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Water ran down his face until it sank into his already dripping sweater. It was a normal grey sweater but stitched a few times at the fissure. Luna did this for him. He turned his head, looking back at the continuous shrinking coast. Hogsmeade wasn’t recognizable. Griffin forced him on his knees, as the ship crashed down a special high wave while the storm was howling around them. A lightning turned the upper deck into light for a second until it all turned dark again.
“Who’s there?”
He recognized the speaker, Thomas. They’ve served together since Thomas joined their crew at the age of 20, which was a normal age for young men to become pirates. People like him want more in life, more money, more glory, more action. Another lighting. He wiped the water out of his face, not that it made a difference. He needed to get out of the rain and that quickly. “It’s you.” Thomas recognized him immediately, despite his dripping clothes and the dark of the night. He looked down at him and the man thought about what an awful image he must be. At least the blood must have been washed away. “You look like shit”, Thomas said.
He ignored him,“Is the captain here?”
“No, but Arthur is.”
He didn’t wait for Thomas to lead the way. He grew up on this ship and he was able to find his way around here without eyes. Arthur would be in his office as the commanding officer. He was the man who adopted him after his parents had died and brought him to the Griffin. He pushed the door open without bothering to knock first. “Neville!” Arthur stood at the windows, a glass of rum in his hand. His clothes were dry, Neville noticed. He wiped the last raindrops out of his face, ignoring that his clothes will still create a little lake on the wooden floor. The moment where Neville still felt the cold was long over. His body was numb.
When he didn’t answer, Arthur frowned. “What happened son?”
Neville felt his legs falter, but he forced them to carry his body. This wasn’t the time to be weak. He remembered how he made his way crosscountry, always just to get here. Arthur put his glass down and came over, probably to hug him. Neville backed off, not ready to be touched. Arthur looked at him more closely, a deeper frown visible on his face. “Whose blood is that?”
He closed his eyes. Flashes of tonight's events came back to life. The sound, when the cannons had hit their flank, still rang in his ears. How the sails had come down and buried them alive. Neville saw how it had hit Lavender straight in the arm, effectively tearing it off.
It must be his own blood, otherwise the ocean would have washed it off. Neville didn’t remember any swords slicing him open.
“I tried to cut through it”, Neville heard himself talking, “the sails…” He opened his eyes, Arthur had walked to the table, filling something into a small wooden cup. “You were on the Marauders?”
Neville flinched.
Arthur gave him the cup, but Neville’s hands were shaking. He could hardly hold it.
The older man touched his shoulder, this time Neville let him. Only because he didn’t deserve the comfort, it didn’t mean his heart didn’t long for it. He looked up, through tears he didn’t feel, at the face of the man who took him in at the age of five. He was still shaking.
The Griffin had been Neville’s home since his grandmother had died. Arthur, a friend of the Longbottom family had taken him in, raising him like his seventh son. Except for Charlie, no one of Arthur’s kids stayed a sailor. They’ve left, running shops and selling their earnings.
When he was 25, Arthur gave Charlie his own ship. In their world, for being a captain you need your own ship. Hiring a crew was easy at harbors like Hogsmeade or Cokeworth. He’d sailed at the Marauders for two years now.
“Did Ginny set you over? We heard from the Ravens that the Marauders got caught in a storm on its way back to Hogsmeade.” No storm, but Neville couldn’t answer.
Ginny. Neville saw her, who she fought. When Slyther had crushed them and their crew had jumped on their deck, Ginny had been the first to raise her sword. She was the perfect commanding officer. He still tasted the salt of his own blood when Baile had smashed his hilt in his face.
“Neville?” The first time, Arthur seemed to be genuinely afraid. A clank. Neville looked down from his hand to the broken cup. Coffee sickled away. Neville felt he was going to be sick. He should have saved them. He felt Arthur leading him softly over to the couch and pushing him down. Neville let him although he didn’t deserve the comfort.
“Tell me everything, son.”
“You won’t call me son anymore”, Neville was shocked how awful he sounded. Nothing had been able to break him, not until this day. “Try me.” Neville looked into Arthurs comforting green eyes and he couldn’t not trust this man.
“We’ve sailed out this morning; Ginny, me, Hannah and the Creevey brothers”, the Marauders was a small ship. “We hadn’t anything big in mind. Raiding a small village near Wales. Colin heard they had a booming festival the other week.” Which means there would be lots of goods. Neville stopped talking for a second, caught in his own thoughts.
What would have happened if HE hadn’t been fighting against them? Not in his whole life Neville had ever met someone he fought better with than with HIM.
“What happened then?” Trustworthy green eyes. Neville pushed the memory of HIS green eyes away, they were friendly once before everything had changed. If Neville had known it, he wouldn’t have done it.
“We raided. On our way back the winds changed and Hannah” - Neville’s voice broke at the mention, he forced himself to continue - “saw them first. "It was Slyther.”
If Arthur was shocked at the mention of Griffins archenemy, he didn’t say it. “We tried to escape, but they had the wind at their back. They were our hunters.”
This time Neville didn’t fight it when Arhur put his arm around his shoulder. He was 27, but felt like five again. “They shoot down the sails. We were blind, and then they entered. They killed her. Colin tried to push back, but Malfoy pushed him overboard.”
It was the first thing a pirate was told when walking onboard. Never fall into the sea. Take a bullet, but don’t fall in the water. Neville felt too, he didn’t know how he’d managed to get to the coast or how he found his way back here. It was a miracle he didn’t deserve.
“What happened to Ginny?”
Neville heard the amount of pain it costs Arthur to ask for his only daughter. Neville breathed heavily out. Green eyes, hateful eyes flashed in his memory. They were the same eyes who had looked at him loveful once. “He took her.”
“What did he say?”
Neville looked at Arthur. He wasn’t the only boy the older man had taken in. But Neville was the only one who stayed. “He sails with Malfoy now. And when he pushed me overboard, he told me Ginny belongs to him now.”
A salty tear ran down Arthur’s cheek and Neville catched it before it could fall into his wamp.
“He won’t be able to break her.” They both knew it. And he would rather kill her than let go of what he declared to be his. Neville hummed. Arthur looked at the window, still touching him. “He will kill her.” Ginny wouldn’t be easy to kill. Neville wished he could cut his traitorous heart out for still caring about HIM. HE was the enemy. HE stole his sister.
“Arthur!” Thomas' voice came from just outside the door.
“What is it?”
“It’s a ship! A ship at the horizon!”
Both men were up in a second, Neville felt the adrenaline pumping through his veins. It was still raining outside, but the wind had calmed down and the storm had moved on. Arthur grabbed his spyglass, “it’s the Syther!”
“GRAB THE WEAPONS! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!”
In a minute the Gryffin morphed from a sleeping sailing boat to a busy warship. Thomas and Dean secured all loose boxes, Seamos and Charlie prepared the cannons. Neville ran down to grab swords and pushed every pirate a weapon into their hands.
“Neville!”, he turned around to see Dean standing at the sailing, “they hissed the white flag!”
Neville ran over to see it himself. It was. And at the railing a redhead stood, her short hair was flying in the wind. She waved. Otherwise the Slyther was empty. Neville forced himself not to think about the other member, his crew was dead. Ginny took revenge and she did it the perfect way. She was the living death.
Neville shouldn’t feel sorry for HIM or for what happened to his ship. HE brought it over himself. When it was Neville’s turn to hug her, Ginny smelled like salt and blood. They hold onto themself tight, promising them to never let go. “Is he dead?”
Since he was five, Neville knew the exact moment when his little sister was lying. “I didn’t had a choice.” He didn’t call her out, no. So they stood together and lent each other strength they both needed desperately. This was the moment Neville vowed to himself that he could forget their kiss. But he would buy a gravestone the next time he visits Hollow.