She couldn't breathe. All was red hot. All was hell. Heat had shape, moulding to her body. Suffocating. Burning. Over the roar of flames, she heard screams, and then she heard laughter. Hot. Searing. Struggling for air. Screams again, and this time fire blistered her throat.

Klara woke trembling in the milky white of dawn, clammy from sweat and tangled in her sleeping bag. Gingerly, she extracted herself and lay atop her makeshift bed, pulling away the hair that had stuck to her neck, panting to catch her breath.

For a few minutes, she lay very still, listening for the sound of worried footsteps, but the house was quiet. She hadn't screamed aloud then, thank goodness. The last thing Klara needed was someone to be concerned about her nightmares. She didn't have the time or need to deal with the inconvenient episodes.

Now she glared down at her damp sheets and nightclothes. Ever since the return of her memories, she'd had an aversion to being overly warm—no surprises there. One didn't need a degree in mind Healing to understand why, after the way her family died, her body might respond to heat with unpleasant dreams and flashbacks.

Klara expected the symptoms to subside in a few weeks as her brain became accustomed to her old life, Once she dealt with Nott, that should be an end to the inconvenience. For now, she would simply need to limit the triggers around her. During the day, so long as she cast a discrete cooling charm whenever the temperature crept close to uncomfortable, she could carry on as normal. At night, she had learned that a general cooling spell before sleep had the same effect.

Last night, amid the mental fatigue of the day, she had forgotten the charm. Of course her body had overheated in an old house in the middle of July. She had no one to blame but herself, a fact that caused unreasonable vexation to bulge in her chest.

Sighing, perhaps even grumbling, Klara felt beside her pillow for her watch. 5:38. Nauseatingly early, but not early enough. There would certainly be no returning to sleep. Even if she did not have an 8AM appointment, she could still see roaring flames and crashing beams behind her closed eyelids.

"Hure."

Cursing under her breath, Klara pushed herself up off her makeshift bed and stepped onto the little rug she'd laid below the table so she would not have to touch the revolting carpet. She stretched, absently massaging her forearms and wrists, which had been sore ever since her return. Must have been all the packing and cleaning, and now she would add on more.

Slowly, her body still lethargic in protest of the early hour, she peeled the damp pyjamas from her limbs and cast Scourgify on both clothes and body. With her wand awkwardly angled at her hair, she cast a modified Aguamenti so that a fine mist of water landed in her curls. Then she shook them out, scrunched them, and pulled the top section of her hair back with a clip.

Hopefully she wouldn't too closely resemble Medusa today, though with London humidity, that might be asking too much. She desperately wanted a bath—the great solution to all woes—but it was clearly untenable in current circumstances. Perhaps tonight, if they were lucky and productive that afternoon…

After washing, dressing and tying an apron around her waist, Klara rummaged through her clipper bag until she found the two sacks of groceries she had brought from parents' flat and levitated them as she made her way through the house and down the stairs.

The sight of the kitchen nearly made Klara drop the groceries on her feet. This was not what she needed at present, especially before she'd had her coffee. It was barely six, and the morning had already evolved from unpleasant to disgusting.

When Remus had said the kitchen was "much worse" than the dining room, she had imagined more dust, rot on the wall, and spiders and pests in the corners. Not…was that Mimbletonia fungus? Covering the entire kitchen? How did that even make its way to England, and how was she supposed to—? But no. Now was not the time for cleaning. She'd have plenty of time to consult books if need be, but later, in the afternoon. Now she needed her coffee and whipped cream.

Steeling herself, she nudged her way to the stove, careful not to step on the sticky green tendrils that webbed the floor. Sirius and Remus had cleared a bit of space on the long wooden table, and, sighing with disgust, Klara set down her groceries and set about making breakfast.

O~O~O~O~O

At 7:45, Klara walked into St. Mungo's Hospital, her feet finding their way through the corridors and to the stairs seemingly on their own. Right out of Hogwarts, she had spent nearly every day here for more than two years, working as a trainee Healer in an emergency ward created chiefly for victims of Death Eater attacks. In the passageways, the portraits lining the walls were so familiar that for some moments she could not tell if the pained wailing and bellowed instructions echoing around her were present-day reality or memories from the war.

She had despised the chaos of the emergency and trauma room—the constant stress and panic of patients and Healers alike—but Britain had needed Healers then, and Klara had always had a quick hand, especially at Charm. Of course she stayed. She had never been the best with physical damage, never even wanted to be a conventional Healer, but when a wizard's life was thrust into one's hands, one learned to smother the self-doubt and do what had to be done.

The emergency ward had been retired after '81, Dumbledore had told her, but they both knew that sooner or later, it would need to be revived. And then what? Would she return to the emergency trauma work? Could she even stomach it this second time?

Klara emerged through the double doors on the fourth floor to find a rotund, white-haired Healer waiting for her, pacing on the balls of her feet and wringing her hands. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Klara, and surged forward to grip Klara's hand in both of hers, shaking it eagerly.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, you must be the mind specialist from Austria. Oh, I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am you're finally here. You really are much younger than I expected, I have to say, but I heard Albus Dumbledore personally recommended your expertise, so you must be most skilled, most skilled."

Klara could not decide if the witch before her more closely resembled a bee or a bunny. For a second she froze, her brain unable to process her slew of words. Then, as always, decades of her mother's training took hold, and she smiled the warmly polite smile she reserved for acquaintances.

"My name is Klara Montagu. Pleasure to meet you."

"Nifflers and Kneazles, your English is excellent, my dear, simply excellent. I was worried I'd have to use a lot of hand gestures or something, but no, hah, of course not." For a moment Klara considered correcting her assumptions, but she had already sped on, and really, if the Healer couldn't recognise that Montagu was about as English as one could get, Klara rather thought anything she said would just evaporate into the ether.

"Now, the family of the patients are already in my office," continued the Healer, urging Klara down the left corridor, "so I thought, oh, I'll just go and wait for Healer Montagu by the stairs in case she gets lost. Good to see you made it up here in one piece. Oh, my name is Dorothy Willoughby, by the way. I'm one of the Healers in charge of the long-term residents' ward. Wonderful to meet you, simply wonderful."

Klara smiled again, then frowned.

"You said the family are already in your office?" She looked down at her watch, even though she knew perfectly well that she was early.

Healer Willoughby stopped walking and again began to wring her hands.

"Yes, well, they were here rather early. That's just the way she is, Augusta. Very prompt, very serious, you know, even at school. Very commanding presence, ahem, yes, most commanding, most, uh, intimidating, one could almost say…" She gave a nervous chuckle, then smiled hopefully up at Klara.

"Dear, I noticed you didn't bring robes with you. Shall I'll just go find you some scrub robes? You're fairly tall, aren't you? But I'm sure we'll have a pair that fits." Already she was bumbling away, but Klara lightly caught her sleeve.

"There's really no need, Healer Willoughby, but thank you. I'll be doing very little physical examination, and I'm leaving before noon."

"Oh, please, call me Dottie," she said absently, looking disappointed. Poor woman. She really was looking for any excuse to delay returning to her office. "And…well, I suppose, if you're sure…"

"Yes, very sure," said Klara, tilting her head to indicate that Healer Willoughby should lead the way to her office.

She would have liked to help Healer Willoughby's frayed nerves, truly, but delaying the return would only increase her anxiety, and besides, Klara knew from bitter experience that the collars on the Healer robes were scratchy.

They walked to an office near the end of the hallway, passing various Healers and patients in wheelchairs or stretchers. Before the door, Healer Willoughby visibly trembled for a second before puffing up her resolve and turning the handle.

"Dottie, back I see," came an imperious voice, and Klara stepped into the office to see…was that a stuffed nightingale on a hat? The owner of the hat, noticing her presence, stood now to her full imposing height and proffered a bony hand for her to shake.

"Klara Montagu, I take it. Augusta Longbottom. I've heard many things about you over the years."

Klara gripped her brittle hand as firmly as she dared and smiled her polite smile.

"Wonderful to meet you as well, Mrs. Longbottom." Instinctively Klara searched her face for any resemblance to the Prefect and friend who had helped her navigate that first daunting year at Hogwarts, but it seemed Frank took after his father.

"This is my grandson, Neville," continued Mrs. Longbottom after an imperious nod, and from behind her she pulled a nervous boy of about 15. Klara hadn't even noticed another person in the room.

She turned to the boy, and froze. Her breath caught, and for just a second she was twelve again, looking into the inviting face of Head Girl Alice Fortescue. But no, no of course not. This was only her son, and at once the differences in height and brows and demeanour were evident. Composing herself, hoping her lapse had gone unnoticed, Klara smiled again, as warmly as she could, and reached out her hand. He extended his arm tentatively, but she gave his hand what she hoped was an encouraging squeeze.

"Of course," she said, "It's lovely to see you, Neville. We have met, though I trust you have little recollection."

To her dismay, Klara saw Neville give a jolt of surprise—and it did not seem to be the good kind—then stare at her with a sort of horrified confusion.

"She means when you were an infant, Neville dear," said Mrs. Longbottom, giving Neville a patient look. "She knew your parents." She turned to Klara. "My son and his wife always did hold you in high regard, Healer Montagu."

"And I them," said Klara, turning back to Neville. "You look very much like your mother."

"Oh," said Neville, looking like he didn't know how to respond. "Thanks."

"Er, shall we sit down?" Healer Willoughby, who had finally gathered enough courage to speak again in Mrs. Longbottom's presence, gestured to the set-up of armchairs around a coffee table. They sat.

"Now, er, Augusta here's already signed the appropriate paperwork, so here are the patient files—" She handed Klara two very thin folders, which Klara took, but didn't open.

"Thank you," she said, folding her hands over the files on her lap and turning to Mrs. Longbottom. "I will give them a thorough read, of course, but I actually prefer to do an examination on the patients before reading history. Helps me stay unbiased."

"I see," said Mrs. Longbottom. "Very sensible. Dottie?"

"Oh, yes, of course." Healer Willoughby, seeming flustered by Klara's deviation from her expected course, popped out of her seat, cheeks wobbling. "I'll just go see if Miriam's got the patients settled. Oh, I do wish Healer Galen could have made it today, but spell damage, you know, rather unpredictable work—one of his patients took a rather nasty downturn early in the morning."

"Of course, I understand," Klara replied, and turned back to the Longbottoms as she left the room.

"Now," she began, taking care to use her calming professional voice, more for herself than others. She must not view the Longbottoms as friends now, not as people she once laughed with and fought next to. They were her patients, and detachment was the first thing they drilled into you at the Institute.

"I know you've signed the waivers, but I'll still need you to be in the room with me while I perform my examinations. As the patients' guardian, I'll explain to you each phase of my exam, and I'll need your verbal consent."

"I see," Mrs. Longbottom said again, narrowing her eyes in thought. "And what exactly will these exams be?"

"Today will consist mostly of Legilimency, to see what the psychological damage is," said Klara, settling into her familiar professional exposition. "When we say 'Legilimency' in layman terms, it almost always refers to a witch or wizard accessing another's medial temporal lobe, where most episodic memory is stored, or their lateral sulcus, where stream of consciousness manifests."

Here, Klara indicated the area above her ear, and waited for Mrs. Longbottom to nod her understanding.

"However, by the same principles, we mind Healers are trained to see inside other areas of the brain, including those that control, for example, judgement, vision, or motor functions. We then perform adjustments to the structure of the mind through highly targeted potions and charms. It's a relatively new field of work, but in Germany and Austria we've had many decades of research into mind-specific Healing.

Mrs. Longbottom looked slightly taken aback here, and Neville again looked startled.

"You mean, you can go inside and do spells that change someone's brain?" This was Neville, who was staring at her with huge eyes.

"Yes, in essence," said Klara, launching into her explanation. This part usually did give people pause. "If you consider spell theory, many spells do exactly this altering of mental structure without the caster needing to use Legilimency. The most obvious is Obliviate, but others, ranging from the Babbling Curse to various sleeping charms to the Imperius Curse, were all created by wizards through Legilimency theory, to target and manipulate a certain area of the brain.

"In the case of—" Klara felt the names stick in her throat, but forced them to form again on her tongue. "In the case of Frank and Alice, prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse likely overstimulated the somatosensory region of their brains, and that stressor probably spread damage to surrounding areas. Of course, this is all speculation until I can examine their brains first hand."

Mrs. Longbottom was nodding again, but Neville looked up at her, determined.

"Does that mean you can…you can fix them? All the Healers here have said it's impossible, but…"

"I can't tell you anything either way yet," Klara said quickly. She had told Dumbledore she'd have a look and try her best, and for the sake of her friends...but the rational Healer in her knew even now that their chances at any sort of improvement were slim.

"I will try everything I know, but given how little improvement they've seen on their own…I don't want to give you the expectation of miracles, Neville."

She saw the boy hang his head, and Klara wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand again, but before he could ask any more questions, the door to the office opened and Healer Willoughby stepped back inside.

O~O~O~O~O

Dumbledore had vaguely explained the state of the Longbottoms the previous day, but as Klara entered the treatment room, she had to dig her nails into her palms and force her professional mask to stay plastered over her face. The two people sitting in the armchairs were barely recognisable, yet so unmistakably shells of who they once were.

Alice, her face no longer round and lively, looked shrivelled and gaunt. Her hair was thin and limp, and her skin had taken on an ashen colour, as if she was already halfway in the grave. Her eyes darted nervously around the room, foot tapping and fingers rubbing together.

Frank's entire head of hair had gone grey, his forehead set with deep wrinkles, and he sat back in his chair unmoving. At their entrance, he slowly turned his head to the door, but his eyes stayed unfocused and uninterested, glassy and still in their hollow sockets.

Neville and Mrs. Longbottom were already sitting down next to them, Neville tentatively taking Alice's hand, and Klara stood to the back of the room for a few moments, trying to regain her composure. Detach. Compartmentalise. Patients, not friends. Not the parents of this brave, timid boy. She repeated the words to herself, remembering how her professor at the Institute always insisted no one, including the professor herself, was to see a patient until they were perfectly composed. She gripped her wand and tucked the storm of emotions firmly away.

"Alright," she finally said. "I believe I will begin with Frank." It really made no difference, but Klara would need Neville to let go of Alice's hand when she did her exam.

Healer Willoughby helped turn her chair to face Frank's, and Klara lined up her eyes with his lifeless ones.

"I'm going to start with the somatosensory region I spoke of, where I imagine the origin of the damage is," she told Mrs. Longbottom, and at her assent, Klara dove in.

In her mind's eye, the barren desert of shrivelled, tangled neurones nearly shocked the breath from her. All around her was the greying brown of death, and an overcast of smog rolled through the field. In a healthy brain, this sensory region of the mind was an intricate web of sensation networks, its technicoloured threads glossy and shimmering as they received constant touch input from various parts of the body. Here, however, it seemed the sensation networks had tangled together into an impossible-looking mass, each strand lifeless and charred.

Detach, Klara. Patients, not friends. Clinical patients.

"Mrs. Longbottom," said Klara, hoping her voice did not shake. "Would you please touch Frank's hand?" A rustle of robes, and within the mass of tangled neurones, she saw weak glimmers, like flashes of sun reflected off wet mud, though they weren't the ones normally connected with sensations from the hand.

"And now his knee?"

Again, the random glimmers of sensory input, not at all in the right place. It seemed the repeated use of the Cruciatus had shocked the nerve receptors into shrivelling and knotting together, so that a touch on the hand or knee would feel to Frank like simultaneous sharp stabs to the ear, tingles in the shoulder, and a coldness in the ankle.

Organising her mental notes for easier Pensieve extraction later, Klara informed Mrs. Longbottom and moved on through Franks visual and auditory inputs, which seemed largely unaffected. Next she delved into the stores of episodic memory, and for a few minutes, Klara was feeling hopeful that Frank's long-term memory had not been too gravely affected either.

Because of his lack of normal emotion, Klara had to work at finding entrances to strings of recollections, but the memories themselves seemed fairly intact. She scanned over years of childhood and adolescent memories, careful not to delve in. She had no need to see into individual memories, and no desire to accidentally encounter the last few moments of lucidity before he and Alice had become lost to the torture.

However, as she moved closer to the front of the brain that controlled personality and rational thought, the memories began to fragment and separate, losing their meaning and logic even as Klara perused them. The smog had returned, engulfing her vision, and it soon became a violent storm.

"Mein Gott," she breathed before she could stop herself. She had never seen or heard of anything like this before. Suddenly she was surrounded by a swirling, howling hurricane of jagged memory fragments, and she struggled to move forward, trying to see beyond the maelstrom to the mental structure beneath.

It was the most desolate area she'd encountered yet. Charred fragments of neurone networks seemed to be all that remained, and every so often one or two threads would twitch and attempt a flash of connection. And still, the hurricane of memories howled around her, and Klara realised with a start that the jagged fragments were slashing into her own mind, stinging like heavy, pelting rain.

Gasping, she forced her eyes shut, clutching her wand as she dragged her consciousness out of Frank's brain. She fell back into her chair, out of breath, her palm pressing hard where her heart was beating painfully against her ribs.

She registered the words of concern and alarm around her, but she was deep in her own mind, gulping air and trying suppress the images of flames and rough stones that had started to escape her own carefully contained memories.

"It's alright," she said when she finally composed herself, attempting a smile. "I was simply caught off guard. It happens sometimes, and the best thing to do is take a break," she lied easily, as if Frank's mind wasn't a horrific wreck like she had never encountered.

"Is it…is it very bad in there?" Neville's voice was a thin thread of a sound, and Klara couldn't help remembering with a pang the boisterous baby who'd babbled and laughed that one time Frank and Alice had needed to bring their son to an Order meeting.

"It is certainly…not normal. There is a lot of damage, but the good news—" Klara paused, selecting her words carefully. "The good news is that I can clearly make out the damage in most of the brain."

"And what does that mean?" Mrs. Longbottom finally spoke, and Klara found her voice was more drawn than before. The poor woman was just as anxious as her grandson.

"Nothing in terms of a prognosis, but it does mean there are a variety of tests I can administer, to see if he might respond to treatment."

Grandmother and grandson exchanged a look, and she saw Mrs. Longbottom's entire angular body stiffen. Klara stiffened too. She hoped to hope that she would be able to make at least a tiny bit of headway, that she'd be able to find something positive to tell them both. This was likely the only piece of positive news they'd heard about Frank and Alice, ever, and Klara couldn't bear the prospect of disappointing them. And yet, she had an obligation to temper their expectations.

"Again, I do have to stress, I can't work miracles. I don't know yet if Frank will respond to treatment, and even if he does, the improvement might not be noticeable."

"Yes. Yes, I understand, Healer Montagu." Mrs. Longbottom was nodding now, the nightingale bobbing in such a ridiculous manner that Klara, amid the tense gravity of the room, felt hysterical laughter start to tickle her throat.

"Just…well, I trust you will do your best. Will you move on to Alice now?"

This time Klara was very careful to prevent contamination and Legilimency reversal into her own mind. She started with the storms that raged in the frontal cortex, where the webs responsible for Alice's personality and rational thought were, like in Frank's mind, charred and shrivelled like bits of roots from a dead tree.

Her sensory inputs and motor skills seemed less damaged, and her emotions seemed more active and volatile, meaning Klara had much less trouble finding her memories. Just as she was beginning to withdraw, however, something slipped in her hold over the strings of memories, and Klara felt herself delving into the closest one.

It should not have been distressing. It should not have even been a shock.

It was only a memory made post-madness, just a hospital ward with flowery curtains and tidy beds. Alice walked up and down the aisle, peering up at every sound. But as Alice walked back to sit next to Frank, her mind was entirely flooded with a tender, glowing warmth, and an exquisite joy overtook her as she looked at Frank's distant eyes, her hands slinking up to gently touch his greying hair.

And Klara could not breathe, letting the feeling wash over her own mind. Even when she had lost herself, Alice had not lost this warmth.

Just then, the ward door opened, and both turned. In the door was Augusta Longbottom, this time with a brent goose on her hat, holding the hand of a Neville who looked no older than five. And at the sight of the boy, that feeling swelled again, different from when she'd looked at Frank, but beautiful just the same. So wonderful she thought her chest would burst from it.

She made her way to her son.

It was not until Klara withdrew from Alice Longbottom's mind that she realised she was crying. Cheeks burning from embarrassment at her public display of emotion, Klara gratefully accepted Healer Willoughby's handkerchief. She couldn't believe how far she'd let herself fall into her patient's emotional memories. She'd never done that before, and just as Professor Kolwalski repeatedly warned, things had become a horrible mess.

Three pairs of curious eyes bored into her, but Klara couldn't explain just now. Instead, she reached for Neville's hand, giving him a watery smile.

"I hope you know, my dear, dear boy, that your mother loves you very much. Even when she doesn't seem to recognise you, even when she seems off in her head—she loves you very much."

O~O~O~O~O

Twenty minutes later, Klara was walking through Mayfair, having decided that exercise and a stroll through muggle crowds would do her some good. She could barely remember her vague explanations as she ended her appointment with the Longbottoms, could barely remember scheduling to return in a few days.

As she let her feet guide her through the city and into Hyde Park, all Klara could think about—all she could replay, over and over in her own mind's eye—was that glorious feeling Alice had felt when she'd looked at her husband, even after she'd lost her conscious mind, even after she supposedly had no more personality, no more real thought.

Because she knew that feeling too well. She had known it at seventeen, and it returned to her now, this emotion that pushed like a tenacious spring shoot into Klara's heart every time she looked at Sirius Black.

A/N: Not sure if anyone besides me enjoyed this deep dive into my made-up mind magic. If not-I apologize. Lmk, and I won't be so technical in the future.