The Search For Life and Death

THE SEARCH FOR LIFE AND DEATH

Chapter XXVI

The Sword

The world was a prison of silence.

Draco was no stranger to the quiet. Malfoy Manor was large and it was not rare that he was left alone with only the elves for company whilst his parents paraded themselves about social functions.

The house elves had known better than to speak around him, so more often than not, Draco had found himself amongst silent halls. He would not say that he had grown accustomed to it. One does not become accustomed to the unnatural quiet, to being completely alone. Humans were not meant for such confinement, even if the walls that imprisoned them were made of silence.

Sometimes, when it became too much, too quiet, Draco would knock the books from the shelves in the library - the ones that screamed when the pages were bared. The ones filled with the sounds of children sobbing and men yelling. He would punish a house elf or two, just to hear their cries as they beat themselves. Anything to make some noise, to make the house sound less empty.

He remembered it was better to punish the younger house elves - the newer ones. The old house elves that had been with them for years were quiet when they punished themselves. It was the ones who hadn't learned their place yet that were the loudest. Draco remembered one house elf in particular. It had been his father's house elf and he didn't remember the creature's name, but he never failed to grunt and squeal every time it hit itself in the head or shut its fingers in a door.

But even that hadn't always been enough. Or maybe it hadn't been the right kind of noise. More than once, Draco had been on the receiving end of a lecture from his father for flying his broom in the mansion. The lectures had always been worse following him having knocked some precious, expensive artifact to the floor and breaking it. After standing in front of his father throughout the lecture, it was hard to imagine that the mansion had ever been quiet.

Draco had done a fair bit of flying through the house while his parents were away.

This world was different. It was hard to imagine any sound had ever existed in this world, with Afa ringing in his ears. It was not a quiet, but an emptiness. The sound of a nothing so strong that it drew everything else into it and made that a nothing, too.

It frightened him.

A large part of Draco wanted to leave this strange world. He wanted to fall asleep in his bed with a dream in his head of winning the House Cup, of his father's proud glance, his mother's soft smile. He didn't want to be here, wandering through another world, on a search that pitted him against Voldemort and Dumbledore both. As if he didn't have enough trouble deciding where he should stand.

He didn't want to be a part of this… this quest. It was too much. He'd heard of Potter and his friends facing up against monsters - the Hogwarts rumor mill was never silent, especially about Gryffindor's Golden Trio. He'd never believed them, though. People liked to talk about it, but most people hadn't believed.

But here he was, facing a reality he'd never thought possible. If everything the rumor mills had said was true, Potter could sue the school and ask for anything. He could be Headmaster. He could own Hogwarts.

Draco had always thought that he wanted the fame Potter had. He'd always been jealous. But if this was the sort of thing that he had gone through every year since coming to Hogwarts, Draco didn't want any part of it. He didn't even want what he was doing now. He wanted to go home. He wanted his mother to be there. He wanted things to go back to the way they had been before.

Draco sighed. He walked on.

The Realm of Dreams was only occasionally a land of white for Neville.

When he woke there first in the White Room where the others appeared, Neville saw nothing but white around him, and the barren expanse had continued while he traveled with the Weasley twins.

But they had disappeared now, or perhaps they weren't asleep at the moment, and that meant that Neville was alone. And when Neville was alone, the white of the world disappeared and Neville began to see people.

They weren't actually there, yet they were. Images, like photographs, would appear alongside him as he walked, slightly blurred as though by age. They were colored, but the colors were more subdued than those he could see in reality – the color of his own skin was much brighter than that of the people he could see. As he walked, the images would start to move, but unlike wizarding photographs, he would hear the sounds associated with what was happening, as though he were watching one of those picture boxes that the muggles had.

The people in the scenes weren't always the same. In fact, they were often never the same, but as the people changed, so did the style of clothing they were wearing and the tools around them. Time progressed forward.

The only thing that remained the same was the sword.

It was a long weapon and Neville was sure it must be heavy. The blade was silver in color and seemed to refract every tiny ray of light that touched it. The rain guard (a small part of the hilt in front of the crossguard that overlapped the blade) of the sword was embedded with a crimson jewel that shone in the light. From what Neville could see, there was one on both sides of the sword, placed in mirror of the other.

The crossguard, a horizontal part of the hilt behind the rain guard that protected the hands that would be folded around the grip of the sword, was a shining silver on the out- and underside, but red in the center of the top, which faced the blade. It was still quite shiny where it was red, and so clearly still metal, but the color contrast seemed significant.

The grip of the sword was thick and long, obviously meant to be held in two hands instead of just one. Neville didn't know a great deal about swords, but he had grown up in a pureblooded family and thus had heard the old tales of wizard princes rescuing damsels and claiming them in marriage for their troubles. Because of these stories, he was able to place the sword as being a Claymore, due to the length of the blade and hilt. The grip was a dark black in color, striking in the fact that it seemed to shine as though projecting a light from within. It was rather odd, actually.

The pommel of the sword, a round base that sat beneath the grip, was as silver as the blade on the outside, but the inside of the metal sphere was transparent, glittering, catching every ray of light and reflecting it better than the shining blade. After a while, Neville recognized that it was a diamond, perfectly crafted into the exact center of the pommel of the sword.

The person holding this blade changed frequently. Sometimes it was a tall man wearing a brown long-coat with long, windswept locks. Other times it was a shorter man with close-cropped white hair and a scarred face. Once he had even seen a woman, her hair golden and flowing down her back, eyes shining ethereally, staring at him as though she could see right through him. The person changed continuously, but they all asked him the same thing.

"Will you take up the sword?"

And each time he was asked, the whispers would start again.

He heard them constantly, murmuring in his ear constant truths, keeping him awake at night or haunting him as he walked the halls on his way to class. They were words he had heard spoken at one time or another and never forgotten, because they were not the sort of words that could be forgotten. Every word was like a blade itself, tipping the tongues of the people in his life that should never want to hurt him, but who were so adept at it.

"Madame Longbottom, your grandson is barely more than a squib." A mediwizard had come to the manor to give him an annual check-up two summers before he turned eleven. He had scanned Neville with his wand as he had every year before that, and turned to his gran to inform her that Neville was little more than an embarrassment to the Longbottom name.

"I don't imagine he has enough magic to be accepted to Hogwarts."

"Surely there must be something you can do," his gran said, her voice still stern but radiating disappointment. "I know he'll never be half the wizard his father was, but surely you can do something to assure he gets an acceptance letter."

"I am sorry, Madame Longbottom. Were his lack of magic due to an illness or accident, I could give him some potions to help him regain what has been lost. This is not due to an outside force. Your grandson simply doesn't have enough magic. I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do."

Neville pulled back his hand from where it had been reaching for the hilt of the blade. He closed his eyes and turned away. No, he couldn't take up the sword. He wasn't strong enough.

He wasn't worthy.

He glanced back in time to see the disappointed look on the face of the man who had been holding it, before the man vanished in a swirl of smoke and disappeared.

The sword clattered to the ground where he had been standing and lay there, waiting for someone to pick it up.

Neville turned and walked away.

The next person who would fashion the blade, sharpen it, and make it better was due to appear. They would take up the sword.

They were worthy.

Neville woke up all at once.

He stayed still for a long moment, listening. The only sounds that came to him were the snores of his dorm mates, and he released a quiet sigh at the realization that he was in his dormitory and not in his room at Longbottom Manor.

Blinking his eyes open, he wasn't surprised to see that the curtains surrounding his bed were dark, revealing that the sun hadn't risen yet. He idly wondered what time it was, but it didn't really matter.

Sitting up, he quietly pushed his curtains aside and padded out of bed, across the dormitory floor, careful to not bump into anyone's nightstand or trip over shoes or robes left lying about. He didn't want to wake anyone else up.

The Common Room was still and silent, the fire in the hearth having burned down to mere coals that gleamed eerily in the darkness. Neville made his way over to the fire and found one of the iron pokers hidden to the right of the hearth. He prodded the hot coals, shifting ash around, and didn't jump when two fresh logs appeared with a quiet crack, settling in the racks and quickly catching flame. House elves could always be counted on to know the simple things people hoped for.

The poker lying across his knees rather than returned to its holder, Neville settled crosslegged on the floor in front of the fireplace. He wasn't allowed to sit like this at home. At Longbottom Manor, one sat in a chair, back straight, head up, feet flat on the ground. One did not slouch, one did not cross his legs or his ankles, and one did not sit on the floor like a dog.

Neville smiled into the flames that flickered lazily across the two logs, merrily burning them at an easy pace. He liked it at Hogwarts.

Neville loved his gran – she had raised him and taught him well – but it was nice sometimes to be out from under her ever-watching eyes. After a while, the continuous staring, the unimpressed noises that told him he was doing something wrong, the looks of disappointment, and the low expectations all became too much for him to handle.

The fact of the matter was, Augusta Longbottom wanted Frank, her son. She didn't want Neville.

He sighed and leaned back against the leg of a chair, gazing sadly into the flames. Knowing that, and being accustomed to it, didn't make dealing with it any easier. Because no matter how hard he tried, he would never be Frank.

He'd always be Neville.

Just Neville.

"Do you have any idea why it didn't work properly?"

Severus Snape shook his head from where he sat at the table, nursing a cup of tea. "I couldn't say for certain. I utilized my notes from when I created the Wolfsbane potion to help make adjustments to suit the Lycanthropy, so it should have kept him only for the seven days." He took a tentative sip of his tea, burning his upper lip. "However, I obviously made a miscalculation with myself as well as the elder Weasley children. I was acting on the physicality of the wolf, not the mentality."

Dumbledore sat down across from his Potions Master, nursing his own cup. "You said you cannot say for certain. You have a theory."

He didn't answer right away. Snape watched the steam curl up from his cup and thought about the effects the Slumber of Ages potion had had. He, Charlie Weasley and William Weasley remained confined to Headquarters. William was in the library last he was made aware, and Charlie was sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms, having collapsed during dinner.

It happened without warning. They fell asleep, pulled back into the Realm of Dreams, where they continued walking through a strange world that changed its shape at a moment's notice. Severus himself had wandered through castle, wasteland, and a place of shadows that looked suspiciously like the park he had spent time in as a child. He suspected others had faced different settings, but didn't know if they had found any of them linked to their own pasts or if he was grasping at ghosts, trying to find life.

Lupin was the only one who remained asleep, practically comatose and showing no signs of waking. Pomfrey had stopped by at some point and performed spells to keep him hydrated and cleaned up, so they didn't need to fuss with constantly emptying his bowels. The only concern was routinely giving him a nutrient potion so the wolf didn't starve to death, but Dumbledore had called in one of the Hogwarts house elves for the task.

Severus glanced back at his tea, not realizing his eyes had wandered away, and noted that the curling steam had finally given up. He took a sip of the lukewarm drink and sighed appreciatively. A mild calming draught did wonders for frayed nerves. He should start implementing a regimen during times he was forced to teach.

"I suspect," he said, lowering the cup back to the table, "that it has something to do with the Dark Lord choosing to use Greyback in his ritual."

Dumbledore leaned back slightly, which was manipulative-old-man language for "I'm very interested but I'm not saying anything so I appear aloof and mysterious." Severus narrowed his eyes but went on.

"Wolves are pack animals, after all. They no doubt call to each other in the Realm, helped along by who they are to each other."

"I doubt Remus would have any desire to run with the man who bit him."

Severus sneered at the word "man" being used to describe a werewolf. "I doubt that matters. They are werewolves and who knows what the Realm has done to their heads. I still haven't determined why Lupin didn't change on the Full Moon."

That had been a huge shock. They'd had chains ready to hold the wolf down while he was in his transformed state, but when the full moon rose he had never shifted. There was no explanation for it other than the potion somehow managing to affect him to the point of nullifying the disease's effects. Severus would have to go over the ingredients. Perhaps he could surpass his own prowess in the creation of the Wolfsbane Potion by crafting a cure. He would certainly sleep better at night knowing the beasts weren't running around biting people.

"You could be right, my boy," Dumbledore said. "I suppose we won't be certain until Remus wakes up, and perhaps not even then." He sighed. "Ah, life's great mysteries."

Severus rolled his eyes.

"Well, I must be getting back to the school. I left a letter from Cornelius unanswered concerning his desire for Dolores to evaluate all of the professors during their teaching hours. Once you return to Hogwarts, I'll have to have you set up an appointed time with her." He turned to bid Severus farewell, only to find the man facedown on the table.

Albus Dumbledore sighed. Potions mishaps could be much worse than this, but as far as annoyances went, this was right up there with running out of lemon drops.

"Will you take up the sword?"

Neville stared at the hilt of the blade. The man holding it out to him was dressed in dark brown robes with narrow sleeves with the ends singed from the forge he had been using. His hair was dark and pulled back tightly, tied with a ribbon into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He had a Van Dyke beard that included a large, fluffy moustache that curled up slightly at the corners. It might have looked ridiculous on another person, but it seemed to fit the man perfectly.

The dark green eyes that gazed out of the memory were bright with life and stared directly at him, and the expectant look on the man's face was not an illusion of Neville's mind. He waited with the same patience the others had shown for Neville to take the sword, and once again, Neville considered it.

How easy would it be to step forward and grasp the hilt? How simple a task.

Neville took a step forward, hand reaching.

"Madame Longbottom, surely you can't be serious!"

Neville's hand jerked back as though from the heat of the forge's flames and not the ready hilt of the sword.

"I have no reservations, Claudia. He is the only child of my son and I am his guardian. I have every right to decide what to make of his future."

"But a muggle orphanage? The boy cannot be completely lacking in magical talent, he is of Frank's blood. What happens when he begins showing signs?"

"That will hardly be my problem if I am rid of it now." His gran's voice was crisp and direct, as it always was. The familiarity did nothing to stem the ache in Neville's heart. She was sending him away.

She was sending him away because he was worthless.

"Don't you think you might be making a mistake? Augusta, he's your grandson!"

"My great grandfather swore upon the soul of his late wife that we would never have a squib in the family and I shan't break his promise to her for pity's sake. We'll not have a squib in the family, whether I have to take him to the orphanage or drop him down a—What was that?"

A great rattling sound was coming from the kitchen. It sounded like all of his gran's china dishes shaking in the glass cabinet, and Neville didn't fancy hearing whoever it was causing the problem get the sharp end of his gran's whipping tongue. He stood from his hiding spot on the stairs and quickly retreated to his room, where he would be out of reach of his gran's voice.

He never did figure out why she hadn't sent him to an orphanage.

Neville's lip quivered and his eyes burned. He clutched his hand to his chest as though it were wounded and he refused to look at the blade still held before him.

"Will you take up the sword?"

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter still to keep out the offending sight of that damnable blade. But no matter how many times he was asked, he never said no.

When Neville woke up in the Realm, he was alone again. He hadn't seen the Weasley twins since they had told him they were going to travel with him for as long as they could and help him find his artifact. After he had woken up that time (and forgotten completely about the Realm, because he forgot everything), he hadn't seen them again. He didn't know if they simply weren't sleeping at the same time as he was or if the world he was in was fixing it so they weren't together.

He hoped it was one of the two. Neville hated the idea that they had realized he wasn't worth wasting time on, even though he knew it was true.

"You won't take up the sword, will you, son?"

The voice was familiar from pensieve memories, but too impossible, and Neville spun on his heel, hopeful and despairing at once.

Frank Longbottom stood behind him, healthy, whole, but with a sad smile on his face as he stared at his son.

"Dad?" Neville asked, his voice cracking on a dream.

"Hey, Nev," Frank said, standing in front of a workbench Neville hadn't noticed was there a moment ago. In fact, now that he looked, his father was standing in the center of the workshop he had seen in his every vision. And like all the others, the sword was in his hands.

Frank held it by the hilt, however, loosely, the tip resting on the ground.

Neville frowned, his eyebrows crinkling in confusion. He looked back up at his father's face. "I don't… why are you here?"

"Because you need me to be," Frank said, leaning his hip against the workbench and regarding Neville with eyes that seemed to stare right into his soul. "You won't let any of the others speak to you, so I came. I told them they should have let me come from the start. You didn't know them and your mother always told you not to talk to strangers." He flashed a teasing grin, but it faded slightly when Neville didn't return the gesture.

"Mum never told me that. You were gone by the time I would have needed to know—"

"Even one-year-olds need advice sometimes, Nev." Frank's voice was soft, reassuring and admonishing at once. "Your mother wanted to cram all the information she could into your poor head in as short a time as possible. I think she wanted to speed up the learning process so you'd have more time to play Quidditch, but she would never admit how addicted she was to the game. It's a sickness, you know." He grinned at Neville, and this time, the boy's lips did quirk up into a smile.

"There we are," he said, pleased. "I was wondering where you'd gotten to, Neville. You were such a happy baby. It's hard to see you sad all the time."

"You don't—"

"Just because we can't respond when you come to visit us doesn't mean we don't know you're there. It's hard to explain, how separate our minds are from our bodies. We're always aware of your presence, Neville. It's… comforting." His smile had turned sad. "But don't let us hold you back, us or anyone else. You have such potential, Neville. You need to realize that."

Neville looked down, shaking his head. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to fight the tears, but they came anyway. "I tried to be like you, Dad, but I can't. I'm not good enough."

Frank huffed. "You'll never be like me, Neville. Stop trying to follow your grandmother's stories."

The tears slipped down his cheeks and he wanted so badly to run away.

"Neville."

He sniffled, but dutifully raised his head. Frank had shifted his grip on the blade and held the hilt out to him.

"Will you take up the sword?"

"I can't."

"That isn't an answer. I don't want to know whether or not you can. I want to know if you will. When the time comes, when you're needed, when only you can stop it all from happening, will you take up the sword?"

Neville stared at his father and wondered at the words. He wanted to ask a million questions. He wanted to know if his father was really here or if this was a trick of his mind. He wanted to know if Phoenix was just playing games with him, or giving him what he wanted so badly just to make sure Neville worked to succeed. He wanted to know if his dad was proud of him, if he still loved Neville just as much, even if he was clumsy and overweight and not good at anything.

He wanted to know if his father would want to call him his son, even if he was worthless.

But he couldn't ask any of those questions. There wasn't time to even answer his father's own question. There was suddenly light, as green as envy, which arched by Neville's head. He screamed and threw himself to the ground as the Killing Curse erupted across the chest of his father and sent the man crashing to the ground.

"Dad!"

The sword arched out of Frank's grasp and tumbled through the air. A spell caught it halfway, and then long, thin fingers were curling around it, and Neville stared into the face of the woman who had twice now wrecked his chances of having a father.

Bellatrix Lestrange sneered at him around the glinting edge of the blade. "Is the wittle Longbottom baby gonna cwy?" She poked her bottom lip out mockingly at him and laughed.

Neville let out another scream, this one of rage and pain and sorrow, and lunged for the woman, planning to rip her apart with his bare hands.

Bellatrix raised her wand with a bored, languid motion and waved it once.

Pain erupted across his body and Neville saw fire everywhere. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

And when he woke up in his bed in Gryffindor Tower, he was still screaming, and tears were still coursing down his cheeks, and he was still on fire.

The first time she hears the voices, Ginny thinks Dumbledore has finally lost his mind completely and picked her mother as one of his Chosen. But, of course, that didn't make any sense. Molly Weasley didn't lack power or talent, but she would surely have been too emotionally distraught after the Dementor attack to handle the act of searching for an artifact.

Thinking through it dimmed the voice that sounded so much like her mother's. The doubt drove it back until only silence remained. But the silence eventually faded as another voice appeared.

"Stop, go back."

Ginny froze. Her eyes widened. "Bill?"

She looked around, eyes scanning the landscape, knowing she had heard his voice. And that made sense. Bill would have been a perfect choice to search for the artifacts. And if Bill was looking for the same artifact as she was, they could look together.

"Go back, Gin."

Go back? "Why? Bill?"

"Go back."

It was dangerous here.

She had good intentions. They all had good intentions, but they were just children. How could they possibly hope to find the artifacts when Albus Dumbledore himself had people looking for them – people who were trained to fight and to find things? Mere children could never hope to outwit them, and wasn't it bad enough that they were already racing against Voldemort's Chosen? They should let Dumbledore's people handle it. Ginny should let Bill handle it.

But despite her thoughts, Ginny didn't move. She didn't turn in the other direction and head back the way she had come. The skin between her eyebrows crinkled slightly as she frowned, then her eyes scanned the world again.

"Bill?" she called, less certain this time.

There was no answer.

Not even his voice, telling her to go back.

Silence.

Her disappointment was real, but she ignored it. Ginny walked on.