While I've been a Potterite (is that a word? Well, it is now...) for well over a year, I've never been able to complete a fic about HP until now. (Now, watch as I burst forth with tens of thousnads of HP fics next week...) However, Whitecat-san challenged me to write a fic about Neville visiting his parents with his grandmother. I did so, although I lost a few hours of sleep on the way. (Well, excuse me for having an internal clock set to 7:30...coincidentally, too late for me to wake up and yet get to school on time. -_-;;) Neville Longbottom and his family all belong to J. K. Rowling, not to me, but I'll take the poor little guy (he's my favorite) if anyone's offering him...^_^
The Price of Shining Too Brightly
by Rb
The smell was always what I would remember most.
There were lots of horrible things about my visits to St. Mungo's
Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, but the smell was the
strongest. It actually permeated the air for about two blocks
around the horrid place, as if the scent itself was trying to
escape. It was a horrible smell, of blood and urine and smoke and
illness, an almost tangible thing. In my youth, I imagined it
would reach out and try to grab me, two bony, clawed hands
reaching out to snatch me and imprison me there, along with my
parents.
I would always stick close to Gran on these visits, which were
regular "as the sun coming up," as she would say. I
used to dread the sun coming up. Some days, I still do. I always
wonder what would happen if the sun didn't come up. Would I still
be subjected to this personal, private hell so often?
The day after Christmas, the day before Easter, on my birthday,
on their birthdays, and on Gran's birthday, I'd dress in my best
robes (which always looked worse for wear five minutes after I
put them on). Gran and I would travel by Floo Powder to one of
her old cronies' homes which was nearby. The old woman would
offer me a biscuit, which I would always refuse. After the
unfortunate incident where I vomited right in front of my parents
(They didn't blink an eye. It was hard for them to blink their
eyes. Their eyes were always wide and bloodshot.), I'd lost my
enthusiasm for food of any kind on those days.
Then I'd walk with Gran the five blocks to St. Mungo's Hospital
for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The closer we'd get to the
hospital, the closer I'd creep to her, until my face was mashed
against her old ratty handbag and I was tripping over her feet.
After a while, she would notice and squawk "Neville
Longbottom, you had better stand up straight for your
visits."
"Gran," I would moan in fear.
"Gran nothing, it's your duty. Do your duty, Neville. It's
what...it's what you have to do."
Unable to reply to this, I would continue to creep behind her, as
if her formidable presence could protect me.
St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was
originally supposed to be a bright, antiseptic white, but time
and lack of care on the part of the Ministry had combined to make
it sort of a greyish dull, forgettable color. Originally, there
had been wide green lawns on either side, looking bright and
cheerful and dotted with many-colored flowers. That's what was
still in the brochure pictures, too, even now. But the grim
reality was a run-down old slummish building surrounded on either
side by a desolate wasteland.
When I asked Gran why the wizards didn't fix it up with magic,
she just sighed and said "I don't know, Neville,"
looking old and tired. Gran never looked old and tired, except on
the way back from a visit.
In their own way, they were as wearing on Gran as they were on
me.
Once inside, the smell hit you ten times as hard. It was
increased probably because of the proximity of the people, those
that were merely ill and not criminally insane. People were
walking everywhere, talking, sleeping, farting, groaning,
complaining, and being disagreeable. At this point, Gran would
clutch my own small, grubby hand in her large, wrinkled,
white-gloved hand and signal for a nurse, who would look very
young, be very innocent-on-the-verge-of-world-weary, and act
completely frazzled.
"We're here to see the Longbottoms, room 7A," Gran
would say in her most imperious voice. The nurse would widen her
eyes in sudden surprise and then recognition, and call for the
head nurse, who would bustle around in a haughty manner before
deigning to accept Gran's reassurances that yes, we were allowed,
look, here's something signed by Cornelius Fudge himself, please
let us in, ma'am.
These visits were the only time that my grandmother would allow
herself to become humbled. Every other time, her eyes would be
icy cold, the better to quench some young arrogant hothead's fire
with. But her, in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and
Injuries, she was an old woman, no different from any old woman
seen anywhere, fragile, her eyes weak.
We were led down the dingy halls, feeling less like we were in a
hospital and more like we were in a prison all the time. This
feeling was truth, actually; by the time we reached room 7A there
was little light to interrupt the gloom and each room was locked
off by heavy iron bars. In this section of St. Mungo's Hospital
for Magical Maladies and Injuries, there was no hope for
improvement. You would stay here until you died.
Visitors were far and far between, as most of the patients here
were so far gone that it was too painful to try to visit with
them. Gran visited out of a sense of love/duty that I could never
decipher. I visited because I was forced to come by Gran.
When I was very young, I didn't realize what had happened to my
parents, how odd it was for them to be locked behind bars, why I
couldn't come near them. I thought it was normal for all parents,
that everyone was raised by their grandmother. As I grew a little
older and I pierced the pieces of my parents' lives together, I
thought it might have been a warning to me.
Don't get too powerful, boy, don't shine too brightly when doing
anything, or else they'll come for you, too, and they'll hurt
you, boy, they'll hurt you, too.
That was the first lesson about magic I ever learned, and it
inhibits my magical power even to today. I'm afraid of being too
powerful or too strong, because of what might happen if anyone
ever decides to become jealous.
The cells were a very scary place, but my gran would go up to the
bars and talk in a loud, calm voice. "Hello, Frank and
Alice...how are you today? I'm fine, thank you for asking.
Neville's fine, too." She would stage a loud, one-sided
conversation, as if my parents could respond. My parents, their
bodies each secured by magical restraints to opposite sides of
the room, their minds trapped in the depths of insanity, didn't
even hear her. If they did, they surely weren't hearing the same
things.
My father would mumble incoherently most of the time, every so
often jerking his head up and attempting to cast a Stunning spell
on his imagined attackers. On Death Eaters he'd captured.
Sometimes he wept, because he was so powerless.
My mother was even more heart wrenching. Her eyes wide and dry,
she kept imploring for her little Neville. "Please, let me
see my son..." she kept begging. "I need my
son..."
The worst part, the absolute worst part, would be when Gran would
drag me (often by the ear) up to the bars and say in a loud
voice, "Frank, Alice, here's your son, Neville. Say hello,
Neville." Sometimes they wouldn't hear her at all. Sometimes
they would look up at me with fear and hatred in their eyes. My
mother would shriek for her son, that I was some sort of devil.
Once, my father tried to attack me.
All the moisture in my body would seem to migrate to my palms,
forehead, and under my arms in sweat droplets. I felt moist and
dry at the same time, stringy. I would open my mouth and close
it, because I had very little to say. Gran would prompt me every
so often. "Neville, tell your parents about what you did
last week...about the books you've read...about that joke Great
Uncle Algie told you..." and I would whisper in halting,
short words.
I don't think they heard me.
I don't think they cared.
On the way back -- freedom, blessed freedom -- both Gran and I
would be subdued. I don't know what Gran thought. I've never been
able to tell what Gran thinks. But I would wonder, is that what
I'll be someday? Is that what I might become? I would remember
the pictures Gran had in her album. That tall, dignified man,
that pretty woman...
The price of shining too brightly, of flying too close to the sun
-- for every moment my parents spent in the spotlight, popular,
respected, beloved, they a moment in that... that dung heap! Is
that the price we must pay? For every up, a down?
Or is that just the curse of those who are extraordinary? Maybe
those who are ordinary don't suffer in such extremes. It's worth
it to not shine in the light, because then the shadows don't
attack you.
It's the little things that stick in your mind, you know? Those
are the things you'll remember. The fear. The despair.
The smell.
Those are the things that can't be erased, that will haunt me for
my entire life. I don't want to live like them. I don't want to
be like them. I want to avoid their fate.
Even if it means being ordinary, even being a Squib, I want to
avoid their fate.