Neville (helleder) wrote in regulation, @ 2008-07-22 23:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | backstory, harry potter, neville longbottom |
WHO: Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom
WHEN: late May, 1999. BACKDATED.
WHERE: A hotel room in southern England
WHAT: Harry and Neville have to face their demons and one another.
RATING: B for Bucket of Tears
STATUS: Closed; completed
NOTES: This is an old story reworked, so it's a little off but Cait and I felt it reflected the characters well, and wanted to incorporate it into their canon. So here it is for anyone who wants to read it.
"...want Mummy," the little girl whimpered as he tucked her in, sliding the blanket over her small shoulders. Hyacinth's lower lip jutted out, trembling as she looked up at him with fearful eyes. "Want Mummy. Not Da. Mummy." Her hands were clutching at the thin lining of the blanket, kneading it between thumb and forefinger as she quivered.
"Mummy's not here," Neville said. Said as he had said it for the past two months.
"Want Mummy." He wondered, as he stroked her dark curls, if she would ever forget Alix, if she would ever grow used to the fact that her mother simply... wasn't there. She sniffled a little, looking up at him. "Mummy come home."
"No," and his voice choked, tired of saying it. "She's not coming home. Mummy's- she's passed the Veil." And her eyes grew still more fearful, still more frightened as she heard it.
"Mummy..." Hyacinth whispered, her voice growing tighter and smaller than it normally did, her toddler's lisp twisting the word until he couldn't understand, catching tight in her throat. She'd used to scream it. But then had come the alarms and the screams and the flashing outside of her window, the blackening of the streets and the constant running, running in the middle of the night, her father's arms clutching her as they Apparated, spinning from one darkness to another... Hyacinth never screamed any more. It was too dangerous. And he hated that worst of all.
He hated that he had been the first one to silence her.
And he did it again, moments later after listening to her soft mumbling for her mother became too much for him, the constant pleading too much to bear. Neville stood there as she cried, helpless to do anything more than rub her forehead. He wasn't enough- he wasn't her mother, just as he hadn't been his father for his grandmother or Alix's former lover. Being himself wasn't enough- not even for his daughter.
He'd always had courage but at the sound of her last desperate cry of "not Da...want Mummy...", he couldn't take it anymore. He walked away.
Shutting the door to those soft, hushed cries, Neville's knees hunched to the floor and he knelt, his head in his hands as he sat in the bathroom that connected his room with hers. The walls were thin, too thin to mask the fact that she was still crying- crying and choking as she tried to mask her own voice. Crying and choking because she was afraid that the Death Eaters would come as they had come for her mother. And he couldn't move. He couldn't bear it any longer.
"I'm too young for this," he mumbled, wrapping his arms around himself. "I can't do this." But finally, she stopped.
He opened the door, not to see if she was asleep but because he was afraid that she had died. His legs managed to bring him to the bedside and he shivered in sheer relief to see that she was still breathing, her chubby cheeks glistening with the raw shine of tears. Neville almost touched her- but knew that if she woke and began to cry again, he was lost.
A slight rap on the door to his room stopped him before he could.
"I have the money," he started to say as he stumbled for his room, turning the knob with clumsy fingers. The truth was that he didn't, that he'd given the last of it to the clinic keeping his parents, but he'd find it somewhere. He always had. "I'll pay- oh," And he stopped when he saw it was Harry. Harry Potter.
"What are you doing here?"
"I need to sit down, and I need to talk to you immediately." Although the look Harry gave Neville was perfectly sober, there was a marked scent of old Firewhiskey and stale beer about him, and the clothes he wore had been on him the day before, and the day before that. He kept blinking, trying to keep the other man in focus against the pounding in his head and the lights in his vision. "Can I come in? They light this hallway like a bleeding ship beacon."
"I don't have anything to drink, Harry," Neville looked at him with weary, familiar eyes. "Aye, and I haven't got a tenner. I haven't even got the money for the room." He leaned against the doorframe, his tired side sagging into it. "If you want water, come in. If not, you'll have to bear the lights a bit longer as you walk out of the hotel."
"I don't need a drink," he said impatiently, though the implication did not slip by him. "I need to talk to you right now, because you've heard about Bill haven't you? You've heard-" Harry cut off, and blinked wetly, and he rubbed at his eyes. "Can you let me com-" Realizing Neville was no longer in the center of the door way, Harry promptly stepped over the threshold. "Keep the lights down, could you? Christ..."
Finally, Harry paused and gave Neville a once over. "Merlin, you look awful. Is it...?"
"It's nothing," Neville shied his eyes away from Harry so the other man wouldn't see how blotchy his face was. "Can you please be quieter? Hyacinth's just fallen asleep and..." And I can't deal with her anymore. I can't listen to her cry like that night after night... not when there isn't anything left to give.
"Here's your water," he said, shoving it into Harry's hand as he closed the door. It had been sitting on the counter but he doubted Harry would notice that. He rarely did notice anything, these days. Leaning over, Neville turned the switch as he shut the door to Hyacinth's room, leaving the two of them in hazy darkness, lit only by the lamplights reflecting from the streets outside.
For a moment, Harry was silent, apparently puzzled that he was now holding a glass of water, though it didn't long deter him. In a quieter tone, he said, "Thanks," though he was referring to the lights and not the glass. "I've been thinking," he said more slowly, "I've been thinking of going back to London. Did I tell you that Bill's alive? Dupuis had an errandboy sent from Paris, he knew we were in the country. The bloody government knows everything, and he knew I was nearby, so he sent me the intelligence. I think we could do this. I've been thinking of going to London."
"Bill's alive?" Neville said, a bit stunned. Then he snatched the glass back from Harry, sniffing it to be sure that it was, in fact, simply water. "What do you mean? London? Harry, you can't go to London. You're drunk- or you were, if you aren't now- you'll kill yourself. I mean, you can't do it."
He paused, shaking his head, having managed to confuse even himself. "How do you know Bill's alive?"
"I am not drunk," he said heatedly, and then whispered in a hiss, "Bill's alive. I know because Dupuis, the fucking French international diploma-Ambassador-thing had me notified. I think the Delacours know him." The look on his face was suddenly very closed. "I don't like the way they look at me, Neville. I won't stay with them for much longer, I think Fleur's been talking to them, and I'm tired of staying with her parents. They have pictures of Bill all over the bloody place. Shit."
Scrubbing his forehead with his fingers, he said seriously-and coherently- "Lestrange has Bill. It's common knowledge with his people that Bellatrix Lestrange is housing him, keeping him... like a pet." Lucky that he wasn't still holding the glass, Harry's hands had balled into fists and the rough, bitten nails were cutting into his palms.
"At least he's not dead," Neville managed to fumble the glass down on the counter before clenching it against his palm so hard that he, too, could feel something cutting against the skin. "What can we do about it, Harry?"
His eyes were conflicted as they looked at the other man, flickering between a lack of faith to a slight glimmer of hope that there might be something that they could do. But he could still smell the sour alcohol in the air- could still see that Harry's clothing was rent in places, wrinkled in others. He bit his lip as he looked at the other man.
You're placing your trust in a drunk. Neville thought to himself, then amended. No, you're placing your trust in your friend. For whatever else Harry might have become in the years between, he was still that much.
His voice strengthening, he reached out and pulled the other man's hand open, unclenching the fingers so that he could lock his with Harry's in a brief gesture of solidarity, "Tell me what you need me to do."
"I-" Harry merely looked at their hands, and seemed to partially deflate; in fact, the defensiveness in his posture had drained from him and left him looking a little smaller and less burly, but there was something working in his head, a cinder in his eye. "I don't know. I haven't... been able to talk sensibly with Dupuis. The French are still sticking to the same policy, they don't want to get involved. I thought... we might go to London, just look at what sort of operation they have there."
Harry sank back against the closed door, his arm stretching like cables that connected him to Neville. "I don't know if the others would go... Kingsley, Tonks, Fleur... I don't know." They may have lives now, but you wouldn't know because you don't return their owls. They've stopped sending them. "Christ, Neville, it's nearly Christmas." Harry's eyes were taking on a damp look again.
"Is it?" His eyes grew distant. "I haven't got a tree."
It was absurd to say it. But to Neville, that one simple sentence was his way of telling Harry everything he didn't have. He didn't have roots, he didn't have air or sunlight or even warmth- there was nothing there to offer a plant, even if he'd wanted one.
"There were fairies in the window of the-" he paused, but then plunged recklessly on, "The pub on White Street. I don't know the name in French, it's the wizard district's main avenue with all the fucking marble. I saw the fairies and I didn't know before then, and Hermione was charming all the ice statues..."
He looked very much on the verge of shouting, or laughing, or crying, but instead said, "You should come to our place's. We're having a party there, and there will be children, and those crackers... They'd love to have you, Hermione has talked about sending invitations to the old crowd. We fought about it," he said, sounding abashed. "I don't know if she's sent them. Did you..." Receive one?
"I don't know," Neville answered but the words sounded hurt, as if he knew that the invitations had been sent without him receiving one. "I don't know if I was ever really part of the old crowd." He glanced down, looking at his hands as if the lines in them contained some secret.
"I stood for you," he said finally. "When the rest of them wouldn't."
"If you haven't, then the others haven-" he began to say, but said violently, "Don't talk to me about them. The Order." Removing his hand from Neville's, he turned to one side in frustration, still feeling as though there was a line drawn between them, connecting them. His eyes looked everywhere but Neville, and all that he saw, the hotel linens and wallpaper, the cheap furniture, and the flowery curtains- they were all impossible, infuriating. "Don't talk to me about the Order. You're stupid to think that anyone is going to win this war until the horcruxes are destroyed, and it isn't possible. It isn't... you saw. You saw what it did to Arthur Weasley." And what that means for Bill... He closed his eyes against Neville, against it all.
"Of course, I saw." Neville was pure ice as he spoke, so cold with his anger that he trembled, torn between his loyalty to Harry and that he owed the Order.
There were times, however, that he would not admit to Harry, when the dark drew down and Neville found himself wondering whether that faith was only left untested because he didn't see Harry any longer. If Harry was still his hero only because he was gone.
Neville didn't like himself very much when he let the thoughts take hold. It was easier to cling to his purpose- to the sense of right and wrong and the idea that, even controlled, Harry had the potential to be a hero, even if it only meant walking away before he killed an old friend. The jarring of his own fist as it hit the table, shaking the tattered Bible off the wood, broke him away from that spell.
"He killed the people who mattered," Harry spat, temper flaring anew though the argument was an old one. When he looked at Neville, though, he caught himself, the color draining from his face. "To me. The people who..." He opened his mouth to say something useless, to explain how he justified believing that winning the war was impossible but rescuing Bill was not.
"Aye, he killed the people who mattered. I'll give you that much." He turned away then, picking up the glass and holding it for a moment. "It's almost all I can give you." He was trying not to shake as he said it.
Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out a couple of crumpled notes, shoving them in Harry's hand. "Just go, Harry. Go."
Neville was dangerously close to falling apart as he said the words- he'd been so sure that the other man was going to give him an answer and now this? Nothing. Nothing but assurances that Dumbledore's Army was dead. As dead as the man himself.
Harry stared at the money in his hand before he let them fall through his fingers. Face red, he seized Neville frantically, closing his fingers into a fist around the shoulder of his shirt and tugged him to face him. He thought he felt the man jump beneath his touch, and though it made him wince inwardly, he said through teeth that were barely parting to form the words, "I'm not leaving. I'm not going back to that house, and I'm not going to shut the door to the their guest room and sit."
His hands were shaking, and though a sharp throb of his head punctuated his words, he was thinking more clearly than ever. "I'm going to write everyone, and we're going to fucking sit down and talk. Tonks can go into London, she can look for others who scattered," he whispered feverishly, "And Kingsley knows others from our parents' generation. You are coming to that Christmas party, I don't care if I have to drag you there unconscious.
"Fuck France, fuck Voldemort, fuck you, Neville. Stay here and sit on your arse and weep, but I'm fucking going back. And Voldemort... Someone's going to kill him, Neville. Them or me, someone is going to kill that..." And while looking for an appropriate slur to sling at Voldemort, Harry lost his steam, his grip on Neville loosened.
"If you're going back, I'm going with you," Neville answered stubbornly, his brown eyes narrowing black as they felt the grip on him loosen. He stood firmly, staring at Harry. "But how long will it last? I can't keep doing this, Harry. I can't just build armies to watch them fall."
But you weren't there. But maybe- The little voice nagged in the back of his head again. Maybe that's better.
"It's not going to fall," he said angrily, and he stepped away from the other man. "I can't think straight with the smell." He removed his wand from his back pocket and pointed it squarely at his own chest. "Scourgify."
Harry began to pace the length of the room, shoving his wandless hand repeatedly through his hair until it stood right on end. "We have to think about tactics, because the Order never faced a situation where the Ministry was against them." Then he snorted, "If you can call it a Ministry. Someone will have to talk to Dupuis again, maybe the French would be willing to quietly... Sod it, I would trust any aid they gave us. Neville," he turned to look at him, and there was definitely a red tinge to his cheeks. "I can't talk to Dupuis. The last time we talked I was... a bit under the table."
"Then I'll have to do it," he paused, feeling his stomach churn a little at the thought. He wasn't good with people and he knew it but if there was even a hope- "I'm a pureblood and my family's not married outside of the line. I guess that'll count for something with someone." Neville shrugged but his eyes told the truth of his hope, gleaming up at the taller man as he paced back and forth.
"Unless-" He bit his lip, realizing that he'd volunteered himself and that Harry might not have even considered him as a part of it. "Unless you don't want me."
"That's good," he replied immediately, brushing aside his last comment, "That's excellent, and the Longbottoms are a better name than Potter anyroad." He actually grinned at that, and turned to face Neville. "We'll have to get a house.. like Grimmauld Place. The Delacours are a huge name in the political atmosphere... I don't want to draw undue attention to them."
"Hold up a minute," Neville said but he was laughing, laughing so hard from relief that his eyes were watering. "Where are we going to get a house? We haven't- well, I've not got the money for anything."
He calmed, adding, "There's my parents to consider. I had a bit of money saved up but..."
Biting his lip, Neville said quietly, "I guess you're going to suggest we go up to Gringotts and steal it back."
"Might be able to get the French branch of Gringotts to cooperate with England if we talked to the right people, but I have some money as well... not a lot, just what the shop was worth with Gringotts' insurance, but maybe enough for a down payment, unless we find somewhere really inexpensive. It's in Muggle pounds, though, I'll have to have it exchanged" he said thoughtfully. "Not in Paris, that's too obvious, and too many people come and go in Dijon."
He looked at Neville and laughed suddenly, wheezing because he was trying to keep quiet for the little girl. "We'll have to talk to the others, see what they have to say about it."
"Aye," Neville said thoughtfully. "I think they'll not argue though. We've been waiting- all of us- for something. I'm just not sure I knew what it was until now."
He shifted slightly against the wall, smiling at Harry. "I could fix up the house a bit- if you wanted something rundown." Laughing, he added, "Look for something hit by natural disasters- earthquakes, flooding, volcanoes- it'd be less dear."
"Volcanoes," he grinned. "I don't think there are any volcanoes in France. I'll look around, though, in the metro areas. There'd be less of a problem with Muggles." He tried to laugh again, but it caught in his throat. Blinking, he regarded Neville seriously. "Do you think we can pull this off? Whatever it is? Do you think we can get this thing together?"
"Yes," Neville answered him honestly. "But it won't be easy. Nothing worth having ever is." He could have said nothing ever is- it seemed like it wasn't these days- but something in Harry's eyes warned him away from being too pessimistic.
"No, I suppose not." Thinking about what he was suggesting from every angle made all of it more harrowing, but he webbed his hands together before him as if to brace himself against it. It was the first of the small victories they would collectively need to set a foundation in place, though he wished suddenly that he hadn't been the one to suggest it, not when it meant facing the people he'd ignored for months.
Thinking of Bill, the DA, Ron and Hermione, Mr. Weasley- the family he had lost- but mainly seeing the room they stood in and the hope in Neville's face made him realize that he wouldn't walk away. He knew he had to prove himself somehow, though, earn the trust that Neville seemed willing to give him. "I want you to help me with this, but I need you to show me how to help you, too, since we're in it together. I... how's Hyacinth, Neville? I haven't seen either of you since..." Since I last came to you for milk money.
He opened his mouth to say that she was fine, that they were both fine but then found something else in Harry's face. If he was going to trust him in this, then he needed to trust him in all things.
"She's not okay, Harry," he whispered. "And I don't know what to do."
"Is she ill?" Harry asked, though the look on Neville's face already indicated otherwise. "Does she remember the war?"
"She was there when-" Neville halted, unable to complete the sentence. "I know she can barely talk but..." He bit his lip. "It's always this, Harry, it's always running away in the middle of the night and sirens and danger. It's never her and I coming to a safe place, I guess. It's more like a temporary stop."
"You should've contacted one of us, Neville," and as Harry said that, he abashedly thought, perhaps not me, and for good reason, "Anyone would help you. We all fought together and we were friends. We are friends. What are your plans for Christmas?" Harry's mind was already working as he tried to remember just how old Neville's daughter really was.
"We'll be with my parents," Neville said quietly, glancing down at his feet. "Like every Christmas. But thank you for thinking of us, Harry." He slowly lifted his head, looking into the other man's eyes and he managed a smile.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Harry managed to meet Neville's eye as he murmured, "Why don't you come with me tomorrow to find a tree?"
"Are you sure?" Neville asked, trying not to sound too eager. It had been too long since either of them had gone out to do anything Neville would have considered normal. He glanced away so that Harry wouldn't see how badly he wanted to go.
"'Course I am, and you should bring Hyacinth along as well. And... I promise I'll be dry as we gallavant around the French countryside." His tone was deceptively light, and he did not meet Neville's eye then.
"Then," and he held his breath for a moment, still not quite believing it. "I'd really like that."