A crime to outlive him

A crime to outlive him - chapter 5

It was, in the end, a disappointment. There was some conventional talk, some little catching up, a polite lie or two about Petunia's part in Harry's upbringing. (Lily spotted the evident insincerity, but thought nothing of it.) But both of them were dreadfully embarrassed, and Harry, to boot, very tired. It had been a long and shattering day. Also, he did not want his mother to notice the state of his knuckles; he could not think of an excuse. He broke into a couple of carefully choreographed yawns, and Ginny - bless her! - suggested that they had all had a hard day and that it was more than time for bed.

"Yes... yes, I suppose. But you haven't had any supper, either."

"We'll ask the house-elves to send some to our rooms," answered Hermione. "Considering what happened in the last couple of days, I don't suppose that the ordinary routine is quite restored in Hogwarts yet, anyway. I doubt there would be dinner in Hall tonight."

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Once they had said their goodnights, Harry could have turned back. He was left dissatisfied, dubious, with a flutter of feeble self-doubts that amounted to a sense that he had bungled something or other. And when he reached his bed, he was sure he would not sleep. But within a couple of minutes he was out like a light.

It was Snape who did not sleep.

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Neville did not see Bellatrix die. Summoned urgently - along with most other fighters around Hogwarts - when Narcissa Malfoy had appeared at the gates, he had been unlucky enough to be at the other end of the estate, on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, brooding on his life and future. Reaching Hogwarts, he had been delayed by some trick stairs and by Peeves in a particularly irritating mood; and he had only reached the Infirmary in time to see Narcissa cradling her sister's corpse.

(Peeves, stuck to a corridor wall like a butterfly on a pin, was still struggling to free himself from the sticky, itchy and constricting magical bonds summoned by a furious Neville; and several students, some still unaware of the tragedies going on elsewhere, were taking in the show in delight.)

Nobody noticed Neville as he came to a halt among the circle of wizards and witches who surrounded the weeping Narcissa and the dead Bellatrix. That may have been a mercy, since it meant that he was left alone to take in that the woman he hated most in the world was dead - and not, as he had hoped, by his hand. But he had hardly had time to take in that shock, when he heard the new Headmistress say those words - "I would not deny anyone a proper burial and someone to weep on their tomb. Not even to Bellatrix Black Lestrange"...

...not even he could have said how he felt at the thought. He could not hate Headmistress McGonagall; he knew enough of Hogwarts and its values to know that she was only carrying on in the tradition of the beloved Albus Dumbledore. As for him, he would have butchered Bellatrix where she stood, and then revived her only to destroy her again. All his life she had been the incarnation of everything he hated, everything that revolted him and that he did not wish to exist. The very thought of someone weeping over her grave - his parents did not yet have a grave, they were dying their long death in a mental hospital, because of her - and she had enjoyed it, and wanted to do it again - should such a thing even have a grave? Why honour a monster? Narcissa should be sent to Azkaban herself, just for daring to weep for her sister.

Neville's emotions were out of control. He just stood there, outwardly unnoticed, inwardly in turmoil, as the crowd of wizards and witches escorted Narcissa and the dead Bellatrix away; and barely two or three of them all had even noticed that he had been there at all.

Then he turned and left. He knew that he should stay in Hogwarts as a student, that there were still NEWTs to be sat (and after all he had gone through, he would probably do much better than anyone expected); but he could not help it: tonight, at least, he could not stay. He had to take his fury, his unfulfilled vengeance, his baffled grief, somewhere else, and work them out in his own time. As dusk began to gather, he walked out of the castle - still unnoticed, still alone - and summoned the Knight Bus. At the same time, Minerva McGonagall, able at last to pay some attention to the running of the school, was coming upon a knot of laughing students - and finding herself admiring the masterpiece of magical binding that had overcome Peeves, and wondering who was responsible.

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The Goblins assigned to watch the Knight Bus spotted the ungainly shape of Fenris Grayback at the Dunkeld stop, and notified their leaders. And they were not the only ones to recognize him. Grayback entered the bus quietly, asked for "The Temple, London", and paid his fare like any other wizard, but as soon as he had turned his vast back on them, Stan Shunpike turned a pale and sweaty face to Ernie Prang and stuttered:

"'ere, did you see who that was?"

"I did... Gawd, I did good and 'ard. Thank Gawd it's two weeks to the full moon."

"What do we do, Ern? What do we do?"

"Do? We deliver the bastard to the Temple fast as we can, and 'ope 'e don't fancy a bit o' throat-slittin' while 'e's still 'uman. What else can we do, Stan lad?"

Grayback hardly tried to hear the conversation, for he was sure of how it would go. He had not spent a whole lifetime trying to impress his name on two generations of wizards and witches for nothing. Not only did he like to inflict fear; like the late Dark Lord, he found it useful.

But it annoyed him when fear was turned against him. And it did right there, on the second floor of the Knight Bus, where he saw Neville Longbottom sitting alone and deep in a reverie. For a second Grayback's thoughts were on what Ernie had just called "a bit o' throat-slittin'", but the dangers were too great. These days, apparently, not even the Avada Kedavra was certain any more, and if he failed to kill Longbottom on the spot, he would have to fight him - plus any other Knight Bus travellers who happened to be feeling heroic that night. And there was the problem of leaving the damned vehicle. No, better to let sleeping dogs lie. Grayback was one of the few wizards in the world, that night, who would not underestimate Neville Longbottom. He had been near to Bellatrix when Neville had taken her down by sheer brute force and then subjected her to a Cruciatus of such power that his own, Grayback's, hackles, had risen on his neck. In his estimate, the boy was probably as bad as Potter, and a duel with him would be dodgy. Much better to let sleeping dogs lie - for the time. Grayback climbed to the top floor and settled back as the Bus, amidst a volley of backfires like explosions, rushed from stop to stop in a mad flight down to London.

Neville, busy with his own thoughts, did not notice Grayback on the bus. Nor did he notice when - to Stan and Ernie's immense relief - he got off; he had slipped from brooding to a fitful sleep. And he would have had to have been paying careful attention to notice the sudden scuffle that engulfed the monster a few steps from the bus stop, and in the middle of which he suddenly vanished. The Goblins had caught their first Death Eater.

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Neville could not say how he had reached the conclusion in which his mind was settling. It was not so much a process of reasoning, as, in a way, finding out. He had discovered the form of his own mind, of his wishes; he knew, now, that a particular future seemed natural for him.

His brooding died down, and he slowly awakened to his surroundings. The darkened aisles of the Knight Bus made a peaceful surrounding, broken only by the soft snores of a few fellow-travellers and by the occasional bump. Neville was vaguely aware that the bus had been travelling much faster - and more bumpily - earlier on, but he had no time to reflect on the matter; as his senses focused, he realized that the next stop would be his grandmother's home. He got up to leave.

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As the Knight Bus vanished in the distance, Neville stopped and looked at his grandmother's country estate. Somehow, it had never quite felt like home. His grandmother's stern management had something to do with it; there had always been a feeling, ever since his childhood, that he was there in place of someone else. He had grown up in the shadow of his parents, their perpetual absence in St.Mungo's, the regular visits - increasingly distressing as he grew more aware of their miserable conditions - and the terrible stories of their courage and misfortune. He learned, early on, to be proud of them; but he was also scared - not of sharing their destiny, but of not coming up to their mark, of falling short, of becoming an asset to the enemy through his own slowness and folly. For most of his life, Neville had asked too much of himself; and, failing the impossible goals he envisaged, had suffered even more from his own clumsiness.

It was different now. The country house... it was strange, looking at it in the light of the new moon, how different it looked. It was rickety, an assemblage of wings of various ages, most of them old, uncomfortable, and pretty much useless. Great halls designed for minor medieval lords did not offer much to modern families; and barns, dovecotes, crenellated entrances, all seemed like a homage to needlessness. And why were they still standing? He was suddenly reminded of the Weasley house in Ottery St.Catchpole, its crazy shape held up by nothing but magic; and he understood. But, all those wings... His grandmother must have been expending an enormous amount of magic just keeping it together and standing. It would have been more practical to demolish it and build a smaller, modern mansion in its place. But thinking about it, Neville did not wish for that. In fact, now that he realized it, he felt some admiration for his grandmother's spirit. One day the mansion would devolve to him... he was fairly sure that he wanted it kept as it was.

He had not been there for four months; from the moment when the creeping war had burst into the open and both he and his grandmother had been taken to different secure places, away from the hatchets of Voldemort. But now the monster was dead, his grandmother must be back. And as though in answer to his thought, he saw a pale candlelight shining from her drawing-room windows. Nobody but her would dare sit in there, late at night. He started walking towards the hall, the pebbles crunching under his feet...

...the front door flashed open, pouring light from inside. A small, twisted figure held it open. Neville started running towards the light; and as he reached the door, he bent over, and, against all precedent and protocol, seized the ancient, creaky house-elf in both arms and embraced it.

"Yiskey!" he said, "I am so glad to see you!" And then he became embarrassed and put the house-elf down; he had felt it, for one second, struggling, and that made him realize how bewildering and even threatening his sudden burst of affection must have seemed to the creature.

"Yiskey... permission to speak freely, Master Neville?"

"Certainly, Yiskey. I was foolish to lose my self-control." This was as close as he could come to apologize; a loyal house-elf like Yiskey would never accept an apology from his own master.

"Yiskey is also very pleased and heart-warm to see Master Neville again. And if Yiskey may say so, Master looks stronger and happier than Yiskey has ever seen him."

"Perhaps I am, Yiskey. Perhaps I am" said Neville, patting the house-elf's bald head. "Now, I would like to see the Mistress, if she is still awake."

"Mistress is awake, Master Neville. She will be glad to see you."

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Augusta Snodgrass Longbottom sat on her elderly high-backed,silk-upholstered chair, the one she always used in her drawing-room. The effect was rather like a throne, when she wanted it to be; but tonight she was feeling her age. She sat in a dark reverie not unlike sleep, with only a couple of candles to keep the dark out. When the drawing room's door started opening, she at first did not even notice.

And when she saw who had arrived, she had the strange and painful feeling of being in the presence of two persons, one she knew, one she did not. Here, on the one hand, was certainly Neville, with his round face and his short build, as he had always been; but here, too, was a strange new person, with a firm and vaguely rolling gait, a somehow burlier and harder figure, an erect carriage of the head. He bowed to her, not as the shy child had done, but as a strange wizard might to a great lady in her own policy.

Neville, on his part, was suddenly and bewilderingly aware that this was an old woman. He had never perceived any feebleness in the hard, erect, bony frame with the commanding nose and the vulture headgear; but now as he looked at her, he saw skin sitting tiredly on old bones or falling in folds about a shrunken neck, and a body using the chair not as a throne to frame her, but as a support to bear her weariness. He had never felt that before; he was disconcerted, feeling out of his depth, feeling even an unwonted sense of pity for this tired, withered old person - something he would not have imagined even four months before, and which would have angered her had she known.

She took refuge in formality. "Welcome back, Neville. You look stronger." And he bent his head modestly and smiled. "Tell me how the battle went." That was a safe subject to start a conversation, and indeed one in which she might take some pleasure; he was able to tell that he had given a good account of himself, and the fact that Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Black were both dead was hardly going to displease her.

In fact, he must have shown more emotion than he thought, for when he came to tell of Bellatrix' suicide, his grandmother looked at him shrewdly and said unexpectedly: "You must not blame yourself for failing to kill her in person, you know, Neville." He was startled at her insight.

"It's not blaming myself, exactly, Grandmother" he replied quietly. "More like angry at her for making a fool of me. She got away from me under my very nose."

"Still," said the old woman rather painfully, "that is war. That is life. You rarely get what you want, and often get what you did not expect. You have done more than enough, Neville; and you have made so proud..."

"Yes, well," Neville broke in with a slightly embarrassed air, "that was sort of what I wanted to talk about."

"You mean?"

"Well, Grandmother, I have a strong feeling about what I want to do now I'm an adult. I have been thinking about it all evening, and I find myself more and more confident that it is the right thing."

Neville paused for a second, but the old woman said nothing. He started again: "I intend to be a freelance Dark Wizard hunter. Eventually I might join the Corps of Aurors, but at least at first I would like to go out on my own and test myself. I have both the ideal case right now, and a built-in advantage.."

"The escapees?"

"Yes. The Lestranges, the Carrows, the Averys, Grayback, the Notts, and some others, have escaped us in the chaos of Voldemort's death and Lily Evans' recovery." The old woman noticed the clarity and brevity of his report. Someone had trained him well, she thought. "They are the most dangerous of the lot, and luckily this once I know exactly who I am hunting for - something that not every hunter always knows, I gather."

"And you said you have a built-in advantage..."

"Nobody will think of me, Grandmother. Nobody thinks of me as a threat. For all everyone knows, I am the fat kid at school who made a fool of himself at everything but Herbology. They will be looking out for Aurors, for Harry Potter, for all sorts of magical enemies - nobody will think of looking out for me, until I am at their throat."

"That will not last..."

"Yes, but by then I will probably have gained some sort of mystique. People will begin to talk of me as the man who took the Death Eaters down."

"I've seen it happen with Harry, Grandmother. People are nervous about going up against him. He doesn't realize it, but he has an advantage right there from the start, because of his legend."

Mrs.Longbottom fell silent, and Neville felt once more how old she had grown in these last few months. It was as though the props that held her up, straight and fanatical, had been collapsing one by one. Yet he could not see any reason why this should be so; their enemies were now dead, and he had just brought word of the death of the last and worst. And she should, if anything, be proud of the path he had chosen for his life, and the confidence he felt. It occurred to him that this was nothing but simple old age; that there was nothing that he could do, no good news he could bring or comfort he could give, to undo the work of this enemy.

Neville had just reached, after a long and hard climb, the fullness of his youth and strength. To see the other end of this process, the inevitable collapse that was to overcome everyone in time... himself, his friends, every man and woman and child... was deeply unsettling. Oddly enough, this was the first time in his life he had had to give any thought to old age and natural death. His life had been surrounded by violence, war, terror, early death; one could almost have thought that those who survived their enemies could hope to dodge death itself. But now here was the strongest person he had ever known, falling before this universal enemy like hay before the reaper. Neville felt sad and frustrated, itching to do something that could not be done.

His grandmother, on the other hand, was looking at him. She saw, more clearly than ever, his young, solid body; and she knew that he had not been bragging or deluding himself as he described to her the future he envisaged. "Oh, Neville, I don't know... You are here, now, everything I had ever hoped for and more. You are as strong as your father ever was, stronger, perhaps. And now that I see everything I had ever hoped for... I don't know if I want it."

"Grandmother..."

"I remember when Frank, my son, came back from his marriage, and I knew that he and his new bride were both going to become Aurors. And I was scared then, and did not want him to do it, but I kept silent, because I was so proud of him, too. And I would have been ashamed of myself if I had let my fears get in the way of my son doing his duty. And so Frank and Alice took up their duty... and gained glory among their fellow wizards... and you know where all their glory went."

"It would be stupid to tell you to take care. They took care enough; they were not stupidly reckless or easy to capture; and still their enemies laid hands on them. It is all just luck; that is the way it is in war, and in life."

"But the truth is that someone has to take on these dangerous and disagreeable duties, so that the rest of wizards and Muggles may live in peace. We have just seen it again. And it would be both stupid and selfish of me to stand in your way, only because I fear being left alone in my dotage. Go, my boy, go and do your duty."

"Now, Neville, if you are certain of your destiny" - "I am, Grandmother." - "Good. Kneel before me, please."

Neville knelt; and high, quavering and cracked, her old voice rose, as she placed both her hands, balled into fists, on the crown of his bowed head.

The blessing of Merlin upon you,
The blessing of the ancestors of your house,
The blessing of good spirits and good spells
Upon the warrior of this house as he goes forth;
The blessing of what is Goodness Himself
Upon all your paths and all your ways!
Amen.

Neville stayed there, kneeling, deep in thought, for a while, after she had pronounced the ancient formula. Then he rose, took her right hand in both of his - a fragile old twig in two oak branches - bent his head again, and kissed it. Then he made as if to leave; and outside it was dawning.

It was at this point that old Yiskey, the house-elf, knocked on the door and entered. He was holding a large piece of expensive vellum parchment, which he handed to the old lady. "This was just materialized by magic on your threshold, Madam."

"Magic, you say?"

"Yes, Madam. I felt the waves of the spell myself."

Grandmother Longbottom bent her head to read, then she smiled grimly. "You cannot say that they lack confidence. Have a look, Neville, you might find this interesting."

Neville took the parchment from her, and read. It was the announcement of the establishment of the great new Voldemort School of Magic and Wizardry, offering education from the most elementary to the highest levels of magic for all such wizards and witches as might feel disappointed or ill at ease with the current mediocre educational offer.