A/N: Slightly AU, written pre-book 5 and when I wasn't completely sure Neville's parents had been attacked.

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He stared at the canopied ceiling of his dormitory bed, looking glassy-eyed up at them. Every year he'd attended Hogwarts, on the first night when he was sure everyone else had fallen asleep, he'd post the picture up onto the gauzy drapes to stare down at him, making it appear like he was sleeping but he was really gazing up at... them.

They were so happy, smiling and waving to the photographer, turning to admire the statues of the large fountain behind them, every so often dropping a coin in and making a wish. They were nearing the height of their careers, before it all came crumbling down.

Neville Longbottom had some great memories of his parents, but the most fantastic were the rainbows. His mother always did like colours, and the rooms of their home were painted in vibrant colours that always kept your spirits high and positive. Then one day she came home holding various crystals shaped like tear drops, stars, and moons, and hung them in front of windows. Then, when the sun hit them just right, the entire room was splashed with spectrums of miniature rainbows all across the walls, floor, and ceiling. It delighted him to see the prisms cast the coloured rays of light everywhere, to see the rainbows reflected in his parents' eyes, in their smiles, and even, somehow, in their hugs.

Until one night, the rainbows became tainted. The sun was slowly beginning to set and the prisms caught the light and spread out the rays to shoot coloured light across the walls as they always had. It had become a sort of tradition to watch them flare to life as the sun sunk down; every sunset was different. But this time the tradition ended grisley and cold, absent of the warmth of the rainbows in his parents' hugs.

There was a loud *crack* and strangers had appeared in their front room, bearing menacing grins that stood stoic upon bleached porcelain faces that never blinked. Neville was only three or four, he didn't know any better, until a vicious slash of one of the strangers' arms caught his mother across the chest and sent blood splattering on to the walls. Neville knew then what was happening, the blood glistening through the rainbow arcs was forever burned into his mind.

He had ran and screamed and cried, "They got blood on the rainbows! Daddy! Mum!" But even as blood leaked from their wounds they couldn't hear him through their own screaming, the pain and unbearable shock of the curses coarsing through their bodies as the strangers tortured them endlessly, laughing haughtily and coldly.

Whatever happened after that was somewhat of a blur to Neville. He knew that Aurors had arrived in a flash to defeat and capture the strangers, ending the torment his parents had to endure for more than an hour, some disappearing with the perpetrators and the rest instantly disappearing with his parents to St. Mungo's.

No one had immediatly seen Neville. He was curled into a tight ball in the corner of the room, speechless and wide-eyed, staring at the rainbows across the way that were slowly dying out from the fading sunlight, leaving only the blood stains to accompany him until a remaining Auror finally found him, taking him into their arms and whisking him away. Away from the blood and rainbows.