Shatterpoint

Some people never remember their dreams.

I do.

I remember every one of my dreams, every single night. They're of happy things.... Of finally getting an above average mark on an exam. Of finally standing up to everyone. Of getting 12 O.W.L.s. Of becoming Head Boy. Of people acknowledging my existence.

Sometimes I can see myself flying away from everything on a broomstick, riding properly for once, without a care in the world. And certainly no fear of falling off.

Sometimes I'm an Herbologist, with a thumb greener than even Professor Sprout's. I built my own greenhouses, somewhere near a secluded country house where I live with a wife and children. I'll teach it one day, Herbology... at Hogwarts, so that I can finally show everybody that I am capable of making something of myself.

The dreams are an escape.

Then I wake up and think to myself: how quickly dreams of reason can produce monsters.

***

Harry is the shatterpoint.

I knew the second after I heard him tell Hermione and Ron about the prophecy... that Harry either has to kill, or be killed.

It was late, in the Gryffindor common room. They thought everyone else had gone to bed. But I was there, in an armchair facing the fire, where no one could see me.

I do this a lot. Sit here by myself, I mean. People don't notice me, and since they don't think anyone else is around, they talk freely. This is how I get information, how I figure things out. I would never know anything otherwise, because nobody bothers to tell Neville Longbottom anything of importance.

"Hold on - what's Neville's toad doing down here?" That was Ron. I look and see that my toad is no longer sitting next to me on the arm of the chair. Oops.

"Come on, Trevor," says Harry's weary voice. "Let's get you back up to the dorm and find Neville."

"I'm here," I say, as I peek around the back of the chair.

All three of them looked startled to see me. "Neville!" Ron says. "We, uh, didn't see you there."

"Were you eavesdropping?" Hermione asks.

I shrug and stand up. No point in pretending I wasn’t.

“How much did you hear?” Ron asks suspiciously.

I ignore them and look at Harry. “It’s up to you,” I tell him.

“What is?” he asks me warily.

“Everything.”

“Neville,” Ron interrupts sharply. “I’m sure Harry doesn’t need to hear this, on top of everything else.”

My gaze doesn’t waver. “It’s you, it's all you,” I say. “You’re it. The balancing force... the one who can tip the scales. The shatterpoint.”

“The shatterpoint,” he repeats, looking at me dubiously.

“You can break him,” I say. “You can find where he breaks.”

“No, I can’t,” Harry says.

“You can. You’re connected. By that,” I point unabashedly at Harry’s scar. “Everything has a shatterpoint... EveryONE has a shatterpoint. He found yours fifth year. Now you find his.”

Hermione looks excited. “Harry, if that’s true, if what Neville’s saying is true, if you can find it... then we can win... it can all be over.”

“You just have to find You-Know-Who’s... what did you call it? Shatterpoint,” Ron says.

But Harry only shakes his head slowly and tonelessly says: “He hasn’t got one.”

***

I dream of them sometimes. Of my parents.

I’m a toddler, and my mum is singing to me. She rocks me to sleep and my dad tucks me in.

I’m slightly older, and my dad and I play catch in the yard. The ball hits me gently in the nose. My dad cannot stop himself from laughing and I cannot stop myself from joining in.

We’re watching firecrackers on Bonfire night and my mum coos in my ears and there is a wide smile on my face.

It is late one night by the fire and I’m talking to my dad. I want to know things... how he knew he wanted to be an Auror... how he knew my mum was “the one”... was he like me when he was my age?.... I want him to tell me everything and to never, ever stop.

“Not today, son,” he tells me, his voice is weary and his shoulders are heavy with the weights he’s been carrying. “I’m too tired. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I can never tell if he means morning or mourning.

***

There is a fight outside the Great Hall one dreary Monday morning. Ron and Harry are standing in front of the grand staircase, wands out, eyes flashing at the adversary before them.

"You shut your mouth, Malfoy," Ron rages, and he waves his wand through the air threateningly. "Or you'll regret it."

Malfoy says something in return, but I do not hear it. I instead push my way through the crowd of students that had gathered around them.

"This is really quite petty, don‘t you think?" I say, my voice calm.

Ron, who was just about to utter a hex, falters at my interruption.

"Neville," Harry says quietly. "You shouldn't be here."

"You shouldn't either," I say. I stare at them all. "There is something bigger than this going on. But you're all too busy concerning yourselves with petty rivalries."

"It's not petty," Ron says angrily, green sparks flying from his wand. "Malfoy insulted my family, and Harry's family, and he deserves to get his ass beat."

"Perhaps," I say. "But don't you think your abilities are best used to fight the war?"

“There's no war,” Ron says instantly. “It’s ended. It’s over. It was over the moment, well,” he looks apologetically to his friend. “It was over the moment Harry got his scar.”

“Nah,” I say. “That’s just a myth. War began when humanity set foot on earth, and war will never stop. We are what we are, and not even the best of us can change that." I gesture to the scene around us. "We love to hate.”

They stare at me in dismay and disbelief, and I smile.

***

Sometimes I am in pain, terrible pain. An echo of the curse I felt that night last June. I scream in agony, I scream for friends to come and rescue me, friends I do not have. I scream for it to stop, for relief and please God please no more I can’t take it why is this happening to me please God oh why make it stop.

Then my parents come and save me. They come, and with powerful flourishes of their wands, they save us all. My beautiful mum stops Hermione from being cursed, my strong dad stops Ron from being attacked, and together they stop Harry’s godfather from dying. They capture the Death Eaters, take care of me, and everything is okay.

When I finally wake I muse to myself how much I am jealous of Harry at that moment because, unlike him, my dreams can never be real.

***

I see them every year at Christmas, every year on their anniversary, and a few times in between.

They always look the same. They do not recognize me.... They do not know me.

I stare into their blank eyes with my gram at my side. They gaze at the ceiling, and my mum has another gum wrapper clenched tightly in her hand.

I feel tears begin to form and I squeeze my eyes shut.

My gram puts a hand on my shoulder. “Be proud,” she whispers fiercely. “Be proud of who they are, of what they’ve done.”

I've tried, please believe me, I have. But I couldn't feel pride, I could only feel anger for the people who have done this.

I couldn’t do this anymore.

Everyone has shatterpoints. Including me.

***

"Do you ever have nightmares?" Harry asks. "About... you know... everything?"

"No, I only have dreams... good dreams," I answer. "I live the nightmares."

***

The Potions classroom is quiet, save for the occasional noises of students mumbling to themselves under their breaths as they try to brew a successful potion.

Professor Snape sits at his desk in the front of the room, surveying his class with a hawk-like expression on his face.

My mind is on other things... on the war, on You-Know-Who, on the free Death Eaters who drove my parents to insanity... so it really wasn't a surprise that I accidentally added the rat whiskers before the armadillo bile, which caused my cauldron to steam and fold in on itself.

It really wasn't a surprise to anybody else in the class, either. Just typical Neville potion making to them.

Snape glides effortlessly from behind his desk to glare at me from across the remains of my cauldron. "Idiot boy," he breathes. "That's the fifth cauldron you melted this month."

I lower my face and try to clean the mess up but Snape is just getting started.

"I have tried for years to make that empty skull of yours absorb some semblance of competence... but it has become clear to me that you have no skill in the delicate art of potion making. Evanesco!" he cleans out my melted cauldron with a wave of his wand.

He continues with the insults and I straighten up and face him head-on.

"...If you do not get an Acceptable on the next practical exam," Snape continues, "I will thank you to not return to this class. It is obvious that no lesson I can teach will at all penetrate your thick head."

Snape turns his back on me, but I do not sit meekly at my table like I used to. Instead, I boldly push my stool back and stand up.

"Neville, don't!" Hermione hisses urgently at my side, but I do not listen to her.

"Maybe it's not important what the teacher teaches," I say quietly, my voice steady, "but rather what the student learns."

Snape only responds with another glare... but in his expression, I think I catch a fleeting glimpse of something that looks suspiciously like grudging respect. And that is enough for me.

***

The news came with a flurry of owls one day at breakfast. You-Know-Who was active. He had killed 2 families last night, one half-blood family, one Muggle family. He had left the Dark Mark floating above their destroyed houses.

At the high table, the teachers are talking in low whispers to each other. Some look fearful, while others look determined. Dumbledore sits serenely with his hands folded, gazing at something. I follow his gaze with my eyes, and a few seats down from me, I see Harry crumpling up his newspaper in anger.

"This is it," I hear him say in a grim voice. "He's made his move. It's time for us to make ours."

***

I walk down the staircase into the common room a couple evenings later, to finish a Transfiguration essay, and saw that it was not empty as it usually is this time of night. One person was sitting on an armchair, fingering a ruby-encrusted sword.

"Harry?"

He looks up. "Hi, Neville."

I point to the sword. "Where did you get that?"

"Took it," he says, quite casually.

"I've seen that sword in Professor Dumbledore's office before. You stole it." My voice isn't accusing, it is simply stating a fact.

Harry only shrugs.

"What are you planning to do with it?"

He favors me with a predatory grin. "Win."

I blink. "You're going to stab the Dark Lord with a tiny little sword?"

His grin fades. "I’ve tried to find a shatterpoint like you said, but he doesn’t have one. This is the only plan I've got," he says softly, running a finger slowly over the gleaming blade.

He looks up and stares at me bleakly. "What else could possibly defeat a hate as strong as this?"

Hate. Now there is a funny word. Often used casually... perhaps too casually. I hate him, I hate you, I hate this class, I hate this miserable world I live in, I hate myself....

Hate is a word that should not be used so lightly. After all, it is the cause of everything.

Hate is what started the first war. Hate is what started THIS war.

Muggle-borns hate Purebloods. Purebloods hate Mudbloods. Hate is the reason You-Know-Who decided to take over. Hate is what broke Harry’s life. Hate is what did this to my parents, hate is what destroyed my life when it barely began.

I’ve lived in a world of hate since I was born. Not only have I been hated, but I have hated in return.

I hate the people who tortured my parents. I hate Bellatrix Lestrange for putting Cruciatus on me. I hate them, and I want to see them suffer and scream and yell and cry and I want to see them split in two.

I’ve lived with hate forever. I was tired of it, and I couldn’t handle it anymore.

I had a revelation that night in the common room, in front of the crackling fire, staring through a window into the night sky where a silhouette of an owl flew against the half-moon. Suddenly, the world became clear to me.

I realized that hate needs to end.

I come back to the present and find that Harry is staring questioningly at me.

“Maybe the time to hate is over,” I say to him. “Maybe it is time to love.”

Harry gazes at me thoughtfully for a minute. “That’s the shatterpoint,” he says in wonder. “Not only of him, but of this entire war. That’s what breaks it.

“Love.”

He puts down the sword and smiles.