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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 60
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Chapter Sixty-One—The White Light
As they came out of the Apparition, Harry looked around. Yes, this was the meadow he and Minerva had picked earlier. It was at a distance from both Muggle and wizard dwellings, with no wards nearby that would pick up the presence of Dark magic. It had taken some time for Minerva to Apparate all the modified Death Eaters here, so they would rest before they began the next step.
Neville stood on the far side of the meadow, dim in the starlight. Harry didn’t have to see him to know that his face would be pale, though.
“I understood the Latin for the spell that you used on their Dark Marks,” Minerva said suddenly. Harry turned to her to find she was sitting with her head bowed, her hand pressed to her chest. Harry started a step forwards before he thought about it. She had said something once about her heart being weak.
But that was not the same as thinking it was weak right now, so he checked the step as she looked up at him, and only nodded.
“If you plan to go in and confront You-Know-Who yourself,” she whispered, “how are you going to avoid being caught up in their destruction?”
Harry smiled and sat down on the grass next to her, flexing his hands gently. His claws rasped along the wood of his wand. His leg muscles coiled as if he would need to leap in the next second. It was a long time since he had felt this alive.
“My particular trick of Transfiguration comes in useful here. Because of the way I use the Wild, my creations aren’t really independent. But that also means that they would never attack me unless I told them to do so.”
“Can you—make others immune to their attacks as well?”
“Nothing that’s not made of my Wild. That’s why I’ll have to go in and confront Lord Dudders on my own.”
She stared at him. Harry looked calmly back, his hands draped around his knees. His mind was full of the wounds that Regulus’s fire had wreaked on Lord Dudders. Harry hoped they were still open. He could kill Lord Dudders if they weren’t, but that particular fact, if it was true, would make it easier to cause him the pain Harry wanted.
“How—no, I know you could do it. Especially because you’ll have your animals with you, and they’re also immune to the attacks.” Minerva took a heavy breath and closed her eyes. “You aren’t—worried about not coming back?”
“I’m worried about making him die. And a little about Neville.”
“Of course.” Minerva was silent, flexing her wand hand. At least she wasn’t clutching her chest right now, Harry thought. He didn’t want her to clutch at her chest. “Remember that you have your parents to wake up. And the Lestranges still in the cellars. And—” She paused. Harry waited.
He wasn’t prepared for her to turn sideways and grab him, holding him close while she almost smothered him with her hair. But now he thought he knew that Regulus had wanted to do that sometimes, so he held still, and finally stretched out an arm to curve it around her ribs. It was the only thing he could reach from here.
“I don’t want you to die,” Minerva whispered to him.
“I’m not going to,” Harry said, a little startled that she could have misunderstood all the words he was using to so badly. “He is.”
Minerva sighed and rested her chin on his head. Harry let her hold him like that until her wand hand stopped trembling altogether, and Neville turned around and strode sharply through the grass towards them.
“Harry.” His voice was as hard as glass. “I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be.”
Harry squeezed Minerva’s ribs one more time and stood up. She let her arms slip from around him and nodded to him, although Harry thought she was looking more at his chin than his eyes. That amused him. “I’m not a Legilimens, you know,” he said.
Her gaze snapped up from his chin to his eyes, and she stood and nodded. “I know. And I’m waiting behind you here, whatever you decide.”
“I’ve decided what I need to,” Harry said softly, and hoped she would understand his words better this time than to think he was the one going to die instead of Lord Dudders. Then he turned and led Neville towards the trees that screened one edge of the meadow, stepping over the unconscious forms of Death Eaters as he did so.
*
Minerva watched them go. She knew what was going to happen, and had expected to fix almost all her pity on Neville, to think more about him. And it was true that she couldn’t feel pity for Harry.
Not in the traditional way.
Minerva breathed out slowly. She let her mind move to what frightened her more than the notion that Harry was going to battle You-Know-Who alone, as much as that seared her throat and charred her heart.
If he survived. If he had some notion on how to wake his parents, as the way he had kept the Lestranges prisoner suggested he did. If he succeeded, and Lily and James opened their eyes with their memories and personalities intact up to the point where they had been tortured into insanity.
If they didn’t accept Harry. If they didn’t think of him as their son, but as a monster who had made too many sacrifices for too unworthy a cause. Minerva had known Lily and James. They were the first ones ready to give their lives for innocents. How would they feel to know that Harry had taken life after life?
Minerva straightened her shoulders. Then I will be there as I was in the aftermath of Regulus’s death, to help Harry and support him in what he needs to do. I can’t predict what will happen. I can only make plans.
Perhaps that’s all any of us can do.
*
Neville’s hands were trembling as he and Harry walked over on the other side of the trees, and he stuffed them in his pockets. He didn’t want Harry to see the evidence of his fear.
But when Harry turned and stared at him, and Neville saw his eyes gleaming like a cat’s, he knew Harry already suspected it, or knew it, or smelled it. And he was forgiven. Harry didn’t expect others to be like him. Only to help him or not stand in his way.
“I’m not entirely sure what will happen,” Harry said calmly. “I only saw the result of what happened after Lucius hit Nagini with that Killing Curse, and heard what you told me she was saying in Parseltongue. You may be dead for a few minutes before you come back to life. You may be dead longer. You may only seem unconscious and not dead. I don’t know. Is there anything you want me to do if you don’t survive this?”
“I—I think I will.” Neville’s voice sounded like a toad’s. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I—tell Gran that I loved her. And that I hope she could understand why the training never worked for me.”
“I’ll tell her more than that.” Harry leaned forwards, balancing on the balls of his feet. “Why do you think you’ll probably survive it?”
Neville refused to break down in tears or quivering, although he would have really liked to. He held Harry’s eyes and said, “Because you were the one who told me that I would.”
Harry remained still. Then he eased back, and raised his wand. He dipped his head to Neville and held it for long enough that Neville was sure it was a bow and not a nod. “Thank you,” he murmured.
His wand snapped up, and his voice snapped open. “Avada Kedavra.”
And Neville saw the green light of his earliest memories, and died.
*
Then he woke up.
Neville shook his head and looked around the white room in wonder. It extended far enough that he didn’t know where he was. He began walking, after he’d checked himself over and realized that, honestly, he looked pretty normal.
His footsteps clicked on the white floor beneath him, and the light and fog shifted around him, pearly and soft, keeping him from seeing any walls. But then he came across a carved pillar, and felt as though someone had pushed all the breath out of him. These were the kinds of pillars—carved with lions rampant entwined with thorny roses—that filled the entrance hall of Longbottom Manor.
But that didn’t explain all the white light, or the size of the room. Nothing like this had ever filled it that Neville knew of.
“Hullo?” he called out, wondering if his Gran was going to answer him. Or anyone, really. As long as he had some idea whether this was a dream or not, then he might know what to do next.
“Hello, Neville.”
Neville whipped around and knew that if he said the next few words, he would stutter. So he only stared as Albus Dumbledore walked out of the mist and sat down on a chair that grew out of the floor in front of him. The chair was huge and golden and overstuffed with purple upholstery, just like Gran’s favorites.
“I—thought you were dead,” Neville said at last, after waiting a few minutes for Dumbledore to start scolding him, and it didn’t happen. In fact, Dumbledore seemed a lot different than Neville had ever seen him. His smile was tired and gentle, and he didn’t look as if he would start wagging a finger any second. In fact, his fingers were wrapped around the top of a sturdy white cane that Neville had never seen before.
“I am,” Dumbledore said softly. “But so are you, in a matter of speaking. Or you might not be, if you want to do something about it.”
“Is the Horcrux in me dead?”
Dumbledore sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Horcrux. It was wrong of me. But, yes.” He nodded behind Neville, and he turned just in time to see another chair rising out of the floor. If he stooped and looked underneath it, there was something red and torn there—
Neville’s stomach tried to leap up his throat. He swallowed. It was a severed head, with a torn hole in the center of the forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt, and staring red eyes. He’d seen those eyes too much in visions not to recognize them.
“That’s the Horcrux?” he muttered, and took several steps away from it to put the chair between him and it. And then a pillar.
“It is indeed.” Dumbledore sighed and shifted in his chair. “You can choose to return to the world—if you wish.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?” Neville turned around and clenched his fists. Dumbledore didn’t understand him better even when he was dead. Or when Neville was dreaming. Or whatever was actually going on here.
“Because I know that your life has not been a happy one, my boy. The expectations we all piled on you were a huge part of that, and once again, I am sorry.” Dumbledore stared at his lap as if there was a scroll there with all the answers on it. “The extra training didn’t help, did it?”
Neville licked his lips. “No. It just reminded me of all the things I didn’t know and I couldn’t learn in time to defeat Voldemort. And then I didn’t do well at Potions, and that made me feel horrible.” He suddenly thought of a question he’d always wanted the answer to. “Why did you let Snape teach me Potions? He was a horrible teacher!”
Dumbledore sighed again. “Because I tried to give him too many chances. I thought he could be a good, effective professor if he wanted to. But in giving him that chance, I didn’t spare many students. Not only you.”
Neville was quiet for a minute. Then he nodded. Oddly, it made him feel better to realize that Dumbledore recognized Snape had had other victims. It meant Dumbledore was sorry for other people, not just him.
I don’t want to be singled out as the Boy-Who-Lived. Ever again. I’ll be happy to give all the credit for defeating Voldemort to Harry, if he’ll take it.
He cleared his throat, drawing Dumbledore’s gently sad gaze back to him, and asked, “What happens now?”
“This is an in-between state,” Dumbledore said, gesturing around the entrance hall. “You can walk through the mist, and find yourself on the other side. Your parents are waiting for you there.”
Neville’s breath caught, and his eyes filled with tears. He wanted to know his parents. He only had the memory of his mother screaming as Voldemort killed her. And he had Gran’s stories, but they were almost all about feats of magic his father had done and how weak Neville was in comparison to Frank. Neville knew almost nothing about his mum.
“Or you can turn around and go back to the world. Back to where the Horcrux will be gone from you, but Voldemort isn’t defeated yet.” Dumbledore smiled a little. “There is also a third choice. You might walk through the mist and let whatever comes to you, come. Even I don’t know everything that’s out there. You could find a different future, or another dimension.”
“Even a dimension where my parents are still alive?” Neville blurted.
“Indeed. Though you might have to search for a long time before you find it, and it won’t come to you for the asking.”
Neville bit his lip and thought about it. Honestly, he’d never thought something like this would happen even if he did manage to survive Harry killing the Horcrux. Coming back had seemed like the best thing he could hope for.
From the way Dumbledore peered at him, distant and kind, Neville knew he would probably get truth, and more apologies if he wanted them, but no help in deciding.
Neville looked around the entrance hall again, his gaze lingering on the lions prancing among the roses. He could leave, but what about Gran? He wanted to see her again. Maybe it was partly to tell her how wrong she had been, but he wanted to see her.
And what about Dapple? The kitten might literally die without him. He was made of the Wild, and loyal only to Neville. Neville had never pretended to understand how that worked, but he knew Harry couldn’t sustain Dapple the way he could his other beasts.
And there were Ron and Hermione, who were good friends even if they couldn’t understand everything about Neville, and there was Harry. Harry wouldn’t break or falter if Neville didn’t come back, but his eyes would turn darker.
Neville could imagine what would happen to other people, if not Harry, should his eyes get even darker.
“I’m going back,” he said.
“I thought you might choose that, my boy,” Dumbledore said, and stood, holding a hand out. “Once again, I am sorry for the mess I made of your life. I hoped you would continue on so that you could enjoy living in a way I never permitted you to.”
Neville took his hand and shook it, wondering all the while if this was the real Dumbledore, or something created out of his imagination and yearning for someone to apologize to him for his training. But even if it was, he was more at peace now.
And he no longer had the Horcrux riding him.
Without a glance back at Dumbledore or the severed head under the chair or the drifting white mist in the entrance hall of Longbottom Manor, Neville turned his back, and walked towards the soft beckoning sound of life.
*
Harry felt a crushing weight removed from his lungs as Neville stirred and lifted a hand to touch his forehead. The scar was still there; Harry had thought it might vanish. But now, when he concentrated on the plucked harpstring noise of a Horcrux, he heard nothing. It was truly gone from Neville’s head.
“That was so strange.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Harry held out his hand and helped Neville off the grass, making sure that he had his claws sheathed.
Neville gave him a half-smile. “Dumbledore was there, and he told me I could die and find my parents if I wanted. And he said he was sorry. Harry, you’re squeezing my fingers.”
“Sorry.” Harry removed his hand. He disliked the thought that Dumbledore would haunt Neville even in death, but Neville didn’t seem distressed about it, so perhaps Harry could drop the distress as well. “You lay there as if you were dead. But you started breathing again a few seconds before you opened your eyes.”
“And I sincerely hope those dramatics are done with, Mr. Longbottom,” said Minerva in an acid tone that she belied as she reached out and put a hand on Neville’s arm. Harry shook his head a little. He wondered why she said things like that when anyone who concentrated could pick out her true emotions.
“I think they are, Professor.”
Neville still looked at peace. Harry studied him closely for a moment, then nodded and drew the cup Horcrux out of his pocket. When he put it on the ground, Neville flinched and backed away from it.
“It feels—greasy,” he muttered, when Harry glanced at him. “Did you do something to it? None of the other Horcruxes felt like that to me, not even the one in Nagini.”
“You could say I did,” Harry said, and then raised his wand. Now he knew what he had to do, and he created the wards to confine the Fiendfyre easily. Then he spoke the incantation.
The flames that rippled forth from his wand grabbed the cup and spun it around. Harry thought he heard a voice shouting in the distance. He simply stood and watched as the fire did what it was supposed to do, stalking the cup and batting it playfully around between the talons and paws and fangs of the beasts it formed.
Then it pounced.
There was a shimmer as something dark tried to emerge from the cup, but Harry strengthened the Fiendfyre by a miniature application of his will, and the dark shrank back into the cup. In the end, when a particularly vicious-looking leopard picked up the cup and crunched into it, there was nowhere it could hide. Harry watched a creature that looked like an eel impaled and squirming on the leopard’s teeth before it faded.
Then the fire turned and stalked away from the twisted, smoking cup towards the barrier.
Harry heard Minerva gasp behind him, and Neville swallow nervously. But he had honestly studied, and a simple motion of his wand was enough to make the barriers close in around the Fiendfyre the way the flames had closed around the cup.
The animals squirmed and squalled and spat at him, and they climbed the wards. It didn’t matter. Harry flicked his wand again, and the transparent walls surged in around them and then spiraled together with a soundless explosion.
The flames died. Harry nodded and waited a moment to make sure the grass was truly clear before he floated the cup into the air.
“What are you going to do with the Death Eaters?” Neville asked, stepping forwards to peer over his shoulder at the people lying on the far side of the meadow.
“Send them back to Lord Dudders with a compulsion placed on them to stay close to him.” Harry smiled a little. “It’ll probably need to be a compulsion, after what he did to himself when Regulus battled him. I think this body is different than the one he had when you defeated him, Nev. He should have collapsed into a wraith, but it seems to be more resilient. That doesn’t keep him from being ugly, though.”
“And you told me his open wounds are part of your plan?”
Harry nodded to Minerva. “It’ll hurt more,” he said, and then he moved forwards and knelt by the first Death Eater, casting the spell that would lay a compulsion on his body. Since it wasn’t on the mind, Lord Dudders couldn’t find it by using Legilimency.
Minerva and Neville both remained silent as they watched him work. Harry was grateful that they didn’t bring up this being Dark magic. Of course it was, but he was hardly going to hold back on Dark magic so late in his plan.
When he sat back, he felt drained. Many powerful Dark spells in a row, including an Unforgivable, had shaken him more than he realized. But soon he would have his parents back, and he would never cast Dark magic if they didn’t like it.
He stood, and glanced at Minerva. “How long do you think you’ll need to Apparate us away from here? I want to cast a spell that will wake them up, but put a timer on it so that it’ll go off only when we’re safely away.”
“I can Apparate you at once, of course,” Minerva snapped, her eyes having a gleam in them as if she had spotted a mouse. “You can cast it, and then I’ll Apparate you.” She reached out and took his wrist in one hand and Neville’s in the other.
Harry nodded, having expected that. But he would have felt stupid if he hadn’t asked. He raised his wand, and the spell that made a red flash light up the night sky, as well as an invisible hand shake the shoulder of each Death Eater, flowed from his wand.
Then he really did stagger and almost fall as Minerva Apparated them away. But he had time to see their eyes open.
He hadn’t left them their wands. They would have to find their own way back to Lord Dudders.
But he had no doubt they would do it. And that meant his final plan could begin as soon as he had rested enough.
The Horcruxes are dead. Harry closed his eyes and let a smile play around his mouth as they vanished into the night of Apparition. Now, so is he.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning