The Lost and Found

The Hogwarts Express left the station without Harry Potter for the second time in six years, and it left without Ron and Ginny Weasley, without Luna Lovegood, without Hermione Granger, and without Neville Longbottom. In short, those six who had brought down the Dark Lord's finest in the depths of the Ministry of Magic were forbidden to step on the train, and were instead met by five Aurors on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

"You're coming with us, children," explained Mad-Eye Moody, torn lips hardly moving as he growled their orders. "We've had warning that the Express isn't safe. Too hard to secure. Floo network's unstable, brooms too risky. Leave all your luggage here " Neville put his new wand down. "Don't be a fool, boy. Wand's a part of your body. Never relinquish it. Now, come on. We're moving through our Underground."

There was a long spiral staircase that bore deep in to the ground. Moody's hobnailed boots clacked a staccato on the stone. "How long is it?" whispered Harry, after their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. There was no reply, but for the heavy breathing of eleven people, wands at the ready. "Can't tell you, Harry", replied someone. Harry thought it might be Tonks. There was a silence.

A dreamy voice broke the calm of the passage. "You can find Common-or-Garden Heffalumps this far underground".

"Silence." That was Moody again. The floor levelled out. Neville stumbling a little. A grating sound came from up ahead, and a little spark of flame shot up before a boiler furnace burst in to life, spitting sparks and steam and heat, illuminating the little chamber with tongues of red and orange.

"Here we are, kids," spoke Tonks, wand at the ready. "Auror-restricted Floo network. It's the only one in London, there's another at Hogwarts. Just throw in the Floo Powder and dive in to the furnace. Devries will go first to check it's safe, then Ginny, then Harry, the rest of the Aurors, bar the rearguard, of course, and then we'll send the rest through. We've got ten sec-"

"Wait." Neville could see Moody sniff the air, the flames shadowing the jagged grooves in his face. "I can hear people. Wands at the ready."

"Who is it?"

"The rock's too thick for a better look. Devries, go. Constant vigilance, people!"
A short Auror threw in a handful of dust, spoke out "Hogwarts" and stepped in to the blaze. Children and Aurors followed him, before a sudden hammering on the door sounded up, rents in the wood appearing on their side of the door. Only Neville and Moody are left, and Neville stammered the words, and dropped the powder bag, and the next moment all he could feel was pain.

* * *

The first thing Neville notices when he comes round from unconsciousness is that the floor was very cold. The next thing he notices is that he is naked, and the third thing he notices is that this is also true of Moody, who is crouched over a pile of sticks and dolls, looking nothing more like a bizarre shaman trapped in a rubbish heap. His neck aches painfully, and when he touches a hand to it he almost swears with the pain, fingers wet with blood. Neville can hear the rumble of trains and a sudden splash of liquid falling, as Moody urinates in a wide circle over the back of the door. Tall shelves remind him of the Prophecy Room, but the prophecies here are broken and lost things, teddy bears, umbrellas, books piled high, and briefcases in various states of decay.

"Where are we?"
His voice is little more than a croak. Moody shakes himself dry, droplets of piss spattering the floor, and he hobbles back over, crouching down by Neville without a trace of shame or self-consciousness, a scarred Adam in a hand-me-down Eden.
"Lost and Found. You were attacked, lad. The others made it through, you and I didn't."

Memories of corridors and sewage-filled caverns flicker darkly in the boy's mind. "Who attacked me? Were they Death Eaters?"

Moody chuckles hollowly. "Not who, a what. A vampire." He taps the wound on Neville's neck softly. Pain flares up again, and Neville winces, the pain shooting through his skull and his shoulder. A flicker of concern touches Moody's features, before settling back in to the hewn monolith of his normal self.

"It attacked you before we realised it was on you. I'm... I'm sorry, Neville." It's hard to apologise. In the field, apologies are useless and unexpected. "Piss and hoodoo'll keep it as far off as it takes for you to recover, but we've only got until midnight."

Old fairytales his Gran would tell come back to him. "Slippers to clogs and pumpkins... Will I live?"

Moody ignores the question. "Your Gran's a wise old lass. Now, if we bind the wound, you'll breathe easier."

The bandages help a little, replacing pain with tightness, though his breathing still comes in ragged gasps. The moment he can talk again, though, he asks the question again. Moody looks at him, and sighs It wasn't right to lie to a boy, not when the boy was the son of a colleague, of friends, his godson even, and he shakes his head slowly.

"Their bites will turn you in to them like Doxy poison turns flesh to pus and rot. Neville, lad, it bit too deep for me to just cauterise the wound and suck the spittle out. Two ways to stop it, to push back the balance of human to beast, and you won't like either. I could become a relative, in as much as the world will let me, and give you as much blood as it would take for you to drive the poison out. But your father lives, and the old magic won't have you renounce me for him."
Neville shakes his head a little, as much as the pain will allow. "I wouldn't anyway. The other?"

"You'd be my lover, boy, and become one with me, like the Hebrews believe, but like I said, you'll not like it."

Moody's nudity is almost oppressive, scarred and hunched and hot with power and tension. Neville's heart pounds quickly, fear and apprehension mixed with... well, he couldn't deny he'd looked on the old imposter's kindness with something close to hope, but that was the romanticised daydreams of a quiet boy. Down here with the smell of warm urine, sweat and blood wasn't how he'd imagined it with girl nor with man.

But that would be beyond him entirely, if he let his blood drip away. "Can't you apparate me away from here?" He knows they won't be able to before Moody even replies, but he asks all the same. It's a way of putting off the inevitable; he's spent too long in the waiting rooms of St Mungo's to ever want to lose his sanity and body, without even the solace of visitors that his parents have.

"Do it, then."

Moody makes a nest of clothes and soft toys in the central aisle of the lost-and-found. His black-button-eye watches Neville carefully, perhaps for fear or pain, whilst his bright blue eye revolves, perpetually on guard. Neville realises that in Moody's world, everybody is as naked as the day they were born, and as untrustworthy and treacherous as could ever be. He crawls on hands and knees to the ragged marriage bed, in the bowels of London, lies down with legs apart and cock barely aroused. He wonders if he'll faint if he finds too much excitement in this, whether the rush of blood to his privates will knock him out cold once again.

The man is hard already, gnarled member in a hand as grizzled and worn as his torso, like a jungle cat torn by thorns and the defences of his prey. There are no lubricants, there's no time for that. This is business first and pleasure for later, the consummation of something desperate to stop new life from coming to bear. Abortion through sex, perhaps, or the violence of passion against the darkness. It'll hurt. They both know that.

Neville leans back on his elbows, head ensconced between a stuffed elephant and a blue dress, neck and privates throbbing. It's as if all his body is blood, pounding and shifting, the main arteries like tendrils, pushed apart at the legs and reaching up to pull Moody down- his teacher- his guardian- not his lover- and he stops, Moody now on his hands and knees, wooden peg-leg tap-tap-tapping messages through the floor.

"Must I love you, sir?"

Moody shakes his head, tendrils of greying hair falling like a curtain around the troubled theatre of his face. "It's old magic, deep magic. The Israelites had a rapist marry his victim, all because the physicality of joining two bodies in one is so powerful. You don't have to love me, lad, and I won't love you as anything more than a godson, if that's all you want."

And Neville pulls his buttocks apart anyway, slick with sweat, and it hurts when Moody enters him, as if the vampire had ended the obscene kiss to his neck and turned to his fundament, which amuses Neville for a moment, addled by blood-loss and tiredness, before the pain starts up again, Moody bearing his weight against him.

He's fully imbedded himself in the nightsoil, thinks Neville, who turns pain in to gardening puns, but he can't help but scream a little under his breath at the friction, and edge away a little. Moody takes it as an invitation to begin pushing in and out, and Neville groans with the curious sensation of being buggered by a man three times his age, and none the less virile for it. The tendrils of veins pound faster, and Moody pauses for a moment, a wordless check of Neville's consciousness, and Neville grins back weakly. He realises that he's not horrified by this, and for a few seconds the reason for doing this, the fight of sex and life against death and decomposition of his elemental self, leaves him and he rides a wave of lightness, until he realises with a start that he's felt this before, that this taking of his memory and his will is little more than Obliviation.

Even so, he submits. He submits because has to, and because he wants to, and Moody, who has kept himself hard inside Neville with slow friction and the sheer knife edge blessing of innocence and desperation. This touches the boundaries of sex and magic, buried in lost possessions, each of them broken in their own personal way. And each of them finds himself here, as Moody takes Neville and Neville digs his heels hard against the clothing on the floor, slipping and pulling against Moody, trust and longing and healing all binding as Moody loses himself, muttering spells of love and sex, and comes, as softly and gently as he can. Neville can feel it in him like blood, like the waters of memory, and for a single, perfect moment they're as one, not a pair of people fucking, not a teacher and his student, not a man and his godson, not two, but one, joined, perfect, and Neville aches and Moody aches with him, lost limbs feeling as if they might be there once more, as if he had two good eyes again and his flesh was whole.

And then they are two again, and Moody pulls out as fast as Neville's arse will allow, wipes filth and fluids over a pretty pink top, lack of trust and constant vigilance back in his mind once more. The urine is stale and rank by the door, and Moody pulls his clothes on, and buckles up the straps and the buttons that hold him in. Neville's clothes are dishevelled, sticky with blood, and he picks out a new raiment from the pile of clothes, a phoenix clothed in the nest of his new creation. They're Muggle clothes, but he feels more at home in them than the robes his grandmother buys for him.

Moody checks the door again, wipes the circle of piss and magic from it, and kicks the door open, Auror instincts back again. The corridor is empty.

"The vampire will have gone to hunt the surface now. We'd best go, lad. Dumbledore'll be wondering where we are." Moody can imagine Dumbledore pacing the underground, stopping now and then to tie his shoelaces and surreptitiously glance at the scar on his knee.

They make their way to the surface carefully.

* * *

When they arrived at Hogwarts, Neville wondered whether it would be the same now. In his heart, he knew he would be sorry to see Moody go. Something joined them, old magic, and he owed him a debt of his life, and more. Moody came to visit him in the infirmary in the middle of the morning. He looked a little vulnerable in his dressing gown, and he spoke softly, nervously, as if this was something new. Neville tried to thank him, but Moody brushed the words away as he kneels down by Neville's head.

"Don't thank me. It was what had to be done. I don't expect you to give me a second thought. But, well, I'm heading up the security force here at Hogwarts, the best job an ex-Auror could hope for, really."
Neville grinned as much as he could bear.
"So you'll be here all year?"
"Now, don't get ideas in to your head. Entirely inappropriate, lad."
He kissed him all the same.