It's the cats that catch the rats
I wrote this one aaaages ago, but I was worried it was really overly angsty and odd, so I let it stew for a while. Came back to it today, and didn't really change anything after all. Hehe. But anyhow, enjoy.
Title: It's the cats that catch the rats
Summary: Each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1730
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.-- W. Somerset Maugham
Lightning was striking all over the courtroom, with loud clicks and clacks and fizzes of light bulbs flashing and camera shutters opening and closing. As each flash struck, the thin boy in the cage would flinch, and bite his lip. By the end of the session, when he was dragged away by his arms, toes leaving sweaty trails on the ground, his chin was bright red from the blood.
~.~
“Neville, I haven’t the time, I have to go help Ron, go talk to Ginny.”
“Can’t you go find Justin, or someone else to bug?”
“Neville, we’re all really busy, why don’t you go talk to the Gryffindors?”
“Why are you hanging around here, mate? I’m trying to talk to Dean. Privately.”
A flash.
Neville snatched the camera out of Colin’s hands, and smashed to the ground. Metal pieces dashed across the floor, shrapnel for bare feet that weren’t looking. A piece of paper drifted to the ground in sympathy with the broken machine, the image jumping out of the black as it fell.
Neville, standing in a corner, away from the couples and groups in the common room, head in hands which pulled thin hair, hunched against the wall.
When Colin tried to rescue his photo from the wreckage, Neville pushed him to the ground, and fell down on him. His fist was raised, and was aimed at the photographer’s eye, when brutal hands pulled him off and flung him across the room. When the lights stopped spinning in front of his eyes, he could see Ron and Seamus standing as sentinels in front of the sobbing boy.
They were looking at him as if they didn’t know who he was. Neville stood, back to the wall, and edged along the wall until he fell out of the door.
~.~
The voices always started in the middle of the night, just as he was about to sleep. They would sift in through the cracks in the floorboards and between the weave of the curtains, tiptoeing across the pillow and then diving into his ears, taking up residence inside his head.
They whispered bad things, horrible things, wrong things. Words that cut and bludgeoned; they were tearing everything up, until there was nothing left, only a little scrap of paper that was torn and muddy and had written on it ‘Neville’ so he that wouldn’t forget.
They had broken all the safe windows and blinds, so that now the light could get in burn him until he was red and blistered.
He’d tried to tell them, that the voices were talking to him, that they were wrong, and to let them prove that they had the right way, the Light way; but the light was filling him now, so that he could hardly see, and it burnt.
He’d tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.
~.~
Neville had always loved his parents. They were heroes who were casualties of the Light right bright fight. They would always love him and want the best for him and want him to be brave and good and strong and their pride and joy.
While his Grandmother would say all this, in her vulture hat which was always about to pluck out his eyes, his parents would scream and moan and dribble over his arm. His parents would never hurt him. They were strapped down too tightly for that.
He hated Voldemort. It was because of him that his parents were this way because he was evil and wanted the worst for the world and anyone with sense in their heads felt the same way and his parents had done the right thing the only good thing in going out and fighting him and Voldemort would have done even worse to Neville if he could have, and Neville knew this.
Neville couldn’t help thinking, though, that if his parents had both been accountants, this never would have happened. And then he looked at Malfoy, and Pansy, and he looked at Harry, and he wondered at having parents, and not having parents, and sides.
~.~
He knew he was brave. He didn’t scream at all when he was falling out of the window.
No one had ever properly explained to Neville what would have happened if he hadn’t bounced.
~.~
Neville knew about the Marauders. He knew about James the brave, Sirius the brash, and Remus the bright. And he knew about Peter, the sidekick, the tag along, the traitor.
They didn’t know he knew it all. They thought he was harmless, little and powerless, but nice and favoured and looked after, like a pet mouse.
Mice got into the nooks and crannies, where they weren’t expected or wanted. They chewed holes in the furniture, and left droppings in the food. A mouse could bite, small and sharp.
Neville knew that James was dead; and Sirius was gone; and Remus was a tame dog, with a potion as his collar. But the other one sat at the right hand of the Dark Lord, and had a mighty hand of his own, that could make stones dust.
~.~
Harry had always looked after him. Harry had made him feel twenty times as good as he was; worth twenty of Malfoy, maybe he was almost worth one Harry. Harry was broken, too, with a crack running down his head to bright green eyes that treated Neville well, and knew what it was like to be ignored.
Harry knew what it was like to have everything counting on being on the right side, and he could listen to him. And when he had stood there, and let him be bound and powerless while Harry had gone off and been the hero, bright and broken fair; well, Neville had then been the one to make it all right at the end of the year, and his Gryffindor gold was all around the hall, as was right.
The Slytherins looked as if they would cry, that day; a few of the juniors did. Neville didn’t look; there were more important things to do, as he was held up high.
But then Harry had left, and the others were too busy being prepared to listen to Neville’s whispers about the voices. And the light burnt, and flashed, and when Neville made it stop, they couldn’t even recognise him.
~.~
Neville fell out of the door, onto the stone outside, which with sharp claws scratched the thin skin away from his weak chin, so that crimson bloomed and graced his face with its wet heat.
That bright red flower still lay abandoned on the floor as he stumbled off down the corridor, with loud, empty sobs bouncing off the hard walls.
The pictures lay silent - still, unforgiving windows into the parallel universes that Muggles could only dream of.
And he thought of their eyes, blazing brightly in protection of their own as he, Neville, slunk out of the room; he thought of their eyes, almost as bright and as painful as the light that blazed and coiled confidently in his head and whispered sweet, toxic things to him; he thought of them, as he stumbled, sobbing, down the corridors and down the stairs down to the dark dungeons.
~.~
Being a rodent, a rat, was not so bad. It is, after all, the rats that stream off the ship, sensing danger, abandoning the vessel for the foolhardy sailors that journeyed off the edge of the world, while their sweethearts stayed behind weeping.
It’s the rats that spread the black death, carrying sickness on their backs
Rats are popular pets, once washed and tamed and given novelty collars and names.
Trust me. I’m a rat.
~.~
And at the end, when all the snakes lay dead on the field, Neville sat secure and scared as usual in his little hole, gnawing at his nails and whatever crusts lay around.
At night, when the darkness that filled the room was just that little bit darker, he would curl up on the floor amid the ashes and the dust, and cry hopelessly for his mother. His tears would form puddles, and when he eventually awoke with tired eyes, there would be mud stuck to his face, which there was no clean water to wash off.
And so when the big cats came bursting through the ceiling, dumping dirt straight down on him, with their claws out and mouths shouting out bright, golden spells that filled the space inside his head with blazing light, it was no surprise that at first they did not recognise their once-friend, once-ally.
Both Neville and Harry wished that he hadn’t been recognised, once the heartbreak and betrayal was again spread across the hero’s face. And Neville, seeing that, felt his own small, beating flesh tear and bleed.
~.~
They hadn’t understood.
Not when they dragged him roughly out of the dirt, their fingernails leaving red crescents over the scars and dark marks that now covered his arms.
Not when he’d screamed and sobbed in the cell they’d thrown him in, saying over and over I’m sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me.
Not when he testified, voice flat and dead. But he hadn’t expected them to. Neville, were he in their shoes, would not have forgiven himself. And he’d known that, known when he had given them up that it was for forever.
He hadn’t thought, though, that it would end this way. That sweet, whispering voice had been right about all the foul, wretched things that it had hissed through his head, about loyalty and love and the ideas that bind so tight they cut. But the lure of promised sweetness had been wrong.
Neville had thought that it was the rats that came out on top. But he had forgotten: it’s the cats that catch the rats, and put them in a cage for all the world to see. With sharp tooth and claw, they carve ‘traitor’, and then turn their backs, secure in honourable blindness and the deafness that victory brings.
Title: It's the cats that catch the rats
Summary: Each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1730
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.-- W. Somerset Maugham
Lightning was striking all over the courtroom, with loud clicks and clacks and fizzes of light bulbs flashing and camera shutters opening and closing. As each flash struck, the thin boy in the cage would flinch, and bite his lip. By the end of the session, when he was dragged away by his arms, toes leaving sweaty trails on the ground, his chin was bright red from the blood.
~.~
“Neville, I haven’t the time, I have to go help Ron, go talk to Ginny.”
“Can’t you go find Justin, or someone else to bug?”
“Neville, we’re all really busy, why don’t you go talk to the Gryffindors?”
“Why are you hanging around here, mate? I’m trying to talk to Dean. Privately.”
A flash.
Neville snatched the camera out of Colin’s hands, and smashed to the ground. Metal pieces dashed across the floor, shrapnel for bare feet that weren’t looking. A piece of paper drifted to the ground in sympathy with the broken machine, the image jumping out of the black as it fell.
Neville, standing in a corner, away from the couples and groups in the common room, head in hands which pulled thin hair, hunched against the wall.
When Colin tried to rescue his photo from the wreckage, Neville pushed him to the ground, and fell down on him. His fist was raised, and was aimed at the photographer’s eye, when brutal hands pulled him off and flung him across the room. When the lights stopped spinning in front of his eyes, he could see Ron and Seamus standing as sentinels in front of the sobbing boy.
They were looking at him as if they didn’t know who he was. Neville stood, back to the wall, and edged along the wall until he fell out of the door.
~.~
The voices always started in the middle of the night, just as he was about to sleep. They would sift in through the cracks in the floorboards and between the weave of the curtains, tiptoeing across the pillow and then diving into his ears, taking up residence inside his head.
They whispered bad things, horrible things, wrong things. Words that cut and bludgeoned; they were tearing everything up, until there was nothing left, only a little scrap of paper that was torn and muddy and had written on it ‘Neville’ so he that wouldn’t forget.
They had broken all the safe windows and blinds, so that now the light could get in burn him until he was red and blistered.
He’d tried to tell them, that the voices were talking to him, that they were wrong, and to let them prove that they had the right way, the Light way; but the light was filling him now, so that he could hardly see, and it burnt.
He’d tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.
~.~
Neville had always loved his parents. They were heroes who were casualties of the Light right bright fight. They would always love him and want the best for him and want him to be brave and good and strong and their pride and joy.
While his Grandmother would say all this, in her vulture hat which was always about to pluck out his eyes, his parents would scream and moan and dribble over his arm. His parents would never hurt him. They were strapped down too tightly for that.
He hated Voldemort. It was because of him that his parents were this way because he was evil and wanted the worst for the world and anyone with sense in their heads felt the same way and his parents had done the right thing the only good thing in going out and fighting him and Voldemort would have done even worse to Neville if he could have, and Neville knew this.
Neville couldn’t help thinking, though, that if his parents had both been accountants, this never would have happened. And then he looked at Malfoy, and Pansy, and he looked at Harry, and he wondered at having parents, and not having parents, and sides.
~.~
He knew he was brave. He didn’t scream at all when he was falling out of the window.
No one had ever properly explained to Neville what would have happened if he hadn’t bounced.
~.~
Neville knew about the Marauders. He knew about James the brave, Sirius the brash, and Remus the bright. And he knew about Peter, the sidekick, the tag along, the traitor.
They didn’t know he knew it all. They thought he was harmless, little and powerless, but nice and favoured and looked after, like a pet mouse.
Mice got into the nooks and crannies, where they weren’t expected or wanted. They chewed holes in the furniture, and left droppings in the food. A mouse could bite, small and sharp.
Neville knew that James was dead; and Sirius was gone; and Remus was a tame dog, with a potion as his collar. But the other one sat at the right hand of the Dark Lord, and had a mighty hand of his own, that could make stones dust.
~.~
Harry had always looked after him. Harry had made him feel twenty times as good as he was; worth twenty of Malfoy, maybe he was almost worth one Harry. Harry was broken, too, with a crack running down his head to bright green eyes that treated Neville well, and knew what it was like to be ignored.
Harry knew what it was like to have everything counting on being on the right side, and he could listen to him. And when he had stood there, and let him be bound and powerless while Harry had gone off and been the hero, bright and broken fair; well, Neville had then been the one to make it all right at the end of the year, and his Gryffindor gold was all around the hall, as was right.
The Slytherins looked as if they would cry, that day; a few of the juniors did. Neville didn’t look; there were more important things to do, as he was held up high.
But then Harry had left, and the others were too busy being prepared to listen to Neville’s whispers about the voices. And the light burnt, and flashed, and when Neville made it stop, they couldn’t even recognise him.
~.~
Neville fell out of the door, onto the stone outside, which with sharp claws scratched the thin skin away from his weak chin, so that crimson bloomed and graced his face with its wet heat.
That bright red flower still lay abandoned on the floor as he stumbled off down the corridor, with loud, empty sobs bouncing off the hard walls.
The pictures lay silent - still, unforgiving windows into the parallel universes that Muggles could only dream of.
And he thought of their eyes, blazing brightly in protection of their own as he, Neville, slunk out of the room; he thought of their eyes, almost as bright and as painful as the light that blazed and coiled confidently in his head and whispered sweet, toxic things to him; he thought of them, as he stumbled, sobbing, down the corridors and down the stairs down to the dark dungeons.
~.~
Being a rodent, a rat, was not so bad. It is, after all, the rats that stream off the ship, sensing danger, abandoning the vessel for the foolhardy sailors that journeyed off the edge of the world, while their sweethearts stayed behind weeping.
It’s the rats that spread the black death, carrying sickness on their backs
Rats are popular pets, once washed and tamed and given novelty collars and names.
Trust me. I’m a rat.
~.~
And at the end, when all the snakes lay dead on the field, Neville sat secure and scared as usual in his little hole, gnawing at his nails and whatever crusts lay around.
At night, when the darkness that filled the room was just that little bit darker, he would curl up on the floor amid the ashes and the dust, and cry hopelessly for his mother. His tears would form puddles, and when he eventually awoke with tired eyes, there would be mud stuck to his face, which there was no clean water to wash off.
And so when the big cats came bursting through the ceiling, dumping dirt straight down on him, with their claws out and mouths shouting out bright, golden spells that filled the space inside his head with blazing light, it was no surprise that at first they did not recognise their once-friend, once-ally.
Both Neville and Harry wished that he hadn’t been recognised, once the heartbreak and betrayal was again spread across the hero’s face. And Neville, seeing that, felt his own small, beating flesh tear and bleed.
~.~
They hadn’t understood.
Not when they dragged him roughly out of the dirt, their fingernails leaving red crescents over the scars and dark marks that now covered his arms.
Not when he’d screamed and sobbed in the cell they’d thrown him in, saying over and over I’m sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me.
Not when he testified, voice flat and dead. But he hadn’t expected them to. Neville, were he in their shoes, would not have forgiven himself. And he’d known that, known when he had given them up that it was for forever.
He hadn’t thought, though, that it would end this way. That sweet, whispering voice had been right about all the foul, wretched things that it had hissed through his head, about loyalty and love and the ideas that bind so tight they cut. But the lure of promised sweetness had been wrong.
Neville had thought that it was the rats that came out on top. But he had forgotten: it’s the cats that catch the rats, and put them in a cage for all the world to see. With sharp tooth and claw, they carve ‘traitor’, and then turn their backs, secure in honourable blindness and the deafness that victory brings.