The Light in the Dark | Neville Longbottom

Chapter 70: The Half-Blood Prince

Dear Dawn,

When you said "things were good at school", the last thing I expected was a letter from Professor McGonagall regarding your behavioral problems. Why didn't you tell me that kids were being mean to you at school? You know you can trust me, Dawn. You can talk to me. We could have figured this out months ago, so that these angry outbursts of yours never happened.

But besides that, I hope that your counseling sessions with Professor McGonagall have helped with the bullying problem. Again Dawn, you can reach out to me about these things, bottling it up only makes it worse.

There's nothing new with order business. We're still doing security checks with our alarm system, and I offered your suggestion at the last meeting, they thought it was smart. We're going to expand the system to other continents, starting this summer.

And lastly, regarding your comment about Tonks and I, I have it under control. There's no need to worry about our relationship.

Sincerely, Remus.

『••✎••』

Dear Remus,

I've known that I've been getting bullied, I just chose not to care about it. That's why I didn't feel the need to tell you. I came into this school year knowing that people were going to talk, and after so many months of people just... talking, I've stopped letting their words affect me. Now every now-and-then, a word, or two, would irk me the wrong way, and I'd snap, but that was a very rare occasion.

I'm glad to see that the order has taken my suggestion. I think having those alarms world-wide will do the Wizarding World some good. Also Remus, I'm not an idiot, you don't have it under control. I can tell that you haven't even talked to Tonks either. So after reading this letter, I want you to call Tonks right away, and I'll be awaiting your response. Thank you.

Take care, Dawn.

『••✎••』

April 26th, 1997

"Our session seems to have come to an end," McGonagall stated, "Dawn and Neville, I hope that over these past three weeks, we have worked everything out between you two. I know that this situation has put both of you in awkward positions, but let's try and move forward without any more problems, agreed?"

Neville and I nodded in response, neither of us were looking at each other or Professor McGonagall.

"Good, you two may leave, and head to Hogsmeade with the rest of your classmates." McGonagall sighed as she dismissed us.

Neville and I gathered our individual things and left, all without a single word to McGonagall or one another. Our detention "counseling" sessions, as Remus liked to call them, ended today. Detention itself was fine because I had Ron to talk to, but as McGonagall figured out what caused the fight a couple of weeks ago, she rooted it down to Neville and I.

The first week of counseling was a lot of fighting and victim-blaming, in which Hermione, Harry, and Ron spoke the most. The next week, it was just Hannah, Neville, and I, so we could talk about our "love triangle", or whatever McGonagall called it. I spent a good portion of those meetings watching Neville and Hannah argue. And to literally no one's surprise, by day four, Hannah dumped Neville, and stopped showing up to the meetings. The last week, it was just Neville and I, and we spent most of these meetings in silence.

But thanks to these counseling meetings, I found out why Neville ignored me after the events of March 1st. According to Neville, he didn't want things to go back to normal because he was scared of losing me again, so to get rid of any romantic feelings, he avoided me. Apparently, Neville remembered everything he said that night. But when I asked him if he meant it, he didn't respond, and we resorted back to that awkward silence.