Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first time Neville saw it, he was on his way back from dinner.

(Months later, lying in bed with a withered leaf clutched in his hand, he would wonder if that had really been the first time, or just the first time he’d noticed. He would give up his wand to know how many he might have missed. It wasn’t his dad’s wand anyway.)

He hadn’t eaten; as he walked, he felt like a tired, thin shell, just a sack full of bones stumbling blindly through the hall. But everyone else had seemed to enjoy their stew and bread, so it had to count.

Ginny trailed after him, her grip tight on her wand, scanning anxiously as they passed through groups of younger students. Since re-starting the DA, she was ever vigilant that the Carrows should somehow realize that they needed to be immediately eliminated in the middle of a crowded hall, sod the witnesses.

But Neville’s mind was on things far, far away from Death Eaters and wars and student armies.

He was thinking about Draco’s face at dinner from across the Great Hall.

(Draco. Because it was only Draco now. Could not be anything but Draco. Always.)

Neville remembered how his skin had looked bone-white and thin like a skull. How he hadn’t eaten a single bite. How he’d suddenly stood up, run halfway across the hall, and pulled back a tiny Slytherin boy who was getting into an argument with a Hufflepuff over their respective uncles.

“Do you want a bloody detention from me for fighting on school grounds?” Neville had heard Draco hiss in both their faces. Both the boys had cowered back from Draco in terror, and the Slytherin had wrenched himself out of Draco’s grasp with a cry, staring with wide eyes at Draco’s arm.

But Neville had caught Draco’s eyes glancing nervously to the staff table, and he’d seen the same fear which he’d seen weeks ago in a shadowy alcove.

It was all an act. The boys sat down at their respective tables unpunished. The Carrows had no reason to leave their seats. Draco Malfoy was still feared.

Pansy looked at him with longing. Crabbe and Goyle with awe.

(And Neville had wanted to stand up in front of everyone, and go to him, and touch him, and tell him that he was brave. That he was helping, even though nobody else could tell. That he had seen . . .)

And then he saw it.

At first he thought it was a leaf blown inside by the wind. Only, it didn’t flutter to the ground, or swerve through the air caught on a gale.

Frowning, he reached out to grab it, magic crackling across his fingertips the closer he got. He just wanted to touch it. To see if it was real. He just wanted to see . . .

“Neville!” came Ginny’s voice in a fierce whisper. She gripped his wrist and yanked him along. “Don’t dally. Let’s go.”

Neville lurched after her, confused at the frantic tone of her voice, until he caught Snape’s glare on them from the top of the nearest staircase, his black robes crossed over his chest like a swarming, ominous cloud.

“I’m telling you, he knows something,” Ginny was whispering as she dragged Neville behind her. “He knows . . .”

By the time Neville looked back, the plant in the air was gone.

He blinked, and he thought he saw a familiar wand suddenly disappear behind a column. Thought he saw the smallest flash of pale fingers.

But he couldn’t be sure.

--

The second time Neville noticed the plant cutting floating in mid-air, he was too busy sprinting by with Padma, Dean, and Luna to stop and give it a second thought.

“Oh, what a beautiful sprig!” Luna cried as they ran. She started to slow down, staring with her mouth half-open at where the flush, full leaves of a fluxweed stem were twirling in a silent dance.

Dean grabbed her wrist and yanked her along. “There’s nothing even there, Luna, Merlin,” he panted. Sweat was dripping down the back of his neck.

But Neville saw it, too.

He stumbled trying to glance over his shoulder as they neared the next corner, but Padma elbowed him in the ribs to turn back around. “There isn’t any plant, Nev,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Now come on.”

Then Neville watched in horror as the leaves suddenly burst into flames, a hex consuming them mid-air in a flash of white fire.

“Stop!” screamed the Slytherin student-guard who was chasing them. He hurled another hex, barely missing Padma’s head. And another, exploding the stone at their feet.

They kept sprinting.

They’d just hung a new sign advertising DA recruitment near the wall of the library, then stopped to create a bit of harmless but highly inconvenient chaos in two of the hallways near the Carrows’ offices, when the on-patrol students had been tipped off by an infuriating second-year Slytherin who’d spotted them from the floor above when he was wandering out of bed.

Which resulted in the four of them running as fast as they could through Hogwarts at just past six in the morning on a Wednesday, flying around corners as they tried to lose their chasers and make it back to the Room before anyone lost an eyebrow—or worse.

Neville could barely hear the footsteps behind them anymore as they came to the proper corridor, but the four of them kept running until their hands slapped against the wall. Padma was the one to whisper the week’s new password into the stone as they all gasped for breath, waiting until the wall crumbled before them and sucked them inside through the open door before reforming again.

They’d been successful, minus the getting-chased part.

Each new sign that went up over the last few weeks had resulted in at least a couple new members, and Neville knew that there was strength in numbers, no matter how much the growing size of the DA meetings made him feel panicky and sick to his stomach. The Carrows were becoming wary and suspicious, he knew, and Snape was watching them all like a hawk from where he sat at Dumbledore’s seat at meals every day.

The pranks in the Carrows’ hallway that day were Dean’s idea. Neville wasn’t overly fond of wasting time, risking getting caught just for meaningless chaos instead of an organized plan, but he couldn’t deny the way the members’ faces always lit up at the prospect of a ‘fun’ mission.

Harry would have let them have fun sometimes, Neville thought. So he almost always said yes.

They were all still trying to catch their breath, and Neville was starting to think through how long they’d have to wait before it would be safe to return to their Common Rooms before breakfast, when Luna sighed, and stared back at the wall they’d just tumbled through.

“I wish I could have saved that fluxweed for a vase,” she said, looking wistfully at the stone. “It was an extraordinarily divine example of stem pliancy, it seemed.”

Dean and Padma stared blankly at her, both holding back laughs.

“Luna, are you pulling our leg?” Padma asked.

Dean shook his head. “There wasn’t even anything there.”

But Neville was suddenly struck with the sensation that he had missed something. Missed something entirely as they sprinted past it in the hall.

“Wonder who floated it there,” he said, almost to himself.

“Good Christ, not you, too,” moaned Dean.

“Oh, who is Christ?” asked Luna with wide eyes. “You think he placed the fluxweed there? What House is he in?” Her voice sounded as if the prospect was awfully romantic.

Neville smiled at her, his real smile, even as his mind tugged at him with unanswered questions, and as Dean and Padma stalked off to one of the sofas, muttering about how they would possibly win against the Death Eaters when their leaders were busy spotting invisible plants.

Neville made a mental note to reach out and grab the plant the next time he saw one—if he saw one again—and hoped that he wouldn’t immediately forget.

--

The third time Neville saw a plant floating in midair, he was simply on his way back to class from a trip to the hospital wing.

Well, not simply. He was also trying not to fall down where he stood, or duck in the nearest bathroom to throw up, or cry.

He’d been sitting in Transfiguration earlier that morning, trying not to look as exhausted as he felt, giving McGonagall her due, when his coin had burned in his pocket. The burning hot rhythm of alarm.

He’d given the excuse of the restroom to hurry off into the hallways, following the pull of the coin pressed into his palm until he came to the doors of the old Defense classroom and froze.

Amycus had his wand pointed straight at a third year’s chest, and the terrified students were all pressed in a line against the wall. Neville had instantly recognized one of them as Michael Corner’s younger sister, and saw that she was squeezing Michael’s coin very hard in her small palm.

Neville had realized that he’d have to have a talk with everyone about keeping their coins safe and not handing them around, but all he had been able to do in the moment was watch in horror as Amycus cleared his throat and began to circle the sobbing boy standing in the center of the room.

Neville couldn’t bring himself to think about the rest, now. It was too nauseating.

The important part was that he’d eventually gotten the poor boy out with a spur-of-the-moment lie involving Professor Flitwick, escaped with only a verbal warning for himself, and ensured the boy was safely back with Madam Pomfrey to be given a calming draught. And all in the time it would have taken a lazy, meandering student to take an extra-long restroom break. Or perhaps, everyone had just assumed that Neville Longbottom had gotten lost.

He was counting it as a win.

And that was when he walked smack into a plant hanging in the air, alone in the middle of the corridor.

His heart stuttered, then sang.

For no reason at all, his skin grew tight with anticipation as he carefully reached up and wrapped his fingers around the stem. The idea that it could be cursed didn’t even occur to him—after all, it had just smacked him in the face, and he wasn’t dying or dead.

The rest of the DA would probably be horrified to learn that their leader had trusted a random plant hanging in the air—one that he knew was apparently invisible to nearly everyone else—without casting any Detection charms to test it first. But nobody was there to see, and he wouldn’t be talking about this at the next meeting.

He gently held the clipped-off stem in his palm, tracing his thumb over one of the flush, green leaves.

This time, it was asphodel—a single flower bound tight in a fresh bud.

Then, before his eyes, the asphodel disappeared entirely, transfiguring into a tightly rolled up piece of parchment, the same length as the stem had been.

Neville’s heart began to pound.

With shaking fingers, he clutched the scroll and ducked into the nearest smaller hallway off the main corridor, hiding himself away in the shadows where he wouldn’t be immediately seen. It took him three tries to unroll the parchment, his hands were trembling so badly.

(If only everyone could see him now, he thought. His stupid heart racing over a transfigured plant more than it had been when he’d stared Amycus Carrow in the eye and demand he hand over the boy not ten minutes earlier . . .)

An unfamiliar scrawl stained the middle of the parchment with tight, messy ink:

East, fourth, three, one.

North, all, three, ten to eleven.

Neville stared down at the parchment in a mix of confusion and shock. Something niggled in the back of his mind, something hot and insistent, but as he went to read the words a second time to try and make sense of it all, the parchment in his hands suddenly curled back up and shriveled, then fell from his fingers in broken, withered leaves to the stone floor.

He stared down at his feet, breathing hard for no reason. Briefly, he thought of getting out his coin and summoning someone to come see. Luna had seen it before, hadn’t she? She would have an idea . . .

But for some reason, the thought of someone else witnessing the broken leaves on the floor felt too raw. That someone could witness, firsthand, the complete failure of Neville Longbottom, leader of the DA, who got a note he could barely remember, and couldn’t save it before it crumbled away.

He jumped when he heard the sound of students rushing through the main corridor. Embarrassment consumed him; he’d stood there long enough for class to be over.

Not thinking clearly, Neville bent and quickly brushed as many of the pieces as he could into his hand, then shoved them down in his pocket as he tried to slip back into the main hallway without anyone noticing.

He forced himself to walk in the direction of McGonagall’s office, trying to work through his apology for missing class in his head and failing, his mind still stuck on ghostlike, incomprehensible words like three and north and east and ten to eleven.

--

The next morning at breakfast, Neville was forcing himself to take tasteless bites of porridge in between idiotically glancing to the empty seat at the very end of the Slytherin table, when Lavender Brown hurled herself onto the bench across from him, tears in her eyes.

“What are you going to do?” she sobbed under her breath.

Neville froze. A thousand possibilities surged through his mind, until he finally set down his spoon with a shaking hand and tried not to look as useless as he felt.

He cleared his throat as his skin prickled. “About . . . ?”

Lavender gaped at him, then burst into tears all over again. Seamus’ hand appeared out of nowhere on her shoulder, and he pulled her into his chest so she was hidden from the staff table and the rest of the students.

“Why didn’t you come last night?” Seamus said to him in a harsh whisper.

Neville tried not to shrink back at the accusing tone of Seamus’ voice. He swallowed hard. “Come to . . . ?”

“Bloody hell, Neville,” Seamus groaned. He glared at Neville with fire in his eyes. “We summoned you. Did you not see your coin? We were in the Room all night trying to help Cho. We needed you there.”

Neville’s mind reeled. “Cho?”

Seamus growled in frustration. “Call yourself a bloody leader,” he hissed under his breath, looking down at the table. Then he stared at Neville as he helped Lavender to her feet, leading her out of the hall. “Just talk to Luna to find out what you bloody missed,” he said, almost spat, and then the two of them were gone, Lavender’s stifled sobs echoing across the hall.

Out of nowhere, Luna was suddenly at his side, her long hair falling into Neville’s barely-eaten porridge.

“Yes, I knew he would be particularly angry,” Luna said, as casually as if she were announcing the day of the week.

Neville tried to speak normally over his pounding heart. His palms felt slick and cold. “What was he on about?”

Luna looked completely unphased. “Everyone on duty last night went on their assigned missions. Only, Cho did not return on time with Anthony. We were all very worried, imagining both of them dead.”

If it had been any other circumstance, Neville would have laughed. Only his stomach was in his throat as he desperately searched the Ravenclaw table for Cho’s face . . .

“She is not dead,” Luna added, about five seconds too late. “Only, she and Anthony met with a coordinated sabotage from the Slytherin students, it seems. It turns out, rather like the spy novel ‘To Catch a Slashkilter’, they have been tracking our movements and coming up with targeted attacks. Anthony put up a shield, but Cho’s hair was badly singed. They made it back to the Room around three in the morning, and we were all trying to heal their great emotional distress until just before breakfast. Everyone is quite terrified of being murdered, now. Nobody would listen to my suggestion that we all sing an old Kelp Kingdom hymn together to heal, but maybe next time they’ll learn. And perhaps we should stay away from the East Wing for a few—”

“Did you say the East Wing?” Neville gasped.

It was the first time he’d been able to make his voice work since Luna casually alerted him to the fact that Cho Chang was not, in fact, dead.

Luna gave him an odd look. “Neville, I know you are expected to forget things, on basis of popular opinion, but I just said the East Wing. I know you aren’t that—”

“What floor were they on?”

Luna put a delicate hand on his arm. “Neville, why didn’t you answer your coin last night?”

“Luna, what floor?”

Neville’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt. It felt like the floor was tilting onto its side, and he was about to slide off the earth any second unless he held fast to the table.

Luna frowned, and the motion looked unnatural on her face. “Why, the fourth floor, of course. Only, I think we should stay away from the entire East—”

“Did Cho or Anthony say how many students were involved in the attack?” He was gripping the table so tightly his knuckles were white. “Was it three?”

And then, unbidden, Neville’s eyes flew to the end of the Slytherin bench.

He gasped when he saw that, not only was the empty spot filled by a shock of white hair and black robes, but that two grey eyes were staring straight back at him across the hall.

A pulse jumped through Neville’s chest, halting his lungs.

He’d dreamt of those eyes.

Three weeks since that night in the alcove in the Slytherin dungeons, the one he’d nearly convinced himself had been a terrible dream, where a nose had brushed against his, and tapping fingers had curled into his robes, and a voice had breathed, “Longbottom,” as the air crackled, and Neville’s stomach pulled tight . . .

And Neville hadn’t answered his coin the night before because he’d been hiding up at the top of the Astronomy Tower in the dark, not even caring if he got caught or by whom, desperately thinking over what the words from the scroll had meant. Trying to find some meaning in the useless letters, as if that could somehow help Harry Potter defeat the Dark Lord and live.

And then he’d closed his eyes, and despite his best efforts to think about meetings and schoolwork and guards, his mind had drifted to the sharp smell of fresh mint in the dark. Draco’s low voice next to his ear. The sound of his tongue as he swallowed. Their knees pressed together. And Neville had thought of him miles below in the cold dungeons and missed him.

Merlin, he’d missed him, sitting alone at the top of the Tower with his coin left back in his room . . .

“Neville.”

Luna’s voice ripped through his thoughts, parting the fog. He blinked, and he saw that the seat at the end of the Slytherin bench was once again empty, but when he turned to look at Luna, he realized in a wave of cold panic that she had seen.

“Neville,” she said again, very slowly forming the word. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Did you know that there would be three Slytherin guards in the East Wing? On the fourth floor?”

(“Don’t start up the Army again,” Draco had begged him with wet eyes, and a fresh bruise on his neck, and fingers tapping on his thigh. “Potter isn’t here to save you all now.”)

Neville looked at Luna, the girl who’d once spoken to him of stars and constellations on a warm summer’s day in the grass lifetimes ago, and he placed a clammy palm on her knee beneath the table.

“I . . .” He glanced once more to the empty seat, hoping she would understand. “I might have,” he finally said, whispering so softly she had to lean forward to hear.

She nodded very seriously, and covered his hand with her own. “I think you should let me know if you think you might know something again,” she whispered. “Everyone in the Army is very scared.”

He swallowed hard, and fought back a shiver at the memory of Seamus’ voice, and Lavender’s tears. “I will.”

“And I would like it if you kept your coin with you from now on,” she added softly.

Neville could feel his cheeks heating, but he forced himself to keep meeting her gaze. He tried to think of what brave, grand promise Harry would make, but his brain could only think of Harry’s empty bed with the folded sheets, and he came up short.

“I understand,” he finally said. He shrugged. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

She squeezed his fingers, then glanced toward the Slytherin table. Her eyes suddenly looked very full, and very sad.

“Oh, Neville,” she said. “I’m sorry, too.”

--

The notes kept coming.

Weeks passed, and Neville almost came to be able to predict the floating plants like clockwork. Every time, they floated in mid-air, waiting for him to walk by. Every time, the stem transformed into parchment in his hands, and a thin scrawl would tell him cryptic words about locations and people and times.

Every time, after only a few precious seconds, it would dissolve into pieces. And Neville would stoop wherever he’d been hiding to read the note in secret, and pick up the withered, dead leaves with his fingers, and keep them in his robe pocket for no reason at all.

Sometimes, he missed them.

If he changed his routine, or had to walk a different route, he could go days without a message. Without the familiar scrawl cradled in his palm. Those days, the DA would conduct their activities only within the Room.

“Recoup days,” Neville called them, “No missions tonight.” And everyone would grin at him, trusting his words, then break off into smaller groups to practice and plan and train. To share homework answers by the fire. To laugh at Justin Finch-Fletchley eating an earthworm-flavored bean.

Once, and only once, Neville held the paper to his lips, right in the desperate moments before it crumbled away. Trying and failing to catch a whiff of something. To understand.

But the parchment had smelled of nothing but his own ink-stained hands.

By November, the members of the DA seemed to think that Neville had finally stepped into his role as their brilliant leader. They were owning the castle, succeeding in nearly every mission. They were conducting their activities without running into a single teacher or student-guard. They were growing, and they were resisting, and trying to get messages to the outside world. Trying to contact the Order about their work, and about what miniscule pieces of information they had gradually came to know from within the Hogwarts walls.

The Room of Requirement transformed into a safe place for all hours, beyond meetings. It was a hiding place, and a War Room; an infirmary, and a place to sleep. It was a place to cry together when the stifling terror of the castle became too much. When someone had been forced to watch students cast the cruciatus on each other one too many times. When someone had been hexed and was moaning in pain, or lost communication with their family beyond the gates.

It was a place to whisper: fresh rumors about Death Eater movements beyond the castle from eavesdropping on the Carrows; intel on the Order passed in secret from Luna’s father through the Quibbler’s pages; angry, hissing rants about the Slytherin students, about which of them had Death Eater families, about who might want Harry dead.

About the most dangerous one of them all, the one who was guilty and Dark and Marked: Malfoy.

(“I would keep them all,” Draco had said to him after asking about his mum without laughing. After he’d let Neville gently press his rough fingers to his bruised throat. “I would never let them be taken . . .”)

And the Room was a place to crowd around the Wizard Wireless in the middle of the night, holding their breaths and twisting the dial through endless static, hoping and hoping to catch Lee Jordan’s voice through the fog. To catch a hint of Harry’s name . . . or someone they knew . . .

In all those weeks, Neville was never, ever without his coin.

He talked to Harry, sometimes, despite the fact that Harry was lost and possibly dead.

When he found himself on those rare occasions completely alone in his dormitory room, Neville would walk on trembling legs across the vast expanse of the carpet, and sit down on Harry’s pristine bed, and touch the cold blankets with his hand.

He would tell him about the meetings. What they all remembered from Harry’s lessons in fifth year. He would tell him about Ginny and Luna and Cho. He would tell him what it was like to be terrified of the very halls they had all once called home. To fear pain around every corner. The unfathomable darkness of the Great Hall ceiling, as if it didn’t have enough hope left to reflect the daylit sky.

He told Harry how the notes from transfigured plants had never once been wrong.

Neville followed the notes religiously, sprinting back to the Room as soon as he could whenever he got one so he could devise that night’s plan of attack before he forgot the words: where to put up new signs for recruitment, which hallways to use to check on DA members and their siblings in their various Houses, which areas of the castle to avoid, who to tail with spies.

And at night, only at night, he would lie awake with the withered leaves clutched in his fingers. As if they could tell him all their secrets if only he cradled them long enough in his hands. If only he begged them, feeling lonely and young in the dark, to tell him who had floated them into the air. Whose hand had held the quill . . .

Luna never asked him again how he suddenly became adept at guessing where patrolling guards would be in the castle. She’d given him a penetrating look after the first three chase-less missions had gone by in a row, and then given him a tiny smile, and never mentioned it again.

Which Neville was grateful for, because if she had asked, he would have genuinely, honestly looked at her and said, “I don’t know how. I don’t know who it is. They don’t want me to know.”

But Neville knew who he wanted it to be. Desperately. More than he wanted to breathe.

Almost as much as Neville wanted it not to be him.

Because Neville lost sleep at night wondering what would happen to Draco if he was found out. Spent hours of his life wondering whether Draco had spent the night in the castle or back at the manor. If Draco’s skin had fresh bruises hidden beneath his robes. If his arm hurt. If Snape was there to hold up his chin.

If Draco called him “Neville” in his head since that night, or whether he was still Longbottom like before. If anything had changed in their final moments together, as tears glistened in Draco’s eyes, and he pulled his hood back over his head.

Twice, Neville found himself wandering toward the dungeons at odd hours. Twice, he caught himself just around the corner from the Slytherin Common Room. “Where is he?” he would beg if he knocked. “Is he safe? Has he slept? Is he warm?”

But Neville always forced himself to turn around and head back up the stairs, his fingertips playing with the leaves in his robe pocket until he was back in friendly DA territory once more.

--

The first week of December, Neville found himself back in the rare situation of being chased through the Hogwarts Halls.

It was nearing sundown, and his too-thin, angular body felt like it was hurling itself across the stone unnaturally, as if yanked by strings. His chest ached, and his vision felt hazy, and all he could hear was the terrible drumming of his own feet, nearly drowned out by the two pairs of feet chasing behind him.

It was the Carrows, he was fairly certain. He hadn’t gotten a great look after the first curse zoomed past. But he’d felt their eyes on him all week as he tried to do normal things like go to class and eat and sleep, and Ginny had begged him to be on his guard.

How the Carrows had known that he was planning to steal extra medical supplies from Pomfrey’s supply cabinet that night was a mystery, but he couldn’t afford to stop and think about it when his life depended on him making it around each new corner just before they turned the previous one.

A hex exploded just over his head, crumbling a block of stone.

(Neville was almost bored of hexes flying toward his head by now. Bored of running. Bored of slinking through the dark. Bored of the terror.)

And that was when he turned a corner, took two steps, and ran smack into Draco Malfoy.

Neville knew it was him before they’d even hit the ground. He collapsed in a beautiful rush of black silk and mint, right on top of a warm body with a harsh grunt, amd Draco’s arms flew up around Neville’s back, trying to stop the fall. The air from Draco’s lungs released in Neville’s face with a strong oomph.

“Draco,” Neville panted.

He reached with trembling fingers for Draco’s face, for his hair, for his clothes, for something, but Draco was somehow already on his feet, gripping Neville by the shoulders and yanking him to standing with a shocking burst of strength.

“Go left,” Draco hissed, whipping out his wand and widening his stance, eyes trained on the end of the hall.

It was the first words Draco had said to him in nearly two months. They landed like water in the back of Neville’s throat, and he almost moaned.

The footsteps were just at the end of the corridor, but Neville couldn’t move away.

He wildly gripped handfuls of Draco’s black suit, shivering at the feel of it once more in his palms. He pulled him closer, until their panting chests touched. For one beautiful second, Draco’s cold hands covered Neville’s own.

“Is it you?” Neville gasped, panic making his lungs spasm.

Draco wrenched Neville’s hands off him and took a step back. “Go.”

“The notes, the information, has it been you?” Neville pleaded.

“Ooh, I think someone’s stopped to catch their breath!” came a sickening voice, just out of view.

Before Neville could beg him again, Draco’s wand was suddenly in his face.

“I’ll fucking hex you,” Draco said in a desperate, shaking voice. “I said go left.”

The shadow of someone appeared at the edge of Neville’s vision, sprawling across the floor from around the corner; he had no choice.

With one last desperate look at Draco’s pale eyelashes, the freckle on his jaw, the long hair falling into his face, the dip of his upper lip . . . Neville clutched a handful of Draco’s suit right over his chest and breathed, “Thank you.”

Then he sprinted with all his might down the corridor to his left, his last vision of Draco’s wrecked expression burned into his mind.

Distantly, as he ran, and his palms burned where he’d gripped handfuls of silk, he heard Draco’s voice back in the hallway, clear as day and perfectly calm, as if he’d simply been out for an evening stroll.

“Ah, Alecto, Amycus,” he said, in his most elegant drawl. “Fancy seeing you both here tonight. I believe the man you’re looking for just ran to the right. It’s a shame I couldn’t stop him myself, but he was so quick . . .”

Neville didn’t realize until he made it back to the Room in one piece, and Ginny looked up at him in terrified concern, that he had tear tracks running down his cheeks, dripping salt into his mouth.

He let her put her arm around him on the sofa for a very long time. She never asked him what had happened, and he held his face in his hands, closing his eyes.

--

The day before Winter Holidays were due to begin, Neville found himself wandering aimlessly through the halls in the middle of the afternoon.

He was supposed to be in class, he didn’t remember which one, but instead, he found himself taking step after step across the stone, passing by the familiar corridors that used to lead him to the greenhouses, warmed by the sun in a previous life.

Snow flurries drifted in through the walkways now, swirling down endlessly from a weeping, grey sky.

It seemed impossible that Christmas would still be happening in only a week. He half-expected the Hogwarts gates to remain shut tomorrow afternoon, holding them all in a prison, never to see their families again. He imagined his Gran, sitting alone in her vast drawing room on Christmas morning, her only son babbling at a plain white wall miles away, and her only grandchild stuck in the Room of Requirement until he was nothing but bones and a skull.

His cheek hurt.

Two hours ago, Neville had stood up in the middle of Muggle Studies, sick to his stomach listening to Alecto ramble on and on and on, and he hadn’t even believed the words coming from his own mouth as he asked her, point blank, how much Muggle blood she had in her veins.

He’d thought the moment would make him feel like Harry Potter again—brave and fearless and fighting in the face of Darkness with pure Light.

But instead, as Alecto’s wand had gashed a curse across his face, and as blood had sprayed from his cheek over his robes and the desk, all Neville had thought was that he was completely exhausted.

Some of his classmates had screamed in horror, and some of them had cheered. They’d praised Neville for his fight, for Dumbledore’s Army, pledging their allegiance with their wands held high in Alecto’s face.

Neville had tried to keep his chest puffed out as he ran from the classroom, waving off anyone’s help and claiming he was on his way to Pomfrey. He’d held steady for about ten buzzing steps, shuddering at the howl of Alecto’s screams of rage echoing over his friends’ jeers. Then he’d turned the corner out of sight and sunk to his knees, out of his mind with searing pain.

He’d never felt anything like it—not since Bellatrix Lestrange had held a wand firing curses straight into his chest. The world faded in and out, and hot blood coated his tongue.

And then, for reasons he’d never be able to explain, he took hallway after hallway leading away from the hospital wing. Dried blood coated the front of his robes and sweater, and the gash across his face had clotted into a throbbing, stinging mess.

And still, he walked. Not caring if anyone chased after him to finish him off, or if anyone caught sight of him and screamed.

As he walked, he considered his life as if from afar. How lately, he’d found himself staring from the corner in the Room of Requirement—at his friends looking breathless and strong, holding each other up, laughing in the face of despair, toasting to Harry Potter.

He’d been watching them all slowly pair off as the weeks went by. Couples straying closer together on couches for comfort. Girls’ legs draped across boys’ laps, and hands on thighs. Gentle touches on faces, and fingers stroking hair, and secret kisses in corners where people thought no one could see . . .

And Neville would be alone, hunched over a plan with a parchment and quill.

And he was exhausted.

He’d never felt less like he was in the middle of a war. People were dying beyond the walls, pledging allegiance to a madman, running from Snatchers, fighting for their lives for the good of the Order.

And here was Neville. Dripping blood from a cut on his face because he said something unwittingly stupid in class.

Briefly, he thought of going near Ravenclaw tower and waiting for Luna to return. Surely, she’d heard of what had happened to him by now. He was even surprised, almost pathetically offended, that no members of the DA had come running looking for him now that he’d missed the next class and wasn’t in the infirmary.

Then he did hear footsteps. Sprinting footsteps. And a person came flying around the corner into the open space at the end of the hall.

It was Draco Malfoy.

Neville watched in shock as Draco came sliding to a halt. He glanced wildly around the branching hallways as if he was searching for something lost. Then he whipped around and made to sprint again in a different direction.

And that’s when he noticed Neville.

Draco stopped himself so quickly he nearly fell onto his face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. He lifted his hands. “Where the fuck have you been?”

Neville froze, stunned.

Draco’s hair was disheveled and dripping with sweat, his face pale and gleaming, thin cheeks flushed. And he was panting, as if he’d just run the full length of the castle more than once.

Draco stared back at Neville, his eyes quickly scanning Neville’s body in a way that made Neville feel suddenly naked, his skin prickling and hot.

Then Draco’s face paled, even more than Neville thought possible. He looked in horror at Neville’s cheek, his grey eyes wide with shock. His mouth dropped open.

For one terrifying second, Neville almost thought Draco would keel over. Then Draco shook his head and marched toward him, reaching out for Neville’s arm.

“What happened?” Draco said, his voice almost unrecognizably wild. He shook Neville’s arm so hard it hurt in the socket. “Why aren’t you in the infirmary? What happened to your face? What are you doing here?”

Neville swallowed, trying to form words at the shock of being so close to him. Hearing his voice.

“I’m just . . . it’s nothing . . . I was going to—were you looking for me?”

“It’s all over the bloody school,” Draco said, his face now seething with rage. His nostrils flared. “I heard that you—and no one knew where—nevermind.”

He looked at Neville with a cold expression, almost like disgust, then checked they were alone before dragging Neville along, his fingers clamped tight on Neville’s wrist. “Come here.”

Neville followed, dumbly, his feet barely touching the ground. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

Draco glared at him over his shoulder. “Shut up and come on,” he hissed.

Neville suddenly felt too bone-weary to argue. He let Draco drag him through the school, watching idly as Draco stopped to check each new empty hallway before they turned a corner, one hand gripping his wand and the other yanking Neville along.

They went down and down and down. Neville didn’t even recognize the dungeon corridors that they crept through after a while.

Draco’s breathing was heavy, echoing on the stone walls as they went. His grip was so tight on Neville’s wrist that Neville’s hand went numb.

“How have you been?” he idiotically wanted to ask, as if they weren’t in the middle of a war taking place in their school. As if Neville’s face wasn’t covered in blood, and Draco didn’t look like he’d just spent an hour sprinting through the castle, looking for him.

Distantly, his mind registered the fact that any sane member of Dumbledore’s Army would be afraid at being forcibly lead to the dungeons by someone with the Mark.

But in the same breath, Neville also knew that he would never feel that fear. He could wait a thousand years, one-hundred thousand, and it would never come.

Draco lead them until they entered a dungeon passageway that seemed even more cloaked in shadow than the rest, falling into disrepair. Even the lamps flickered ominously along the damp walls, and icy water dripped from the stone.

Neville stumbled for balance when Draco finally let go of his wrist in front of a blank stretch of wall. He noticed, as if through a dream, that the fingers of Draco’s left hand were tapping madly against his thigh through his robes.

He subtly pinched his own arm just to check that he was awake.

Before Neville could decide whether to ask where they were, Draco took a deep breath and gave him an odd look. If Neville didn’t know any better, he would have thought that the look was shame.

“I have to . . .” Draco began, still trying to catch his breath. Sweat dripped down his brow in small, pearled beads. His grey eyes seemed pinned to Neville’s cheek, unable to look away or meet his gaze.

“I have to show this, to open the door,” he said.

Neville frowned, then realized with a dull thud in his stomach that Draco was holding up his left arm between them, still covered by the sleeve of his robes.

The moment seemed to freeze.

They both stared down at Draco’s arm in the shadows, and Neville saw that it was shaking until Draco held it steady with his other hand.

A boldness rushed through him—sharper and more powerful than whatever had filled him when he rose to his feet in Alecto’s classroom.

Neville raised a shockingly steady hand, dried blood on his fingers, and he placed it over Draco’s forearm on top of his robes. The heat of Draco’s skin seemed to burn straight through to his palm.

“Okay,” Neville said, his voice almost too loud in the darkness.

They both stared down at Neville’s hand draped across Draco’s arm. Just once, Neville let his thumb softly rub along the fabric.

Draco inhaled sharply through his nose.

When Neville looked up, Draco was blinking hard. He pulled his arm from Neville’s grasp, so that Neville’s fingers fell away one by one. Then Draco angled his body away, pulled up his sleeve, and held his wand to the black snake with bone-thin fingers.

Neville held his breath.

Draco glanced at him one more time with heavy eyes through the darkness, almost as if he looked sorry, then he took a long breath and stared down at the pale stretch of his skin.

“Morsmordre,” Draco whispered.

The word sent a horrible, icy shiver up Neville’s spine. He watched in horror as the snake twisted sickly on Draco’s skin, flickered once with a silvery burst of light, then went still.

Before Neville’s very eyes, a door suddenly shimmered into existence in the black stone, carved into the belly of the earth from magic. Draco stared at Neville as he reached for the handle, then paused.

“Are you going to follow me in?” Draco asked, frowning as he said it. He flicked his sleeve back down at his side.

Neville didn’t even need to pause to consider. “Yes.”

For some reason, that seemed to be what Draco needed to hear. He nodded once, straightened up, and pushed open the door, pointing his wand to ignite the oil lamp on the wall as they entered.

Neville ducked to follow behind him. He looked around in awe at what appeared to be a pristine storeroom, filled floor to ceiling with thousands of jars of ingredients, shimmering ghostlike in the pools of light from the rusted lamp.

He heard the door click shut behind him, then felt a powerful wave of magic roll through the room as the wall of stone settled back into place.

Silence fell like a thick curtain.

Neville couldn’t believe that he was alone with Draco Malfoy again. It felt like only seconds had passed since they were pressed together in the darkened corner, nearly check to cheek, Draco’s hair brushing his face.

For a moment, they just breathed, not quite looking at each other. Neville wondered if anything had ever sounded so beautiful as the soft, rasping sound.

Draco wordlessly pointed his wand at the chair by the wooden table in the center of the tiny room, effortlessly transfiguring it into a bench wide enough for two.

After a sharp nod from Draco, Neville sat. He felt bone-tired and heavy, barely able to keep his eyes open through the grey gloom. He stared at Draco’s back as Draco almost frantically scanned the shelves, long, pale fingers reaching out to trace the various jars.

“What were you thinking?” Draco said into the silence, not looking at him.

Before Neville could respond, he went on in an angry rush. “You don’t even have to tell me who gave that to you. I recognize the spell; it’s one of Alecto’s favorites. Have you any idea how stupid you’ve been? How mad you’re being? Weeks, months, you’ve been egging them on. You and all your stupid little friends. Do you want them to die for you? For this ridiculous, meaningless cause?”

Draco snatched up a jar with his hand, nearly dropping it to the floor, and Neville could only stare at him blankly from where he sat, his tongue in knots.

Draco whipped around in a swirl of robes and pinned Neville with his gaze. “You think your pathetic games of chase and your useless pranks are all fun and harmless? Your little missions in the dark to put up your blasted army signs?” He slammed the jar down onto the table, making Neville flinch at the noise. “Fuck, Neville, you know what they are capable of,” he nearly yelled. “You’ve seen . . . you saw them that day in the courtyard. With me. How long until they pin you as the ringleader, if they haven’t already? How long until you can’t weasel your way out of their detentions? Until they torture you without reason? Until you wind up dead, and then what are the rest of them going to do? How long would they all survive—?”

“You would keep helping them,” Neville suddenly cut in, rising to his feet in a wave of emotion. His eyes burned as he reached out and trapped Draco’s left arm in his grip once more. “I don’t think any of this is fun. I don’t think it’s a game. Harry . . . Harry could be dead, and we’re all trapped in here, and this is all I have.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” Draco growled, so close that his spit flew into Neville’s face. “Everything I’ve done, to get you to fucking stay out of it, and then you’re holding your stupid meetings, running down the halls. Why can’t you—”

“Kids are being hurt!” Neville screamed. He slammed his palm on the table. “They’re kids. They don’t have any reason to be mixed up in this mess. Don’t tell me you don’t see that. If we don’t do something, if I don’t try—”

But Neville’s words died in his mouth as a wave of blinding pain suddenly ripped across his cheek. He’d torn open the clotted wound again as he spoke, and hot streams of blood were pouring down his skin, soaking his stained robes.

He clutched his hand to his face and tried not to scream. Distantly, he realized that hands were on his shoulders, pushing him down to sit. Fingers were pulling his hand away from his cheek, holding his neck steady.

Soft words were pouring into his ear, comforting and warm. Neville clung to them.

“You’re alright, it’s alright,” a voice was murmuring. Neville blindly grabbed hold of a fistful of robes as he gritted his teeth at the pain.

Fingers—Draco’s fingers—were pushing the blood-stained hair out of his face.

“Hold still,” Draco whispered. “Listen to me, you’re alright.”

Neville squeezed his eyes shut harder.

Then, like a breath of fresh air over his skin, familiar magic tingled across his face in a soothing rush. Neville shivered as the magic he’d longed for in the middle of the darkest nights stopped the wet blood from dripping down his cheek, and dulled the mind-numbing pain into a manageable ache.

Draco murmured a spell Neville didn’t recognize, and he winced once as he felt the skin of his face knitting itself together, as if the magic was a needle and string.

When the sensation stopped, and Neville finally brought himself to open his eyes, Draco was sitting impossibly close, his eyes trained on Neville’s cheek.

“You’re alright,” Draco said again, almost to himself under his breath. Neville recognized the soft magic of a cleansing charm working its way over his skin, clearing away the blood.

For long minutes, Neville sat there and tried to regain his breath. His vision was still blurred from the shock of the pain, and his heart felt numb. Distantly, he realized that the robes clutched in his hand weren’t his own, but he couldn’t let go.

Draco didn’t say anything. He kept one warm hand on the back of Neville’s clammy neck, the tips of his fingers barely touching Neville’s hair.

“Where are we?” Neville finally asked, as if Draco hadn’t just watched him come apart at the seams.

“Snape’s private storeroom,” Draco said, sounding a bit out of breath, but calm.

Neville nodded, then paled as a terrifying realization slammed into his chest. “That spell, though. The one you did to get in . . . the Carrows could—”

Draco shook his head. His palm on the back of Neville’s neck slowly slipped away. “Snape set that as the entrance so that only I could get in, other than him. Not any other students. He . . . he didn’t trust the wards of the castle.”

Neville blinked, feeling like he was coming out of a deep sleep, and cleared his rough throat. “But they could still—”

“The Carrows don’t know this room exists,” Draco said. “Technically, they could enter if they knew, but . . .” He shrugged, then he unscrewed the lid of the jar he’d slammed onto the table, carefully taking out what Neville recognized were preserved dittany leaves.

Draco swallowed. “I haven’t let them know about it, though. Whenever they’ve looked into my head. Neither has Severus.”

Neville wanted to drink in the sound of Draco’s voice in the quiet room. Have it inked under his skin. Poured into his blood.

“I trust you,” Neville said.

Draco shook his head, his eyes glowing in the golden, shadowy light from the lamp. “You really shouldn’t,” he said, but his voice sounded unsure.

To stop himself from doing something unthinkable, like reach out and pull Draco into his arms, or press his cheek to the crook of Draco’s neck, Neville kept talking.

“Snape knows you come in here, then?”

Draco looked at his hands as he prepared some dittany leaves, then at Neville’s cheek, leaning closer to inspect the sealed gash.

“You’re all hogging the bloody Room of Requirement,” he said. “The rest of us need somewhere to go that’s safe. The other Slytherins have their Common Room. There isn’t anywhere else.”

Something sharp twisted in Neville’s chest, but he couldn’t pinpoint what.

“This is where you are, then?” Neville asked in a whisper, as if they could be overheard any moment. “When I don’t see you? When you’re not at the manor?”

He heard Draco’s swallow as Draco pressed a palmful of cool dittany to Neville’s cheek, tilting Neville’s head back gently with his other hand.

“When you don’t see me?” Draco repeated, his voice oddly fragile.

Neville closed his eyes at the slight burn of the dittany working its way into his slashed skin. “Yes. When I don’t see you.”

Their faces were incredibly close. Neville could feel the warm stream of air as Draco breathed. The gentle hand holding Neville’s head wove fingers through his hair.

“I told you not to watch for me,” Draco whispered.

Neville opened his eyes, immediately locking with pale grey just inches from his. “I know.”

But then he had to close his eyes again. It was unbearable. To think of Draco sitting alone in the black shadows of the storeroom, perched on the tiny chair with the dim light coming from the horrible lamp.

And meanwhile, Neville had been spending some nights laughing with the other DA members on comfortable sofas. Drinking smuggled pumpkin juice together by the fire. Cheering over successful missions. Watching people curl around each other in comfort.

And only an hour ago, Neville had been thinking how exhausted he was by it. And Draco had apparently spent half his term sitting alone in the dark . . .

“This was unforgivably stupid, you know,” said Draco’s voice, as if from far away.

Neville opened his eyes, words on his lips. Then he froze at the sensation of Draco’s palm covering his cheek, cupping his jaw.

He only had to lean forward.

Only had to tilt his head and open his lips and be thrown headfirst into his dreams. Full pale lips pressed warmly against his own, drinking in his air, letting his taste coat his tongue . . .

Draco suddenly hissed, as if in pain. His arm holding Neville’s head whipped away.

Neville bolt upright, his heart pounding. Terror bloomed in his chest that Draco had somehow read his thoughts. That he had known. That he had looked into the depths of Neville’s twisted mind and saw their mouths pressed together, bare skin on skin, and flinched away in disgust at the thought, in fear—

But then he realized that Draco was shaking, struggling to breathe.

(Remembered the alcove. Draco’s nose pressed along his own. And he hadn’t looked disgusted, then. Hadn’t looked afraid . . .)

“Are you hurt?” Neville gasped, a horrible realization washing over him at the look on Draco’s face. “Tell me. Where are you hurt?”

But Draco shook his head, and it was as if a blank mask had fallen across his features. He suddenly appeared as if he was simply sitting in class, even though his body looked rigid, and he held his arms tightly down at his sides.

“I’m not hurt,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s nothing.”

Neville stared at him, taking in the fresh sheen of sweat over Draco’s brow, but then Draco was stiffly picking up another handful of dittany, carefully crushing it in his shaking palms.

“You need another round of this, else it’ll scar,” Draco said.

Neville nodded, lost for words, and Draco lifted the cool leaves to Neville’s cheek again with one hand, his other arm pressed against his stomach.

Stupidly, Neville asked the very next question that popped into his mind to break the tense silence:

“How did you know the countercurse for this? You knew how to heal it.”

Draco’s hand holding the dittany flinched once, then regained control, pressing the leaves to Neville’s skin.

Neville closed his eyes, for some reason unable to keep looking at the unnaturally tense lines of Draco’s body.

“Last year,” Draco said in a very small voice. It tickled Neville’s ear. “My . . . my mother . . . after I failed to . . .” Draco trailed off, and was quiet for so long that Neville thought he wouldn’t finish. Without thinking, Neville moved his hand back to Draco’s robes and held on again.

Draco’s thumb seemed to stroke his cheek.

“My mother was punished,” Draco finally said, in the deepest whisper. “Alecto got to carry it out. I learned, then.”

A wet burning filled Neville’s eyes. He tried to turn his face to look at him as he sucked in a breath.

“Draco . . .”

But Draco pressed the leaves more firmly into his cheek and looked away. “Please, don’t,” he said.

Then, so quickly it took Neville a few moments to catch up, Draco added, “Why didn’t you go straight to Pomfrey?”

Draco’s hand fell away as Neville went silent. Neville opened and closed his mouth, testing his jaw, and his cheek felt smooth and clean. Pain free.

Silently, he shifted so he was facing Draco on the bench. Flickering shadows were dancing across Draco’s thin cheeks, playing tricks with the grey light of his eyes, casting shadows from his eyelashes across his skin.

They stared at each other. Neville licked his lips to speak. Saw Draco’s eyes dart down once to his tongue.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

Draco frowned. “I don’t believe you. I don’t think—”

But he suddenly moaned under his breath, and his face broke; his eyes squeezed shut in pain. He hunched over with his arms crossed over his stomach, his hair falling into his white face.

“You are hurt,” Neville said. He reached out for him, but Draco waved his hand away. “Don’t lie to me. Draco, please. Tell me—”

“Shut up,” Draco hissed weakly. He seemed to gasp for a deep breath.

It made Neville want to scream, but he clamped shut his jaw and bit his tongue.

Then, straightening up again, his face sweaty and pale, Draco stared at the wall just over Neville’s shoulder. His eyes looked glossy in the flickering light, and he set his shoulders, seeming to pull himself together once more.

“Why didn’t you go straight to the infirmary?” he finally asked again, sounding exhausted.

But something came over Neville at the sight of the grey circles under Draco’s eyes.

“Why did you do it?” he asked back, the words rushing from his lips. He leaned forward. “The notes. I know it was you. Why did you help me? Help all of us?”

Neville’s body felt like it was alive for the first time in three months. Like his veins hadn’t been pumping real blood until just this moment. He could feel every prickle of Draco’s heat in the air. Every shivering exhale against his skin.

Draco didn’t look like he was in pain anymore.

Instead, he looked lost. He looked five years younger than the man in the suit strutting through the Hogwarts halls at the beginning of term.

The air thrummed, like wordless, wandless magic. It was the alcove all over again, and Neville wanted to weep at the sweet, aching memory as it washed over his skin.

Draco’s eyes looked like stars lighting up the blackest sky. He blinked, many times, and Neville felt his heart drop into his stomach.

(This was what people wrote about in poems, he suddenly realized. This was what they sang about. What they killed for. What they’d rather die than live without . . .)

“Sometimes . . .” Draco began, hesitantly into the thick silence, but his voice shook. He stopped and looked down to where their knees were nearly touching on the bench.

“Draco,” Neville breathed.

Draco looked up at him again with wide eyes and swallowed. Neville gave the tiniest nod.

“Sometimes,” Draco started again, breathing hard. “I . . . I want things. I feel things.” His voice faded to a shaking whisper. “And I don’t understand.”

Neville felt the earth drop out from beneath him. He couldn’t breathe if he tried.

(He might have realized that Draco’s left hand was clenched tightly into a fist. Might have noticed that he was still shaking, the veins of his neck pulsing as if he was in terrible pain, but Neville couldn’t focus. Not now. Not ever again.)

Neville leaned even closer, until he could count the individual flecks of blue in Draco’s eyes.

“What sort of things?” Neville breathed.

Draco looked back down to their knees. Slowly, carefully, as if Neville might leap up and sprint away, Draco lifted his right hand, and he reached to where Neville was still softly gripping his robes.

Neville watched, dumbstruck. Thin pale fingers edged closer and closer to his own rough hand. He watched as Draco tentatively touched his skin, tracing Neville’s knuckles with his fingertips . . .

Then Draco winced, and he pulled back.

“No,” Neville gasped. He blindly grabbed Draco’s fingers with his own, keeping him close.

Slowly, painfully, as if Draco might disappear at his touch, he moved his hand until he was covering Draco’s with his own, skin to skin. He could feel the faint rhythm of Draco’s rapid pulse. Could feel the barest pressure of Draco tapping against his leg under their palms.

“I’ve been afraid,” Neville said, before he could convince himself not to. “For you.”

“Don’t,” Draco whispered, staring transfixed at their hands. “You can’t—”

“Since that night,” Neville went on, his throat tight. “Since I waited for you. Draco . . . I’ve wanted—”

“Please don’t say it.”

“I’ve missed—”

The door materialized in the stone.

Neville gripped Draco’s hand in paralyzing fear as it immediately swung open, and a wave of black swooped in, and a voice was frantically saying, “What are you doing? Why haven’t you responded to your Summons? He is not pleased that you’re—”

Severus Snape stood dumbstruck in the doorway of his storeroom. He stared at Draco, then at Neville, then at their hands still clasped tightly between them.

Neville prepared to die.

It was the only possible way he could see himself leaving this situation, where Draco’s trembling hand rapidly twitched under his own, and their knees were touching, and Snape glared at them with the fiercest, blackest gaze Neville had ever seen in his life.

He could hear Draco shaking, practically gasping for breath.

Then, to his utter astonishment, Snape’s expression changed in an instant, and he only looked terribly afraid. Somehow, that was even worse.

“You need to go. Now,” Snape said, speaking only to Draco.

Snape’s words from seconds ago suddenly clicked in Neville’s mind, and he leapt to his feet in shock, staring down at Draco’s pale face.

“You were being Summoned?” he gasped. He couldn’t help but stare at Draco’s covered arm.

Draco gazed up at him with lost eyes, speechless and unmoving. His right hand was still awkwardly held out where Neville had been holding it.

Rage burned Neville’s skin. Rage and panic. “You . . . is that why you looked like you were in pain? Draco, that was ages ago. What the fuck are you—why didn’t you immediately leave and—”

“Your father has assured the Dark Lord that you are on your way, as has your mother, but their excuses will not hold much longer,” Snape broke in, almost calmly from the doorway. “I highly suggest that you leave. Now.”

Unlike Neville’s frantic yelling, Snape’s cold voice seemed to break Draco out of his frozen fog.

He came alive and rose to his feet, staring down at the floor as he quickly adjusted his robes. Something about his face looked grey, almost dead. He didn’t even look sad, or angry. He wouldn’t look Neville’s way.

“Draco,” he tried, his heart pounding like mad, not giving a shit that Snape was mere steps away. “Is this—are you going—you’ll be there for the whole break? At the manor? When will you—”

A jar was suddenly being pressed into Neville’s hands. He grabbed it on instinct, then looked down to see the rest of the dittany cradled against his stomach.

“It’ll scar if you don’t do one more treatment,” Draco said, in a voice that was so flat it filled Neville with more spine-numbing fear than any Death Eater ever had. Than the Dark Lord himself.

“Draco, wait,” Neville called as Draco brushed past, not meeting his eyes, even though he’d been yelling at him for not leaving sooner just seconds before. “Please . . .”

Snape stepped aside as Draco got to the door to let him pass, then Draco paused. He looked back once over his shoulder with dull, black eyes, staring at a spot just above Neville’s head.

“Would’ve been nice,” he said, in a soft, lifeless voice.

Then he was gone.

Snape halted Neville with his hand as Neville blindly rushed toward the door.

“I don’t need to elaborate on what will happen if he is any later than he is,” Snape hissed.

Neville stumbled back, the world around him reeling like an endless, dark void. All at once, it occurred to him that he was alone in a room with a Death Eater (a different Death Eater), and no one knew where he was to come to his aid. His mouth was very dry, and he felt panic fluttering at the edges of his mind.

He thought about grabbing his wand, reaching for his coin, sprinting past him out the door—

“You’ll find that Miss Weasley is quite correct in her suspicions regarding myself,” Snape drawled, seeming to tower over Neville even though they stood eye-to-eye.

Neville felt himself blanch. “What are you—?”

“And I suggest,” Snape continued, in a much quieter voice, sharp like a knife, “that your grandmother do something about the pathetic excuses for wards surrounding her house.”

“My—my gran—?”

Snape grabbed a handful of Neville’s robes and suddenly yanked him through the door before he could finish. Neville tripped and slammed head-first into the opposite wall of the damp, black hall.

“You will die if I ever find out you have come back to this place,” Snape said, crossing his arms over his chest like an impenetrable tower in the doorway.

Then, as Neville blinked, the door transformed back into stone, sealing Snape off from view in a rushing clap of magic.

And Neville was alone.

--

Later, much later, after what felt like hours blinking in the pitch dark, Neville found himself walking very slowly back to the Room.

He turned the final corner into the corridor of tapestries, his eyes dull and burning and his stomach in an icy knot.

And he was so lost to the world that he almost didn’t notice leaves brushing against his face.

But when he did notice, and he reached up numbly to catch the sprig of dittany in his fingers, he felt like he was watching someone else hold the transfigured parchment in their palm.

He felt like he was spying, reading over someone else’s shoulder, as he unrolled the scroll standing in the middle of the hallway, not even trying to hide.

It took him three tries to actually read what it said:

I won’t be coming back.

I’m sorry.

I tried.

Neville cradled his palms so that the withered leaves wouldn’t fall to the floor. He kept them there, not shoving them down into his pockets.

Immediately, he turned away from the corridor with the Room and made his way to Gryffindor Tower instead. He didn’t know whether he passed anyone on the way there. If anyone he knew tried to say hello. If a guard halted his path.

But he did know when he finally ascended the top of the stairs and pushed open the doors into an empty dormitory. He knew that Seamus and Dean would be spending their last night before Break in the Room, like everyone had already planned.

So Neville carefully held the handful of leaves in his palm. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his outer robe to the floor.

Then he climbed straight into Harry Potter’s bed, between the sheets. He drew the curtains closed around him with a murmured spell. And he lay down, his cheek pressed into Harry’s stale, clean pillow. He let the leaves scatter across the red and gold silk.

He didn’t let himself cry.