Notes

Harry clambered up onto the mantelpiece and through the hold behind Ariana’s
portrait. There were smooth stone steps on the outside: It looked as
though the passageway had been there for years. Brass lamps hung from the
walls and the earthy floor was worn and smooth; as they walked, their shadows
rippled, fanlike, across the wall.
“How long’s this been here?” Ron asked as they set off. “It isn’t on the
Marauder’s Map, is it, Harry? I thought there were only seven passages in and
out of the school?”
“They sealed off all of those before the start of the year,” said Neville. “There’s
no chance of getting through any of them now, not with the curses over the entrances
and Death Eaters and dementors waiting at the exits.” He started
walking backward, beaming, drinking them in. “Never mind that stuff. . . . Is
it true? Did you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It’s everywhere,
everyone’s talking about it, Teddy Boot got beaten up by Carrow for
yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!”
“Yeah, it’s true,” said Harry. Neville laughed gleefully,
“What did you do with the dragon?”
“Released it into the wild,” said Ron. “Hermione was all for keeping it as a
pet—”
“Don’t exaggerate, Ron—”
“But what have you been doing? People have been saying you’ve just been
on the run, Harry, but I don’t think so. I think you’ve been up to something.”
“You’re right,” said Harry. “but tell us about Hogwarts, Neville, we haven’t
heard anything.”
“It’s been. . . well, it’s not really like Hogwarts anymore,” said Neville, the
smile fading from his face as he spoke. “Do you know about the Carrows?”
“Those two Death Eaters who teach here?”
“They do more than teach,” said Neville. “They’re in charge of all discipline.
They like punishment, the Carrows.”
“Like Umbridge?”
“Nah, they make her look tame. The other teachers are all supposed to refer
us the 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.”
“Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against the Dark
Arts, except now it’s just Dark Arts. We’re supposed to practice the Cruciatus
Curse on people who’ve earned detentions—”
“What?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s united voices echoed up and down the passage.
“Yeah,” said Neville. “That’s how I got this one,” he pointed at a particularly
deep gash in his cheek, “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.
“Alecto, Amycus’ 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 toward
them, and how the natural order is being reestablished. I got this one,”
he indicated another slash to his face, “for asking how much Muggle blood she
and her brother have got.”
“Blimey, Neville,” said Ron, “there’s a time and a place for getting a smart
mouth.”
“You didn’t hear her,” said Neville. “You wouldn’t have stood 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, wincing slightly as
they passed a lamp and Neville’s injuries were thrown into even greater relief.
“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.”
Harry did not know what was worse, the things that Neville was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.
“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 a bit too outspoken in The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna off the train
on the way back for Christmas.”
“Neville, she’s all right, we’ve seen her—”
“Yeah, I know, she managed to met a message to me.”
From his pocket he pulled a golden coin, and Harry recognized it as one
of the fake Galleons that Dumbledore’s Army had used to send one another
messages.
“These have been great,” said Neville, beaming at Hermione. “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?” said Harry, who had noticed the past tense.
“Well, it got more difficult as time went on,” said Neville. “We lost Luna at
Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were
sort of leaders. The Carrows seemed to know that 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,” muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope upward.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t ask people to go through what Michael did, so we
dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground
stuff, 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?” said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.
“Yeah,” said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing
so steeply, “well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping
kids to force their relatives to behave, I s’pose it was only a matter of time
before they did it the other way around. Thing was,” he faced them, and Harry
was astonished to see that he was grinning, “they bit off a bit more than they
could chew with Gran. Little old witch living along,e the probably thought they
didn’t need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyway,” Neville laughed,
“Dawlish is still in St. Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run. She sent me a letter”
he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was proud
of me, that I’m my parents’ son, and to keep it up.”
“Cool,” said Ron.
“Yeah,” said Neville happily. “Only thing was, once they realized they had
no hold over e, 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.”
“But,” said Ron, looking thoroughly confused, “aren’t—aren’t we heading
straight back into Hogwarts?”
“’Course,” said Neville. “You’ll see. We’re here.”