meddow

Really, I have no good excuse for why this chapter has been so long coming. I’m very sorry to those who have been waiting patiently. I will do my best to finish the last two chapters before Deathly Hallows.

Growing (16/18)
Chapter Sixteen – Wake Up Brother
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Chapter Summary: Lydia has finally made some progress and Neville finally finds out who has been preventing him from reading his parent’s file.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to my beta

nathaniel_hp

Previous Chapter

~*~*~*~

“You’re thinking about what Andromeda told you,” Ted suddenly said out of the blue when he and Neville were cleaning the kitchen that evening. He was right, Neville was thinking about it. How anyone would want to harm Ted, he did not know.

“I’m fine with you knowing,” Ted continued. “I just don’t like it when my life becomes entirely about one incident in the past.”

“I get that too,” Neville replied. “I don’t like it either.” He had hated it so much he had purposely decided to keep his parents' state secret from all the people in his year at Hogwarts. While most members of Ted’s generation knew, it was not something that people generally told their children, so Neville had some success, or at least until Gilderoy Lockhart was transferred to his parents' ward and Ron’s dad got attacked. Then it seemed like everyone that mattered knew.

Ted nodded.

“So, you haven’t said what caused your outburst this morning?” he enquired, stopping what he was doing and leaning against the kitchen counter. “Do you want to talk about it? Because if you do, I’m all ears.”

Neville thought for a moment. He had not explained his actions to Andromeda - she had just seemed to have been expecting it. Neville decided he had to tell someone about his morning and began telling Ted about his trip to St. Mungo’s.

Ted nodded patiently the whole time, and before Neville knew it, he confessed how he had thought he heard his mother.

“So you think there is hope?” Ted asked, patiently.

“I don’t know anymore. I want them to get better. I always have but maybe I was wrong, maybe they don’t know what’s going on around them,” Neville replied, not feeling quite as awful as he had a few hours ago, but it still hurt to admit what he was thinking.

Ted put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know what to do, Nev. It’s a tough situation. But if you don’t want to give up hope, I think a lot of people will understand that. Including your parents.”

“I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” Neville confessed.

“Well, it’s doing them no harm staying there for the meantime, is it? You have time to decide what is right for your family,” Ted replied.

Neville nodded, thankful that Ted was there to listen to him. Neville rarely had someone to confide in about matters relating to his parents.

Just then Andromeda burst into the kitchen. “Post owl arrived. Letter for you, Neville. You are very popular at the moment, aren’t you?”

She passed it on to Neville who recognised Lydia’s handwriting immediately.

This was the one telling him whether his parents' file had been declassified or not. Neville decided he did not really want to open it in front of Andromeda and Ted, not when he had not told them anything about his quest in the first place, so he shoved it in his pocket.

Later that night when he was alone in his room, Neville prised under the seal and peeked at the contents inside.

Dear Mr. Longbottom,

It seems your parents file is to remain official information. An Auror put a ban on it this morning. But don’t despair. The great difficulties I have had to go through only to be sidelined now has me greatly intrigued, and I think I may have a way of finding out who put on the official information order. Then it’s just a matter of persuasion.

Yours,
Lydia.

Neville didn’t know what to make of this. On the one hand, he did not really have much use for the information anymore. But the lengths people were going to keep this information hidden reeked of something suspicious. And this concerned his parents after all. He wanted to know what had happened on that night more than ever now.

Maybe he should talk to Tonks, he thought. She was an Auror; she would know how to get information. He then decided against it as she seemed to always get very uncomfortable around the topic of his parents. He would go speak with Lydia though.

~*~*~*~

It was odd going back to work again, after all the time Neville had had off with the Wedding and the Order meeting, which now seemed to be far in the past, despite it only being a few days ago. Neville wondered whether the emotional day he had before had caused time to seem to go by faster.

The Mimbulus were in good shape, now looking rather swollen, but Neville didn’t think he was any closer to getting them to flower. He had been giving some thought to transcription but quickly discarded the idea since Mimbulus did not have any branches, and while Neville was very comfortable around the plants defences, he wasn’t silly enough to want to experiment with the pustules.

A few days passed by, and relations with Andromeda seemed to be going well. If anything, Neville thought him and her as well as Ted seemed to get along better. Neville suspected it was because the topic they had all tiptoed over for so long was now in the air, and they all understood each other better.

There had not been sight nor sound of Tonks though, or Lupin for that matter. Neville asked Ted about it, and he replied that she was very busy at work. Neville had been quite busy as well. Ted and Andromeda’s wedding anniversary was fast approaching, and Ted had enlisted Neville to go through all the menus and reviews of all the restaurants in Chester looking for just the right place. Neville did not think he was much help. He had not eaten a lot of the food many of the places sold, especially the ethnic places. Ted kept going on about how Neville had missed out on so much having never eaten at an Indian restaurant and even went so far as to sneak out one day and reappear with an armful of Indian take-away. Neville was quite taken with butter chicken, but the idea of eating food that made his mouth feel like it was on fire took some getting used to; some of it seemed too much like one of Fred and George Weasley’s pranks to be actual food.

The events of the day he had yelled at Andromeda also seemed to have a positive effect on Neville’s relationship with his Gran. She even sent him a letter, railing on for some time about the blunders of the Ministry, and how in the day of Neville’s parents they had not been that incompetent; back then they had actually bothered to train the Aurors and they had caught at least one Death Eater every week. Neville was glad to have her back to her old self; he had missed her quite a bit since the fire.

Luna continued writing. Her latest quirk was ordinary household items. She had decided to test if they remained fixed when a person left the room. She wrote a long letter about her attempt to see if her dinning room table disappeared. It consisted of sneaking up on it and jumping out. But it was still there. In the end, much to Neville's and later Ted’s amusement, she concluded that it probably was disappearing, but it was much too crafty for her. Ted suggested to Neville that Luna should get some camera equipment and explained what that was. Luna decided that it wouldn’t count as leaving the room, and Neville continued to write about his plants. Luna was always asking about them.

Neville also received his Hogwarts letter, this year not signed by Professor McGonagall, but by Professor Sprout as acting deputy Headmistress. Neville did not have to go to Diagon Alley to pick up any supplies; he had bought his Hogwarts robes months ago now, and the texts could be ordered over Owl post. However, he found himself in need of an excuse to go visit Lydia, and needing to purchase supplies was the best reason he could think of.

Ted and Andromeda’s wedding anniversary crept around, and Andromeda surprised Ted by cooking him a very impressive spread for breakfast, and it wasn’t even that burnt. Neville felt like a bit of a third wheel and decided it was as good a day as any to leave for a while.

“Do you mind if I go to London for a while? I need to pick up some things for school,” he asked politely, hoping that Andromeda wouldn’t mind him taking a Tuesday off.

Andromeda seemed to be considering it, when Ted whispered, “We’ll have the house to ourselves,” which Neville, unfortunately, overheard.

Andromeda glared at Ted. “Are you sure you want to go alone? I just don’t think it is a good idea right now. Ted can go with you.” Ted’s pleased expression very quickly turned to one of disappointment.

“No… It’s alright, I’m meeting my Gran,” Neville lied. Andromeda did have a point, but he really did not want them to know he had been employing a private investigator to find out information about his parents.

“Oh, all right then,” she replied.

Ted grinned.

~*~*~*~

Neville apparated into a Muggle alleyway not far from the Leaky Cauldron and took the route he knew to lead to the Ministry Library. It was a bit odd for Neville wandering around Muggle London by himself. He had never been alone among Muggles before, but he thought he handled himself well, although he could not help but feel the odd stare in his direction.

To his relief, it wasn’t long before he came to the back alley that led to the Ministry Library. He tapped the rusty pipe five times, and sure enough a doorway appeared.

Reaching the fourth floor he found the same irritated librarian waiting at the desk. Neville surveyed the floor; there was nobody there among the towering filing cabinets other than him and the librarian.

“Is Lydia Jenkins here?” he asked timidly.

“She always shows up. Wait there, I’m sure she’ll be along,” the librarian replied, not looking up from a stack of paper on her desk.

Neville sat down on one of the chairs. The library was so quiet that Neville could hear the slow moving of the clock on the wall and the erratic shuffling of paper from the check-in desk. It did not take long for him to become bored out of his mind.

Eventually he got up and went for a wander around. There was very little around other than the cabinets. All of them were labelled in rather ancient looking handwriting and in ink that had started to fade. Peering at the one closest to him, he made out the words “licences – restricted plants and animals”. Moving around the room he found more, randomly situated cabinets with labels ranging from “school records” to “past editions of the Daily Prophet” to “animagus-capable wizards and witches”. Neville was astounded by all the information available to anyone wandering off the street. It was quite worrisome to him that anyone could just look up his school records.

He had the sudden urge to attempt look up his own school records himself to see if he could find them when he heard a woman cough behind him.

“Mr. Longbottom. So good to see you.” It was Lydia, wearing a rather satisfied grin.

“Hi,” Neville replied.

“Come, I have news,” she said putting a hand on his shoulder and ushering him towards the small room she used as her office.

Neville stepped in and sat down, as did Lydia after she rummaged around in her suitcase.

“I must say, your case is very interesting. It’s not very often that elements within the Auror Department try and stop my every move. But then again I should have expected it, they always protect their own,” she said smiling.

“So you found my parents' file?” Neville asked.

“No. No. That’s still official information, not available to the prying eyes of me, or even you for that matter,” Lydia replied with air of confidence about her.

“So really you’ve made no progress since your last letter.”

Lydia’s mouth moved into a thin line, and Neville thought he may have insulted her, before she regained her composure. “No. I’ve made a great deal of progress. You see, bureaucracy is a beautiful thing. Forms need to be filled out for the application and signed by the Auror making the application.”

“Oh,” Neville said, nodding a little and wondering where she was going with this.

“And while these form are all kept far away from the prying eyes of the public, I have a little friend who is working in the Ministry filing office,” she continued.

Suddenly she lowered her voice and leant over the table to Neville. “I don’t do this for all my clients - this was a rather large favour I had to call - but your case, as I have said before, intrigues me. So while I haven’t managed to get your parents' file declassified, I have managed to find out which Auror’s name is currently on the classification request.”

“Though it hasn’t been much help,” she said, while springing back up suddenly, the conspiratorial tone leaving her voice. “The girl must be covering for whoever really wants the file covered classified. She’s much too young to be involved in the actual incident.”

Neville felt his body suddenly chill like a person had walked over his grave. The Auror sounded too much like – no, it couldn’t be.

“Who’s the Auror?” Neville asked, dying to know.

“I haven’t learnt much yet. Just that she is some low-ranked junior. I can go interview her if you want - see who she’s covering up for - though I don’t recommend face to face confrontation, it’s not my style,” Lydia replied. “I’ll get some information on her and send her a letter.”

“No - I mean whatever - I just want to know her name,” Neville asked anxiously.

Lydia sighed. “It’s a bit of a dead end, but Nymphadora Tonks.”

Neville froze. Tonks had been covering up for the Ministry. Then he remembered the letter she had received that had caused her to run out. How she had been really uncomfortable around him at first. All that time it had been Tonks.

“Are you quite okay, Mr. Longbottom? You’ve gone quite pale,” Lydia asked.

All this time she had been keeping information from him, and he did not know why. Could he trust her? Neville then remembered that is had been him who had recommended Tonks for the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts and felt sick.

“No.” Neville paused trying to think of what to do. “I have to go,” he said getting up, the legs of his chair making a jarring scratch along the floor as he did so.

“Do you want me to continue with the investigation?” Lydia asked as he rushed out of the room.

Neville stopped. “No. I’ll do it from here,” he said before heading off again. This concerned him, his parents and Tonks. He would deal with this himself, not get Lydia involved.

“Fine, my bill will come in a few days,” Lydia called after him.

Neville got to the ground floor and was about to apparate, but quickly decided against it. He was in no state to try with his mind like this.

He began the trek back to the Leaky Cauldron, trying to make up his mind about what to do. He had to speak with Tonks, and soon. But he did not know where she lived. In Hogsmeade somewhere, but he would probably wander around the town all day and not find her.

His only option was to go back to Andromeda and Ted’s house and ask them. But were they in on it, as well? What was it? Was she covering for a colleague? Or was she covering for someone more sinister? And why? What could possibly be in that report that would hurt anyone, everyone knew what had happened, why was it being covered up?

Another thought crossed his mind, was she covering up for his parents? Was there something in their past Neville did not know about?

He did not know anything. All he did know was that he needed to talk to Tonks, and soon.

Neville reached the Leaky Cauldron and threw a handful of Floo powder onto the fire. “Dominion Road,” he yelled and was quickly in the Tonks’ lounge. It was late afternoon now, and he found Ted wandering round the kitchen, using his reflection in the oven to tie his tie.

“I need to speak with Tonks,” Neville said. “Where does she live?”

Ted gave him a puzzled look. “In the flat above where Zonko’s used to be.”

“Thanks,” Neville replied and started to head towards the fireplace.

“Look, Nev, if you want to speak to Dora, now’s not a good time to go. She’s working days at the moment, and chances are that she won’t be home. Send her a letter first and ask her when she will be there. Can it wait?”

“Well, can I go tonight?”

“We were hoping you would be able to keep an eye on the house tonight,” Andromeda said as she walked in, wafting the scent of her perfume through the kitchen. She was wearing a beautiful floral dress and carrying a shawl, ready to go out for the evening.

Neville remembered then their anniversary plans. Ted had put so much effort into this, and Neville did not want to ruin it by making them worry.

“What is it about anyway?” Ted asked.

“It’s not important, it can wait. I just…um…needed an answer on a Defence question,” Neville lied.

“Okay, good,” Ted replied, having finished with his tie.

“We should be back by nine,” Andromeda said, walking out.

“You know where we are going, don’t you?” Ted called as he left the lounge.

“Yeah,” Neville replied, not listening but rather thinking about what he was going to do.

He went up to his room and grabbed a sheet of paper and a quill.

I know about the report. I know you have been keeping information from me, he wrote. He addressed it to Tonks, tied the letter to the foot of one of Andromeda’s owls and sent it off to Hogsmeade.

Satisfied he had done something, but his head still spinning with questions, Neville sat down with some left-over curry and began to read yet another book he had found on plants. His mind was so preoccupied that he did not notice he had already read that one three times before.

There was a sudden noise, a knock on the door.

Neville got up headed for the front door, pulling out his wand as he did so.

“Who is it?” he called.

“Tonks.”

Neville had to think for a second before he could remember what the question he was supposed to ask was, “What was your pet Owl’s name when you were a kid?’

“Phillip,” she called back patiently.

Neville unlatched the door. Tonks was standing there alone wearing her normal T-shirt and jeans, carrying her wand and with a tired and distraught look about her.

“We need to talk,” she said. Neville nodded.

“Why?” Neville asked, his voice quieter than he thought it should be. He thought he would be angrier. “Were you covering for someone?”

Tonks stared at his hand, and Neville realised he had his wand pointed at her. He did not put it back.

“No. It was me. I didn’t want you to read it,” she replied, pushing her way past him and into the lounge.

“So…why?” he asked again. “What’s in it?”

Tonks sat down in the chair and stared the wall. She just sat there not saying anything. She seemed to be steeling herself up for something. What it was, Neville had no idea.

“I need to know what happened. Why don’t you want me to read it? What is in it? Why do my parents need protecting? Why is it you that is doing it?” Neville asked, the volume of his voice rising with every question, hoping to get some form of response from her.

Tonks bowed her head and looked to the floor. “Please, Neville, stop asking questions,” she snapped.

Neville stopped talking and a moment's silence followed before Tonks opened her mouth once more.

“You have to understand, this isn’t easy for me. I’ve never had to tell anyone before and – and you’re really the last person I wanted to have to tell,” she said rapidly.

“Tell me what?” he pushed, growing impatient with her. What could it possibly be?

“The report says that your parents were foolhardy,” she said, still concentrating on the floor. “It uses that exact word.”

“Foolhardy?” Neville repeated, his stomach sinking.

“Because they did exactly what they shouldn’t have done. They found they were being attacked by three Death Eaters in their own home. They were outnumbered and they had an infant child, and instead of running and getting help and saving you, they stayed and fought. They risked their lives when they shouldn’t have done so.”

She said it slowly and calmly, and Neville took in every word. The report was right, that had been exactly what had happened. They had hidden Neville beneath the floorboards in the bedroom surrounded by silencing charms and gone off to fight. His Gran had told him as a child that was how he had survived. But they could have run away.

“And you didn’t want me to read that?” Neville asked.

“No,” Tonks replied quietly.

Neville sat down on the chair next to her.

Tonks turned to him, looking him the eyes for the first time that evening. “Your parents were heroes, Neville, and I wanted you to think that. They deserve better than that lie that was concocted up to protect me.”

“What?” he asked, shocked by her last statement. Neville really had no idea what was going on now.

A tear fell down Tonks’ face. “I really have never had to tell anyone this. Nobody knows that I know, except Dumbledore and he’s dead now so I never had to…” Her voice drifted off.

“Know what?” he asked, desperate to get a straight answer out of her.

“That I was there,” she blurted out. “They saved my life…Your parents stayed and they fought because Bellatrix and Rodolphus had a child under Imperius and it was me. I’m the reason why your parents are in St. Mungo’s."

She looked to him, her eyes red. "My family really did ruin your life."

Neville stood, feeling strangely calm despite her confession, as if a wall had been erected between him and whatever he was supposed to think. It had happened again. It had happened with Moody and now it had happened with Tonks. All this time he had been talking with a person who had been there on that night and he had not know. Neville headed for the back door and on to the greenhouse. He needed to be alone. He needed to think.