"We won the war."
The man sits near the edge of the bed. The older woman on the gives no reply.
"Voldemort is dead." He tries again.
The woman cocks her head to one side in confusion.
Tears shine in the man's eyes. The realisation that she still does not understand him, despite the news he has to give her, hits him like a ton of bricks. He turns to the sleeping man on the next bed, knowing that Frank Longbottom's condition would not be any better than his wife's.
From the doorway, a Healer watches the one sided conversation in silence. Once, she would have gone up to Neville, perhaps smiled at him, and reassured him that the Moon frogs flying around his parents would heal them soon. But war had stolen the innocence of the Ravenclaw.
For five years she has watched from the shadows as the young man has patiently waited for the day when his parents would smile back at him. Five years of silence.
She has chosen to become a Healer for a reason, she reminds herself, everyday.
And so it came to pass, that a certain Gryffindor finds a comforting hand on his shoulder each time the tears threatened to fall, a hand that had remained until the day he chose to let go of the two he loved most.
A hand he held when he realised he had found one who taught him to love again.