A/N - Disclaimer: I don't own Neville Longbottom. I don't own Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, or Ron Weasley. I own nothing related to any of JKR's books. But you all know that. So, I'll just carry on, shall I?
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It was a long time later. He could probably count the days, if you asked him. It didn't really matter to anyone else, anymore – he was the only one left who wouldn't give you the textbook rendition, if you asked him. He could tell you what it all meant, what the echoes really sounded like, then – if you asked him.
If you asked him.
Nobody did.
After a long time, humanity moves on. There are the sacred few, who struggle to remember, but once they are gone, we are free to repeat our mistakes. He is here, but even his role has nearly been forgotten. It is hard to pinpoint where it first began; or rather, when. In the days after the Last Battle, or later? Months later? Years? When did the people who had known them, who had known the great Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, the others, start to vanish into the palimpsest of memories that only belonged to him, now? They were all dead, of course – dead, or gone. But it was all the same, really. All the heroes, the mosaics, the laughter you could almost hear if you listened – all of it had crumbled away. He could barely remember playing chess with Ron, hearing Hermione scold about homework, having Harry defend him when he didn't have to, when it wasn't up to him at all. Their eyes, their smiles, the days in the sun – where had the time gone? When had the memories started to fade? He knew, then, that it had been when there was no one else to remember it with him. There was no one to tell, anymore.
Not only were they gone, but also his parents, for whom he'd waited so long. They, too, had slipped away, first one, then the other, the way he'd always known they would but had someone hoped, prayed, that they would not.
The Last Battle had wreaked havoc on the flower of his generation, half a century ago. The loss of his parents had been a more private battle, but just as important to him, nonetheless. In a way, they were the same thing, the same way his memories seemed to flow together into an indecipherable whirl.
Reaching up, he brushed a strand of silvered hair from his eyes, so dim now, and turned away from his loneliness. It would be his turn to join them soon, to leave this parody of a world behind him. It wouldn't be long, now…
From his hand dropped a memento, something he'd kept all the long years of his life; a lone bubble-gum wrapper that drifted away on the wind that howled through the empty courtyard.
He wouldn't need it, where he was going.