QR / Chapter 20 - Suspension Bridge

[streetscribbles]

Title: Quiet Revolution / Chapter 20 - Suspension Bridge
Author: street scribbles
Rating: R
Summary: A conversation with Neville Longbottom steers Hermione and Draco in the, hopefully, right direction.
A/N: I was motivated! And this chapter might have been easy to write. ;) Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter - it meant a LOT. Hopefully you guys will enjoy this one, too?
Link:

Chapter 20 - Suspension Bridge

Something’s in the air tonight
The sky’s alive with a burning light
You can mark my words,
Something’s about to break
Mat Kearney - Nothing Left To Lose

There was a reason why most of the Gryffindors were so put off by Draco Malfoy the minute they met him - and that reason will remain as is: Draco had simply intended it to be that way. He didn’t come into Hogwarts to branch out and become popular, or to even make new friends. He came to Hogwarts for one reason only - to eventually leave. So with that said, it’s really no surprise to find out that he was nasty and unfriendly to nearly every person he had encountered as soon as stepping on the platform the first day of school.

The irony of all ironies occurred when we find out the only person Draco had been friendly to had been Harry Potter.

His father had advised Draco to be careful of Potter. “Potter is the enemy,” Lucius had said. “And that is precisely the reason why you’re going to be his friend.”

But even under his father’s commands, Draco couldn’t commit to this task. Contrary to popular belief, Draco did not start outwardly conforming to his father’s beliefs and policies until much later in his career at Hogwarts. When we’re younger, our most fundamental settings are put into place in our systems - they’re coded and embedded, deeply rooting themselves in us, knotting and tucking away in all the crevasses, empty spaces and slots that we have. So while it can be said of Draco this - his father was influential to him, this also had to be noted - Draco did not start acting upon this influence until he was much more developed. As a prickly first year, Draco was still merely developing his mind, he was still trying to fight off what was inevitably happening - Dark values, a consuming desire to be noticed (especially from his dad), and a heavy current of desperation crashing through his system in waves - he really did want things to be different, so badly that when they didn’t turn out all sunshine and daisies, that the core of his fighting system crashed.

Meltdown.

And there was no emergency button to push - there was only the inevitable. The inevitable, as we all know, is obviously impossible to fight off. So, sometime during his early Hogwarts career, Draco Malfoy blossomed into the boy everyone then knew him to be - his father’s son. This shell, soft and fragile in the beginning, hardened fast. So fast, that nobody even saw the progressive transformation. One day, Draco Malfoy was a whiny, annoying little twit. The next day, he became his father’s whiny, annoying little twit.

The only difference was that one still knew how to think for himself, the other? Not so much.

His father had fed him stories about the Longbottoms. They were one amongst the many on a list of names to be shamed. Draco didn’t question why they should have been, he just accepted that yes, they were on the opposing side of the war, so yes, that name was another red flagged one. Their son, Neville Longbottom, might as well have been a Muggleborn, Lucius had said.

Draco highlighted this part of the conversation as a lowly insult. Muggleborn = bad. Neville Longbottom = also bad.

To Draco’s delight, it was also shamefully easy to pick on Neville - as he was clumsy, fiddly and awkward - intimidating fit nowhere in that description. And Draco didn’t just engage in the crowd of harmless titters when Neville slipped or fell or something of that sort, he always took it a step further, a step too far. Nothing Draco attempted to inflict upon Neville was harmless - if Neville were to fall accidentally in Draco’s presence, Draco would attempt nothing short of stepping on Neville’s hand as he walked over him and then when they met eyes - if Draco would allow such contact, he would make sure that Neville could read them.

You’re despicable. You’re scum. You’re an embarrassment to society.

Neville had reciprocating thoughts, justifiably. Because even Harry Potter was more deserving of bullying from Draco Malfoy. It was people like Neville Longbottom who didn’t deserve any of the bad to come his way, but it was also people like him who would take most of it, anyway.

Neville had been holding in a lot over these years because of Draco Malfoy.

Neville was ready to explode.

“Get out!” he cried, when Hermione and Draco appeared in his dormitory.

“Neville, wait!” Hermione said, and at the same time Draco started to say something with “Longbottom---”

Neville’s chair scraped loudly against the hardwood floors as he got up from his place at his desk to march over to Draco. Unlike Ron, who was more of a hothead and more violent, Neville used less of his fists and protested more with his words. He was standing face to face with Draco, who looked him square in the eye, and then he promptly spat in Draco’s face.

“Neville!” Hermione shrieked.

Draco’s eyes closed. He could feel the trail of slimy, thick saliva - still warm from the contact and shot fiercely from Neville’s mouth onto Draco’s cheek. It oozed down and he disgustedly swept the back of his hand across his face to rid of it.

He could still feel the cold smear.

“Fuck you!” Draco cried out. He couldn’t believe it - so far, the two people who he had come into contact with aside from Hermione had both asked to be smacked upside the head.

“Draco!” Hermione shrieked, now looking from Neville to Draco. But neither Draco nor Neville were paying attention to Hermione. It seemed that Neville’s anger had subsided considerably since he had spat in Draco’s face, and he was just quietly absorbing what had just happened.

“I - I thought you were a ghost!” Neville stammered. “But when I spat, it didn’t go through you at all!”

“You were never too bright at Arithmancy, but maybe even you can figure this one out?” Draco said coldly.

“Draco,” Hermione warned again.

This time, Neville turned to Hermione.

“What’s going on?” Neville cried. “Is Malfoy dead or not?”

“He . . . well, yes. But that’s also why we’re here, Neville.” And Hermione went straight into it. She didn’t even explicitly make him promise not to tell anyone, because this was Neville - she knew this much of him - he would never tell anyone, or he was not Neville Longbottom. Everyone trusted him for a reason.

Because he was Neville Longbottom.

“Draco did die, but he came back as a Wanderer, and now we’re both trying to work on this god awful complicated ancient Egyptian spell that involves both he and Harry to come out alive in the end and time to be turned back. Also, nobody is supposed to be able to see Draco except for me, but since you can obviously see Draco, I think there’s a missing link that could be found in you. Anyway, will you help us?”

Neville sat down. Hard.

“Splendid job on the dosage you went with in delivering all that information.” Draco snorted, but did not keep his eyes off Neville, who was sitting at the foot of his bed. Draco looked down and felt his feet sinking into the thick, plush Oriental carpet - woven dark red with dark gold tassels at the end, each dark rosewood bed was placed on top of one. To his left was a little nook by the window - this was the same nook that Harry sat on during many sleepless nights when he was alive.

Draco would have liked a nook. And the Gryffindor bedrooms were notably bigger than the Slytherin rooms, although the Slytherin beds were more plush. But still, there was no nook. What if this was his room - would he actually have been friends with all these people? And how much more difficult would his life had been, considering his whole entire family line at Hogwarts had been Slytherins?

Would that hard life with his father’s constant reminders have been worth it for friends like these?

He shook his head and blurred out all the images of what it might have been like to been a Gryffindor.

“. . . I do want to help Harry, but help him?” Neville cried.

“I never did anything to you,” Draco snapped, leaving his own thoughts.

Neville looked at Draco incredulously and spluttered. “You - you never did anything to me?!”

“Oh, come off it. It was all in good fun.”

“You’re going to let him say all these things, Hermione?” Neville cried. “To me, in front of you, about himself? You’ve been helping the other side all this time and I’m supposed to help, too, now?”

“He’s not the other side, Neville,” Hermione said insistently. “The war is over. And even if you can’t see him on our side, you know I’m on the right side still.”

“He killed Harry, Hermione!”

Hermione reeled back so fast that she nearly snapped her neck. Draco's mouth fell open in shock.

“Excuse me?” Draco yelled. “Ex-bloody-fucking-scuse me?”

Draco was angriest for actually wondering what it would have been like to be friends with Gryffindors just earlier.

Hermione looked from Draco to Neville. Neville's eyes were notably bloodshot and his hair was unkempt and uncombed. Draco just looked worn down and moody.

“Neville . . .” Hermione trailed off, and looked hesitantly at Draco.

Draco looked coldly at them both, and felt a stone sink to the pit of his stomach. This was definitely class warfare at its best - Draco Malfoy the Pureblood, the Slytherin, the son of the late Lucius Malfoy, standing here with Hermione Granger, the Muggleborn and Neville Longbottom - both of them some of Potter’s closest friends. And Draco knew that a lot had happened since those statuses were set up, and he knew that what he felt about Hermione was past that, and what she saw in him was hopefully nothing of the sort, but when it came down to how fast old emotions and feelings associated with yesterday could be triggered up - the results were slippery and wet - Danger: caution.

“I’m leaving,” Draco said.

“Draco, wait!” Hermione called out, and then she turned to Neville, her eyes pleading. “Whatever issues you have with him, I understand, Neville, I understand that so much, trust me. But if you’re going to be doing this, you’ll be doing it for me. Not Draco. Please.”

Neville bit his lip and looked at Hermione for a lingering moment and then turned to Draco, whose backside was now in their line of vision as he was still slowly making his way toward the door, seething.

“I never did anything to you,” Neville said, taking Draco’s words from earlier.

Draco turned around. “Pardon?” he asked, frostily.

“I never did anything to you,” Neville repeated. “And it’s not the other way around from you. That’s what I regretted not saying to your face when you were alive. Every time you picked on me, every time Crabbe or Goyle beat me up - I didn’t want to hurt them back, I just wanted to go to the source - and that was you. I really wanted to just tell you that. I never did anything to you, Malfoy. So I don’t really know why you did all those things to me. But I know you remember, and if you don’t - you don’t deserve to live, after all.”

There was a drafty pause, and Hermione anxiously looked at the both of them.

“I didn’t kill Potter,” Draco said slowly, and that was all he could say.

Neville sighed and turned to Hermione. “If whatever I agree to do, here on out, ends up benefiting Malfoy,” he looked at Draco at this point and then turned back to Hermione, “it wasn’t intentional. The only thing that I hope comes from this is that you’re better, Hermione.”

Neville was willing to do this because, like Hermione to him, he trusted her. There was an unspoken bond between Neville and Hermione, and this trust went behind any kind of Gryffindor bundling, it was just the two of them. They were great friends. Great friends trusted each other, and Hermione missed Neville a lot, she realized.

She nodded and fell forward to hug Neville. He closed his eyes and embraced her back.

“You were one of my first friends here, Neville.” Hermione smiled at him and Neville smiled back.

“We all miss you here, you know. I’ve definitely noticed your absence.”

She pulled away and gave him a watery smile. Draco sighed loudly.

“Oh, isn’t this touching.” He sneered.

“I saw you kill Harry, I swear it,” Neville snapped, looking at Draco.

“I d---”

“Okay, let’s go to my room. All my notes are there, and maybe if I go over what’s happened so far, you can help us, Neville,” Hermione said hurriedly, brushing Draco off to the side.

He felt stung.

“Okay,” Neville said and got up, also ignoring Draco.. Hermione walked next to him and for the first time in nearly weeks, Draco felt cold again.

Hermione turned around and met eyes with Draco. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and looked up hesitantly, afraid to read her gaze. It normally would have said: I don’t know what to believe, Draco.

That’s what they spoke every time he was able to decipher. And it never made him happy, but he understood it. He hoped that as of late, it would be different, but he head a dreaded hunch that she was even more unsure, now after this conversation with Neville, on where Draco stood in things.

When he finally did muster up the decision to meet eyes with her, what she was saying to him was so far off from what he was expecting.

I believe you. They said. I trust you.

He let this absorb slowly, the cold melting, thawing out smoothly and he immediately felt warmer again.

* * *

“Okay, Lavendar and Parvati normally have class with McGonagall this hour. And after, they always like to watch the Quidditch practice out in the field, so we should be good for a couple of hours.”

“I never liked those two,” Draco commented.

Neville looked a little stunned to be standing in a girl’s dormitory, but once his gaping mouth closed shut, he turned to Draco and spoke.

“Me either,” he admitted.

Draco was about to respond to Neville's, but Hermione took over in her usual fashion, her nerves already tightly wound and anxious as is, and spoke instead.

“Okay, Neville. You can sit on my bed! Make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to warn you right now - I’ve started up a really heavy collection of notes. But they’re very organized. Let me just take them out.” Her voice grew muffled at this point as she rummaged through her desk.

Draco and Neville stood awkwardly in the room as they waited for Hermione. Somebody should have commented about the weather soon at a moment like this, except they were nothing close to being remotely friendly with each other, so the discomfort raged on.

“Here! You can start with this one.” Hermione emerged from the depths of her endless drawers and planted a green notebook on Neville’s lap.

He looked down at it as if it were a foreign object. Hermione went back to looking in her drawers some more. Draco continued to stand.

“Wait, Hermione, stop for a second,” Neville called out slowly. “That flower on your desk, the one that’s a bit wilted---”

“Oh. Harry gave that to me last year, so it holds a lot of sentimental value and I don’t have the heart to throw it out. But, anyway, Neville, do you see how on the first few pages--”

“Uh, Hermione,” Draco interrupted and Hermione looked up at him. “I don’t think your notes are what Longbottom is focusing on.”

Hermione followed Draco’s gaze and saw Neville hop up from his place at the foot of her bed and trot over to the flower. He picked it up nimbly by the bottom of the vase and peered at it closely.

“. . . Neville?”

“Do you know what kind of flower this is?” Neville asked quietly. “It’s very rare.”

Hermione blushed. Herbology, although she did obviously master it along with her other courses, was never really her favorite, so she retained very little outside knowledge aside from what Professor Sprouts lectured about during class.

“What kind is it?” Draco asked, rolling his eyes at Hermione’s crimson cheeks. “Since this is the very first time we won’t be able to get an answer from Hermione, you can do the honors, Longbottom.”

Hermione swatted Draco, and Neville spoke.

“Well Professor Sprout gave me a book one time, about rare flowers and I remember reading about this one because the Egyptians, back in the day, used it during their rites of passage ceremonies and what not. It holds a lot of ancient, powerful magic, too. I think according to one of their myths, the young boy who found this flower and it was used on his grandmother, who was scheduled to die the next day, and instead she lived for another twenty years. Anyway,” Neville coughed and this time it was he who was blushing, “I’m rambling. Sorry. It’s just -- I find this stuff very interesting. And I think it’s nice that Harry was the one to give that to you. But, what were you saying about your notes? Do you want me to--”

Hermione and Draco shared a glance and she paused Neville with a slight, slow raise of her hand.

“I think,” she said softly. “You’ve done more than I ever imagined you could do.”

“It’s an Ancient Egyptian flower!” Draco cried out excitedly. “Longbottom, you genius! Why were we not friends again during school?”

Neville looked from Draco to Hermione, a huge gaping question mark etched across his face.

“The spell that Draco and I are working on,” Hermione explained, “is also an ancient Egyptian spell. Maybe this flower is the missing link to our last and final step!”

“Maybe,” Neville agreed hesitantly and slowly, not really agreeing but mostly just not knowing what else to say.

“What can you tell us about this flower, Neville?” Hermione pressed.

Neville bit his lower lip.

“Anything?” she added.

“Take your time,” Draco said.

Neville looked at Draco strangely. At this very moment in time, Hermione was much more annoying than Malfoy and Neville felt like he had stepped into the twilight zone.

Neville Longbottom was one of the few people who had never really been annoyed by Hermione’s self righteousness; all he had thought of it was that she was a great person.

Of course, Ron and Harry knew she was a great person, it’s just, any kind of greatness gets to be too much and unnecessary sometimes.

“Well, flowers served many important roles. They were used as a fashion statement for the women. They were used a lot in rituals - weddings and funerals, that sort of thing. I know that flowers appear a lot in their legends and myths, and your flower - Harry’s flower, the French called it the celsie à crete when it was later discovered to be blossoming all over Europe.”

“What does that mean?” Hermione mused out loud. “Oh, I know what that means! I--”

“It means of immortals,” Draco said.

This would be the second time Neville looked at Draco in surprise that day. Hermione was a little embarrassed, too. She had forgotten about Draco's French background.

“Well, right you are,” Neville said, a little disgruntled. “Anyway, the celsie flower, like I told you, appeared in one of the most popular ancient Egyptian myths about the boy saving his grandmother’s life when the flower came into their possession.”

“Okay, so we now know that this flower could possibly save our lives. Oh, Harry! I knew he would come through.” Hermione beamed.

Draco rolled his eyes. “How do we use it, though, we don’t know that part.”

“Step three of our spell,” Hermione said quietly.

Step Three: This life is a constant storm. When a storm rumbles, it carries rain out onto this world. Rain forms rivers and rivers form oceans. Oceans are deep full of secrets that life’s storm bring about. Swim - discover a secret, and the last key to your mission will have been discovered, as well.

“What about it?”

“It required us to swim, obviously not literally because that’s what I did during my Ipse spell and we’re not past that step. But it mentions swimming as a verb equated to discovering a secret or uncovering something. So now that we know the flower is useful, there’s probably a secret in this that we can find out about?”

“Wait, that’s what I was going to ask you - if you performed any big spells after you were in possession of that flower,” Neville said.

“A few,” Hermione said. “The spell of Ipse, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically a self discovery spell that--”

“I’m familiar with it,” Neville interrupted. “I even performed it on myself after the war was over, it wasn’t very fun.”

“It’s not,” Draco agreed.

The three of them sat in quiet for a few moments. Draco was standing, leaning against Hermione’s tall, wardrobe closet with the brass iron knockers. Neville was sitting at the foot of Hermione’s well made bed and Hermione was sitting in her chair at her desk. The windows in the room were all open, and through the barred iron were thick vast spaces for the wind to blow in. Spring at Hogwarts was a little colder this year, and it felt like winter was still lingering heavily at the front of this season, not ready to depart just yet. A slight chilled puff of air brushed past Hermione’s cheek and she shivered, promptly getting up to shut the window just as Neville finally jumped up as well.

“That’s it, Hermione! Did Malfoy perform the Spell of Ipse on himself as well?”

“Yes, he did,” she said, turning around, the firm clunky click of the closed windows sounding behind her as she looked at him in curiosity. Draco lifted his head as well.

“In the story - the boy found the flower and tried to heal his grandmother with it, and it didn’t work, the grandmother went to go find another solution and ended up with the same flower and it didn’t work either. They both found that when they attained the flower separately, the grandmother would get sicker, but when they traveled together and found the same flower, that’s when the miracle happened. That’s when the curse was broken.”

“So you’re saying . . .” Draco trailed off.

“That we have to perform the Spell of Ipse again,” Hermione said.

Neville nodded. “Together.”

“Does that even work?” Draco asked.

“We’ll find out,” Hermione promised him. And when Hermione Granger made a promise, this was not a light, airy kind of commitment. It was a firmly pressed down, hard as granite sort of pledge. It was a guarantee.

"Well, I guess this is going to be our next step," Draco said.

“Will you let me know how it goes?” Neville asked, getting up. “I have class . . . although I don’t think I’ll be learning all that much considering what just happened in the past hour.” He gave a faltering grin.

“Oh, of course! Neville, thank you for all this. Thanks for being so cooperative.” Hermione stepped forward and gave Neville a hug. He awkwardly wrapped an arm around her and as soon as their hold turned into an actual embrace, it progressed from awkward to comfortable and familiar and longing.

Ron was not the only one who missed Hermione. Just like it was not Hermione who was the only one who missed Harry.

Everybody had been missing the way things used to be. But people will always miss what used to be with rose colored glasses. But tint on this or not, Neville found that he had always found it rather easy to long for something - it had been his parents, before they faded into a long lost cause. But after the war took away the seemingly solidified group of Gryffindor friends for him, Neville missed them, the company that he felt belonged to. Hermione had always been a part of that belonging group.

The war changed everyone, Draco realized, as he watched Hermione and Neville hug, and the brief moment that Neville closed his eyes. And this was the very first time that Draco actually noted it for every word of it’s worth. It affected everyone, not just you, everyone - even Longbottom - who you used to treat like absolute shit, who you used to not care for, who you used to assume had no feelings, emotion, or a single drop of realness.

Neville let go first and Hermione walked him to the door.

“Longbottom,” Draco called out, and Neville turned around, looking at Draco unexpectedly.

“Malfoy?”

And Draco had yet to even really explicitly say this to Hermione, but to Neville, he found that for something he thought would come out so grudgingly, it was almost effortless, albeit a little embarrassing.

“I’m sorry.”

Neville looked shell shocked, but didn’t say anything. He merely nodded and then left.

Hermione’s eyes were wet with tears when she turned around and looked at him, and Draco’s Wanderer body felt warmer than it had ever been. She took his hand and he didn’t say anything but took it back.

The spell of Ipse had revealed secrets neither Draco nor Hermione knew possible to be revealed by way of any kind of spell. It had revealed to them Will Malfoy - the brother that Draco Malfoy could have had, the person who might have changed the course of everything for him in his life. It had unveiled Hermione’s greatest fears and hopes and led her to Draco in the end. It helped her to realize how Draco died. It helped Draco to realize why he never really lived.

It changed them both, and with secrets that were very real. They were both real, nothing was made up, crafted by way of a spell, or formed in their heads to delude them into finding artificial answers to real questions. They were just truths that finally came to light.

There apparently were more truths to be discovered between the two of them. They had not been ready for any of them before, so Draco didn’t know what the hell was going to prepare them for this, but it was literally now or never.

He was already aching with tiredness and probably never going to be ready for anything, but he knew he was going to do it because he had to. There are necessities that come with war and life and love. And while this was not really any of the above three for him, Draco knew that this was still a necessity because it - all of this - could be one of them if he did this.

And more than anything did he want something like that, he realized. One shot, one go.

He decided to stand with Hermione for a little longer before they’d have to start, though. She spoke first into the silence, promptly breaking it.

"Hey." She prodded him gently and he looked down to his left at her.

"It all comes down to this, huh?" Her smile wavered a little, but stayed intact regardless.

He nodded. "Let's go."

Hermione grabbed her wand and took hold of Draco's hand tightly while reciting the incantation clearly.

He squeezed her hand, blinked, and soon all they could see was a blinding white light.

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