This one won first place in the Writing Contest over on CoS (very narrowly, mind), the topic being 'Neville Spends A Day With Mum And Dad'. I hope you enjoy it - I certainly loved writing it - and, as always, Jo, dear Jo, owns all.
'… and then Fred and George were trying to test this other sweet, I can't remember what they called it, something to do with fainting, maybe, but then the one who tried it – I can't tell them apart, really, although I heard that one of them's got a weird mole somewhere – anyway, he turned yellow, I think they perfected this spell they kept trying in my first year, only in the wrong product – they kept trying to turn Scabbers, that's Ron Weasley's old rat, they kept trying to turn him yellow, only it never worked, you remember me telling you about –'
'I'm sure they remember everything, dear,' Mrs Longbottom said wearily, making Neville flush, shrinking down in his seat. There was a moment of pure silence.
'Well, I'm going to get some coffee. Would you like a cup, Neville?' Augusta boomed, just as a small giggle broke the disquiet.
'Okay,' he replied in a small voice, and his grandmother sighed.
'Cheer up a bit, Neville, dear. Tell your parents more about your term, there's a good boy.'
But he was no longer excited and chirpy, and eager to relate every anecdote of every day. Her comment had reminded him of just exactly who he was talking to; not enthusiastic parents delighted to see him back from boarding school, but two patients in a mental ward, capable only of staring, pointing, and, if he was lucky, laughing; and certainly not of listening to him, and processing what he told them, or remembering a single thing he'd said. He had long since grown out of the belief that the sound of his voice would bring back their sanity, or that he should tell them everything about himself so they knew him when they 'came back'. He liked to think he wasn't that naïve anymore, but since starting Hogwarts he'd felt himself slipping back into the habit.
'Do you want that autograph, yet, boy?'
Neville looked up and quickly blinked away the few tears forming in his eyes. Gilderoy Lockhart was sat in his bed at the other end of the ward, beaming cheerily as he clutched a big batch of black and white photos of himself. Neville simply sighed to himself and ignored his former professor. Lockhart asked him if he wanted a photograph at least twice during every visit, and while Neville knew better, his grandmother couldn't help herself, giggling like a schoolgirl as she slipped the disjointedly signed picture from his fingers. And she complains at me for keeping Mum's sweet wrappers, Neville thought disdainfully, thinking of the stack of photos on his grandmother's dressing table. He had the horrible feeling she was one of those fans who'd written to him every week before his accident.
Getting up to draw the curtains around his parents' beds, and therefore shut out the talkative man, Neville felt a little tug on his arm, and his heart gave a painful leap. It was his mother, a wild, broken look on her face, the same face she wore whenever Neville left the hospital – the one thing about her that sometimes gave Neville hope that his parents would get better. He knew it was impossible, but he didn't know how he'd cope without that face every time they visited, however much it hurt him to acknowledge that she looked like that because of him.
Forgetting about the curtains, he slowly sat back down, clasping his mother's hand as he did so. 'I'm not going anywhere, mum,' he whispered. 'Don't worry, I'm here.'
Seeing that he was still with her, Alice beamed, and then turned back to chewing her gum. Neville sighed, stroked her hair and reached into his pocket.
He gently pulled a small photograph print from his jacket, and, glancing guiltily down the ward for any sign of his grandmother, gazed at it sadly. Augusta didn't know he had it, and she wouldn't like it if she did – he wasn't supposed to have it, as it had been hidden in a cupboard in her room. Neville had only come across it by chance when, a year before he'd started Hogwarts, she'd sent him up to fetch her second best vulture hat, their old Kneazle having eaten her best one just before they were leaving for her brother Algie's 90th birthday party. He'd kept it with him ever since, though it saddened him that his grandmother cared so little for it that she hadn't noticed its disappearance.
It was a photo of his mother and father on their wedding day, standing on the steps of what looked to be a church, though Neville had always been told that witches and wizards weren't accustomed to getting wed in the house of God.
Alice was plump, but not in a bad way, with a healthy glow in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye as she stared at her new husband. She was wearing a simple white dress which suited her black curly hair perfectly – the beautiful black hair which had turned wispy and grey, and Neville couldn't help but tear his eyes away from the image to stare sadly at his now rocking mother. A tear slowly rolled down his cheek as his gaze returned to the picture he held so lightly as if scared it would crumple in his grip.
His father looked to be laughing, though he wasn't quite sure; the picture seemed to be from a Muggle camera; most likely, his great uncle Algie had been going through one of his Muggle obsession periods. Neville recognised his brown hair, similar to his own though his was curling like his mother's, though there was really not much else there to connect them; people who had known his parents (mostly relatives Gran dragged him along to see) commented on how like his mother he looked, but his father was almost never mentioned. He wondered what Frank might have done to deserve the negligence.
Sighing heavily, Neville tucked the photo back into his pocket, and looked up to see both his parents peering good-naturedly at him. He managed a weak smile, which his father returned, though Alice kept peering at him as though she had met him in passing somewhere, long ago, and couldn't quite place him.
Neville's heart jumped, though this had happened more times than he could count already, and the Healers had told him more times than he thought necessary that it was something which sometimes happened between patients of this nature and close relatives like mothers or children, though Neville had never seen Frank act like this around Augusta. Either way, it was not an indication that they were going to get better, the Healers urged, and as Neville wilted like a dying plant before them, they bustled off to shatter someone else's hopes.
His heart heavy, he got up to close the curtains, wanting some privacy in his moment of depression – and found himself face to face with Lockhart.
'Do you want this autograph?' he demanded, flapping a headshot of several years ago in Neville's face, and suddenly Neville couldn't stand it any more. He hated that his parents had been tortured into this permanent childishness; that he was stuck with his uncaring, unloving grandmother; that it was Harry Potter who got all the sympathy for his dead parents, when he didn't have to look upon their blank, mindless faces every holiday – and he hated this stupid, fraudulent, gold plated moron in front of him.
His hand automatically gripped at his waistband, but there was no wand residing there – it made his grandmother nervous to have them on the Tube, though it made Neville feel more vulnerable without it.
Lockhart was lucky for this mad belief of his grandmother's, though, for instead of jinxing him with the hatred currently flowing though his body, scaring him half to death in the process, Neville simply grabbed the bemused man's arm, making him drop his exposures in the process, and dragged him over to the locked door, muttering the keyword under his breath as he did so. The door sprang open as he reached it, and he shoved Gilderoy, still confused about what was happening to him, out into the corridor.
'I heard that your fan club's down there,' he announced, trying to hold down his anger as he pointed down the hall, 'I think they'll want some autographs.'
Lockhart's face immediately lit up with a bright beaming smile, reminiscent of those which had once plastered Witch Weekly's front covers, and he strolled off down the corridor in search of his eager fans. Neville, pleased with himself, slammed the door of the Janus Thickey ward closed and turned back to his parents.
Alice was now chewing some more gum, having deposited her old piece into the rubbish chute in one of the white walls, and Frank was counting something on his fingers as he mumbled indistinctly. Neville felt suddenly drained, as though someone had reached into his body and pulled all his organs out, and as first one tear, then another, flowed freely down his pink cheek, he couldn't fight back and threw himself onto an empty bed, covering his face as his tears made a damp mess of the plain sheet.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, but he was suddenly aware of a hand on his shoulder, and, sniffling, he turned to see the unusually-concerned face of his mother peering worriedly at him. He knew the Healers had warned him about sudden movements around them – they might bring back half-memories of their torture and make them violent – but he couldn't stop himself from throwing his arms around her. The presence of her between his arms was entirely new, and almost scary, if he hadn't felt so thrilled about it. He didn't expect her to hug him back, and there was no real disappointment when she just stood there and let him hold her – just the fact that she seemed okay with it pleased Neville beyond words.
He let her go quickly, but let one hand linger on her arm, unwilling to break this strange new connection he felt towards her. He saw fear in her face, and confusion, but even though he knew how this must be affecting her, unstabling her, he just couldn't bring himself to take himself away …
'Neville?'
His hand dropped like a lump of lead, and as he stood there, ashen, his mother scuttled away and his grandmother took her place, placing the two polystyrene cups of coffee on the table beside them.
'Are you okay, dear?'
Neville bit his lip and nodded silently. 'I'll be fine,' he managed, but a salty tear dropped from the tip of his nose into his open mouth as he said it, and the other tears storing up in his eyes broke loose.
He expected Augusta to tut, and take out a tissue to forcibly wipe away the tears, but to his surprise a lone tear slipped down her made-up cheek. 'I miss them too, Neville, dear,' she whispered, so quietly he thought he'd misheard her, but another tear confirmed what he'd heard.
And then, the tissue came out, and there was no evidence of the tears on his grandmother's face, but as they walked back down the ward to Frank and Alice, she gently linked his arm in hers, and cast him an understanding glance as she pulled the curtains to.
Alice seemed to have recovered; at any rate, she was chewing her gum happily and looking to a spot on the ceiling as her son and her mother-in-law wordlessly sipped the quickly cooling decaf.
After several minutes of this unbearable atmosphere, Neville heard the door open, and the voice of the ward's Healer, apparently showing some visitors around the ward, and then the self-pompous voice of Gilderoy Lockhart. He felt thoroughly downhearted, though didn't quite know how he had expected the man's little misadventure to finish – maybe down a rubbish chute.
He knew his grandmother was speaking to him, but he'd switched off. Now utterly depressed, he sought solitude in his head, going over some of the more obscure plants he'd learnt in his extra Herbology lessons with Professor Sprout.
Just as he was feeling happier, he felt someone shaking his arm, quite forcefully. He blinked and looked around him, trying to take in his surroundings.
His grandmother looked quite cross. 'Honestly,' she whispered in irritation, 'you're showing yourself up – not to mention me – in front of Mr Lockhart's guests.'
Neville didn't care about the stupid fake's guests, or anyone else in the room – until his mother gently touched his hand. She had that scared look in her eye again, as though she knew that he was leaving her, and Neville's frosty heart melted to look at her.
'Bye, mum,' he murmured, determined not to let a tear fall this time. He kissed her on the cheek, followed by his father, and, sighing deeply, got up to follow his grandmother out of the ward, still not concentrating on his surroundings as she sharply pulled the curtains back from around the beds. He was lost, deep in thought, his mind desperate to escape the awful surroundings and the feelings he was forced to feel in this claustrophobic ward, surrounded by people who were never going to get better, people resigned to their fates, people like his parents. People wasting away without a care in the world, without a clue about what was happening to them, or their tragic circumstances. He wanted, he needed to get back to Hogwarts. But first, he needed to get out of this hospital.
'And – oh, Mrs Longbottom, are you leaving already?' The Healer sounded almost disappointed, though Neville wasn't sure why. And then he saw them.
'Neville!'
Aw :pinches poor Neville's cheek: Reviews are love!