Day 17 - Surviving Seventh Year
Day: 17 – Friday, 17th July Title: Surviving Seventh Year Author: tetsubinatu Rating: R – nothing explicit but the subject is not for children. Pairing(s): Neville/Alecto Carrow Summary: Neville is singled out by a teacher. Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction set in the Harry Potter universe created by J. K. Rowling . No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work Warning(s): Non-explicit references to non-con/dub-con Word Count: 1100 Author's Notes: I have imagined at least a dozen different pairings and scenarios for this post, but this is the one I wrote. Please do inform me of spelling mistakes and misplaced commas. I am comma-impaired. Any eccentricities of my grammar, however, are by design.
I can't post this conveniently during the day tomorrow, but it is past midnight on the 17th here, and day 16's post is up, so I guess I can legitimately post it now.
Neville faces his friends defiantly. How can they say such things about the woman he loves? They are united against him, but a wise man once told him that it took a great deal of courage to stand up against one's friends, and he knows he has that courage.
“I understand why you dislike her,” he says reasonably, “But you have to understand that I love her for who she is. She's done bad things, but inside she is sweet and loving. She was led into evil ways by her parents and her brother, but I can help her. I can! You'll see.”
“Can we just go over the facts again, please Neville?” pleads Susan. “Pretend we are talking about someone else if you like. Yes – pretend it is about me: I'm the one who has fallen in love with a Death Eater...”
“She isn't really a Death Eater..” Neville interrupts.
“Well anyway,” Susan continues. “Here it is. When Snape became Headmaster let's say a person – a person who appears to be a Death Eater...”
Neville frowns but allows the characterisation to pass.
“This person becomes a teacher. She.. Er, he takes particular note of me, because I am one of the few remaining Gryffindor seventh-years. I come away from every detention bruised and unable to speak about it. Should my friends worry?”
Neville opens his mouth and closes it again. He does remember that happening. He hunches his shoulders and shrugs. Susan nods as if she has proved her point and continues.
“One day I come back from my detention glowing and declaring my love for the teacher. My friends find out that this day the teacher gave me tea and chocolate digestives at detention. I am full of praise for his consideration but...”
Susan gazes sternly at Neville.
“The bruises don't stop. The teacher gives exactly the same amount of detentions, but as well as being bruised I come out of detention looking rumpled and flushed. The teacher is observed to pat my bottom at least once in an empty corridor. I tell my friends I love him.
“What would you conclude?”
Neville is not stupid, even if he is in love. He whispers something, and then takes a deep breath and says it out loud.
“The teacher gave you a love potion.”
Susan nods. “That's what we think, too.” His friends look pityingly at him and he wishes they would just all... go away.
“Will you take the antidote, Neville?”
He nods. If it isn't true, it won't do him any harm.
The contents of the vial taste vile. He struggles against the nausea, sweating and tensing every muscle until it is finally over. His mind might have accepted that he needed to take it, but until his mouth is recoiling from the taste and the fog of love begins to lift he hadn't believed, on some level, that it could be true. The realisation sweeps over him.
She raped him. Love potions count as rape in this context, surely? He feels defiled on so many levels.
“Could you please leave me alone now?” he manages to say with reasonable courtesy. They mean well. They have saved him. He wants to batter their heads in for depriving him of what he had thought he had. He doesn't look up until he hears them clattering out of the room, leaving him alone in the dormitory.
Harry's bed is gone. Dean's bed is gone. Ron's bed is disused – he is supposed to be coming back whenever he gets over his spattergroit, but Neville knows that he will be wherever Harry and Hermione are.
Seamus' bed is there, but he sleeps in the Hufflepuff dorm with his girlfriend most nights. The Hufflepuffs let boys into the girls' dorms. The room which was always cosy when five boys slept and laughed and fought in it seems huge and Neville is tired of being brave. He pulls the curtains closed and curls up in his bed, wishing that he could cry.
The long night passes as Neville thinks. He could run away. He could ask to be removed from school. He could take his straight-edged razor to the bathroom. He considers all these options seriously.
Yesterday he showed a firstie how to tickle the pear and get food because he was too scared to go to the Great Hall for meals. He had warned the child not to let people know what he was doing, but he couldn't let the boy starve, could he?
If he stays he will have to face Her, knowing what she did to him. Her brother surely knows too. Does Snape know? Anger begins to rise through the shame. Headmaster Snape has been quite reasonable in his punishments. Oddly, Neville can see this year that he is fundamentally a teacher. Neville has always thought of him as a bad teacher, but compared to this year's new arrivals... well, Snape follows the rules. Sort of. Vindictive, mean-spirited, spiteful as ever - but he has limits that the other Death Eaters don't. Or does he? Could he condone the molestation of a student by a teacher?
Neville thinks, on balance, that he wouldn't approve, although whether he would do anything about it is another matter. Snape has many faults, but no-one has ever accused him of that sort of inappropriate behaviour. And he would probably disapprove of the misuse of his beloved potions too. The thought is steadying. Bizarre that Snape's unchanged misanthropy should be a stable resting place for his racing thoughts, but it is true.
Dawn is beginning to light the room and Neville's throat is still thick with the taste of horror and rage, but he rises from his bed and goes to the showers. In the drenching spray, hot as he can make it, he is finally able to cry, sprawled heedlessly over the tiles, sobbing into their slick ceramic indifference.
By first bell he is able to dress himself and take himself to breakfast in the Great Hall. He chews his toast stolidly and one by one his friends seat themselves around him. He nods gravely to them and concentrates on his toast. When second bell rings he stiffens his spine and goes to class. Ernie and Susan walk beside him. He is not alone.