Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the world. I do not write to be paid lots of money.
All quotes preceding the chapters are from the song "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas. Also not owned by me.

Warnings: Will contain slash.

01

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high
Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I'm dreamin',
I can hear them say...

"Carry On Wayward Son"

-Kansas

Hogsmeade was looking dismal indeed. Gray cold sleet pounded down on the roofs of the village washing away the snow that had fallen and leaving only slick, miserable mud. Wind whipped through the streets wrenching tree branches and debris with it, trapping everyone inside. There was a kind of quiet somewhere in the deafening roar of the storm. A comfortable, though unwelcome, kind of quiet, that can only be known to some people.

Inside that quiet a conversation was taking place.

The Three Broomsticks was closed for the night. The bar was dark inside and the doors were locked. The stools and chairs were turned upside down on the tables. Everyone had gone home for the night. The merry makers were back in bed beside their wives. The troublemakers had found beds with someone else's wives. The miserable old men had hobbled home. Even the three legged alley cat had retired, slinking his way through a crack in the glass of a small window and down into a slightly less damp basement where he was curled behind a stack of wine barrels.

Upstairs, on the second floor, beside a glowing hearth and a bottle of wine, the untroubled quiet and the conversation huddled together. Words passed back and forth between two friends, a bartender and a headmistress, that could be of no consequence to anyone but themselves.

Minerva leaned back comfortably in a large cushy armchair. Her wrists rested on the arms and her legs were outstretched and crossed. Her hat was pushed forward to a dramatic angle over her face by the back of the chair. She was, without a doubt, slouching. A most rare occurrence indeed.

In her right hand was a notably empty wineglass, a drop or two of red still sleeping at the bottom.

Rosmerta was tending the fire, her purple red skirt hitched up in one hand while the other prodded firmly at the coals. The spitting and crackling nearly drowned out her voice as she spoke. But given that Minerva had known this woman for a good many years she didn't actually need to hear the words to know what was being said.

"It's his eyes." her friend was saying. The fire poker made a metallic clang when Rosmerta set it down on the hearth stone. She rose and brushed a few ashes from her dress. "They are..."

"Sad." Minerva agreed.

Rosmerta nodded, turning her head to the rain outside. "With his childhood it's no wonder."

Minerva made a noise that didn't indicate her feeling one way or another on the matter.

"You haven't failed him Minerva." Rosmerta spoke in the soft voice of someone who was more used to soothing the woes of strangers than her own. "He did spectacularly. Stood up to the dark lord in the end, when everyone else was ready to give up. That's what you told me. You should be proud of him, and he should be proud of himself."

"He should be." Minerva agreed softly and cursed the waver in her voice. "If he could just catch a break. If life would just leave him alone for two seconds, give the poor boy a chance to catch his breath." She was feeling much more maudlin than usual. It was this damn wine. Rosmerta had snuck a couple more glasses in on her somehow, filled the cup when she wasn't looking.

"I've heard rumors..." Rosmerta said slowly. Minerva shrugged, not feeling she had the energy for this conversation, knowing she didn't have the energy not to have it.

"Some of them are true. Some of them pretend to know too much. Most of them don't say enough."

"Frank is really dead then?"

"Frank. And Alice too." Both of them gone, like whispers in the wind. Frank and Alice Longbottom were dead and it was damn unfair.

"Alice." Rosmerta echoed. Her voice had changed. They were dying, all of the Order. One by one. The war was over and still the heroes died. "Tell me how."

There was a very brief moment where Minerva considered refusing. And then she looked up from under the brim of her had at the face behind the question. Rosmerta was stricken. She had been listening to the stories for a month now without any notion of what she could actually believe. The graying wisps of her brown hair framed by the fire, the flushed skin of her cheeks, her hands were white where they clenched.

"It's an awful story, my dear."

"Minerva please..."

Minerva leaned forward staring down into her empty wineglass. She held it outstretched, realizing that if she was going to tell this story she hadn't had nearly enough yet. Rosmerta filled the glass. The wine made a light musical sound falling into the glass, putting a cheerful wall between themselves and the night.

Then Minerva, her hat pushed forward, her eyes lined, like the voice of the reaper, began to speak.

"Two weeks ago Alice woke up. The poor mediwitch who came in to check on her must have been frightened out of her skin. Working all those years and the woman never speaks a word to you, then one morning she sits up and asks if it isn't possible to get a pot of tea and some biscuits!

"The Healer contacted me. The first thing I did was go searching for Neville to take him with me of course. It took me thirty minutes to find him. It was eleven o'clock at night, the boy should have been in bed. Or at the very least in his dormitory. But he was nowhere, not even the library. Hermione told me that he often disappeared quietly for hours at a time. I had to dispatch several house elves to locate him. Then the house elf who did find him refused to tell me where.

"It didn't really seem like such a big deal at the time. I didn't care what rule he was breaking I just wanted him to know the news. I thought he would be overjoyed, bouncing." Minerva broke her pattern to breath, hands floating down to rest in her lap. Rosmerta was watching her with still eyes.

"He wasn't."

"No. He was melancholy at best. Subdued. For the first few moments he simply stared at me. He didn't speak at all until we actually got to the hospital. 'How is it possible?' he asked me. I told him I didn't know. How could I even guess?

"I felt like a fool Rosmerta. Me, a seasoned member of the Order, looking a gift horse in the mouth. I was so pleased to hear the news I didn't even stop to wonder about the implications. It took Neville, the child who I should have been guiding, to snap my mind back into place."

"That-" Rosmerta's quavering voice interrupted, "is a disturbing reaction for a child to have."

"I know." Minerva forced herself to take a deep breath. "I think we need to accept that he isn't a child anymore. We failed him in that aspect at least."

"Perhaps he simply did good by us."

"You don't believe that." Rosmerta didn't answer.

"In any case we saw her. And she smiled and hugged and fussed over Neville like any proper mother should. Neville smiled back and gave her all the right answers. It was all so calculated, so cold. Like a dance they both knew the steps to. It doesn't really matter what she said. I know you want those details but I'm afraid I don't have the heart tonight. I may never.

"What I can tell you is that when we returned to Hogwarts, in the early morning, Neville didn't leave right away. I expected him to. He was always closed off and quiet. But he sat down in my office... and looked and me and he cried." Small tears scraped into her voice. Minerva reached for her handkerchief.

"He came back to my office often after that. We talked. We still do, that was how it started. I tell him about his parents, how I knew them. And he tells me, well anything." Minerva took a deep breath. "Two days later I got another emergency floo call from St. Mungo's. Frank was dead. Alice had pushed him out of the window."

"My god!" Rosmerta's gasp showed the clearly she hadn't heard any of the right rumors. Minerva picked up her wine glass again, sipping it. Her own voice, she found, was frighteningly steady.

"She told the healers that she hadn't meant to do it that way. That she had wanted it to be quiet and nice. But then, standing there, looking at his blank face she'd just snapped. She couldn't take it, the way he was. "He wouldn't have wanted to live that way." she told them. Then she just kept apologizing and sobbing and they couldn't get her to explain anymore.

"The healers said she'd had a dissociative episode that presented as lucidity."

"Oh-" Rosmerta was gripping her skirt, the deep folds casting deeper shadows on her hands. They were a bartenders hands. Lean and nimble, but strong. Minerva cleared her throat.

"Then a week ago she killed herself. Overdosed of a potion." She looked up to find needles gazing back at her from her friend's eyes. Needles that probed and saw everything.

"You don't think it was a dissociative episode do you?"

"No." And the knots Minerva had been waiting for came back, the pain that was supposed to come with losing old friends. "It was too neat, too well planned. She managed to trick the mediwitch attending her and hide her potions until she had enough to be a toxic amount. That she even knew how much she needed suggests-"

"That she was lucid."

"Yes. Killing Frank wasn't an act of madness. It was a botched act of mercy."

Rosmerta was leaning on her knees staring at the fire. Minerva leaned back and looked at the fires reflection in the window.

"Poor Neville."

"I'm worried about him." Minerva admitted. "He talks to me, and that's good for him. But I can't remember the last time I saw him laugh, or hanging around with his friends. And sometimes..." Minerva stopped herself. It was the wine, she asserted in her mind, the wine making her want to say these things.

"Sometimes?" Rosmerta prompted. Minerva decided it didn't matter how ridiculous the truth sounded. Years in this world, in the war, should have taught her that by now.

"I feel like he's fading away. Like he is one of Hogwarts phantoms, fading into the woodwork."

XXX

Neville sat on the cold stone floor. His thighs were partially numb from the cold now and burned when he laid the heat of his palms on top of them. He should have been long to bed. Hours ago. He should have felt better. Days ago. He should have been able to move on. Months ago.

The mirror of Erised glimmered before him, a serene liquid pool to calm the tossing storm inside him. The clarity of his reflection was made sharper by the milky shafts of moonlight streaming in from the window. It seemed to him the reflection was more solid than he was these days. When he looked down at his own hands and legs at night, when he dared, they looked smoky. Like they weren't really there, like he was the reflection and that tranquil face in the mirror was the reality.

What is it, he wondered to the familiar face that makes you so calm? At the same time a smaller, more ashamed voice was furious with the unfairness of it all. Why not me? Was all it wanted to know.

Because that is only what I want most. Neville reminded himself. Because that is not real.

It was for Harry. Says the small voice, a far away whisper, echoes from deep within a chasm, from deep within himself where he had been certain he was already asleep. When he needed the stone.

I'm not Harry. And there the train of thought ended. Because that was pretty much what it came down to. He was not Harry.

Harry could let go of the past. Harry could move on and have other dreams. Harry lost his parents and still slept at night.

Neville sighed to fill the silence. If only that reflection could talk. If only the Neville in the mirror would smile, and wink, pass his secret on.

The stone floor was still cold. Neville traced the cracks in the rocks.

When he glanced up he noticed his reflection was tracing the soft fibers of a rug instead. Behind him was a warm looking room, with dark wooden walls and curtains on the windows.

"Where are you?" Neville asked out loud before he could remind himself how ridiculous the question was.

Where are you? Asked a voice he did not know.

XXX

Minerva saw Neville pass through the hallway one evening. The dusk was bright and clear as a crystal glass, the orange sunlight warm. Neville was transparent as a ghost.

He saw her and paused. His brown eyes met her own.

You've changed. She thought and nodded a casual greeting at him. If only... her conscience was whispering. Neville's plain form wavered and for a moment she imagined she could see the red of the tapestry behind him through his stomach and shoulders.

He nodded back without even the thinnest parody of a smile. Neville kept walking.

Minerva shook her head, called the event preposterous, and continued with her day.

XXX

When he slept he dreamed of the room inside the mirror. He was peering from his comfortable seat on the rug out to the miserable "other" of himself seated unhappily on the stone floor of Hogwarts. Behind him there were voices, whispers, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. And the mirror, of course, didn't reflect to show him who else stood in the room.

Neville closed his eyes and made himself listen to the speakers.

"He's getting clearer everyday." the voices said.

"Yes," they answered themselves. "And perhaps someday soon he will decide to stay."

"I do want to stay." Neville said out loud. He twisted, hoping he would be able to get a glimpse of who was hearing his words. He met brown eyes, but everything outside of the mirror was hazy. He was getting tired, which was odd because he knew for a fact that he was dreaming. "In fact I think I will." he decided. And gave up on the illogic of falling asleep while already being so, and dropped himself into the darkness and comparable comfort of a soft warm rug to a cold earthy floor.

XXX

Neville woke up to an oddly colored ceiling. Well, actually, it wasn't the color itself but the fact that it wasn't the color he was expecting which left him feeling so odd. The ceilings in the Gryffindor dorm were a deep scarlet red. This one was green and wooden. Ornate carvings scattered across the beams, tiny figures and shapes that his baffled eyes couldn't make out.

The bed was not his own either.

Neville sat up and saw the mirror. It sat in the corner of the room like a watching dog. Still and calm, with edges like quicksilver. Within it was a cold stone room.

Hogwarts. Here there was a soft carpet on the floor.

In the doorway, across from the mirror, stood a young man. His stillness matched the mirrors. He was tall and blonde with thin eyebrows and rather perfect hair. High cheekbones that suggested good "breeding" and deep gray eyes that suggested deep things. His face suggested strongly that he was Draco Malfoy.

Draco stared openly at him. He expressed nothing one way or another. He did lean back and tilt his head to the right and shout.

"He's awake!"

"I'm coming!" A familiar and strange voice answered. "Be. NICE!"

Draco snorted. He walked to the foot of Neville's bed, graceful. Despite his whirling confusion Neville was inspired to understand that this was not the Draco he had known at school. Draco's arms crossed across his chest in a manner that suggested he was unimpressed. Not that Neville saw any reason why he should be.

"So." said Draco. "I suppose you're Neville Longbottom."

Neville coughed and cleared the catch in his throat. "Yes."

No reaction. "Of course you are."

A brown haired young man brisked his way into the room. His hair was slightly curled and imperfect, like Neville's. His eyes were brown and wide, like Neville's. And his face had a sort of childlike roundness, like Neville. The difference being that on this guy all of his features looked charming. There was also the matter of the rather hideous scar that ran from brow to chin on the left side of the man's face. It cut through the eyebrow and down the eye.

That eye, Neville noticed, was just slightly darker in color than the other.

"Who is our guest then?" asked the brown eyed man, whose voice could probably have been Neville's a few years down the road.

"He's you."

"Really? Now isn't that fascinating."

Draco turned away. "Not really." But the young man, who Neville was sure he could put a name to now if he dared, was smiling.

"You will be Neville then?" he asked at Neville.

"Yes." said Neville for the second time. Considering the hour of the morning, much too late, and his ever rising stress level he was growing more and more impatient with the situation.

"Good. Me too. I imagine we'll get along swimmingly. Although there seems to be an age difference. How old are you Neville?"

"Eighteen." Neville wasn't sure how much he liked being addressed on a first name basis by himself.

"A bit of an age gap then, yes. I'm twenty three now."

Neville raised a hand to his eyes and rubbed at them hard. His morning, so far, and thanks to his older mystery clone, was proceeding in a business-like fashion. He didn't like it. He was confused. He was tired. And as far as he was concerned a little more chaos was in order.

"Excuse me!" he said loudly, interrupting whatever was being said. "What the hell?"

Neville-who wasn't Neville but apparently was-, looked taken back.

"Tell me about your home." he requested.

"Tell me where I am." Neville replied in kind.

"Malfoy Manor." Draco told him. He received a nod from Other-Neville.

Without another word Draco walked out of the room.

"You'll have to forgive Draco. He always gets a little testy when this happens." Neville assumed this comment was supposed to be comforting. "I think it unsettles him."

If he feels at all like I do I don't blame him. Neville thought.

Other-Neville was speaking. "You are in an alternate universe from your own. Though usually the alternate versions of me, or us rather, that come through are the same age.

"My reality has pulled you here in an effort to rectify a mistake. It chose you specifically because it deemed you unnecessary to the reality you were previously in." Again, that was uncomforting. "Or perhaps I should say that you considered yourself unnecessary within it." Other Neville paused, looking sad. "Which leads me to believe that you left something less than ideal behind."

Neville shrugged. He wanted to say "I doubt this world will be much better." but he didn't have the energy. Or the will. Or maybe he was hoping if he just let everything happen the dream would end eventually and he would wake up.

Other-Neville rose from the bed and shut the door. His hands were perfect, unscarred. Scholars hands.

I thought I always wanted to be a gardener?

A silencing spell settled over the door at the older Neville's casual wave. He put the wand down on the bed and sat back down, crossing his legs this time.

"If you are anything like me, which I can very safely assume, you will benefit most from being told everything immediately. To avoid further confusion you may refer to me by my –our- middle name."

Neville scrunched up his face. He hated the name Ambrose.

Ambrose nodded. "We all make sacrifices." he said ironically.

Then he told Neville a true story.