Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By the time Neville's heartbeat had returned to normal, and his stomach had resumed its regular place in his middle, Professor Sprout was back to hand him several shrunken parcels, and Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall had emerged from behind the screen.

Neville didn't know why he should be surprised that McGonagall looked more or less the way she always did, but he was, a little. Somehow she was already becoming a different person in his mind, and so it gave him a bit of a jolt to see the familiar sharp jaw and thin mouth and square spectacles. Only her hair was different ― not long and wild as it had been right after the attack, but gathered into a loose knot at the base of her neck.

It made her look softer, younger, and suddenly he could see what his gran had meant when she'd insisted, not exactly approvingly, that Minerva McGonagall had been "quite the one" in her day.

"Now, that doesn't mean she wasn't a good girl," Gran would say, which was her term for a girl who "kept herself clean" and didn't have sex until marriage. But then Gran would always add the appropriate Augusta Longbottom touch: "as far as we knew, anyway."

And that little aside had made Neville wonder just how "good" Professor McGonagall might have been, until he became convinced by her prim pursed lips and her tightly-bunned hair and her intolerance of snogging couples that any wondering was laughable.

But now, just for a minute, he wondered again.

"This is Mr Longbottom," Madam Pomfrey was saying. "He'll be taking you to your quarters, and I repeat, it's essential to your safety that you stay put. You're in danger."

"Yes, so you've said," Professor McGonagall replied with a touch of impatience. "I think it would help me to know just what I'm supposed to be in danger from, but if it's so important, you can rely on me to be a good girl."

In spite of himself, Neville snorted half a laugh, and she turned to him. "Yes, Mr. . .?"

He sobered hastily and had opened his mouth to speak when he looked her in the eyes the first time and nearly cried out in shock.

She wasn't angry with him, or hostile; in fact, she was half-smiling, but. . .

She didn't know him.

He'd understood that, in theory, but the reality was something else again. And he didn't know her, either. The woman looking at him from Professor McGonagall's face was a stranger.

Something stable and permanent went out of his universe at that moment; he felt for a second as if he, too, had ceased to exist.

"It's me, Neville," he said loudly, as much to assert his own reality as to help her remember him. "Neville Longbottom. From Gryffindor."

But his name brought no recognition to her, just a brisk nod of acknowledgement.

"Neville's the one who found you," Professor Sprout said, in a slightly over-hearty tone of voice. "After. . .well, after ― "

"After the 'accident,' yes," Professor McGonagall said, with a gesture towards Madam Pomfrey. "So Matron has told me. The accident you all so carefully refrain from describing." She smiled wryly. "If you think you are encouraging me to remember it on my own, I'm afraid the plan isn't working."

"Well, it's early days yet," said Madam Pomfrey. "And now you'd better get going. Filius, if you will. . .?"

Professor Flitwick stepped forward quickly and performed his Invisibility Charm. It was his own design, and an excellent one, Professor Sprout had said. Neville felt it wash over him, settling around him like a soft, warm cloak. The infirmary and the other professors suddenly were indistinct, and only Professor McGonagall looked real.

She turned to him, her eyes dancing with unexpected humour. "So, Neville Longbottom from the town of Gryffindor, you are to be my escort, is that right?"

"Er. . .yes?"

"Well, then," she said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. "Escort me, kind sir."

Without thinking, he covered her hand with his and led her into the corridor and towards the Room of Requirement.

* * *

She found the cottage charming, "if a little primitive," but it awoke no memories in her.

"At least there are books," she said, heading immediately to one of the bookcases.

"Oh, that reminds me," said Neville, fumbling in his robes for the shrunken parcels. He set them on the deal table and unshrank them, not to be nosy, but because he didn't think she'd be able to control her magic sufficiently to do it herself. There were books and some food and a small suitcase, and a paper-wrapped package that was shaped suspiciously like a bottle of Ogden's Old. "Professor Sprout sent you these."

"Professor? We are in a school, then?" Professor McGonagall asked. "A university?"

"Er, no, not exactly a university," said Neville. "But a school, yes."

"Am I a teacher?"

Neville wasn't sure if this was one of the things he was supposed to let her remember for herself, but then he thought he'd better tell her. He was bound to call her "Professor McGonagall" sooner or later, and then the cat would be out of the bag anyway.

"Yes, you are," he said.

"And are you one of my students?"

"No. Not any more."

"Good," said Professor McGonagall, smiling at him.

And Neville found, suddenly, that he was glad, too.

"The others, they called me 'Minerva,'" she went on. "Is that actually my name, or just an indication of my warlike personality?"

Neville surprised himself by laughing. Truth be told, he'd always found her witty, but he'd usually been too nervous to appreciate it. Especially as the wit was occasionally at his expense. Or at least it had been when he was younger ― it occurred to him now that it had been some time since Professor McGonagall had been sarcastic to him.

"It's your name," he told her. "And see? You remember some things. Like the fact that you're a goddess."

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realised what he'd said, and he blushed what he was sure was the most furious crimson of a life already filled with blushes.

Professor McGonagall threw back her head and laughed aloud, something Neville didn't think he'd ever heard before. "You're a treasure, Neville Longbottom," she said. "I think we are going to be great friends indeed. Will you visit me? I have promised that rather frightening Matron of yours that I will not try to leave this sanctuary, and I have a feeling it may get rather lonely."

"Yeah, sure, er, if I can," said Neville, pleased and flustered at the same time. "I'd like that, Professor."

She smiled again. "I'll like it, too," she said.

* * *

Professor McGonagall's apparent disappearance caused an uproar in Hogwarts. Students gossiped in whispers between classes; the most widely-believed rumour was that the Carrows had killed her and fed her body to the Squid. Unless it was that she had defected and joined the Death Eaters. Or had accidentally Transfigured herself into a pincushion. Or been bitten by a rabid dog while in her cat form. The theories were endless.

Neville did what he could to reassure the worried Gryffindors, telling them with all the confidence he could muster that Professor McGonagall could take care of herself and would never leave them for long. "She's just on a mission or something and will be back as soon as she can. Take my word for it," he said.

The Headmaster, it was said, was coldly furious, and word was that he had interrogated every single staff member as well as a number of students. The Carrows, of course, had reported their attack on McGonagall ― "discipline," they'd called it, according to Madam Pomfrey, who also told Neville that Snape's questioning of little Essie Butterwort of Ravenclaw had yielded nothing more alarming than a case of nerves on Essie's part that had been fairly quickly cured with an ice cream. Beyond the fact that Professor McGonagall had intervened in Essie's "detention" and had sent her to the Ravenclaw common room, Essie had had nothing to tell.

Neville and Madam Pomfrey took some private pleasure in the fact that Snape, too, had heard the story that McGonagall had been murdered by the Carrows, and by all accounts had subjected them to a questioning as intense as any the rest of the staff had endured. In the end, their story must have satisfied him ― "Veritaserum, no doubt," Madam Pomfrey had muttered darkly ― for he turned them loose again. But they'd obviously had a miserable time of it, and whatever Snape had said to them seemed to have made an impression, because the number of hexes and detentions they meted out dropped dramatically. For a few days, anyway.

On the second day after McGonagall disappeared, Snape began to summon the Gryffindor students, and Madam Pomfrey had Neville place his memories temporarily in her safe-deposit pensieve.

"It's far safer this way," she said. "You don't even have to try Occlumency, and you won't have any tell-tale scars in your mind the way you might if you were Obliviated. It's not a permanent removal, either. As soon as you finish with the Headmaster, just come to me and get your memories back. Of course, it's not a long-term solution, because you can only do this with fairly recent memories, and not very many, either. The older the memory, the more traces it leaves, even if you're just keeping it in the pensieve briefly. But these will be quite fresh enough; the Headmaster will have no idea anything has been removed. Are you ready?"

Neville nodded. He realised that she was being untypically chatty just as a way to put him at ease, but in truth, removing memories for a pensieve held no terrors for him ― not when compared to the prospect of trying to use his meagre Occlumency skills against someone like Snape.