Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness

Chapter 4: Taking Sides

The first thing he saw was that the world had turned from gray to crimson. Neville blinked slowly, his eyelids feeling ridiculously heavy, and everything seemed to double, spin, and then resolve itself again into the same flat redness. He tried to move, only to discover that he could not feel his own body, and he began to wonder if he was hallucinating. If he was, it wasn't so bad. The red was strange, but the numbness was a blessed relief after the endless, grinding pain that had been his world for so long.

"You're awake!" The voice seemed familiar, and as he struggled to place it, his thoughts responding with the same reluctance as his eyes, a face appeared in the middle of the red. It was a girl. A pretty girl, with long red hair that had been braided back, and she looked both worried and very happy. The red. It was above the girl. Familiar. The canopy of his bed! Then he wasn't hallucinating. He was in his own bed, and he knew the girl. What was her name?

"Uhnnee." The word sounded like it had come from a badly wounded stranger, hoarse and ragged, and he tried again, but this time only a rasp emerged from his lips.

"Shhhh...." Soft, gentle hands slipped beneath his head, lifting it slightly, and he felt something against his mouth as the girl - Ginny - smiled kindly at him. "Here...drink this."

It was water. Nothing more than cool, fresh water, but the moment it touched his tongue, he knew that he had never tasted anything so sweet and wonderful. He gulped at it greedily, but she pulled it away, and he heard himself moan in despair. "A little at a time, you'll make yourself sick." She allowed him another mouthful, and he held it as long as he could bear before swallowing, feeling the parched, shriveled tissues of his mouth and throat seem to come alive again.

He was starting to be able to feel again. Neville became aware that his tongue was grossly swollen in his mouth, his lips like sandpaper, cracked and rough. Still, however, he could feel nothing at all from the neck down, and this began to worry him. He tried again to move his arms and legs, but it was impossible to tell if anything had happened.

With a sense of rising panic, he looked up at Ginny, gratefully accepting another sip of water before he attempted to speak again. "Ca't...fee...m'seff...."

The words were still husky and half-formed, but she seemed to understand. "It's okay. You've been given enough Painkilling Potions to numb a Hungarian Horntail. It's really better that way right now. You should still be in the hospital wing, but Professor Snape only let you stay there until you were out of danger. I don't know how much you remember, Neville, but you and Ernie almost died."

He frowned, trying to shake his head. The beating had been excruciating, the hunger and thirst unbearable, but to say they had nearly died.... "Zaashrat'n."

"I'm not exaggerating. Madame Pomfrey made them take you down at the end of the third day. You'd been completely passed out since that afternoon, Ernie'd only lasted about an hour longer. It was the dehydration after...after you lost all that blood. She said you'd both have been dead by morning at the latest."

Neville tried to say something again, to ask about the brave friend who had taken the terrible punishment alongside him, but Ginny lifted the cup to his lips, and this time, the water was sour, almost lemony, with a strangely bitter aftertaste. He wanted to ask what it was, but everything was growing dim again, and the last thing he heard as he slipped under was Ginny's voice, strangely maternal for a girl so young. "Just sleep for now, there'll be time later...."

OOO

When Neville awoke again, it was to far greater awareness, but also to far greater pain. His back felt as though it were on fire, but when he tried to roll over to ease the discomfort, every muscle and joint let out a howl of agony, and he groaned.