WHO: Hannah Abbott and Neville Longbottom WHEN: After lunch, Friday September 20th WHERE: Room of Requirement SUMMARY: Training and a pep talk RATING: PG STATUS: Completed Log
Hannah had a lot on her mind as she made her way to the Room of Requirement. She made the requisite pacing back and forth, feeling as though she could keep going on pacing for a lot longer. But practicing dueling with Neville seemed as though it might do her more good than pacing, so she walked in.
So far no one had asked her about the lack of the badge--Perhaps they thought she'd just forgotten to put it on. She wasn't sure what she wanted: someone to ask, or the whole of the school not notice yet. Hannah knew that she didn't need to make a fuss about it. After all, it was bound to get out sooner or later. People would ask her questions and she would give them answers.
But her robes felt too light. And she was more scared than she'd ever admit.
"Hi, Neville," she said as she closed the door behind her. "Thanks for helping me out."
Neville had heard the steady beat of Hannah's footsteps outside the Room's door and for a panicked moment, wondered if the DA had already been found out so soon into the year. When the door finally opened and Hannah appeared, he relaxed and gave her an easy smile. He'd noticed Hannah's missing badge earlier in Muggle Studies and his eyes again briefly found the place it would've been if she'd been wearing it, but he looked back up at her, smile unmoved. If she wanted to talk about it, she would, but he was already assuming it had been taken from her after all.
"Hey, Hannah," he said. "It's my pleasure. Did you want to do some proper duelling or did you maybe want to work on deflecting some spells? I asked for some cushions --" He jerked his thumb in the direction of a stack off to the side. "-- just in case, but we can do either."
"Maybe we should work on my reflexes first," Hannah said. She could feel his eyes where her badge was and her hand automatically went to touch it. Hannah thought about telling Neville about it, but decided that that could wait at least until they had finished their practice. Even though she was glad she had made her decision, she was really nervous about what the rest of the DA would say. She hadn't asked their opinion before she'd done what she had.
Maybe she should have.
"We can duel another time," she said softly. "But right now I'll be satisfied if I can do a perfect shield charm."
"You will!" He gave her an encouraging grin and walked over to the stack of cushions, laying them out for Hannah to fall on. "Just in case," he said. He had noticed her hand move to where her badge should've been, but again he remained quiet.
"Thanks," she said with a smile, leaning over to help him set them out. "So, what spell are you going to hit me with?" She practiced falling into the cushions with a weak laugh. "Yeah, all right, that's going to be perfect," she said. "Not that I plan on having to fall back. But it's always good to have a failsafe."
For good measure she cast a quick one, hoping that she wasn't too distracted for the lesson. She needed to put her problems aside for this. She needed to learn how to focus on what really mattered in the moment.
"Nothing I can't reverse," he said, trying to sound mysterious. He laughed a second later, though. Part of Neville really did want to go easy on her, even though she'd asked him not to. He'd been in her shoes more times than he could count and he knew how frustrating it felt to feel too slow to defend himself. He knew what a struggle it was to get better, too. But he had faith in Hannah. And she'd asked him not to go easy on her.
He waited until she was situated in front of the cushions and in quick succession, aimed an impediment jinx and a stunner at her.
She laughed with him and readied herself. But she was rusty after such a long time since Dumbledore's Army training. She wasn't ready for the second spell and fell back against the cushions with an oof. Hannah lay there for a second feeling stupid. She closed her eyes and got up, her nerves on end from the stunner but refusing to look as though it had made any impact on her.
"All right!" She said. "I gave you that one. I was going easy on you," she joked. "Your pride, you know." This time she readied herself more. She was determined to not let another one in.
Neville grinned. "That's generous of you," he said. He waited again, until she looked ready. This time he aimed three spells at her. The first two were the same and, though he staggered them and left her a bit more time to react, he followed them with a non-verbal petrificus totalus.
She got her shield charm up in time for the first two, and was just about to look proud of herself when she got hit with the petrificus totalus. She was seized with momentary panic as soon as she realized what the spell was. She was reminded of when Crabbe had done it to her. And while she knew that Neville would never give her a rough kick to the side, the lingering bruise reminded her of her terror the weekend before. As soon as he lifted it off her she climbed up, holding tight onto his hand as he helped her stand, really glad they had gone with the cushions.
"Okay," she said. "Let's try this again."
He immediately felt bad for the body bind and he could see once he lifted it that it hadn't been pleasant for her, but he was impressed that she was back to business once she was on her feet. He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and stepped back to where he'd been standing before, back to business himself. And he didn't go easy on her. The groups of spells were always varied, both in timing and number, and by the end of the hour he'd stopped verbalizing his incantations altogether, challenging himself as well as her. He collapsed on the cushions next to her, more than a little out of breath, and lolled his head in her direction.
"You're doing really well," he said quietly.
She turned her head to look at him with a weak smile that grew a little. She trusted him not to just say so to make her feel good, but to only give a compliment like that if he truly meant it. She nodded slowly, though, and opened her mouth to speak before closing it and opening it right back up again, because it was rare when Hannah was actually unable to keep herself from speaking.
"Thanks," she said. "And so are you. That was a lot of wordless magic. I wasn't expecting you to pull that out. But I'm glad you did. You didn't go easy on me after all. Thanks. I really want to be able to stand on my own. I know things are only going to get worse." She lifted her hand to touch the place on her robes that her badge had been on. "I don't have as much protecting me anymore."
He was quiet for a moment, silently considering Hannah and exactly what she was saying. His eyes drifted again to the spot on her robes where her prefect's badge would've been and then back to her face. He'd smiled at her compliment about the non-verbal magic, though he had a feeling the dull ache behind his eyes was his punishment for pushing himself, but he didn't think that's what she really wanted to talk about. He hoisted himself so he lay on his side instead of his back, his head propped on his elbow as he looked down at her.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" he asked, nodding in the direction of her hand.
"Sort of," she admitted, dropping her hand once she realized what's what she had been doing. The giving up of her badge had been resting heavily on her mind since she'd given it up. Was it a mistake? Maybe it was a mistake. Was it too late to go to Professor Sprout? It was probably too late.
Hannah chewed the inside of her lip and pressed a loose fist into the cushion near Neville, bouncing it there as she tried to figure out what to say. She didn't know how to start, so she just started with what she'd done that morning. "I… Gave up my badge this morning. To Professor Sprout. I know I should have talked to the DA about it first but I was so tired of flopping back and forth like a flobberworm. I knew what I wanted to do. I was sure of it."
"Maybe," he said, shrugging. "I mean, maybe you should've talked to the DA first, but..." He stopped to chew on the inside of his mouth, considering his words carefully. "If you can't do it, you can't do it. There's no use pretending because they'll figure it out eventually and I think things'd be worse for you then. The year's gonna be hard enough as it is. There's no use making things worse."
Hannah closed her eyes. "I can't lie like that. And I thought, maybe, I could show all the students that they can't win when I gave in my badge. It was Susan's idea that I turn it in, and I think it was a good one. It sends a message, you know? To the rest of the students and to the Carrows. They can't control me. I won't let them. And I understand why the rest of the DA does it. I just…"
She opened her eyes and looked up at Neville. "I just wish I could say it was selfless or the absolute right thing to do. I hate all the shades of grey that this year is bringing with it."
He nodded slowly. Neville was naive enough to think that the DA could solve any problem that came their way. They'd won fifth year. Of course they'd win again this year. It was why he hadn't been able to see Ginny's point with the secret broadcast. And it was why he didn't want to tell any of the prefects to hang on to their badges. He didn't think they needed them. Not when they all had each other. There was a part of him that knew it would be ridiculous if he ever admitted he felt that way. He could almost hear Zacharias rolling his eyes when he even considered saying something.
"I think," he said finally, "at least the message is definitely right. These are Death Eaters. This isn't just Umbridge trying to control us. This is Death Eaters trying to turn us into them probably. Why else would they be here teaching us Muggle supremacy and dark magic?"
She could sense an unspoken chastisement in his voice. She really should have talked to the DA about it. But Hannah was, on the whole, an extremely impatient person. She didn't always think things through. And sometimes things fell hard. She knew this was going to be one of those times. She was glad she and Susan and Ernie's approval, but she didn't know for sure if she had Neville's, and she could only imagine Zacharias's.
"They were going to take it away in any case," she said. "I bet that's why I couldn't get into the bathroom. I tried again this morning and the barrier was still there." She stopped bouncing her hand and splayed her fingers over the cushion. "You think they're training us to be Death Eaters? Really?" Her eyes were nervous when they landed on Neville.
"I don't know why else they'd be here," he said. "Especially with the headmaster being the one who killed the last one." The second the words was past his lips, he noticed the nervousness in Hannah's eyes and he twisted his mouth in thought. Finally he frowned. "That's just what I think. I've been wrong before."
"You might be right," she said. "I don't want to admit it. I don't even want to… I don't want to think about that. It's terrifying. But you might be right." She shuddered. "I still can't believe they're letting Death Eaters in the school. At least we have the other professors and our heads of houses. Even Slughorn isn't so bad, for a Slytherin." Hannah frowned. "This makes cooperating in Dark Arts even scarier."
"I hate Dark Arts," he spat out, his frown deepening for a second. But then his face changed and the purpose he'd felt since Dumbledore's death, since Bellatrix Lestrange's escape from Azkaban his fifth year, was plain on his face. "But I want them to know they've put these spells in the wrong hands."
She gave a shiver. "That's one way to look at it," she said. "I think I'm going to be trying to pick my battles more than I did." She glanced down at the hand that was flat on the cushions. There was still some redness around the middle of her hand, but it wasn't swollen and puffy like it had been Wednesday night. "I hate detentions so much. I'm glad you're done with all those." For now.
"For now," he snorted. He balled his hand into a fist, where the words from the blood quill were a lot less faint than they'd been his first detention. "She's already trying to give me more. She tried to blame it on me that I'd had so many."
"She's a cow," said Hannah. She had a lot worse things to say but she didn't much like cursing, so she didn't. "Worse than a cow. A demon cow. A rotten demon cow corpse. With maggots. And add in a few worse things." She turned so that she was facing Neville too. "I hope you don't get more. We'll go along with their project, okay?" She glanced down at his hand. "We'll just throw in our own special touches and make Regina hopping mad. Ugh, I hate her."
"Regina's a cow, too," he said, frowning again. "But yeah, we'll go along with it. You know whatever we do they'll undo before class, though, right?"
"Maybe we can figure out something they won't recognize," said Hannah slowly. "We'll just have to get really creative. I'll try to come up with something. You try, too." She nudged his foot with her own.
"Hmm," he said, flopping back onto his back and staring up at the ceiling for a moment. He tilted his face toward Hannah and grinned. "They probably wouldn't recognize self-respect. Let's throw in some of that. And then a little bit of 'not being a purist wanker' for good measure. What do you think? Could we manage that?"
"I think we can," Hannah said, grinning back at him. "In fact, I'm sure we can. We'll think of a way to do it. And we'll do it so Professor Carrow can't accuse us of being subversive, but everyone else can read between the lines. What do you think of that?"
"We have to think of a way to do it first," he said. "But I'm sure we could." He tilted his head back so he could look at the ceiling again, hoping inspiration might strike. But all he felt was tired and the dull ache in his head grow. Maybe non-verbal magic hadn't been such a good idea. "Can we do it later, though? I'm thinking of catching a nap before dinner."
"Sure," said Hannah, getting up. This time she was the one to offer a hand to Neville to help him get up. "I'm glad you got into dinner last night. And breakfast and lunch today. But anyway, I'll see you at dinner and maybe sometime this weekend we can try to figure out what to do. Okay?"
Neville took Hannah's hand and got to his feet, nodding along as she spoke. He didn't let go of her hand once he was standing, wanting to keep her there just a moment longer. "Do you know when you said before that you didn't have as much protecting you?" he asked, his expression suddenly earnest. "Well, you'll always have me. And Ginny and Susan, too, of course. But we'll always be here to protect each other."
She was surprised when he didn't just let go of her, but at his words her shoulders relaxed a little and a weak smile slowly grew. "Thanks," she said. She was bashful for a second before the weak smile was gone and replaced by a beam. "Really. It's good to know. It will make all of this a world easier. Honest. And you'll always have me at your side, too."
He gave her hand a squeeze and let go finally. The earnestness in his face was quickly replaced with a smile and he scooped up his schoolbag, slinging it over his shoulder as he made his way to the door. "I'm glad," he said, turning to face her. "But yeah, let's definitely meet up sometime this weekend. I'll see you at dinner!"