When Things Go Slightly Wrong

Chapter 48: Trick Step

Professor Neville Longbottom was on duty tonight.

It wasn't that he disliked patrolling the castle, or working with this year's Head Boy and Girl – he just had a lot on his mind, as with most nights he had patrol.

Okay, so he didn't like night patrolling.

Brave though he may have been in the war, that was all for self-preservation. He really had always been more sweet than scary, though he tried to sprinkle both traits equally into his lessons. He was quite a beloved professor; his reputation preceded him. His popularity had spiked ever since Teddy Lupin and the ensuing, equally famous Weasley cousins had come to Hogwarts, for he talked to them not just as their teacher, but as their personal friend. And it didn't hurt that once he had come into himself and had to be a leader in his seventh year, his timidity had lapsed into a mere reservedness, and even that had fallen away eventually. His instatement as the Head of Gryffindor House ten years ago brought him even closer to his students, and the Gryffindors all tended to call him "chill," whatever that was supposed to mean. He and Professor McGonagall became closer than ever when he became the Herbology professor, and all of these factors coalesced into a person Neville had never thought he'd become. He was confident, experienced, and comfortable with himself.

And he was still creeped out by the dark.

He had lived in this castle for over half of his life, had talked to almost all of the portraits in it, and yet he still didn't like walking past all of the frames, for they were often empty. It felt ominous.

So preoccupied was he with these thoughts of keeping the encroaching darkness and loneliness away (some Head of Gryffindor, he chided himself) that he didn't even notice when he turned onto the fourth-floor staircase that had so plagued him in his school days. Out of nowhere, he plunged forward, his foot trapped in midair.

"Merlin's balls!"

Roxanne Weasley would find him in this state some hours later, when the sun had come up, and he would bribe her not to let word of the incident get out to anyone… especially her uncles.

Professor McGonagall was still smirking when Neville hobbled stiffly into breakfast.

"Say anything and you get to mend the damage to my nether regions," Neville grumbled. The students in the Hall were bewildered when McGonagall howled with laughter.

"Oh, you haven't changed a bit, dearest Mister Longbottom!" she exclaimed, patting his cheek fondly. Neville couldn't help but smile back at the woman who was like another grandmother to him.

"Ah, but you forget, I used to cry when I got stuck in the step," Neville rebutted.

"I heard you swear all the way in my office, Longbottom. You aren't fooling anybody."

Muttering darkly, Neville went to work on his kippers, pointedly ignoring the smirk that he would have sworn was the inspiration, not the deterrent, for the Marauders, Fred and George Weasley, and the modern Weasley cousins.