𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑

the one with the battle of hogwarts

"I don't want to be
threatening.
just feared enough to never have to
make a fist."

•

NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM MADE a smile trudge through my face as we made our way down the tunnel. He had been overenthusiastic about meeting all of us-even Draco. I clung to Draco like my life depended on it for many reasons, specifically, I was about to expose him and I might as well remain with him until something horrible happens.

As we made our way down the corridor, I zoned out on most of the conversation, calculating in my mind that Voldemort was now very much aware of my escape and that Harry had been hunting down Horcruxes.

"-Skylar?"

"What?" I refocused on Neville's face. "I'm sorry I didn't hear you."

"You disappeared, Skylar. I asked what happened to you."

I pushed my left sleeve behind and said bitterly, "This happened to me." Addressing the rising panic on Neville's face I said quickly, "That's alright. You-Know-Who thought I was an ally. I played him to give Harry some time. . .let us just say everything that happens, it happens for good. I'm alright. Did you get a message from Luna?"

"Yeah!" he said brightly. "These galleons have been working miraculously. Dean too-he was on the run with Ted Tonks."

"Thank God," I winced remembering how Ted Tonks was supposed to die. "Are they both okay."

"Yeah! They got into your Aunt Muriel's house, Ron!"

"These have been great," said Neville, beaming at Hermione. "The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape hated it."

"Longbottom, I didn't know you had it in you," Draco said with a chuckle. I smiled.

"You used to?" said Harry.

"Well, it got more difficult as time went on," said Neville. "We lost Luna at Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the leaders. The Carrows seemed to know I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on me hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year they'd chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off."

"No kidding," muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope upward.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago. That's when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran."

"They what?" said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.

"Yeah," said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so steeply, "well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave, I s'pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the other way around. Thing was," he faced them, and Harry was astonished to see that he was grinning, "they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living alone, they probably thought they didn't need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyway," Neville laughed, "Dawlish is still in St. Mungo's and Gran's on the run. She sent me a letter," he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, "telling me she was proud of me, that I'm my parents' son, and to keep it up."