The Power of the Potters ✔

Part 14: the traitor

The night following the attack on Hogwarts and the kidnapping of Lord Potter was the longest Neville Longbottom had ever experienced.

Hogwarts was supposed to be impenetrable. The general consensus among the wizarding populace was that as long as Dumbledore was Headmaster, no-one would ever dare attack the school.

Boy, were they wrong.

Most students spent the evening and night within the Great Hall listening to the hundreds of theories as to what happened the night before. No professor or Prefect enforced the lights out curfew since they had all been on high alert after their impromptu, late-night meeting with Headmaster Dumbledore. Neville had never seen the man so downtrodden and perturbed. He looked… broken and so unlike the super-being that he was rumored to be.

He had informed them all that there had been an attack on the castle by Death Eaters and that he had activated the war wards which prohibited movement into and out of the castle. The professors had been given all-night rotation duty, Heads of House were to stay in the dorms with the students still there, and the Prefects were asked to keep a vigilant eye on their fellow students in the Great Hall before the Headmaster abruptly ended the meeting. The students still in the Common Rooms had just been brought down by their Heads in the morning for breakfast.

So Neville was not surprised by a harried-looking McGonagall's morning declaration to the general student population that You-Know-Who was behind the assault on the castle and that further information would be provided after breakfast.

It had ruined his appetite immediately.

"Where do you think Dumbledore is?" Ronald Weasley asked with his mouth full. His usual, terrible table manners disgusting those sitting near him. As usual, Neville noted aside.

A growl bubbled in the back of Neville's throat as he spoke what was on his mind. "The real question is: how can you stuff your face when so many of us are injured or missing?" His disgust at the red-head gormandizing across from him was visibly evident.

The freckled boy frowned at the unexpected response from the normally timid teen and swallowed a mouthful of eggs. "Starving m'self won't help anything!"

Neville and several others around them snorted in disbelief.

Neville turned away from his insipid classmate and stared out of the painted windows wondering if the injured students were being healed in the Hospital Wing or if they were taken to St. Mungo's. Each house table was missing a substantial number of students, more than the number of beds in the Hospital Wing.

I hope Hermione is ok.

His bushy-haired companion of several months had taken Harry's hospitalization very hard. Neville assumed she was overwhelmed by guilt for ignoring him since the beginning of the school year.

He had tried to explain to her the ways of Family Magik many times, but she was stubborn in her belief that if Harry were truly interested in her that he would be able to see through it.

Neville knew such to be hogwash, but try as he might, he could not get the girl to see reason. He hated seeing the distraught looks that Harry had cast in her direction. Neville had been so fed up with Hermione on Halloween, after seeing a particularly heart-wrenching look from Harry, that he told her she had to approach Harry soon and talk to him directly.