His informant, a pale girl with blonde hair and icicle eyes stood across from him in the back alley, a large envelope in her hands. Nevilles mind flashed for a moment, as he remembered the oversized red letter he’d received at a Hogwarts breakfast after accidentally letting his paper filled with passwords fall into the hands of Sirius Black. Everyone had laughed at him, even some of his fellow Gryffindors, but it had been one of the lesser of his many humiliations. Then he remembered the counter curse to the full body bind he’d developed, one so powerful it would knock the original charms caster old cold, and a small and almost dark smile crossed his face. He reached his hand out slowly to take the envelope, but his eyes remained on the girl. “Hello, Sal,” he said, using the name shed told him upon their first meeting.
It was a meeting that had changed his life. A cold bar, where loneliness was getting its ass kicked in a way only whiskey can manage. Shed appeared as a flirty girl, which had alerted him instantly that something was up. But as she passed him drink after drink, she began to pass him other things. Pictures, articles, hastily scrawled notes. Evidences of Ministry corruption and treason, and worst of all, uses of the Cruiatus Curse on people who hadn’t deserved it in the slightest. It had been enough to make Nevilles blood boil, to know he had helped these people, and his mind had been made up. He would join this girl, her and her crusade for justice against the Ministry. The Brotherhood, she had called it.
“Hi Neville,” she said in her chilling but almost sing song voice. For a brief moment he wondered if it was a mistake to have told her his real name, a practice all Aurors and Magi had been discouraged from, but then shooed the thought away. Just because he’d been betrayed by the Ministry didn’t mean he should lose faith in people, especially in this iridescent angel of a human being. She handed her the package, which in truth would appear completely innocent to the casual looker. Schedules, a few directions, some maps... and a single picture. A snobby looking man with red hair, the Minister of Magic himself. Neville gulped, but he’d known it would come to this. He had to get it at the source, for the entire wizarding world. He may be remembered as a traitor, an assassin, but he’d learned long ago not to care what people thought about him. He’d know the truth.
Sal was already leaving, turning into the night and seemingly melting into the shadows. She never stayed long, sometimes it wasn’t even her that showed up to give him the information. Frowning, Neville stared up from the picture in his hands, that was staring up at him in a prim sort of way. And then he turned into the alley, and out of sight, threw up.