In the Pines

In the Pines

My girl, my girl, don't lie to me

Tell me where did you sleep last night

"You were there, weren't you." Neville's voice was flat, too flat for his statement to be considered a question. He just sat in his chair next to the fire, and stared at his hands. His fingers were laced loosely together, and he flexed his wrists a few times to see how that changed the placement of his fingers. These actions sent dark shadows racing across his pale features, contrasting wildly with the flickering light coming off the fire. It was nighttime, and the fire provided all the light in the silent house.

"I- I don't know what you mean," Ginny replied. Her hands were shaking, making the few loose coins in the purse she clutched clang together harmoniously, the musical tinkling of money joining the crackling flames to create a song of nervousness and anger.

"Yes, you do." Neville did not take his eyes away from his flexing hands.

"Neville-"

"I don't want to hear your excuses this time, Ginny," Neville interrupted her. "You may have a new one every time, but they all sound the same." His voice rose into a falsetto, mimicking Ginny. "Oh, I was at my mother's house all evening. That's why I'm flushed. Oh, I spent the afternoon at a friends. That's why I wore my best robes. Oh, I was out shopping. That's why I didn't buy a single damned thing!"

"Neville, it's not like that," Ginny protested. "You know I love you..."

"So you say, Ginny, so you say."

"I do! I truly do!"

"I know who else you love, Ginny. Everybody knows." Neville still hadn't looked at the distraught woman.

"Neville..." Ginny finally just dropped her purse, and ran to his side, kneeling in the floor beside him. "Would I have married you if my heart belonged to someone else?"

"You would have if you thought it was hopeless to get with him," Neville shot back. "I was at Harry's wedding too, you know. I saw you crying the whole time."

"W-weddings always make me cry, you know that," came the soft response.

"That is what you told me at ours."

"I don't know what you want me to say to that."

Neville finally looked at his wife. "I want you to tell me the truth. Where were you?"

"I-" Ginny looked away. "I'm sorry."

"Not as sorry as I am, Ginny, believe me when I say that," Neville sighed, and dropped his hands into his lap. He stared at his wife, looking at her hair, which he used to think was the same color as love and hearts and Valentine's day. Happiness and good times, laughter and kisses. Now, he realized, that hair was the color of hearts. Not just the cute paper hearts one gave at Valentine's, but the bloody, pulpy hearts found inside people, the ones that were much harder to rip, but once they tore, muscle and tendon and veins refused to heal.

Neville had known for a while that his heart was ripping, but now that it had happened, he wished with all the shreds that remained that he hadn't pressed the issue. So what if she had been cheating on poor Neville Longbottom? She had only married him. That was no reason to think that she might actually have cared about him. Had there ever been a reason for him to think that she had married him out of true love?

No, he realized, there really hadn't.

Ginny had been loving towards him, but she had never, he realized, been in love with him. She had never been utterly, recklessly passionate with him. She had never let him inside her completely, to share her loves and hates and fears and joys with him. In their four years of marriage, she had never once brought up the topic of children.

And now the sneaking suspicion that had been forming in his mind over the past year had been confirmed. She was cheating on him, her husband, with Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the boy she had been in love with since childhood. The man she loved more than him. The man who got everything. The man who had her heart.

Neville reached out to strike her, to show her that he wasn't weak and pitiful, that he was a man too.
Instead, he simply caressed her cheek, feeling the wetness of her tears under his fingertips. He trailed his fingers along her jaw, then pushed a strand of that red hair back behind her ear.

He really was sorry.

"N-neville?" Her voice was soft, barely even loud enough to be heard over the crackle of the flames. She was looking up at him, a plethora of emotions filling her eyes. He wasn't sure, but he thought the main one might be regret. Regret or sorrow, but the two were so similar it didn't really matter at all, did it?

He pulled his hands away from her face, away from the blaze of her hair and the softness of her skin and away from the dispirited look in her eyes. He didn't want to look at her anymore, he didn't want to deal with this anymore, he just wanted all of this to just fade away like a bad dream. It all needed to just... fade into oblivion, to become the dimly remembered past, to just have not happened at all.

Pity that would never happen. This was life. No convenient fade-outs, no short paragraphs covering ages worth of pain and anguish summed up in a few pretty sentences. No, he had only had his suspicions of his wife's... treachery confirmed only minutes before, yet it felt like ages. He would have to live through the pain, one second at a time, until it finally faded into the dreamlike obscurity of the past.

"I-I'm going to bed," he finally said, and rose from the chair with a little difficulty trying to avoid touching his wife.

He made it to their-no, his- bedroom, and pulled nightclothes from his bureau, and went into the bathroom, studiously ignoring all of Ginny's things strewn around. He got ready, and managed to get into bed, and clicked off the light. He knew that Ginny wouldn't be coming in here tonight. He also knew that she would not be able to go back to Harry Saint Potter's, because his wife would be there. Neville knew Lavender well enough to know that she would not abide her husband having a mistress, and would throw Harry out of the house if she ever found out.

Neville made a quick decision to call on Lavender in the morning.

Neville lay in his dark room alone in his cold bed, and thought about Harry Potter, and Ginny, and became more and more sickened by the whole situation. How had he ever thought that Ginny loved him? Why had Harry decided that he needed to add her to his list of conquests?

Harry might not have a conquest list like some men, but his hurt those around him a lot more. Everything, from making the House Quidditch team first year to becoming Head Boy to defeating You-Know-Who himself at the age of nineteen. That last one had caused Neville the most grief. If You-Know-Who was weak enough to be defeated by a kid- a boy the same age as Neville himself- then why had his parents suffered so much? Why had all those people died? Surely one of them had been just as powerful or whatever it was that made Harry strong enough to defeat the Dark Lord.

Harry Potter had everything. Extremely loyal friends, fame, fortune, success, a beautiful wife... and also Neville's beautiful wife.

It wasn't fair.

Most things weren't, but this- this was even less fair than anything that Neville could think of off the top of his head. One person should not have that many reasons to be happy. Sure, he was an orphan. But Neville knew firsthand that there were worst things than being orphaned. In his case, not being orphaned was much, much worse.

He'd heard that Harry had grown up with horrid relatives, but how much worse could it have been than growing up with Agatha Longbottom, his dear Gran? She had been, to be frank, a frightening woman.

He didn't deserve life.

The thought was so sudden, so abrupt, that Neville sat up in bed, looking around his darkened bedroom in suspicion. Surely it hadn't been his thought. He wasn't the type to deprive another person of life. Though, if he were that type, Harry Potter would be the highest on his list of people that he didn't think deserved life any longer.

He supposed that he shouldn't hate Harry, after all, no one hated Harry. Well, there was Malfoy and the deceased Dark Lord and assorted Death Eaters and Professor Snape, of course... But no one decent hated Harry. Why should they? Harry was a good person, goodness incarnate. Harry was a saint and a god and should be revered as such. Harry would never take something that didn't belong to him. Harry would never sleep with someone else's wife. Harry wasn't that kind of person.

Neville suddenly had an epiphany that this was what Snape must have thought of Harry from the very beginning. And lo, he was right. Harry wasn't a good person. Harry was just a slime ball of a different sort. Harry didn't deserve everything he had. Harry deserved to have a cold bed and dark room and to feel insecure and hated and to know how it feels to not be the golden boy.

Someone ought to put him in his place.

Neville wasn't quite sure what Harry's place was, exactly, but he imagined it would be dark and damp and most likely underground.

He knew that Death Eaters never got caught torturing and killing Muggles by Muggle authorities because Muggle authorities didn't know how to deal with magic. So, he thought, it stands to reason that wizard authorities didn't know how to deal with Muggle forms of investigating crimes. So, therefore, if he were to put Harry in his place, all he would need to do would be to do it in a Muggle fashion.

He needed something sharp. Sharp things hurt the most, except perhaps for dull things. The dull thing would carry out, the pain would last longer and cause suffering, and Neville didn't want Harry to suffer. He just wanted him to be put in his place and for that goal, the sharp thing would be quickest, less painful.

Neville shook his head, and tried to push the thoughts out of his mind. He didn't really want to hurt Harry, the eighth wonder of the world, did he? Because that's wasn't the kind of thing that Neville Longbottom did. Neville Longbottom was the nice guy, the one who would go in at the Ministry for another shift so someone could go to a wedding. He was the one who did the grunt work, the unglamourous things, because no one else wanted to. He was nice, and nonviolent, and was basically just a big teddy bear. No passions, no hard edges, just soft filling and a plump exterior.

He cuddled deep into his empty bed, now warmed from his own body, and had one last drowsy thought before allowing himself to slip into a much welcomed slumber.

He did want to hurt Harry, to make the so-called hero feel like he did now.

In the pines, in the pines

Where the sun don't ever shine

I would shiver the whole night through

Neville crept through the back door of the Potter residence. The door had been locked, and Neville was thankful for his foresight to steal Ginny's key. He suppressed the thought of why, exactly, his wife had owned a key to Harry's house. He was, after all thankful she had it now. It wouldn't do for him to use magic here. There were wards everywhere, he knew.

He'd listened to Harry and Lavender talk about them when they'd first been cast into the very foundations of the house. He recalled Harry's grin as he said that the only way to remove the wards would be to destroy the house down to the last bricks of the foundation. Neville had known, thanks to that, that he couldn't use any magic to break into the house without setting off nasty curses and alarms.

He supposed the Harry did have good reason to be slightly paranoid when it came to security, as he was one of the most famous faces in the wizarding world. That whole defeating the Dark Lord as a baby had kind of sealed the fame envelope.

There were baby pictures on the wall. A chubby dark haired child of less than a year gurgled and drooled in them. Neville couldn't remember the name that the Potters had saddled their only child with, but was pretty sure that it was something horrid. At least Ginny didn't have a baby; he wasn't sure how he would deal with the doubting of whether or not he had a child.

Neville wandered up the staircase, stopping in the landing to pick up a forgotten toy with his free hand. The toy was stuffed, and shaped like a dragon. Harry undoubtedly wanted his only begotten son to be as brave as he was, another true Gryffindor. Another one who would show up at Hogwarts, and shatter a young boy's dreams of perhaps becoming more than what he was.

Neville had hoped to prove to his parents that he was a brave boy. That he was courageous. That he was fit to be their son.

The second Trevor had gotten away from him on the train, his hopes had begun to plummet. Brave boys didn't lose their toad on the train, and brave boys didn't need to have bushy-haired Muggle-borns help them find the toad. Brave boys had sleek, graceful creatures and nothing went wrong, except in cases where they would end up looking like a hero when they fixed the problem they themselves had created.

Harry Potter had been a brave boy. Neville Longbottom had not. Neville had been nothing more than background filler, solely there for being the occasional obstacle in the way to greatness, and as something to laugh at. Oh, look. Neville blew up another cauldron. Hardy-har-har.

But he would show them.

No! He wasn't there for personal gain. He was there to show Harry that he wasn't the center of the bloody universe. He was there to prove that even heroes could trip and fall. He was there to prove to his parents that he had a spine, and that he wasn't the yellow-bellied coward that everyone thought had been placed into Gryffindor due to the Sorting Hat's pity.

He was in the hall now.

He tightened his grip around the handle. Muggle objects were made out of the most perplexing materials. Things that were hard and smooth, yet often times equally flexible and breakable. Metal would be combined with a startling array of materials, and none of the Muggles seemed to think it was the slightest bit odd.

Once, he'd seen a Muggle container made of something perfectly see-through that hadn't been glass. If he remembered right, it had belonged to Hermione Granger. She had brought it out on the train in the sixth year. He had been in a compartment with her, Harry, and Ron Weasley for reasons he couldn't quite remember- either pity over his parents, which was a story that came out fifth year, or there hadn't been any compartments left. Probably a combination of the two.

She had pulled out the container, which was fitted with a dark blue lid made of the same stuff as the bowl. He had looked at it in fascination, as had Ron. Harry didn't seem to even notice that a potentially revolutionary object had been brought out of Hermione's knapsack.

"What is that?" he had asked, looking at the container. Ron had also voiced his curiosity, it seemed.

"It's Tupperware," Hermione had answered, looking slightly bamboozled at the question. It apparently hadn't occurred to her that Tupperware, as it was called, was a fascinating thing. Kind of the same thing, Neville thought, that the purebloods went through when realizing that perfectly normal things- quills, talking portraits, spells- were completely foreign and fantastic to the Muggle-raised.

"What's it made of?" Ron had asked, taking the Tupperware from Hermione's hands.

"Plastic," she replied. At the confused expressions of the two boys, she elaborated. "It's kind of like glass, except it doesn't shatter, and it's lighter and more flexible. See?"

With that, she had tossed the sealed container down on the floor. It bounced a little, then landed unharmed on one side.

"So it's got an unbreakable charm on it!" Ron had exclaimed. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"No, Ron, it's Muggle. It's made of materials that don't shatter."

"Oh," Neville had said, finally understanding. It was one of those marvelous inventions that Muggles came up with so that they were able to live without magic.

Muggle inventions were marvelously adaptable for nearly any situation. He gripped the handle of his weapon tighter still, hoping that the sweat that slicked his palms didn't make it slip out of his grip during the action.

It had taken a lot of consideration before he had decided that this was the only option. Really, it was all for the best. The world had to learn that Harry Potter wasn't the perfect savior that they had all had come to rely on. Harry was spoiled, a dirty, dark thing masquerading as good. In fact, Neville would be doing the world a favor. Who knew when Harry was going to suddenly show his true colors? Better to be safe than sorry, as his Gran had always said.

He was outside the bedroom. He had visited this house before, had been here just last month. The door was slightly ajar, probably so that Lavender could hear the baby cry in the middle of the night. Lavender was the one who took care of the child, after all. Harry couldn't be bothered to lift a finger in any matter not concerning other people's wives.

Neville pushed the door open even further, confident that the hinges wouldn't squeak. This was the perfect home, after all. They didn't allow for such imperfections as squeaky door hinges. He stepped into the moonlight-bathed room. Two figures were sleeping on the bed, each confined to their own side. It was as though an invisible line was drawn across the middle of the bed, and they both took unconscious measures to stay on their designated half.

Guess that it didn't matter that he had never told Lavender about Ginny's treachery. It looked like she already knew.

He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at the target of his hatred. Harry was sleeping on one side, an arm tossed casually over the side of the bed. His glasses rested on the bedside table, just under a candelabra. Looked like the wizarding world had made an impact on Harry, though the house was more Muggle than Neville's. He spied the wooden tip of the famous wand that had laid the darkest wizard of the era to waste sticking out from under the pillow.

Apparently poor Harry felt insecure in his sleep.

Dark hair nearly obscured closed eyes, and a tiny droplet of drool rested on the lips that had touched Ginny. Neville felt a surge of anger and Gryffindor bravery, and stepped forward.

He rested the point of his weapon against Harry's throat, and pressed hard.

Blood erupted from the wound as the knife's sharpened blade sliced through the tender skin.

Harry's eyes shot open, and he opened his mouth to scream. No noise came out. Harry looked like he was in shock as he registered first the source of the pain that had awakened him from his slumber, then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, who had inflicted the grievous injury upon him.

Dark liquid stained the front of Harry's pyjama top. Neville wretched the knife out, and stabbed down on the hero of the wizarding world again. And again. And once more for good measure.

Harry died without speaking a word, only the garbled sounds that his ruined throat tried to push out.

Neville just stood there for a minute, staring at the corpse of the man he hated. It occurred to him, dream-like, that he didn't feel any less animosity. His heart was still broken, and his hatred still simmered, and his life was still a waste. He hadn't done anything to make his parents proud.

He turned to leave when a gasp stopped him.

He turned back to the gory bed, and saw Lavender's shocked expression. A sob escaped her lips as she grasped at her husband, and looked back at Neville.

"How.. how could you? Neville, why?"

Neville didn't know what to say. "For G-ginny."

The words felt foreign and false. Lavender's expression turned from shock to mild understanding, then back to the shell-shocked expression of the weary. She opened her mouth to say something, but Neville didn't want to hear it.

Neville ran.

My girl, my girl, where will you go

I'm going where the cold wind blows

Ginny was sleeping in their bed. Her red hair, turned a dull, boring color in the dark, was spread across her pillow as she tossed in her sleep. Neville watched her for a few minutes, wondering what he should do.

Should he wake her, tell her what he had done, and why he had done it? Should he just tell her that he still loved her? Should he leave her alone?

He had come straight home. He was still wearing his bloodied clothes, still clutching the gory knife in his bloody hands. He watched Ginny some more, and was still no closer to an answer of what he should do.

Forget should, the tiny niggling voice in the back of his mind told him. Do what you want, that's what got you here in the first place. Wake her up, and tell her what you did. She needs to hear it from your lips, not from some tabloid in the morning. Tell her why you did it, so that she doesn't live the rest of her life in guilt. Or, tell her enough so that she won't try to join you, but will still stay guilt-ridden for the rest of her life. Just do something, you don't have much time left.

Neville crept closer to the bed in the darkened room. His room wasn't lit by moonlight like the Potter's had been, and only one figure lay in the bed, but the scene was otherwise the same. He leaned over Ginny, still holding the knife. Closer and closer still he went to his wife, until he laid his lips on her cheek.

"Wha-" She rolled over, opening her eyes sleepily. "Neville? Where have you been?"

Then she sat up, and turned on the light. Her eyes widened as she saw him clearly, saw the red splatters and the look in his eyes.

"What have you done, Neville?" Her voice was resigned and sorrowful. She could tell that there was no going back and fixing whatever it was that he had broken; he knew that much from her tone alone. Her eyes told the same story, so he sat down on the bed next to her.

He didn't reach out to her, human touch would be wrong somehow. She didn't move towards him either, just watched him as he pressed the blade of the knife against his fingertip. He flinched as the blade sliced into the delicate skin there, but refrained from speaking his discomfort. After a moment, a drop of his own red blood welled up, and joined the drying flecks of the former Boy Who Lived's.

"I-I killed him."

The words didn't do the act justice.

"Who?"

She knows who, he thought vengefully, but she just wants to hear me say it.

"Harry."

There. Happy now?

A strangled sob. Fears confirmed true. Hopes dashed. Neville took obscene pleasure in the thought that Ginny's heart had been broken too. He stood, and began to walk out of the room.

"You- you aren't going to..."

"To what? Kill you to?" Neville was sure that his voice had never been quite that venomous before. Seeing the effect his words had on his crying wife gave him another jolt of satisfaction, and for the second time in his life he felt like he understood Professor Snape. This kind of power would be addicting to hold over the masses, he thought.

He turned, and left the room. Ginny's sobs were the last sound that he heard as he shut the heavy front door behind him.

He stopped by the small shed at the edge of the cleared yard, and picked up the coil of rope that he knew lay there. He could have just transfigured some once he got into the forest, but didn't want to chance it. His transfiguration skills were minimal at best, and he didn't want to be left hanging. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

He entered the forest that lined the property, and followed a familiar path. His feet crunched in the thin layer of snow that had made it through the pine tree's needles above during the last snowstorm. He didn't think about any specific thing as he walked. Instead, his mind flitted from the past to the present, from warm days to cold nights, until he reached his predetermined destination.

He looked at the tree he stood under reproachfully. It was so strong, steady... It had stood the test of time. He wished that he could have withstood the test of time. He looked back at the rope in his hands. There might be another way out of this, but he didn't see it. He was too far into it now.

He used the gory knife still in his grasp to cut a length of rope from the coil. He then pushed the knife blade first into the snow, and left it there. No more use for it. He carefully knotted the rope, then tossed the unknotted end of the rope up. It flew more gracefully than he ever had, but missed the branch that he had been aiming for. The rope hit the ground, settling in a snake like pattern across the snow covered glen.

He tried again, and this time was successful. He pulled his near-forgotten wand from his pocket, and used magic to secure the rope to the branch he had chosen. He then closed his eyes, and Apparated to the branch the rope was secured to. After feeling his balance teeter uncontrollably, he sat heavily down on the branch.

He tugged the rope up, and then looked at the noose.

He saw his parent's blank faces in his mind's eye, and pictured how displeased they would be to hear that he had gotten Kissed for doing what even the Dark Lord had failed at- killing Harry Potter. He knew they would be more proud to hear he had taken the honorable way out, and saved others the trouble. He was doing the courageous thing.

He slipped the noose over his neck.

The feel of the rough rope around his neck jolted him out of the daze he had been in since he had seen Ginny. He couldn't just kill himself, and avoid the blame for his actions. There was no honor in that. His parents would hate the idea of their only child, their only legacy left, had thrown away what they clung to so fervently. Life was precious, and he couldn't take his own. A sob tried to escape his throat as he realized that he had taken one life already tonight.

He reached up to remove the noose, but found himself leaning too far to one side. He had never been good at flying, balance had never come naturally to him.

He teetered, then, after a heart-wrenching moment of hope, where he felt like he would regain his balance and live, Neville fell over the edge.

Snap.

The tree branch remained strong as it supported its load, the rope still secure. Robes fluttered in the breeze as Neville Longbottom's body swung gently from the velocity of his fall. No look of surprise adorned his features, only the silent, stoic look of the dead. Hands, still bloody, hung limply at his sides, and his scuffed shoes peeked from under the edge of his robe.

In a bedroom not far away, his red haired widow still sobbed over the loss of her lover, while being woefully ignorant of her husband's fate.

His death gained him no dignity, though it had spared him indignity.

In the forest, the tree remained vigilant over the grim scene of desperation and vengeance gone wrong, strong and steady even in the presence of those who weren't.

In the pines, in the pines

Where the sun don't ever shine

I would shiver the whole night through