Neville arrived back in Hogwarts after the Christmas break on January 2nd. It had been a quiet Christmas at home in Huddlesby, uncomfortably quiet. Gran had met him off the Hogwarts Express and taken him straight home and neither had left the house until it was time to return to King’s Cross once more. Her agitation seemed to have grown over the preceding term and was visible for all to see, but she still did not talk about it with Neville.
The entirety of the holidays had been conducted pretty much in silence from start to finish. After overhearing the shock news about Lupin and his parents’ death, Neville had been in a morose and withdrawn mood himself and did not feel like sharing his problems with anyone, least of all Gran. He had sat alone in his bedroom, silently brooding on all he knew of his parents, and what had happened to them.
When it came down to it, he realised how little he truly knew about them. Where were they born? Where did they live? Where were they buried? These and more were all questions that he had never thought about before, never considered that he needed to know. Now they gnawed at him, as if a piece of himself had suddenly gone missing, and he didn’t know how to get it back.
When the Marauders had finally found him sitting in the snow that fateful December morning in Hogsmeade, they knew something was terribly wrong and had begged him to explain, but he had refused. He had left on the Hogwarts Express the next day without even saying a word to Hermione. He occupied himself entirely with his own thoughts and had shut out everything else.
Returning to Hogwarts had not helped matters. He had spent the first evening alone in the common room, ignoring anyone who stopped to wish him a “Happy New Year”. Even when Harry had come over and excitedly wanted to talk to him about something, he’d not listened to him.
So it had come as something of a surprise when after the first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson of term, Professor Black had called him over and asked him when he wanted to begin their lessons in combating Dementors. He had completely forgotten he had agreed to do that and was half inclined to back out, but Black seemed far too enthusiastic to take no for an answer. “Harry did really well on the preliminary stuff we did over Christmas,” he said. “He’s not there yet, of course, still a long way to go, but he’s right on track. He’s just as good as his dad was, if not better.”
They eventually decided meeting Monday evenings would fit their schedules best; Harry was having his lessons on Thursdays. They both agreed it was best to keep this as much as possible between themselves for now; Black certainly did want to be accused any further of favouritism towards Harry.
Neville continued to wallow in his misery right through the first week. He didn’t even care when Snape docked Gryffindor twenty points for absent-mindedly destroying his cauldron (and most of his desk) during Potions. In Muggle Studies they had moved on to basic Muggle technology, but Neville didn’t even join in any of the discussions for once. Professor Sprout even stopped him to ask him what the matter was after Herbology, but he didn’t reply.
He spent most of his time in the common room or at meals simply sitting and watching other people, wishing his life was as simple as theirs seemed to be. Now that he actually paid attention, he realised just how much time Harry and the other Marauders actually spent together. Whilst he knew well that Harry and Ron were almost never apart, he could now see that they were regularly plotting away in some corner with Fred and George. Neville desperately envied their carefree, easy friendship and humour.
He also noticed how much time Ginny seemed to spend hanging around them. They barely seemed to notice the youngest Weasley as she sat by them in the Great Hall or listened in on their conversations in the common room. It was small wonder she had found out their secret. Neville, who knew better than most what Ginny was capable of, was sorry they didn’t seem to appreciate her. Ginny was actually the first among everyone to spot Neville watching her and appeared embarrassed, so Neville stopped.
When Monday finally rolled around, Neville was happy to be going to his meeting with Black just to break the monotony. At eight o’clock in the evening, he made his way down from the common room to Black’s office on the second floor. He knocked with trepidation but a smiling Black opened the door and invited him in.
This was the same office as Lockhart had used the year before, but the look of the place was completely different. One wall was given up to a shelf thickly lined with books on Dark Arts defence and defensive theory, which surprised Neville as he didn’t figure Black for much of a reader. Quidditch paraphernalia covered another wall. Black’s desk was piled high with papers and rolls of parchment, but given pride of place were two moving photographs. One was of a grinning Harry, the other of four teenage boys, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing together. Black saw Neville glancing at the photograph and quickly ushered him to a chair, facing away from the desk.
He sat down opposite him and looked at Neville closely. “Nervous?” he asked. “Don’t be. This should be an enjoyable experience. There is no more satisfying spell when cast correctly than the Patronus Charm, nor more emotionally powerful.”
“The Patronus Charm?” replied Neville. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It is normally reserved for NEWT level Defence Against the Dark Arts, and few even then achieve the practical side. I think it is looked down on by some, as it has no offensive use, its primary purpose is purely to shield against attack. It works like…”
Suddenly there was a quick tap on the door and it was pushed open. Neville was surprised to see Professor Burbage step into the room. “Sirius, are you… Oh, Neville, I didn’t see you there,” she said.
“Neville just wanted my help with something. I’ll see you in about an hour, Charity, okay?” explained Black.
“Don’t be late,” smiled Burbage and closed the door.
Black grinned to himself, then caught Neville looking at him. “What?”
“Isn’t she a bit old for you?” asked Neville.
“Mind your own business,” laughed Black. “Anyway, she’s only four years older than me. About the same age as your parents were, I guess, give or take a year.”
Not wanting to dwell on the subject of his parents, Neville rapidly changed the subject. “So tell me about this spell, then.”
“Oh, right. Well, Patronus means sort of protector, I think. Like patron. It’s an outward projection of everything the wizard feels protects and safeguards them, channelled through the wand. When performed correctly, it takes the form of an animal, unique to the wizard who cast it, embodying those qualities. But we won’t get that far here. Just to get any shape is hard enough.” Neville’s confidence was hardly growing with Black’s description. “You do have a slight disadvantage to Harry in that I won’t be able to test you in real conditions. With Harry, I used a boggart as his takes the form of a Dementor, but that doesn’t work for you as we know. I’m certainly not going to bring a real Dementor in here, even if Dumbledore would let me, so we’ll just have to do it without a target.”
This reassured Neville a bit. He knew doing anything in the face of a Dementor was hard enough, let alone learning an extremely complex new spell. “So what do I have to do?”
“Now this is the tricky part. The incantation is simple enough: Expecto Patronum. But the real key to the spell is memory. You see, in order to project this force, the wizard needs to call on emotions of joy and happiness, and the way to do that is to focus, to fixate on the happiest, most powerful memory they have. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
Black nodded sympathetically. “That’s all right. Let’s have a demonstration.” Neville smiled. Black was very keen on doing demonstrations in classes, even if they didn’t always quite come off as planned. “Right,” he said, standing up and adopting a stance with his wand. “The wand is held like so. I clear my mind and remember something unpleasant like, say, my parents. Expecto Patronum!”
Nothing happened. “You see?” said Black. Neville looked bemused. “Okay, now I shall remember something particularly happy, like a recent evening spent with the delightful Professor Burbage.” He grinned. “Expecto Patronum!” This time an insubstantial silvery-white mist emerged from Black’s wand. It hovered there for a moment, before dissipating. “Getting there, I hope you notice,” continued Black, “but the key is the memory has to be the most powerful you can visualise. If I do that, then we get the proper result, as I shall now demonstrate. Expecto Patronum!”
A silver figure erupted from his wand. It landed lightly on all fours on the stone floor and padded gently around as Black guided it. It was a thick-haired dog, its glistening tongue lolling out of its mouth. It nuzzled up against Neville’s leg, producing an odd, pins-and-needles sensation. Neville was entranced. “It’s beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you,” replied Black proudly. “They’re always impressive, though, in their own way. I’m sure yours will be the same when we eventually get there. Shall we begin?”
After a short while practising the basics and getting Neville’s pronunciation right, Black announced he was ready to make a proper attempt. “Now I want you to think hard. Do you have a memory that you think might work?” Neville closed his eyes and thought. The fact was, though, that he was so miserable and depressed that he struggled to think of anything good that had happened to him. Neville’s memory was notoriously poor. Not just for facts, but of his past too. He was thirteen and he could hardly remember anything about being eight already.
Looking back, a lot of unpleasant things had happened to him in his life, but few he would call truly happy, at least in the way Black meant it. Eventually he decided to try the day Gryffindor won the House Cup thanks to points from him at the end of his first year. They had cheered him in the common room that day. Maybe that would work. He raised his wand, concentrated on Dumbledore making that announcement, and cried “Expecto Patronum!”
Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Not even a spark emerged from Neville’s wand. He scrunched up his face and tried again. Still nothing. “One more go,” encouraged Black. But it was to no avail. Neville collapsed back in the chair, breathing hard and feeling even worse than before. “Don’t worry,” said Black. “I said this will take time. What were you thinking of, by the way?” Neville told him. “Are you sure that’s the best you can do? There must be something else.”
“I don’t know. What was your memory?”
Black hesitated for a moment, before replying, “My first day at Hogwarts. I was sorted into Gryffindor and made the best friends of my life all in the same day.”
Neville considered that. His own first day had certainly been a memorable one, and he was proud to be a Gryffindor, even if he didn’t know why he was in the house of bravery and courage when his own reserves of those qualities were so low. “Let me try that,” he said. He thought of the boat ride across the lake, of the Sorting Ceremony and the Welcoming Feast. He raised his wand and intoned the spell once more. Again no effect. Several tries further and still nothing. “I’m useless,” he moaned.
“No you’re not, Neville. It’s difficult, it will take time. You just see; in a couple of weeks you’ll have forgotten all about these problems.”
* * *
“Concentrate, Neville, concentrate!” yelled Black, his frustration building.
“I’m trying,” whined Neville, but it was no good. It was now five weeks since they had first started their lessons and in that time they had progressed not one inch. True, they had missed one week in which Black had been too busy with work. But still, after five whole sessions including the current one, they should have achieved something. But still not so much of a splutter from Neville’s wand.
Neville had changed his supposedly happy memory more times than he could remember. At the moment, he was using the day he received his first Hogwarts letter, but that wasn’t working either. The truth was he had no one perfect happy memory; each was corroded or corrupted by something bad. For instance, the day he’d received that letter had been the day Dumbledore had told him that Voldemort had killed his parents and given him his scar.
The scar seemed to hang heavy over all his happiest times. They all seemed connected to what he had dubbed his “Marauder side”, the side that drove him into dangerous adventures. And most of those adventures he had not wanted to have, but had been drawn into because he was the Boy-Who-Lived, because of the scar. He was beginning to think there had never been a time in his life when he had been truly, totally, genuinely happy, free from all the cares of his life.
Black was proving little help now. As the term had gone on, he appeared to be becoming increasingly more frustrated and irritated in general. The daily grind of teaching appeared to be getting him down. Perhaps he was just discovering he wasn’t truly cut out for it. Neville remembered the so-called “curse” and Harry’s guess that Black would become bored of the job. He expected the turnover of Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers would continue.
And there was Harry of course. Black would never stop talking about Harry; he was his favourite topic of conversation. He adored his godson, that was plain. He would go on at length about how Harry was single-handedly winning the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor (they had recently beaten Ravenclaw in a tense match) and, most annoying for Neville, how well he was doing in Patronus lessons. Apparently he could already cast the spell and his Patronus was beginning to take shape.
It was hardly Harry’s fault, but Neville did not need reminding how much better his friend was at everything than he was. They may have been born only a day apart, but there could not be two more different people. It seemed to Neville that Harry had talent and charm in abundance whilst Neville possessed neither. To be compared to Harry, however unintentionally, was not good for his confidence.
“Maybe we should give up,” he said. “I’m never going to get this to work.”
“No,” replied Black forcefully. “I don’t like giving up on something, however hard it is, and neither should you. Look, we’ll finish for today and maybe we should scale back these lessons to once a fortnight, make it less intensive. But I want you to keep working on finding your memory, okay? If you can find that, all else will follow.”
Neville left Black’s office and trudged back up through the castle towards Gryffindor Tower. He knew he had a Muggle Studies assignment waiting for him to complete, and Hermione seemed too busy at the moment to help him. He tried to forget about yet another failed lesson, but it wasn’t easy.
The thing was, it was all very well for Black to tell Neville to find a happy memory but the more Neville thought about it, the more he felt how unhappy his life had been. His parents dead, cursed to wear a scar that dominated his life and the way people thought of him, incompetent, unpopular, and now with the man responsible for his parents’ death out to kill him. Where was the happiness? How could he ever hope to find a happy memory in such a life as that?
Neville Longbottom and the Prisoner of Azkaban by Sonorus
Chapter Notes: In which Neville begins Patronus lessons with Black.