Rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night

and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape

hated it.”

“You used to?” said Harry, who had noticed the past tense.

“Well, it got more difficult as time went one,” said Neville. “We lost Luna at

Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the

Leaders. The Carrows seemed to know I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming

Down on me hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year

they’d chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off.”

“No kidding,” muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope upward.

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped

Those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a

couple of weeks ago. That’s when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I

suppose, and they went for Gran.”

“They what?” said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.

“Yeah,” said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so

steeply, “well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to

force their relatives to behave. I s’pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the

other way around. Thing was,” he faced them, and Harry was astonished to see that he

was grinning, “they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch

living alone, they probably thought hey didn’t need to send anyone particularly powerful.

Anyway,” Neville laughed, “Dawlish is still in St. Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run. She

sent me a letter,” he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was

proud of me, that I’m my parent’s son, and to keep it up.”

“Cool,” said Ron.

“Yea,” said Neville happily. “Only thing was, once they realized they had no hold

over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all. I don’t know whether they

Were planning to kill me or send me to Azkaban, either way, I knew it was time to

disappear.”

“But,” said Ron, looking thoroughly confused, “aren’t – aren’t we heading

straight back for Hogwarts?”

“’Course,” said Neville. “You’ll see. We’re here.”

They turned a corner and there ahead of them was the end of the passage. Another

short flight of steps led to a door just like the one hidden behind Ariana’s portrait. Neville

Pushed it open and climbed through. As Harry followed, he heard Neville call out for

unseen people:

“Look who it is! Didn’t I tell you?”

As Harry emerged into the room behind the passage, there were several screams

and yells: “HARRY!” “It’s Potter, it’s POTTER!” “Ron!” “Hermione!”

He had a confused impression of colored hangings, of lamps and many faces. The

Next moment, he, Ron, and Hermione were engulfed, hugged, pounded on the back, their

Hair ruffled, their hands shaken, by what seemed to be more than twenty people. They

Might have just won a Quidditch final.

“Okay, okay, calm down!” Neville called, and as the crowd backed away, Harry

Was able to take in their surroundings.

He did not recognize the dorm at all. It was enormous, and looked rather like the

interior of a particularly sumptuous tree house, or perhaps a gigantic ship’s cabin.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 598