Chapter 59

Longbottom Manor

April 3, 2002

3am

Neville wasn't supposed to be at his family home tonight, but his grandmother had held a party for a number of her friends from the Wizengamot and had left the floo unlocked. Neville hadn't used the floo, too easily traced, but an intruder would. The Aurors were lazy at best and incompetent at worst so their conclusions would be drawn quickly as long as Neville left no traces.

He'd apparated from inside his hotel room in Edinburgh where he was presenting on habitat loss and gilly weed. He'd made sure to shake hands and talk with several aspiring herbologists after his lecture. He'd ordered room service and let the hotel staff see him half exhausted and already in a robe. Neville Longbottom was nothing if not careful. He'd been underestimated his entire life, even after slaying that bloody snake, and he was more than willing to use that to his advantage. Pansy's Slytherin nature had certainly rubbed off on him over the years.

With a pang he remembered his soulmates, far away, celebrating a new life without him. The thought strengthened his resolve. He would avenge the moment that was stolen from him.

The spare wand that Viktor had given him as a present the summer before the war began in earnest was already warm in his hand as he walked through the darkened gardens. Whole sections were in an absolute state. The gardeners were clearly doing a terrible job. It was one of the first things he'd fix after he'd claimed the Lordship of House Longbottom. His grandmother would only need to be missing for a month or so before he could do it.

He appreciated the silence of the gardens, there was the chirping of a nightbird and hooting owls in the aviary, but for the most part the only sound was his feet on the path and the soft sounds of plants blowing in the early morning breeze.

His grandmother's yapping crup had finally passed away a little over a month ago. Neville really thought that the poison would finish it faster, but now she was already talking about a replacement and that wouldn't do for what he had planned.

One of the rear doors never closed properly and it swung open with a flick of his wand, no wards to take down, no locks that needed a key. Neville shook his head at the carelessness, with everything going on his grandmother was still so confident that the family home was an impenetrable fortress, just another example of how her pride would lead to her downfall.

The house was silent. His grandmother wasn't fond of house elves nor live-in servants. The caterers she'd hired for the night had left hours ago. There was actually very little sign of the soirée that she'd held. Someone's forgotten hat on a table in the foyer, a few bottles of Elvish wine that had been brought as gifts, but not yet taken into the cellars.

But even with those small things everything was immaculate. As always, Augusta Longbottom had an image to uphold. Neville himself was part of that image, damn whatever he wanted. She held all the power.

But not for long.

He took the stairs carefully avoiding the ones that he knew creaked. Even though he had spent more time sleeping on the pull-out bed in the back of his shop than here at the Manor lately, he still knew every creak and crack of the house. He'd have to move back in to reestablish the blood wards, but he wouldn't mind it if it was just him in the house.

Her door was cracked and the flicker of candlelight let him know that she was reading in bed. He slipped inside, careful not to touch anything.

"Neville, you nearly scared me out of my skin," she cried, her hand flying to her breast.

"Well, that would have made this a bit easier," Neville sighed, "but no matter."

"What are you on about boy?" His grandmother had never been a particularly affectionate woman, so he was used to her scowling disappointment. It somehow seemed fitting that it would be the last look she gave him.

"You've made me miss the birth of my son, Grandmother. For that I can never forgive you." Neville's own look of disdain mirrored hers.

"Son? What son?!" She shrieked at him. Her eyes were wild now, and he could smell the sherry on her breath. Her wand was across the room on her vanity next to the empty glass. One more thing made easy. "To have a son, you'd have to have a wife, and Merlin knows no witch will have you. You haven't got any son!"

"None that you'll ever meet," Neville agreed, pointing the wand at his grandmother, the woman who'd raised him, yes, but ruined his life whenever she could. The woman who'd let her brother throw him out a window when he'd been a boy, because better he be dead than a squib. The woman who always told him how he'd never be as good as his father. He wouldn't miss her.

"How dare you point a wand at me, boy! Your father would never have dared! You'll never be close to the man he was!" And there it was. He should have put some galleons on it; she never could resist trying to make him feel small, comparing him to Frank.

He'd wanted to be just like his father for so many years, until he realised that his father had done everything expected of him and ended up an imbecile in St. Mungo's. He'd been a martyr for Dumbledore's greater good.

Neville had bigger plans than being a martyr. His wife was going to have power in the ashes of the old wizarding world and he was going to stand right beside her and his husband. No one would ever underestimate House Longbottom again.

He shrugged indifferently, his wand still pointed at her. "That may be true, Gran, but in just a few short years no one will remember you. I'll burn your portrait and you'll just be… gone. My parents won't live much longer either. And at this point who even remembers my father well enough to compare us?"

"How dare you!" she yelled, trying to get out of bed and do what exactly he didn't know. She was quite drunk. "I'll wring your scrawny neck! You ungrateful little…"

"Avada Kedavra." The calmness of Neville's voice as he issued the curse did not negat the violence of the green spell that flew from his wand and crackled as it hit her chest. She slumped back against her pillows, not a mark on her.

He looked at her slack-jawed face thinking that maybe he'd feel a sliver of regret, of loss. But there was absolutely nothing, except maybe a little elation that he was free. Free.

He wanted the Aurors to think she'd been kidnapped while asleep in her bed, so he had just one more thing to do.

"Evanesco."