Chapter 349: The Blood of the Longbottoms
In the underground stone grotto, thick with toxic pollen.
The students were sheltered beneath protective barriers, scattered in pairs and threes throughout the space.
Within the enchantment that dulled the senses.
Even standing back-to-back with someone, it was nearly impossible to feel their presence.
Luna, Michael, and Neville had found each other by chance.
They were picking their way forward carefully, stepping over puddles.
"I… I want to go home…"
Neville whimpered, his whole body trembling.
Five years of growing up had made him bigger, taller, and a bit more stretched out. But under his grandmother's dedicated feeding, his weight remained quite considerable.
The way he was shaking, Michael half-expected to feel the ripples from here.
"Aren't you a Morning Star Club member?" Michael said, exasperated. "You're a Gryffindor too — stop being such a coward!"
"B-but… I only know how to grow plants. I still can't do a single bit of wandless casting…"
Neville dropped his head, his face going grey.
He looked like he'd already seen the future — a failing grade in Defence Against the Dark Arts.
"Er…"
Michael gave Neville's broad back an awkward pat.
That stuttering, shrinking demeanour was starting to grate on him.
Honestly, I'm not even that close to this 'plant-brain.'
Michael thought to himself.
With a personality like that — plus the obsession with plants — why hadn't the Sorting Hat just put him in Hufflepuff?
Right at that moment.
Luna, who had been leading the way ahead of them, suddenly stopped.
She tilted her head slightly.
Those blue eyes, set in that porcelain-pale face, fixed on something in the distance.
"What is it?" Michael asked quickly, grateful for any excuse not to keep talking to Neville.
"Oh, nothing much…"
Luna spoke, her voice as clear and weightless as ever, like a melody floating through still air.
As she spoke, tiny points of light — like moonbeams given form — began to drift slowly up from around her. Her golden hair lifted strand by strand. Her whole face took on a quality that was almost ethereal, almost sacred.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Luna continued softly: "Only that someone's come to… greet us."
The words had barely left her lips.
Michael blinked — then his eyes went wide.
The next second —
"Avada Kedavra!"
A streak of terrible green light shot through the dark!
It struck dead-on against the shield Luna had flung up with a raised hand!
Crack!
The shield shattered.
The curse collided with the protective barrier Ethan had set in place and broke apart against it, dissipating into nothing.
All of it.
In the span of a lightning strike.
Under Michael and Neville's stunned stares.
Luna tilted her head and said with mild disappointment, "My magic still isn't strong enough to hold against the Killing Curse."
"Well. I'll have to keep working at it."
Only then did the other two finally catch up to what had just happened.
— An attack!! They were under attack!!
"Dark wizards!" Michael shouted in terror, instinctively reaching for his wand.
His hand closed on nothing.
He froze. Then his expression twisted into something desperate.
Damn it! He'd forgotten — none of them had their wands!!
What was the difference between this and showing up at his girlfriend's without — actually, he didn't even have a girlfriend, so this was somehow worse!
And unfortunately.
On the other side, they seemed to have noticed that too.
"Hey, hey — you're serious? You lot really didn't bring your wands? Ha! I thought that was a joke!"
A rough, vicious laugh echoed out from the darkness.
Accompanied by the sound of boots splashing through shallow water.
Several figures stepped into view.
When Michael took in the gap between their side and the enemy's —
His heart sank.
Two words surfaced in his mind: We're done.
Michael: "Damn it… and I never even got a girlfriend… Ethan took them all…"
At that last line, Luna's ears gave the faintest twitch.
Something like frost passed through those clear blue eyes.
The magic around her seemed to surge, if only slightly.
The lead dark wizard stepped slowly into the light.
When his gaze landed on Neville's face, he paused.
His eyes widened — and then he let out a sudden, almost gleeful shout:
"Ha! You're Longbottom's son, aren't you?! How could I ever forget that face?"
He stretched his mouth into a grin, and said with revolting relish, while Neville went rigid: "Ahh, I still remember how sweet their screaming was. You probably don't know, do you — that in the end, your parents were sobbing and begging."
"Oh — begging us to kill them."
Neville's breathing quickened.
He stood there staring at the dark wizard, face drained of all colour.
"Neville?"
Michael frowned.
He didn't know what any of this meant. But on instinct, he stepped back to shield his classmate.
A dead silence fell.
Then the lead dark wizard gave a mocking bow.
His razor-sharp gaze settled on Neville.
"Allow me to introduce myself," he said, each word measured and precise. "I am Rabastan Lestrange, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Lestrange."
"One of the Death Eaters who used the Cruciatus Curse to torture your parents into madness."
Neville's body gave a violent jerk.
His mind went blank. Through the haze, the dark wizard's voice echoed.
"Hah. Compared to your parents, you're quite the coward.
"Though your parents were fools too. Refusing to submit to the great Dark Lord. They deserved every bit of what came to them.
"Right then. Enough talk.
"Let me send you on your way as well. Avada Kedavra!"
In that instant.
As the lethal green light came hurtling towards them.
Michael's legs refused to move. Like they'd taken root in the ground.
No… no, no…
He didn't want to die like this — not on a field trip —
Someone — someone please —
"Thud!"
A massive force slammed into him from behind and sent him flying!
"Ugh—!"
He crashed into the water, the cold biting straight through to the bone.
He looked up.
Through stunned eyes, he watched the curse strike and shatter the protective barrier around Neville.
Glass-like shards burst outward in all directions.
Refracting into brilliant, glittering points of light.
And in the middle of all that light — Neville stood.
His back — which years of self-doubt and fear had taught to hunch — was now straight.
That round face, for the first time, was hard with determination.
His voice trembled, but it burned with fury and defiance:
"Don't you dare talk about my parents like that!!!"
Neville thrust his hand up, and fire blazed in his eyes!
"Stupefy!"
BOOM!
A brilliant red light erupted from Neville's fingertips!
Like an enraged bull, it smashed straight into Rabastan, who wore an expression of utter disbelief.
Impossible.
Wandless casting — how could a wet-behind-the-ears little wizard like this possibly manage something so advanced?!
"Aaagh!"
A cry of pain.
Rabastan was flung clean off his feet.
He crashed back into a stone pillar with a heavy bang, convulsed twice, and slid limply to the ground.
Still.
"Rabastan?!"
The other dark wizards cried out in shock, staring at the scene in disbelief.
They couldn't believe their own eyes.
A Death Eater — knocked unconscious by a student without a wand?!
How — how was this possible?!
Michael lay there in the water.
Jaw somewhere near the floor.
Finally, he muttered, "Bloody hell. That's Gryffindor for you…"
That's the thing—the moment when it counts, that burst. That's courage!!
"Hah — hah — hah—!"
Neville's breathing came in ragged heaves.
The red was creeping into the whites of his eyes.
The pollen was filtering through his airways into his blood.
Igniting and amplifying everything churning inside him.
Magic kept surging at his fingertips, and in his heart there was nothing but fury — the kind that burns everything to ash, like a sea of fire.
In his mind.
His parents' faces at the hospital kept flashing past.
A voice, seductive and dark, rose up inside him:
[Kill them… kill them all…]
"For… to avenge Mum and Dad…"
[Heh heh… yes… come on… you know the words, don't you…]
Neville's arm trembled, lifting slowly.
The red light at his fingertips began to bleed into an eerie, crawling green.
"N-Neville?"
Michael called out in a small voice.
Something about Neville right now made the hair on his neck stand up.
[Come on. Say the spell. It's fine — they're murderers anyway —]
Neville: "Avada Ked—"
An invisible wave of force detonated through the air.
It cut off the unfinished incantation and, in an instant, swept every trace of that intoxicating, poisonous fog from the space.
"Ugh—?!"
Neville's body shuddered.
His eyes cleared at once.
He crumpled to the ground, and as the memory of what he had been about to do came rushing back, genuine horror filled his face.
The three Unforgivable Curses were forbidden not only because their damage was irreversible.
But because they were Dark Magic at its purest.
Every time an ordinary person used one, a piece of themselves was worn away.
Until, in the end—
They became something that knew only killing.
Just like these Death Eaters.
Neville shook with belated dread: "Oh God… what was I just doing…?"
The dark wizards were equally dazed.
Sent sprawling by that invisible blast of force.
Furious and shaken, one of them bellowed: "Who's there?!"
What answered them was a wave of violet mist, rolling softly in.
Crack. Crack.
A thin film of white frost spread rapidly across the surface of the puddles.
Glug.
The dark wizards swallowed hard. They raised their wands, watching warily as the mist thickened around its source.
Slosh… slosh…
Faint ripples, lapping at the edges of the dark.
In the taut silence.
From within the violet mist, a faint golden glow began to appear.
Like the lure of an anglerfish — drifting up from somewhere deep below.
Slosh… slosh…
A small wooden boat emerged slowly from the mist.
Seated within it was a figure shrouded head to toe in a black cloak, uncannily like a Dementor — an old woman.
She held a hanging lantern in one withered, ashen grey arm.
She raised a face as dried and creased as a walnut, its dull grey-white eyes fixed steadily upon them.
The corners of her lips pulled back.
Revealing a row of sharp, fish-like teeth.
She rasped — a sound like gravel and dead leaves:
[Are you… good children?]