Chapter 7:

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series and everything in it belongs to J.K. Maybe one day, I'll be lucky enough to have people write disclaimers about something I wrote, but that's a long way off...

A.N:) This chapter is very serious. When we left Neville at the end of chapter 6, he had just found out that his grandmother suffered a heart attack. It was just too much for him. Poor
Neville, his life has been so hard. Will things ever turn out ok?
Oh, and one more thing... FLASHBACKS ARE BACK!!!


"Neville... Neville" his grandmother's voice whispered through the trees.
Neville was standing in the middle of an enormous forest (though he had no idea how he had gotten there). He was staring wildly around, looking for the source of the voice.
"Gran!" he shouted, his shouts echoing back to him. "Gran! Where are you?!" He spun around frantically, not knowing which way to turn.
"Neville..." The whisper came again, barely more than a rustling of leaves. "Goodbye Neville..."
"No!" he shouted, "No! Gran you can't leave me, I don't know what to do!"
"Goodbye..."

"No!"
Neville sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat. He was breathing hard and his heart was beating so fast, he thought it would jump right out of his chest. It took him a moment to figure out where he was. -The hospital wing. But why?
And then, he remembered.
"Gran, no." he said softly to himself. He lay back in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to take it all in. His grandmother had suffered a heart attack. HIS grandmother, the woman who thought Floo Powder was too dangerous. She was lying somewhere now, hurt, and where was he? He'd passed out. So much for the courageous Neville, who yelled at Snape and got asked out to Hogsmeade by girls. When his grandmother had really needed him what had he done? He'd fainted.
Neville eyes stung with tears and his throat tightened up.
"So now I'm going to cry?" he said acidly to himself.
He tried to stop the tears but found that he couldn't...



The rain was falling in icy sheets around Neville where he stood looking down at a stone that said
Lewis Larence Longbottom
Loving Brother, Husband,
Father, Grandfather
1913-1989
R.I.P.

His head swam with emotions. Loss, fear, grief... and something Neville couldn't quite understand. His eyes stung with tears, tears of anger. How could he have left him? Neville had trusted his him.
His grandfather who'd always been there. His grandfather who tucked him in at night, who told him stories when he was sad. Who would make him waffles with chocolate chips? Who would run into his room at night after he'd had a nightmare? Who would teach him about Quidditch and broomsticks?
Neville swiped at the tears in his eyes. He shouldn't cry. Boys don't cry.
His grandmother, who'd been standing silently away from everyone, walked over to him. She was dressed in black and looked pale and weak and her eyes were red and puffy.
"Gran," Neville croaked, "Gran, he's really gone." He still couldn't believe it.
"I know Neville." She began to cry, "I know." She bent down and hugged him.
Neville felt the tears in his eyes again but held back once more.
"Neville," whispered his grandmother, "It's alright to cry you know."
He breathed a shuddering sigh of relief and then let everything out, sobbing into his grandmother's shoulder. He cried that day as if shedding the tears of everyone who'd ever lost someone they loved...



Neville didn't know how long he lay in his bed, tears falling free. He cried himself to exhaustion, finally falling asleep towards morning.
But sleep didn't bring him rest or peace, no. Sleep only brought more nightmares. He dreamed of being completely alone, cowering in fear from a shadow that followed him everywhere he went. He no longer had anyone to protect him, and why? Because he'd failed them all.

~~~*~~~

His head was pounding. Why did the sun have to be so bright?
Neville opened his eyes to find the hospital wing ablaze with the afternoon sun. He could hear Madame Pomfrey bustling around down the corridor. He knew Madame Pomfrey well, considering the amount of times he'd injured himself during his stay at Hogwarts. He'd liked her since the first time he'd visited there, having been covered in boils in Potions. The memory still made him wince.
What had been the point? Had his grandmother sent him to Hogwarts to become a laughing stock? No, but that's what he'd become. He'd let her down, he wasn't good at anything, and while he'd been off, making mistakes, he'd missed being there for her.
"Gran." he sighed.
He closed his eyes again, trying to sleep, to try and escape the ever-present nightmare that haunted him in waking life, forgetting for a moment, that the nightmares haunted his dreams as well. "But," he thought bitterly to himself, not succeeding to slip off, "when do things ever
go right for me?"
Madame Pomfrey bustled over to him.
"Oh, Neville. Good, you're awake." She said and proceeded in checking his pulse and taking his temperature. When she finished, she sat down next to him and looked into his eyes.
Neville thought he saw something strange in them. What was it?
"Neville, I heard about you're grandmother. I'm so sorry."
Neville suddenly realized what it was. Pity. It was pity.
He didn't say anything; he just looked at the ceiling. He didn't trust himself to speak. He didn't feel like talking either.
"Neville," Madame Pomfrey continued, "you should go outside and take a walk, get some fresh air. You could still come back and sleep here tonight if you don't feel like going back to your dormitory."
Neville continued to stare at the ceiling.
"Please," she pleaded with him; "you can't just lay here all day!"
Neville sighed and shut his eyes, ending the discussion. He heard Madame Pomfrey get up and leave. He'd probably offended her. He wasn't sorry. Actually, he found he just didn't care. He couldn't care anymore.

~~~*~~~

After a day and a night of nightmares plaguing his dreams and robbing him of his rest, Neville lay silently crying, looking back on everything that had ever happened to him.
How had his life turned into a life not worth living?
Why was everything so unfair? He'd grown up, watching other kids play with their parents, laughing and smiling. He didn't have any parents. At least, not in any way that counted.
"It would have been better if they had died." He said softly to himself, and once again, sank away into despair's nightmares.

~~~*~~~

Neville had lost all concept of time, falling deeper and deeper into a bottomless pool, filled with every bad memory he had. And he had so many. The good in his life was drowned by darkness and he couldn't see it at all. An entire week had passed since he'd fainted in Professor McGonnagal's study and he didn't know, and didn't care. No one came to visit him (Madame Pomfrey had forbidden it) but Neville didn't even seem to notice. He tormented himself, thinking of all the ways in which he had let his grandmother down, and all the things that made his life so pathetic, so that by the end of the week, he'd forgotten who he used to be, and saw only what he thought his past had made of him- a sorry excuse for a grandson, and nothing more than a brainless coward.

~~~*~~~

His grandfather's death. His first meeting with his parents (and every one after). People laughing at him at every turn. Cedric's death and now, his grandmother's heart attack. The scenes kept playing themselves over and over in his mind. He tossed and turned in his sleep, sweating and breathing hard. He was standing in the middle of a tornado, almost blown away, and then, out of the darkness; two gleaming red eyes laughed at him. They'd finally spotted him, and he couldn't hide.
He started awake with a gasp, trembling.
"No...no..." he sobbed and began rocking back and forth, muttering to himself. "He found me... he found me..." his terror was so strong, it was almost tangible.
He didn't sleep again that night. He lay awake in bed, listening to the silence while seeing those eyes over and over again in his mind.
The silence was broken at about 3:00 am when the doorway at the end of the corridor opened and Professor McGonnagal walked in.
Neville pretended to be asleep as he watched Madame Pomfrey come out of her office to talk to her.
"Minerva, what are you doing here so late?" asked the sleepy nurse.
"I'm sorry, Poppy. I couldn't sleep. I'm terribly concerned about Longbottom's condition. He shouldn't have been here so long. It's been a week and even Professor Dumbledore is starting to worry." Professor McGonnagal's voice sounded tense but not as tense as Madame Pomfrey's when she replied.
"Minerva, his case is incredibly serious. The poor boy. He was always so strong, but there is only so much someone can take before they collapse under the weight, and Neville has taken more than most of us."
Neville couldn't believe his ears. Strong? Him? He almost laughed out loud at how misled they were. And he hadn't been there a week, had he? He shrugged to himself. It didn't matter.
McGonnagal sighed. "What did he ever do to deserve these things?"
"What did any of us ever do" Madame Pomfrey wondered.
"Poppy, isn't there anything we can do?"
"I'm afraid not, Minerva. Neville's recovery is completely up to him; he has to do it on his own. That's the reason I haven't been letting anyone in to see him. You see, all he needs is to remember one good thing about his life, one good memory, to give him hope, for hope is the only true medicine for despair. Otherwise," Madame Pomfrey sighed, "we may never know the same Neville again. I doubt very much if he even knows himself anymore."
There was a pause, and Neville could feel their eyes watching him.
"Go to sleep Minerva. There's nothing you can do."
Neville heard McGonnagal leave and Madame Pomfrey go back to sleep in her room.

He lay there, thinking about everything he had just heard. What had Madame Pomfrey been talking about? What good things did he have in his life that could possibly turn him from the edge? Because that's where he was standing, on the edge of a great abyss centimeters from falling. He would fall if he didn't turn back; he felt it with every breath he took.
And then, he remembered, as though from a far off dream of years before. There was a light in the back of his mind. It had been there all along, begging him to notice it, and now he finally had. There was hope.
"Hannah." He sighed, and with that, he felt a dagger pulled from his heart, a weight lifted out of his soul. The poison that fogged his mind cleared and he breathed as if never having breathed before. How could he have forgotten? And more, how could he have not realized? He had said he loved her, but he had never truly understood until that moment what love really was. This was. Being able to wrap himself in her memory and feel utterly safe. Just her memory, soothing his fear, relieving him of pain and releasing his mind of the nightmares that never gave him rest. She was a part of him and had been all along. And so, feeling the peace of mind that he hadn't felt since his grandfather had died, he finally, gratefully, drifted off into a dreamless sleep...

To be continued.


A.N:) I would like to take this opportunity to say a couple of things
Neville's grandmother did NOT die. She's just very very sick.
I wanted to say that I think Neville is one of the most complex characters in "Harry Potter" that being the reason I chose to write story about him. Nobody seems to realize that he is capable of so much, and can go so many different ways, he just has to be given the chance.