A Light of Meaning

“Harry, will you stop pacing?” Ron growled. “It’s driving me nutters!”

Harry paused in front of his chair. “Sorry, Ron,” he muttered, falling into the chair. He sighed and ran the fingers of both hands nervously through his unruly hair. “So,” he said, sounding exhausted, “what you’re saying is, we’re sure.”

“That’s right,” Luna said amiably. “The deciphering of the language is perfect, there’s no question. And the translation into modern language matches everything.”

Harry looked to Hermione, who nodded, seeming a bit stunned herself. “Luna’s right, Harry, and we explained it thoroughly enough to all of you. It’s very clear – if cast correctly, this spell really could bring Neville’s parents back.”

“ ‘If cast correctly’,” Ron repeated, looking a bit sick. “That’s a bloody big if, Hermione.”

“I know, Ron, but look around this room,” Hermione replied gently. “Each of us is a strong witch or wizard, in our own way. I have no doubt that together, the five of us will pull this off right.”

“Will?” Ginny shot back, speaking for the first time. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hermione; just because we can do this doesn’t mean we’re going to!”

“I thought you wanted to,” Harry said in surprise.

“I-” Ginny looked down at the table, her anger quickly giving way to anxiety. “No matter how careful we are, it’s still possible something could go wrong,” she whispered. “As long as I’ve known him, Neville’s been nothing but trustworthy and brave and kind. He’s lost his parents once already…I don’t think I could live with myself if I took them away from him again.”

All five of them contemplated Ginny’s words. “It’s not just that,” Ron said eventually. “Neville – don’t get me wrong, he’s as brave a bloke as I’ve ever known, but he’s not exactly…confident. We all saw how Neville is about his parents, I mean besides you, Luna. Don’t you think, if something did go wrong, he might...he might kind of fall apart?”

Hermione nodded. “Even though he never knew his parents, he loves them dearly,” she agreed. “It might- it might break him, if we failed.”

“He would want us to, if there was a chance it could work,” Harry said firmly. “He- I know how Neville feels; knowing he should have had his parents with him as he grew up. It was worse than anything the Dursleys ever did to me, knowing my parents should have been there and weren’t. I’d be willing to take any risk if I thought I could have my parents back; I know Neville would feel the same.”

“You don’t know, Harry, you think,” Ginny countered. “It’s not your right, or any of ours, to play those kinds of games on Neville’s behalf. We’re not him, and no matter what, we don’t know how he feels or what choices he’d make.”

There was more silence until Luna said “Well, then we have to ask Neville what he’d like to do.”

“No!” Ginny blurted out. “It’s cruel to give him hope like that, Luna!”

“You think he’d be better not even knowing there’s a chance?” Ron shot back.

“I think that Neville’s had enough pain in his life, and has enough pain already coming in the war!” Ginny replied hotly.

“But doesn’t that mean he deserves the right to choose to try for a bit more happiness?” Hermione asked, biting on a fingernail. “Neville’s certainly earned every chance at being happy.”

Ginny had no response for that, so they lapsed into silence again, and gradually they all came to the same conclusion; that they simply couldn’t make the decision. “Look,” Harry said, “right now, I only see two options; either we tell Neville and let him choose, or we don’t try the spell. I- this isn’t a decision for Dumbledore’s Army, this is personal; we’re all Neville’s friends and I can’t, er, pull rank here. I say we vote.” Everyone nodded, so Harry got up and lifted something from a shelf. “This is a Voting Vase,” he told them all as he set it in the middle of the table.

“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed in shock. “I didn’t know you knew about Voting Vases!”

“I found out about them last week; it occurred to me that this might happen,” Harry admitted. “There’s five of us; majority rules, okay?”

Luna looked surprised. “You want me to vote as well?”

“Of course!” Ginny said immediately as Harry nodded.

“Luna, you’ve more than proven how much of a friend you are to Neville, these past few weeks,” Hermione said.

“Yeah,” Ron agreed. “Without you we’d never have even known about this. You have as much right to vote as any of us do.”

“Oh,” Luna said faintly. “All right.”

“So here’s what we do,” Harry continued. “Each of us sticks our wands in the Vase and concentrates on a color. We’ll use red for telling Neville, and blue for not telling him. The Vase will sense your choice and remember it. Then when we’ve all gone, the Vase will release the results as balls of light, in random order – that way we won’t know who voted which way. Got it?” Everyone nodded again, so Harry pulled out his wand and stuck it in the Vase; his brow furrowed for a moment as he concentrated, and then he removed his wand. “That’s it. Ginny, you go next.”

It took no time or everyone to cast their vote. Then Harry tapped the Vase with his wand. “Vovere unvelum,” he said.

For a moment it seemed like nothing had happened, and Harry began to wonder if he’d erred when creating the Voting Vase. But then a strong heat began to seep from the porcelain, and with a flare-up similar to the Goblet of Fire, the Vase released a large red ball, which grew larger than the Vase itself, and hovered over the table. After a full minute the light hadn’t dissipated: “What’s going on?” Ron whispered. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry answered.

“I do,” Hermione said, and smiled softly at them. “The Vase will, rarely, release only a single ball – but only if everyone who voted, voted the same way.”

*****

Neville stared down at the surface of the table, lost in thought. He didn’t know which recent revelation he should be most focused on. That Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione still trusted him was a huge relief; that they’d been awkward around him because they felt guilty keeping such personal secrets made him feel contented in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. And the fact that they had been working so hard for his own benefit – he hardly knew what to think. He felt a bit guilty that he’d doubted their trust in him, and doubted their friendship; and he felt embarrassed that they’d felt they should bother, for him.

But in truth, all of that was completely overshadowed by what they’d just told him – about his parents. “So, um…you’re sure it would work?” he asked cautiously, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Er…no, Neville, we’re not sure,” Harry answered. “We’re pretty confident. Luna’s been brilliant with her translation – the work she did made it possible for Hermione to wake Ron, and that proved that Luna’s translations are accurate. And you know how clever Hermione is. If anyone could create a modern translation of the spell, Hermione and Luna could. But no matter what, it’s practically a new spell. It’s never been tried in this form; in fact, we’re not even sure how often or how long ago the original version was used. I can’t just say ‘yeah, it’ll work’. The truth is that we just don’t know.”

“It could hurt them?” Neville exclaimed, his voice cracking.

“It’s not probable,” Hermione told him. “It’s more likely to do nothing than cause any harm, and more likely to work than not. But it is possible it could have negative effects.”

Neville’s eyes dropped back to his hands on the table. The others exchanged glances, but didn’t say anything until Neville asked “So my p-parents…if they did come back – I mean, would they remember any of the time since-?”

“We- we don’t know that either, Neville,” Hermione said softly. “The information in the book is all focused on the spell; it makes a few allusions to how effective it is, but it only mentions restoring the- the victims. It doesn’t say anything about what they were like afterward.”

“I think that the book would have a very wide definition of a successful spell if the results had been really unpleasant,” Ginny pointed out.

“Yeah…that makes sense,” Neville agreed, nodding slightly.

“You know Neville, you don’t have to choose now,” Ron said quickly, glaring defiantly at the others as if daring them to contradict him. “You could…you know, think about it a while-”

No, I want you to do it,” Neville interrupted. “I’d rather take the risk than not know.”

“You say that, but are you sure?” Harry responded. “You know something could go wrong – would you rather have your parents as they are now, or not have them at all?”

Neville looked Harry straight in the eye. “Harry, if what you’re saying is true, about what’s been going on with my parents the last fifteen years… I always thought what was done to them was cruel, even sadistic, but if I’d known the truth I might have begged my gran to let the Healers end them. It’s worse than death. Death would at least be an ending; my parents didn’t even get that.” He sat up straight, and met each of their eyes in turn. “I want you to do it. If anything goes wrong I’ll never blame you for it; you let me choose, and it’s all on me.”

Harry glanced around; although no one but Luna seemed calm or certain, everyone had been affected by Neville’s words. “All right,” Harry said, and turned to Hermione. “What do we need for the spell? If we have everything here, we’re doing it tonight after St. Mungo’s closes.”

*****

“Neville, I really don’t think you should be here,” Harry said as he lowered his wand from casting a Silencing Charm. “If things don’t go as planned…”

“Harry, if things don’t go as planned, this may be the l-last chance I get to see my p-parents,” Neville pointed out with a hitch in his voice. “I had to…to see them again one more time, at least.”

Harry couldn’t bring himself to meet Neville’s eyes. Ever since Neville’s brave words that afternoon, he’d been growing more certain they were making a horrible mistake. “I can’t believe you’re trusting us with this,” he whispered. “We’re just teenagers, for Merlin’s sake, none of us even graduated from Hogwarts! There’s got to be a better way…maybe we can find a more skilled witch or wizard to do it-”

“We can’t, you know that,” Neville said calmly. “The risk of Voldemort finding out about the book is too high. Besides, Hermione and Luna pretty much invented the spell, no one else knows it better than they do, you said so yourself.”

“But a lot of people are better than any of us at spellcasting! We could get Tonks to help, she’s in the Army; and I’m sure we could trust the Weasleys, I bet Bill would be great for this…”

Neville stopped Harry’s words with a hand on his shoulder. “Harry, stop that, please. I know you’re scared of what might happen; so am I, a lot more than I’m letting on, all right? But I’m trusting you with this because you’ve earned it.” He dropped his eyes to his hands, which were wringing in the front of his robes. “That day on Christmas, when you saw my mum for the first time, when she gave me that- that wrapper…it would’ve been really easy for you to laugh at it. But you didn’t, not then, not ever. Up until then I thought that maybe you, and Ron and Hermione and everyone, were only being nice to me out of pity. But when you let me keep that secret, and didn’t tell me I was acting childish…well, I realized you were being nice out of respect. It was the first time I ever felt like someone respected me for anything other than a bit of skill at Herbology. How could I not show you the same respect? I’m just still amazed you’ve gone to such trouble for me. And I know you said I’ve earned it, but really I haven’t done much for the D.A., and in the Department of Mysteries I wasn’t a lot of help-”

“Neville, it’s not a matter of earning it,” Harry interrupted. “We wanted to do this for you because of the sort of person you are, the sort of friend. Do you remember the start of Fifth year, when we all got to the bedroom the first night? Seamus was being a prat, and you told him off for not believing me about Voldemort coming back. You said ‘We believe Harry’. It meant more than I ever said; I knew Ron and Hermione would believe me, and Ginny, and the twins…but anyone else could’ve gone either way. You’re the kind of friend who believes, who trusts, and I’d spend a thousand times as long on this if I thought it’d help you.”

Neither boy had anything more to say, but their admissions had opened something up between them. When Ron walked over, looking at them strangely, and said “We’re all ready,” Harry felt a lot more confident that what they were doing, however it went, was right.

“Right,” Neville said, looking increasingly nervous despite his confident words. “Er…where do I-?”

“You have to leave, Neville,” Hermione told him gently, coming over and handing an unlit candle to Harry. “And you, Ron; anyone not actually casting the spell can’t be present, it’s too risky.”

“What?” Ron exclaimed. “Risky to us, or to Neville’s parents?”

“Both,” Hermione said shortly. “And that reminds me…” she pocketed her wand and pulled off her engagement ring, and held it out to Ron. “Just in case,” she said, trying to sound calm.

“You’re nutters, put it back on,” Ron said; he looked a bit white.

“But there’s a chance something may happen!”

“Yeah, I think I got that!”

“Look, Ron,” Hermione said as if it were obvious, “this ring – well, it’s very special…”

“Too right, it’s special,” Ron muttered, shoving Hermione’s hand back. “It’s your bloody engagement ring!”

“That’s not what I meant! This ring predates Hogwarts, it’s an important family heirloom! If something should happen to me-”

“If something happened to you I wouldn’t say ‘Oh no, Hermione’s gone, but I still have the ring so everything’s all right’!” Ron shouted. “I’m not engaged to the bloody ring, so put it back on!” Without another word, Ron spun around and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“Well!” Hermione huffed. “Well, if he’s going to be unreasonable…Neville, will you take it, please?”

“Er…” Neville eyed the ring nervously. “No, I can’t.”

Hermione threw up her hands. “Honestly! What is wrong with everyone?”

“Hermione,” Neville said tentatively, “I’m hardly an expert, but I think that trying to give back an engagement ring, under any circumstances, isn’t a good idea.”

“What do you- oh!” Hermione exclaimed, suddenly stricken as it finally dawned on her what Neville was saying. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that-!”

“I’m pretty sure Ron knows that,” Neville said with a soft smile, heading for the door. “I’ll talk with him; it’ll pass the time, at least.” He swallowed. “Good luck.”

Hermione put her face in her hands as Neville closed the door. “I’m such an idiot…”

“What’s going on?” Ginny called from across the room.

“Nothing,” Harry answered. “Hermione’s just found the one thing she’s more dense about than Ron!”

Hermione raised her head and frowned at Harry. “Harry, that doesn’t help!”

“No, but putting the ring back on would,” Harry pointed out, and Hermione, blushing, slipped the ring back on her finger. “Now come on, for once in your life you have to forget about Ron,” Harry teased; Hermione scowled, although the corners of her mouth twitched. “You’re sure everything’s ready for the spell?”

Hermione nodded confidently. “As ready as we can make it.”

“All right,” Harry said, and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”