Disclaimer: If such a thing as a Norwegian Nangdoodle already exists, then hats off to the person who discovered it or invented it. It was the first nonsense word that came into my head.
Note: Just one chapter again. Like I said last time, they're coming whenever I finish them. I've got some of the coming chapters already written so they'll be posted en masse.
Note2: Well folks, my self-imposed deadline is fast approaching, it is now but six short weeks away and you've no idea how many chapters I've got left to write. I need to find out how it ends! (No, I am not going to do a Dallas and wake up with Dumbledore in the shower. That would be beyond disturbing…)
Chapter Forty-Two
The Animal Within
Neville still couldn't quite believe that Christmas had come and gone already. The last four months had been spent in such a tense mess of adrenaline, a coiled spring ready to explode, that they had not paid much attention to the passage of time. There were far more important things to be doing than ticking the days off on a calendar, things like anticipating and trying to plan for an attack that just didn't seem to be coming. That was another reason why Neville had been so surprised to find Christmas just around the corner and even more surprised to find it had passed with relatively few hitches; if you'd asked him at the beginning of the academic year, he would have expected, in all honesty, for something catastrophic to have happened by now.
True, the year had not been without trials and tragedies. It was impossible to avoid the death and destruction that seemed to be surrounding them and moving ever closer, its grip tightening so horribly perceptibly. Hardly a week went by without a student being told of deceased or missing relatives. But in the comparative safety of the castle's sturdy walls, they survived somehow. The DA had, according to Neville's plans, become a great help in that respect, and Neville was proud that he had helped to engineer this student support network. Membership had doubled and tripled over the past few weeks, to the extent where they needed to hold two meetings in order to accommodate everyone; one for beginners and one for long-time members. The gatherings often overran, with people staying to talk and share experiences long after the instruction itself had finished. It was far more than just a defence association, bringing together students of different ages and houses who would never normally meet, and allowing them to discover that they all had a lot more in common than they would have previously admitted. Neville had made a point of trying to mix up the houses in pairs and groups when they practised to try and avoid the Room of Requirement reflecting the divisions that were far more deeply rooted within the school.
Slytherin was still by far the most underrepresented house, but after word had spread that the green faction was just as welcome as any other, their membership had continued to increase. The new recruits mainly came from the first four years, and Neville accepted that that the familial connections and the too-long-established rivalry in the older students would prevent them joining. Still, there were more Slytherins than there had been, and there had been no upsets within the group as a result, which Neville considered an achievement. One surprise member was Blaise Zabini. Neville had never really given him much thought, always grouping him together with Malfoy, and he had been surprised when Blaise had approached him after a charms lesson and asked, a little nervously, if he could join. Now that he thought about it, Neville reflected that he really didn't know his classmates at all. As it was, Blaise had brought with him a selection of highly unusual albeit undoubtedly effective hexes and their counters learned from his peers, and they had duly been passed on through the group as another weapon in their ever-increasing arsenal.
The thing that would never fail to astound Neville, though, was the regard in which the other students now held him.
"I don't understand," he said to Ginny as they made their way towards the Room of Requirement, where the beginners' class was about to get underway, and people kept waylaying him to ask if he'd had a good Christmas. "I mean, I'm not famous. If I were Harry, I'd understand, but I'm just me. I haven't done anything amazing. I didn't even create Dumbledore's Army, that was Hermione."
"Neville…" Ginny began, but she gave up her explanation before she started it and just shook her head with a smile. Luna met them as they entered the room.
"You're later than normal," she said. "We were about to send a search party out. Ron's lost his eyebrows twice…"
If Neville was confused by this remark then he didn't show it.
"…and Trevor escaped again, but I think he's safe now."
Neville looked at Trevor, who was magically glued to the door but seemed to be content despite this, and raised an eyebrow. He had to admit, it was an ingenious if unorthodox solution. A puff of smoke signalled the end of another game of exploding snap, and a high-pitched yelp told them that Ron had lost for the third time in a row. Hermione rolled her eyes and pulled out her wand, declaring that this was the last time that she regrew his eyebrows for him, and that if he lost them again he would be wearing a permanently surprised look for the next three weeks. Thankfully, the arrival of Neville and Ginny seemed to distract them from snap and they came over to chat whilst they waited for Harry so that the lesson could begin. Normally, the classes began as soon as there were enough people to make it worthwhile, with whichever longer term members who happened to be there starting the instruction until Harry came to cast his more experienced eye over the proceedings. On this occasion however, they had made the mutual decision to bend to their pupils' wishes and teach them to cast patronuses, and this was an art in which none of the elder students felt confident enough to instruct. Harry had been a little alarmed when they suggested it, advanced magic as it was, but it had not taken long for the others to convince him of the necessity of learning such things. With the depressive atmosphere growing ever larger and the dementors breeding like proverbial rabbits, everyone ought to have a little instruction so as not to completely give in to misery.
Their teacher arrived a few moments after Neville and the lesson began in earnest. By the end of the hour, Neville found himself feeling happier than he had done in months; the sheer amount of positive thinking required to cast the basic patronus form, let alone cast one strong enough to solidify into an animal shape, was infectious, and for the first time in a long time, the Room of Requirement had rung with genuine laughter, the happiness bouncing off the walls and increasing tenfold as it did so. Those younger students who left immediately in order to get to their common rooms before the curfew went with smiles on their faces, and the sight of melancholy banished, even if only for a short time, made Neville and the others smile too.
Not everyone left as soon as the instruction was finished; the slightly older students stayed to talk to one another and Arnold, Gryffindor's latest quidditch superman, fiddled with the wizarding wireless that the room had thoughtfully provided for their entertainment and to keep in touch with what was happening in the outside world. Now that the Ministry and in their turn the media had been taken over by You-Know-Who, it was becoming harder and harder to find out what was truly going on, and the few pirate magical radio stations took great care not to be discovered. Presently, the old machine blasted out 'we're all going on a summer holiday'. Neville remembered the thick snow that still lay on the ground around the castle and raised an eyebrow at the choice of song.
"Sorry," called Arnold from the wireless. "Tuned it into the muggle network by accident." He twiddled the nobs on the front of the apparatus and a familiar newscasting voice began to speak.
"Reports are coming in that the dragon which escaped from Gringotts bank on Boxing Day has been spotted as far away as Mongolia. The goblins have always been rumoured to have used to beasts in the guarding of their highest security vaults, and this specimen managed to escape after the spectacular collapse of part of the bank's internal infrastructure. The building has remained closed for safety reasons ever since, and the goblins are refusing to give comment as to the cause of this spectacular ruin. One, however, was heard to mutter something about 'if all couples solved their arguments with a fight to the death then the divorce rates would plummet'. Dragon fanciers the world over have been trying to catch a glimpse of the magnificent reptile, which has so far eluded all attempts to catch it."
"Hagrid'll be pleased that it's still holding its own," said Harry, coming over to Neville. "He's been so worried about that dragon. I'm half-convinced that he's going to go out looking for it himself with a steak and a blanket in case it gets cold."
Neville laughed, but as the news continued, the joyous atmosphere that had built up in the room slowly began to dissipate as the more sombre statistics began to be broadcast. Arnold also felt the change in the mood and switched the radio off, leaving Harry and Neville to their conversation, which naturally turned to the lesson just experienced.
"They're really coming on leaps and bounds," said Harry. "If we can convince Arnold that his patronus isn't a chicken then we'll be getting somewhere."
Arnold had not managed to produced a corporeal patronus as yet, but once a small beak had appeared from within the swirling mist. Convinced that this beak belonged to a chicken, he had been slightly disheartened and his subsequent casting attempts had not been quite so successful.
"Personally I don't see what's wrong with having a chicken as a patronus," mused Harry. "If it does its job then the shape doesn't matter."
"A chicken isn't really scary though," Neville pointed out.
"Neither's a stag," said Harry. "The dementors can't see it. Besides, some might find chickens terrifying. The alien killer chickens of doom. I'm sure Dudley had a comic called something like that once…"
Neville shook his head in disbelief, and his thoughts turned inwards. He too was unable to produce a corporeal patronus. He was not overly worried by this – he had certainly improved from not being able to produce the slightest wisp of smoke from the tip of his wand – but he was still intrigued to find out into what form his thoughts would distil themselves. For some people it was self-explanatory: Harry had the stag of his father, Luna had a March hare for her eccentricity, but what could Neville have? The only animal to which he had been particularly connected was Trevor, and he did not particularly want a toad for a patronus, despite Harry's assurance that the shape was secondary to the magical effects. In Neville's case, looking at a second Trevor would possibly only serve to remind him of the various disappointments in his life and thus completely defeat the object of the exercise.
"I'm sure you'll find yours eventually, Neville," said Harry, picking up on his companion's train of thought. He nodded, determined not to succumb to melancholy so soon after revelling in absorbing the happiness that had been rushing around the room.
"Harry," Ginny called from the doorway of the room. "Earth to Harry…" She tapped her watch. "Quidditch practice!"
"Crumbs," said Harry and he scrambled up from the floor beside Neville before running across the room to meet Ginny, Ron and Arnold who were all leaving. They called general goodbyes to the group and disappeared. Neville looked around the now almost-empty room. Only Luna and Hermione remained, the former staring fixedly at the middle distance and the latter lost in a book and oblivious to the world around her.
Neville decided it might be easier to turn to Luna first. Of all the people affected by the mad world in which they were living, Luna seemed to be bearing it the best, letting everything take its course whilst she continued in her life as best she could, ignoring what she could not hope to change instead of letting it depress her. It was an admirable tactic and Neville wished that he could do the same, but he simply could not blinker himself.
"It's not easy," Luna had admitted to him. "Of course you feel sympathy for people who are living in worse circumstances, who've lost their entire extended families, who've been orphaned for no reason. But we can't bring back the dead, Neville, and we definitely shouldn't try. We can offer sympathy, but we cannot stand still and hope that everything will stop. We have to keep moving forward."
It was possibly the most meaningful and comprehensible thing that she had ever said to him, and Neville had tried to live by its principles. He was trying to make positive influences where he could with the DA.
"Hi Neville," said Luna. "Have you come to watch the wrackspurts as well?"
"Yes," he said, sitting on the chair next to her, a moth-eaten wing-back item in purple velveteen. The Room of Requirement was never very particular about the seating arrangements it provided for them, every day seemed to herald a new batch of chairs for them to test, but the purple wing-back had been there since day one, almost as if it was part of the room itself and couldn't be removed. Neville had no idea why; it wasn't even the most comfortable of chairs.
"They really are fascinating creatures," said Luna. "And you can tell Arnold that his patronus isn't a chicken, it's a Norwegian Nangdoodle."
Neville and Hermione, who had looked up from her voracious reading on hearing the new species, knew better than to ask what a Norwegian Nangdoodle was. Hermione rolled her eyes but did not return to her reading as a massive yawn escaped her at this point.
"I think I ought to go to bed," she said through the yawn, and she closed the book with a dull thud, sending clouds of dust flying into the air. Neville suspected that his classmate had not been getting anywhere near enough sleep lately in her quest to finish the tome. He glanced at the title; Secrets of the Darkest Art.
"Why are you reading that?" he asked with a shudder.
"Research," said Hermione shortly. Her face was apologetic as she hefted her ever-overstuffed bag onto her shoulders and made to leave. "It's very complicated." She paused. "Do either of you two know anything about knitted magic?"
Neville and Luna shook their heads.
"I'm dying to know what Professor Babbling's knitting," Hermione muttered to herself. "I'm sure I read something somewhere but I can't for the life of me remember where."
Her murmuring continued for a moment, brow furrowed, until she seemed to remember the presence of her fellow students in the room with her.
"See you later." She waved and disappeared through the door, leaving Neville and Luna alone. The silence was not unpleasant, each absorped in their own thoughts and reflections. Neville found his thoughts turning inexplicably back towards Trevor and the possibility of seeing his double in patronal form.
"You'll find it in the end," said Luna suddenly, her statement seemingly unconnected to anything else. "The animal within, I mean. You're worried because you don't have a corporeal partonus, but it'll come."
Neville nodded. He had no doubt that it would, in the end. Most magic came to him in the end. The trouble was, he had the foreboding feeling that he would probably need to use it a little sooner than that.