Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness

"It's been two weeks! They can't just lock us up down here for the rest of the school year!" Neville slammed his fists against the unyielding metal bars in frustration as the house-elf piled the remains of his dinner onto a large tray. "Come on! Tell me something, anything!"

"Krimpet is sorry, sir, but Krimpet has orders from the Headmaster." The elf looked ashamed, but his large blue eyes were fearful, and he kept glancing at the walls as if they were watching him. "Krimpet brings the food for the prisoners, and he takes the dishes, and he has been given the strongest orders. He would have to punish himself most terribly grievously, and Krimpet is not brave like Dobby, oh no. He is scared of Headmaster Snape." He gave a thin, desperately servile smile, bowing as low as he could with his awkward burden. "But he brings the mustard for Luna Lovegood, and he makes the chicken for Neville Longbottom with not too much gravy, and he never forgets that Ginny Weasley likes the lemon with her tea, not the milk, so Neville Longbottom should not be so angry with Krimpet."

Neville let out a long sigh, sliding slowly down the bars until he was on his knees in the dank cell, his head sagging in frustrated defeat. Taking a deep breath, he looked up and tried to produce what he hoped was a kindly apologetic expression. "You're right, Krimpet, it's not your fault. I'm sorry. I just ... I thought we'd be Cruciated at least, but they've only...it's making me mental. How are the girls?"

"Ginny Weasley is angry, just like Neville Longbottom. She yells things - most horrible language for a witch to use - but she forgets that there is powerful magic on the dungeons, and she cannot be heard upstairs or from inside other cells. But she is still well, oh yes, well enough to throw her cake and smash the plate into very tiny pieces." Krimpet shook his head sadly, clearly mourning the waste of pastry, then he brightened. "But Luna Lovegood is not angry, Neville Longbottom, sir. She sings and she paints with the food she does not eat, and Krimpet thinks she is much nicer."

"Have they sent me any messages?"

"Every day, Neville Longbottom asks this, and every day Krimpet must tell him that it is forbidden. Why does Neville Longbottom still ask?"

The question was asked with innocent, genuine curiosity, and he was forced to shrug, smiling sheepishly. "I don't know, really. I guess I just hope something's changed."

He had stood again, turning to resume the pacing that had become the constant staple of his existence, but stopped dead as the little being spoke again. "Dobby sends a message."

Neville whirled, fighting the urge to grab the towel and shake the elf until his brains rattled for not telling him sooner. Instead, he gritted his teeth, forcing his voice to remain calm and gentle. "What's that?"

"Dobby says that something big is coming very, very soon. That is all, Neville Longbottom, sir, and before he asks, Krimpet does not know what he means by this either, but Dobby is a free elf and very strange." The look on Krimpet's face clearly implored the young wizard to take anything from such an unbalanced individual with the deepest skepticism, then he bowed again. "Krimpet must go now." A loud crack echoed through the tiny stone chamber, and the elf was gone.

Something big. Neville ran his fingers maniacally through his greasy hair as he resumed pacing, his long strides covering the confines of the cell so quickly that he felt rather dizzy with the rapidity he was forced to turn. Something big. Was the D.A. planning a breakout? Had Snape finally decided to punish them? Were they being sent to Azkaban? Turned over to You-Know-Who himself? Or had he heard from Harry? Was the war won? Was it lost? Were they going to be executed? It could mean anything!

"Blimey, lad, I reckon I smelt you before I saw you. How long's it been since you had a bath?" Neville skidded to a halt, whirling towards the barred front of the dungeon cell as his jaw dropped open in shock. Dobby's cryptic message was immediately, wonderfully clear.

"Hagrid!" He covered the cell in two paces, pressing himself against the bars and reaching through to grab the gamekeeper's dustbin lid-sized hand in both of his. "What are you doing here?"

"Fetchin' you lot." A fond smile appeared beneath the wild black beard, but his beetle-black eyes were solemn. "An' I'm 'sposed ter tell you that if you try any funny business, they ain't gonna do naught to you, but they'll start pickin' random first-years to take whatever you'd be gettin'." He made a face. "Right nasty pair, them Carrows."

Hagrid reached into one of the pockets of his moleskin overcoat, and Neville heard several things rattle, clank, and even something that squished before he withdrew a large, old-fashioned key. There was no lock or door on the cell, and it struck him as odd, but Hagrid simply pressed the key against the nearest bar, and it slid in as easily as if there had been a keyhole all along. With a half-turn, the bars in front of Neville vanished.

"Ginny!" He shoved through the opening, already at a sprint, barely nodding thanks to Hagrid as he flew past and down the hall in the direction Krimpet came from after delivering his friends' food. Despite the accuracy of the elf's descriptions, part of him had never let go of the terrified possibility that he might be lying, so it was to a wonderful surge of joy and relief that he heard her call out back to him, saw a puff of dust fall from the ceiling as she flung herself forward into the bars, her slender arms reaching through into the hall.

"Neville!" Barely avoiding crashing headlong into the bars, he slid to a halt and reached out to grab her up in a tight hug that crushed the bars between them awkwardly. She gave a laugh that was almost a scream, almost a sob, her hands searching over his body as if unable to quite believe he was real, even as he held her as tight as he dared without hurting her.

"Where have you been? What have they done to you? Are you okay? Tell me you're okay! I've been trying ... but they won't tell me ... that sniveling little ... I didn't know ... I thought it was over ... I thought we were ... and then Snape ... oh, the Sword ... and he stunned you ... and then me ... woke up here ... days and days ... and no idea ...." The words were broken, half-sobbed with relief, excitement, hope, fury, and a dozen other things that tumbled the sentences against each other too fast to finish. She didn't need to. He understood, and he nodded at everything as she rained kisses over his face, but he felt no guilt because there was nothing wrong there, just the love of a friend and a comrade who had become almost a sister to him.

"Now if you'll two peel apart for a sec', I can go 'head and let Ginny out 'o there fer you." Hagrid chuckled deeply from behind him, and Ginny pushed herself away with a delighted gasp, her eyes wide.

"You're the one helping us escape!"

"'Fraid not, love." He shook his great, shaggy head ruefully. "The Carrows've ordered me ter fetch ya up to 'em."

Neville saw the same spark of defiant hope in her eyes that had flared in his, and he cut her off before she could speak. "No, we can't make a run for it. They've said they'll punish the little ones in our place if we do - just random first-years."

Her face twisted in disgust. "That's sick!"

Hagrid pushed the key into her bars, and Ginny jumped through the opening, wheeling back to let fly with an impressive gob of spit into the empty cell. "At least I'm out of that effing place!"

He grabbed her arm. "Which way's Luna?"

"This way!" With a jerk of her head, she led him off at a run around a bend in the hall, and they soon heard the familiar dreamy voice echoing softly ahead.

"...and the climbing roses twine.

You were waiting for me there,

I held your hand in mine.

I cried that you went off to war,

But darling, don't be afraid.

I'll transfigure my spindle to a sword,

And fight at your side, a soldier maid..."

They exchanged a look, shouting her name as they neared the glow from the single candle in the occupied cell, but as they reached it, they stopped, struck dumb by the sight in front of them. Luna was sitting peacefully cross-legged at the base of the wall, a pot of mustard in one hand as she daubed petals onto a platter-sized sunflower.

The entire cell looked like a fanciful garden; a riot of vivid color and beautiful, skillfully painted plants, fruits, and flowers that bloomed over the walls, the floor, even the sides of the narrow wooden bunk. Unlike their own squalid, disheveled appearance, Luna was clean and neat, her pale blonde hair shining in a twist on top of her head that appeared to be secured by a spoon tucked through the long tresses, her clothing mended and returned to its usual gray sweater and crisp white shirt with blue and bronze at the trim and tie. She got to her feet at their approach, brushing dust off the seat of her trousers and turning to them with a smile. "Oh, hello. Have we been released?"

"How ..." Ginny started, then shook her head, unable to finish.

"I painted with my food," she replied simply, then paused a moment, tilting her head slightly. "And used some magic so it didn't rot."

"How did you keep your wand?!" Neville felt a new hope begin to rise. If at least one of them was armed, maybe they could figure something after all, despite the Carrows' attempts at blackmail.

Luna gave them an odd look, then pulled the spoon from her hair. "I didn't. I used this."

He would have thought this absolute proof that Luna Lovegood had finally crossed what he had always deep down suspected was the extremely fine line separating her from actually being insane, but the evidence that she had in fact produced magic was strong enough that he hesitated. "A spoon?"

"Krimpet let me keep it. I asked nicely." She spoke as if that should explain everything, and Ginny frowned.

"But ... a spoon?"

"You need a wand to do spells, of course, or to aim them precisely, but we can all do magic without them. We did it when we were kids. It's just not fancy or exact when you focus it through something else. I couldn't use Scourgify or Impedia Mortificus, but I could focus my mind and magic on wanting to be clean and not wanting the food to rot." Luna shrugged as if it were all common knowledge anyway. "There wasn't anything I could do about being down here, so I thought I'd just make it a nice place and find a way to occupy myself."

Neville exchanged a look with Ginny, relieved to see that she appeared to feel as abruptly stupid as he did for driving themselves half-mad screaming and raging uselessly. They had accomplished nothing but sore throats and bruised, scraped fists, and looked as haggard, filthy, and worn as could be expected, while Luna had kept her head about her and seemed ready to stroll into the next D.A. meeting without needing a moment's recovery.

As they stared at each other in growing embarrassment, she looked past them and gave a little wave. "Coming to take us up to the Carrows, Hagrid?"

"No, sorry, I'm jes'--" He stopped, blinking. "Wait a minute. Them two's already told you."

"No, but if you were here to break us out, they would have. Just give me a minute." She turned back to the cell and gripped her spoon in both hands, holding it outstretched and squeezing her eyes shut as she concentrated. The little pewter utensil began to glow, and the walls shimmered a moment, then the textures of mustard, pea soup, chutney, and tomato sauce faded, and it seemed instead as though the stone itself had been dyed the same vivid tones.

"What was that?" Neville asked.

"I just focused on wanting it all to stay forever so the next person doesn't have to be depressed." Coiling her hair with one hand, she tucked the spoon back in neatly and stepped out into the hall, taking a few steps before glancing back over her shoulder to where the other two were still staring incredulously into the elaborately decorated chamber. "Well, are you coming?"

They followed, Hagrid bringing up the rear as they began to make their way back through the twisting network of tunnels that made up the dungeons. Ginny cast him a sidelong glance, then mouthed silently, Spoon?

He shrugged, mouthing his reply back in equal silence. Luna.

OOO

"We've given ourselves a good long think on this one, we have." Amycus Carrow's doughy, pallid face was twisted into a self-satisfied grin as he paced in front of the three prisoners. The entry hall was deserted, and Neville could see light through the cracks of the doors that led to the Great Hall and hear a low babble of voices that told him it was dinner time. Outside the windows, the light had turned livid with sunset, and it gave the round face and sunken eyes of the Death Eater the look of a living, demented jack o' lantern.

Despite the threats, he had taken no chances, locking each of them with a full Body Bind the moment they had been brought in front of him, and adding a layer of magical ropes for good measure as he reminded them that the slightest move would result in their punishment being given to helpless children. The elaborate precautions, rather than engendering the despair they had been meant to, had only filled Neville with a sense of pride. A fully grown and qualified wizard, one of You-Know-Who's own Death Eaters, felt he had to use two different restraining spells, threats, and a half-giant to handle three wandless teenagers, two of them sixth-year witches. It would have made him smile if he could have moved his face.

"We reckoned that you've been a stubborn little buncha gits, but they say you can ketch more pixies with honey, so we're takin' it easy fer what you did. Yer goin' out into the Forbidden Forest with 'Agrid tonight. He'll be leavin' you there ta spend the night. If you come back out in the mornin,' you can have yer wands back and go back to classes, no more said." He gave a horrible, shrill laugh, then wagged his wand at Hagrid.

"And dontcha get any ideas about hangin' back with 'em, you stupid animal." He raised his voice, standing up on the tips of his toes to shout loudly and slowly into the buttons on the front of Hagrid's waistcoat. "One hour, you go in. One hour, you come back. You no come back, I kill big doggy. Still no come back, I kill ugly Skrewty-nasties. Still no come back, I send little firsties go find you. Savvy?"

Neville could not turn his head to see the look on Hagrid's face, but he could hear the tightly restrained fury in the giant's voice. "Oh, I 'savvy' perfectly fine what yer about, Amycus."

"Good." Carrow turned towards them, then hesitated, his wand drawn. He paused a moment, then jerked his head towards Hagrid. "Take 'em outside, I'll let 'em go once yer ta the edge 'o the Forest." His face split in a horrible, leering grin, revealing stained, crooked teeth and making him look more than ever like a badly carved pumpkin. "Best hurry. Sun's settin'. Full moon tonight."

Carrow waved his wand, and the front doors opened, revealing the grounds that stretched to the edge of the forest, already shadowed nearly black against the ruddy light. Somewhere, deep in the distant mountains, so far away that it could have been a trick of the wind, a wolf howled, and Neville felt his heart stop.

He knew. With a sudden burst of sickening terror, he knew why Amycus was smiling, why they weren't expected to return, and exactly what waited for them in the Forbidden Forest under the dark shadows and the full moon.

OOO

Through the thick canopy of trees above them, a few slivers of sky still showed gold and blue with the dying sunset, but on the forest floor, night had already fallen on the heavy underbrush. The tree trunks stood no more than an arm's length apart this deep in the forest, old and gnarled, and the shadows they cast were an inky black. They had been walking for what felt like days, pushing their way through knotted brambles that plucked at their clothing and scratched their skin, leaving the path far behind as they stumbled over unseen roots and caught their feet in rabbit holes, every fluttering bird and snapping twig harsh against their tightly-strung nerves.

Finally, Hagrid stopped, and Neville tripped as he came up short to avoid running into the broad back. "Got ter leave you here." He turned, and even in the darkness, his face was flushed, great, fat tears running down his cheeks to drip into the wild tangle of his beard. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" With a loud sob, he pulled a tablecloth-sized handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn. "Yer jus' babies, 'taint fair ter leave you here ter...." There was another sob, and Ginny reached up to lay one hand against the massive elbow.

"It's all right, Hagrid. We know you don't have a choice. He'd kill -" Her voice was soothing, but he cut her off with a wave of the huge hankerchief.

"I'd give Fang fer you in a moment!" The announcement came with a heartfelt resolution that was all the more wrenching for the sacrifice they knew it would mean. "It's the little ones, you see ... not that you lot are half older!"

"I'm a grown man now, Hagrid. I can take care of myself." Neville spoke with confidence, only to find the statement met with a look of rather patronizing skepticism through the still-falling tears.

"Yer seventeen. I don't care what the Ministry says, that's still a ruddy child, or it should be, right 'nuff." Hagrid dug in his pockets again, pulling out an object the size of a loaf of bread. "I'd give you my wand if I could - they snapped it when I got expelled, and I weren't 'sposed ter keep it, but I sort of hid the bits, see - 'cept Snape knew where I kept it, an' he took it from me at the start o' the year. So best I can give you's this. It's jes' a pocketknife, but it's all I got that ain't too big fer you to manage proper." He held it out in one vast hand, and Neville took it, unfolding a foot-long blade like a small dagger.

He tested the thick handle in his grasp, finding it surprisingly well balanced, and a few practice swipes at the underbrush cut through with razored ease. Neville looked up in genuine gratitude. "Thanks ... I mean, yeah, it's your pocketknife, but it's a real weapon for us."

"You have to go, Hagrid. You can't be late." Luna gestured to the sky. "Please. We don't want this to be any worse than it needs to be."

With another foghorn-like blast into the handkerchief, Hagrid nodded miserably, then Neville found himself lifted fully off his feet and crushed against the homespun waistcoat in a hug that drove the breath out of him as his ribs groaned in protest. The girls had been swept up into the same colossal embrace, and he tried to squirm away from where Ginny's elbow jutted into the pit of his stomach, only to have them crushed in even tighter. "Blimey, I'll miss you all jes' awful!" Hagrid wailed.

"Hagrid -" Ginny managed to gasp, "you're going to crush us ...."

"I'm sorry!" He dropped them immediately, and Neville felt to his knees, sucking in a great, gasping breath of wonderfully available oxygen. Gingerly feeling his sides, he satisfied himself that no ribs had actually snapped under the well-intentioned assault, and he got to his feet, pulling his shoulders back with all the authority he had ever used as leader of the D.A..

Though a tall young man, the top of his head barely came to Hagrid's armpit, and he felt slightly ridiculous staring up at someone so much bigger and older as he forced his voice to belie the feeling of creeping dread that was growing as the blue above them deepened. "Hagrid, you aren't doing us any good by staying just long enough to cause more bloodshed. Give our families our love, but get out of here! Go! Now!"

Still weeping, Hagrid gave them each one final, deliberately gentle hug, then turned and left back the way they had come, his loud sobs carrying back to them long after his gargantuan form had vanished completely into the trees. Then even that died away, and they were left in the forest that seemed at once alive with tiny, ominous noises and yet utterly silent.

Instinctively, the girls had moved in close to him, and they were now standing in a tight circle in the little clearing, their backs to one another as they scanned the shadows in vain for some sign of their fate. Neville fought the urge to brandish the makeshift sword at nothing, forcing himself to fold it and tuck it into the waistband of his trousers, hiding the handle under the back of his shirt. If it was their only weapon, he wanted it to at least come as a surprise to their enemies. "Ginny?" He didn't know why he was suddenly whispering, but his voice refused to come any louder.

"Yes?" Though she didn't whisper back, her own voice was thin and trembling around the edges.

"How well did you know Professor Lupin?"

"Not all that well. You think so too, then?" There was a sick resignation in her voice, as if she had hoped he would have come to some other conclusion, anything but what they both knew to be the truth.

"Why else hold us for more than two weeks to wait for the full moon and then turn us loose like this? I mean, the Forbidden Forest just isn't worth what we did on its own. And they didn't lay a finger on us. They even fed us well, but they didn't let us bathe or change clothes. I think we're supposed to smell."

He could feel her nod against his side. "Easier to find." She paused. "Luna, do you still have your spoon?"

"I lost it when I caught my hair on a branch a little way back. Do you think we should try to go look for it?" Even her words were quavering with fear, and Neville felt their hope of seeing the morning alive fade a little bit further away.

"Don't worry about cutlery, darling. We aren't picky eaters." The voice was chilling, a harsh, rasping bark coming from only a few yards away in the shadows of the surrounding trees, and Neville felt himself break into a cold sweat as the owner of the voice stepped forward into the clearing.

He wore black Death Eater's robes, but they barely clung to his big, rangy form, stretching precariously at the seams over his chest and shoulders. He was filthy beyond description, his callused and dirt-caked hands ending in long, yellowed claws. His hair and beard were as long and gray as Dumbledore's, but rather than falling in smooth silver sheets, they were clumped in thick mats and snarls, dreadlocked with dirt, grease, and other, darker, less savory things. When he smiled, he revealed jagged yellow teeth that gleamed unnaturally in the moonlight, and as the wind shifted, it brought a sickening stench of sweat, dirt, decay, and unmistakably, blood.

Neville knew him instantly. Indeed, he had, like every wizarding child, known him by reputation his whole life; and despite himself, he felt his knees begin to tremble. He was the nightmare. The creature that will get you if you're bad. The reason not to go into the forest alone or leave the house at night. The thing that waited under your bed. The monster that preyed on children and was all too real. Fenrir Greyback.

Suddenly, Ginny bolted forward, her face flushed and blazing with rage, her hands stretched ahead of her with the fingers crooked into claws as she flung herself towards the newcomer. "YOU!" Neville lunged, grabbing her around her waist and dragging her back as she kicked and writhed, utterly deranged with hysterical fury. "Bill! He attacked - you attacked - my brother! You attacked Bill! You monster! You foul, loathsome...I'll tear you to pieces, I'll -" Her words dissolved into an incoherent shriek of hatred, and Greyback laughed.

"Should have seen the family resemblance. Same hair, I'd even say his was as long as yours. Pretty lot, aren't you? Well, at least, I suppose he's not so much any more." He licked his lips slowly, obscenely, reveling in the memory and the pain it caused her. "Went down smooth, that one. But faces are always the best parts."

He turned away, ignoring her cries and increasingly desperate attempts to break free from Neville's hold as he approached Luna. Neville felt sick with helplessness as he watched the werewolf extend one thick nail to run ever so gently along her pale cheek. He knew if he let Ginny go for even a moment in her current state, she would fling herself to her own death, but to see that beast touch his friend ....

"They've been good to us." Greyback's voice had taken on a grotesquely sensuous appreciation. "I've always liked my dinner delivered." He drew away from Luna, stepping back to look at all three of them with a greedy gleam to his narrow eyes. "Nice-sized bit of good lean meat for starters, and for dessert, we get our choice ... strawberry or vanilla." A coarse, barking laugh sounded into the night, and to Neville's horror, it was answered from all sides. They were surrounded.

Ginny froze in his arms, and he felt her suddenly clutch against him instead, even as Luna latched herself onto his other side in a death grip of her own. Seeing their terror, Greyback leered at them again. "Why, don't they teach you anything? Wolves travel in packs."

There were at least thirty of them emerging from the woods. Men, women, and most appallingly, children as well, the youngest a scrawny boy no older than four who slunk through the underbrush with a look of hunger on his already-cruel face. Only Greyback himself wore robes. The rest were clad in a haphazard collection of crudely sewn animal skins, their hair and the men's beards long and matted, their limbs and faces dark with filth, strings of what were unquestionably human finger bones and vertebra hung around their necks. Even with the moon still tucked below the canopy of the trees, they looked barely human; a primitive, feral tribe from some distant, uncivilized past that was best forgotten.

Shoving the girls behind him, Neville grabbed for the knife, flicking it open and brandishing it in front of him in wide, sweeping strokes. "Come any closer, and I swear I'll--"

"Expelliarmus!" The knife flew from his hand, spiraling uselessly through the air to vanish into the trees, and Neville gasped in shock as another figure in ragged wizard's robes stepped into the clearing, a wand outstretched in his hand towards the three helpless teenagers.

"Professor Lupin?" Neville felt shell-shocked. It couldn't be, and yet, the man standing in front of him now was nothing like the sickly, kind, almost retiring teacher he remembered. The features were the same, perhaps a little thinner, a little more gray prematurely streaking his hair, but his expression was one of open hate and mocking vengeance.

"Don't call me that, boy." It was the same voice that had once asked him whether his grandmother carried a handbag, but now it growled around the edges and snapped through the air with the crack of shattering hope. "I'm not Dumbledore's lapdog any more, curling up and cringing and biting my own flesh instead of his precious students so he'll throw me a few crumbs." Wand still outstretched, he turned to Greyback and flicked his head at the three. "Mine. I claim kill."

"You want the boy, you can have him. I'm still deciding between the two little lovelies," Greyback answered as he circled.

"I want all three." Lupin seemed unfazed by the depth of his own betrayal, running his tongue over his teeth as he grinned viciously at them.

"You can't have all of them, you wizard-loving pet." Greyback's voice was even thicker with scorn, and now the two werewolves were circling each other, shoulders tensed, hands raised like wrestlers about to attack. Neville watched in fascinated dread, uncertain whether what he was seeing was really as hostile as it appeared, or some form of ritual challenge in this strange animal society.

"How many do you have wanded, Greyback? You can't even use that stick of yours," sneered Lupin.

"You've mated with a witch!" The words came with as much disgust as Neville had ever heard from anyone before, and it struck him as hideously ironic that such a creature could find anything distasteful.

"I've bred. You want them young," he waved a hand at the feral child who's eyes were beginning to shine in the growing light of the rising moon, "it will be one of us from birth. And my dear, darling, tolerant, Dora --" his lips twisted in a mocking smile, "-- doesn't exactly want me anywhere near her at these times."

"They were given to me, not you!"

"Fine!" barked Lupin, and he turned away in a swirl of shabby robes, stalking towards the trees as if leaving them all. "Your master can let you in when it's time, and you can search to your heart's content. And then I will go back after you've slunk away with your empty bellies and open every secret chamber, closet, crack, and corner where they've hidden their precious children, and stuff myself on sweet young meat."

There was a silence that seemed to stretch an eternity, then Greyback barked once, stalking over to Lupin and actually biting him on the shoulder with a snap of his head and jaws, blood welling through the ragged fabric. It seemed expected, and Lupin scarcely reacted, returning to them with anticipatory malice greedily lighting his eyes. He waved his wand at them. "Incarcerous!"

The thin silver ropes shot from the end of his wand, binding the three of them securely, too disbelieving to give much of a struggle, and he gathered the ends of the ropes in one dirty hand, holding them deliberately like a master walking a brace of hounds. He yanked them towards the trees, and they were forced to follow, stumbling awkwardly in their restraints.

Neville's mind raced. Their situation was hopeless, there were too many of them, but a bitter, white-hot hatred that had grown towards the enemy he had once looked up to filled him with a terrible resolve not to go easily, not to simply let himself and his friends become prey without a fight. There would be a moment of transformation, he knew, and he flexed his fingers. Never had he imagined himself capable of such a thing, but he vowed he would tear out the traitor's throat as he shifted, rip it away with his bare hands, and take as many more as he could before he himself was downed.

They were alone now, and Neville tensed his legs, ready to spring at his first opportunity. Then Lupin turned, and desperation had replaced malice on every feature, his voice a plea. "We have no time, it'll happen any minute now! Please, listen to me ... I'm going to take some blood, try and convince them that I got in at least a bite before you pulled a wizard's trick on me when I changed, but you must do as I say. All of you must run as fast as you ever have in your lives. Run and don't look back. No matter what happens, what you hear, no matter what." He waved his wand and the silver ropes vanished as he reached out, "Your arm, Neville -"

Hatred replaced by a sudden, resurgent hope, Neville thrust out his arm, and Lupin grabbed a tear in the dark sleeve, ripping it open and slashing his wand across the exposed flesh. Blood welled instantly from the shallow cut, and he could not suppress his shudder as the werewolf lowered his face to the wound and lapped at it, his tongue already too long and flat to be quite human, his face growing scruffier against Neville's skin.

When he raised his head, his mouth was smeared lurid scarlet, and he snarled at them, his teeth too long, his eyes slit-pupiled in the sudden silver light of the moon that had just now come into view above them. "Run!" The word came in an inhuman growl, and his head snapped back, his body twisting and contorting, the wand falling from his fingers as they knotted into heavy paws. For a moment, Neville considered trying to grab it, but Luna had his wrist, and behind them, only a dozen feet away, they could hear the shrieks and moans of agony as the pack began to transform.

They ran.

Pushing through the underbrush like a battering ram, he threw himself headlong into the forest, his legs driving him forward faster than he had ever thought possible, the girls close on his heels, propelled by raw fear and survival instinct to ignore the slicing thorns and grasping roots as they fled. He didn't know if they were headed towards the castle or only deeper into the woods, but it didn't matter, because behind them rose a terrible howl of triumph, and he knew the pack had their scent, and it was a race now, a race for their lives.

A sharp stitch had seized his side, his breath was coming in gasps, but he kept running until the trees vanished and the ground abruptly fell away at his feet. He caught himself barely in time, throwing out his arms as Ginny slammed into him and he caught her only inches from falling over the precipice that had appeared before them, Luna striking his back a second later.

Silver moonlight lit the clearing, and below, in the wide scoop of the valley floor, a thick spider's web stretched gleaming white across the entire vale. It was wild and knotted, and like blackberries heavy in twisted briars, a hundred spiders the size of small cars crouched on the rope-like strands, their tiny eyes glittering a thousand reflections of the round, shining moon. They were trapped.

The embankment began to crumble under his feet, and Neville took a step back, but a thin trickle of pebbles clattered down the side of the valley, and he watched in wide-eyed fear as they struck the edge of the web, plucking it like a piano string to announce the arrival of prey. The nearest spider twitched, then rose, long, hair legs extending with monstrous grace as it began to make its way across the web towards the edge, a dozen fellows rising at the movement to join it.

Behind them, they could hear the snapping of underbrush, eager bays and howls as the pack drew nearer, and he looked from Ginny to Luna and back in desperation, his mind racing for something, anything that could be used against the monsters closing in from all sides now. They had minutes at most, utterly unarmed, and in that moment, he would have given anything, everything for a wand, for Luna's spoon, for anything at all but the terrible fear that was all they had.

We can all do magic without them. Luna's words echoed in his head as if she had just spoken them again, and Neville fell to his knees at the edge of the underbrush, stretching out his arms to wrap his hands around the thick bases of two briars, scarcely feeling the thorns that stabbed deep into his palms. He closed his eyes, reaching deep inside himself for what he knew had to be there, that spark of power that had so long been so faint he had wondered if it even existed at all.

His lips did not move, but his heart called out a desperate prayer to the parents he still loved. You were Aurors. I know it's there. If you can hear me from wherever you've gone, if some part of you knows you still have a son, help me now. Help me find you. Help me save my friends.

In the darkness of his mind's eye, a tiny light seemed to gleam like a single star in the night sky, and he reached towards it, pulling it, calling on it, willing it to come to him. It grew, and now it was like a tiny sun, a glowing orb becoming larger, brighter, hotter as he focused, concentrating everything on what he now realized he had always been so deathly afraid of, the something in him that didn't just exist, but shone with a power that would have scorched his eyes to blindness had he been forced to look on it in reality.

It was the something the Death Eaters had come for. The thing that Harry had just begun to coax into life. The thing that when he cut himself adrift from it left him barely able to remember his own name. The thing that roared and screamed when he fought. The thing that in presence and absence had defined his entire life.

A woman's voice, familiar but alien in its strength and sanity, screamed out in unendurable agony. I won't tell you! You can't have him! You'll have to kill me first! Then another voice, shrill and mad and laughing the Unforgivable, CRUCIO! CRUCIO! And CRUCIO again and again until you tell me where they are, the Dark Lord and the brat...I can do this all night! CRUCIO!

And everything was darkness and yet everything was light, a light that burned now hotter than the brightest summer sun, that filled everything, that had replaced bone and muscle to become him, swelling into something larger and deeper and stranger and more terrible and more wonderful and more right than anything he had ever known before. The screaming went on and on, a man and a woman's voices both raised in shrieks of anguish, and they pulsed through him like lightning.

Then the light flared with the intensity of a star reaching nova, and his back arched like a drawn bow, his body nearly snapping itself in half as the light burst, tore, and collapsed into nothing.

OOO

There were hands stroking his hair. Gentle hands, combing their fingers back from his forehead in soothing, rhythmic passes as his head lay cradled against something warm and soft. Neville opened his eyes, blinking uncertainly as Luna's pale, heart-shaped face came into focus above him. There were dark circles of exhaustion under the large blue eyes, but there was an oddly secretive little smile on her lips that grew a bit as their gazes met. She glanced up and away. "Ginny ..."

He heard movement nearby, a rustling of leaves and twigs, and he suddenly realized that they were outside. The forest. The Forbidden Forest. It all came back in a rush, and he sat bolt upright off of Luna's lap, his heart racing as his head snapped around, his shoulders tensing, ready to fight. Then he stopped, and a frown of confusion creased his brow.

They were still outdoors, certainly, but the eerie, deep-shadowed silver light of the full moon had been replaced by the warm glow of dawn. The air was soft with morning mist, his breath just barely fogging in the early chill, but the knotted trees, the precipice, the monstrous creatures that had been attacking them were gone. Instead, they seemed to be inside a strange domed structure of some kind. It was about the size of a large tent, without windows or doors of any kind, the walls and ceiling tightly woven in a wild, haphazard snarl of what he gradually realized were living thorn briars, still deeply rooted in the soil on all sides of them.

Gradually, more of his last moments before losing consciousness came clear, and Neville raised his hands in front of him, staring at the deep puncture wounds that stabbed his palms in a half-dozen places. Slowly, he curled his fingers into fists, feeling the injuries throb in protest, somehow needing to prove to himself that they were real. Then he felt a hand on his arm, and he turned, seeing Ginny beside him.

She looked just as tired as Luna, and she was staring at him with that same cryptic expression. When she spoke, her voice held the attentive concern that Neville associated with someone addressing a seriously ill loved one. "How do you feel?"

"Did I -" he motioned around at the bizarre shelter. "Did I do this?"

"Luna and I thought it was over. I'd decided to jump, take the spiders over the wolves - I thought it would be over quicker - but then you ... you grabbed the briars, and they started growing, just shooting up so fast and thick ... and then you opened your eyes, and there was this light pouring out of them, and I had to look away it was so bright." She shook her head, as if still not quite believing her own memory. "The next thing we knew, the briars had wrapped over us and knotted together into this place, and it just kept getting thicker and thicker until you sort of jerked back and collapsed."

Neville reached out a hand, running the tip of one finger along a long, dagger-like thorn. "And it kept you safe?" It wasn't really a question, their living presence in front of him proved as much, but he still half-expected to hear that their salvation had come from something else, some fortuitous last-minute intervention.

Luna got to her feet and crossed over to them, nodding. "We could hear them all night. They tried to get through, but the thorns were too thick. It was pretty horrible - we think they were fighting each other for a while - but that stopped a little before it started to get light, and it's all been quiet since. I think they're gone."

"I just ..." He closed his eyes, thinking of how he had called out to his parents, the desperate last hope, the plea for something, anything. "I don't know what I did, really."

"You saved us." Luna's voice was matter-of-fact, but it was so far from that simple.

He shook his head as if trying to dispel a dream. "I don't even know what spell would do this if I meant to!"

She shrugged. "You've always been good with plants, Neville. I think you reached out towards where your strength lies instinctively, and they just responded to what you needed ... something to keep those -" a little shudder went through her, "--those things away from us."

"Just because I get high marks in Herbology doesn't mean ..." He trailed off. One of the vines had untangled itself from the wall and reached out towards him, brushing over his hand like a dog sniffing its owner. The leaves quavered a moment, then an entire section of briars began to unweave, unfolding themselves from their protective barrier to form an opening in the side easily large enough for them to step out into the forest again.

Not quite believing what was happening, Neville stepped through the newly created doorway, and the girls followed close behind him, so near that he could almost feel them at his sides. The moment they passed through the magical thicket, there was a loud rustling, and all three whirled around only to see that the shelter was dissolving, whipping apart into independent vines and brambles that were shrinking down into the earth once more. Within moments, all sign of their fortress had vanished, the underbrush there no thicker or stranger than it ever had been before.

They were standing on a battlefield. Blood and ichor were sprayed and splattered everywhere, even gathering in half-clotted pools where it had not just been spilled but gushed. A dozen spider's legs and twice as many pieces of them littered the earth like branches after a windstorm; hairy, twisted, and as thick as saplings. Neville took a single, hesitant step forward, and something squished beneath his feet. He looked down, and saw that he was standing in a pile of offal, a pale loop of intestines coiling wetly beneath his shoe. Recoiling in horror, he suddenly recognized the remains of Greyback's fallen, less easily recognized than the spider's legs, but left behind in chunks and splatters only for the same reason. The ground surrounding where their shelter had stood had been torn up in great heaps and gashes, the underbrush crushed flat, the rim of the valley collapsed back several feet from the edge, and everywhere, not only the signs of a ferocious struggle, but of things being dragged. Both sides had eaten their dead.

His eyes fell on a hand that lay half-buried in the leaves, the fingers slightly gnawed, but still recognizable as having belonged to a young woman, the nails filthy and long, the palm callused, yet still as dainty as the hands that had coaxed him awake. Neville looked back at his two friends. Hate and disgust at the wanton savagery was clearly twisted into Ginny's face, but Luna seemed only saddened and resigned, though her normally pale complexion had faded to the color of ash.

He felt horrified and slightly ashamed as he thought of what the night must have been like for them, huddeled together beneath their shield next to his own unconcious body as this battle raged mere feet away. For all their beauty and the delicacy of their bodies, they were both so strong, so brave in their own very different ways, and he was filled with a new respect for them.

Then a twig snapped, and all three of them jumped, every nerve and muscle firing to alert. Ginny moved like a cat, snatching up the sharp and shattered end of what had once been a human thighbone and holding it in front of her like a sword, Neville's fists raised to fight, as Luna seemed to produce a rock from thin air, her arm cocked and ready to hurl it towards the first enemy that presented itself.

There was a heartbeat of terrible silence, then the auburn muzzle of a fox appeared through the underbrush at the edge of the forest, the golden eyes regarding them placidly before, with a whisper of leaves and a flash of white at the end of its bottle-brush tail, it wheeled and vanished again into the morning mist. The trio let out a deep sigh of relief, and Neville turned, unclenching his fists and wiping his sweating palms on the thighs of his trousers. "We should get out of here before something bigger comes back."

The girls nodded, and without further discussion, he took his bearings off the newly risen sun, and they set out, still alert for any sign of the creatures they had barely escaped the previous night, or anything else the forest might have lying in wait for them. For the first few minutes, they traveled in silence, picking their way through tangled bushes and stepping carefully over roots and fallen logs, but after the embattled clearing had fallen far enough behind that they had begun to relax a little, Ginny pulled up beside him, and he saw that the oddly cryptic look from earlier had returned to her face.

"Neville?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"There's something I need to tell you." There was such a tone of regret to her voice that he paused, turning to look at her more directly.

"Were you hurt?" His eyes scanned over the filthy, shredded remains of her uniform, but he could see no evidence of anything worse than the scratches that crossed all of their limbs from the headlong flight away from the pack.

"No." She shook her head, then resumed walking, using the obstacles to avoid his eyes. "But when we were in the office, Dumbledore wanted to talk to me."

He nodded. "I remember. I assumed it was about Harry or Ron."

"Sort of. He said - " She took a deep breath. "He said that I needed to understand and be prepared that Harry, and maybe even all three of them might not make it. That they had been given a task that would ensure You-Know-Who's defeat, but it was very dangerous, and there was no guarantee they could manage it alive, especially Harry."

Neville frowned, then spoke cautiously, not wanting to seem callus or uncaring. "But we already knew that, Ginny."

"Then he said," she went on as if he had said nothing, "that I needed to watch out for you in case Harry failed."

"Watch out for me?" he asked bemusedly.

"Neville, there were two of you." Ginny grabbed his arm, and he stopped, shocked by the intensity of her blazing look. "The prophecy ... Snape heard it, he told the Death Eaters all those years ago, and it was about both of you. You and Harry. You-Know-Who chose Harry, but that's why they went after your family, because he could just as easily chosen you."

Neville felt like he had been punched. His voice was dead. "They thought something about me ...."

She nodded, and now her eyes held only a deep, sorrowful sympathy. "You're the backup plan, Neville. It's why Dumbledore let you just flounder, so no one would suspect. If Harry fails, you're the only other one who can kill You-Know-Who, because Dumbledore said 'only to give one's self and soul can be a sacrifice as great and powerful as the gift of a life, and that gives him a strength and protection almost equal to Harry if he is willing to use it.'" Ginny swallowed hard, looking away now. "I didn't believe it. I'm sorry. I knew you had guts, but your magic's been pretty weak, honestly. I thought he was trying to make me feel better, you know, not feel like everything was riding on Harry and them. But last night ... I think it really might be true."

Slowly, Neville sank down to the damp leaves of the forest floor, his legs no longer able to support him. It was ridiculous, it was impossible, he was stretched to and beyond the absolute limits of anything he had ever imagined of himself just with the D.A.. If taking on Harry's role as a leader at Hogwarts was so nearly too much to bear up under, how was he possibly supposed to ... there was no way he could ... he shook his head, trying to banish the entire ridiculous concept. The very idea that he could have anything in common with Harry besides being a Gryffindor and the little coincidence of sharing a birthday ....

His mind was spinning. The protesting evidence of his entire life - almost a Squib, the school joke, the fiasco of broken wand, nose, and prophecy at the Ministry, twice being captured already in his attempts to lead the D.A., and how hard it was, and if he was supposed to be some great hero, shouldn't leadership come easily - pushed against other things; other, fainter voices from deeper places in his memory that had only surfaced in the blinding light among the screams of his parents he had never even known he remembered.

Where have you hidden the other one?!...Tell us what it is!...What does your brat have in common with the Potter creature that could possibly harm my Master?!...We know the prophecy, Longbottom, we know there were two ... we know there were two ... we know there were two ... we know there were two ....

Neville buried his face in his hands, feeling as though an impossible weight had just been laid across his shoulders. He was shaking, though he barely felt the morning chill. He wanted to argue that she was wrong, that Dumbledore was wrong, that it couldn't be true, but he knew better, even as he knew with equal certainty that the task would be too much; that if it came to him, he would let down not just his parents, his Gran, or his friends, but the entire wizarding world, maybe even the entire world at large. "I can't," he whispered.

Luna knelt on the ground in front of him, gently pulling his hands away from his face to meet his eyes with her serene, sky-blue gaze. "You can. You found what you're really capable of last night, the magic that's always been there, and it's still there. I can feel it. Don't push it away again." She reached down into her sock and pulled out a faded chocolate frog card, the wrinkled picture barely recognizable as the wizard Nigel Gamp. "I still have the last thing my mother gave me, even if it's silly. Don't throw away what your parents gave you."

"But, Luna, I'm scared." He made no effort to conceal the tremor in his voice. "Harry's not afraid of You-Know-Who. I am."

"Nonsense. Harry's terrified of him." Ginny tossed her tangled red hair. "He just knows what he has to do. The question isn't if you can, Neville. Dumbledore knows you can. The question is what you will do. Are you going to disband the D.A. and run off to hide somewhere, or are you going to keep fighting and be ready to take this as far as it has to go, whatever that means?"

He thought of Seamus, hot-tempered and steadfast. The trusting, innocent Creevey brothers. Parvati and Lavender, willing to throw aside boys and gossip for pain and danger. Ernie and Susan, putting their love and future on the line for a battle that could tear them apart. Hannah's gentle green eyes gleaming defiance under a black scarf. Runcorn risking everything to turn traitor on his own father to do what was right. Luna and Ginny, with him now after lying awake all night through a nightmare he had led them into. There was only one answer he could live with, and he nodded. "I'll do it, then."

Getting to his feet, Neville brushed the leaves from his knees, and stood, a wry smile on his lips. "But I'm going to be rooting for Harry like you wouldn't believe."

Ginny grinned back at him, but there was relief in her eyes. "That makes ... well, all of us, I think." With a quick squeeze of his shoulder, she set off again through the forest. "Now come on, I want my damned wand back!"

OOO

"... as you already know, which, although severe, we felt to be appropriate given the extreme nature of their infraction. However, it is with the deepest regret that I must inform you that someone did not feel the same way. Our gamekeeper believed that a month was too much, and last night, he abused the privilege of the keys which his position allowed him, and attempted to release Mr. Longbottom and his companions. They were last seen being taken by him into the Forbidden Forest, presumably to hide. However, they became separated ..." Snape's voice sounded clearly through the double doors into the entry hall as Neville pushed open the front doors of the castle.

He had wondered why no one had come to greet them, but now he saw a black swag of cloth hung over the Hogwarts banner, and the three of them exchanged a look as Snape's speech echoed into the chamber. Ginny's cheeks flushed. "He thinks we're dead, and he's trying to blame it on Hagrid!"

Even Luna seemed offended by the audacity of the former Potions Master. "I think that was the plan all along."

Neville felt a mischievous smile begin to spread slowly over his face, and he made a show of brushing off his sleeves, though the cloth hung in tatters and crackled with blood, dirt and sweat. "Then I think a correction is in order. Ladies first?"

Ginny gave a haughty sniff, her own brown eyes sparkling. "Mr. Longbottom, didn't your grandmother teach you a gentleman always opens the door?"

Taking a deep bow in reply, he led them to the doors of the Great Hall, then took a deep breath and seized the handles in both hands and pulled.

The colorful house hangings had been replaced with black, just as they had after Cedric's death, and Snape stood at the Staff Table, his mouth falling open in shock mid-sentence as the crash of the doors being flung open sounded through the Hall. Hagrid was standing next to him, his immense wrists shackled together by iron manacles as thick as anchor chains, a gag like a bedsheet wrapped around his mouth, and he had clearly been crying, the floor at his feet spattered with huge droplets, his eyes red and swollen. At Snape's sudden silence, he looked up, and his eyes lit with a pure and wonderful joy.

Every eye was on them. Neville had cringed under such attention before, but now it filled him with a vindictive thrill as he looked around, his gaze searching hungrily for the faces of those he had missed so much in the past weeks. They were there, they were all there, alive and well, if struck dumb with shock to see him standing in front of them after being told their leader was dead.

Then, at the Gryffindor table, a gangly, sandy-haired boy stood, and Seamus stepped out into the aisle as he drew his wand, raising it in front of him and then snapping it neatly to lay diagonally across his chest. "Gryffindors!" His voice rang out, crisply disciplined even as his eyes burned with elation, "Salute!"

There was a loud scraping of benches, and then every Gryffindor, from their fellow seventh-year D.A. members to the tiniest first-years who had no idea such a thing existed were on their feet. Wands came out of sleeves and pockets and from inside robes to join Seamus, but before they had even finished standing, Ernie Macmillan was on his feet, and Terry Boot at the Ravenclaw table, and within moments, all three houses were arrayed in a half-dozen lines as precise as a military parade in a show of honor and defiance that made Neville's breath catch in his throat.

Then another figure stood. For the first time since the doors had opened, all eyes turned away from Neville and his two companions. A stocky boy with a shock of chestnut hair was standing at the Slytherin table, his own wand raised in a salute that mirrored that of the other three houses as his fellows stared at him in a mixture of disbelieving shock and open horror. He did not flinch, but rather regarded them with open disdain. "My father is a Death Eater," he announced boldly, "and he has told me the Dark Lord values courage. I share those values, don't you?"

Silence met his words at first, then to Neville's amazement, Gregory Goyle stood, raising his own wand and crossing it over his barrel-like chest, his piggy little eyes fixed on Neville. "I don' like you none," he announced in a voice that was surprisingly soft for such a massive youth. "But Professor Snape says there's werewolves and all sorts of monsters out there, and I reckon if you faced 'em wandless, that's sumthin.'"

Slowly, reluctantly, Slytherins began to stand, first in twos and threes, and then more, until the entire table was on their feet and had joined the salute. Neville was speechless, but beside him, he heard Luna's almost inaudible murmur. "... for our Hogwarts is in danger from external deadly foes, and we must unite against them, or we'll crumble from within ...."

Filled with a new sense of hope and purpose, Neville drew back his shoulders and raised his chin as he stared up the aisle at Snape, who stood quivering in silent rage at the sight of his entire school united to honor the three students he had thought disposed of for good. He held out one hand towards the Headmaster, his voice ringing clear and strong through the Great Hall. "We had a deal. I want my wand back."