The Light in the Dark | Neville Longbottom

Chapter 60: Lestrange

January 14th, 1997

While everyone else reminisced over the new year, I was back in recovery. Although, this time I was doing recovery at the school. Once I had finished all of my classes, I was required to go to the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey gave me some sort of sedative to calm my nerves and ease my PTSD.

The entire school knew about my mother and the attack. Fred had told me that the Ministry workers were talking about it, and I guess they told their families as well. The deatheater attack at the burrow made its way to The Daily Prophet, and pretty much confirmed all of those rumors. I've only been at school about a week and a half, and the attention I've received was anything but good.

Most people avoided me in the hallways, probably because they thought I would've killed them or something. I lost a couple of friends, like Lavender and Dean were too scared to talk to me. Some of the professors were terrified of me as well; my marks in Slughorn's class dropped, even though I made the potions correctly, and Professor Burbage, my Muggle studies teacher, whimpered every time I came near her. I was forced to drop the class because of it.

Also, rumors were spiraling again. The Daily Prophet told everyone that Harry and I were the only ones injured during the attack. Combine that with the amount of times we were seen "frolicking" by our peers and professors and my reputation, and now everyone thought that we were together. It was absolute rubbish, all of it! Harry was in love with Ginny, I made sure of it once the rumors began. Parts of my heart still belonged to Neville, although I was slowly moving on because I couldn't have been worried about him and my mother.

It was stupid, all of it was. Although speaking of Harry, he recovered faster than I did. But all of the rumors and teasing put him in a bitchy mood, and he was snapping at everyone. I watched him throw a book at a random fourth-year girl a couple days ago while we were studying for our Potions test.

At the moment, I was on my way to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Snape taught the class this year, and it was about as enjoyable as Potions was. D.A.D.A was with Slytherin, and Snape always favored them over Gryffindor. Unlike my other professors, who called me by my first name because I had asked them all to, Snape was very keen on only using my last name to address me. I dreaded this class, to say the least.

On my way to class, I noticed a group of Hufflepuff students. There stood Neville with his hand in Hannah's. My heart sank at the sight of this, but what was I to do about it? I lowered my head as I neared the group. They stood right near the corridor leading to the D.A.D.A classroom, there was no other way to get around them.

"You've all read it in The Daily Prophet!" I heard Ernie MacMillan snark, "She's dangerous. Why should she be coming to this school? She puts all of our lives at risk!"

Hannah sniffled, her voice shaking with anger, "I swear, I've known for months that there was something off about her. Like mum... Like daughter, I guess. She's going to fucking kill us all..."

"Han..." Susan comforted, wrapping an arm around her friend, "It's going to be alright. Maybe she didn't know that Bellatrix was going to-"

"Oh, save me the pity," Hannah spat, "She knew. They probably planned it together, the second she saw Neville and I getting close."

I heard everything they said, but it was nothing new. I already knew coming back to school was going to be rough for this particular reason. Bellatrix Lestrange killed Hannah's mum, and Hannah hated me because of Neville already. It was almost too ironic. But that wasn't the worst I've heard. I once overheard a group of Ravenclaw students plotting to kill me before I "killed them". And with all of the shit I've been receiving, I kind of wished they went through with it.