Abstergent: cleansing.
June 27, 1995
It was late, past three in the morning. Even with the horror of the third task hanging like an iron veil above their heads, the common room had finally emptied. All except for one person.
Neville Longbottom knelt before the dying fire, the rusty orange glow washing over him and throwing his face into flickering shadow. Slowly, he turned the pages of the heavy book in his lap, examining the beautifully illustrated pictures, the carefully written text that had become a refuge for him this year.
He reached the middle of the book and let the covers drop limply, staring at the pale weeds curling and drifting in the sketched current of the Mediterranean. Gillyweed, the page opposite read. If ingested will cause gills to sprout from the neck and enable breathing underwater temporarily. A truly magnificent property discovered in…
But Neville closed the book. He knew what came next, must have read it a dozen times before February the twenty-fourth had rolled around. He loved that particular chapter. He had been afraid of drowning ever since Great Uncle Algea had pushed him off the end of Black Pool Peer and for a few horrible seconds he'd known what it was like for dark icy water to close over his head and steel his breath. The knowledge that there were plants out there that could stop that from ever happening, that he wouldn't have to worry about not being able to work a spell properly….
This book had been a trove of wonderful discoveries, a companion and reminder that there was something he was really good at.
Without a flicker of expression, Neville lifted the book, his fingers curling around the smooth, heavily-handled leather cover, and dropped it into the hearth. The embers sparked, bright flames began to lick its edges, quickly charring the crisp parchment. And Neville watched with sorrow and the feeling of a friend's betrayal, but without regret.
Those bright pictures had been colored with poison and the information loaded and deadly. It had been nothing more than a weapon aimed at his friend, and but for a streak of pride, a few words unspoken, Neville would have been the one pulling the trigger.
So he sat alone in the dark common room and watched the book burn.
A/N: Heh, hi. So I'm back…. Okay, so I'm hopelessly behind, and this was a random day to get back into it, but I had inspiration, so I went with it. Actually, I meant this to be the first part of a whole other one-shot. You might have read about my plans for it on my profile? It was meant to be called small gestures and compiling about twelve (since it IS Harry Potter) little moments with people doing little, unnoticed things for one another, just to restore my faith in humanity, but I looked at my list of other ideas and decided they could all fit in to this story somehow and I need to focus on this story.
So, if you're all still with me, I don't know how updates will look for a while, but hopefully I'll at least be writing. Oh, yes, and about this chapter, I imagine all Neville knows at this point is that Moody was being impersonated by a Death Eater with the ultimate goal of killing Harry and he's figured out that he was supposed to be part of the plan. When he learns what specific Death Eater it was, I'm sure he'll be more than happy he burned his book.
Thank you for being so patient! You all are extraordinary! :)