Gryffindor Day

He is not beautiful. He knows this as surely as he knows that he is not funny or famous or popular.

He is clumsy though, yes, and absent minded. His gran chides him about it - his great-uncle bought him Trevor to try and teach him some responsibility. He just feels more worthless because he can't even look after a stupid toad.

He stops that train of thought as his throat begins to close up. Don't let yourself think about it, he reminds himself, think of good things, like Herbology and Professor Sprout and Ginny Weasley's flame red hair.

She told him, one night, about the diary that talked back. He knew that she hadn't meant to and hadn't wanted to but that it had all just come tumbling out after too much of the illicit Butterbeer, smuggled in by some boys from her year. He played with her hair nervously, sitting behind her because she couldn't look him in the face and he knew that. Her hair looked silky and soft, in frothy waves, but it was wiry and prickled his fingers. He liked the sensation. He can feel it now, as he sits on his bed, curtains closed round him, dreaming.

He only dreams during the day, never at night. He knows which plants induce dreamless sleep, and has done for as long as he can remember. He never forgets to add a few drops of his special solution to his glass of water that he drinks before bedtime every night. In fact, he never forgets the important things: the properties not only of all plants native to the British Isles, but also of those that are only obtainable in specialist shops in Knockturn Alley; the feel of Ginny's hair as he listens to her tell her strange, sad tale; the screams of his parents as they are put under the Cruciatus curse time and again while a Death Eater bounces him on his knee and tells his parents that unless they talk, it will be Avada Kedavra for their only child.

He hated Ginny when she told him all about Tom Riddle, the nice boy with the seductive voice who made her do things when she was asleep and who ate her soul bit by bit. But he sat very still, and stroked her hair, and told her it wasn't her fault. Shortly after that he asked her, haltingly, if she'd be his girlfriend and she said yes even though he knows she wants Harry, The Boy who Lived, and that one day she will get what she wants. She deserves it.

He doesn't really want her to die, although he knows that she probably will in the end; no, he wants to kill the monster that broke his parents' minds. So he studies hard - not the foolish charms, childish hexes and how to defend yourself from a Luna-crazed werewolf, but how to use potions and herbs to turn a person mad. How to seal a man's soul inside a glass bottle.

He already knows that he will live forever.

They aren't dark arts if you practice them for good, he reminds himself. He looks forward to the day when that animal, that Voldemort creature is lying crushed beneath him. He wonders, idly, if Death Eater blood is red, or if it is black. It will be a great day, he knows, a Gryffindor day, stained red and him the golden boy. Not that Parselmouth, that pretender, that Potter. The one who has Ginny's heart.

He knows that Ginny looks just like Harry's dead mother, and Harry himself like his dead father James. He smiles to himself, gently, as he imagines the day that Harry's house is stormed. He knows the history, just as he knows that history repeats itself inexorably.

When he is asked to join the secret order, The Order of the Phoenix, as he knows he will be - they all know how he hates Voldemort and how good he is with his identification of useful herbs - he won't turn traitor to kill the Potter boy, who 'lived' a fortnight too late to save his parents, or a fortnight too early to kill them. He knows he will not need to, because there are others to do that and he will never help the vile snake Voldemort in any way, not even to help himself. He does not fear death like the others do, because he has tasted it and not been choked by its cloying stench. The unicorn's blood that he took from the forest in the first year when all eyes were on Potter, pearlescent silver in the moonlight, is dulled to grey now but still as potent and still as pure. He keeps it in a phial at the bottom of his trunk because he knows it is the safest place and that there are no truly 'secret' rooms in Hogwarts.

Neville knows a lot of things.

He only dreams during the day, and his dreams are full of sounds and smells and colours. He can feel the bone of Voldemort's skull splinter as he grinds it beneath his heel, and taste the hot blood of the guilty on the wind, and smell victory and success, and hear his parents call out his name as he mends their shattered senses.

He is not beautiful, but his dreams are.