Chapter 202

Neville hadn't slept well, the previous night. He worried about his parents and he worried Harry had something to do with it.

That morning he and 'Gran' had a quiet breakfast, each lost in their thoughts. Neither ate that much as their stomachs were churning with worry.

When she finished her own breakfast, Augusta rose and muttered, "I'm going to the hospital and, from there, to the DMLE. Stay out of trouble." And left without another word or waiting for her grandson to respond.

About five minutes after she left and just as he was thinking of going out to greenhouses to work to calm himself, a house elf he recognised as belonging to Harry popped in.

It asked, "Mister Neville, Sir?"

Neville frowned in curiosity at it before he replied, "Yes. You're Harry's elf, aren't you?"

"I be Dobby," replied Dobby. "Dobby beings honoured to work for the Great Master Harry Potter, Sir; as his personal elf."

"Why are you here?" asked Neville.

Dobby pulled the envelope Harry had given him to deliver out of a hidden pocket of his pillowcase and offered it. "Master Harry be askings Dobby to be delivering letter to Mister Neville."

A little surprised, Neville accepted the letter and said, "Thank you."

Dobby popped away again without another word.

Quickly checking the envelope over, he noticed it was addressed to him in the scrawl Harry referred to as his handwriting whenever he was quickly writing anything.

Undoing the flap, he quickly unfolded the letter and read it.

By the time he was finished he was full of different emotions. He was grateful Harry had seen fit to write him and figured out using a house elf to deliver the letter got the letter to the recipient almost instantly. Clever, that. And he could see the wisdom of checking the life-stones - which his grandmother had already told him she'd done. He also appreciated his logic of them not being hurt where they lay implied the intent was not to hurt them at all. So, something else was going on.

However, the last line of the letter, below the signature, confused him. Harry was not one, as far as he knew, to write such... wishy-washy... circumlocution.

"Sometimes, when it is the most darkest, a line appears to guide the way," he muttered in confusion. "What, in Merlin's name, does that mean?"

After a long few moments, he still couldn't figure it out.

With a sigh, he muttered, "I need to go work on something in the greenhouses."

He got up and strode from the room, the letter still in his hand. As he walked outside, he stopped to fold it and slipped it into his robes before continuing on.

_‗_

―==(oIo)==―

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Harry was thankful that shopping wasn't anywhere the exhausting experience it was when he first arrived at the Grangers. True to her word, Hermione only made him purchase a couple of new pairs of jeans, three long-sleeved shirts, a jumper, a windcheater and a coat.

On the walk back, she said, "We'll have to let the aurors also know you'll need to be going into Diagon Alley tomorrow to be fitted for new robes and other wizarding wear."

"Whaaat?" he exclaimed.

"You have court on Tuesday morning, Harry," she replied. "You don't want to be turning up to represent your godfather in robes that show ankles and wrists, do you?"

Harry sighed and quietly replied, "No."

"Good," she firmly said. "I didn't want to have to argue with you about this. You'd have lost, anyway."

"Damn it," he grumbled.

Once he'd got home he mirror-called his godfather and told him the injustice his betrothed had put him through and was going to put him through again the next day in Diagon.

Sirius had no sympathy for him. Instead, he was all for it.

"Tell her I'll be stopping by after breakfast," he said. "We'll go into Diagon Alley, together. You're not the only one who needs to buy new robes. I've been on similar potions, remember?"

"What are you, part girl?" Harry exclaimed in shock. "It's clothes shopping, Sirius!"

"I'm aware, Pup," his godfather chuckled. "She's also right. The clothes maketh the man, Harry. Your mother told me that, once. She was just as right. I used to pick up more birds when I was dressed as a proper Heir than in jeans, open-collared shirt and motorcycle jacket - my preferred attire of choice.

"If you don't dress like the proper Lord you want everyone to believe you are, the Members aren't going to take you seriously."

"Damn it!" his godson grumbled.

_‗_

―==(oIo)==―

ˇ

Wanting to relax for a bit after the 'ordeal' of clothes shopping. Harry grabbed his bookbag from where it was currently hanging from the back of one of the dinette chairs from earlier that morning and pulled out parchment, ink and quill.

With them on the table he was quickly into yet another letter to Frank and Alice.

~ # ~

Frank and Alice,

Well, the story's broken. It was in this morning's Daily Prophet. You two made the main story on the front page. Congrats!

Secondly, it's now been about sixteen days for you two. By the time you get this you should have reached eighteen days. Congrats for that, too. You're halfway through.

Now that I know the story's broken I was able to send a letter to Neville. To get it there faster, I used what I term 'house elf express'. In other words, I gave it to a house elf to deliver. That way it got there in a matter of seconds, rather than hours. Why use owls?

To help him not panic so much, I reminded him you both have life-stones in Gringotts and that he should go check them. I also spoke about how, if 'whoever' took you wanted to do you harm, they'd have just harmed you where you lay. After all, it's not as if you could defend yourselves at the time. Why take you unless 'their' intent was to keep you alive?

I know it's going to make him stop and think. It's what I've been constantly quietly encouraging him to do since First Year and actively encouraging him to do since the First Task of the Tri-Wiz and we were all still at the school. Don't just accept things at face value. Think about it, first; really think about it.

Neville might not be a Slytherin. He might not want to think strategically or connivingly. But, as I told him back at school, he's 'supposed' to become the Lord of his House and take Seat on the Wizengamot in less than three years. If he didn't start to learn to do that - to look for hidden meaning and agendas - they were going to, as the saying goes, 'eat him alive'.

I know he's taken that to heart. So I also know he's going to have read what I wrote and be worrying at it like a dog with a bone, because some of it is not written how I would normally write. And he's going to wonder why.

If I'm right, he's going to figure it out either late tonight (our time) or tomorrow morning at the latest. He's going to figure out I had something to do with your disappearance.

Then he's going to have to face a dilemma. That dilemma is whether or not to tell his 'Gran'.

He might not know which way he'll decide, but I do. He will show her the letter and explain to her how he 'figured' out I'm partly responsible for you going missing. I know he'll do this because, even with our friendship, he has a strong sense of both family honour and respect for those in authority.

But, that's okay. He'll be right to tell her.

Then Augusta, the Slytherin she is, is going to 'figure out' I took you to stop her putting 'Uncle Algie' in the Longbottom Seat as Proxy. She's going to believe I'm holding you hostage somewhere. I want that misdirection.

Augusta's problem is, while that might be the sort of thing a Slytherin would do, it's not the sort of thing a Potter would do. As I said in my first letter to you, I might have supposed to have gone into Slytherin, but there was a reason the Hat allowed me to go into Gryffindor. I'm more a 'front you full on' sort of guy, than to do something so mean and dirty.

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