AN: Alright, this is the last sad one for a while. The next two have been written and they're must more lighthearted.

Again if anyone has suggestions for other "Firsts" let me know, I'd be glad to try and accommodate them.


Night Terrors

The first time that Neville has the nightmare is because of his Gran. He supposes it's not technically her fault, but in his head it still feels that way. It's Sunday and she's trying to get him to tidy up so they can go visit his parents in the hospital. Neville would much rather stay home and play in the yard, because they got the first real snow of the winter last night. He's seven years old now and he thinks he might finally be tall enough to make a snowman in the yard. But Gran won't listen and she just keeps telling him to put on his nice shirt and clean up his face.

"I don't wanna go," whines Neville. "It's boring."

"Now, Neville," snaps Gran.

"Why?" groans Neville. "They don't know we're there. It's stupid and I don't wanna go. What's the point?"

Gran's face goes hard and Neville knows he's said something wrong. "You sit yourself down on that sofa right now, young man," she says sternly. She waits until he's sitting down before she leaves the room. When she comes back she's carrying a big leather book that looks even older than her. She sits down next to him and opens it up.

There's a big picture right in the middle of the page, two people at a wedding. They look familiar to Neville, but he's not exactly sure why. He just knows he's seen their faces before. Especially her, the woman in the pretty white dress with the big smile. Gran watches him as he reaches out and touches the picture carefully. "These are your parents," she says suddenly.

Neville blinks in surprise and looks from her to the picture real fast. No, that's not right, is it? His parents are older, much much older. Mum and Dad both have lots of gray in their hair, and wrinkles around their eyes. And they never smile like the people in this picture. Mum smiles sometimes, but not all happy like this. Dad never smiles at all. He can see where the faces are the same too though. Mum has the same shape in her face, and the same big blue eyes. Dad's got the same nose, and those big ears too.

"Is the picture way old?" asks Neville.

"Nine years," says Gran. "Just a little bit older than you." That sounds old to Neville, but he knows that that's not long enough for someone to get so old. "This was taken at their wedding. Then two years later you were born. And then just a bit over a year after that was when they got attacked."

Neville's eyes widen in horror. "Attacked?" he asks. "Someone attacked them? Why?"

So Gran told him a story. She told him all about an evil dark wizard named You-Know-Who, who was going to take over the world with his army of evil wizards called Death Eaters. She told him about how dark those times were, how people were disappearing or dying every day, and people like his parents fought to keep the bad wizards at bay. She told him about the day the evil wizard disappeared, how he had tried to kill a little boy named Harry Potter, a baby the same age as Neville, and how somehow he couldn't do it and You-Know-Who vanished.

Then she told him about how some of the evil wizards weren't ready to give up yet. How they still thought that You-Know-Who was out there, and that they could bring him back if they could just find him. So they started attacking people, questioning them to find out if they knew anything about where he might be. They heard that Neville's parents were part of the good fight, so they came to the house one night. They used a curse, an Unforgivable Curse Gran called it, that caused pain. They used it to torture his parents until they couldn't remember anything.

But she told him that they never gave up any information. No matter how much they were tortured, they said nothing to these dark wizards. "Your parents are heroes," says Gran. "No matter if it bores you or if they don't recognize us, they deserve to be remembered. That's why we go to see them, so that the good things they did never get forgotten. You got that, boy?"

Neville nods. His mind is racing. Dark people came and tortured his parents. They used a spell that made them hurt, and it hurt them so bad that now they can't even remember him. These evil wizards, they're the reason that he has to live with Gran and not with his Mum and Dad like a kid is supposed to. It's all their fault.

"Who did it?" asks Neville. "Did they catch them, the bad wizards?"

Gran nods and turns to the back of the picture album. She picks up a folded piece of newspaper print and opens it. There are four people in the picture, three men and one woman. Two of the men are big and bulky and mean looking. One of them is little and blonde and he just looks scared. But it's the woman that catches Neville's eye. She might have been pretty, with her thick dark hair and her light skin, but there's something in her eyes that makes Neville's stomach twist and she has a smile on her face that doesn't look friendly at all. He doesn't know what else to call that look but evil.

"These are the people," says Gran. "When they caught them, they didn't even deny it. That woman there, she was proud of it. Said that it meant when You-Know-Who comes back then she'll be treated like royalty."

Neville feels like maybe he might be sick. Gran puts the newspaper back in the book and closes it. "Alright now, run along and change your shirt," she says. "We're already going to be late." He doesn't argue anymore, just goes to his bedroom and puts on his nice dress shirt. He doesn't talk much as they Floo to St. Mungo's, and at the hospital he sits quietly next to Gran in the plastic chairs between the beds. Dad doesn't move, just stares up at the ceiling, and Mum fidgets with a piece of yarn.

Neville usually sits and talks to them during their visits. They never respond, and Dad rarely even spares him a glance, but sometimes Mum watches him and tilts her head like she's listening. But today he can't bring himself to say anything, because all he can think about is the story Gran told him and the pictures from the album. He doesn't want to talk to them about that. He thinks they wouldn't want to remember it so it's better not to say anything, even if he doesn't know if they understand. So Gran just sits and prattles on about the family and some of her old lady friends and things that she read in the Prophet, until they get ready to go home. Mum gives him a Drooble's wrapper with a vacant smile on her face, and Neville abruptly hugs her.

There are tears in his eyes, because he can look at his mum and her sweet little smile and underneath it he can see the pretty woman in the wedding dress from the pictures in Gran's album. He hugs her around the legs and she pats him on the head like a little pet until he lets go. Then he turns around and hugs his dad as best as he can since Dad doesn't even sit up. He murmurs a quick, "Love you," to both of them and then follows Gran out of the ward, tucking the gum wrapper into his pocket as he goes.

It's hard to fall asleep that night. Gran makes his favourite stew but he can't make himself eat very much of it. He's had a sick twisting feeling in his stomach all day and he's afraid if he eats too much of the onion stew then he might vomit. So after he picks through his dinner and listens to Gran read the Evening Prophet like she does every night, he goes up to bed. He lays on his back and stares up at the ceiling and thinks about the story Gran told him. When he finally does fall asleep it's to bad dreams.

It starts with his favourite memory, of his mum's pretty face humming to him. Then after a minute his dad's face joins her and they are both just smiling at him, smiling those big happy smiles like from the picture of their wedding. But then suddenly it changes. The colors turn darker and they both start screaming. High, horrible screams that make Neville want to cover his ears and hide, but he can't move. He is stuck there just listening to them scream with terrible looks on their faces. As he watches their hair changes to gray and their faces sink and their eyes get dull until they look like corpses, like pictures of Inferi or vampires that he saw in Uncle Algie's monster book.

Then Mum and Dad disappear and all he can see is that woman from the news clipping, with her thick black hair swirling around her and that scary smile on her face. She's grinning at him, laughing even while the screams go on in the background, louder than ever. Her big dark eyes are fixed on him and Neville feels afraid. Then she lifts a wand and points it at him and he knows that she's going to hurt him, hurt him just like she hurt his parents. There's a flash of bright red light and Neville wakes up screaming.

He screams and screams like he's never screamed in his whole life. His whole body is wet with sweat and he looks around his dark bedroom, expecting the evil woman to jump out of his closet or from behind the bureau. His door opens with a crash and he screams even more as someone runs at him. And then Gran is sitting on the bed with him, her arms wrapped around him as she pulls him against her chest. He stops screaming, but now he's crying and shaking. She just holds him as he curls up in a ball against her side and sobs, and she pats his back and makes little shushing noises.

It feels like ages later when he stops crying enough to talk. Gran asks him what happened and he tells her, in broken sentences, about the dream. About the evil woman and the screams and the bright red spell that he knew was going to make him hurt so much he would forget her too. She holds him tighter, her bony fingers almost painful on his arms.

"You listen to me, Neville," she says and he isn't sure whether it's really her voice shaking, or if he's just shaking so bad he can't hear right. "That woman is never going to hurt you, you hear me? No, you're going to grow up to be a strong, brave wizard, just like your parents, and if you ever do meet that woman then you'll get the best of her. I can promise you that. No, that woman is never going to hurt this family again."

It all sounds so crazy to Neville, but Gran sounds so sure that he nods. Because Gran is always right. That's what happens when you're an old grown-up like her, you just know things. She tells him to get up and he does, and she keeps her arm around him when they go downstairs to the kitchen. He sits at the table and she makes them a pot of tea. It's warm and sweet, and Neville drinks it all because it makes the fear and the cold from his dream fade away. It also makes his head feel light and sleepy. He only finds out much later that it's because she added a couple drops of a sleeping potion.

When he's finished with it, Gran walks him back up to bed and tucks him in. Then, for the first time in a really long time, she gives him a kiss on the forehead before she wishes him goodnight. She isn't even out of the room before he falls asleep, and he doesn't dream again that night.