As spring came to Hogwarts, and March passed on into April, time seemed to pass more quickly for Neville as the days grew longer and warmer. It was as if time itself was in a hurry, rushing on towards the day of the third and final Task of the Triwizard Tournament, late in June after the end-of-year exams. Neville preferred not to look so far ahead however, trying to enjoy the present as much as possible.
He continued to be amazed at Ginny’s relaxed attitude to the snide comments, and in some cases abuse, she was getting over Rita Skeeter’s muck-raking article about her in the Daily Prophet. Most of the time she simply ignored it all, although she wasn’t above the odd well-directed hex if she thought it merited. Neville learned that Mrs Weasley had written a very angrily-worded letter of complaint to the Prophet, which it had printed “ in tiny font in the bottom corner of page thirty-five. So far Mrs Weasley had not been in contact with Neville himself and if she had written anything to Ginny, Ginny had not told Neville about it. Neville hoped that was a good thing. He did not like the idea of incurring the wrath of Molly Weasley.
Gran’s recent letters to him had praised him on his performance in the Second Task, but had not mentioned Ginny. Neville wondered if Gran was trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. Ron was still sulkily refusing to speak with him and was moping around, generally being miserable. The Marauders’ latest pranks and experiments had been conducted with one member missing.
Intensive training with Moody and Sirius for the Third Task had not yet begun in earnest. Moody had informed Neville that he was still waiting to discover details of the Task, but it was expected to be an all-round test of wizarding skills. Moody encouraged Neville to practise his general conjuring and duelling skills and had taken to calling him forward more often in his regular Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons.
Moody continued to be on edge for anything suspicious surrounding Neville but, despite his and Dumbledore’s worries, nothing unusual had happened. Neville had noticed that Moody’s magical eye now seemed to be focussed almost continuously on Snape whenever they were in the Great Hall together. Snape, if he noticed the attention at all, ignored it completely. Yet he did seem even more irritable than usual, perhaps because he had apparently developed a rash on his left forearm. He scratched at his arm regularly through his Potions lessons.
When the Easter holidays came, Neville spent them at Hogwarts along with most of the Gryffindors. It let him spend more time with Ginny, and away from any awkward questions Gran might ask. The holidays passed pleasantly until the final night before term was due to start again. Ron had been particularly grumpy that evening in the dormitory, and Neville had gone to bed in a bad mood, with an itch in his scar.
He saw a small village amid rolling hills, a graveyard, and a large, grand old house. Then, suddenly, he was in an upstairs room. The light of a flickering fire was all that illuminated the space, revealing a large wooden table, an armchair and a small man kneeling in front of it. The man was shabbily dressed, unkempt and balding and there was a mixture of fear and excitement on his face.
“My lord, everything is in place,” the man said in a gushing, wheezy voice. “Your plans are proceeding perfectly. We only need wait.”
“Excellent,” said another voice. Neville could not see the speaker. The voice was high and cold and it had a tone of pleasure and delight. “I knew my faithful servant would not fail me. I grow tired of waiting, Pettigrew. I grow tired of this form. Soon it will all be over, and I shall reward those who have been loyal to me.”
“My lord knows I wish only to serve him,” replied Pettigrew.
“Your sycophancy is transparent, Pettigrew,” spoke the voice, “but your aid has not been unwelcome. Without you, none of this would have been possible. After all these years, Pettigrew, the impatience is almost too much to bear. I feel as I have not done for a long time.”
The dream faded away and Neville sat bolt upright in bed, back in his dormitory once more. His scar was searing with pain and he was sweating profusely. Dimly he started to recall images from what he had seen, and he knew he recognised the high, cold voice. The idea of a happy Voldemort filled him with dread. Dumbledore, he thought. I have to tell Dumbledore about this. If this doesn’t qualify as urgent, nothing does.
* * *
All through lessons the next day, Neville’s mind was on only one thing. He couldn’t concentrate on the subject, or any work at all. All he could think about was his dream, and what Dumbledore might say about it. Taking Moody’s attitude on secrecy to heart, he had not told any of his friends about the dream. He could not even see Moody to tell him as he did not have Defence Against the Dark Arts on a Monday, and there was no reply from his office when he knocked at lunchtime. He had to wait until the evening after supper before he eventually made his way up to the headmaster’s office.
Standing in front of the gargoyle which guarded the entrance, he remembered what Dumbledore had told him and said, “Cockroach cluster.” The gargoyle silently moved aside, revealing the stone staircase. Nervously, Neville ascended. He reached the large oak door and knocked.
There was no reply. Neville knocked again, but still silence. Thinking he might just not have heard Dumbledore, Neville tried the handle. The door swung open. Neville peered cautiously into the room. It seemed empty. He took a few steps inside to get a closer look.
It was the third time Neville had been in the room and everything was much as he remembered it: the walls lined with bookshelves and portraits, the odd silver instruments, Fawkes on his stand. But there was no sign of Dumbledore.
Suddenly a voice above him yelled, “Intruder! What are you doing here, boy?” Neville turned to look. The voice came from a portrait of an elderly wizard with a pointed beard, dressed in green and silver.
“Er, I came to see Dumbledore,” replied Neville. “He gave me his password.”
“Well, he’s not here, is he?” said the portrait sarcastically.
“Do you know when he’ll be back? It’s quite urgent.”
“The Headmaster does not keep me informed of his minute-by-minute private schedule,” snapped the wizard. “He will return when he returns.”
“Fine, I’ll wait,” said Neville.
“Just do it quietly,” said the wizard, and settled back in his chair to snooze. Neville wandered over to Dumbledore’s wide desk and leaned against it, taking the weight of its legs. He wanted to sit down but the only chair was Dumbledore’s and Neville did not fell right about sitting in it; it would be disrespectful.
His arm brushed against something and he turned to see what it was. It was a shallow stone basin perched on the edge of the desk. It was filled with what at first glance seemed to be water but, as he looked closely, lights and colours seemed to rise up from the swirling liquid. Curious, Neville leaned over and prodded his finger into the liquid. It seemed to stick to his fingertip and he had to prise it clear. The surface of the liquid fell flat again and Neville’s finger felt dry.
As he looked closer, the colours seemed to resolve themselves into images. It was like looking down a long tunnel or through the wrong end of a telescope. Deep in the bowl he could make out the sight of a tiled floor surrounded by high benches, as if he was viewing a tiny room from above. Puzzled, he leaned forward to get a closer look, and his face was an inch from the surface of the liquid.
Suddenly, he was falling, tumbling through fresh air as if the ground had vanished from underneath him. Below him the floor he had seen came rushing up to meet him. He threw his hands up in front of his face, expecting to crash into it, but inexplicably he landed lightly on his feet.
He looked around him. He was in the room that he had seen. It was huge and bowl-shaped, with a circular central area surrounded by the benches that rose above it. Seated on the benches, taking up maybe a quarter of the available space, were rows of identically robed wizards, talking amongst themselves. None of them seemed to have noticed Neville’s arrival. Where am I? thought Neville.
In the centre of the room was a single chair, currently unoccupied. Neville saw that there were manacles attached to its legs and arms. He looked around for more clues and came almost face to face with Professor Dumbledore. “Professor!” he called elatedly, but Dumbledore did not hear him. He was nervously pacing up and down the room in front of the benches, muttering to himself. Neville tried to attract Dumbledore’s attention, but it was if the headmaster could not see him. It seemed nobody could. What is this place? he thought.
There was a loud bang and Neville turned to see the wizard obviously in charge, sitting centrally in the front row, banging a gavel to bring the assembled wizards to order. To Neville’s surprise, he recognised the wizard as Bartemius Crouch. He looked younger and less careworn, but there was a tiredness behind his eyes. “Order!” he yelled. “Order!” The assembled wizards fell silent. Dumbledore stopped pacing to listen.
“This special closed session of the Wizengamot, on the fifteenth day of January, 1982, is now called to order,” announced Crouch. “Before we proceed, I would remind everyone present that this is a closed session and so we are all under an oath of silence concerning anything you may learn here today. I trust you accept the necessity of these security measures. Are there any objections?” There was no reply. “Good. Bring in the prisoner.”
Two Aurors stationed on either side of the door of the courtroom departed into the corridor. When they returned a few moments later, Neville noticed that one of them was Alastor Moody, sporting his familiar magical eye but with a few less scars on his face. Between them they now escorted their prisoner, whose head was bowed so that his long black hair covered his face. He was led forward to the central chair, into which he sat calmly and willingly.
The manacles on the chair sprang to life and secured his wrists and ankles. As they did so, the man looked up to face Crouch. Neville gasped. The prisoner was Severus Snape.
He looked a lot younger than Neville knew him, perhaps early twenties, but there was no mistaking the sallow face, the lank, greasy hair and the black, impenetrable eyes. His expression betrayed no emotion at all, save an air of complete calm. He did not attempt to struggle or fight the restraints, but simply sat waiting.
“Your Honour, before we begin, may I make a brief statement to the court?” asked Dumbledore.
“Proceed,” said Crouch.
“Members of the Wizengamot,” began Dumbledore, “it has now been ten weeks since the unexpected defeat of the greatest threat ever to befall this community “ Lord Voldemort.” There were murmurs of discontent at his use of the name. “A number of his Death Eaters remain unidentified or on the run. A month ago, some six weeks after the fall of Voldemort, Severus Snape voluntarily turned himself over to the authorities. In this process, I have acted as guarantor of his safety, to ensure that he receives a fair hearing.
“Mr Snape has confessed to having been a Death Eater for the past three years, although he expressly denies committing murder in support of that cause. Rather, he says that it was a misplaced love of the Dark Arts that drew him into the clutches of Lord Voldemort.” Moody gave a none-too-subtle snort of disagreement from the back of the room, but Dumbledore ignored him. “Nonetheless, he is aware of the severity of his crimes and asks only that what he has to say is taken into account when deciding his punishment.”
“Very well,” said Crouch. “Mr Snape, what do you wish to tell us?”
Snape spoke calmly and deliberately, a speech he had seemingly long prepared. “I offer no excuse or rationalisation for my actions, for my crimes. I offer the only thing that I can “ the names, that I am aware of, of those who committed far worse deeds than I. My one-time colleagues within the Death Eaters.”
There were whisperings of excitement and interest around the court at this, but Crouch banged his gavel and said, “Continue. But I remind you that you will be judged on the quality of the information you give.”
“Firstly, Augustus Rookwood,” said Snape. “He was a spy placed inside the Ministry. Then Antonin Dolohov. He murdered numerous opponents of the Dark Lord. Igor Karkaroff, he helped raise money and recruit for the Dark Lord on the Continent. And Travers, he was a murderer too.”
Crouch carefully recorded each name as Snape spoke it. “The Wizengamot thanks you for your information,” he said. “You will be returned to your holding cell while we consider your case.”
“I still have four more names,” interrupted Snape, “and I can personally vouch for their guilt. As you know, shortly after the Dark Lord’s demise, the house of noted wizarding citizens James and Lily Potter was attacked by Death Eaters. The Potters were tortured by use of the Cruciatus curse in an attempt to discover information about what happened to the Dark Lord, and were driven permanently insane. I know who was responsible. Three of them were from the Lestrange family: Rabastan, his brother Rodolphus and Rodolphus’ wife Bellatrix. The fourth…” here he paused for the first time and gazed directly into Crouch’s eyes, “…the fourth was Bartemius Crouch, Junior.”
There was uproar in the court. Everyone began talking at once, whilst Crouch just sat unmoved, staring at Snape with horror and disbelief etched on his face. But at that moment the image of the courtroom began to dissolve in front of Neville’s eyes. He felt a great rushing all around him and before he knew it he was back in Dumbledore’s office once more, flung out of the basin onto the floor.
He scrambled to his feet and found himself face to face with the present-day Albus Dumbledore. The Headmaster was seated in his chair, regarding Neville with a calm, placid look on his face. “Well, that will teach me to leave memories unattended,” he said gently.
“Uh, Professor, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…” stammered Neville, but Dumbledore raised a calming hand.
“Relax, Neville, you weren’t to know. This is a Pensieve. It can be used to store one’s memories and view them again at one’s convenience. I had been studying some of my old thoughts and carelessly left this one in the bowl. In my defence, I must say I was not expecting any callers this evening.”
A hundred questions were flooding into Neville’s mind, but he voiced the most urgent. “P-Professor Snape was a Death Eater?”
Dumbledore sighed. “Yes, he was, Neville.”
“And you let him become a teacher?”
“Impertinence!” yelled the portrait Neville had talked with earlier, who was evidently not asleep at all. “Questioning the Headmaster’s decisions!”
“Thank you, Phineas,” said Dumbledore. “Yes, I chose to appoint Professor Snape, and I stand by my decision. I consider him a reformed man, and worthy of a second chance. He has left behind the indiscretions of his youth.”
“Has he really?” asked Neville. All his fear and mistrust of Snape now seemed justified. “Professor Moody doesn’t think so, and I can see why now.”
“I am aware that Professor Moody remains sceptical of Professor Snape. He never believed he had made an honest conversion.”
“But did he really make an honest conversion? He only turned himself in after You-Know-Who was gone, when he would have been caught eventually anyway. Then he sold out the other Death Eaters to escape Azkaban. Wasn’t he just betraying them to save his own skin?”
“I do not believe so,” replied Dumbledore calmly. “Yes, your summary of what happened is correct. He did not turn his back on the Death Eaters until after Voldemort’s fall. And his evidence to the Wizengamot was considered sufficient to commute his sentence and permit his release. But I am certain that the reasons for his actions were entirely honest and sincere. If they were not, I would not have appointed him a teacher a year later.”
Dumbledore seemed impassive, and Neville decided to move onto a different question. “What happened to the people Snape named?”
“They were arrested and imprisoned, every single one of them. Rookwood, Dolohov, Karkaroff, Travers, the Lestranges, even Barty Crouch, Junior. It nearly broke Crouch’s heart to have to send his own son to Azkaban. He’s never been the same man since. His wife died soon afterwards and the Ministry quietly moved him out of Magical Law Enforcement and into International Magical Cooperation. His son died in Azkaban. The rest, as far as I know, are still alive and imprisoned there.”
“Including the Lestranges? I mean, that’s horrible what they did to Harry’s parents. I knew something had happened to them in the war, but I never guessed… Harry never told me…”
“It is not something that either Harry or his godfather like to discuss much, I know, and I would ask you to respect their privacy. James and Lily still live in St Mungo’s hospital, unaware of who they are, or anyone else is. Dark magic cannot be reversed, and they will remain that way for the rest of their lives. Harry and his godfather visit them regularly in the holidays. I believe Harry is very proud of his parents, as he should be. They were fine people.”
Neville stood in silence for a moment. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to carry around such a secret. Often, Harry had seemed to him like he didn’t have a care in the world, so cheerful and fun. But he remembered Harry’s reaction to the screaming golden egg and shivered a little. They had more in common than he ever realised.
Finally, Dumbledore spoke. “But I presume you did not come to see me tonight to pry into my memories, Neville.”
Neville was flummoxed for a moment. The revelations he had just discovered had driven out of his head all thoughts of why he had come in the first place. At last, he said, “I had a dream, Professor.”
Dumbledore listened in silence while Neville recounted the dream as best as he could remember it. “And the thing is, sir,” added Neville when he had finished, “I have the strangest feeling I’ve had a dream like it before, only I can’t remember anything about it. It was some time last summer, I think.”
“Did you have any idea where Voldemort and Pettigrew were in the dream?” asked Dumbledore. “Did you recognise anything?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not. Do you really think it happened?”
“That, I cannot say. But it is certainly possible, yes. I knew it was likely that Pettigrew would try to seek out his former master. But the ‘faithful servant’ that Voldemort speaks of, I do not know who that could be.”
“But how can I have dreamt it? I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
Dumbledore peered closely at Neville over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “I would not worry yourself about that, Neville,” he said eventually. “As I said, it may be nothing more than a dream. But you were right to bring it to my attention. If nothing else, it is a warning to be vigilant where Voldemort may be concerned. Good night, Neville. Sleep peacefully tonight, and may no such dreams disturb you.”
“Good night, Professor.” Neville left Dumbledore’s office, his mind racing with all that he had seen and heard. But one thing more than any dominated his thoughts. Professor Snape: was he ever truly reformed, or did he remain a Dark wizard who had sold out his friends for his freedom?
Neville Longbottom and the Goblet of Fire by Sonorus
Chapter Notes: In which Neville dreams of Voldemort and visits Dumbledore’s office, where he accidentally stumbles upon a thirteen-year-old memory.