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Chapter Text

Neville Longbottom was not stupid, though it was often convenient when people thought he was. He knew. When a dozen Aurors came marching across the battlefield, stepping over and on corpses of Death Eaters, Order members, and students alike, with that stupid letter in hand, he knew exactly how it was going to play out.  So he fumbled in his pockets and stuttered over oblivious questions and scrunched up his brow and played Poor Dumb Longbottom, stalling for time as the seeds he spilled out of his pockets soaked up the blood and magic of a battlefield.

The Aurors casually walked around them, forming a nice tight circle, surrounding them with no room to escape. 

That was fine, really. 

It meant none of them would escape either.

They were still, the ground undisturbed, as Harry explained that he did die, the horcrux was destroyed. 

Neville smiled grimly and raised his wand, but didn't aim at the Aurors. If Harry died and came back once, maybe he could do it again, and if not… well, they'd all go down together. 

All fifteen of them.

He aimed a mild stinging hex at the Willow behind the Aurors and died with a smile on his face as the Willow struck the ground and his experimental plants sprang to life, growing and devouring the wizards around them as acid-green lights struck and three barely-adults fell dead.

He only wished he could see Professor Sprout's face when she found the thicket later, given he'd managed to crossbreed the vampiric glass roses, venomous tentacula, and most importantly, magic-imbued kudzu. Waving vines and white roses steadily turning red filled his vision and he smiled, turning to follow the tug in his soul going Elsewhere.

***

He opened his eyes in a forest. Of sorts. If a forest was made mostly of bones and dead things.

With nothing better to do, he wandered. (He was dead, it's not like getting lost in a strange forest was going to kill him.) While he wandered, he curiously poked at branches of the bone trees, fallen logs of indeterminate origin, prying up stones to look underneath them, smiling to himself. 

Fabulous things, forests. Full of all sorts of things. More than half of which subsisted entirely on dead and dying things. Which meant that this forest, whatever it looked like, whatever it was made of, wasn't really dead. The trees most definitely were, and most definitely were made of bone instead of wood. The bushes and shrubs and vines were likewise dead, and either made of appropriate plant matter or… maybe dried sinew? And there did not appear to be any living animals. But if you looked closely, mosses, mushrooms, bacteria and insects still lived here, growing and thriving on the wood and blood and bone of the larger dead things. Neville very much wanted to take samples of a few but he didn't want to disturb the careful balance of the ecosystem here and also, he was dead, it wasn't like he had a lab to take the samples to. So instead, he observed and walked and kept poking at things to see what else he could discover.

Finally he came to something like a stream, except what was flowing in it was most definitely Not Water. It looked rather like descriptions of the River Styx, actually, except for the fact that he could probably have stood with a foot on either bank and not worried about getting wet.

The creatures in it all had rather large, sharp teeth and looked quite deadly, if it weren't for the fact that they were tiny.  

He stopped to observe them, poking a bone-stick into the water to see what they would do.

You know, they aren't at all tame.

"No, I didn't expect they would be."

Then it is very foolhardy to disturb them.  Styx-nymphs are notoriously dangerous, even to the dead.

"But then I wouldn't know how they react!" Neville shot back at the disembodied voice.  "You never learn anything if you aren't willing to push yourself.  Besides, I wasn't poking them, I was poking the water.  I wouldn't have poked them.  They've done nothing wrong."

They consume the very souls of those deceased who cross their banks.

"And?  Nature has a balance.  The dead are a part of that.  There is nothing wrong with keeping that balance, and an awful lot wrong with selfishly upsetting it for no good reason."

The silence felt heavy, and a bit… embarrassed?

And what if there is a good reason?

Neville thought.  

"It'd have to be pretty good and I don't think mortals have the right sort of perspective to decide that."

And what of Death?  Does Death have the right perspective?

"If not Death, then who?"

And if Death offered you that chance?

Neville went quiet.  He knew he wasn't the impressive one.  He was the Prophecy's Spare, the quiet one, the foolish one, the one everyone knew had Exceptions Made, not for his merit but his lack. The one very specifically Not Chosen, the Unchosen One, as it were.

He also knew that there were things in the world far beyond the understanding of Wixen.  Old Gods and Aspects of Reality unbound by the basic laws that governed the universe, and that deals with them came at a cost they wouldn't risk not being paid back.  He knew he was not an idiot, and he had every reason to think Death knew that too.

He knew what his skills were.

He wasn’t Harry, the Boy Who Lived.

He wasn’t Hermione, the Brightest Witch of her Generation.

He wasn’t Ron, with his enviable lack of Destiny, and the courage to stand beside those Fate had sunk wicked claws into.

He was The Boy Who Stayed.  The Spy.  The Rebel.  The one who did dark things to defend his charges, who nicked his skin over scars made with blood magic in the dead of night under a moonless sky and invoked old pacts.  He was the one who twisted Nature into a tool, who created living death in floral form and smiled as it did its job.  The one who learned, and learned, and learned, and who knew how well wisdom and silence worked as a weapon.

He knew what sort of thing he could offer as payment.

"What would it cost? Me and the world?"

You? Nothing that isn't already paid. The world? Depends largely on your point of view. Fate's a bitch and I aim to ruin her plans. You are very good at that, without anyone directing you, even. You don't need excessive supervision.

Neville smiled, and it was a sickle's blade in the dead forest.

"What's the mission?"

***

He woke up, the frescoes on the nursery ceiling greeting him in the dim light. The moon hung low on the horizon, which…didn't actually tell him anything. The nursery bed he was in was a little too small, but not as small as it would have been had he laid down in it yesterday. Back in time, then, but how far back was a question. And Death had given him a mission, which would fuck up Fate’s plans as well as everyone else’s.  

That's fine, they were crappy plans anyway.

Neville thought back over the letter and the last seven-and-change years and couldn't help but agree. Every one of Dumbledore's and Voldemort's plans had been… just bad. Honestly, when a handful of first years can trash your plan, you should probably let planning be someone else's job. But of course, when you're trashing everyone else's rubbish plans for the world, you'd better have your own plan ready to put into place instead, or the weeds would just grow back. Good plans depended upon sound information. Information Neville didn't have just then. 

Step 1 would have to be the same as it always was, then: Research, research, research.

Neville nodded and climbed out of bed, blinking in dismay at how short he was. Casting a quick, wandless Tempus, he breathed a sigh of relief. Midsummer's day before Hogwarts was just beginning. Grandmother was gone Visiting for the week, and while everyone was waiting on tenterhooks to see if he was Magical enough to get a Letter, the near-fatal attempts to prove his magic were already over. He had time, and better yet, a complete lack of supervision on his side. Plenty in which to do what needed to be done.

Grandmother had long since removed any restrictions on the Library, as he only ever looked at his assigned books and books on plants (which she never did see as useful or dangerous) anyway, and no one but him and the House Elves would be on the grounds for five whole days. It was the best opportunity he'd get.

But first… there were more important things to take care of.

With the traditional ways of celebrating the Olde holidays deemed "dark" and banned, four times a year Grandmother spent seven days visiting the homes of several family members, and four times a year she spent three days visiting the homes of various friends. Neville figured it was her way of handling her grief, avoiding the house devoid of anyone who mattered on the days that meant more. It was fine, the Elves ensured he had everything he needed while she was away, and it meant there was no one there to care how he celebrated those days. The House Elves approved of tradition, and he found it comforting.

Celebrating seemed much more important this time. He couldn't do a full and proper Midsummer, but he didn't need to, not really. He needed to celebrate being alive...and mourn old friends before he saw them again when they wouldn't know him.

The traditions were a comfort he needed now, with so many people to grieve, and an Aspect to honor.

He gathered up supplies from around his room, pulling plain, unbleached linen trews and shirt from a chest he kept buried in the back of his closet, herbs and dried flowers from his dresser, beeswax candles from sconces around the room, and slipped out into the main nursery, trailing a hand over chairs and rocking pegasus used and loved by three generations of his family as he made his way to the nursery bathing room.

He drew the bath himself, stirring herbs and flowers into the water. A small flex of magic and the candles he placed around the room lit.

Normally, he wasn't allowed to do any of this himself, but whatever he looked like at the moment, he wasn't ten years old, and he was also not waking the Elves up in the middle of the night. Today of all days, they'd have twenty four hours off. The joy of being the heir and the only human present, he could set the rules. And if he ruled that no one worked today, it would be adhered to.

Stripping out of his pyjamas, he settled in to scrub yesterday away with salt instead of soap before laying back and soaking in the warm, scented water. 

Salt couldn't scrub the soul. It couldn't take away the last year of suffering and doing terrible things to protect others, or the lingering layers of lies that might no longer be visible in his own handwriting but which ached anyway. It could scrub away the lingering magic of battlefield spells, the smell of blood and mud and ichor, the tingle of standing next to Hermione when she cast an exceedingly overpowered bombarda. Even though those things weren't attached to his current body.

All in all, by the time Neville was dried, dressed, the tub drained and candles extinguished, it was 3 am. If he took his time, he could pack up a portable breakfast and lunch into a basket he'd be sure to get from somewhere in the opposite direction as the kitchen, he could order the Elves to take the day to do no work at all at their usual time rising and be out in the wandwood on the grounds in time to greet the sunrise. 

Which is, of course, exactly what he did. Almost. The Elves insisted, on the grounds that Midsummer Day didn't begin until sunrise, on working just enough to take his basket out to the glen for him, leaving him with more food than he had packed, a pot of tea, an old blanket laid out on the ground, and several bottles of butterbeer.

Neville sighed and settled onto the edge of the blanket facing east, digging his bare feet into the grass and loam.

He drank the tea as he waited  for the sun, using it to ground him in his newly-small body while he meditated on the last eight years, friends gained and lost, lessons learned and unlearned. Enemies earned. 

The pot emptied as the first glimmerings of grey appeared on the horizon. Neville set it aside, opened a bottle of butterbeer and stood facing the coming sun. He opened his mouth, but his words died. (Heh. Like I did.) He took a sip and reached instead for the words of others, pulling on old songs like a cloak as he greeted the sun and trees.

Of all the trees that grow so fair, old England to adorn

Greater are none beneath the sun than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn

Do not tell the priest our plight

For he would call it a sin

But we've been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring summer in.

He swayed and danced through his family's wand wood grove, stopping to offer butterbeer to each of the trees the song named, patting each trunk and letting his magic settle into each for their few lines before moving on. If the trees seemed to lean into his touch, he paid it little mind as he followed the words and let them connect him back into a wood that wasn't made of bones and dead things.

When he'd greeted each tree and the song ran out of words, he returned to the center of the grove for another bottle as memories pressed close again and another song came to his lips.

Let us drink and be merry all grief to refrain

For we may or might never all meet here again

Song after song fell from his lips as the sun worked his way across the sky and Neville wept and spilled drink out for people who, Aspects willing, would never come to be, much less die in a war they should never have had to fight.

As the souls of the dead fill the space of my mind

I’ll search without sleeping till peace I can find

I fear not the weather, I fear not the sea

I remember the fallen, do they think of me?

When their bones in the ocean forever will be

• ••

Grief in the snow, the winter of woe

Has come here to judge and bereave me

Lock up the rage, it rattles the cage

The fury it never leaves me

• ••

There were heroes and angels all fated to die

Over 2000 souls laid to rest by-and-by

We will always remember and lift a glass high

To the e’ening when Hogwarts she burned

• ••

Watch that old fire as it flickers and dies

That once blessed the household and lit up our lives

It shone for the friends and the clinking of glasses

I'll tend to the flame; you can worship the ashes

• ••

Fires are rising and the bells are ringing

Glory take us into Odin's halls

Golden glimmer and the sound of singing

Asgard's call

• ••

Hoist the flags, hold the lines

Lessons ever lost to time

Now we sing for you, departed pawns of war

• ••

All my friends are dead and gone

I'll join them soon, it won't be long

Whether lost at sea or far ashore

To the ocean return forevermore

We're down, downed and drowned

Downed and drowned and never found

• ••

There's a man on high

With the Devil in his eye

And a golden hand, I'm told

It can hurt you, it can hold you

He can kick you or console you

When you're sleeping in the cold below

Neville sang and poured and wept, grieved and raged, back and forth across the grove until finally, he lay beneath the noon-high sun, emotionless and empty. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve (Gran wasn't here to scold and didn't know about this shirt to care if it was ruined anyway) and sat up. He ate far more than he had expected he would of the food the Elves sent with him, tossing what crumbs were left behind into the bushes to feed birds and squirrels and insects. Grieving is hard work when you squish years of it into a few hours. 

Taking a long drink from a cool bottle, he looked around the glade with eyes clearer than they had ever been before. (Crying does that. One should always take the time to cry on occasion.)

Neville stood and picked up a suspiciously straight branch that had fallen beneath the Alder tree, roughly the length and thickness of a quarter staff. Gifts given, and all that.

He closed his eyes and lined up the memories of Carrows and Lestranges, Malfoys, snakes, and noseless wonders. He gave himself to the rage as thoroughly as he had given himself to the grief, pacing through katas learned on the sly after the disastrous end of fifth year to strike down illusory foes he wouldn't get a chance at for years to come.

Finally, he sat, just sat, and leaned into the feeling of Death as he celebrated the pulse racing in his chest and breath ragged in his throat and sweat dripping down his back, the wind on his face and grass on his toes, trees at his back, and flowers beneath his nose.  Death leaned back, and it was far more reassuring, steadying, than it had any right to be.

The sun set and he bid it farewell, trudging back into the house, basket and blanket in one hand, new staff in the other, humming under his breath. Tomorrow, the work would begin.

A curse upon you! Sorrow fall thick and fast!

Your days have been numbered, each hour your last!

May the land, sea or sky turn to swallow you whole

And fore'er ne'er forget what you stole.

***

A month passed with Neville mostly in the library reading, researching and drafting plans. The four days Gran was elsewhere following the Solstice, he spent researching everything he could get his hands on about everything the Golden Trio had ever mentioned in passing: cerberi, devil's snare, philosophers stones, basilisks, parseltongue, dementors, dragons, mermaids, magical water plants, sphinxes, portkey spells, confundus charms, obliviation spells, legilimency, the Wizengamut and laws regarding the handling of broken laws —especially pertaining to minors,— apparition, defensive spells and wards, gringotts and goblins. When Gran returned, he focused on healing spells, gardening spells, and the defensive use of plants. All of which she expected, even if he wasn't using them the way she would expect if she thought at all about them being used in the first place.

Look, anything can be used offensively if you're creative enough. Even delousing spells. He may have accidentally written an essay or three on the subject of battlefield misuse of "harmless" spells. 

Which was fine, Gran would never read them, anyway, and no one else would care. The Elves assigned to assist him grinned vicious, sharp-toothed, little grins when they read the essays over his shoulder, and even offered helpful advice on other Perfectly Harmless weapons. Aspects, he loved his Elves. 

He also thought he could love Goblins, too, as he read more about their culture, values, and skills. He had a soft spot in his heart for vicious, clever, undervalued underdogs, and Goblins and Elves both fit into it quite nicely.

The Goblins, as they had last time, had sent a letter two weeks before his birthday, bidding him to come to his Account Manager for an inheritance test before his birthday. Last time, Gran had scoffed and refused, on the grounds that they already knew his inheritance, and it wouldn't matter until he got his Hogwarts letter, anyway. This time, he'd simply neglected to inform her.

On July 25th, Gran announced at breakfast that she would be at the bank all day for multiple will readings, and Neville stuttered something about the greenhouses while trying not to dance in glee.

He waited quietly as Gran finished eating, donned her favorite hat, and left. The instant she was gone, he burst into motion, running up the stairs two at a time to hurriedly change into Public Clothes in shades of grey and black, gathered up the staff he had kept hidden and his piles of notes and plots in their Expanded bag, and bolted back down to the greenhouse, where he did, in fact, set foot inside … immediately before calling Whisp to apparate him to Diagon Alley. 

It's important to tell the truth, after all.

At 8:15, he presented himself and the letter to a teller at Gringott's, and was promptly shown to his Manager's office.

Manager Redtooth was relatively young for an Account Manager, not yet middle-aged, but she was wily and vicious. She had one canine that was slightly longer than the other and poked just a bit out under her upper lip. In pure spite, she had painted it blue. (Neville adored her, honestly.)

Neville waited patiently through the lineage test and the frankly shocking inheritance test. (What do you mean Lily and James Potter's wills were never read? What do you mean I get both Longbottom and LeStrange? No, I have no idea how I could have "defeated" both Lord and Heir LeStrange and Bellatrix. Ravenclaw what???) 

And when Redtooth got around to asking about the death and rebirth noted on his inheritance test, and what he wanted to do, he smiled viciously, picked up his bag, and poured the giant mound of parchment onto her desk.

She read through three of them and smiled viciously right back.

He left the bank an hour later with several books from the Longbottom and LeStrange vaults, a pouch full of galleons, and a new godparent. 

No staff, though, Redtooth had taken it down to the weaponsmiths to get it turned into…something. She wouldn't say what, only asked how tall he had been when he died.

His first stop was Ollivander's. Gran would, actually, take care of everything else he needed for school later this week, but he knew already she'd want Neville to use his father's wand, and he knew it neither fit him nor had relinquished Frank as its wielder.

He walked in the door and he swore Ollivander looked like he was going to cry.

Garrick Ollivander looked at the rings on Neville's hand, looked him in the eye, and crumpled. His lips quivered and he sighed and said "I know the wand for you," and disappeared down the back.

He came back with a beautiful white and grey wooden box, a pamphlet, and an auror-model wrist sheath in black and blue. He set them on the counter and backed warily away.

Confused and mildly concerned, Neville approached with equal wariness, and gently lifted the lid from the box.

The wand inside was a masterpiece. It was gorgeous, made of black walnut, cedar, and a white iron oak that had survived many fires. And it sang to Neville, like wind in the trees and like a little stream that should have been a river flowing through a forest made of bone. He picked it up and lost his breath as thoroughly as if he had been facing upwind during a storm. It felt like a pile of books and like standing between children and nothing-so-kind-as-Death. It felt like waving vines and white roses and tall mountains that could not be moved and feathered wings and a sword in his hand. It felt like watchful silence and seeds deep in the earth growing quietly, steadily up no matter how you pushed them down. It felt like white roses turning themselves red. It felt like falling, it felt like flying. It felt like Freedom. It felt like Death.

When he looked up, Ollivander was gone, leaving only a blue and black auror wrist sheath and a note refusing payment. Neville left the usual price on the counter anyway and took himself off to a bookstore. He had more research to do, after all.

***

Erumpent Horn

As this core has never before, to my knowledge, been used in wandmaking, I can only speculate as to its uses. However, given the attributes of the Creature and part from which it came, some reasonable assumptions may be made.

Its wielder will likely have far more power than they generally see any need to use. They will most likely be calm and peaceable unless attacked. When attacked, however, their response is likely to be explosive, relentless, and final.

I would not care to tangle with the wielder of an Erumpent horn wand.

Huh. Neville had to sit on that for a bit, reading the pamphlet that came with his new wand in his room. Black walnut was well known, as was cedar. The iron oak was largely the same as English oak, but had a distinct flavor to it, of spite and stubbornness and survival. Those were relatively easy to read and acknowledge their suitability for him, even if they weren't what he ended up with last time. The Erumpent horn was a little harder. He could see how it was accurate, but he wasn't sure how comfortable he was with it. No one had ever said he was powerful. Mostly they said the opposite.

And, honestly, he liked it that way. It meant no one looked too long or thought too hard at Neville Longbottom and what he was up to. He wasn't sure he liked his wand loudly declaring he had more power than he let on. 

Oh well, at least he could be vague about it. He wasn't entering the Tournament, willingly or otherwise, so there was no reason for his wand core to be announced to all and sundry.

***

On Wednesdays, Gran had Tea, sometimes at the manor, sometimes at a friend's,  but always, Neville was shooed out onto the grounds to entertain himself somewhere away from Respectable People. He gleefully took advantage. He spent the whole of every Wednesday between Gran's return after Midsummer and his birthday in the greenhouse he'd been given, working on recreating various plant-based inventions he'd made.

His birthday, a Tuesday, was spent doing the school shopping, and he slipped bits and pieces of his Plan into the baskets and boxes of supplies. But on Wednesday, Harry's birthday, Gran left for an early Tea before running off to friend's houses for the three day holiday she usually took around Llammastide, leaving him to "entertain himself." What he found particularly entertaining this holiday was having Whisp apparate him to various sites, particularly two graveyards in specific, one in Godric's Hollow, and one in Little Hangleton, planting seeds on various graves. His still-unnamed hybrid liked the magic of graveyards and battlefields best. They wouldn't grow for someone simply walking by the graves, but should anyone start digging… well, the bones of the father weren't all that would be found. It was while he seeded James and Lily's graves on August 1st, that the rook found him.

It landed on the headstone James and Lily shared, tilted its head to the side as it looked at Neville, looked back and forth between Neville and the ground where he was poking seeds into the ground, and tilted its head the other way. "Kah." It flapped its wings, arched its back and jutted its head at Neville. "Kah."

"What's that look for?" Neville defended. "I'm planting flowers on graves, a perfectly respectable thing to do."

"Kah."

"Okay, so the flowers won't grow unless someone does something stupid like try to dig them up or have a battle in a graveyard, and then the flowers will eat the stupid person, but that's just reasonable defense of the dead! You're a psychopomp, supposedly, you understand."

The rook hopped closer and looked at the seed in his hand. "Kah."

"No, you can't eat it, I have no idea if it'll be poisonous or not to you, or what else it would do to you. The plant's a magical carrion eater. Capable of making carrion if it needs to. Do you want to be carrion?"

"Kah," the rook said before looking decisively away from the seed.

"Didn't think so." Neville sighed, planted the last seed, and dug into a different pocket for a different packet of seeds, pouring some at least non-poisonous seeds onto the headstone for the daft bird as he stood.

"Well, I'm done here," he told the bird, "enjoy your snack."  He turned to rejoin Whisp at the graveyard gate, planning to head to the bank to see Redtooth, and stumbled as something hit his back. 

Specifically, something large, black, and feathered that was now sitting, prim as you please, on his shoulder.

Neville sighed. "You know, rooks are supposed to guide the virtuous dead to the afterlife. I've already been. Well at least as far as the River Styx that was really more of a brook. I don't need a guide, as I am not, currently, dead, and I don't think I count as particularly virtuous. Surely you have someone else to bother?"

"Kah."

"Fine, but I'm apparating to the bank, and if you don't appreciate that method of travel, that's a you problem not a me problem."

***

Redtooth thought the rook was delightful. 

Of course she did, they were both feral, sarcastic entities.

She also had, by digging through auror records, discovered how Neville had acquired the LeStrange lordship. Apparently, he had Accidental Magicked all the plants on the grounds close to and in the manor to life and set them against the DeathEaters, which, since he hadn’t even been two yet, had temporarily burned out his magic. Neville fumed. All those times Uncle Alfie had endangered his life when he knew Neville had been born with magic strong enough to defeat four full grown wixen, and a simple trip to the healers could have cleared up whether his core had recovered yet or not! 

When he expressed as much, Redtooth (see: Feral Entity) grinned viciously and asked if Neville would like a lawyer to take care of the problem. 

Of course, Neville didn’t survive a year of Death Eater-run Hogwarts without also becoming a feral entity.  Naturally, he agreed, and set an appointment for the next day. Redtooth presented him with a charmed pair of fucking chess Rooks to act as a message delivery method with her. (Fold, roll, and shrink any papers needing to be sent, and stick them inside the rook by the removable base, close it, and say “Castle Kingside,” and it would portkey anything inside it to the inside of the matching Rook. Apparently, she had a similar arrangement with a friend who happened to be a lawyer, except theirs were Bishops from the same set. Neville badly wanted a complete set of them, perhaps with duplication spells. Hermione’s coins were genius, and excellent for short messages that needed immediate attention, but having the ability to send more detailed messages on occasion would have been helpful, dammit.) 

***

The rook, as yet unnamed but determinedly inhabiting Neville's space, did not like Uncle Alfie. Which was a point in its favor, even if it did nearly get Neville in trouble. Fortunately, poor, dumb, stuttering Neville would obviously never sic a wild bird on his doting uncle. (He would, absolutely sic a wild lawyer on him, but they didn't know that yet as the courts were absolutely bogged down with other cases until nearly September.) So all he really has to do was look innocently confused and stutter something about rooks in mythology to get out of it. 

Alfie still got him a random, non-magical toad, probably fished out of a pond rather than bought, when his Letter came as a not-even-half hearted pretense at an apology.

The rook ate it. 

Neville was surprisingly unbothered by Trevor's fate this time around. Last time, he'd released Trevor into the pond after first year and never really looked back. As dependent on Trevor for assurance of his place in his family as he had been when the year started, by the summer, he had known full well that Trevor hadn't meant anything at all. It took longer, but by Fifth year, he'd known that his family would never really approve of him no matter what he did, so really, they didn't matter all that much either.

Supposing he should name the bird something other than a chess piece or its species, he returned to the library and headed for the mythology section.

An hour spent reading through the entries of Death gods  from around the world, with the rook seated on his shoulder looking for all the world like it was reading along, and Neville stopped to cackle. One book by two authors had an entire chapter that was nothing but the two arguing back and forth over whether the wizarding canine Grimm was named after the muggle human-shaped Grim Reaper or vice versa. The two different handwritings even switched which they were arguing for a couple times, with a side argument about potentially being the same entity who happened to be an animagus. They discarded the idea and concluded that there was, ultimately, no knowing unless one died and had the opportunity to ask. 

Honestly, that was enough reason for Neville. For Harry, for Sirius, and for the hilarity of a near-skeletal man in dark robes who also happened to be a big, terrifying, black dog. "Right, Grimm you are, then," Neville announced to the bird sitting on the desk in front of another book, pecking gently at a picture of Baron Samedi. It kahed in offense.

"Nope, nothing doing, Grimm. It suits you, clearly states what you are, and honors someone I actually liked. Also, there's probably going to be a big to-do about dog-grimms, grim reapers, skeletal men, and dementors in a few years, and if I name you Grimm now,   I'll get to pretend to be confused about why everyone's talking about my bird then, and it'll be just too funny to pass up. Besides, I'll get you a top hat. Would you rather be named after Baron Samedi, or look like Baron Samedi?" 

Grimm huffed and waddled over to hop back onto Neville's shoulder.

 "That's what I thought."

***

The month of August flew by in a flurry of Gran squawking like the vulture of her favorite hat and Neville passing notes to his solicitor and godmother through his rook while quietly laughing with Grimm when no one was looking. Something had Gran in a tizzy and it was delightful. Especially when she squawked about the gumption and gall of people who abused children and Neville took the opportunity to look up at her innocently and ask what Uncle Algie did that had her so put out. Her stunned silence as she stared at him before falling into a chair was delightful. Made Neville's month, or maybe decade.

She took him to a healer at St. Mungo's, and after twelve minutes examining and talking to him, the healer spent a good hour yelling at Gran.

Gran was a good bit quieter when she took him home. She asked the elves to make his favorite foods for supper and paid attention to what they put on the table, this time. His school trunk was replaced last minute with one that had a greenhouse compartment, half full of plants for healing, with space for whatever he wanted to grow left for him, and his old brown-so-they-can't-be-ruined clothes vanished and were replaced with nicer ones in a bevy of colors. She even asked if the wand he had worked for him and offered to take him to get a new one. He said only that his wand was fine and they didn't need to go back to Diagon. She frowned slightly, but nodded and left him to pack.

September first dawned, and Neville was overwhelmed with a sudden spate of anxiety. Gran thought it was about the children he'd soon be surrounded by, he wasn't a well-socialized child, after all, and insisted he'd make plenty of friends, some of whom would come and go, and some of whom would last a lifetime. He let her.

She wasn't exactly wrong, anyway. Not on any part of it. It was about the children he'd see today, and some of them had literally been friends for a lifetime. His lifetime. And theirs. Many of them had died, after all. Despite his best efforts. Himself included.

Grimm bit his ear and he forced himself to breathe.

Here they were all very much alive, and he was planning, plotting even, to make sure they stayed that way. Here he had several years in which to Change Things. And he would.

He had a mission.

All he had to do was get on the train.

One foot in front of the other. And plenty of research in his bag to support each step.

He got on the train. He sat in his compartment. The same one he sat in last time. But he didn't go looking for friends. They wouldn't know him, and he couldn't handle seeing the blankness in their eyes where recognition should be. Not today.

Instead, he pulled out his chess set and used it as a metaphor for his plotting, even if its binary setup was sadly lacking in tools for ruining the plans of three different sides.

An older Ravenclaw came in, whom Neville faintly recognized as the Keeper for Ravenclaw's Quidditch team, and Neville grinned as an idea occurred to him.

The rest of the train ride was spent with the two dragging every passing Ravenclaw and Slytherin into the discussion on how to make a chess game with a variable number of sides.

In 22 rides of the Hogwarts Express, this was the most content Neville had ever been.

***

Neville honestly didn't pay any attention to who he rode in the boat with. The wave of welcoming magic from Hogwarts wrapping around and through him like the warmest windstorm in existence distracted him enough that he didn't even really notice Grimm playing with his hair and grumbling in his ear. Never mind the eleven year old humans sitting quietly next to him as all four stared in awe as the lights of the castle came into view.

The trip up to the doors of the castle was just the same as Before. Professor McGonagall's speech was unchanged. The smudge on Ron's nose identical. He deliberately made sure his cloak was twisted and the clasp under his left ear, just for the fun of it. When the conversation on how they'd be sorted came up, he couldn't help it. "I think there's some sort of test," he joked. Someone had to say it. Too many people panicked delightfully at the absurd thought.

And then the ghosts came in, having the same conversation about Peeves, someone shrieked, just like Before, and it was all Neville could do not to laugh. So what if he was the only one who'd get his jokes? He thought it was funny, and that was enough for him. He wondered faintly if this was how Luna had felt, knowing more of what was really going on than everyone around her.

When they went into the Great Hall, he stopped just inside the door to stare in renewed wonder at the stars of the ceiling as the feeling of home, at last, settled into his chest. The person behind him ran into him and cursed him for a bumbling oaf, and that, too, made him want to laugh.

The hat sang, and Neville stifled the urge to sing along with what was supposed to be a new song, and forced himself sober by the time the Sorting began. 

Back to Planning, he tracked who was sorted where, and froze as Hermione Granger sorted Hufflepuff. He knew, for a fact, that he didn't have anything to do with Granger's Sorting. Not Before, and not this time either. The next was Sorted, and the one after, and no, those were right, and the third one too. It was just Granger that changed. Neville shook himself out of his stupor just in time to be called. 

Sort of. He stumbled on the stairs as he forced his brain back into operating his body, but he was fully functional again before the hat came down over his head.

The hat was silent.

Mother. Of. God, the hat swore just as Neville started to get antsy. Was one of you not enough???

"Oh," Neville thought back at the Hat, "Hermione's back, too, then? I may have to adjust some of my plans. Or not. It might be more effective to let her carry on her plans while I do mine. If only for the chaos. I'll have to talk to her tomorrow, somehow."

Why do you need so many plans? Even Rowena never had so many completely different plots going at any one time!

"Because if I want to live and keep everyone else alive, I have to out think, out research, and out plan Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, Lestranges, Blacks, Carrows, The Ministry, and assorted other intelligent beings who all have their own plans. Which means I need at least two plans for every plan each and every one of them has."

You're eleven.

"Eighteen."

A child.

"A man with a mission. Sent by Death,” Neville said, Remembering as pointedly as he could.

A forest of bone, a river of destruction, a smile like a Reaper’s blade. 

 "What's the mission?"

Wrenches and Shoes, Little Spy.  Fuck up Fate's plans and everyone else's plans, too.

“Do you really want to be in my way?"

I should sort you Slytherin. Are you sure you have enough notebooks to keep all your plans straight with?

"Can I interest you in a rook feather for your band?"

Ugh. Fine, better be…

"RAVENCLAW!"

I will take that feather, please, the raven feather Rowena gave me dusted ages ago, and I miss it.