All Kinds of Directions

The room Neville had been stuck in was really very nice, he had to admit. The four-post bed was easily twice the size of the beds at Hogwarts, and the adjoining bathroom was elegant and spotless.

Not that any of that mattered; a prison was still a prison, and Neville was locked in. Once he’d discovered that the doorknob wouldn’t turn, he’d pounded on the door and shouted for them to let him out, but no one had come.

That had been three hours ago; he’d woken in time to see the door shut, and realized that someone had cast Rennervate to awaken him just before leaving; he still felt quite hurt that Ginny had been so callous about Stunning him! He’d thought they were friends!

Since then there’d been no sign of Harry, Ginny, or anyone else. A tray of food had appeared on the table out of nowhere, and Neville (who was starving) had dug in. At least they’d taken the time to feed him. And to properly heal his leg, even if it had been while he was unconscious. It felt like new, and Neville was grateful for that care, at least. Not that it made up for kidnapping him, of course.

The longer Neville was alone in the room, the more agitated he became. He didn’t know where he was, or why he’d been attacked. It was clear to Neville that the Death Eaters had been intent on capturing him, and he didn’t know why. Plus, when he’d thought about it, Neville had realized that Katie Bell and Justin Finch-Fletchley had been watching him from under their Invisibility Cloaks—guarding him. They’d known he was in danger from the Death Eaters! But how? And why?

Finally, when Neville was contemplating lying down—it was late, and it had been a long day even before he’d been attacked by Death Eaters and Stunned—the door shimmered and swung open, and Harry walked in. Neville frowned from across the room, but Harry didn’t notice because he’d turned back to mutter something to Ginny, Ron and whoever else was outside the door. After getting a murmured response, Harry shut the door, which shimmered again, no doubt reactivating the magical seals.

Harry faced Neville and grimaced. “Hey, Neville. Er… I think—”

“Are you really Harry?” Neville demanded suspiciously.

Harry looked surprised. “You know it’s me, I proved it before…”

“But I was unconscious,” Neville pointed out defensively. “Anything could have happened.”

“Oh—good point,” Harry said, apparently a bit angry at himself for not thinking of it. “Er… let me think…”

“Who was the first person I ever slept with?” Neville asked, speaking clearly despite his blush. It was a question that only three people knew the answer to: Harry, Neville, and…

“Susan Bones,” Harry answered, going a bit red himself. “You—er, I ran into you two coming back from…from it. In our fifth year. I never told anyone, I swear.”

Neville nodded embarrassedly. He knew that whatever else Harry had done, he would never have told that secret to anyone. “Are you going to explain what the hell is going on?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am,” Harry said; he looked and sounded extremely tense. “Er… This might take a while… maybe we should sit down.”

They sat at the little square table that was off to one side. “Hang on a second,” Harry said, and turned slightly toward the middle of the room. “Dobby?”

To Neville’s surprise, a house-elf appeared in the room. “Yes, Harry Potter?”

“Could we have that tea now, please?” Harry asked.

“Right away!” the little elf squeaked, and disappeared again.

It returned with a tray of tea and biscuits, then left Neville and Harry alone again. “That was the house-elf from Hogwarts that you knew, wasn’t it?” Neville asked. “The one that warned us that Umbridge was coming during the last D.A. meeting?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Harry confirmed, pouring them both some tea. “Listen, Neville… I’m really sorry about all this,” he said. “I would’ve come in to explain everything sooner but I was arguing with the others. We’ve been trying to figure out how to handle the situation.”

“What situation?” Neville asked. “I don’t know what’s going on, Harry! You—you’re leading some of our schoolmates in something, I understand that… and it’s obviously got something to do with You-Know-Who. But why were you having me watched? Did you know the Death Eaters would attack me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Neville, calm down, okay?” Harry begged. “I’ll answer all of that, I promise, but—but I have to tell it to you in parts, all right? Otherwise it just won’t make any sense!”

Neville sat back and stared at Harry. “Is it really that complicated?” he asked. “You were guarding me, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, we were,” Harry admitted. “Bloody hell, I hardly know where to start,” he muttered, and shook his head. “Neville, there’s one thing I have to tell you that’s more important than anything, and it makes everything else make sense. But you’re not going to like it—you’re probably going to hate me for it.”

Neville blinked. “If there’s a good explanation for all of this, then I want to know,” he said. “If you really did have good reasons, then I won’t hate you.”

“Hah, that’s what you think,” Harry muttered. “Neville, does this place seem familiar to you at all?”

Neville hesitated. He had felt a strange sense of déja vû when he’d woken and looked around, but he’d dismissed it. “Sort of, yeah,” he admitted. “But I don’t know why it would, because I’ve never been here.” A slightly pained look crossed Harry’s face. “Where are we, anyway?”

Harry smiled weakly. “We’re in the House of Black,” he said. “At Number 12, Grimmauld Place in London. It’s my house, I own it. And the reason it looks familiar is—” He visibly steeled himself—“is that you’ve been here before.”

Neville thought Harry was taking the mickey. He glanced around the room quickly before favoring Harry with a skeptical gaze. “I’ve never been here,” he denied. “I’d remember it.”

“No you wouldn’t… That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Harry said wretchedly. “You’ve had a Memory Charm put on you.”

Neville stared incredulously at Harry. “I can’t have,” he said. “I—”

“You wouldn’t realize,” Harry said. “That’s the point of a Memory Charm, after all: to make you forget something completely. The last three months or so… most of what you remember isn’t real. It’s all the Memory Charm.”

“But… I mean, why would someone do that to me?” Neville asked. “What could I possibly know that’s so important that someone would want to make me forget it?” His eyes narrowed as another question occurred to him. “Who did it, anyway?”

Harry tried to answer several times before finally whispering “I did.”

“You?” Neville gaped at Harry in shock. “You—oh, now I know you’re having me on,” he said, smiling with relief. “You’d never do that, Harry.”

Harry, if anything, looked even more miserable. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I really wish I deserved that trust…” He sighed. “Do you remember that dream you told me about… The one where I was asking you about plants you were growing for me?”

“Yeah, of course…”

“I asked you about a Last Rites plant,” Harry stated. “It was for Dumbledore’s Army, which I was leading and you were raising plants for. The Last Rites was arriving on August 13—Mundungus Fletcher, who you’d never met, was arranging it, and you told me to be sure he followed all the safety guidelines or he’d probably be killed. I asked you if you had all the safety gear you needed, and you said you did, but you thought it would be wise to create a separate room within the greenhouse so that the Last Rites could be properly contained.”

Neville’s mouth was hanging open. Harry had just described the details of his dream perfectly—but he’d never told Harry any of those details! He’d never told anyone! “How—how did you know all that?” he gasped.

“Because it wasn’t a dream,” Harry replied. “It happened, just like the other dreams you told me about.”

Neville stared for a minute before frowning. “So you’re telling me that I shagged Pansy Parkinson?” he asked sarcastically.

“Er… Yeah,” Harry said, reddening again. “I didn’t know when you told me that dream, but I asked her later, and… I don’t know if it happened more than once, but it did happen.”

“Harry, come on!” Neville retorted hotly; he was feeling very shaken and didn’t like it. “This is Pansy Parkinson we’re talking about—the Slytherin who’s hated all of us from the first day at Hogwarts, remember?” He hesitated. “What do you mean you asked her?”

“She’s joined Dumbledore’s Army,” Harry said. “It’s a long story. Neville, you know I’m telling the truth—how else would I have known the details of your dream?”

Neville swallowed nervously. “I don’t know,” he admitted. Then something occurred to him that made his heart jump in his chest. “Did you mean that all the dreams I described to you really happened?” Harry nodded. “Then… Then that night, when Bellatrix Lestrange attacked us in St Mungo’s…”

“I was there, yeah,” Harry said carefully. “And so was Pansy.”

“Pansy Parkinson almost got hit with the Cruciatus Curse defending my parents?” Neville exclaimed. Of all Harry had told him, that seemed the most far-fetched.

“It sounds really unlikely, I know,” Harry said. “But Pansy confirmed it.”

“So Pansy really… And she and I really…?” Neville couldn’t help but grimace when Harry nodded. “But you said that you hadn’t known about it, so that means we’re not… um, dating? Publicly, I mean.”

“No,” Harry said. “None of us knew about it, and when I asked Pansy about it she threatened to hex me if I told anyone.”

Neville let out a long breath. “Thank Merlin,” he mumbled. “I just can’t see… It’s just too weird,” he said, and Harry nodded wryly. “So you and Hermione and I really were in that closet together. And the fight with Bellatrix…” He shuddered. “I thought that it was bad enough with just me and Hermione. And then afterwards, we were trying to wake Hermione up, and we were arguing—”

Neville’s voice died as the dream’s details filled his mind. “We—we were arguing,” he repeated, “because I told you to do a Memory Charm, didn’t I? To keep the Ministry from finding out about Dumbledore’s Army…?”

Harry looked stunned. “That’s right,” he said, his voice full of amazement. “I can’t believe you remember that!”

“I remember it from my dream,” Neville croaked. “I said—I told you to figure out how to undo the Charm after I’d been questioned by the Ministry.” Neville clutched the edge of the table in a death grip. He felt disoriented, as though his entire world had just been thrown on its end. “Harry…I’m really scared,” he admitted. “I—I think I believe you, but what am I supposed to do? I mean, is that why You-Know-Who is after me? Because of my memory being altered?”

“We were worried that Voldemort might think you were more vulnerable than the rest of us,” Harry explained, speaking quickly. “Thanks to his spies in the Ministry he found out that what you told the Aurors didn’t match up to Rodolphus Lestrange’s version. We thought he would target you to torture for information… and he can break through Memory Charms. We’ve been watching you since that night, Neville—and even more seriously since you and I had dinner together, because I realized that the Memory Charm must be leaking through into your dreams. We were hoping we could figure out how to remove the Charm before anything happened—and we were really close—but then today happened, and we couldn’t just leave you there. Until today we’d only been concerned that Voldemort might target you, but now he actually has. We had to get you somewhere safe.”

“O—Okay,” Neville stammered, nodding; that made sense, at least. “But now what? I mean, you have to restore my memories, it’s been long enough, hasn’t it?” he pleaded. “That is… will you be able to restore my memories?”

“We think so,” Harry said hesitantly. “Sally-Ann Perks, Padma Patil and Terry Boot have been working on figuring out how to do it for a while now. But it was only yesterday that they decided they had the solution worked out.”

“But they have it worked out,” Neville replied instantly. “So you can do it!”

“I think they need a bit more time,” Harry insisted, his eyes widening at Neville’s vehement insistence.

“Time?” Neville choked. “You said they had it worked out!”

“They haven’t had as much time as they’d like to double-check everything—”

“The hell with double-checking!” Neville shouted.

“Calm down, Neville—”

“Calm down?” Neville snapped, his voice breaking. “Damn it, Harry, you just told me I can’t trust my own memories! Do you have any idea what that feels like? It’s bloody terrifying, so don’t tell me to calm down! Give me a potion or cast another charm, but undo whatever the hell you did to me!”

Harry was leaning as far back in his seat as he possibly could. He swallowed a few times before finally responding; “All right,” he said, slumping a bit. “You’re right, Neville… it’s your choice. If you say you want it done now, then we will.”

Neville took several deep breaths to calm himself down. “Right,” he said, his voice a bit hoarse from shouting. “So what do you have to do?”

“I’m going to get Sally-Ann, Padma and Terry in here to explain it to you,” Harry answered, standing up. “They’ve been working on it since we got you back here, just in case—in case you reacted like this. If after they explain the risks you still want to go ahead, then we’ll do it right away, I promise.”

Harry walked over to the door, cast some sort of spell to unlock it, and stepped through. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he promised before he shut the door. “And Neville… Whatever happens, I want you to know that we’ve all really missed having you here. Not just because of how good you are at Herbology—we missed you.”

*****

It took half an hour for Sally-Ann, Padma and Terry to explain the procedure to Neville: Harry and Lavender would enter his mind, working together to locate the buried memories; once they’d found them, Lavender would ‘hold’ them while Harry removed the Memory Charm he’d cast. Then together they would draw the true memories back to the surface. “It’s a dangerous series of charms,” Padma warned, “and even though we’ve taught Harry and Lavender how to cast them, they haven’t exactly been able to practice.”

Neville, however, wouldn’t back down—he insisted that they proceed immediately. Several of the others—most notably Hermione and the three Ravenclaws who’d worked out the procedure—strongly objected, and Lavender wasn’t too confident about her part in it. But Neville was adamant and finally Harry kept his promise.

They had Neville lay down on his bed. “It’ll be easiest if you’re asleep for this,” Hermione told him, pursing her lips; she was clearly not happy about what they were about to do. “Since your memories were leaking into your dreams, it may happen again, and that could help Harry and Lavender find what they’re looking for. But you don’t dream when you’re stunned, so I brought this Sleeping Draught.”

Neville sat up and took the flask from Hermione. “Th-thanks,” he said. “Don’t worry, okay? Hey, if something goes wrong, I’ll never know it, right?”

His attempt at humor certainly didn’t work; Hermione looked close to tears. “Hermione, I have to do this,” Neville said seriously. “I can’t stand not remembering, and knowing I can’t remember. It would eat at me every second.”

Hermione opened her mouth, but froze when Ron laid a hand on her shoulder. “I get that, mate,” Ron said quietly. “I do.”

Hermione stared wide-eyed at Ron for a moment before hugging him and burying her face in his chest. Neville didn’t get it—had something happened to Ron that made him understand what Neville was feeling better than the others? If so, it was another thing Neville wanted desperately to remember.

“Neville, we’re ready,” Harry said from the other side of the bed. Neville looked around to see Harry and Lavender standing side by side, wands drawn. They both looked deeply apprehensive. “You’re absolutely sure?” Harry asked one final time.

Neville nodded. “Positive.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Drink that, then.”

Neville downed the Sleeping Draught without tasting it. He immediately began to feel drowsy. “Wake me up,” he mumbled, falling back on his pillow. “Soon’s ye’r…done…”

“We will,” he heard Harry say, just before he closed his eyes.