It was late in February when the hearing into the incident between Buckbeak the hippogriff and Draco Malfoy finally took place. Neville, who didn’t take Care of Magical Creatures and hadn’t paid any attention to the case, was surprised to hear that Hermione, along with Harry and Ron, had been helping Hagrid prepare for the hearing. Hermione had apparently been spending some time in the library, looking at old cases and legal material for anything that could be useful to Hagrid or Buckbeak.
Hermione seemed to have become quite fond of Hagrid in their lessons and, not having Neville there, the class had probably strengthened her friendship with Harry and Ron. Hermione didn’t make friends all that easily and tended to rely too heavily on her friendship with Neville at times. It was good to see her broadening her horizons. If only it would work for Neville.
Still, it was remarkable to Neville that she even had time to spend poring through obscure legal books. She was taking on a very heavy workload and it looked to Neville like it was beginning to tell on her. She often seemed very tired and occasionally irritable, particularly in Divination, about which she was scathing at times. Neville had on more than one occasion heard her refer to it as a “joke of a subject”.
Neville wasn’t particularly fond of Divination, but at least it was an easy subject requiring little talent, or even thought, so he didn’t mind it so much. It was one of only two subjects though (the other being Defence Against the Dark Arts) in which he was more likely to go to Harry for help than Hermione. Harry had the greater creative talent (that is to say, he was better at making stuff up).
Hermione was also beginning to tire of Muggle Studies, which surprised Neville more. Neville loved the subject, and Professor Burbage was rapidly becoming his favourite teacher, though he wasn’t going to tell Professor Sprout that. He was learning all sorts of remarkable things about Muggles. In particular he was amazed how resourceful they were. It was the typical wizarding, or at least pure-blood, view to rather condescendingly pity Muggles for their lack of access to magic, but Neville was astonished at how much they could achieve without it. It made him feel a little better about himself; magical skill clearly wasn’t everything.
As it turned out, Hermione’s efforts were largely in vain. Neville learned what had happened at the hearing when Ron and Hermione came into the common room one evening, both looking glum. Ron explained what had happened. Apparently Lucius Malfoy had done his best to turn the hearing into a show trial, organising the whole thing like a circus ringmaster. From what Hagrid had told them, it sounded if Hagrid himself had been lucky to escape punishment, but Malfoy had settled for the execution of Buckbeak.
Hagrid, according to Ron, was understandably distraught, and Hermione looked particularly upset, the sense of injustice was what most annoyed her. Neville had never even seen a hippogriff, let alone this particular one, but he did his best to sympathise. The execution was scheduled for early June, pending a highly unlikely appeal. Neville’s opinion of Lucius Malfoy slipped to a whole new low and he was even gladder he had freed Dobby from the man.
The days and weeks of the second term of Neville’s third year slipped by, with little change in the sense of gloom that hung over him. That feeling wasn’t alleviated by seeing Draco Malfoy strutting about the castle, revelling in Buckbeak’s imminent demise and the anger and hurt felt by the Gryffindors. Neville knew Harry and the Marauders were already planning some form of revenge.
Patronus lessons with Black continued, but they were proving no more successful than before. Occasionally a light would splutter for a moment from Neville’s wand, but would not last. Black refused to give up, but there was little that he could do now. Harry on the other hand could now cast a vaporous form of his Patronus at will. He was eagerly speculating what animal form his might take.
Nothing had been heard of Remus Lupin for weeks, though security did not let up and it appeared to Neville his movements were still being monitored. He took the opportunity to write to Gran and ask to stay at Hogwarts over the Easter break, which she seemed all too happy to agree to. Hermione, Ron and Harry were all staying as well, and he much preferred staying at Hogwarts over going back to a likely miserable, silent, cooped-up time at home.
Neville had got into the habit each evening of staring out of his window in Gryffindor Tower to check on the phase of the moon that night. Each time it came around to the full, he would become restless and nervous, and his sleep would be interrupted by unpleasant dreams. Usually they involved him coming face to face with the werewolf, but occasionally other features like Dementors or the dying words of his mother would invade their way into the dreams. Everything seemed bound up together and until Lupin was caught, he knew this fear would continue.
The lessons with Black stopped for the Easter break, and Neville wasn’t sure if they would start up again. If it wasn’t for the looming presence of the Dementors about the walls, and in his dreams, he would much rather have forgotten the whole thing. He settled down to a quiet holiday in the castle, doing very little and spending his time in Gryffindor Tower or wandering through the Herbology greenhouses, enjoying the plants outside of lessons.
One evening a little more than a week into the holiday, Neville was relaxing in the dormitory, playing with Trevor, who was hopping happily about on his bed. Across from him, Ron was listening to a Quidditch report on the Wizarding Wireless. Suddenly, Harry stormed into the room. Looking angry and frustrated, he went over to his bed and kicked his trunk hard before collapsing on the bed. Ron glanced across at Neville, before wearily asking, “What is it, Harry?”
Harry looked around to check that he, Ron and Neville were alone before answering glumly, “I lost the Map.”
Ron’s eyes widened. He turned off the wireless and scrambled to the end of the bed. “The Marauder’s Map? Seriously?” Harry nodded. “Fred and George are going to kill you. It was Fred’s turn to take care of it tomorrow”
“I know,” acknowledged Harry.
“What about everything we had organised? The whole ‘get Draco’ plan? We can’t do it without the map, you know that. How did you lose it anyway?”
“Well, I didn’t lose it as such; it got taken away from me. It was all bloody Snape’s fault,” moaned Harry.
“Snape took it?” exclaimed Ron.
“No. Look, let me explain. I’d gone out scouting the corridors up from the dungeons, to find a place from where we could spook Draco. You know, around where we pulled the prank last year. I took the map along, of course. But I wasn’t paying attention and I ran right into Snape.”
“What about your cloak?”
Harry reached under his bed, pulled out the cloak and held it up. “I didn’t think I’d need, so I left it here. Dumb, as it turned out. So Snape starts laying into me, and I mean really having a go, accusing me of ‘loitering about the castle’ and ‘plotting trouble’.”
“Well you have to admit, he was kind of right,” pointed out Ron with a smile.
“That’s not the point!” retorted Harry. “He can’t go around accusing people without evidence and besides, he claimed I was going to steal from his stores, which I wasn’t. What would I want with all that rubbish? He’s had it in for me since day one. Just because he can’t get over stuff that happened twenty years ago, he has to make my life a misery.”
“What did happen?” asked Neville.
“Oh, he and my dad fought a lot when they were both here. They hated each other. Sirius tells me it was mostly Snape’s fault. I think he was sort of the Draco of his day. Anyway, I gave him some remark back like, ‘better than prowling the corridors looking for innocent kids to pick on,’ and he goes really mad. That’s when he grabbed the parchment off me. Luckily I’d deactivated the map before he’d caught me.”
Ron giggled. “He didn’t try to read it, did he? That must he been a right laugh to see. Did it get him good?”
“Best I’ve ever seen it do,” laughed Harry. Neville looked nonplussed. “You see, the map insults anyone who tries to read it without the correct passphrase,” explained Harry. “The… the…” he half collapsed into fits of laughter, “the map called him an ugly git with greasy hair and a giant nose! Right to his face! You should have been there, Ron. Snape went purple like he was going to explode!” Harry and Ron laughed together for some time before Harry regained his composure. “Yeah, but that was when Sirius showed up.”
“Sirius?” said Ron, stopping laughing himself. Trevor hopped onto Neville’s lap and Scabbers loudly scrabbled at the bars of his cage.
“He must have overheard us or something. Of course, Snivellus takes the opportunity to go straight after him; he hates Sirius more than he hates me, I think. He starts haranguing Sirius over me, giving his opinion on how useless a guardian and a teacher Sirius is, which is rich coming from him. Then he shows him the parchment and Sirius went white as a sheet, I swear. He took the parchment from Snape and said he’d deal with the situation. Then he marches me back to his office and has a right go at me!”
“Whatever for?”
“I don’t know! He yelled at me, going on about how I should have told him about the map, and how I shouldn’t be wandering around the school with it. He wanted to know where I’d got the map from and what I’d been doing with it, which I didn’t tell him of course. That only made him angrier. Then he said he was confiscating the map and sent me off back up here. It’s totally unfair, I tell you. He’s never usually like this. I don’t know what about the map frightened him so much.”
“Wait a minute,” said Ron. “Are you saying he knew what the map was? How’s that even possible? You didn’t give him the passphrase, did you?” Scabbers scratched even louder against his cage.
“No, that’s just the thing,” replied Harry. “He seemed to know something about what the parchment was, that’s for sure, but I don’t know how much he knows. He must have seen something like it before, though I’ve never heard of anything similar. Something spooked him about that map, for sure. I’m going to try and find out what it is.”
“Is there any chance of getting the map back?” asked Ron. “We can’t be the Marauders without the map, it makes no sense.” Neville had got the impression that Ron most of the four enjoyed being in the Marauders; it gave him a place to belong and improved his standing with his twin brothers.
“I can ask,” said Harry, “but he seemed pretty determined to keep it. I’ll do my best. But there’s not much we can do about it now.” He shrugged and took a book off his side table to read. Ron turned the wireless back on.
Neville, who had listened quietly to Harry’s story, felt sorry for him and Ron. He had seen over the previous few weeks how much they loved their little secret club and he agreed with Harry that it seemed unfair that it might be taken away from them. He put Trevor back in his box and spent the rest of the evening thinking and overhearing Ron’s wireless, before going to bed.
In the morning when they woke they discovered Scabbers’ cage broken open, and Ron’s rat had disappeared again.
Neville Longbottom and the Prisoner of Azkaban by Sonorus
Chapter Notes: In which Buckbeak’s hearing takes place and Harry tells Neville about a run-in he has with Snape.