'Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?'
Neville Longbottom swallowed hard. He did know of another enchantment, another curse that had been condemned in the wizarding world.
Fingers trembling slightly, but voice steady, Neville raised his hand. 'There's one - the Cruciatus Curse.'
Neville Longbottom did not really remember his parents.
That is to say, he did not recall times when they had picnicked on flowered moors, or played Quidditch in the sunny fields behind his grandmother's manor, or sat around an open fire in the dead of winter, sharing stories and cups of hot cocoa.
He had only one distant memory, of when he was a very small boy. Mr. Longbottom had been off at work, and Neville's mother had sat up and waited for him in the small sitting room of their cottage. It was very late, but Neville had been allowed to stay with his mother, and wait for Frank Longbottom to return home. He leaned against the windowpane, which was icy cold, and watched for the familiar shape of his father, which usually Apparated outside the window.
Hours passed. His father never came.
Gran had explained to Neville, seldom as she mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom, that they both worked for the Ministry of Magic, and were usually absent in Neville's early childhood. Of course, Neville's father had arrived at home that frigid evening, but it was well into the waking hours of the next morning when he finally appeared in front of the window. Neville remembered falling asleep at his post, head resting on the sill.
All other memories of his life were shared with Gran, and the rest of the Longbottom family - all of whom were very intelligent and well-known wizards. Unfortunately, these memories were often less than pleasant, thanks to the members of the Longbottom family themselves - Great-Uncle Algie, who was convinced that Neville was hopeless as a wizard; Neville's five-year-old cousins, who could transfigure their own bed slippers at the time that ten-year-old Neville could scarcely hold a wand; to Gran herself, who presided over the manor with a queen-like air.
The Longbottom family's discovery of Neville's abilities as a wizard came to him as a sort of misfortune rather than a triumph. After hearing his aunts and uncles whisper about him behind doors - 'only Squib in our family, I suppose that's lucky'; 'after all, the odds weren't bad' - and once watching his grandmother pack up old school things that could have been Neville's, tucking them out of reach, Neville had grown accustomed to his role as the black sheep of the family. It was a place in which he belonged, even if it was rather disgraceful.
Maybe Hogwarts, surprised as Neville was to have been admitted, had done something to improve his opinion of himself; but that day in his fourth year that he raised his hand for the first time in a Defense Against the Dark Arts class had nothing to do with developed self-esteem. It had to do with his parents.
'Your name's Longbottom?'
Neville nodded. Though he had expected his teacher to comment, Professor Moody only turned back to the class without another word, and reached into his jar for the second spider.
Neville had been wandering the hallways of his grandmother's manor. It was the kind of place where you weren't allowed to touch anything, and if you did, well, your hands were expected to be scrubbed raw. This rule seemed to have been created for Neville's especial benefit, since he had an unfortunate tendency to knock over anything within his reach.
Hands held carefully behind his back, Neville bent down to inspect a display of porcelain figurines in the shape of various merpeople; they were flipping their tangled green hair about and looking up at him peevishly.
Across the corridor, there used to hang a photograph of Neville's parents. They had been standing together, near a beautiful willow tree, which Neville supposed had been planted in front of their cottage. Gran had caught him looking at it so many times that she had finally let him move it into his bedroom.
Now, the photo lay in the bottom of Neville's dresser, hidden by socks and underwear. He could visualize it in his mind, anyway, and that was the way in which he liked to think about his parents; Mrs. Longbottom, with her long, sandy-colored plait, and gentle smile; and Mr. Longbottom, with a jovial grin and bright blue eyes.
'So, how did they die?'
Neville jumped. A voice had come from the carved door of the main parlor behind him.
'They didn't, Fritz, haven't you heard?'
In his haste to reach the parlor door, Neville tipped a mermaid figurine onto its side with his elbow. Shaking her fist, the mermaid shouted at Neville from her precarious perch over the side of the shelf.
'What happened, then?'
It sounded as if Fritz, the butler, and Dora, a maid, were tidying the parlor, and they were talking about Neville's parents.
'They went stark raving mad, that's what. Don't you remember the attack?'
Fritz gave a grunt. Neville ignored the merpeople that were jumping up and down in anger on the display shelf, waving tridents threateningly in his direction.
'It was the Cruciatus Curse. You-Know-Who...'
'Neville? What are you doing?'
Neville gulped. He turned in the direction of this new voice...his grandmother, a rather formidable-looking witch sporting a purple witch's hat bedecked with a stuffed vulture, was making her way up the corridor.
'You shouldn't listen at doors, child, it's rude.' Gran took hold of the sleeve of Neville's sweater and started back down the hall.
'Gran, what's the Cruciatus Curse?'
Grandmother Longbottom stopped dead. She looked around at Neville, as though sizing him up. Then, as if making up her mind about something, she gave her head a little shake before answering. 'The Cruciatus Curse, Neville, was outlawed by the Ministry many years ago...it's one of the Unforgivable Curses, you know.'
Neville, who couldn't see what value this information had - if any - only nodded as if every mystery of life now made sense.
Gran nodded, too, then turned and continued down the corridor. 'Tea's at six, Neville, don't forget.'
She left him to wander down another hallway, not looking at anything, really; just walking and wondering.
'The Cruciatus Curse,' Moody repeated. Neville's heart began to beat in a panicked sort of way, and he wondered why he had raised his hand at all.
'Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea,' Moody continued, pointing his wand at the spider and engorging it to thrice its normal size. Then he raised his wand again.
'I'm not going!'
Neville folded his arms and flung himself onto his bed. Angering Dora was almost too simple, and although Neville usually obeyed all who ordered him about, this defiance gave him a sort of satisfaction.
'Please, Neville, you have to go!' Dora looked desperate. She was in no mood to play nanny.
'Why?'
'Because!' Dora was starting to panic, voice shrill. 'Madam Longbottom said that you must get ready to visit your parents...'
'Dora?'
Gran had poked her head through the door. Neville was in for it now.
But she only said, 'Neville, are you ready?'
Neville only nodded. He looked up at Gran, and realized she had heard every word that had been exchanged between Dora and himself.
Gran raised her eyebrows at Dora, who only looked to happy to leave the bedroom.
'Neville?' Gran lowered herself onto Neville's bed. 'You have to go and see your parents. We do every holiday. You can't just abandon them, can you?'
They abandoned me, Neville thought, but was wise enough not to say. He only nodded.
St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was a whitewashed building off Diagon Alley. It looked dark and foreboding to Neville, and he pulled the lapels of his coat closer to his body before starting up toward it.
'Longbottom?' The receptionist nodded, a little pityingly, Neville thought, and Gran handed him a bunch of Christmas flowers.
They climbed the staircase to the seventh floor. Gran, lithe as ever, hurried ahead of Neville, who huffed behind her. This level of the hospital was for patients with mental conditions; the lost causes...
An orderly opened the door to room 418 for them, and now Gran hung back, instead of bounding ahead as she had on the stairs. Neville was pushed into the room, and felt all breath leave his lungs.
The gray-faced couple lying in their beds paid no attention to the visitors that had just entered the room; their empty eyes rested on the ceiling. Neville, heart thudding, tiptoed forward and set the flowers on the bedside table between them.
Gran sat down in a chair near the door, and took out her knitting. Neville, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, had never been sure what Gran expected him to do, exactly; he tried not to look at the two people in the beds.
To Neville, these were not his parents. They were complete strangers. His parents were the happy couple in the picture frame at the bottom of his dresser. Mrs. and Mr. Longbottom were not the motionless figures in the hospital beds, whose eyes did not stray from the ceiling. Automatically, Neville followed their gaze, but couldn't see anything but dull gray ceiling.
'Erm. Hello Mum, Dad.' It was a practiced greeting that Neville recited each time he visited St. Mungo's, but from the look on his parents' faces, he might as well be invisible for all they noticed.
He looked over his shoulder at Gran. She was knitting furiously, needles stabbing at the yarn violently. She didn't glance up at her son and daughter-in-law, but kept her eyes on the yellow scarf she was working on.
Neville stood there, in the silence, until the orderly poked his head into the doorway to tell them that visiting hours were over. As Gran tucked the scarf into her big red handbag, and they left the room, Neville didn't look back.
'Crucio!'
The spider crumpled onto the desk, and began to roll back and forth, pain emanating from its very body. Neville jerked and clutched the desk in front of him, suddenly replacing the spider with his parents, the two young people in his photograph, who he saw writhing on the floor, screaming...
'Stop it!'
Neville left the classroom that day shivering uncontrollably, sweating palms holding his leather bag in a death grip. The imagined scene played over and over in his head, Cruciatus, Cruciatus...
Several classmates asked him if he was all right. Neville only nodded quickly and concentrated on making his way down the hallway, to the Great Hall, where dinner would be served soon.
'It's all right, sonny,' a gruff voice said from behind him. Neville whirled around, and found himself facing Moody and his darting eye.
Neville didn't say another word as the menacing teacher rested one hand on his shoulder and led him, gently, back into the classroom.
~Beauxbatons