A Great Deal of Courage

A week after the incident in Dark Arts, Professor McGonagall calls Neville into her office shortly before dinner.

"Longbottom," she says, with characteristic briskness. "Have a seat."

Neville does so, wary--it's habit to expect bad news, these days.

McGonagall doesn't disappoint him. "I'm sorry to have to inform you that there's been an incident involving your grandmother. She's all right, as far as I know," she continues before Neville can say anything, "but she's evaded an attempted arrest and is believed to be on the run, or in hiding."

Neville nods, relaxing. "Gran's good at taking care of herself. She always said You-Know-Who being gone all those years was no excuse to get soft."

McGonagall gives a tiny, wry smile. "I should say so. Both of the Aurors sent to arrest her have been hospitalized."

Neville can't help but smile as well, but his fades quickly as he realizes, "Them going after her--was it anything to do with me? Like they took Luna to shut her dad up?"

McGonagall nods. "I'm afraid so." She leans forward, lowering her voice. "And I'd say you're in more danger than she is, now, Longbottom. The Carrows don't care anymore who overhears them talking, and what I've been hearing lately is that if they can't shut you up one way, it may be time they try another."

Neville swallows hard. "What--what do you think I should do, Professor?"

"Be somewhere other than Gryffindor Tower when they come looking for you," she says simply. "Which I'm afraid will likely be soon."

"I can't leave Hogwarts," Neville protests. "I can't go home, now, and I don't know where Gran is, and...I just can't, Professor."

If he leaves, Snape and the Carrows win.

Of course, if they kill him or send him to Azkaban, they sort of win then, too.

McGonagall eyes him over the rims of her glasses. "In that case, Longbottom, it seems to me that what you require is a very good hiding place."

Neville's eyebrows go up as he realizes what she means, but McGonagall holds up a hand.

"The less I know about your movements from this point on, the better." She stands, reaching into a pocket of her robes, and hands him a folded sheet of parchment. "Augusta managed to get this to me."

Neville tucks the letter securely into his own robes, hesitates briefly, and then holds out a hand. "Thank you, Professor."

McGonagall shakes his hand, quick and firm. "Good luck, Longbottom."

---

Everyone's at dinner when Neville gets back to the dormitory, which means he can throw what he needs into his book bag and get out without having to stop for any questions. He can get word to the people who need to know later.

He walks through the halls at a steady pace, doing his best not to look like he's running, and makes it to the corridor where the Room of Requirement is without anyone stopping him. He's almost to the right spot, and already thinking I need a place I can stay for a while without them finding me, when Crabbe and Goyle round the corner.

"Oy!" Goyle shouts, and they both break into a run. "Get 'im!"

Now, Neville thinks urgently, Now, please, and don't let them get in after me, and he dives into the room and hears Goyle smack into the solid wall a moment later. He leans against the wall panting while they try one spell after another and shout that he might as well come out, he can't hide in there forever.

"We'll see about that," Neville mutters, and thinks Looks like I'm going to need to stay here a while.

---

"Suppose we can't ever get you out of there, Longbottom," Amycus Carrow calls from outside. "What good'll it do you to stay holed up? Wouldn't you rather go down fighting, like a true Gryffindor?"

Neville leans his head back, looking up at the scarlet and gold hangings the Room has given him, and says nothing.

"It'd be a better death than a lot of your side are getting, that's for sure," Amycus continues. There's a calculating pause, followed by, "Your friends are all dead, you know. We killed 'em. And a lot of 'em didn't go easy, especially the pretty redhead and the loony blonde."

Neville's hands clench into fists automatically, and he forces them to relax. He can check on Ginny and Luna with the coins. He has no reason to believe anything Carrow says.

"Best you could do for yourself now is come out before I get too angry, and maybe you'll have an easier time of it," Carrow says, and Neville lowers his forehead onto his raised knees and asks if the Room can't block his voice out or something.

"You're my favorite room ever," he says softly when it does, resting a hand on the smooth stone of the floor. "Don't know what I'd do without you."

His stomach growls, reminding him again that there's one thing the Room can't do for him. Well, more than one--it can't give him food, and it can't do anything about the fact that he's trapped, and that as lovely a room as it is, it can't do anything about the fact that Neville's world has shrunk to four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and...a door?

"...That door wasn't there before," Neville informs the Room, which presumably knows. He eyes it for a moment, and, when it continues to be there, gets to his feet and opens it, cautiously, just a crack--

Early on, Neville did his best to keep his head down and his mouth shut in class with the Carrows. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to stand up to them from the start, but he hadn't had any doubts about who'd win if he did.

He'd made it to mid-October before the first time he spoke up and got a week's detention for his troubles. The detentions he started earning on a regular basis in both classes got longer and more unpleasant until late November, which was the first time Amycus Carrow had foregone detention in favor of simply sending Neville into the nearest wall with a curse and telling him to shut his mouth.

Neville had, and then opened it again two days later.

He's been on the verge of giving it up a hundred times, convinced that he's not doing any good by it, just making trouble for himself. But then someone else will thank him for having the courage to say what they were thinking, and he knows better, knows his defiance does some good, even if only a little. Or one of the Carrows will say something else about Muggles or half-breeds or "animals" (a catch-all that includes, on any given day, house elves, werewolves, goblins, and, in fact, Muggles and half-breeds), and the question of whether he's doing any good or not goes out the window as Neville becomes unable to focus on anything but how furious he is.

The first major clash in Dark Arts (Neville's not sure when they officially dropped the "Defense Against", considering that the students had dropped it amongst themselves much earlier) since the Easter holidays ended happens on a gray, wet Tuesday, just after lunch. As usual, the class falls silent when the door opens, but it's not Amycus who walks in--at least, not at first. Three students trudge in--Anthony Goldstein, Jimmy Peakes, and a Hufflepuff girl Neville only knows by sight. Anthony and Jimmy both have detentions this week, Neville knows, but he's never heard of a detention being served in a class before.

"Time you brats made yourselves useful," Amycus sneers when he enters the room behind the three students. "You've learned about the Cruciatus curse, haven't you?"

The line of Neville's shoulders tightens reflexively as a ripple of whispers and murmurs goes through the room. No one answers until Carrow barks, "Well?", to which a few students give tentative nods.

"Let's see which of you can cast it, then." Amycus ignores the gasps and shocked looks this receives, pointing at the three students standing at the front of the room. "I've even found three volunteers for you lot to practice on."

Neville swallows hard, his throat suddenly dust-dry. His heart's pounding in his ears like it has before every battle he's been in.

"Who wants to go first, then?" No one raises their hand--even the Slytherins in the class can't quite seem to believe what's being asked of them, yet. Carrow casts his eyes around the room for a moment--and then locks onto Neville, with a cruel smirk.

He knows, Neville thinks. Of course he does, it's not like the ones who did it would've made any secret of it.

"Longbottom."

Neville has to swallow again before he can speak, but when he does, he doesn't falter. "I'm afraid I can't do that. Sir."

There's nothing the least bit respectful in the 'sir', and Amycus advances on him, twirling his wand idly in one hand.

"Did you think I was asking, Longbottom?"

Neville's hands clench into fists on his desk, palms slick with cold sweat.

"No, sir," he says. "But it doesn't matter. I'm not doing it."

Carrow raises one eyebrow, more amused than angry. "No?"

"No," Neville replies.

"Well. We'll see about that, won't we?" The Death Eater gives a cold, sharp smile, and points his wand. "Imperio!"

Even with DA practice, Neville's never been the best at resisting the Imperius curse. He's come to accept that he's just not as strong-willed as some of his friends.

Maybe, he thinks now as he digs his nails into his palms and steels himself, he just needed sufficient reason to resist.

"No," he spits, rising to his feet. "I won't do it and you can't make me."

Amycus calls off the curse with a flick of his wand, looking less than pleased now. I've surprised him, Neville thinks, oddly detached. Professor Lupin would be proud.

"Maybe we should add you to our row of targets, then, Longbottom," Amycus is saying, and it's Neville's turn to sneer.

"Go ahead," he returns, over the part of him that wants to do anything, anything to avoid feeling the Cruciatus Curse again. "It takes a lot to break a Longbottom, but if you think you're up to it, sir--"

He's cut off by a flash of pain, and for a moment of blank panic he thinks it is the Cruciatus--but no, he's sprawled on the floor and his cheek is bleeding, and this is pain he can take.

"You're disrupting my class, Longbottom," Carrow snarls, standing over him. "I'd make you hurt more than that for it, but you're not worth wasting more time on. Or maybe I just don't feel like letting you get blood all over my classroom floor. Hospital. Now."

Neville staggers to his feet, one hand pressed to his cheek, and makes it out of the classroom before his knees give out. He collapses against the wall for a moment, breathing hard, and then forces himself back into motion. If Amycus does get anyone to perform the curse, Neville doesn't think he can handle being there when the screams start.

I can't take this for much longer, he thinks as he stumbles down the corridor. What he told Carrow was true--Longbottoms don't break easily.

But if you push them hard or long enough, they break just as hard as anyone.

Neville wakes up a few days after Easter to find Ginny's Patronus sitting on his windowsill. It speaks ten words, and then vanishes.

"Family in hiding. Not going back to Hogwarts. I'm sorry."

Gran, when he tells her about Ginny, suggests for the first time that it might be better if Neville didn't go back, either. She'd never have dreamed of advocating such a retreat earlier in the year--at Christmas, she'd simply told him to stay strong and make his parents proud--but that was before Neville came home with still-healing gashes on his face.

Now Gran's a bit more open to the idea of retreating. It's Neville who nixes the idea immediately. If Ginny's not going back, it makes it even more important that he does.

---

He calls a meeting on the first day back, after checking as well as he can to make sure the fake Galleons haven't been compromised.

Just like after Christmas, not everyone who was still coming before the holiday shows up. Some have left school, like Ginny, but there are some Neville saw in the halls today, and doesn't see in the Room of Requirement now. At least now he knows why they were avoiding eye contact with him.

"Where's Ginny?" Seamus asks, looking around. He's already got a fresh black eye forming.

Neville takes a deep breath, then says, "Ginny's not coming back. She's all right, but the Weasleys are all going into hiding."

The news is greeted by a flood of questions, mostly having to do with why, and if it has anything to do with Ron and therefore (everyone assumes) Harry. Neville raises his hands and protests that he doesn't know any more than he's already told them, and eventually the noise dies down.

When it's quiet enough for individual voices to be heard again, Padma asks, "So what do we do now?"

Neville's first impulse is to shrug, but before he can, Seamus chimes in with, "Yeah, what's the plan now, Neville?"

"--Er," Neville says uncertainly, realizing that everyone in the room is looking at him. "Am I supposed to have a plan?"

Everyone stares at him for a moment before Parvati says, "Well, you are in charge now Ginny's gone, aren't you?"

Neville can actually feel the blood draining out of his face. "I am?"

There's obviously been some sort of mix-up, or he heard Parvati wrong, because Neville doesn't do being in charge of things.

"Aren't you?" Ernie Macmillan asks, nonplussed. "Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all gone, and so's Ginny, now--most of us always figured you were next in the chain of command."

"...We have a chain of command?" Neville asks weakly.

Everyone stares at him some more.

"Well if Neville's not in charge, who is?" Terry Boot asks eventually.

"Maybe we should vote on it?" Zacharias Smith suggests, to which Colin Creevy pipes up, "If we have a vote, I'm voting for Neville!", which is greeted by another wave of noise, this one sounding an awful lot like a chorus of agreement.

Neville is just sort of standing there, working on breathing, so Seamus eventually raises his hands and gestures for quiet.

"Sounds like you've got mostly everyone's vote, Neville," he says. "How about it?"

Neville should really say something, eventually.

"But...why would you want me to lead?" he finally manages.

Parvati rolls her eyes. "Maybe because you're the only one still at school who was at the Department of Mysteries two years ago?"

"And one of the ones who pushed hardest to start the DA up again?" Michael Corner contributes. "We all know how important it is to you--why wouldn't we want you for a leader?"

Because I'm clumsy, Neville almost starts to say, except that he spent all of last summer practicing to overcome that. Because I'm forgetful, is next, but he's never forgotten anything he needed to know for the DA--it's too important for that. After that, the most immediate objection that comes to mind is that he's not Harry, or Ron, or Hermione. He's not Ginny, who he's always thought of as braver than him, or Luna, who he knows is smarter.

But none of them are here anymore. There's just Neville.

"All right," he says eventually. "I'll--I'll do my best."

"'Course you will," Seamus says, like that's a given.

Neville spends a lot of time on his own in the summer. There are other wizarding families who live close by, but few people near his own age, and of those, even fewer he's really friends with. He's spent most of this summer so far practicing in back of the house; it's a bit lonely doing so alone, but on the other hand, it means he doesn't feel foolish when he runs and dodges, dueling make-believe enemies, working on his form without actually casting anything while waiting for his birthday.

He spends the rest of the day in his room after he returns from Milliways, staring at the ceiling as he lies on his bed, trying to keep his eyes from constantly straying to the picture of his parents on the nightstand. He barely speaks at dinner, but thankfully, his gran doesn't ask any questions--these are solemn days, and he's never been the chattiest boy.

After a sleepless night and a quick breakfast, he's out back again, setting up the wooden targets he made the first week home. The bar gave him a lot to think about, and not all of it's bad, but he needs to deal with the bad first. It won't be easy to stop thinking of how sincere Rabastan Lestrange seemed to be, and what it means if he was telling the truth, and, even if he was, whether or not Neville can afford to believe it. But what he can do, for now, is channel the fear and anger into adrenaline and get them out of his system.

Puzzling through everything on his mind is going to be the hard part. This, letting his mind narrow to here and now while he practices for a fight, is easier to do than he ever thought it would be.