I just stayed down... don't worry, it will pass, always does. She couldn't see me, but she knew that I was there. It's a favourite spot in this kind of situation. But that time she seemed... different? Was she crying?

"...can't keep on telling you this, Neville, it has to stop, I'm only an old lady, what more do you expect of me..."

No. Just the same old. I knew that speech practically off by heart by then. Now it was time for Mum and Dad.

"... again. My Frank and my Alice were different. How you came out of it, I'll never know. Really, just because they're in... there, doesn't..."

My Frank and my Alice. I don't even know if Gran is my dad's mum or my mum's mum. She treats them as though they are both her kids, and I've never seen it appropriate to ask. I mean, what time is right for that sort of question? I've lived with her for fifteen of my sixteen years of life, and now's the time to ask if she mothered my mum or my dad? No. So I just let it hang. She kind of physically resembles both of them, so no luck there.

"Neville. Neville, you're not listening. I was saying about how you always run, how you can never do anything properly, for the lack of trying, well, I don't know, honestly..."

I thought she was a bit mad, really. Well, not so much a bit as a lot. She tended to repeat things, not just a few words or sentences which could slip out of some people's minds but whole stories, speeches, the lot. Like this rant. I must have heard it twenty times. What's more, she seemed to be getting worse by the day. That was the third time she was rambling that day, and it was two in the afternoon. Saying almost exactly the same words, in the almost same tone. And she always scared me, I always thought she's crying, or genuinely upset, and those scared me, but I didn't think she ever was, or was even too aware of her surroundings to feel emotion. She might have been the first time, but then? Who knows.

"I can't do everything, you know..."

But I was the one who took care of you.

"... and you know how much I love you Neville dear, but sometimes you can get right on my..."

And I love her too. She was a good person, if usually quick tempered. She'd just been corrupted by that... insanity?

So I just went up to her, gave her a hug, and felt her tears steadily dampen the right shoulder of my sweater. She was shaking like a baby. I suppose she had been getting more and more childish, now I think about it. I think it's all just a cycle. You start in the world as a baby, pure, innocent, then get older, gaining confidence, independence, do your own adult thing, and just get older, whilst slowly returning to your beginning form, becoming less confident, less independant, more needy, more of a burden, and yet, more endearing... almost like a baby...

So I took her to her bedroom, made sure she was in comfortable clothing and a comfortable position and was sleeping for about ten minutes before exiting. I was hungry. I hadn't eaten a full meal in a couple of days. Just that thought made me feel all the more empty. So I went to the kitchen to make a turkey sandwich for myself, and a cheese and salad one for Gran, one bread white, one brown, just in case she was hungry when she awoke. That was her favourite snack. She laughingly said once it strangely reminded her of herself; plain, simple, something everyone knows and likes, but not everyone's first choice. Being about seven at the time I didn't really know what she meant, but I giggled along with her all the same. That memory has always remained with me though.

Soon after finishing my sandwich I wrote Gran a note saying that I'd gone for a walk, and set it down on the bedside table next to her own sandwich. She was still sleeping at that time. I covered her a bit more with the blanket, gave her a small kiss on the forehead and left the house.

It wasn't anything special. I just walked around a few blocks, bought a packet of crisps from a Muggle shop with the Muggle money that Gran sometimes gave me, and only finished about half of it. I went down to the park and sat on a swing, contemplating. It was one of my favourite things to do, contemplate. That afternoon I contemplated about my gran. How I loved her, and yet lashed out at her. How she was perfect in my mind, yet all the things I would change about her in an instant, if I were able to.

When the church clock by the park showed it was nearly half past four I got up to go home. I thought Gran would almost certainly be awake by that time, and would surely be wondering about me. I gave the half-empty packet of crisps which was still in my hand to a little girl with bright red hair in numerous pigtails on the way home. She had such an innocent smile.

I don't know what it was. Coincidence? No, couldn't have been that. What, really, in life happens coincidently? Instinct? Maybe. Whatever it was, I found myself walking home faster and faster, eventually full-out running to that lilac door. Gran loves lilac, and for her last birthday I painted the front door and her bedroom walls lilac, with little flowers in varying shades of blue and purple scattered around the walls. Oh, she was so happy that day. The smallest and most random thing could have made her so joyous, almost like her old self.

It was only when I'd got to the bottom of the stairs, panting, that I'd realised that something must have been wrong. The front door, for a start, was open. The atmosphere of the house was... unusual..? I can't find words to exactly place what I was feeling. But something, something, was different.

"Gran?" I called, stalking up the stairs. "Gran - "

I stopped. Before me, on the landing on the top of the stairs, stood someone I'd seen over a year ago. Altered. Maddening. A woman.

Bellatrix Lestrange.

I was frozen by fear and hatred. My insides were writhing yet as still as my heartbeat. We locked eyes for a second, before her face split into a wide smile, one side of her mouth slightly higher than the other, making her look even more lopsided and scary. Her eyes had a pinkish tinge to them, the left of which twitched a few times. Her skin the pale shade of one who hasn't seen much light recently. Her wild hair seeming to become more and more static as time stretched on.

How dare she come into my home and smile like that? I felt my face contort. I ran up the remaining steps wildly to - what - grab her? Jump on her? Punch her? But just as I was close enough to her that I could feel her thick putrid breath in the air she vanished. Disapparated, but not before she gave a sadistic bark of crazy pleasure. I screamed as inhumanely as I had ever screamed. My fists clenched so hard my fingers could have come out through the other side of my hand, I whirled around, half-expecting her to be there, waiting for me. She was no where to be found, of course. I cursed, again and again, at my stupidity. I couldn't apparate at the best of times during those lessons we took at school, let alone at that moment, and I wasn't even of age.

My curses fading as they turned into shrieks so shrill I had ringing in my ears, I fell to the floor on my knees. Thoughts and memories flew through my mind like wildfire. The time Dad remembered my name when I went to visit him. Gran throwing away all the sweet wrappers Mum had given me, and me shouting at her, tears splashing down my front. Me dancing with Ginny Weasley at the Yule Ball two and a half years ago. My first and only kiss I stole off Luna Lovegood after the last DA meeting before the Christmas holidays. The face of the little girl with the dozens of red pigtails after I'd given her my crisps. The time Draco Malfoy stole my Remembrall back in first year. The feeling I got when Harry told me I was worth twelve of Malfoy. My first meeting with Bellatrix Lestrange. Gran's smile when she awoke to her newly painted room.

Gran...

I stood up, shakily and with a wet face, and turned to Gran's room. I felt nauseous. I opened the door and took a step inside, whether I did it quickly or not, I can't remember, I just view it now in slow-motion. My scream never did leave my mouth.

There was every sign of a struggle. There were Gran's bloody fingerprints all over the bedsheets. Gran's worldly possessions, pictures of my parents and me, were broken, shattered, scattered across the floor. There was even her middle, pinky and index finger strewn on the rug, in their own little pool of the sickly mixture of blood and pus. Across the wall behind the bed were the words 'I could make a better sandwich with my eyes closed' scribbled in (I felt my heart break) yet more blood. Beneath that was a smiley face, the corner of its lips dripping.

I tore my eyes away from this sight and looked right. The window was open, the net was swaying gently in the afternoon breeze. Just in front of the window was my Gran, covered in blood, mucus and her pink nightie, her left arm just hanging off her shoulder, her head drooping slightly to the right, her hair covering her face, levitating a few inches off the ground. Pure, innocent... Plain, simple...

For how long I stood there, I don't know. All I know is that I walked closer to her, and pushed her hair back so I could see her face one last time. Shaking, I took a deep breath and took her appearance in, what must have happened. She wasn't just killed. She was tortured first. And for what? How would a deluded old woman have any information useful to the dark side? I gazed into her open eyes, willing them to spring into life. After a while I closed them. I picked her up and laid her down on her bed. I slowly took a step back.

"Goodbye."

And I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could. I didn't know where, it just had to be someplace else. It just had to be somewhere away from here.