Valley Forge

Neville sat stiffly at the kitchen table, staring at his grandmother as though she’d just sprouted an extra head.

“We can’t take care of them,” he said, his voice hoarse with disbelief. “Gran, we don’t know how—”

Augusta Longbottom merely looked at him, her sharp eyes betraying no uncertainty. “If we don’t, nobody will.”

Neville shook his head in an attempt to clear it, confused at her impulsive actions. “That’s not true. They have Healers assigned to them, a whole ward dedicated to their care.”

His grandmother inhaled deeply, but said nothing, turning her gaze to look out the window. “Not for long.”

He opened his mouth to argue, to insist that St. Mungo’s had looked after his parents for decades, but something in her tone made him stop. The certainty of it, the weight. 

“We can’t—” he tried again, rubbing his temple. “Gran, I don’t know how to do this. What if they get worse? What if something happens and we—”

“We will do what we must,” Augusta interrupted, her voice steel.

He didn’t argue further. Not because he agreed, but because he simply didn’t know what else to say.

The Shacklebolt estate was dark, ancient, and eerily silent. Thick, velvet curtains shrouded the windows, blocking out even the faintest hint of daylight. The walls, adorned with deep mahogany paneling and towering bookshelves, seemed to absorb every sound. It was grand in the way old wizarding homes were—ornate furniture, flickering candlelight, and a heavy sense of history hanging in the air like dust.

Dean had never been in a place like this before, somewhere so richly furnished yet so suffocating at the same time. It wasn’t quite a prison, but it wasn’t home either. He didn't know how Kingsley had grown up here.

He sat cross-legged on a thick Persian rug, listening to the man in question’s low, steady voice. The auror-in-exile was verbally mapping out what little information they had—Death Eater movements, dwindling safe houses, and the people still unaccounted for. Dean wanted to focus, to try to provide some sort of input and give the man a sounding board, but his thoughts kept drifting to Seamus.

His best mate had left hours ago, slipping out under the cover of darkness to check on his mum. He had refused to let Dean go with him, on account of his still-healing injuries, and had insisted he’d be fine, that he’d be back before dawn. But the sun had long since risen, and Seamus still hadn’t returned.

Something was wrong.

A knot of unease twisted in Dean’s stomach, his hands curling into fists against his knees.

Kingsley must have noticed, trailing off before sighing. “He’ll be back,” he said, voice quiet but firm.

Dean nodded, but he wasn't sure if he believed him.

Then, as if Kingsley’s very words had summoned it, the heavy wooden door slammed open. Seamus stumbled inside, barely making it past the threshold before his legs gave out.

Dean was on his feet in an instant, catching him before he hit the floor.

“Seamus—”

He whined into Dean’s neck, his whole body shaking. Dean held him tightly in alarm, and began feeling the back of his skull, looking for blood. His fingers remained dry, but his anxiety only continued to ratchet. “They killed her,” his friend choked out, “Oh Merlin Dean, she’s dead.”

Dean froze. The words rang in his ears. He felt Seamus tremble against him, his fingers gripping Dean's forearms tightly enough to leave bruises.

“She was still warm,” Seamus moaned. 

Dean tightened his grip, his chest contracting painfully. His mind raced as he considered what he could possibly say, each idea worse than the last.

Kingsley moved closer, his shadow stretching long over them in the dim candlelight. “What happened?” His voice was calm, but there was an edge to it—dangerous and sharp.

Seamus sucked in a shallow breath, struggling to steady himself. “They knew she was my mum,” he rasped. “It—my name,” his voice cracked, “It was on the walls.”

Holy shit.

Kingsley exhaled through his nose, his expression unreadable. 

They weren’t just killing indiscriminately anymore, Dean realized. They were hunting families down.

Seamus squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against Dean’s shoulder. “It’s my fault.” He broke into a sob.

“No,” Dean said, voice weak and unsure. “No, Shay—”

Seamus shook his head wildly, guilt and grief twisting across his face, “My mam is dead and it’s because of me.”

The sun had barely begun to rise, casting a pale golden glow over the empty Quidditch pitch, when Oliver Wood arrived for practice. Damp air and dewy grass clung to his cloak as he pulled it tighter around himself, his breath curling in the air in misty tendrils. He relished the quiet, the stillness before the rest of the team arrived. He always liked being early. 

He took a moment to simply breathe in the crisp morning air, letting the tranquility of his surroundings ground him. 

He kicked off, hovering just above the pitch, stretching his arms as he let his broom glide through the air. It felt good to fly.

He was halfway through a slow circuit, a bit closer to the ground now, when a voice cut through the silence.

“Wood. You need to leave.”

Oliver turned sharply, catching sight of Hector Vance, one of Puddlemere’s Beaters, standing at the edge of the pitch. His face was drawn, his expression grim.

Oliver frowned, reluctantly lowering himself to the ground near his teammate.

“What are you on about?” he asked, straightening his broom to stand vertically.

Hector glanced over his shoulder before stepping closer, voice low. “Death Eaters. They’re coming for people who fought at Hogwarts. They’re rounding them up.”

Oliver felt as though he’d been knocked off kilter, his breath escaping him. He let out an unconvincing laugh. “Hogwarts? What makes you think I was there?”

The beater's eyes narrowed, “Are you really going to try and say that? I’m trying to save your arse right now. I heard it straight from the horses mouth. They’re looking for you.”

Oliver’s blood ran cold.

“We have a match in two days,” he muttered, the words sounding ridiculous as they left his mouth.

“You won’t be alive in two days if you stay,” Hector snapped. “Go. Now.”

Oliver hesitated only for a moment. Then, he bolted for the locker room. He didn’t waste time saying anything besides a frazzled thank you as he slammed past the door into the changing area.

He was digging through his bag in search of his wand when a group of cloaked figures Apparated just beside him. For a moment, nobody moved. Oliver froze, staring at them wide-eyed. He recognized at least a few faces from the battleground. They stared right back, obviously not having anticipated catching their prey so easily. A shorter one to the left came back to himself first and shouted, “Locomotor mortis! ”

Unarmed, Oliver dove to the side, carrying his duffel bag with him. He scrambled to his feet, hiding behind a row of lockers as the rest of the dark wizards came back to themselves. The spells became decidedly less kind then. A flash of green light singed his hair as he scrambled behind a bench. Panic-stricken, he continued to dig in the bag.

The ceiling above him collapsed when one of the Death Eaters sent a display of lockers into it. Oliver sprinted away, nearly tripping over a stray Quaffle. Metal and plaster crashed behind him, sending vibrations through the floor. “Crucio!” a female voice shrieked. The spell missed him by inches.

Mercifully, his fingers finally latched onto wood, and he pulled out his wand, letting the rest of his bag drop to the floor. He barely caught sight of three of the dark wizards rounding a corner before Disapparating.

The world lurched as he reappeared in the alley behind a Muggle coffee shop he'd used to frequent. He doubled over, trying to steady himself, and coax his pants into steady breaths. He gave himself a once over, checking to make sure he hadn't splinched himself in his panic. Mercifully, he was fine on that front.

Still, he needed to hide. He couldn’t go back to his flat now. He had no money, no food, no owl or parchment… He needed a plan. 

Only one was coming to mind.

He pushed himself deeper into the muggle alley, hoping the shadows would hide him sufficiently. He whispered an incantation and hoped no muggles spotted the mist that burst from the tip of his wand.

“Percy,” he whispered to his patronus. “I need help. Please. Let me stay. I—I don’t have anywhere else.”

Neville's parents were home. Home. Not because they’d recovered, not because some miracle had undone the horrors wrought by Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand, but because his grandmother had walked into St. Mungo’s and taken them out.

Alice Longbottom sat in the chair across from him, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her eyes were unfocused, wandering the room with a dreamy kind of detachment. Frank sat beside her, staring at the table with a slack jaw and empty expression.

Neville felt sick.

The radio crackled in the dimly lit room, its static filling the heavy silence as they waited. Potterwatch was returning for the first time since the Battle of Hogwarts, and the air in Aberforth Dumbledore’s childhood home was thick with apprehension.

After Hogwarts, they’d had nowhere else to go.

Hannah sat at the long wooden table, hands wrapped around a cup of long-cold tea, staring at the flickering candle in front of her. Across from her, Madam Pomfrey’s lips were pressed into a thin line, her fingers laced tightly together in her lap. Cormac McLaggen, usually brash and overconfident, was hunched forward, uncharacteristically quiet and timid. Aberforth himself stood near the fireplace, detached from them, arms crossed, jaw set.

Hannah could tell he was miserable. She didn’t know why, but she could tell in the way he moved. She gathered something had happened here based on the way his gaze lingered on certain corners of the house. It was as if they held ghosts, but only Aberforth was conscious of their presence.

A quiet hum of static, and then—

“Welcome back to Potterwatch.”

Hannah swallowed. The voice was different, raw with exhaustion, but unmistakably Lee Jordan’s.

“Before I get started, I thought I'd give the password for next weeks broadcast at the beginning rather than the end, just because... Ah. Anyways, it's Sherbert Lemon." He cleared his voice. "Right, now that that's out of the way,” Lee paused, his voice becoming more somber, “I know we’ve all been waiting for news, so let’s get right to it. This won’t be easy to hear, but people deserve to know. Families deserve to know. This is, to the best of our knowledge, a list of all who died at the Battle of Hogwarts.”

The room tensed.

Lee inhaled shakily. “Fred Weasley.”

A silence.

Hannah squeezed her eyes shut, willing the lump in her throat to stay down. She had known—of course, she had known—but hearing it said aloud made it real in a way nothing else had.

“Lavender Brown,” Lee went on. “Kellah Morris. Wayne Hopkins. Amanda Hooch.”

Hannah bit the inside of her cheek. She remembered Amanda—Ravenclaw, sharp, but kind as well. 

“Colin Creevey.”

“Damn it,” Cormac swore.

“Kevin Entwhistle. Steven Bones.”

Hannah sucked in a breath. Susan’s father. Her mind went to her own family. The mother she lost in her sixth year. She blinked hard, forcing herself to focus. The names kept coming.

“Eddie Carmichael.”

“James Harper.”

“Remus Lupin.”

Madam Pomfrey let out a soft, shuddering sigh.

“Nymphadora Tonks Lupin."

"Beatrice Haywood."

"Penny Haywood.”

Hannah glanced at Cormac. He was staring at the fire now, jaw clenched. 

The list ended. But the silence stretched on.

Then, Lee cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. “We all knew the price of fighting. We knew the risks. But 82 of our own have fallen, and the Ministry-controlled media won’t even acknowledge them. They’ll give you their own number—68—because in their eyes, only their dead count.”

Aberforth scoffed again. Hannah stared down at her cold tea, her chest aching.

Lee continued, quieter now. “We won’t let them be forgotten. We won’t let them be erased. Remember their names. Carry them with you.”

A heavy pause.

Then, “That’s all for now. Stay safe. Stay hidden.”

The radio clicked off, plunging the room into silence.

No one spoke.

Hannah set her cup down. Her hands were trembling.

Aberforth didn’t look away from the fireplace. Madam Pomfrey wiped at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. Cormac stood abruptly, muttering something about needing air before shoving open the back door and disappearing into the cold.

Hannah stayed seated, breathing in the suffocating silence of the house.

The news came the next morning.

Neville had barely slept, his mind racing with the reality of his parents sleeping under the same roof for the first time since he was a baby. Every creak of the house sent him jolting upright, certain they’d wandered out of the room they’d set up for them. He was terrified that they’d hurt themselves when he and his gran weren’t looking. 

He was only half-awake when he retrieved his copy of the week's Quibbler. Despite Xenophilius Lovegood’s incarceration and much-lowered readership, the paper was still being published. Luna had been writing, apparently, from the Ollivander household. She and the older man had forged a bond during their mutual imprisonment, and he’d offered her a place of refuge, apparently also helping her with the papers’ distribution. They used a neat little charm, apparently an invention of her mother's, that allowed anyone with a properly enchanted bucket to drop a few knuts - the papers cost - into it every Sunday. Their copy of the paper would appear in it the following Monday.

Sleep-addled as he was, it wasn’t until he’d sat down for morning tea that he’d actually registered the headline.

MUNGO’S MASSACRE—ENTIRE WARD SLAUGHTERED

Neville’s stomach dropped.

“What?” His voice came out barely above a whisper.

His grandmother, bustling in the kitchen behind him, paused in her task to come up behind his shoulder.

He barely registered her, eyes frantically darting across the paper, desperate for details. A late-night attack. Every long-term resident in the Janus Thickey Ward—every patient, every Healer who'd protested—dead. The Death Eaters had made sure there were no survivors.

A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. His parents would have been there. They should’ve have been there.

He swallowed hard and looked at his grandmother. She wasn’t reading anymore, just staring at the paper with an unreadable expression.

She'd known, he realized.

She had walked into St. Mungo’s and brought Frank and Alice home not out of sentimentality, not out of misplaced hope, but because she knew.

His grandmother, the woman who dressed him in absurd jumpers and never hesitated to scold him for poor posture, had survived two wars, he finally recognized. She had been through all of this before. She had seen the warning signs, the writing on the wall.

Neville clenched his fists.