He heard Harry's spluttering of surprise but he was already hugging Ron and Hermione before Harry could string a sentence together.
'I knew you'd come!' he repeated, standing back after hugging Hermione and looking at them all. 'Kept telling Seamus it was a matter of time!'
As Luna had said, they didn't look great. Harry's face was grimy, his black hair long, his clothes torn and tattered; Ron red hair was just as long, and he looked dumbstruck at Neville's arrival. Hermione was half-beaming, perhaps unsure if he was really there at all. She also looked like she'd been through the wars, and was just as messy-looking as the other two, her hair as bushy as it had been during first-year.
'Neville, what's happened to you?' Harry blurted out.
'What? This?' asked Neville and indicating his face. 'This is nothing. Seamus is worse. You'll see. Shall we get going then? Oh, Ab, there might be a couple more people on the way.'
'Couple more?' Ab said aggressively; he looked rather uptight about something. 'What d'you mean, a couple more, Longbottom? There's a curfew and a Caterwauling Charm on the whole village!'
'I know, that's why they'll be Apparating directly into the bar – just send them down the passage when they get here, will you? Thanks a lot.'
He offered his hand to Hermione, who beamed as he supported her into the hole, Ron just behind her. Harry muttered something to Aberforth before following them.
'How long's this been here?' asked Ron as Neville began to lead them down the tunnel. 'It isn't on the Marauders Map, is it, Harry? I thought there were only seven passages in and out of school?'
'They sealed off all those before the start of the year,' Neville answered. 'There's no chance of getting through any of them now, not with curses over the entrances and Death Eater and Dementors waiting at the exits. But never mind that stuff ...' he began walking backwards to get another good look at them, hardly daring to believe his luck and his eyes. It was the best thing he could have hoped for ... finally, after months and months, they were going to thwart the Carrows and Snape once and for all.
Then he remembered the report on Potterwatch.
'Is it true? Did you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It's everywhere, everyone's talking about it, Terry Boot got beaten up by Carrow for yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!'
'Yeah, it's true,' said Harry and Neville laughed as he had done when he'd heard it on the radio.
'What did you do with the dragon?' he asked.
'Released it into the wild,' answered Ron. 'Hermione was all for keeping it as a pet –' he began, while Hermione spluttered indignantly.
'But what have you been doing?' enquired Neville, trying to sound casual instead of curious. 'People have been saying you've been on the run, Harry, but I don't think so. I think you've been up to something.' He knew he sounded nosy with that last statement, and he thought Harry noticed.
'You're right,' he said evasively, 'but tell us about Hogwarts, Neville, we haven't heard anything.'
'It's been ... well, it's not really like Hogwarts any more,' Neville said, failing to keep the sadness out his voice and feeling his grin slide away into nothingness. 'Do you know about the Carrows?'
'Those two Death Eaters who teach here?'
'They do more than teach: they're in charge of all discipline. They like punishment, the Carrows.'
'Like Umbridge?' Harry asked.
'Nah, they make her look tame,' Neville said with a wry smile. 'The other teachers are all supposed to refer us to the Carrows if we do anything wrong. They don't though, if they can avoid it. You can tell they all hate them as much as we do.'
They continued up the passage. This was certainly the most Neville had talked for some time, and it was a relief to do it to friends he hadn't seen in such a while.
'Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against the Dark Arts, except now it's just the Dark Arts,' he continued. 'We're supposed to practise the Cruciatus Curse on people who've earned detentions –'
'What?' they all shouted together.
'Yeah. That's how I got this one,' Neville said, pointing at the worst scar on his face and remembering Selwyn in the dungeon. 'I refused to do it. Some people are into it, though; Crabbe and Goyle love it. First time they've ever been top in anything, I expect.'
Neville paused to look at their faces, each displaying expressions of dismay.
'Alecto, Amycus's sister, teaches Muggle Studies, which is compulsory for everyone. We've all got to listen to her explain how Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty, and how they drove wizards into hiding by being vicious towards them, and how the natural order is being re-established. I got this one,' he said, pointing to another cut on his cheek, 'for asking how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got.'
'Blimey, Neville,' said Ron quietly, 'there's a time and a place for getting a smart mouth,' and Neville had to resist laughing.
'You didn't hear her. You wouldn't have stood for it either. The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry.'
'But they've used you as a knife sharpener,' said Ron but Neville simply shrugged.
'Doesn't matter. They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us. The only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble. They get taken hostage. Old Xeno Lovegood was getting too outspoken in The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna off the train on the way back for Christmas.'
'Neville, she's alright, we've seen her –'
'Yeah, I know, she managed to get a message to me.' He filched out the fake Galleon again and spoke to Hermione, grinning.
'These have been great. The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape hated it.'
'You used to?' asked Harry pointedly.
'Well, it got more difficult as time went on,' said Neville. 'We lost Luna and Christmas and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the leaders. The Carrows seemed to know I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on me hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year they'd chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off.'
'No kidding,' mumbled Ron, looking slightly scared himself.
'Yeah, well, I couldn't ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kind of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff,' Neville continued, remembering how that hidden underground chamber had in fact been beneath the dungeons, enabling them to rescue students from below. 'Right up until a couple of weeks ago. That's when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran.'
'They what?' the three of them shouted together again.
'Yeah ... well, you can see their thinking,' Neville proceeded, taking heavier breaths as the end of the passage sloped up. 'It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave, I s'pose to was only a matter of time before they did it the other way round. Thing was, they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran ...' Neville smiled in spite of himself, as Carrow's words returned to him. '"Little old witch living alone", they probably thought they didn't need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyway,' he laughed, 'Dawlish is still in St Mungo's and Gran's on the run. She sent me a letter telling me she was proud of me, that I'm my parent's son, and to keep it up.'
'Cool,' said Ron, now also smiling.
'Yeah ... only thing was, once they realised they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all. I don't know whether they were planning to kill me or send me to Azkaban, either way, I knew it was time to disappear.' They approached the end of the tunnel, Neville's excitement mounting again.
'But,' stammered a confused Ron, 'aren't – aren't we heading straight back to Hogwarts?'
''Course,' said Neville, as they rounded the corner, up the short stairs and towards the back of the portrait. 'You'll see. We're here.'
Under Snape's Regime by joehook
Chapter Notes: Hi everyone, these next two chapters I've had to take directly from the books, but I've made little changes to make it from Neville's point of view. Sorry to reintroduce you to the text we're all familiar with by now!
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