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Summary: A one-shot fic about Neville Longbottom and his thoughts.
Crystal Lunacy
My name is Neville Longbottom, a pureblood wizard with magic of squib porportions and I envy Harry Potter the Boy-Who-Lived. You know or have at least heard of the Boy who survived the dark curse Avada Kedavra, the one and only, with but a scar to show for it. Most people, my room mates included, envy him for the obvious reasons. He has talent, power, looks, money, fame, can play a kick ass game of Quiddich.
What makes me so special then? Oh yes, I envy Harry Potter alright, though not for any of those myraid of reasons, but because his parents died at the hands of the Dark Lord and his followers. People don't know about my parents, about their lives. The Neville Longbottom that people see is hiding a past that would wound any childs heart, as I know it did mine. I don't want pity, charity, and I certaintly don't want fame. I don't want people to know that my parents fought but were broken by the Dark Lords followers. I want my parents back.
Alice and Frank Longbottom are currently residing in St. Mungo's, the hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, but not for any physical injuries do they stay there. Ten years ago on a fateful stormy November night, a few days after the defeat of You-Know-Who, I witnessed my parents sanity snap under torture.
That night is burned into my mind, and I never shall forget.
Death Eaters in their black robes with their white masks, barged into our home. Through the entry way they attacked my father first. My father Frank Longbottom was an Auror. He knew how to fight, and fight well he did. He took out three of the twelve Death eaters before falling to a Incarceratus and Petrificas Totalus from behind. My mother was hit soon after with a cutting hex that momentarily distracted her, as she went to help my father and then was hit with a stupify and went down. Then they were both tied to the chairs from the dining room and awakened.
In case of any attacks I was told to hide and so I had hid when my father had shouted, in the closet with an air vent to watch my parents. To watch their minds and my innocence shatter like so many pieces in a mirror. My parents, my life, screamed out in agony, writhing where they sat, bound to the chairs. One little word, Crucio, and my world fell around my ears.
I would learn later that Bellatrix Lestrange was the one to cast the unforgivable spell. She would rot in Azkaban for destroying the lives of three people. My parents and my own. Alice and Frank Longbottom were questioned for an hour about the location of the defeated Dark Lord. Crucio was applied again and again, agony made their bodies thrash, straining against the magical ropes that bound them in hell. Only an hour after the house was overrun with dark wizards did my parents lose the fight and their sanity. On November fourteenth, one am on that dreary night did my parents stop caring about the world, their lives and about me.
After they went insane the Death Eaters soon left, having gotten very little information that they had wanted. They left my parents to die, and calmly apparated out of my house, out of my destroyed life. My neighbors, the Kirkles had seen flashes of light and had called in Aurors hoping to catch the bad guys. All they found was two adults unresponsive and a child almost in catatonic shock, shivering in a closet.
The adults were sent to the Hospital St. Mundo's, and would never leave the psychiatric ward again.
Alice and Frank Longbottom don't reconise me. They have no memory of their past and have the intelligence of five year olds. I am not their son any longer. My mother once gave me a gift of a gum wrapper, it was pretty. The colors swirl around together, only slightly faded and still smelling faintly of bubble gum. It's the first present I have ever hated and loved at the same time and I carry it around. Gran told me to throw it away but I keep it. It reminds me of days gone by where my life was innocent and perfect, where I had parents who loved me, not who like me because I bring them sweets and keep them company. The doctors say my parents are healthy despite their mental capabilites, they will live out long lives. The average wizard or witch lives to about one fourty. I have another hundred years of loving and hating Alice and Frank Longbottom. One hundred long years.
Oh yes I envy Harry Potter, the boy who lived with parents who didn't.
Finis.