Title: Letter

Author: SnowStormSkies

Universe: Harry Potter

Theme/Topic: Neville writing a letter to Harry.

Rating: Teen/Mature. Can't decide but it's both. References to both torture and abuse as well as adult themes.

Characters: Neville, Harry (brief mentions of Ron, Hermione, Seamus and Bellatrix Lestrange.)

Warnings/Spoilers: Ummm...Let's see, most of the Deathly Hallows, I suppose. Spoilers for Neville's parents and a couple of Death Eaters...Oh sod it, if you haven't read all the books, why are you reading this?

Word Count: 2,261 words.

Time: Twenty five minutes written along to the Lord of the Dance's Lament.

Summary: Neville writes a letter to his Harry. It's not a letter of adoration, nor a letter of hate. It's a letter of honest truth.

Dedication: To everyone who cried at some point during Deathy Hallows. (My point was Dobby's funeral. I SOBBED!)

A/N: Just re-reading the Deathly Hallows for the thousandth time last night and I just thought, "Neville's all alone in the school and he's taken Harry's place a bit hasn't he?" (In my head, he has anyway). So I decided to make this, and originally it was just the letter. But I liked the little bit on the bottom because I think it highlights a little bit of the life of the Students locked inside Hogwarts.

Distribution: No, you can't have it. It is mine and if you take it without my permission then it is considered plagarism and I believe that is agains t the law. Ask me and I may consider it~

Letter

~~*~~

We count our dead and add up those who are missing or untraceable in these dark times. We're locked in a school where there is only one rule, "Death comes to all in the end." I am a Gryffindor and to most here, I am the scum of the earth. And so we count our dead and check those missing and every day my heart hurts a little more because I see the names of people I know, people who are too young to die, to go missing, the list of the Muggle-borns and half-bloods that have gone missing.

We fight back in little ways, little acts of defiance but even those leave us bloody and scarred. Everything we do is watched and monitored and we know it. We leave signs like, "Dumbledore all the way!" and "Death Eaters suck!" all over our books and our parchments because we can. We know it annoys the Death Eaters and we know it frustrates them that no matter how much they whip us and beat us and tear into us with words and threats, that we are still defiant. Still fighting.

I've been beaten, I've been shackled up high on a wall for a week, and I've been whipped and smacked around. I've been in the fight ring, where they set students on each other and if you don't fight then they'll imperious one of you and you'll have to watch it. I've been under the Cruciatus curse more times than I care to remember.

And it scares me. My parents were tortured under that curse and they went mad. How many curses more do I need before I go mad as well? How many curses will they cast on me, before I break, before I lay before them, blank eyed, and empty headed? It won't be many, I think.

I still fight back, I still shout your name when they tell me to bow down to Voldemort and tell them that they should be afraid because their master is going to fall. I say Dumbledore when they want me to say who's the best headmaster this school has ever had, and they want to hear Snape. I still tell students to keep on fighting, and to keep on refuting the Dark Arts and Voldemort because you're going to save us all. /p

I know you will.

You have to.

Because if you don't, then I don't think we'll survive. I don't think any of us will.

You have to win. Because if you don't, then all of us will die or be tortured into insanity.

I don't want to end up like my parents, Harry. I don't want to end up in a forgotten ward of St Mungo's, strapped to my bed when I have nightmares about the last night I had solid mind and Bellatrix Lestrange had me strapped me down and held me under the most painful curse known to man and watched my mind break slowly and carefully in little fractured pieces. I don't want to be unable to remember my only child, leaving them to be raised by a relative who never wanted to raise another child after the first nine. I don't want to be left in an adult nappy because my mind is so broken, I can't recognise when I need the toilet or having to be fed little mashed up bits of food by a nurse like a baby again and washed like one too.

I'm terrified of ending up like that. And Bellatrix has her eyes set on me. I know she does. When she comes to the school on Voldemort's orders, she takes pleasure in holding me under the curse for longer than anyone else. A minute when she first came, now it's five minutes. I can feel the cracks spreading across my mind during that time, and now they repair themselves. But the cracks aren't as easy as to repair as they were the first time, or even the tenth. Now the scars in my mind are easily seen, and the cracks take longer and longer to heal completely. I know that soon, if Harry doesn't come, then those cracks will become crevices, then holes, then canyons a thousand miles across. And then slowly my mind will empty of everything except those canyons. Just like the minds of my parents did.

Ginny was whipped again last night. I heard her crying in the common room where one of the girls took care of her. I heard those screams she made when they whipped her while they whipped me. They like to do us in pairs you see. They think we'll crack if we hear the other being punished. She can't understand that you have to remain silent when they're carving your back up or they'll do it twice as hard. She hasn't learnt that the only thing keeping them from killing you is that they want to able to torture us again.

Luna's still missing. She didn't cast the Killing Curse on the sheep they had brought in, and then the next day she got a letter from her father and then the day after that she was gone. Left. Cho tells me that her trunk and stuff are still in her dorm, and all her clothes in her wardrobe so I don't think she left of her own accord. I hope she's alright wherever she is. Or that they gave her a quick death; and didn't draw it out like they brag they did.

I never knew how much pressure, Harry, we put you under. "Save us, Harry! Keep us safe and protected, Harry! Go and make sure we aren't killed by the evil man, Harry!" and you were only a child. How I laugh now, when I think of how we hide behind you, how we expected to live life when you are the Knight in Armour that won't come off and no-one sees behind it. I know a little of what that's like now. I do.

The students here hide behind us, those left behind of Dumbledore's Army. They expect us be the defiant ones so they can get on with their lives, unnoticed and safe. They expect us to always fight for them, so they don't have to. And I only have a school to deal with. You had the whole wide world to deal with. You still do.

And I'm sorry Harry. I'm sorry of all the times we leant on you, expected you to do all the hard work and then turned our backs on you when it suited us to. I'm sorry, Harry, every time that I read those newspapers and a little flash of doubt of you came to my mind. I'm sorry that I wasn't strong enough to believe you over them. I'm sorry that I didn't believe you when you said that you weren't coming back. I'm sorry that I believed that you were mad like the papers said.

And most of all Harry, I'm sorry that that I didn't see you. I'm sorry that I never saw you, as a person, as a boy too old too fast.

And, Harry, I'm sorry that I ever believed that you had an easy life. I know that it's too late. Too late for sorry and too late for I know what you're going through. But I mean it. A whole depends on a child's shoulders and we didn't try to lessen the burden. We just kept on adding to it. And I've got just a fraction of it, and I'm sinking to my knees already, just three months into it. I know it's tough, and it's bitter, and it's a thankless job.

And I thank you for doing it. I don't know if I can hold up much longer, but as long as you keep fighting the oppression, I know I can try and keep trying to succeed.

But Harry....

Hurry, because if this lasts more than a year... I don't think we'll survive.

And I don't want to die the way all the others did. I don't want to die, by being tortured with the Pain curses, or being chased down by werewolves on the full moon. I don't want to be poisoned for following my dreams, I don't want to be struck down with the Killing Curse on the top of the Astronomy Tower, for my corpse to fall off the edge and land on the ground, bent and broken. I don't want to be left in the Forest, for the Inferni and the shadows to kill me. I don't want to die, Harry, I don't. I'm only seventeen and I have scars like Moody did in his hey-day. It can't be safe where you are either, I know that. But... I think you know the feeling of wanting to live. Of wanting to survive.

I miss you, Harry, I miss you so much. I miss your smiles, and your happy laughter. I miss how you would play Quidditch, how you would eat toast and tomato sauce just because you could. I miss how you would write notes in class and pass them around with little characters on them, and we'd hide them in our books while we struggled to hide our laughter. I miss your presence in the dorm, how I'd know that you were in room without opening my eyes, or even waking up properly because you could just feel you in the room. I miss how you would sometimes sit on the window ledge, in the moonlight and hold your photo album and I'd know that you would keep us safe in our little tower. And I think , now, that can never be again. I miss how you would stand there and tell me that I'm not a failure, and that I'm not a freak because I'm not as magically adept as some. I miss how you would always believe in me, and how you would stand up to those who tried to oppress us like Umbridge. I miss....I miss you. Everything and everything about you.

The Death Eaters hate you, and they tell us to hate you, but I can't. I won't. It could have so easily been me. I could be the one who has to stand there and face Voldemort. But you know what? I'm not. And in some selfish way, I'm glad I'm not. I don't know if I could stand up and live the day, when the whole Wizarding World thinks I've run away and that I'm dark and evil and a coward. I know I can't actually. I'd have left years ago; lived life as a Muggle where no-one could find me. Or I'd have gone mad. Either way.

But you're still out there fighting for us. Even when people say you're not, I say you are, and I believe in you. I believe in you.

I want to. I have to.

But please...Please come back to us, Harry. Please come back, alive. I hate to tell you that we're dependant on you. I do, and I wish I didn't. But we are, Harry. We're waiting on you to save us, to rescue us from Voldemort, the Death Eaters. I'm just not strong enough; we're not strong enough as a group; none of us are or ever will be.

You always were stronger than us, Harry. Always.

Please come back to us, Harry. We need you.

I need you.

~*~*~*

Neville looked at the parchment before him. The ink was thick, black lines on the creamy white parchment. Stark words of honest truth in all their glory lay on the paper; all their meanings and interpretations open to anyone who looked.

pHe held it up to the window; the parchment blocking out the moonlight. Seamus watched him from his bed, his blond hair glimmering in the silvery light. Just the two of them, the last two Gryffindor seventh years. The only two right now. Dean left by the Christmas holidays, Ron with a deathly illness and Harry...Harry off fighting Voldemort.

"What you doing with that, Nev?"

"Nothing, Seamus."

"If that ever gets out, then you could be killed." Seamus slid out of bed, as he reached for the parchment. Neville gently pushed his hand away. "Are you alright?"

Neville said nothing, but pulled his wand from his bedside table. He held the parchment by one corner with his left hand, his wand in his right. He smiled at the wand. Twelve inches of cherry wood, dark as night and unicorn hair inside. It was a beautiful wand; "perfectly attuned to the earth," according to Ollivander. Neville smiled as he remembered showing his new wand to Harry. He had been so proud that he had a new one.

"Nev?"

"I'm alright, Seamus."

Laying the tip of his wand on the edge of the parchment, he smiled. It was just a letter, all the words he had said were inside himself. He and he alone knew what he had written. He intended to keep it that way. He didn't need someone finding it, after all.

He had to be there to welcome Harry home.

"Incendio..."

As the parchment ignited, Neville watched as the flames devoured the ink, the words fading beneath vibrant flames. He dropped the last corner of the parchment as the flames raced up towards his fingers; and then he watched the parchment drift towards the floor, flames devouring it as it went to and fro in the invisible air currents. By the time it reached the floor, it was all but done and the flames were snuffed out. There was no evidence such a letter had existed, no ash, no burnt reminder, and no smoky smell in the air.

There was just him watching in the moonlight, waiting for a friend to come home.

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SSS~