greenlion (greenlion) wrote in attheclose, @ 2011-02-17 20:52:00 |
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Who: Dumbledore's Army
What: Late night meeting!
When: Thursday, 17 February
Where: Hogwarts, RoR
Rating: TBD
Though he realized he was putting every DA member at risk by assembling them on such short notice, Neville hadn’t been able to wait for a more opportune moment. It was a necessary risk.
When everyone had assembled, and he’d given Ginny a knowing look that, he hoped, suggested he wanted to take the lead on this one, he shuffled to the head of the Room of Requirement and started to speak.
"It’s been awhile since we’ve been together, at least all of us, and it’s about time."
"I know things are bad out there, and now is the time when we really need to be there for each other, and for the kids that don’t know we’re here yet, especially... the kids that are just scared and don’t know what to do. We know that we’re not alone. They don’t."
Neville paused, a light color rising to his cheeks as he thought about what he wanted to say, needed to say, despite the fact that he knew everyone wasn’t going to like it. He forged ahead before he could second guess himself and never say anything at all.
"So, I guess what I want to say is that it’s not the time to hand ourselves over to the Carrows and Snape. They know some of us have been involved in the DA in the past and they know we don’t like them, but giving them reasons to shut us down in class and lock us up in detention is just keeping us from doing the work we really need to be doing. You can’t help anyone now if they’ve got you in detention, and you won’t be able to help anyone later if they know who's causing trouble. They’re Death Eaters. The time’s going to come when You-Know-Who tells them we’re not worth the extra trouble, and then it’s not going to be scrubbing cauldrons and cleaning Droobles off from underneath the desks. And when that time comes… we fight back. We fight back and we make them pay for every one of us they’ve hurt."
Neville’s voice faltered not because he was frightened, but because he was thinking of his mother, her soft hair gathered back in a plait by one of the St. Mungo’s orderlies. Once when he was very small, before he came to Hogwarts, she’d had a fit and torn it free, tore out a whole chunk of hair shocked prematurely gray and thrown it at him. The orderly had ushered him out of the ward and explained that this happened, that it was perfectly natural for permanently spell-damaged patients, particularly those who had suffered prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse, to act out in this fashion.
His face hardened, and his voice took on a quality he imagined, in some deep part of him, was more like his father than it was like him.
"But it’s not the time. We hand ourselves over to them now we hand ourselves over to them forever. I can’t, we can’t, do this without each and every one of you. I’m not asking you to do what I want you to do; I’m telling you that we’re all in this together and when we fight, we fight together. When that time comes, you won’t be alone."