alt_terry | Terry's Entries

TERRY BOOT LONGBOTTOM is dreadfully restless after the war ends, and has great difficulty settling down. The idea of attending Hogwarts for a year is considered but firmly rejected. He recovers entirely physically in terms of his ease of movement, but he has scars, mostly on his neck, shoulders, and chin. (Along with the scars he acquired from Amycus, he sports quite a collection.) He is unfailingly polite but distant to Hermione and Draco, doing nothing to seek them out, and taking great pains to make it clear to all and sundry that he's not carrying a torch for her, no. The slight distance that developed between himself and the rest of the old ISS crew remains. He maintains his warmest relationships with the Longbottoms, whom he genuinely loves, Fred and George, who worry a good deal about him, and Luna.

He leaves Albion and wanders extensively for five years. However, this is always in short forays, as he always apparates back in time to spend the full moon with Luna. He takes odd short-term jobs to support himself, lives out of a knapsack, and resists any attempts from Alice and Frank to give him money, and he gets more and more quiet, scruffy and hard-bitten looking.

Luna always welcomes him back, treating him just as she always has. Besides regular journal private messages to him, she sends him an owl letter once or twice each month, with charmed sketches in the margins, and these letters are practically the only thing he keeps. Slowly, he begins to fall in love with her. He fights the feeling for a long time, feeling guilt because of Colin, but finally one day, unlike all the other times he has stayed with her, he doesn't leave the room as the Professor in the morning when she wakes up naked next to him. Instead, he transforms back into himself and simply looks at her, his heart in his eyes.

She smiles and reaches for him. And that will be that.

Once he and Luna become lovers (she was his first), it takes two or three more years for her to convince him she really does want to marry him. He fights bleak periods for the rest of his life, and often resorts to being the Professor for awhile when he does, but once he and Luna are together, he settles down in Albion. It takes much time and trouble for him to find a job he can bear to keep without abandoning it after a month or two (Fred and George are endlessly patient with continuing to line up opportunities for him) but eventually, he finds a job as a personal assistant to an extremely wealthy, eccentric Runes researcher, and their eccentricities mesh beautifully. As he begins to relax and believe in his own happiness, his friendships become less distant. Terry and Luna spend several weeks at Moddey Dhoo each summer, where Terry teaches their two daughters, Rowen and Betony, to fish and swim. Despite his great fears about his fitness to be a parent, and his anxious questions to Frank and Alice about every aspect of their upbringing, he is an excellent father.

He is always be willing to provide advice and mentoring to anyone wanting to become an animagus.

How are you two holding up? Have you seen Ginny or Charlie yet?

I haven't seen Seamus. Which is a really good thing. I've not the least desire to speak with him.

I won't to try to kill him if I lay eyes on him. I owe Mum and Dad that.

But I'll really want to.

Dad?

Mum's trying not to, but she's really fretting. Especially since it sounded like things aren't exactly calm there.

Check in, yeah? Please?

Saw Mum, so I know how hacked off she is, though she didn't say anything to me.

Look, I know I'm not Pete. I'm good at listening, though, and I do have a couple of shoulders sturdy enough to cry on if you need 'em. No judgement.

You in the Astronomy Tower? I'll look for you there.

Madam Pomfrey and Sally-Anne,

I don't want to alarm you--I think it's gonna be all right--but Luna started feeling awful right when Professor Siz did whatever she did with the wards. Just like she does at full moon, you know? But it isn't the right time. She came and found me, and I think it's getting harsh enough for her that I'm about to change in the Professor like I usually do, to calm her.

I sent a patronus to Colin to let him know. Like I said, I don't think she's any worse than she usually is, but I just wanted to let you know, in case one of you want to come by her quarters to check on her. And maybe you'll let Professor Siz know? In case she's keeping a list of magical effects.

Right. Putting down my journal to turn into the Professor.

I'm pinned down. Guarding a group of about twenty. They're mobile and mostly uninjured but about to bolt in panic except inferi are converging from everywhere. Have only four of Fu's bombs left.

Bugger.

Um. I can't tell which of you is down at the Quidditch shed at the pitch, but I don't want to get close enough to find out.

If it's George, then Fred, I think you'd better come down and talk to him. Same thing if it's the other way around.

I'm so desperately sorry.

Would the professor be any help?

Your sister-in-law Rachel tracked me down tonight. She told me

Shite, I'm such an idiot.

All the time I was living at Moddey Dhoo, I was so careful when I wrote in the journals never to give away any Order secrets. But I was stupid, and I wrote to Seamus Finnigan. I was so angry at him about Neville, and I wanted to make him afraid, and so I mouthed off to him. More than I should have.

Because of what I wrote to him, he figured out I'm an animagus, and worse, that we have more animagi than just me. And he's passed it along to others.

~~If Ron~~

~~It'll be my fault~~

Look, I'm not going out with you to the camps tomorrow. And maybe not for the foreseeable future. There's more than enough Potions work for me to do here.

I'll keep my knife busy and my bloody fool mouth shut.

I see you've been writing to Draco Malfoy, Seamus. Don't know what it's about--he hasn't said anything about it in my hearing. Somehow, I don't think you're exchanging pleasant little reminiscences about Hogwarts. I notice that it's you writing to him, not the other way around.

I also know that Neville once took actions which ended up saving your life. Instead of honouring that life debt, you betrayed him.

There's something you should know, something of which you might not be aware.

Betraying a life debt has a huge magical cost.

Whatever you were trying to do when you betrayed Neville, it's backfired on you. There were two deaths that brought down your Lord Protector. Two deaths necessary for that rite they used that he hoped would give him eternal life but instead ended up killing him.

One was Harry's. But the other was Neville's.

So Harry and Neville between them set in motion the fall of the Protectorate. Draco put Harry there.

But you put Neville there.

Harry and Neville will long be remembered and revered for their bravery and their sacrifice. Draco did what he did at Harry's request, and for the sake of their friendship, and their goals were the same: to bring Voldemort down. And so he'll have honour from us, too.

You may have hoped for gratitude or perhaps notoriety from the people you wanted to impress when you turned against Neville, but you won't be so lucky. In fact, you'll never have luck again.
You will be forgot.

This is the curse that will fall upon you all the rest of your days. Let me be clear: I'm not doing it. You've done it to yourself:

Since you betrayed a man who saved you, a man a thousand times better than you, your own magic will punish you by betraying you.
All your choices from now will turn into weapons in your hands that will only cut youself.
You will always throw your lot in with the wrong people.
Whatever you hold most dear will fail (Rosier died in your arms in the battle, didn't he? Sally-Anne told us).
Even though I'm telling you this, and even if you try to change direction hoping to dodge this fate now that you know it, you will always, always choose wrong.
You can, of course, expect no mercy from us.
You will never have mercy from me.

Your own choices have condemned you to a miserable life from now on, Seamus.
It probably won't last much longer.
I bet, before the end, you'll wish it had been even shorter.

And if you're wondering why you should give a damn what I say, you should.

I'm Neville Longbottom's brother.

I'm also the man who killed Amycus Carrow by ripping out his throat with my own teeth.

You can write back if it makes you feel better, but I won't answer.

I have nothing else whatsoever to say to you.

Terry Boot Longbottom

When I woke up this morning, Madam Pomfrey told me I was ready to leave the Hospital Wing. My left forefinger won't be growing back, I'll always be a little deaf in one ear, and there's a mess of scars on my side, but otherwise my wounds have all healed up. I reckon I was pretty lucky, all things considered. So I asked where my clothes were, and she told me they were on the chair beside the bed. My own clothes were ruined in the battle, so I expected different ones, but when I turned to look at the chair, I about stopped breathing.

I called after her, 'Are you sure these are for me?' and she said over her shoulder, 'The castle provided them.'

So I put them on.

I'm wearing Ravenclaw robes for the very first time.

To the one who now calls himself Harry Potter:

You belong to me, and always have. This has always been your purpose. This has always been your destiny. Accept it - embrace it.

Come to me and you need never know pain or fear again. Come to me willingly, and you can end this pointless conflict now and forever. Come to me before midnight in two days' time, and no one else need die because of your cowardice. Submit to my will, and understand. It's time, Harry.

Your schoolmates' lives depend on you obeying my command.

I tried crossing the words out, but that didn't even work. The lines of ink over them faded away.

If this were a fair world, I'd be there, locked in with you. And Lisa Turpin, and Rosemary Roche from Sherwood, and Draco and Hermione and Sarah Fawcett.

But then if it were a fair world, NONE of us would be locked in at all.

But anyway, we're outside. And we have every intention of coming in when the time comes, so you'll have more than just Ron's and Justin's and Hydra's wands on your side of the fight. If it comes to that.

It's not going to go the way Voldemort thinks it will. That's a promise.

(Ginny, Luna, maybe if you're stuck in your Houses and can't get out for classes or exams or anything, you could be showing people how to make the string bracelets? That way, if anyone can find a way to smuggle the wands back, you'd all have a chance of hiding them?)

It's so hard watching this from the outside, knowing that he's at Hogwarts.

All I can say is, I'm just wishing you stay safe. All of you. And all of the rest of the Hogwarts students.

I hope there'll be a way to get the last Horcrux, but don't--

None of us want any more trees in the Memorial Garden, all right?

Daphne, you and I haven't had much opportunity to get to know each other, but...well. You've done so much for us already, getting the Eagle for us to destroy. I can only wish you good fortune.

Mrs Weasley, Fred and George are both alive, and we've found them. Kingsley was with them, too, although he's ducking in and out of the null field to keep engaging the inferi. I've snuck back out of the protected area and apparated away to write this report.

There are two men, Aurors, I guess, on the ground, bound up with ropes. They're being guarded by muggles with guns. I saw the look of horror on their faces when one the guards broke their wands over his knee, just like twigs.

Cedric and Ken Towler managed to get a few people outside the field and then flew them out by broom. Fred and George both have had bites, and a few burns--the muggles with them at the meeting were resorting to torches to fight the inferi. Fred called for Hitty to try to get out Fu and Colonel Davidson and the rest of the muggle leadership. She made two trips and took Fu and the Colonel. But Fred and George were fighting for all their lives and...and so they decided between themselves, somehow, and George cast the Neofidelius.

He's alive, but he's unconscious. I think Fred's in shock. Pansy and Frank are with them. Well, Pansy's staying with George and Fred, and Frank is organising litters to carry the wounded to a building within the neofidelius field. An old abandoned hospital.

But Hitty...Hitty was apparating back in just as the Neofidelius went up, and I reckon she was hit by the spell staight on and

She's dead. Hitty's dead.

I've spent the past few weeks popping by Ken and Jack's in the guise of a friendly neighbourhood stray. Alice and Remus, I'm sure they've already told you about the muggle servants Ken and Jack requisitioned, but for those of you who don't know, there's a mum and dad, Betsy and Eamon Fisher, with their kids, Meg, who is about 12, and Colum, about eight. Meg really LOVES the Professor, so it's been easy to hang around, napping in corners after cadging treats. There are two other men, one I'd guess to be in his early 20s (Howell) and one who is older. Harder to estimate his age, because he's seen some hard living, but perhaps somewhere between 40 and 50 (Collins). Oh, I guess Jack and Ken can tell you their ages; it must be in their work requisition parchmentwork.

They've been working under Ken and Jack for about two months, and the mum has just about stopped flinching any time either Jack or Ken come within ten feet of her kids. I'll bet she's heard some horror stories about wizard masters in the camps--if she hasn't experienced it herself, that is. I heard Collins saying low over dinner to Howell one evening, 'they haven't even cursed us yet.' So the general impression they've seemed to pick up is that their new masters are kind, at least. Or maybe they're a bit too busy and perhaps inept to be cursing their servants a lot.

Part of the impression of ineptness is deliberate, of course. Ken had a shouty bit with Jack the morning after they moved that flat of three-quarters of the grapes they arranged with Jeremy's crew to spirit away in the dead of night. 'HOW DO YOU EXPECT US TO FILL ALL THOSE BOTTLES WHEN YOU NEVER ORDER ENOUGH?!' Betsy was nervous and kept the children near her, but then seemed relieved that no one chucked anything at her.

Jack's picked up a few tricks about hiding things in inventory, too. It's strange how there's never an empty bottle around when you need one. So far I think the muggles are mostly just puzzled, but Collins and Howell maybe suspect something's up, particularly Collins. He isn't doing as much of the heavier chores, like mopping, scrubbing out the brewery vats and so on, because of his arthritis, so maybe he has more time to think. And I saw him almost start to argue with Jack once when Jack told him to put some 'spoiled' mash back by the rubbish bins, like he suspected it was perfectly fine.

So they--Howell and Collins--have said a few things, low, when Jack and Ken aren't around. I think Collins is wondering if his masters are skimming the books to cheat Pansy.

Mr and Mrs Fisher are still terribly unnerved whenever Hitty pops by to deliver lunch to Ken and Jack. I think they're just not used to house elves. Mrs Fisher in particular always jumps about a foot whenever she hears Hitty's apparition pop.

Anyway. They aren't planning any mayhem while I've been listening to them. I don't think they're the type that'll scheme about how to get perks by reporting on their masters. The Fishers at least are relieved that they've landed with 'nice masters' and that they're all together as a family. But Howell and Collins suspect that something hinky is going on.

Anyway, I've written this up a bit further, and I'll send copies to Alice, Pansy, Jack and Ken.

I wish to speak in particular to the students of Hogwarts. The older ones will remember me.

I was born to Muggle parents. I was taken away from them when I was so young that I don't even remember them. I was told I was a mudblood and given to Amycus Carrow to be his slave.

Or perhaps you don't remember? I was the quiet boy called 'boot' who sat on the floor in the corner of Transfiguration class, who dodged your kicks and never reacted to your jeers. I spoke of myself in the third person, and tried my best to seem simple-minded, because it was safer that way.

But here's the truth. I am a wizard, and I have always been one. The Sorting Hat itself told me so when I put it on during what should have been my first year at Hogwarts. It didn't hesitate at all to sort me into Ravenclaw House.

I have a wand that works well for me, and I've been studying spells and charms, just like you. I'm best at Transfiguration, Charms, Runes, and Arithmancy.

For those of you who pride yourself on your class standings, remember this: you can never claim to be first in your class, because you've never competed against a good number of your true classmates. Those missing classmates have had to hone the qualities that the Founders sought even more keenly than you. They are incredibly brave, they have bonds of loyalty that will never be broken, no matter what the Protectorate decrees, they have wit beyond measure, and they had learned cunning through painful experience. They may call you 'master' or 'mistress,' and you might think you control them, but you don't. That is because magic is not something you can simply declare doesn't 'belong' to a muggleborn. We didn't steal anyone's magic; we didn't need to, as it bubbles up inside of us, impossible to deny. As truly as it does for those who have a tapestry showing eight generations of pureblood descent.

Voldemort's claim of 'blood superiority' is a lie. We are your equals. Just an accident of birth could have put any one of you in our position. Think what it might have been like for you if you had the same magic in you that you've always had, but someone took you away from your family and made you a slave, just because of who your parents were.

Think of yourself, sitting on the floor, barefoot in winter. Hoeing beets in the field, trying to walk fast enough to stay ahead of the whip. Toiling in a coal mine, in total darkness, while still feeling your magic inside of you like a glowing ember.

Someone who is truly a witch or a wizard can't blow that ember out.

The Protectorate never will, either.

I have been thinking that I want to make a public journal entry, as Mum suggested, like Remus did, and I wanted to run the idea past you first so I'm sure I'm seeing all the implications. As far as I know, Hermione and I are the only Muggleborns who have journals. And if we want to make a choice about which one of us should REALLY hack off MLE by making an entry, it might be good for me to draw the fire since Hermione is out there at times hunting for horcruxes. Besides, I played REALLY stupid a lot more than Hermione did, so I think if I posted, it would make a stronger impact, that muggleborns (even the ones that just say 'Yes, master' and 'No, master') have a lot more going on in their thinking than purebloods may suspect.

I've no intention of admitting that I'm an animagus, of course, and I'm wary of saying much about my connection to the Longbottoms. But I think it might really open the eyes of some of the kids at Hogwarts. They KNEW me--the older ones, anyway. But they knew me as boot and I think I hid my true self pretty well. I think it's time to make it clear to them that they were directing all the slurs and kicks and snubs at somebody who was quite a bit like them. It might challenge some of their thinking if I tell that that the Sorting Hat saw me as a real wizard and put me into Ravenclaw--which I could easily do without implicating anyone else, since people knew I was often alone in the Headmistress' office.

What do you think? The thing I worry about the most is whether it might create any trouble for Fred and George, because people know they were fond of me. Would they get into trouble for, I dunno, leading me onto radical ideas or anything? They certainly couldn't be accused of having anything to do with my escape from the git.

It might be that no one will dare to ask me questions, but at least it will get them thinking. Besides, it would be loads of fun to tell Padma Patil and Lana Sandoval-Pennifold that I'm in the same House they are.

mum, dad, I'm alive. So is Kingsley, although he's bloody and singed. And bit up pretty bad. I've had to transform over a dozen times so I could dart away through inferi feet.

Lee, Jeremy, Bill, Cedric, Fred, George, Hermione, Draco, anyone appearing quickly to help with the side-along retreat, BE CAREFUL OF YOUR FIRE if you're trying to gather up stragglers! They've brought Hogwart students here to help with the fight, including ours. I saw Ron, silhouetted against a fire. And I think Justin.

Hogwarts people, if you can read this, beware rifle fire to the west.

we've lost so many.

oh bugger, there's a dementor

transforming again

Current Mood: agonised

who sent me things for my birthday. And cards and notes, too.

It was nice. They always sing happy birthday at dinner at the Sanctuary for whoever's birthday it is, and Victor served pudding after supper.

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Terry Boot Longbottom, once known as boot

somewhere safe

Coda

Order Only: Private message to Fred and George Weasley

Order Only: Private message to Frank Longbottom

Order only: Private message to Evelyn Longbottom

Order only: Private message to Colin Creevey, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Madam Pomfrey, Sally-Anne Perks

Order only

Order Order: Private message to Terry Boot Longbottom

Order Only: Private message to Fred and George Weasley

Order Only: Private message to Fred and George Weasley

Order only: Private message to Fred and George Weasley

Private Message to Seamus Finnigan

Order Only

Order Only

Order Only: Private message to the Juniors

Order Only

Order Only: Ken and Jack's set up

My name is Terry Boot

Order Only:Private message to the Juniors

Order Only: Be careful!

Order Only: Thanks to everybody

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September 2015

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