There was a girl, in a long skirt with floral patterns and a cotton top, an headband holding back her abundant blond hair. A boy with a dark brown leather jacket, a tee-shirt with the name of a famous wizard band inscribed on it and blue jeans had an arm wrapped around her waist.
They shared a cigarette in the moving picture and he mumbled something that made her laugh and pushed back her hair in the process. They were maybe seventeen and they looked like the world belonged to them, young, reckless and fearless as only teenagers and madmen can be.
On the back of the photograph, you could read Sirius and Alice, Autumn 1977 in a delicate handwritting. Mary gave it to her friend and roommate when they graduated. She kept the photograph in the second drawer of her bedside table, under the diary she used when she was a younger girl, with some sweets.
Frank caught her looking at it, once, but didn't say anything. It was a well-known fact that Sirius and the young woman dated for years at Hogwarts. And then they parted ways when he graduated -he was a year older-.
He was with someone else, now. With Ada Mackley. A nice girl, with a beautiful face. Quite the perfect girl. Full lips, long eyelashes, lovely curves, sweet smile. A HeadGirl and Quidditch player. And among other things, her former girlfriend. The one after Sirius and before Frank. She felt uneasy about it. Ada and Sirius matched better than Sirius and her, or even Ada and her, for the instance, had ever had. Two popular students with godlike features beautifully body-shaped. Nothing like her. She wasn't ugly, no, but she was far more ordinary.
She was brillant. She knew that, no need to deny it. At fourteen, she read Runes fluently. She was quite the Arithmancian and a favorite of Slughorn.
She felt trapped when she learnt she was pregnant. Finally she changed her mind. Frank was a nice guy. Someone who could help you to raise a child. And he loved her. Surely she felt that for him in some months.
Neville was a gift. She loved her son. He was a lively healthy boy.
She even was progressively feeling more affectionate with her husband.
And then, there's been that night...
The girl... She never saw her before, just heard about her madness and utter devotion to Voldemort.
She had his face. Alice slowly lost her reason looking straight in his- no, in her eyes.
Now her mind was almost gone. She played with sweets' wrappers , trying to remember as hard as she could. The sweets in the drawer. There was something else in the drawer. Something important. She hoped Augusta understand.
Sweets' wrappers. Look with the sweets.
After, Alice forgot. The wrappers were important but she didn't even remember why.
The day she found the photograph, Augusta Longbottom burnt it. Her son and the Macmillian girl were the perfect couple. No one would ever doubt it. Alice's past relationship with a murderer wasn't welcome in the picture. No one would know. Nobody remembered anyway. Except maybe the madman rotting in Azkaban.