Fidelius

Hogwarts

2001

It hadn’t been goblins, ghosts, or gigantic spiders that stood between Marigold Bronte and her very unmagical resolve.

This time, it was a door.

Doubled with bronzed wood. Carved renaissance panels that stood between a Gothic archway of stone. Masonry cold as judgement. Guarding on either side stood two knights in suits of armor, hands crossed over the hilt of their swords, and blades pointed downward between their feet.

Marigold yanked the iron ring handles with all she had.

But no matter how hard she pulled, the doors of the Great Hall wouldn’t budge to let her out.

“Oh for the love of--Hello! I’m still in here,” she called, her fist knocking against the unyielding door that had now become her prison. “Neville?...Anybody?...I’ve got myself stuck again!”

It was no use.

The door remained still and silent, sealed up tight by an impressively stubborn Colloportus locking charm...Or so she assumed.

But why would anyone want to lock her inside here?

It was her wedding day, after all, and she would be missed soon.

She’d only meant to be gone a few minutes.

‘I’ll be right back, love,’ she had said, stealing a quick kiss from her groom.

“Merlin...don’t leave me alone here,” Neville had murmured against her ear, smiling. “Not with this lot.”

She had laughed softly, brushing her thumb tenderly along his jaw.

“Remember, you don’t have to say anything clever tonight,” she had whispered. “Just smile and let them love you a bit. Besides, we’re married now. I’ve got forever to keep you to myself.”

“We are married,” he had said to her, earnest as ever. “Which means anywhere you are, I’ll be. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with--”

But someone had clapped him on the shoulder merrily then, and Neville had been pulled back into a crush of congratulations from old school friends and fellow Aurors, that he soon lost track of her wedding dress rustling away. She only looked back at him once, her heart swelling with the utmost affection for how much he still blushed, even now, when the center of attention found him off the battlefield.

She’d only meant to make everything perfect for him.

To see that the flowers still sat exactly where she’d left them, with every blushing lily straightened, every ribbon-tied serviette just so. She was a florist, after all. And a perfectionist. Even in a world full of magic that might’ve sorted these things out.

This, however, was anything but perfect.

And when no footsteps returned, when no voices echoed through the passageway outside, it became clear that no one was coming for her until the hors d’oeuvres were served.

She turned back around to the Great Hall lavishly decorated like springtime in the highlands behind her.

Her maple brown eyes scanning the long wooden tables with happy tears for what was to be her wedding reception. Golden candlesticks floating above her against an enchanted ceiling reflecting the stormy indigo clouds outside and cold rain falling against the long paneled Arthurian windows. The stone fireplace carved with the Hogwarts House crest, hung with a shimmering, regal golden banner reading, ‘Cheers to Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom’.

The house tables set with rose-gold chargers and goblets, and eucalyptus green linen napkins wrapped with twine and dittany. Each place card elegantly quill-scribbled with her guest list: The Weasleys, The Potters, The Scamanders, The Finnigans, The Longbottoms, The Thomases, The Brontes. The bell-curved centerpieces on each table weaved together with Gryffindor-inspired burnt-orange peonies, blood-maroon angel’s trumpet, lilac Flutterby Bush, lily, and mint and Niffler’s Fancy for foliage. She and her husband-to-be had spent all of yesterday scavenging the Scottish Highlands for each magical bloom, and wand-tied them together as the sun set over the valley. All before she was pulled away from him, and the hard lingering kiss he left on her sweet lips, as she was “kidnapped” for the next sunset.

Because everybody knows, it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. Even with a well-brewed Felix Felicis potion.

But Marigold was done being told what is and what isn’t proper for a respectably well-bred wizarding family like the Longbottoms. And how, as a “muggle”, she always seemed to teeter hopelessly on the what isn’t side.

She was getting out of that hall, with magic on her side or not.

Undoing the floral pins that held up the rustic, whimsy twist of her twirling auburn hair, her curls cascaded over her bare shoulders as she leaned forward to catch the fluttery chiffon hem of her ivory wedding gown. Wrapping it up in a knot just above her knees, before kicking off her matching bridal lace heels.

Determined to settle the score the castle had picked with her once again, she marched over to one of the stone knight statues guarding the Great Hall doors and yanked the battle sword from his crossed stone hands.

"Colloportus, my muggle ass,” she muttered under her breath.

Counting her barefooted paces between her and the Great Hall door, Marigold squeezed the hilt in both hands, taking a deep breath for courage, and charging at the door again.

Just as she heard a muffled but equally determined shout from the other side of the door, ”Alohomora!”

And had he not been spot on for a wand-dueler, seasoned by the fantastical horrors of the Second Wizarding War, Neville Longbottom might’ve been a moment too late to declare, ”Arresto momentum.”

His quick-thinking spell slowing her down enough to catch hold of her wrist, and divert the sword in her hand away from josting him through. Hanging onto her securely as he pulled her into his chest to slow the brave fury of her momentum, saving her from a nasty fall on the unforgiving stony castle floor. One he was all too familiar with during his tormenting school days at Hogwarts.

And with Neville’s other arm holding her fast at the small of her back, her hands greedily gripped the softness of his knitted brown and caramel cardigan to steady herself, as her gaze locked with his wide, beautiful wormwood green eyes.

His warm, comforting presence and the lingering hint of fresh garden dirt that she could never seem to wash out of his cozy jumpers, inevitably disarming her.

“Alright, Mare?” Neville worried for her first, and then second, scanned up the massive battle steel in her proportionally more dainty hand. “Bloody hell, that’s an ace for a sword. What’s happened? Why are you...”

And then he suddenly went very still.

His eyes gradually going more serious in the eerie quiet in the hall.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t hear me,” Marigold answered him lightly.

But Neville didn’t answer her as quickly as she’d hoped. Instead, his gaze swept across the Great Hall. Over the eerie unseated tables, the quietly flickering gold of candlelight, the flowers she’d so tenderly arranged for their wedding day. His eyes trained for some unseen danger in the shadowy corners of the hall that he forgot to name for her.

“Neville?” Her smile gradually fell. “Is everything alright?”

Gradually, his eyes found refuge back in hers, still held guarded in his arms.

“Mare...was there no one else in here with you?”

“Oh, he actually just left. Not long before you came charging in to rescue me,” she told him. “You didn’t see him go out?”

His body tensed a little at that. “Who, love?”

“That man in the green serpent robe...He was wandering around lost in here when I came in to check the florals,” she said. “He was a bit chatty too, and when I told him I made the arrangements myself, he started going on and on about plants and things. Which makes perfect sense, I think, because he said he was your friend, from the Ministry. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Very pale. He looked a bit sickly, actually. Like he had a bad cold, or something.”

Before he could answer, Neville’s gaze wandered over her shoulder again.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were just coming up the stairs to the entrance of the Great Hall, with the rest of the wedding party not far behind them.

And sensing how gravely Neville’s posture had straightened, Harry, Ron, and Hermione slowed to a stop beside the newly wedded couple.

None of them spoke immediately, which only made Marigold feel more unsettled.

Just a coded exchange of glances that hinted at something very serious being passed between the four of them, in that instinctive wordless language Marigold sometimes observed between aurors that worked with Neville.

She felt the exclusion immediately. That familiar, awful feeling of being the odd one out in a room full of magical folk.

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “Is there something I should know?”

Hermione answered her first, her voice gentle but still regretful that she was always the one to piece these things together. Especially when the others failed to put it in plain words for a muggle.

“Everyone we know from the Ministry is still on their way in the courtyard,” she said. “Whoever spoke to you wasn’t invited.”

Ron frowned at that. “How could someone just wander in without us knowing it? At a mate’s wedding, of all places?”

Harry, though, didn’t seem to find that such a wild idea.

“Well, Hogwarts hasn’t always been exactly as secure as everyone thinks.”

He glanced back toward the stairs, where the wedding party was starting to ascend toward the Great Hall.

“Whoever was here, he knows enough about Neville’s mission to trigger a containment spell, and he probably hasn’t gone far,” Harry said. “The only question is why...Maybe he wanted to use Marigold as a way to gain intel, being the closest person to Neville.”

“He did mention something about the ministry, actually,” Marigold remembered. “Something to do with an experimental plant? Weeping Hecate, I think it was. I told him I don’t know much about magical plants, and when he offered to show me, something felt off. I said no...And he said he’d make sure I didn’t have a choice. He told me everything about what you were working on, and how the Ministry--”

But Neville didn’t let her finish that thought.

His finger came up urgently, gently against her lips. The happy, rosy color quickly leaving his face.

“Mare, don’t,” he stopped her quickly, before pleading with her quietly. “Please, don’t tell me anything else.”

“So...that’s what activated the Restricted Knowledge Charm,” Hermione realized, her brow furrowing in concern.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Marigold answered hesitantly. “Only I’m sorry? I know I’ve a knack for getting trapped behind doors, but whatever that was, I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Blimey,” Ron said to Neville, attempting a grin to break the tension in the room. “Suppose it makes sense how you found each other. You both got a knack for landing clumsily in the middle of it. A matched set, you two are.”

Hermione shot Ron a look, mouthing the words, Not now, Ron.

“Alright, so I’ve broken it...Again,” Marigold said, swallowing back all the awkwardness. “How do I unbreak it?”

“I’m not sure it can be. It’s a Ministry containment charm,” Hermione informed her. “When classified information reaches someone the ministry hasn’t authorized, the spell isolates that person in a kind of prison, until the nearest Auror can show up and...”

Hermione’s regretful eyes shifted back to Neville.

Neville avoided her gaze, but Marigold already felt the tension in his body as he held her.

Whatever she had done this time, whatever they were all so serious about, it was so far beyond the line of “restricted” that possibly...irreparably...not even magic could fix it.

“Well, it was an honest mistake. She’s a muggle, you know. She couldn’t have known,” Ron said. “If Neville explains all that to the Ministry, then--”

“The fact that she’s a Muggle, and non-magical, won’t exactly reassure them,” Harry said grimly. “And by the time anyone files an appeal, the Ministry will already have...handled it.”

Ron stared back at Harry, appalled.

“Wait,” an ever confused Marigold tried to put in. “Sorry, what does your Ministry have to do with--”

“They can’t expect Neville to go along with that. Not tonight,” Ron said back to Harry, hardly hearing her. “Not on his wedding night.”

“I know what I was briefed,” Neville said, aware of Marigold standing there more baffled as the argument between them escalated. “And I know exactly what happens if I don’t follow it.”

His hand pulled her waist in just slightly closer to his side.

“I’ll answer to the Auror’s office for it later. Right now, we need to find the man who invited himself in, before anything else is compromised.”

“Neville,” Hermione reminded him quietly. “They won’t give you that time. You know they won’t wait for a report. If they believe a breach has occurred, they’ll send someone immediately. And if it isn’t...contained...”

“Can we have just a minute alone?” Neville’s request was barely audible, and so carefully restrained. “Please.”

Understanding completely, Hermione nodded.

But Harry was already moving, nudging Ron along with him. “We should find where he is and have him obliviated. Now.”

It happened so quickly for her.

One moment, Marigold was standing in a Hogwarts Greenhouse at sunset, her trembling hands held steady by the love of her life, as his vow breathed softly against her ear, ′Forever, if you’ll have me.′

The next, the Great Hall was spinning, and she wasn’t so much a gleeful bride anymore, but a breach. Standing at the center of wizardly politics, while three wizards and one witch quietly debated her fate, as if it were another looming declaration of war.

And all for the crime of having struck up some casual smalltalk with a stranger about plants over a levitating platter of Stuffed Button Mushrooms.

“Come with me,” Neville urged her quietly.

And she was no closer to knowing what it was all about when Neville’s hand wrapped around her waist to gently lead her back into the quiet of the Great Hall, before the delay of their reception could be noticed.

“Neville?” she whispered. “Why are you looking at me like that? What’s happened?”

He didn’t answer her immediately, his spring meadow for green eyes and his strong dark brows making his profile all the more stunning to her. His gaze wandered from hers to follow the romantic specs of candlelight floating about the Great Hall ceiling, now more ominous, as the storm it mirrored continued to rage grimly outside.

A darker knowing overtaking his once happy thoughts of losing his breath as he watched her walk into the greenhouses, just as beautiful as she looked now, after becoming his beloved wife on their wedding day.

How badly he’d wished to share their wedding night together, knowing how he never believed anyone would see anything worth loving in him, for how incredibly hard on himself he always was. How very instantly he knew he’d found something special in her, when she told him he was magical, before he ever realized he actually was.

How desperately he wished he had a time-turner, so that he could go back to that first day, and do this all differently.

Maybe they both saw each other as an escape from their own worlds, and were just too stubborn to accept that risk like this might come. That they were from two very different worlds, and they were probably never meant to meet.

That she might’ve been right, when she once told him, “Maybe it was Hannah Abbott who was always meant to be apart of your story. Maybe I’m just getting in the way of what really makes you happy.”

He’d faced an army of Death Eaters to prove her wrong. To show her that he could make her happy too, and that the threat of her greatest heartbreak wasn’t always waiting somewhere in his eyes.

And yet, here they were once more.

He knew what was expected of him, now his work with the Auror’s Office had been unexpectedly compromised.

To be a husband, or to be the auror.

“Please,” she said quietly. “Don’t shut me out. Say something. Anything...Or I might start imagining the worst.”

“There isn’t a spell for this,” he managed to get out at last. “Not one I know, anyway, that lets me unhear everything you’ve just told me.”

Her brow drew in, evermore deeply troubled by how conflicted his words sounded to her.

“Neville...you’re scaring me now,” she said. “What are you really trying to tell me?”

“Mare, you know I’d tell you everything, if I could. I hated keeping things from you. I always had. But there are things about my work I’m not allowed to tell anyone. Not even the people I love,” Neville told her. “Especially the people I love.”

“You think I wouldn’t protect you with what I know?” she asked him. “You think I’d ever be so careless with something that could cost you everything?”

“I trust you. With all of me,” Neville answered her. “It’s the Ministry I don’t trust with you. They aren’t concerned about you getting hurt, if it means a favorable outcome in the end. And I won’t let you become collateral. Not for any work I’ve done. I can’t be that sort of husband, Mare. Not if loving me puts you in harm’s way.”

“I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong...After everything we’ve fought through together to get here,” she said, her words quivering with the damning realization. “you want to end this...now?”

“It’s dangerous, love, the work I’m doing, and I know I can’t be with you always. You have no wand to fight back with. And I promised I’d keep you safe from the magic I’m hunting down. From the kind that took your parents from you. The same magic that took mine. If I break that promise to you, I couldn’t live with that.”

“Then this is you asking me to walk away from you. Again...And again, you’re calling it protection,” she trembled a little in protest at the unfairness of it. “First, it was Voldemort. Now it’s the ministry?”

“The Ministry has my oath,” Neville told her. “But I won’t give them you as well.”

And neither would she surrender him, if it meant fighting back for her marriage and her right to be apart of his world.

She was fed up with being the odd one out. The one always adjusting, accommodating, assimilating to magical folk. Being non-magical didn’t make her powerless, but everyone here couldn’t stop imagining she was, especially when it came to decisions that should’ve only concerned her and Neville.

But she supposed, when marrying an auror, every decision had a little fae-dust of the political. Every argument, a negotiation.

But she would not negotiate on this.

She would run, if she had to, even if she knew they’d be faster.

Not because she wasn’t fit for the wild outdoor mountain trails surrounding Hogwarts, but because people like Neville had an advantage she wasn’t lucky enough to be born with. The absence of which had once again been turned against her.

And because of those magical abilities innate to every witch and wizard who had walked through these school halls, no matter how fast she ran, it was inevitable.

One spell, and she’d be theirs.

Running from this was pointless, and certainly not easy through the Forbidden Forest in a wedding dress.

She was only a muggle, after all.

And this was and always would be his world.

But Neville wasn’t like the Ministry, or the wizard who had leaked information to her about Weeping Hecate in the Great Hall.

Even if Neville knew he had magic on his side, he would never use it to hurt or intimidate her....wouldn’t he?

He would want her to come to this decision with him mutually, no matter how long it took to persuade her of the good in it.

“What exactly does this mean for us, Neville?” she dared to whisper. “What do the rules say now?”

And knowing it was what was right for her, his words were barely above a whisper, because the idea of it broke him so completely.

“That you can’t remember me,” Neville told her. “And I’m so sorry for that.”

And even as a muggle, with her very novice knowledge of all things magical, Marigold knew immediately what it was that Neville meant by that in “keeping her safe”.

“You want me to forget you?” she whispered brokenly to him. “Is that really the only option? Is that the only way you can imagine loving me now?”

“I’ve torn this apart every way I know how, Mare,” Neville answered her. “If I knew a better way, one that kept you with me safe, I would take it.”

“I won’t agree to this,” she said, her tears spilling freely now. “Not because I’m ‘too muggle’ to not understand the danger. But because I do. And I still choose you. I left my life behind for you, Neville. I learned your world the hard way, bit by bit. I stood beside you through things that nearly broke us, and I married you anyway.”

“I know,” he said. “You chose me when it wasn’t easy, and you were there for me when it felt darkest. And I know I don’t deserve to ask another thing from you to sacrifice--”

“Please stop explaining,” she hushed him. “Don’t tell me this is for me. This is for the Ministry. This is for magical society. This is for a world that’s never quite had room for me. This isn’t for us. How do I just erase the best things that have happened to me? How am I supposed to forget how much I’ve loved you? How does anyone manage that, muggle or wizard?”

Neville swallowed hard against the swelling ache in his throat.

“Whoever can manage it,” he said quietly, “I won’t pretend it’s me. I’m doing this because I love you.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I knew you being an auror would be dangerous work, and me not being a witch might complicate things for us. I always knew there was a possibility that I might lose you to your work at the ministry. But I never imagined losing you like this. Not on our wedding day. A plant can’t be the reason it’s ending like this.”

And because he couldn’t say no to anything she asked him for, except to have him, Neville’s nose leaned in closer to hers, closing the distance between his rather impressive height and her mighty stance.

So close, he could feel how fast her heart was beating, and he squeezed his eyes shut against her soft brown curls. Knowing that her being in this impossible situation was all his fault. But he couldn’t stop himself from loving her.

“The reason is,” he answered, his gentle breath tickling her nose. “So you can be happy the way you deserve to be...Please be happy, even if it isn’t with me. Say you’ll do that for me.”

“Then promise me something too,” she said softly. “If it this work you’re doing really means so much to you, and you finally do get that world you’ve fought so hard for, where this doesn’t always end in goodbye...Please come find me. Even if I don’t remember your name, or your face after this. Find me and help me remember why this moment with you is the last time I ever felt so happy.”

But Neville couldn’t give her a definitive answer to that, and she knew it.

She knew whatever he was working on was important. Not just for her, but for both their respective worlds. And if it meant justice for her, her parents, and others who had met the same tragedy as they had, Marigold would give Neville as long as he needed to find the answer.

So, rather than make him say what he couldn’t, she stood on tip-toe against his height.

Wrapping her arms around the collar of his knitted jumper until her hands caged at the back of his neck. Gently pulling him in closer until his head bowed against hers, and she softly kissed the bridge of his big quirky nose that she adored so much.

She was so close to him then, that she could yet feel the unsatisfied promise of his body, and the ache of still having to wait a little longer.

“Come back to me please,” she whispered a plea to him. “And be careful out there.”

“I will,” he swore to her softly. “I’ll remember for the both of us.”

Breathing him in one last time, she stepped back from him. Leaving Neville feeling suddenly cold and overwhelmingly alone as her warm body pulled away from his.

Giving him a moment to take in how very beautiful and brave she looked standing in front of him, and how devastatingly love and duty went to war against each other.

He had waited for her once already. He would wait again, if waiting was all he was allowed.

And knowing he had to do it as quickly and gently as he could manage, before someone else from the Ministry took the impossible burden from his hands, Neville reached for his wand with a slightly trembling hand.

And for the first time in their cruelly beautiful history, he reluctantly turned it against her.

The tip of the cherrywood lighting up with a soothing silvery-blue glow, as he held it up to her, and softly murmured, ”Obliviate.”