Fire in the Dark

Fire in the Dark

Chapter 2: A Few Good Men (and one woman)

"Some of these Muggles are so damn ugly, it's no wonder they're not in the services department." a man muttered conversationally to his companion as they sidled down the Muggle Stasis hallway no. 196. In the dim lighting one could only make out their faces that held a day's worth of stubble. Their boots echoed in the metal hallways.

"Some are really, really fat too." his companion returned as he pointed out a particularly heavy boy with blond hair asleep beside them. These comments were made often. Both men hated working in Muggle Stasis facility no. 4 because that was where most of the indecorous Muggles were kept. It was all Murphy's fault that they were there anyway, the first man thought sourly... if he hadn't brought those drinks we wouldn't have been demoted to facility no. 4.

"Wait, what number 're we supposed ta release from stasis?" he asked.

"Uh..." the second man squinted down at the paper, "Number 100,084."

"Blimey! That's the little bugger right there--or not really little, but you get the point. It'll be fun, seeing him try to run around like a servant."

"Aye, that it will. Well 'ere ye go ya little git, let's see what the service department'll make o' ye."

He flicked a green switch on the side of the capsule and opened the case door, letting oxygen pour into the stasis compartment. The obese young man blinked and sleepily looked around, his many chins wobbling. He looked alarmed.

"Where's this? Where's my geography class? Where am I?" he asked out loud, blinking at the two Death Eater men in what they took for disdain.

"Muggles." the first man snorted in derision, once again cursing Murphy mentally for being the cause of him working with such dim-witted Muggles, "Come on number 100,084. You have work to do."

"100,084? That's not my name! My name is Dudley, Dudley--" The second man backhanded the overweight young man carelessly.

"Your name is 100,084! You do well to remember that, chubby."

"If my father was here, you'd never get away with that an'--"

"Look you fat idiot, you have work to do. Times are different than before." The two men pushed a very confused Dudley Dursley out of the hallway and out of the Muggle Stasis facility.

"You're a wizard, aren't you?" Number 100,084 asked while squinting disgustedly at them with his piggy little eyes, "My mum and dad never liked your sort--"

"Shut up, 100,084."

"This sucks." Draco chose to break the silence that had washed over them by voicing everyone's opinion. He had been expecting much more relief of depressing surroundings when he broke out of A.H. This was just another disappointment.

No one made any reply and Draco didn't expect one. Years of being by yourself tend to transform you into a quiet individual. And all three of the hardened escapees were comfortable with that. No one made any attempt at conversation, feeling that they all had an unspoken understanding. At least that's what Harry and Hermione felt. Draco just had no interest in talking to them.

They had been traveling for a quarter of an hour and could already see the ramshackle cluster of buildings that used to be Hogsmeade up ahead. When they entered town, they received another pace-halting shock similar to the one the received when they first saw the Hogwarts grounds.

Hogsmeade was-- to put it lightly-- unrecognizable. The once cheerful little cottage-like dwellings were blackened as if they had been swept through with fire and the windows mercilessly shattered. Old bloodstains that had still not been washed away from rain showers streaked the sides of some stone walls still standing or toppled over. The most puzzling--and most horrifying--things were the skeletons. They were nearly everywhere. Just a few feet away from them lay a skeleton with an even smaller one that look to have been a toddler beside it. Hermione couldn't stop the slight gasp that escaped her mouth. She was consoled by the fact that her two companions were shocked as well.

Draco was the first to recover from the shock. Turning towards a particularly burnt building that must've been Honeydukes, he hastened towards inside.

Harry snapped out of his shock and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Seeing if there is anything worthwhile inside." Draco drawled and looked back at them, as if it were obvious.

"Everything is probably burnt to a crisp." Harry pointed out apathetically.

"Not necessarily, "Hermione told him, a tiny bit of her old self creeping through for a moment, "Some wizards might have put fire-warding spells on some things. They had been doing so for several decades ever since the Hogs Fire that burnt nearly half the village down."

"Then why didn't they just put those spells on all the buildings?" Harry muttered as he sidled into the shop with the other two. Inside was dark except for a beam of sunlight that came through the broken windows, lighting up the dust that was moving in the air.

No one had time to make a reply because they were interrupted by a flash of black and a weak voice yelling, "Get back, you knaves!"

Neville was more than slightly terrified at the thought of another live wizard inside his home. He'd been waiting for something like this to happen. A Death Eater had come back for him? No... why would they? He was of no importance, right?

Right?

He had been alone in Hogsmeade for years, cowering inside the building at night and scavenging the streets and the surroundings by day. The time alone had been as if he was surrounded by Dementors, for he had only been able to dwell on the horrible parts of his past.

"Get back! I'M WARNING YOU!" he shouted, panicked, waving his wand around madly. Later he would wonder what the point of him doing this was; his wand was never any help to him before.

His sudden outburst had little effect on the three intruders. The pale-headed one looked slightly amused. The woman appeared curious and the other man with black hair remained impassive. All three stood confidently with their arms crossed over their chests. Neville was intimidated, and wondered absently if the three were related. They acted so much alike, it seemed. He gulped. That probably came from being Death Eaters together. The three buddies probably picked up each other's mannerisms from all the fun little killing escapades they shared.

Hermione mentally scratched her head; the man looked strangely familiar. He was a little on the short side with a mop of brown hair and worried brown eyes. His face looked to have once been round, but was no thin and frail looking from being underfed.

The man wrung his hands almost apologetically and mumbled something. Suddenly it hit her--could this be... how wasn't he dead?... Neville Longbottom?

"W-who are you?" the bumbling man stuttered. Hermione was struck by the uselessness of the question. If he was so afraid, why would he ask of who they were? Did he recognize them?

"My name is Hermione." she spoke slowly in case, like a skittish animal, he would take alarm and bolt away.

"H-Hermione? As in Hermione Granger?" Neville asked disbelievingly, looking faintly relieved.

"My god, he's a quick one." Draco muttered: Hermione elbowed him hard.

"Ow!" Draco exclaimed, rubbing his midsection, then looked embarrassed for having done so. Default reaction, he thought, annoyed with himself.

"Neville. Neville Longbottom." Neville said, pointing to himself, "Do you remember me?" he asked uncertainly.

"Of course, how could we forget?" Draco said sarcastically and again received an elbow from Hermione. "Ow! Granger, you elbow me one more time and I swear I'll..." his voice held clear warning.

"How are you three alive?" he asked, suddenly having recognized the other two. "Where did you come from?"

Harry looked at the wand that was still being pointed at his chest and reached out slowly to lower it so it was no longer pointing at anyone. "We just got out of A.H."

Neville blinked. "What? What's that?"

The three stared at him. Draco's pale eyes narrowed to slits.

"How can you not know what A.H. is? You're standing not even half a mile away from it!"

Neville ducked his head, flushing. "I haven't had anyone to tell me anything. And I didn't want to go and inspect Hogwarts because... because... sometimes you can still hear the screams from years ago, even from way over here. What happened at Hogwarts was even worse than what happened here."

"What happened--" Hermione started to ask but Draco interrupted her, his voice harsh and angry.

"A.H. is an artificial hell created by Voldemort. He transformed the school as soon as the defense cave in, locking hundreds of wizards up inside. We were all placed inside the old common rooms and had to fight our way through the castle endlessly, hopelessly to get out. Many died inside. Many went insane and attacked fellow prisoners, killing more. Eventually it became clear that the safest way to travel was alone. Inside there you can never rest, never stop being vigilant... because around every corner, under every table you could find a deformed monster of some kind. There's never much lighting and barely any food so you're thin and hungry all the time."

Neville swallowed hard. "That's sounds bad," was all he said.

Draco gave a short laugh that held nothing but bitterness and derision, "I haven't slept a wink in three years and have had to use magic to keep my energy up. Yeah, it was bad."

"Enough already, Draco." Hermione said and then turned to Neville, who was staring into space, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. She knelt down beside him, "Neville? Neville, I need you to tell me what happened here."

He paid her no heed. "So that what he was doing," he said numbly, dazed, "with the blue spell thingy... that's what he was doing to the castle." After a second he snapped his eyes back to her and seemed to shake himself. "Right, of course, hang on."

Neville got up and dug in a closet with a broken door for something. When he turned around again he was holding a Pensieve. "You can see for yourselves." He said softly, setting the low basin down on the ground. The other three gathered about.

"A Pensieve?" Harry asked, squinting at the silver liquid in the bowl.

Neville nodded, "D-Dumbledore taught me how to make one years and years ago, before the Amoral Tide. Anyway... all you have to do is stare into it and sort of, I dunno, let yourself go."

The four bent over the basin and stared into its depths...

A familiar icy wind hit them as they found themselves standing on top of what looked to be a still intact Honeydukes. They looked round and saw a younger figure of Neville standing over in the corner of the roof, staring over in the direction of Hogwarts.

The four looked and they saw the castle and what it had been like after they had fallen inside. They were watching Voldemort's final victory.

"Was the fight with him and his followers--was it really horrible? This is what happened when you all failed..." Neville trailed away when he saw the look on Harry's face. It was an odd look and certainly not impassive as if had been up until that moment. It was almost as if he was fighting with himself inside his head, beating himself up. Neville looked away and watched the familiar scene, which he had revisited many a time.

Red Sky at Night, Sailors' delight,

Red Sky in the Morning, Sailor's warning.

Clouds seemingly stained with the very blood that was soaking the grass of the Hogwart's Grounds that morning gathered over the darkening castle. Black forked lightening only struck down on the towers of the stronghold. A wind composed of air and icy water whipped around, stinging people's skin beneath their clothing.

On the grounds young students stumbled as they tried to run away--anywhere, as long as they were somewhere away from the terror. A few older teenagers stood their ground in attempts to fight back against the dark-cloaked wizards that bore down on them. Screams of all the students would echo in the area months after it was all over.

Past-Neville trembled as he stood on the roof, watching it all.

He wanted to help. Desperately so. He wanted nothing more to go over at lend his hand, however useless or pathetic he knew it to be. But he couldn't. No matter how hard his brain screamed to move and do something, his body wouldn't respond. It was as if he were paralyzed from doing anything but shake.

He watched with wide, unblinking eyes as Voldemort at last rose up from the ground with a simple human levitation spell, his spindly hands cupped together above his head, his wand cradled by the fingers. The Dark Lord must have murmured something because suddenly he brought both hands downward swiftly, pointing his long wand at the castle. Something enormous... something powerful erupted from the tip of the wand and flew at the castle, growing wider as it edged near.

Past-Neville gasped in horror as the shifting blue spell enveloped the entire castle. One by one all the lights in the castle windows went out and then closed up, never to see the light of day again. After a long time Voldemort lifted the spell and lowered himself to the ground. The Death Eaters were finished with their jobs, it seemed. Past-Neville's eyes darted around his socket, staring in traumatic shock at the grounds. He couldn't see the details from so far away, but knew that the only ones standing were the Death Eaters. Blood, he also could see, judging from the mass amount of red in his vision, was everywhere.

Voldemort and his followers turned and strolled from the grounds, as if leaving what had been a pleasant evening party.

A few minutes later, Past-Neville whirled around from where he has still been staring numbly at the castle, to see the groups that had just entered the streets of Hogsmeade. All looking impossibly tall, dark cloaks billowing in cutting wind, the Death Eaters were an intimidating sight. Past-Neville felt ice fill his very veins, stopping even his shivering for the moment.

Voldemort waved a hand and then sat back to watch with maniacally glinting red eyes that shone with pleasure as his disciples ravaged the village. Past-Neville thought that he couldn't have been filled with more terror that at that moment. Wrong, apparently.

The Death Eaters, who were so confident of their success that they no longer wore masks, walked calmly after the shouting villagers, pointing their wands and murmuring horrible torture spells that Past-Neville had known the existence of until that moment. And the entire time he could not move an inch, even when he saw a woman and a baby that she was holding in her arms get cut down where she stood, just below him in the doorway of Honeydukes.

Finally, after a few minutes of joyous watching, as if he were voyeur who decided he no longer wanted to watch but partake in the fun, Voldemort unfolded his arms and began walking further into the village, leaving scorch marks where he stepped. A few feet in he stopped suddenly and turned his head, looking straight into the eyes of Past-Neville.

For the first time in several minutes Past-Neville started and moved. With a deep shame and horror that he'd feel for years after, he jumped off he roof of the shop and ran away, stumbling frequently as he glanced over his shoulder. Voldemort did not follow, probably thinking that eventually he'd be killed by someone, seeing as they were going to murder everyone there anyway.

Past-Neville tripped and fell and then the memory faded out.

The three A.H. escapees said nothing for a few moments, but just continued to stare at the Pensieve without really seeing it. After a few minutes of silence, Hermione asked quietly:

"How did you stay alive, Neville? Why aren't you dead?" She sounded as if she already knew that answer but wanted Neville to say it.

"I don't know." Neville said with complete honesty, "I blacked out at the point that the memory fades and when I woke up the Death Eaters and Voldemort were gone, the village burnt to a crisp."

Hermione looked up suddenly in obvious surprise that showed for a second before she schooled her face to blankness. "Oh." Was all she said.

Again there was silence before Draco broke it. He said scornfully, "He ran," and got to his feet. The look that he sent Neville held more contempt and disgust than he had ever shown, even to Harry back at school.

Neville looked miserable but nodded and said flatly, brokenly, "I put that horrible memory in there to remind myself of who I am... what I did. I didn't want myself to forget or try and cover up the truth with self-illusionary lies. I ran. Ran like a Coward."

"If you're fishing for our pity you do not have it." Draco said spitefully.

"Draco, shut up." Hermione snapped. "He knows what he did and is sorry. Leave him alone, will you?"

"This is exactly the reaction he wants from you!" he hissed. "He knows that if he plays the whole 'I'm ashamed of what I did and I'm sorry' card that he'll get your pity." He shook his head and then stormed out of the building so quickly that their clothing moved slightly in the dead air.

"He hasn't changed, has he?" Neville asked softly in the following silence that he was becoming accustomed to, "From, school, I mean. He's still the same."

Harry spoke for the first time in a while. "No, he has changed. We all have, in more ways than even we know." He got to his feet and nodded at Hermione, "We should be going." He walked out of the building and hesitantly, Hermione followed, with Neville at her heels.

"Wait!" he called after the swiftly trekking three, "What about me?"

Draco said something there that he couldn't hear, but Hermione elbowed him again, and he bared his teeth in annoyance at her like a dog showing his canines. Neville looked directly at Harry, whom he knew had always regarded him with more pity than anyone else. Ignoring the stab of shame and self-disgust he felt, he tried to look as piteous as possible in the other man's eyes.

Harry's face was still oddly blank when he shrugged. "Come with us if you like. I warn you, though, the journey won't be safe."

Anything was better than staying in this haunting graveyard, Neville thought. "Thank you... I don't have anything to bring...." He stepped forward and joined their rank. For the second time in struck him of how odd it was to see them all look so much the same. All three unconsciously stood with their arms crossed and faces blank. The only difference in their gazes was that Draco's was slightly contemptuous, Hermione's slightly gentler, and Harry's completely devoid of anything. It would take a while for Neville to get used to, but never mind that. He wasn't going to be alone anymore. He wasn't going to have to hear the screams of the past anymore. As far as he was concerned, he was free.

Harry awoke the next morning to a cool sky full of clouds. His face and clothing felt damp, and he realized that it had rained while they were asleep. Looking over across the fire that had gone out, leaving a black pile of wood, he saw that Hermione and Neville were already up, gathering what he identified as galleons, sickles, and Knuts in a pile.

"What if that currency isn't used anymore?" he asked as he got up and stretched his stiff muscles. He hadn't felt so strange in three years. What Draco had said had been true; he hadn't slept for years. At all. Now it felt odd , but strangely relieving to have slept.

"It is," Neville said firmly, glancing up, "I once braved the world outside and bought a newspaper at the next town over." He shuddered slightly.

"Braved the world indeed." Draco sneered, walking over to them.

"Where were you?" Harry inquired, still stretching his arms.

"Why do you care, Potter?"

"I don't actually, I was just curious."

Draco shrugged and picked up a piece of extremely old chocolate from a pile that Neville had brought. "I was sleeping in a tree, if you must know."

Harry stopped stretching and snorted derisively, showing emotion for a moment, "Sleeping in a tree?" he repeated.

Draco took notice of his mockery and narrowed his eyes, his short fuse already lit, "Yes. I feel safer in heights."

Harry felt his anger and raised his hands in the world-known sign of peace, "All right Bird-boy, whatever you say. Let's get going." He turned and began walking, Hermione and Neville following behind Draco.

"Neville, you'll be our guide for right now, we know nothing of where the capitol is." Harry called back over his shoulder.

"Harry, I don't know anything about this land!" Neville responded pitifully, "I can't be your guide."

"Oh, that's a shame." Draco drawled loudly. Hermione elbowed him in the ribcage.

"Ow!" he yelped and then growled, as much annoyed with himself as he was with her, "Granger, I warned you not to elbow me!" Draco howled and ran at her. She dodged and ran up ahead of Harry and Neville.

"Look here you prissy little-- Ow! Stop elbowing me already!"