Author's Note: Thanks for reading!
Neville awoke with a strange sensation in his head. It was as if there were two drums mounted inside of his skull and each one played its own distinct beat. This was unlike any hangover he'd had before, not that he'd had many. But still, usually he would only have one source of pain in his head. And usually the sensitivity to light wasn't so bad either. But the sunlight, which was usually minimal in his bedroom in the morning, seemed ten times brighter than normal.
When Neville finally opened his eyes fully, though, he realized why it was so much brighter: it wasn't his room he was in. Rather than the dark navy walls and heavy tartan curtains he was surrounded by at home, this room had bright off-white walls and thin, airy window dressings that let in ample morning light.
It only took a moment after this realization hit for Neville to bolt out of the bed, reaching for his wand automatically and finding it still in the pocket of his trousers. A feeling of foolishness flooded him a moment later, though, when the only possible threat he found was the sleeping form of Hannah Abbott.
She was cuddled into a piece of furniture that looked like an odd version of a chaise lounge, a knitted yellow blanket covering her. The makeshift bed looked as if an armchair had been stretched out a little bit and widened so that it was just large enough for Hannah's small body to curl up on. One more glance around the room and it dawned on Neville that that was probably exactly what it was. She'd given her bed to him, and was left to make this for herself. How he'd even ended up in her room, and then why she had given him her bed, were still mysteries. But then, so was the location of this room.
Neville moved towards the window, careful not to make any noise or bump into anything. The room was small, and rather cramped with Hannah's things. He'd just passed the transfigured chair when a floorboard creaked under his foot. Worried that he'd woken Hannah, he turned to check. The tip of her wand was aimed directly at his heart. Hannah had sat up on the chair and turned to face him, her petite frame tensed. For a moment, Neville looked into her hazel eyes and thought that perhaps she wasn't really seeing him, that his identity somehow hadn't made the trip from those eyes to her mind. He was sure that she was about to hex him. The words must have lain on her parted lips and itched to be said. But the next second Hannah's body lost its rigidity, and she lowered her wand, a hand flying up to cover her mouth.
"I'm sorry," she said, her eyes wide with what looked like horror.
Neville held up his own wand as evidence that she wasn't alone in her instinctual reaction. "No worries," he said.
They both just stared at each other for a moment. The pounding in Neville's head was momentarily overpowered by a swelling feeling in his heart. Hannah's cheeks were tinged pink and small, wispy pieces of her blonde hair fell around her face, having escaped from the messy knot on top of her head. She wore an oversized gray t-shirt that hung loosely and lopsided from her body, exposing a good amount of her collarbone.
Neville swallowed thickly. "So," he said, "About last night…"
"I'm so sorry about your head," Hannah said. She stood from the chair and started folding her blanket.
Neville's eyes darted to Hannah's legs. She wore light pink pajama bottoms that didn't quite reach her ankles. It made his stomach flip, to see Hannah in those clothes, which was silly of course. She'd worn a very flattering and respectably short dress the night before. That article of clothing was what should have made him feel like this. And besides, basically the entire DA had seen each other in various states of undress during their time hiding out in the Room of Requirement. Yet the version of her who stood before him was so comfortable, exposed in such a different way, that it was somehow more intimate—admittedly too intimate for Neville's comfort levels. He still didn't even know how he'd gotten there.
He forced his mind back to the matter at hand. "What about my head?" he asked, reaching up to feel the back of his skull. He recoiled from the brush of his own fingertips, finding a small lump of swelling that he realized was the source of some of his pain.
"You don't remember?" Hannah asked, hugging the folded blanket to her stomach.
"Honestly?" Neville said, "I don't remember much from last night after the cake." He had held onto his magically re-filling shot glass for a few too many rounds of firewhiskey, and had quickly lost track of just about everything. It was an embarrassing truth to admit, but that was the least of his feelings about the night before. At least he didn't have to tell her why he'd been driven to drink too much, that the combination of one little picture and a visit with his parents had proven to be too much for one night. He'd been irresponsible and, frankly, stupid, and he knew that. But he also knew that he'd rather be seen as those things than weak or pitiable, and that was the reputation he thought would come with the full truth. Just the potential of Hannah finding that out provoked the urge to retch. Of course, maybe that was the hangover.
Hannah set the blanket down on the back of the transfigured chair. She ran the tips of her fingers across its intricately woven pattern in slow, careful circles. "Okay," she said, motioning to the chair's outstretched seat, "I'll tell you what I can."
They sat together on the edge of the seat.
"Could you start with where exactly I am?" Neville said, not quite able to meet her eyes as he did so.
Even without looking at her, he could hear the grin in Hannah's voice when she answered, "My room above the Leaky Cauldron."
Over the next fifteen minutes Hannah recapped the previous night's events for Neville. She walked him through everything she knew about his night specifically, which was basically only from the short time between her arrival and the cake and then picked up again right before they left, but also threw in other anecdotes. Most of those were about the drunken antics of other friends, like when Seamus fell on his ass from the couch or Michael Corner vomited upon his departure via the Floo network. Neville knew what she was doing, he saw it in the tilt of her head and the hopeful widening of her kind eyes as she told him those parts. She was trying to make him feel better about his own stupidity, or at least not alone in it. In fact, from the sounds of it, Neville had been far from alone. Hannah had been one of the few odd ones out, apparently, by not getting wasted.
"So when I finally got you to bed," Hannah said, finishing up the tale, "I just made this so I had somewhere to lay too."
"I'm sorry," Neville said. His head was ducked and he stared at his hands where they rested on his legs.
"It's nothing," Hannah said. "I'm just sorry about your poor head. How're you feeling?"
Neville sighed. "Honestly? Not the best." He motioned to his head. "This is hurting in multiple ways."
"That's what I was worried about."
Hannah jumped up from the chair and made her way to the wardrobe, digging inside of it for a moment before returning with a small vial.
"This is from Ginny," she said, handing the glass over. It was filled with a pearlescent pink substance. "Should help with the hangover."
Neville accepted and was about to say thanks yet again when Hannah flit toward a door that he presumed went to a bathroom.
She returned with a larger bottle that was an opaque blue but clearly held a dark liquid. "And this is a pain-relief potion I keep on hand," she said. She must have seen Neville looking at the bottle oddly because she explained further, "I tend to get headaches."
He nodded, but thought that she must have been holding something back because her voice sounded much more restricted, each word pronounced carefully in contrast to her easy tone when discussing the previous night.
"This isn't great to take on an empty stomach though," Hannah said. "So I'll pop downstairs and grab us some food after I change."
Neville shook his head, "That's too much, Hannah."
Hannah just smiled though, "It's fine." Her eyes narrowed for just a moment as she took a breath, and then she told him, "Honestly? It's nice to have your company."
Neville felt suddenly warm and found himself unable to meet her eyes. "Um," he said, trying to fill in the silence. "Well," he started again.
"I'm going to change," Hannah announced, setting the bottle down on her table and then rummaging around in the wardrobe. When she emerged her eyes landed on Neville again and for a split-second it looked like she was going to say something else, but instead she just looked to the side and strode back to the bathroom, this time closing the door behind herself.
Neville took a deep breath. He stared down at the vial, which was small enough that his fingers felt large and clumsy holding onto it. He thought his face must've been about the same shade as the tonic.
It had been such a small, simple truth. There wasn't anything inherently scary about it, but for some reason it had hit Neville hard, like a punch to the gut. Which was ridiculous, he reminded himself as he stood and began to pace. But still, if it were so ridiculous why was Hannah also acting as if something monumental had just taken place between the two of them? Neville had the horrible realization that perhaps he had done something to make her think that. His inability to give her a reasonable response probably hadn't looked the best, and the fact that he never gave a full response at all definitely wouldn't have been reassuring.
He stopped pacing when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Worse for wear didn't quite cover his appearance, with his hair sticking up wildly and dark circles having taken up residence under his eyes, starkly contrasting his skin's pallor.
"You look rather poorly," a scratchy voice wheezed out from the mirror.
Neville narrowed his eyes at his own reflection, but thought that maybe it was time to give that tonic a go. He uncorked the vial and downed the liquid, giving a startled sound and squeezing his eyes shut tightly as it burned down his throat. It was worse than the firewhiskey had been.
"Bloody hell," Hannah said.
Neville opened his eyes and saw that she had emerged from the bathroom, now clad in cropped jeans and a white t-shirt. Her hair fell in two loosely braided pigtails.
"Sorry," she said, moving to put her discarded pajamas into the wardrobe. "You just looked like you were drinking acid or something."
"Tasted like it," Neville said.
She smiled at him. "Any preferences for breakfast?" Hannah asked as she slipped on a pair of sandals.
"No," he said. "Anything's fine, and I can pay you back."
"I can usually get it for free," Hannah said with a shrug. "It's a perk of the job. But thank you."
"If for some reason you can't today—"
"Then I'll take you up on your offer," she said, her smile widening. "Be right back."
She slipped out the door of her room and Neville took a moment to breathe before heading into the bathroom himself.
After peeing he got a good look at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands—this time without any unwanted commentary. The diminishing of his earlier sallowness left him looking slightly more alive, and his headache had dulled a bit, now mostly just hurting in the back of his skull where it'd been hit. Luckily there was no sign of nausea at all. He splashed water on his face to stop feeling so stale, and hoped that would also make him more capable of basic interactions that he felt he had failed at so far. For the first time that morning he checked his watch. It was past ten, meaning that his grandmother would have been up for hours at that point and definitely aware of his absence. That wouldn't be pretty, but Neville tried to push his worries about that to the back of his mind. He ran his hands through his hair, marveling at the fact that it was so dark. Sure, it had darkened with age, but usually at this point of the summer he would have been outside enough to lighten it up a bit through exposure to the sun. Instead, it was the brunet that he had come to expect from mid-winter.
As he left the bathroom he yawned and, in doing so, caught the scent of his breath. It was pungent, to say the least, and he regretted having talked while sitting so close to Hannah earlier. He began searching his pockets for any mint or gum that he might have. "Aha," he said when his fingers finally brushed against something. But when he pulled it out, he lost all sense of triumph. It was the gum wrapper.
He jumped, shaken out of his thoughts, when a bang sounded on the door. Another one happened a split second later. Neville shoved the wrapper back into his pocket before opening the door.
"Thank you," Hannah said, brushing past with her hands full. She carried two large plates, each complete with a full English breakfast. She also had two large mugs of tea that Neville took from her to free up one of her hands.
They settled in on the transfigured chair, facing each other. Hannah had her legs crisscrossed and held her plate on her lap, her mug resting within reach on the floor. Neville's tea was in a similar place, and it had been spiked with the pain-relief potion. He only had one leg on the seat, bent to form a triangle with his other thigh, which led down to his foot that remained on the floor. For a moment, they both ate in silence, enjoying their food. The potatoes and mushrooms that had been included particularly enamored Neville, as they were weren't things Gran usually embraced.
"This is fantastic," Neville finally said. "Thank you, again."
Hannah waved off his thanks, but did tell him, "My mum always insisted that there's nothing a good fry-up can't fix."
Neville thought that he saw a hint of sadness creep into Hannah's otherwise content expression. Her eyes shone in a way that didn't exactly spell happiness, and her smile thinned out a bit. His mind raced back to their sixth year, to one of the last Herbology lessons in September. The image of Hannah's face as she left the room, already looking scared at having been singled out, rushed back to him. He remembered the wail they'd all heard, so loud that the walls of the greenhouse could hardly dull the sound. The rest of the year that class hadn't felt complete, not without Hannah.
He tried to focus on her face as it was now, though. Her moment of reflection had passed and Hannah had gone back to eating, carefully cutting off and spearing bits of sausage and tomato, her expression calm. With her head ducked down over her plate, Hannah's braids hung in front of her shoulders.
"I'm sorry, about what happened to her," Neville said, the words falling out of him before he could stop them.
Hannah stopped her movements. She set her knife and fork down on her plate carefully before reaching for her tea. Her eyes closed as she sipped the hot drink. It felt to Neville like she stayed in that position a long time, eyes shut and hands cradling her mug like she was attempting to absorb its warmth, but the rational part of his brain reminded him that it couldn't have been more than a few seconds before she looked at him again. Her hazel eyes held his gaze steadily, gently.
"I'm sorry about what happened to your parents," she said.
Neville nodded, and reached for his own mug. They left it at that. Nothing would fix their situations, they both knew that, but there was also a mutual agreement in the air that acknowledging it could work wonders. Neville, for his part, was still contending with the fact that more people knew about the fate of his parents. The story had regained traction in the months after the Battle of Hogwarts, when reports of Neville's own actions had been published everywhere. He thought about how Hannah had never had the option of hiding her mother's fate. Most of her classmates found out only moments after she had.
"So I think I heard something last night about you travelling?" Hannah said awhile later.
Neville told her about his travels while they finished off their meals. He recounted stories about his recent time in Egypt, the time he'd spent near the Mediterranean, and his trip to Japan. Hannah asked questions here and there, but mostly just listened attentively, taking it all in. After they were done with their food they set their plates on the floor, but kept talking. Hannah told Neville about the worst customers she'd had to deal with ("He tried to 'accio' a pint to himself and ended up sending the entire keg flying!") and her attempts at muggle craft projects. She asked Neville if he was still interested in Herbology and he told her about his seemingly doomed Mimbulus mimbletonia.
"That's horrible," Hannah said, her eyebrows furrowed and lips pouting in a frown.
"I just can't find any information about it," he said. "I've been trying for weeks now."
"Have you tried asking Professor Sprout about it?"
Neville shook his head. He felt at once foolish and defensive. The thought to try that hadn't even occurred to him, but he also didn't want to resort to it.
Hannah smiled. "You should try! She'd love to hear from you, I'm sure, and she's the best at this sort of stuff."
"Okay," Neville said, even though he was still unsure about the suggestion. He didn't want to shoot it down, at the very least not to Hannah's face, not while she looked so happy and enthusiastic about the idea. He checked his watch. Somehow it had gotten to be a quarter past noon. "Damn," he said, looking back at Hannah. "I should really get going, my gran is going to be pissed."
She nodded, but said, "And here I thought we were keeping you out of trouble by having you stay here."
Neville shrugged, smiling at her. "I can never really stay out of trouble with my gran."
It had been meant as a joke, but the way that Hannah frowned told him that it wasn't received as one. After a beat of silence she broke the tension by asking. "Your head feels better?"
"Yeah," Neville assured her. In fact, he hadn't even thought about how his head felt for the past hour or so, he'd been so wrapped up in just talking to Hannah.
"Good," she said.
They both stood up and Hannah walked him over towards the door.
When he'd crossed through the doorway he looked back. "Thank you again," Neville said. "For everything."
"Of course," Hannah said. It looked like she was going to say something else, but didn't. Instead she simply reached up to pull one of her braids over her shoulder.
Neville had the sudden urge to reach out, to touch her hair as well, or her cheek, or her hand, but he kept himself in check. "I'll see you soon."
"You certainly know where to find me," she quipped, smiling gently.
Neville reached up to rub the back of his neck, unsure of how to respond.
"Have a good day, Neville," Hannah said.
"Yeah, you too, Hannah," Neville told her.
He forced himself to turn away, to walk down the hall towards the stairs. The sound of her door clicking shut made him want to turn back. As he made his way down to the pub Neville thought that perhaps he should come around for a drink again soon. Very soon.
In doing research for this chapter (because I'm the sort of person who genuinely does research in order to write fanfiction) I found no information about anything that wizards use to treat minor injuries like bruises or headaches, which seems odd. Like they have the Pepperup potion for minor illness and obviously things like "episky" and essence of dittany for larger wounds, but nothing for simple little dings. So I decided to just throw in the pain-relief potion as a sort of catch-all.
Thanks again for reading! For some reason I'm feeling a little unsure about this chapter so any sort of feedback would be very much appreciated!
I don't know when the next chapter will be up, it's a tough one that has a lot to do with Hannah's family (so is basically all my own concept and storyline), but hopefully it'll be posted within the next two weeks.
