Sweet Papers and Sanity: Alice Longbottom
Some days when the sun shines clearly on sterile white walls I know there is something missing. Some
piece of me
has broken. Broken off? Away? Or is it
still
buried within me, jagged reminder of Pain Pain Pain.
It is a breezy autumn night, leaves whisper against the windows. Alice thinks that tomorrow she will take Neville into the garden and let him wade through the leaves, his small plump figure will toddle over them, delighting in the rustling. She leans over his cot where he sleeps peacefully. At a noise from downstairs Alice smiles, realising Frank is back from work. Each evening it brings the same relief; an Aurors' job is one of danger, despite the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
I'd like two sugars in my tea today nurse, please, if that's alright.
Nurse? So someone's ill. I think he's ill. The man. They say I know him. Say I'm married to him. I don't
Remember Remember Remember
Frank. A word like a jewel, emerging from the distorting waves in my head to glimmer briefly. A sea-change. 'Something rich and strange.' A fragment of poetry! I remembered. But what was I remembering before?
Something about the man. They say I know him.
Alice embraces Frank and together they hover over their small son. They are filled with joy but also poignant sadness, thinking of another child who is now an orphan. Yet they know they cannot dwell on the murders of James and Lily Potter; it would be an insult to their memories to let their lives become stunted with grief and guilt. The guilt of survival.
An elderly lady visits the man and me sometimes. She looks so sad, but I can't seem to comfort her.
I even give her my sweet papers. I have them in all the colours of the rainbow; if I hold them up to the light they glow like jewels, like my Frank glowed when he saw our son for the first time.
Our son. My darling boy.
No no no no no don't remember you'll remember what came next and it hurt it ripped through you it set your bones on fire.
Rock a bye baby on the tree top
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks...
I feel guilt often, because of the flower girl. I grieved when she and her husband died
but inside I was glad
my son was safe.
Could you accept the guilt of rejoicing that one child is attacked in place of your own? I can't.
I can't understand. I won't let myself
Remember.
The Longbottom's calm is brutally shattered by the sound of curses flung at their home. Frank rushes to the window to see the ghastly figures of Death Eaters fast approaching. One looks up and he meets the grief-crazed eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange. He turns to Alice who has a squalling Neville clasped against her. They attempt to disapparate but the counter-curse has already been cast, likewise a curse which prevents them contacting the Order. Frank meets Alice's eyes.
When they came it was night.
A time of healing.
A time of grieving.
For those who were lost and would never return.
It was Questions Questions Questions, but
The moment in which their eyes meet lasts an eternity. She knows that it is hopeless. They have survived all those years of Voldemort's tyranny to die on this soft autumn night. But they have created a son. Neville must live. Alice swiftly charms him into sleep whilst Frank runs downstairs to confront the Death Eaters. The look into Alice's eyes was his only farewell and he did not even glance at Neville, but she knows that he has given up that solace to hold off the Death Eaters long enough for her to conceal their child. She does so then flies to die besides her husband, prepared to take as many Death Eaters as possible with her. She does not yet know that there are fates worse than death.
I didn't know the answers. Were there answers? I'm sorry, so sorry, but I didn't know the answers I didn't pass the test.
Then
there
was
pain. It
wrenched
my
mind.
The valiant pair fight with reckless courage but eventually, as they always knew would happen, they are overcome. But instead of the death curse they expect they are bound and tortured relentlessly. 'Where is He? Tell us! Tell me!' A demented Bellatrix shrieks. Alice gasps as her body is inflicted with wracking pain. Worse is the sight of her brave husband, crushed into a gibbering wreck.
Occasionally, I am granted the grace of remembering that I was right not to answer. The demon with the evil black eyes was in the wrong and I was in the right.
But when gifted with such fleeting sanity I don't waste it on dwelling on right and wrong. They are just words. Instead I think of Frank and Neville.
Husband and Child.
Then the guilt returns in
Raging Waves, and with it the Pain. If I had known what they wanted would I have given in? Would I have sold my soul for the end of the agony? Would I . . .
Eventually the Death Eaters realise that no more sense or knowledge can be ripped out of the Longbottom's minds. They have torn their sanity to shreds. Bellatrix sobs in anguish, her last hope of finding her beloved Master has crumbled. When Aurors sprint into the room she does not even care. Alice and Frank do not care either. They are beyond caring. They lie in a broken heap in their own urine, their bones fractured and tendons torn.
Think of happy times. Lying by a lake in summer. Flying through the air.
Where am I? Why am I surrounded by these hideous floral curtains? Why why why why why why why why why?
White hair and wrinkles.
They tell me things that can't be true I'm not a mother I'm just a child I got my Hogwarts letter yesterday
anowlflewinthewindowwithit.
Dumbledore tenderly brushes the hair off Alice's face and looks at Frank, remembering him as a bright, brave Gryffindor who was always determined to become an Auror. A child's wailing is heard from upstairs. Alice's face twists in perplexity but this fades as she becomes distracted by a curiously shaped shadow on the wall.
I'm sorry Nurse I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry. Please shut the curtains the light is made of nails today.
The elderly wizard sighs and knows that Neville's parents have retreated into the mists of insanity. Sometimes insanity is a necessary hole into which humans crawl, to lick their wound like injured animals. Sometimes its comfort is such that people remain there, unable to face the harsh light of reality, because they have been hurt too much to recover.
I love
I have loved
I will love
Roses are red and violets are blue.
That's all I can do.
Please know I love you.
A boy comes sometimes and I want so much to give him things. I want so much to call out to him and hold him. I want so much to give him things.
sweet wrappers that glow
but everything I am and have is broken.