Is that me?
I'm looking into the glass, and I see someone - I suppose it's me - when I reach out to the glass, our hands touch, so it must be me. So I must look like that. All pale and thin and stringy.
I didn't always look like her in the glass, though, did I?
There's a blurry picture. If I close my eyes, I can see a blurry picture. I'm with people.
A tall man - black hair. And another, but brown. I must have been there. How else would I be able to see it? I think it was yesterday.
There are people here with me. Not blurry, but real. Only the whitecoats talk. And Loony.
He's funny - he never stops talking. And he dances around. The whitecoats are forever chasing him.
There's a man here. I smile at him sometimes, but I don't know why. I get this - this feeling when I see him. He doesn't smile. He bumped himself yesterday. Or the day before. He fell down,
and I wanted to run to him. He was hurt, and I wanted to cry.
The whitecoats are nice. They give me chewy things. They are yummy. Some of them say "Poor thing"
when they look at me. I want to say something back, but I don't know how to make the words. Or which ones.
There's a boy, and an old woman. I call her Bird, because there is a big one on her head. And she wears green. She is very old. She looks like the man I smile at, a little. The boy, he always looks sad, and lost. He has a round face, and he follows Bird. He has a name, I know he does, and I should know it, but I don't know why.
He was here yesterday, before the man I smile at fell down. He cried, a little. I touched his hand, because I thought I needed to. I don't know why, but I did. And he cried, just a little. He had a little soft round thing - it was yummier than the yummy chewy things the whitecoats give me. When I saw him cry, it hurt - a funny kind of hurt inside. The woman in the glass cried later.
He goes to see the man I smile at, too.
The whitecoats give me the chewy things, and when I eat them, I save the papers, and I give them to the boy, and he seems less sad. He says "Thanks, Mum." I just think I should give him something. I like it when he comes in, but I don't know why.
The woman in the glass is crying again.
Yesterday, I tried to say a word like the whitecoats. I was humming, but then I started a different sound. My lips open, so it was thinner. And then I open my mouth, and then I put my teeth on my lip. I can say that word. I don't know what it is, or what it means,
but I can say it, it's as easy as breathing. The whitecoat who was near me smiled. It was a sad smile. That word - it made the woman in the glass cry.
And I wish I knew why.
A/N
It's Alice Longbottom talking here. The man she smiles at is Frank, and Loony is Lockhart.
She refers to yesterday a lot - I got that from a friend's little sister. Anytime she told you a story about some that happened, whether it was last week or laster year, it was "Last night..."
The blurry picture is the night the picture of the order was taken (the one Moody shows Harry.
The "little soft round thing" is a little cupcake, for her birthday. And in the last paragraph, Alice was trying to say "Neville." That's the best way I could describe how to pronounce the first three letters.
This clicked in my head while at work today. I think Alice is still in there, a little, and she doesn't know why she cries, or why she should know these people, or why she smiles at Frank,
but she wants to know.