"Secrets of Snake Sex Cult at Hogwarts Revealed!
Rita Skeeter reveals shocking truth"
The headlines of the Daily Prophet were always sensational. While the Ministry of Magic wielded its control over the "free press" with the subtlety of a beater's bat at a pick up game, the paper itself remained the single most popular news source because it not only gave the best news coverage over every varied field of interest in the magical world, it provided more gossip than a coven of former school-witches three bottles of wine into catching up.
Rita Skeeter was a cynic. She had been used more often than not to create "heroes" for the Ministry, or from Ancient and Noble Houses that were trying to create some sensation over some useless sprog they were launching into politics. The one thing shared between all of those heroes is that they had feet of clay, unless it was some other dark brown substance you could also step in.
When young Neville Longbottom became the darling of Witch Weekly overnight, and a tiny bit of digging linked him to some improbable stories coming out of Hogwarts, she could smell a put up job. Linked to the Boy Who Lived, son of hero parents, but whispers of darkest murder in the ministry. All off the record of course, but the whispers were in too many ears not to have some official truth to them.
Rumours of him and any number of girls from Hufflepuff were obviously fake, I mean, Rita had been at Hogwarts. First year girls thought romance was holding hands in the hallways and eating together in the Great Hall. Besides, Neville Longbottom's reputation in the Longbottom family was timid fat little squib.
Rita looked at his photo's from the Hufflepuff Post, an in house quarterly magazine put out by current puffs for puff alumni about their quidditch team, and had to admit the boy had filled all the way out, and a shy soft smile attached to a slab of young but clearly developing nicely beef was not hard to sell as a teen girl romance target.
Obviously, this was either Longbottom house tossing ridiculous amounts of gold to create a stir to launch Neville as some sort of celebrity as part of that houses reclaiming of its former place, or a Ministry backed coverup, a shiny distraction to cover facts that could not bear scrutiny.
Rita Skeeter had done what any good reporter did before picking an angle; she spied on people who had every reason to think they were alone. Honestly, when she found out her animagus form was a bug, she had cried for days. She wanted a unicorn, an otter, or wolf, something beautiful, majestic, or at least able to defend itself. She got a bug. Not a wasp to be harmful, or a butterfly to be beautiful. She got a stag beetle. Not a fast flyer, not dangerous.
Still, when she had been trapped her third transformation as a literal bug on the wall in the Ravenclaw girl's bathroom, she had overheard what her "friends" really thought of her. While she was processing the emotional trauma of that, and the death of what few illusions she retained, she then heard them admitting to improper relations with the DADA instructor, Professor Drump.
It was her first expose, and showed her the truth. Being a bug animagus is the ultimate weapon for seeking out the truth. She had been spying and blackmailing in sequence to both advance her career, and ensure her own safety. It had been a winning combination that had never failed her.
It didn't fail her this time either. The truth she heard whispered from the girls on the Hogsmeade weekend to their older sisters was fantastic beyond her imagination. Neville Longbottom, the heartthrob defender of love on Witch Weekly ran a snake cult at Hogwarts.
The details didn't seem to make a lot of sense. There was something about groups of traumatized children, and Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter's snake, who they kept calling Noodle for some reason. Supposedly those children who were previously writing home begging to be removed from Hogwarts went to a few sessions with Neville and Noodle and were soon writing home babbling about how much they loved Hogwarts and never wanted to leave.
The line that kept coming up in some form was always the same. "I was so scared, but Noodle looked into me, then Neville talked to me, and I wasn't scared anymore."
Rita had heard about snake cults back during the first Blood War and He Who Must Not Be Named. He was a parselmouth and rumours of him going through the women of pure-blood society like a pied-piper were all the scandal, before their money and magics made criticizing him unhealthy. A few years later he just went full murder-hobo and killed anyone he didn't like, and half the people he did, but for a while, he was a figure of such dark charm every witch spoke his name with a wistful sigh.
Snake cults and sex had been a thing since Egypt. Greece and Rome also had their own versions, the magic of the parselmouths and the strange magics of divination had always been intermingled in strange disturbing ways that spawned cults that the muggle rulers at the time and their tame wizards could never fully suppress. Not an English sort of thing, those snake sex cults, but every school girl and boy read all about them. The idea was almost impossible to kill, it fit so well with teenage hormones and a boarding schools total lack of parental supervision or any sort of sane sex education.
Rita Skeeter learned in her school days the Hogwarts wards ignored animagi. Given the rumours that the Founders were all animagi it did make a certain amount of sense. Infiltrating the school was relatively easy.
She decided to infiltrate the Hufflepuff's first. Most of the rumours started there, and she wanted to find out how the Hufflepuff girls thought of Neville when they knew they were alone.
There honestly wasn't anything worth mentioning for two whole days. The students were being disgustingly Hufflepuff. They studied, made sure each other were okay, and signed up for projects on the help board the Prefects put up for things the House Elves couldn't handle or get right.
The second night, one of the fifth year girls started screaming in her bed, and as Rita began moving to the older girls dormitories, she heard the cry go up.
"Get Neville and Noodle!"
This was it. This girl was obviously one of the cult victims. Now she would be able to see the truth. Another Hogwarts "hero" would be exposed. She could not go after "The Boy Who Lived", as Dumbledore and the Ministry both had ways to punish her she could not survive, one of them professionally and the other one killed Grindelwald so careers were not the worst consequence.
The fifth year girl was screaming and her magic was running wild, lashing out with unformed but emotionally supercharged power. Rita moved to a corner where the power would have less chance of accidentally killing her when she saw the most shocking sight.
A badger the size of a small bear charged into the room. A dresser that must have weighed several hundred pounds was flying towards the entrance but with an explosive snarl he slapped it away. The great oaken dresser, its runic arrays, special expansion and locking charms exploded from the power and intent of that charging badger as if an origami bird flew into a forge fire.
He charged the bed where the witch was screaming, her power out of control, and the witch lunged at the badger with hands clawed and wild eyes. Rita expected to be reporting a murder when instead what she saw was the badger absorb the fury of the screaming witch, her power and her hands hammering and clawing against him as he simply grumbled and growled in tolerant badger until she subsided into hugging and burying her face in his fur.
Rita hadn't noticed the snake coming in. That struck her as alarming as it was almost well over the reported twelve feet, probably at least fourteen at this point, black as death, and marked with silver glowing runes. How she could not notice the most dangerous snake this side of the rumoured school basilisk she did not know, but instead of terrifying the girls it passed, most of them reached out a hand to stroke it and thank it as it passed.
The snake coiled up onto the bed, and, then across the back of the badger until its head was near that of the fifth year girl. As soon as the snake's eyes met the girls, she stopped weeping, and her body relaxed.
Rita was ready, this was it. Snake cult mind control! The badger shifted back into a third year boy in badger pajamas, because of course he would have badger pajamas. She crawled down the wall slowly to hear the boy speak, wondering what sort of programming or grooming the little pervert was doing; Rita could almost see the scandal exploding!
What she got was something different.
"Were you remembering before, with Lockheart?" Neville asked softly.
"I hated him, I hated it, but I can remember wanting it, even following him and wishing to be chosen!" The fifth year girl began, her voice rising.
The snake ducked his head in her line of sight and began swaying and hissing, the girl calmed and slowed.
Neville held her hands. "Look inside, center yourself. Start using what we have taught you. Let your magic rise, let it flow through your body, don't ask it to do anything, just let it fill you completely and utterly until there is no room for anything else.
Feel that magic, know it as yours. That is you. That is yours. Now take it with you and sink into your thoughts, sink into your memories. Anything that is you, that is yours, keep it inside. Anything that feels different, let your magic wrap it up, let it slide between those thoughts and you. They are not yours, they are not you."
The girl shuddered and relaxed. She began to become embarrassed and mopped at her face, then blushed as she realized she was holding hands with a boy in her pajamas in her bed in the girls dorm with half a dozen of her fellow puff girls looking on.
"You must think I'm an idiot. I had straight O's in my Defense Against the Dark Arts and I let myself get taken and brainwashed right in class. How can I ever trust myself? I can't even defend myself; I could never think about being an Auror." She said.
Neville turned her face to his, the boy looked old, without looking mature. A boy who hit ancient without getting to grow up first.
"You were potioned. Your mind and your magic were fighting so hard to free you. Your mind and your magic never stopped fighting, that is why your memories are such storms of conflicting feelings. You can feel the want was fake, the desire was fake, but it was strong. The potion was so strong the standard detection couldn't even touch it, the standard antidote couldn't even touch it. Hermione, Milicent, Harry, and I together had to come up with something new and stronger just to stop it.
Noodle is teaching you to defend your mind. Let your magic partition off the thoughts that were not yours. Then you can talk to me, and we can deal with the feelings and thoughts that are yours. What happened, happened. You survived, but making you forget is just going to leave you broken. You have to work through it, learn to trust yourself, your instincts and your magic again. I can help, but the work has to be yours, or the strength won't be."
Neville said. The girl laughed, a shocking sound that had broken and jagged edges.
"How did you get so wise?" She said, hugging the boy.
"I let my uncle poison me almost into squibhood, and attempt to murder me more than a dozen times without saying anything because deep down I agreed that I would never be the man my father was, and everyone would be better off with me dead. Then I met some friends who decided that was stupid, and didn't give up on me." Neville said, and the snake lunged forward to butt him in the forehead, Neville grinned at the snake.
Rita actually left Hogwarts for her own apartment after that. She looked at the memory in her Pensive, well it was hers now. I mean technically it belonged to House Fawley, but if they wanted her to keep secret about the fact their ruling lord was now a complete squib due to a completely failed empowerment ritual, they would keep quiet about her having it.
There was some Legimency going on with the snake, which is creepy and her Care of Magical Creatures was only OWL level, but only the famous and possibly only mythical Naga were supposed to be able to do that, not a Rock Viper. Neville wasn't using any magic at all.
She was prepared to believe Little Lord Longbottom was a sex pervert, they had one killed and one arrested at Hogwarts just last year, so it fit. Besides, Professor Toland Drump had been fired as the DADA instructor when she was in school for messing with underage girls, so it fit Hogwarts as she knew it.
She was prepared to believe Little Lord Longbottom was some sort of snake cult leader. That was how Voldemort started, if you believed the wilder rumours from the first Blood War. Having him in the orbit of The Boy Who Lived made it less a champion of light versus champion of darkness, and more of a clash of rising dark lord vs returning dark lord if the snake cult Longbottom led was part of Harry Potters secret plan to take over the world.
She was not willing to accept that Little Lord Longbottom was a secret badger animagus who gave emergency cuddles in the night, and psycho-magical counselling to abuse victims. She would refuse to print that as a really obvious cover story if the Ministry tried to force her to. She could never in her cynical heart of hearts accept it as truth.
She followed him into the Hogwarts infirmary where she found him and that Slytherin girl who murdered her way into the Selwyn Lordship mixing potions for the mediwitch. Here we go, he must be brewing love potions, or loyalty potions, some sort of mind control thing to support his cult.
She crept closer and looked at the book.
One cauldron was brewing Skele-grow bone regrowth potion, and the other was brewing blood restoration potions.
Madame Pomfrey was bustling about, bottling and labelling, chatting with the two as she trained them both in various diagnostic charms, as the heir to one ancient and noble house, and ruler of another somehow wasted their free time learning to be apprentice healers instead of learning politics and economics as any rational aristocrat would.
The Slytherin beater Marcus Flint was brought in. The boy was in his last year at Hogwarts, and was a renowned thug in his early years. His father had somewhat of a dark reputation, but the family had produced some noted Aurors and even a head of the DMLE in the past.
He was not in Hogwarts robes, but dress robes, and was writhing in pain, obviously sweating, and with a fake smile plastered on his face as if nothing was wrong.
Madame Pomfrey looked up in shock as various wards on her med bay went off as Marcus was brought in on a stretcher. Argus Filch sweated on one end of the stretcher and Harry Potter on the other. The snake slithered behind like an interested tourist taking in the sights.
"Argus, what happened!" Madame Pomfrey snapped.
"He just portkeyed in, collapsed in the hall, bleeding all over the place. Won't say nothin about how he got cut. The blood, it burns the stone when it falls, so it aint no natural cut." Argus grunted. While a squib, he had seen enough dark magic to know when something was beyond normally foul.
Madame Pomfrey was working her wand in quick diagnostic charms while Neville and Milicent cut away the dress robes on Marcus left arm and side. An ugly black line crossed his bicep, then rib, the flesh was slowly rotting under it, digging deeper and deeper into his flesh.
"Marcus, this isn't a quidditch accident, and it isn't even your usual back from holidays beating that you won't admit to. This curse is feeding off you. It is family magic and I don't know how to counter it. Do you at least know what it is?" Madame Pomfrey asked.
"Don't know what you are talking about. Just got back from lunch with dear old dad. Told him I plan on joining the Aurors, he had plans on me joining his old firm, but I don't care for their health plan and senior management is bonkers. We agreed to disagree, and then it seemed I slipped buttering a scone and cut myself with a butterknife." Marcus smiled, and his eyes showed the acceptance of death that argues he did indeed know the curse that was used, and there was no point in trying to do anything about it.
Milicent Bulstrode looked at Neville and began hissing in that strange serpent tongue. The snake joined in, then the three of them descended on the writhing Flint.
Milicent touched the bubbling black wound on his side, and white frost covered it. The snake the girls had called Noodle pinned Marcus with his eyes, and the boy went still. Neville drew his wand, and a sickle of golden light grew from it. With several quick slashes, he carved open Flints side like he was butchering meat. Milicent followed behind, her wand stopping the pumping blood as Madame Pomfrey exploded into action, runes burned in the air as she chanted one set of spells verbally, and cast another runically with her wand in a display of simultaneous sorcery she would have been surprised to see at St Mungos, let alone at a school infirmary.
The black from the arm had extended towards Marcus neck, before Milicent and Neville repeated the freeze and cleave on the arm, taking half the meat off his upper arm, leaving only a string of bicep connected.
The black had advanced into his core, and Marcus began to thrash.
"We are losing him!" Snarled Madame Pomfrey.
Neville took some seeds from his belt and forced them into the wounds. Holding his hand over them, he let his magic roar in a way that caused Rita to freeze in fear as the magic went wild in the air around the hospital bed. The seeds turned into flowers which sank their roots into the boy's arm and neck, the flowers that grew were dark and disturbing, each poisoned blossom bloomed and fell to lie hissing and smoking on the stone of the hospital floor as they ate away at the stone.
The toxin seemed to be drawn out, as Marcus stopped thrashing and Madame Pomfrey pointed with her chin at the potions table, and the girl Milicent began to take up the potions, choosing them by half lifting and waiting for Madame Pomfrey's nod to confirm, before she took them to Flint's body and simply opened the cap. Some magic of hers caused the potion to simply flow into Marcus Flint's body, not drinking it, or injecting it, just magically diffusing it through whole tissues.
A few minutes later, Marcus relaxed and lapsed into sleep. Madame Pomfrey began to clean up and Neville and Milicent went back to their potions for hospital stores. This wasn't exactly budding dark lord material. He Who Must Not Be Named just executed his badly wounded followers. The weak had no place at his side. Grindelwald used to just abandon his, if they lived, they could return to him. If they died, well, they were useless. No dark lord went about healing people who didn't even serve them. As a cult leader, miracles got shouted from the rooftops, not done behind closed doors and not discussed.
She followed Neville and Noodle to the Greenhouse of Professor Sprout. Sure enough, both girls and boys of various houses snuck into the greenhouse as if worried about being seen. They sat in a circle, with Noodle coiled up in the middle.
This was it! This was Neville's secret cult. Now Rita would get her scoop.
What followed made Rita wish beetles could be sick. Neville led a discussion about abuse. One by one the kids would talk about what they had been through, here at Hogwarts (and wasn't that a damning little litany for Dumbledore) and at home. Some had even talked about abuse they had committed, Crabbe and Goyle being two struggling to deal with that.
Neville took them into the occulemency that Dumbledore had fought so hard to remove from Hogwarts. He took them through exercises to allow them to look at those events whose pain twisted them, and changed the way they reacted and made decisions. With Noodle, he would isolate those memories, wall them off, and then talk them through examining how that trauma had changed their reactions. Discussed honestly what reactions they thought had worth, and what were just more problems.
This was it, Rita was waiting for him to offer to take the memories away, to get permission to modify their thoughts and feelings. This was how a cult leader passed off making minions as "healing".
Instead Neville let them into his own thoughts, guided them through how he was still processing his own trauma, how he knew that his magic wanted him to be whole and strong, but he couldn't be whole and strong without those memories. Surviving them was important to the Neville he was now, and cutting those away would leave him less than whole, and weak when he moved on. You couldn't learn from what you forgot.
Bloody Hufflepuffs. He didn't offer them a quick fix, he offered them hard work, a lot of misery, and at the end of it, ownership of themselves and their magic. This wasn't a cult leader. Cult leaders promised if you gave up your will to them, all your problems would go away.
He ended the session with giving everyone a very Hufflepuff speech about feelings. Rita was ready to write it off as feel good fluff when Neville drew out his wand and talked about how he could never really command his good memories when he didn't own up to the truth about the bad ones.
"For a long time, I lied to myself, I lied to everyone about being abused. I swore everything was fine, and when I tried to cast my Patronus, nothing happened. I thought I was weak, and worthless.
Then some friends hounded me into admitting the truth and dealing with it. I wasn't pretending everything was okay, but you know what, some parts of my life were legitimately good. Some people legitimately cared. Magic is powered by your soul, not your lies. It was never a lack of power, I just got so lost in the lies I lost myself."
Neville stopped talking, then pointed his wand forward. "Expecto Patronum" He said, and a silver badger exploded into existence and capered about the room happily, before putting its nose down and going looking for gnome traces.
One by one, the rest of the students took out their wands and did the same. Most only glowed, but Crabbe and Goyle both shot a stream of silver mist out of their wands, and she could see the thick troll like boys eyes were shedding tears in the glowing light of their patronus.
Neville smiled at them, and gave the two Slytherin thugs a Hufflepuff hug, the rest of the students joined them. Rita looked at this healing circle and the real magical empowerment that was coming out of it, and didn't know what to think. She was busy trying to see Neville's angle when she froze, two night black eyes stared into hers from well within striking distance.
A strong legilimancy probe slashed through her pathetic resistance and read the truth of her entire life, sifted it for bits that interested it. A tongue flicked out of Noodle's mouth to lick Rita Skeeter on the glasses mark by her beetle eyes, then he turned away.
He knew. He knew and did…..nothing.
She followed Neville around for days afterwards. Twice she was caught by Luna Lovegood that simply stuck her on her shirt like a badge and talked non stop to her about, well it was kind of hard to follow, the girl was either mad or a seer. Possibly both. She also clearly knew Rita was an animagus, and didn't care. She walked Rita into places Neville was at, or where Neville would be.
People came to Neville, and if they were in any sort of serious state, Neville either took them to Noodle or Hermione and/or Harry would drop the snake off shortly for a session. It wasn't a secret from the House Heads, as Flitwick, McGonagall, and Sprout all pointed people at Neville. Slytherins seemed to just show up, Skeeter assumed they had some horribly complicated secret Slytherin way, but they did show up.
She kept looking for the angle, the trick, the secret hussle. She had been at Hogwarts and believed the stories of a magical school that would keep all the children safe, and let them explore the wonders of magic and the whole world it offered. She had learned the truth. Power, privilidged, advantage, and the indulging of every vice and appetite that wealth and power provided were the truth of the wizarding world. Worse than muggles, the witches and wizards of the world had access to powers whose abuses muggles couldn't dream of. There were no heroes. Every champion of light shone so bright to hide their crimes, but they always came out in the end.
That is when it hit Rita. The truth won't set you free, but it sure makes your word count soar in a hurry. The story practically wrote itself.
Daily Prophet lead story:
"Secrets of Snake Sex Cult at Hogwarts Revealed!
Rita Skeeter reveals shocking truth"
Rumours have been exploding all over the wizarding world about Neville, the Longbottom Heir who so recently caused a sensation on the cover of Witch Weekly for his first date heroism. This reporter was not surprised to hear the whispers of something darker, something that Hogwarts had been covering up.
You may have heard the whispers about a secret snake sex cult at Hogwarts, and the recent rumours of Lord Longbottom being involved. This reporter dares to go where no other does, and tells the truth no one wants you to hear.
You have been promised your children are safe at Hogwarts, and this is a lie. There is a secret snake cult at Hogwarts, and Neville Longbottom is involved. There have even been abuses that the Hogwarts charter from the days of the founders have charged the Headmaster and Heads of Houses to protect our vulnerable children against, but these deviant acts have not been caused by the snake cult. They have been stopped by them.
This reporter has looked into the rumours of the snake cult, and found they are true. There is a snake that has mind powers far beyond anything this reporter has seen in all her years, and the snake is using them along side Heir Longbotom to help deal with the damage our children have suffered under the neglect, and sometimes abuse, of the predators Hogwarts has allowed to pass as teachers inside its hallowed halls.
Why are our children turning to Neville Longbottom, when they have the Hogwarts teaching staff and the Champion of Light himself, Albus Dumbledore to turn to?
This reporter has seen a hundred heroes be created by the press, by accident, or by cold political design, and each of these heroes has been revealed to be deeply flawed and frequently, dangerous. I expected no less when I dug into the secrets of young Neville Longbottom, but I was not prepared for what I saw.
Son of a pair of hero Aurors, a noted beater and companion of the Boy Who Lived, I expected a budding warrior, a noble politician trained from birth both to wield and to seek power. What I found was a shy boy who had been deeply hurt by those he both loved and trusted in the past (more on that it is not my place to say, nor will I), and found the strength in a very Hufflepuff way, through his friends to work past that hurt, and seek healing.
We go to Hogwarts to learn magic, and I had been through Hogwarts and thought I knew it. I returned to Hogwarts to learn the truth about Neville Longbottom and his secret snake sex cult. What I learned was the truth about healing and magic.
Neville Longbottom isn't a warrior like his sainted father and mother. Neville Longbottom is a healer. Training under Madame Pomfrey in the magical arts of healing, he is also training under Professor Sprout in the ways of soul healing, and under Harry Potter's magical serpent familiar (called Noodle, hardly a dark lord name) in mental healing.
Are your children safe at Hogwarts? This reporter thinks they are safer now than ever before, but it is due to students helping students, not the world renowned Headmaster and Order of Merlin First Class holder Albus Dumbledore.
The secret of the secret snake sex cult at Hogwarts? No sex, just a snake that sees deeply, a young lord whose sorting into Hufflepuff should not have been a surprise, and a deeper understanding of how magic was supposed to make us better. In the years I attended, and probably you too, the promise of Hogwarts was a lie. With this group of Hufflepuff's that rumour had slandered as a snake sex cult, the promise of safety and wonder of Hogwarts may actually come true.