Chapter 27: Puzzle Pieces

August 29, 2007

The next day she stood with Neville on the fourth floor of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, eyeing a large sign with the words "Spell Damage" embossed across the front.

Neville seemed nervous as he glanced past the small squares of glass along the double doors, so Bella squeezed his hand tightly.

"I know there's nothing to be afraid of. Your parents are heroes."

He nodded defiantly and pulled the doors open.

A healer with deep red hair and a saccharine smile greeted them as they entered the closed ward. "Mister Longbottom, always a pleasure."

"Good day, Ms. Appleby," he gestured slightly.

The healer led them to a pair of beds where an aged couple was taking naps.

"Alice has been asleep close to forty-five minutes, but I'm afraid Frank has just barely begun his rest."

"It's alright." Neville pulled up stools for them to sit, and Ms. Appleby left them to their own devices. "Sometimes it's easier to see them when they're asleep. Dad can get a bit enthusiastic when he has visitors."

Bella couldn't tear her eyes away from Neville's mother. Wispy tufts of white hair tumbled around the loose folds of skin adorning her face. Even in sleep she looked restless, inhaling in a short, scattered rhythm.

"I wonder what goes through their minds," she whispered.

"The healers say that it's not much of anything...but at least there's no pain."

She pulled out her wand from her pocket and began to twirl it around her fingers methodically. "How would they know? What spell would they even use?" She twisted her wand in between her hands. "Legilimens? Obliviate?"

Without warning Bella felt herself thrown forward and sent through a brightly glimmering tunnel of light. Then she promptly landed in a soft, dimly lit cave.

"Neville?" she called out, but there was no answer except the dull rumble of sounds echoing from the walls. Where was she?

The walls of the cave appeared to play like broken television screens, each angular shape holding an image or a clip of moving frames that repeated over and over again.

Wait. Was this...the brain of Neville's mother?

She saw a few frames of the scarlet-haired healer from earlier and Neville's father in a few others. But brains didn't look like this from what she'd gathered in any number of science classes.

Bella considered the possibilities. Maybe it was a magical projection of the mind. This seemed much more likely, and she peered around with increasing wonderment.

Stepping a bit further in, the cave broadened into a tunnel of colors, much like an abstract painting. Looking up she spotted strands of memories dangling all around. They spiraled down like a helix of interwoven, microscopic tent poles, dimly shimmering amidst the canvas of Alice Longbottom's mind.

Going even deeper into the swirl of memories, Bella realized that most of the strands lay shattered and strewn beneath her feet, and their crackling, spastic sparks had all but faded. Reaching toward the mass of broken pieces of the witch's mind, she touched one of the shards of memory.

Like a puzzle piece trying to find its way amidst a thousand other puzzles, the fragment began to glow, and to Bella's astonishment several other pieces on the ground began to emit their own faint gleam as well.

Stumbling through the sea of lost memories she gathered another of the glowing pieces, and like a magnet it attached to the first shard.

"They were Aurors, you know, and very well respected within the Wizarding Community..."

Bella gasped. She seemed to be...piecing together a memory Neville's mother had lost. Carefully making her way through the rest of the debris, she touched another glowing piece, and the memory swirled with life.

"Very well, Alice dear, very well — Neville, take it, whatever it is. . ."

"Thanks, Mum."

The connections within each piece caused the memory to tremble within Bella's hands, and several more glowing pieces flew toward her, sealing themselves together until it was complete.

She couldn't believe what was happening. What if she could do this with all of Frank and Alice's memories? What if she could heal them?

Scooping up the piece of a different memory, Bella froze, inundated with the sound of screams. It was like Rosalie's agonized shrieks in the forest, only magnified a hundredfold.

Throwing the fragmented recollection as far away as possible, Bella wrenched herself from Alice's subconscious and began to sob into her hands.

"Bella? Bella, what happened, are you alright?"

She shook her head violently, continuing to cry bleakly as Neville pulled her into his arms.

"Tell me what happened, Bella. You were in...some kind of trance."

"I don't know what happened," she trembled in in arms. "I was just there. I was...in her mind somehow, and then I saw her pain. I heard her screams. I—how could anyone do something like that; how could I have done that to Rosalie?"

She cried into Neville's shoulder for several more minutes until his mother began to stir.

Neville tucked a piece of Droobles Blowing Gum into her hand and smiled softly. "I brought you something, Mum."

She blinked at him curiously several times. Then, looking more lucid than Bella would have imagined, she whispered, "Neville."

His mouth fell open, and he was speechless for several seconds.

"Neville," his mother murmured again, but this time she reached out, grasping his hand weakly.

"Mum?" his voice broke, and Bella was sure tears were streaming down his cheeks.

Neville's father roused and blinked at the scene for a few seconds before he began to convulse.

"NAAAAAAAAAAH!" He lunged at Bella, but Neville shielded her with his body just in time as his father rained his fists down furiously upon his back.

"Great Goddess!" Healer Appleby shouted, and Neville's father was immediately held down and sedated by three of the healers.

"I'm sorry, Mister Longbottom. I know you wanted to see your parents before the start of term. Perhaps tomorrow Frank will be more receptive to visitors."

His mother began absentmindedly chewing her gum and humming to herself, not seeming to pay any mind to the scene unfolding in front of her. Neville looked like he wanted to stay, but he gradually kissed his mother on the cheek and led Bella out of the closed ward.

The moment they stepped into the hall he spun her against the wall and grabbed her arms, gazing with disbelief and a myriad of other unknown emotions. "What did you do to my mother, Bella?"

"I didn't mean to," she shook her head back and forth several times. "I'm sorry, I was just thinking about what it must be like, then I was...in her head, and the memories were everywhere, just broken. And I...fixed one. I–I'm sorry, I should've asked before I did anything."

"You're sorry?" Neville choked, taking a step backward. "You—Bella, my mother has never said my name before today." He glanced around the hall looking somewhat frenzied. "And today she looked at me, really looked at me. What you did, Bella...that's not magic, that's a miracle."

Before she could think up anything else to say, Neville leaned forward and captured her lips in a searing kiss, and any trace of doubt faded with the warmth she felt radiating from all around them.

Neville deserved happiness; he deserved a family, and Bella would find a way to restore his parents' memories if it was the last thing she did.

Either this chapter was so farfetched it was absolutely awful, or else I actually managed to make it work. Blah! I pour my heart into this stuff, and it's making me exhausted. Thanks for reading! -V