A/N: Hey! Haha, I have managed to post again in a month! I'm proud of myself! This chapter puts us halfway through the story, if everything continues according to plan. Thanks to whythehellnothavefun and ComfortSnake for betaing this chapter!

Last Chapter: Harry received medical attention from Braeburn while Neville and the DA worked to protect themselves after the rescue of Ginny. Harry worked on writing a message about the threat to the muggleborns on a crab shell to pass along to Neville. Neville met with Susan Bones, who passed along that they'd gotten help from Winky to feed the students hiding in the Room of Requirement.

Sneaking in to see Harry was as simple as catching an old chocolate frog - especially when compared to the chaos that had been Ginny's rescue a week previous. Susan and Padma Patil were patrolling on the seventh floor, keeping an eye on the few tucked-away staircases that led to the makeshift Care of Magical Creatures classroom on the eighth floor. Neville snuck his way through the halls under disillusionment and silencing charms, avoiding a pair of patrolling fifth year Slytherin prefects and Professor Vector alike. He didn't run into anyone after the sixth floor - he'd entered Susan and Padma's designated patrol area for this shift.

Once he found the girls, he removed his silencing charm and picked up the pace, letting them see the shimmer of his form and hear the soft falls of his feet.

"Neville?" Padma whispered; eyes not quite focused on him but close.

"I'm here," Neville replied quietly.

"Good," Padma said. "We've got plenty of time on the shift left."

"Ready to go?" Susan asked.

"You really don't need to come with me," Neville said.

"We agreed that we aren't letting you jump into a siren tank alone," Padma hissed. "No matter how much faith you have in him. I'll be fine on my own for a few minutes until Susan has either confirmed its safe or has saved you from your own foolishness."

Neville sighed. He'd tried talking Padma and Parvati around, but neither quite believed this whole thing was a good idea. They weren't the only ones. Anthony Goldstein and Zacharias Smith had both made discrete attempts to talk him out of the plan in the past week. Agreeing to let Susan accompany him seemed a reasonable concession to help ease their fears, though he still thought it would be unnecessary.

"Fine then. Let's go."

Padma took up a position near one of the narrow staircases leading to the eighth floor. Susan and Neville both crept up the stairs, leaving the Ravenclaw behind, and wound their way through the bare halls in the upper reaches of the castle. They'd chosen a staircase farther away from their destination, thinking that it would be less suspicious if someone found Padma loitering there than if they'd found her near the most direct route to Harry. Hopefully, no one would bother coming all the way up here tonight, but if they did, Padma would tell them that she was waiting for Susan to come back from the loos.

It took Neville and Susan just a few minutes, despite the more circuitous route, to reach the appropriate classroom. Neville quickly sung the password while tapping the pattern on the door using his wand. Then they entered.

The large room was completely dark, just like the rest of the eighth floor. Susan whispered a quiet lumos and closed the door behind them. Neville glanced around cautiously. There was no evidence of the scuffle that had happened here a week ago. Professor Braeburn's supplies and tools were stored neatly on shelves above his clean workbench. A storage cubby hung on the wall next to it, undoubtedly spelled to be waterproof to protect the two rolls of parchment resting inside. The long tables and benches the Care of Magical Creatures class had used were still here, but had been pressed against the left hand wall and stacked on each other. The only other furniture was a small table at the back of the room holding a wireless, and a straight-backed chair sitting on its own near the workbench.

The tank was the main feature of the room. The circular top of the tank took up half of the floor space, set against the left wall in the center. The rectangular offshoot that Professor Braeburn had dubbed the interaction tank jutted out toward the right-most corner nearest the door. It was narrow, but twice as long as a bed. Neville couldn't help a tiny bit of a gulp as he remembered that Harry had filled the whole length.

If this had been a normal siren, Neville would have agreed with the Patils and stayed well clear of the tank. But it wasn't - it was Harry. And Harry was still Harry, whether he'd been turned into a legendary monster or not.

"What now?" Susan whispered.

"I guess I'll try to get his attention," Neville whispered back, canceling his disillusionment. He firmed his resolve and crossed over to the circular tank. The dimensions of it here were smaller than in the Entrance Hall. They had to be, or else the tank would have taken up the whole room. The walls must have narrowed at the top of the tank, or else there were some very complicated spacial distortion spells on it. Harry didn't look to be a different size when seen up here versus when seen through the glass in the Entrance Hall.

Neville stood right at the edge of the waist-high glass wall to the tank and stared down into the water. It was dark, the only light from Susan's wand reflecting in soft ripples over the surface. He could just barely make out the crisscrossing lines of the bars some meters down, but nothing else. His skin prickled, and he realized he could just barely make out a strain of sound coming from the water, too quiet and weak to properly identify. The protective wards against mersong were probably still layered over the tank's top, but Harry had definitely been louder when he'd been in the room. Neville wondered how far away Harry was, and if Neville would even be able to get Harry to come up.

Swallowing, Neville tucked his wand into his sleeve and leaned over the wall of the tank, straining to reach the water's surface with his fingers. He found himself needing to shimmy onto the wall until his feet left the ground and he was kept from falling into the water by just a single hand and the press of his knees against the glass. His head and shoulders dipped below the top of the tank and its protective wards in the process, and the hints of mersong he'd heard above suddenly came into focus. It was still muted and quiet, but he could feel the mournful sounds creeping through his ears and straight to his heart, making his breath shudder.

Thankfully, he wasn't overcome with the urge to drown himself, so he took a deep breath and swept his hand over the surface to send the water splashing, loud in the quiet of the night.

Neville froze at the noise he'd caused, breath stilling. Was it his imagination, or had the mersong changed?

Gulping, Neville made himself repeat the motion, then slapped his hand on the top of the water - his best approximation of a knock.

The mersong did change, Neville was sure. The mournful cast of it was gone, replaced by a low pulse that made Neville want to draw back and hide behind something far away from the water. He'd already lifted his free hand to smother one of his ears before he realized how useless the motion was.

"Harry," he said lowly instead, trying to call without shouting. "Harry, it's me. Neville."

He had no idea if the sound of his voice would carry through the water, but he prayed to Merlin it would. It suddenly struck him that even if Harry wouldn't hurt Neville, he surely wouldn't mind hurting Braeburn or the Carrows - and experience had already proven unpleasant visitors were more to be expected than friends.

The tone of the mersong didn't change, so Neville decided to risk being a little louder. "Harry! It's Neville. Um… please don't kill me." The metal grate under the water would keep Harry from getting at Neville with claws and teeth, but it was no defense against being enthralled. Neville wasn't sure if Susan would even be able to drag him out should Harry accidentally charm Neville into drowning himself before he'd even seen Neville's face.

The mersong suddenly stopped. The silence felt just as eerie, and Neville fought to hold himself steady, balanced precariously on the tank's wall. The seconds seemed to drag. Neville heard his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, marking the unbearably long passage of just a few breaths.

"Harry?" he asked, fighting the urge to throw himself backward and out of the tank, to where it was safe.

A peal of mersong, louder than anything that had come before, rung up from the water. It twisted straight into Neville and buoyed his heart, pushing a delighted laugh from his lips. A deep shadow below flickered - moved - and then Neville saw a glimmer of green and amber in the dark water and knew Harry had arrived.

"Harry!" he said, grinning. Another happy peal answered him, but it was still too dark to make out much detail within the tank, no matter how his eyes probed the ripples and shadows. "Hold on. I'm going to come in," Neville said, all his fears banished. He rocked back out of the tank to his feet and hastily removed his outer robes and shoes.

"He's here?" Susan asked.

"Yeah," Neville said breathlessly, still soaring on an emotional high. "I'm getting in."

Susan frowned in concern. "You sure, Longbottom? You don't seem quite… right."

"It's fine," Neville assured her, smiling. "It's just Harry."

Susan gripped her wand a little tighter. "If he's not as… all there as you think he is… the best I'll likely be able to manage is to fish out your corpse."

The words managed to sober Neville somewhat. "Yeah, I… I figured. But I really don't think you're going to have to do that."

Susan nodded, not looking like she felt reassured but accepting Neville's decision regardless. Neville cast a bubble-head charm; the same variant Fleur Delacour had used that only covered the nose and mouth. He needed his ears to be filled with water in order to understand Harry. He cast a lumos of his own, so he'd be able to see in the water, and then scrambled up onto the edge of the tank. He let himself fall in with a splash.

The water was warmer than he'd expected, swallowing Neville whole in a moment. He could hardly dedicate much thought to it, though, because -

"Neville!"

The voice was… unearthly. It had layers to it; a melody and a harmony all at once. The single word swooped and soared like a high-flying bird buoyed by warm winds in a clear blue sky, making Neville grin. He turned his attention downward, past the grate, and his breath caught.

The cold light of his lumos glittered on Harry's dark scales, casting his warm coloration in faint blue. Harry's bright eyes were slitted, matching his pointed teeth. Wicked claws were wrapped around the metal bars, keeping Harry's long body close to the gaps.

"Harry," Neville breathed, blinking at seeing his changed friend so close. He flapped his hands in the water clumsily, trying to fight his way further down, closer.

"You came," Harry sang back, a single hand reaching up past the grate toward Neville. Neville reached out and took it. It was cold and slick, and the claws pricked lightly against the sensitive skin on the underside of his wrist. He pulled himself closer.

"You're so warm," Harry sang, the notes flipping up into surprise. "Do you understand me?"

"Yeah, I can understand you, Harry," Neville said, smiling.

A pleased chitter of sound pattered against Neville's skin. Harry hadn't moved his mouth.

"I haven't talked to anyone in so long," Harry sang - an entire chorus's lament condensed into a sentence. The sorrow in it clogged Neville's throat, making it difficult to speak. He pulled himself closer to Harry, both to reassure his friend as well as to fend off the crushing loneliness that had swelled in his own breast.

"I'll bet," Neville managed, trying to push down the swell of emotion. "I'm sorry we couldn't make it to you sooner. The Carrows have been really on edge lately, so we had to wait for them to drop their guard."

"The Carrows?" Harry asked, curiosity seeming to lift both their spirits out of the depths of sorrow and tugging Neville's thoughts straight out of his mouth.

"Death eaters," Neville supplied readily. "They teach Dark Arts and Muggle Studies, now, and they're in charge of punishments." He blinked, and winced. "They're the ones who came up here to… torture you?"

Harry hissed, exposing his teeth, and making the water in his immediate vicinity fizz like a shaken bottle of butterbeer. Neville jerked, fear spiking, before Harry's expression calmed, and a soothing hum smoothed the water. Neville's skyrocketed heart rate dropped abruptly back to a relaxed beat.

"Sorry," Harry apologized, guilt swimming in his strange eyes. "I wasn't trying to scare you. I'm still not very good at figuring out my magic like this."

Neville nodded in acceptance. It was just a momentary scare, and an accident. Nothing to worry about now.

"They're the ones who hurt Ginny?" Harry asked, his voice slipping a little lower and pulsing with intensity. It wasn't the spiking anger of before that made Neville want to flee. Neville gripped Harry's forearm tighter to ground himself against the determined, interrogating wash of sound.

"Yes," Neville replied. "She's safe now, by the way. We got her out."

Harry nodded, and the pulsing shifted into a soft swell that swept through the water like a cleansing sigh. "That's a relief. You have no idea what it's been like, worrying, ever since I saw Shovel-Face chase her away from the tank."

"I think you mean Alecto Carrow," Neville said, smiling as his body eased into relief. "Her brother is Amycus."

"I think I prefer the nickname," Harry sang, the words bubbling amusedly in Neville's ears and making Neville chuckle. Harry's tone then turned low and measured, serious. "I have things to tell you."

"I thought you might," Neville said, blinking quickly. He would listen - it was why he was here. But he had things he needed to ask, too, he recalled, and reached through the fuzz in his head to find his questions. He found the oldest one, first. "Are Hermione and Ron alright? We haven't heard anything about them."

"Yes, they escaped after Voldemort changed me," Harry sang. The notes rocketed between highs and lows, as if he couldn't figure out how he felt. It made the fuzz in Neville's head swirl, but Harry's next words pushed it away with clear, solemn determination. "If you find a way to contact them, tell them that 'the snake is one.' And… 'I'm an accident.'"

Neville nodded quickly. "Of course. Although I'm not sure if we'll get the chance. Nothing is getting in or out of Hogwarts right now."

Harry pulled his lips back, exposing his teeth in animalistic displeasure. A single, deep thrum pulsed from him in time with a flick of his tail, before it dulled into a barely discernible hum. He stared toward the surface, past Neville, frowning in thought.

"Why is the snake important?" Neville asked, blinking as the subtle vibration in the water seemed to loosen his own thoughts. "And what do you mean, about you being an accident? Did You-Know-Who not mean to turn you into a siren?"

Harry hesitated. "I'll tell you if something happens to Ron and Hermione. Knowing could get you killed, so I don't want to endanger you unnecessarily."

Neville nodded in acceptance.

"He did mean to do this to me, though. I can tell you he doesn't want me dead, anymore. He wants to keep me alive, and this was his way of doing that long-term."

Neville frowned deeply, but Harry had already said that he couldn't say more, so he didn't ask.

"I'm sorry, Harry. Ginny was nearly inconsolable when we saw what they'd done to you. A lot of people were, but You-Know-Who is spreading the lie that you're just a beast now. A lot of people buy it. They're mourning, but they…" They what? They'd lost hope? They didn't care enough about Harry to make sure You-Know-Who was telling the truth? Neither option would be encouraging to Harry in his present state.

"I guessed, after that class," Harry replied morosely, saving Neville from finishing. "Or at least, something like that. And it's hard to convince people otherwise when I can't talk to them." There was a beat of silence, before Harry continued, his melancholy tune rising in pitch until it sounded like a painful smile. "I'll be okay, though. They at least don't seem to want to do me any permanent injury. Something about me being too valuable. Artemius was all upset about it after the… Carrows, you said? … left the other day. But I'm getting sidetracked," Harry said, tail flicking against the bars as his melody once again dropped to the steady beat of determination. "There's something else. Voldemort had me in his office before he brought me here, and I overheard him talking to Umbridge. They're going to take all the muggleborn students over the holidays. Supposedly it will be to a separate school, but it sounds more like a concentration camp. I don't know if the muggleborns will make it out alive."

Neville tightened his grip on Harry's hand in fear. "All of them?"

"All of those that are underage," Harry said. "Or maybe he intends to take all the students regardless. They decided they needed a different way to get rid of the underage ones, to prevent public outrage about hurting children."

"You mentioned something called a… concentration camp? What is that?"

Harry hesitated again. "It's a prison, basically, where the inmates are forced to work, and get hurt and killed. Ask a muggleborn. They'll be able to tell you more."

If Harry was right, they needed to get all the muggleborns to safety right away. Neville felt frozen, trying to think whether they could hide that many students - how many were there, even?! - in the Room of Requirement, and if Winky could really smuggle that much food to them, and how long they could stay there before Snape remembered the room the DA had used back in fifth year and rooted them out.

"They weren't planning on moving them until the holidays," Harry sang calmingly. "They wanted to cause as little disturbance as possible."

Neville nodded, feeling his heart rate slow back down. "That's still not a lot of time. A little more than two months, and we don't have a way out of Hogwarts."

"That's it?" Harry asked, voice wide and shocked.

"It's just turned October," Neville said.

A low keen reverberated through the water, twisting Neville's heart with second-hand pain.

"It was still August last I was able to check," Harry sang mournfully.

"I'm sorry," Neville repeated, unable to offer better comfort.

Harry seemed to gather himself and met Neville's eyes again. "You acted like you had some kind of plan during that class. Something about the research whatever it is?"

"I'm trying to join the research program about you," Neville admitted, cringing. "Our class won't see you again after this week, and it's the best thing I can think of to keep up contact with you of some kind. I can't do this very often."

Harry warbled wordlessly for a moment before he spoke again. "What kind of research?"

Neville squeezed Harry's hand again, reading the fear and uncertainty in Harry's voice. "I'm not sure," he said softly. "I'm sorry I don't know more. I won't do it, if you'd rather I didn't. I might not even be able to get in to begin with. Snape has to approve my application. Professor Braeburn said he'd convince him, but I'm not certain it will work."

"No," Harry sang hesitantly. "If you can get in, you probably should. You're right. I'm just…"

Afraid.

Neville squeezed Harry's hand again, tightly. "If I get in, I'll do my best to make sure you're safe," he promised. "I'm not sure how far I'll get, but I'll try."

Harry chirped a muted affirmation. "Thank you. And… thank you for coming to talk to me. I think I might be starting to go a little crazy in here on my own. But I know this must have been a risk, and… and you need to stay safe. You and everyone else. I'm afraid I'm not good for much anymore. You… you shouldn't worry about me. And tell that to Ginny, as well."

"You're still our friend no matter what, Harry," Neville said, as firmly as he could with Harry's grief clenching at his heart. "And I'll make sure the others know that you're still you. I'm not sure how we can help, but anything we can do, we will."

Harry hummed uncertainly even as he smiled. "As long as no one else gets chased by that death eater for it."

"We're trying to be smart about it. Me and some of the other prefects are using our patrols as excuses to be out a lot doing things we shouldn't."

"You're the new prefect?" Harry asked in high-pitched surprise.

Neville smiled bitterly. "Only because I'm a pureblood. All the prefects are, now. Parvati is the other seventh-year one, but she's… not coping too well, right now. I can't blame her. Living under death eater rule is hard on everyone."

Harry crooned a wordless comfort that stroked Neville's heart sympathetically. "I'll bet you're doing great. How are the others?"

Neville smiled at the compliment, before listing what he knew. "Seamus got spotted rescuing Ginny, so he's in hiding. Dean's pretty scared, understandably, and so are Lavender and Parvati. Eloise Midgen is hardly ever seen outside classes, but that goes for a lot of people these days. Most are trying to lay low. But we've got each other, and some of the professors, so at least that's something."

"Gryffindor must be pretty lonely," Harry sang sympathetically.

"Dean and I definitely feel it," Neville admitted, some of the knots inside loosening at the understanding he could hear in Harry's song. "We miss you and Ron and Hermione. Seamus now, too, of course. It's not the same."

Speaking of others, Neville remembered Susan above. He glanced up but couldn't see her light. She'd probably rejoined Padma - and the longer he stayed, the higher the chances were that a professor (or death eater) would come to check on them and find them loitering.

"You need to go?" Harry asked, his mournful pitch reminding Neville of a thestral's cry.

"It's been a while, and the longer I stay the more dangerous it gets," Neville said regretfully. "I'll try to come back. I don't know when, though."

"When will I see you next?" Harry asked.

"We have another Care class in three days," Neville said, grimacing. "So we'll see you then. After that… well, if I get into the research program, I suppose I'll see you on Saturday mornings every now and then."

Harry nodded and slowly released Neville's hand. "Alright. I really appreciate you coming, Neville. I was trying to figure out how to write a message to warn you about the camps, but it took ages, and I'm not even sure if you would have been able to read it through the glass. If you do manage to come back, I… could use the company. But please don't put yourself in danger just for me. I'll… I'll be okay."

"We'd get you out if we could," Neville said despondently.

"I… know you can't," Harry sang haltingly, looking away. "Hermione and Ron couldn't, either, and I… well, there's nothing I can do, like this." Neville felt Harry's shame, eating him from the inside until he felt sick."So I… I know. It's okay. Just… focus on the people out there you can still help. And if you ever think of some way I can help, I will," Harry went on, tone more neutral and allowing Neville to breathe. "Even if it's just hiding something… although, if you get a chance to knock the Carrows in here when I can get to them, I'd more than happily take care of that problem."

The last sentence was a spear of hate that shot past Neville, sucking him up in the wind of its passage. The hot anger that rose in Neville in response made him clench his teeth and fists. He'd happily help Harry kill the Carrows. They deserved it. Knowing that - knowing that he could and maybe would do something about their reign of terror - made Neville feel stronger than ever before. His head buzzed and his heart burned. He was breathless with exhilaration, with hate, and it was so right but so, so wrong that Neville abruptly found himself terrified by it, terrified by himself and the wand in his hand.

"You'd better go," Harry said, and suddenly the intense anger Neville had felt was gone, as suddenly as the air from a popped balloon, leaving him dizzy. "You don't look very good."

Yeah, that was… probably a good idea. He did need to go. And now that Harry had mentioned it, his insides felt scrambled - there was a swirl of feeling inside and he couldn't separate joy from grief from hate.

"I'll try to come back," Neville promised, trying to think past the confusion inside - to focus on the friend he was about to leave on his own again. "We all still stand with you, Harry. Take care of yourself, alright?"

Harry hummed some kind of agreement. "Stay safe. And… tell Ginny that it's okay to let go."

"I will. Goodbye, Harry."

"… Goodbye."

Reluctant, Neville swam back to the surface. A lonely, whining song dragged at his limbs as he went, making him want to turn back, to stay, to never leave. A sob welled in his chest, making it hard to breathe, and he stopped swimming. He didn't want to be alone. He couldn't be alone. He would die if-

"Sorry," Harry sang quietly. The lonely song stopped. "I wasn't trying to, but it's hard to stay quiet. Go. Before your charm runs out. Go. Go. Go."

The repetitive pulse of Harry's voice forced the crippling melancholy away and seemed to push Neville back toward the surface with sound alone. His head broke into air, but he could still hear Harry from below. He could no longer hear the words, but the pulsing rhythm of the sound was the same. It bolstered him as he kicked up to grab the edge of the tank and then hauled himself over, kicking and panting. He barely got his feet underneath him on the other side to save himself from flopping gracelessly into a sprawl.

Even still, he found his legs to be shakier than they should be. He collapsed with his back to the glass tank, staring up dazedly at a blank place on the wall, trying to get his bearings. He could still hear mersong coming from the tank, but it felt strangely distant. It had been inside of him, living in him, and now it was consigned to reach Neville's ears but no further. The separation felt like a tear inside Neville's soul - something ripped away crudely to leave tattered edges and loose threads behind.

Neville sat, gasping, staring at nothing, until the strains of mournful mersong had faded into taunting whispers in his ears, no stronger than a cry carried on the wind. He drew in one more deep, shuddering breath and looked around the classroom, recollections of purposes and goals and fears trickling back into his awareness.

"Merlin," Neville breathed, overwhelmed and realizing he'd been sitting there for he didn't know how long. He raised his still-lit wand. "Tempus."

Shimmering letters replaced his lumos, telling him it was 3:02 a.m. He must have been with Harry for at least half an hour. Half an hour listening to magically charged mersong. No wonder he felt as if someone had reached inside of him, torn everything loose, and scrambled it into a mess. There hadn't been anything in their textbooks about the effects of prolonged mersong exposure, but then, he didn't think most wizards survived it long enough for the effects to be "prolonged." He was probably the first.

"Merlin," he repeated, as his body began to shake. Adrenaline that he hadn't realized he'd been feeling was wearing off. He had just survived something that all the stories, all the textbooks, and most of his classmates and professors had said he shouldn't have.

Then again, he realized dimly, it would probably also help if he dried off and warmed himself up. The water hadn't felt cold getting in, but now that he was dripping on a stone floor, he was definitely chilled, and he was sitting in a puddle.

Neville cast the necessary charms at himself stiffly, then stumbled to his feet and dried up the puddle he'd left on the floor as well. Hesitantly, he leaned back over the edge of the tank to peer down. Part of him mourned the loss of that presence-laden sound stirring in his deepest parts, even as he remembered the bone-aching grief of solitude that had nearly kept him under the surface. If he stilled his breath to listen, he thought he could hear the melody of it from far away, stripped of its power by distance and the tank's wards.

Neville stared into the dark depths, eyes hot with tears, and reached out a hand toward the water as if to offer some comfort. He could go back. No one should have to suffer that loneliness. What kind of friend was Neville if he just walked away?

No, it was - it was the mersong. Neville stumbled backward, ripping himself from the water's edge. Even now that Harry's magic couldn't reach him, the memory of it still lingered powerfully. He walked to a wall away from the tank and pressed his forehead to it, trying to collect himself. Harry understood - had even forced Neville to leave by the same power that had initially compelled Neville to stay. Harry wanted Neville to go. Except that wasn't quite true. He'd ordered Neville to leave, but his soul had tried to cling to Neville's, unwilling to feel his pain alone. And Neville had felt the same thing. The silence around him was grating; the lack of another living thing nearby like ice pressing against his skin. He wanted relief.

Was Neville only feeling this because it was what Harry felt? How could Harry do anything at all, feeling like this?

The tears that had welled in Neville's eyes spilled over his cheeks, hot and salty. He couldn't fight the waves of melancholy washing through him. He sagged against the wall, using it to support himself as he cried - for Harry's fearful isolation, and for his own sense of loneliness trying to lead a group of desperate students against murderers.

The tide of emotion ebbed away almost as quickly as it had come. Neville collected himself, sniffling, and used a charm his grandmother had taught him to erase the puffiness from his eyes.

He breathed. He felt the stone digging into the skin on his forehead, the smooth grain of his wand in his right hand. He heard the rattle of his shaking breath and smelled the faint odor of salt lingering on his dried clothes.

He was alive. And, more importantly, he'd done it. That thought alone was enough to make a slightly hysterical laugh bubble up to his lips. So what if his emotions were a mess? Harry hadn't killed him, and Neville had been able to talk with his old friend. Neville could now prove that Harry wasn't a monster - because Neville would be dead, dead, dead if that was the case, and he was still alive and breathing. Yes, he'd been gripped by Harry's mersong - that much was painfully obvious now. And Neville had almost stayed beneath the water, would have been trapped there to drown, but Harry hadn't let him - he'd made Neville go, go to tell people about everything he'd learned, and… oh, Merlin, the muggleborns. Neville needed to call a DA meeting so they could figure something impossible out, again. And if the plan somehow got the Carrows killed, then that would be wonderful -

"Ah, ow," Neville muttered to himself. "My head hurts."

Planning later.

Harry had said that the plan for the muggleborns wouldn't be enacted until the holidays. It was urgent, but not so urgent that Neville couldn't go sleep off his mersong hangover. He knew he needed to. His head was spinning, and he still wasn't sure what thoughts were entirely his, and which were Harry's.

Better sort through it all in the morning when he could think straight.

Another laugh of relief and absurdity pushed past his lips again as he made himself move to leave. He barely remembered to silence and disillusion himself first, and the disillusionment spell took three tries before he'd collected enough focus to cast it adequately. It didn't matter. He'd done it! Poor Harry. He hated the Carrows. He-

In the morning, Neville would barely remember how he made it back to his dorm without doing something stupid and getting caught. His cycling thoughts, however, took their toll on his energy, and he didn't have any trouble falling asleep.

17