Harry's hand and exchange a suspicious look. "Where are you going, alone?"
"It's all part of the plan. There's something I've got to do. Listen - Neville -"
Jemima sits back on her heels, hand still on the young Hufflepuff's chest as Neville and Harry talk. She looks down at the face, so familar from countless meals and passings in the corridor - but what is her name?
"Kill the snake."
Trisha Green. That was in. Trisha Green in the year below. She once dyed her hair black and yellow for the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff game. McGonagall had been horrified.
"We're all going to keep fighting, Harry," Neville has seized Harry's wrist now and is looking his friend fiercely in the eye.
Harry nods vaguely and as he turns to leave Jem struggles to her feet.
"Harry!"
He turns and glances away from her face almost immediately.
"Jem. I'm - I'm so sorry about your dad and Tonks. I'm sorry for you and for Teddy."
She shakes her head, but it's more of a shudder. She has wrapped her arms about her body and closes her eyes for a moment.
"They believed in a world without Voldemort," Jem says finally. "That's why they believed in you."
To Harry's surprise she hugs him, very tightly so that he can almost feel all the bones in her thin arms.
"Take care, Harry. Won't you?"
"Yeah, course I will."
He steps backwards a little way, watches Neville and Jem take each other's hands as they look down at the body of Trisha Green. After a moment, Neville kneels down and closes the girl's eyes.
It is bad, they all know that. But somehow no one seems to have imagined that Harry might actually die, but there he is in the arms of Hagrid. As still and lifeless as a rag doll. It is this sight, rather than that of her family lying dead in the Great Hall, that makes Jem think they have lost. They have fought and died for nothing at all. For a moment, she thinks that she might surrender.
But when Neville makes his strident refusal to join Voldemort, something like hope kindles in her and she remembers suddenly what Neville said to Aberforth.
"So you'll just bow down to them, is that it?"
It lights a fury inside her – she will not bow down to the people who murdered her father and her stepmother. People who killed her mother and all her mother's family years before. People who have made her – and Teddy, oh Merlin, Teddy – orphans.
But no sooner has she decided that she will fight to her death rather than live in the world that Voldemort rules, than Bellatrix recognises Neville with a shriek of laughter. With the wands of several Death Eaters poised over the crowd Jem can do nothing but watch as the Sorting Hat is placed on Neville's head and set alight. She cannot even scream, though the sound brims in her throat like vomit.
Somehow this is worse than finding her father and Tonks dead in the Great Hall and inside her head she is howling.
But suddenly the hat is off and in a gleaming, heroic arc; Neville is twirling the sword of Gryffindor and slicing off the head of Nagini.