Chapter One - The Misuse of Dementors
“Neville!” Gran shouted up the stairs, “Neville!” She shouted again a second later.
He groaned and turned over in his bed so that his face was in his pillow. This particular morning, he felt unusually exhausted for having had such an uneventful summer holiday. The only times he’d ever been remotely excited in the last two and a half months was when Bill and Fleur had their wedding and Mrs. Weasley paid a galleon for it to be featured in a paragraph on the third page of The Daily Prophet (Luna’s father was mentioned for the simple fact that the editor-in-chief of The Quibbler attended the festivity). The other time was the next day: The Daily Prophet had on the front-page the fact that Harry, Hermione, and an unknown spectator (Neville just knew this to be Ron) had gone missing the day of the wedding and of course, Rita had it that they were running away from the evils of You-Know-Who for the rest of the wizarding world to figure out what to do next. But Neville knew better than Rita. He knew that the Golden Trio was out on a mission - wherever or whatever it was - and they would come back and things would be okay in the end. At least, that’s what he hoped…
“Neville Franklin Longbottom!” he heard his gran walking up the stairs to see if he was actually awake or not.
That’s when he stretched out across his bed and lulled himself out. He groaned, “I’m up, gran!”
He was walking to the loo when his gran walked into his room and shrieked, “Neville! Do you realize what time it is!? If you bathe, make it five minutes!”
Neville winced at her harsh voice, but continued on into his loo.
An hour later…
“Neville, you look impossibly disheveled! For Merlin’s sake, tuck in your shirt!”
Neville did as he was told, like always and also for the fact that he wouldn’t be hearing her nagging at him every second of the day for the next three and a half months in just about ten minutes. He was almost relieved by that little revelation when a young woman wearing brightly-colored clothes and rather interesting-looking earrings showed up and cheerfully said, “Neville! How lovely it is to see you! I’ve missed you so much!” She hugged him. His heart soared and his stomach gave that familiar flutter he felt when he first met her on the Hogwart’s Express two years before.
He turned his head to see his gran’s face and just like he predicted, her face was contorted to an almost disgusted fashion. Neville was secretly disappointed; if gran were ever to accept another woman (besides his mother and herself) into her grandson’s life, he wanted that woman to be Luna.
“And who might this young lady be?” Gran said, her voice dominating and threatening.
Luna looked positively unaffected by this rude woman, but Neville knew what was coming. What he didn‘t see coming was Luna speaking up in her usual bright, airy voice, “I’m Luna Lovegood, Mrs. Longbottom. It’s rather nice to meet you. Neville’s told me about what happened to his parents. I think they were rather brave for what they did. Amazing, really.”
Neville blinked, open-mouthed. Gran blinked as well, but after a few seconds, she smiled and said, “Well thank you.”
“Well, I’m off. It was quite lovely talking to you, Mrs. Longbottom! I’ll see you on the train, Neville!” And with that, Luna took off skipping toward her father and onto the train.
Neville looked terrified as he turned toward his grandmum and heard something he’d never before heard from her, “She reminds me of your mother when she was that age.”
Neville’s mouth hung open. Seriously? He thought.
Gran sighed and said, “Well, it’s time you get on that train! What with all these new and ridiculous rules the Ministry and Snape have going. Ugh, I can’t believe that hook-nosed, greasy-haired man is the Headmaster; outrageous! Anyways, love, write me twice a wee. Bye,” and with that, she left, muttering things like ‘Why isn’t McGonnagal the Headmistress!’ and ‘I could be the Headmistress!’.
And so onto the Hogwart’s Express he went, looking for a compartment when he finally came to one that had Luna and a rather depressed-looking Ginny in it. He slid his trunk up on the rack overhead and sat down next to Luna: At first almost too close to her, but then he scooted an inch over, blushing madly. Luna kept a blank, far-out stare the whole time.
At first Neville said nothing, but then Luna said, “Harry’s gone and Ginny’s upset. I don’t blame her, though, it was a rather rude thing for Harry to do. Without a simple good-bye no less. But I suppose it doesn’t matter, we’ve got each other now and we must stick together.”
Neville honestly had no idea how important those words would be in the next few weeks, so for now, he just smiled and asked, “How was your summer, Luna?”
“Oh, it was nice, except for Kingsley’s Patronus at the wedding that interrupted everyone’s good time to alert us of the looming danger. Do you remember that, Ginny?” she cocked her head slightly to the left.
Ginny slowly turned to face one of her best friends and said with a grave look, “Hmm…”
Neville looked down, obviously feeling uncomfortable.
“How about you, Neville?” Luna asked, smiling at him.
Neville slightly grimaced, but went on, “To be honest, not too much happened to me this summer. I-” He trailed off.
“What did you do?” Luna asked calmly.
“I visited my parents.”
“Oh, at St. Mungo‘s! And how are they doing?”
Neville was almost shocked that someone as beautiful and intelligent and amazing and…odd…as Luna would be interested in knowing what his insane parents were up to. So, he answered her question, plain and simple, “The usual. Moping about, not doing too much. My mum still gives me her Droobles gum wrappers.”
“Oh, how sweet of her! You are quite a lucky son to be getting Droobles gum wrappers from your mother!”
Neville looked at her curiously and wondered whether this was the perfect time to kiss her or the perfect time to start backing away. Then they both heard Ginny stifle a sound that was reminiscent to a sniffle and a giggle.
Neville cocked his eyebrow and Luna started laughing a girlish laugh. This made Neville laugh. And soon the pair was laughing so hard that Ginny really got into it and then after a few minutes, Neville grabbed onto his right side and said between laughs, “My…side…hurts.”
“You know, Loon, thank you. For that. I haven’t laughed all summer and all of it just came out,” Ginny said with tears in her eyes and a big smile on her face.
Luna smiled wider, making her features brighter, if that was possible and looked at Neville and took his warm and slightly sweaty hand in her own comfortably cold hands. In his head, he was screaming ‘Hallelujah!’ and the electricity went right through him to his brain but on the outside, he was merely blushing an intense shade of red.
Ginny noticed this gesture, cocked her eyebrow, lost her that glorious smile of hers, and turned to look out the window again. Back to her monotone face.
When they arrived in Hogsmeade, Neville took down all their trunks and when they got off the train, all three immediately sensed an eerie change about the place. The lights were all rather dim, it was unusually cold for a September night, and they all felt a sudden rush of sadness.
Neville whispered to no one in particular, “Dementors,” he then turned to Ginny and asked, “What are Dementors doing in Hogsmeade where there are a couple dozen first years?”
Ginny shrugged and said, “I would feel this way without the Dementors.”
Neville came to the conclusion and muttered to himself, “This is going to be a long year.”
