Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first thing I hear: a steady rumbling sound, like someone snoring. 

For a moment I think I’m back at Hogwarts, in the dormitory.  All the other boys in my year snored occasionally, though none of them - I was told constantly - as bad as me. I  even woke myself up with my own snoring occasionally. But this isn’t one of those times, because the noise continues steadily even while I try to claw myself out of what feels like an impossibly deep sleep. The kind you only get with sleeping potions. The kind that can last for days if you aren’t careful with the dose. The kind they might give you if you’re badly injured. 

School can’t be right, I realise as I drag myself grimly through the mental fog. Hogwarts was years ago. I’ve done three years of Auror training since then. I’ve gotten married since then. But Alice doesn’t snore; she’s a scarily sound and silent sleeper, so much so that more than once I’ve had to watch her for a few minutes to make sure she’s really breathing. So who is snoring? 

I force my eyes open with a great deal of effort. They feel so, so heavy. How long have I been sleeping for? This isn’t even my bed. It’s too small, too narrow, and these are not the high quality, ridiculously expensive sheets mother insisted we buy when we got married, no, these are cheap, stiff things… 

Get up. The voice in my head is back, the one that sometimes forces me to do necessary things that I don’t want to do. It sounds like my mother, as usual. I haven’t missed it. How long since I heard it last? It seems like a long time. 

Eyes focus. There’s another bed beside me, and someone is asleep on it. I sit up a bit. There is another bed behind that one, and then another. A row of beds, like barracks, or a hospital. 

Hospital? 

Must have been injured then. Trying to remember. Can’t be sure of the last thing I do remember. All a blur. Can’t remember going to sleep. Can’t remember being hit, can’t even remember fighting. Can’t remember the last time I got up in the morning. What day is it? There’s something I was supposed to do - can’t remember that now, either. 

I sit up properly, taking in more of the surroundings. It seems to be early morning, dim light coming through a gap in the closed curtains at the end of the ward. Only one or two people in here with me. The one next to me is the one snoring. He isn’t even wearing hospital pyjamas - like I am, I notice with annoyance - but lying fully clothed on top of the bed, rumpling it. A dark grey cloak is slung over the foot of the bed, and there’s a little puddle under it like it’s dripped rainwater onto the floor all night. 

I don’t even have so much as a pair of underwear, that I can see, but my clothes must be somewhere about. 

Carefully, I check myself over. All vital functions seem to be working. I can feel and use all my limbs, stiff as they are. There’s no pain, and no visible signs of injury. Only the strange fuzziness in my head. My hands look a little odd, somehow, but maybe that’s just my eyes. It stands to reason, if I have a head injury, that I might not be seeing properly. I feel over my scalp, gingerly. No pain there either. I’m fine. 

All right. Let’s get out of here. I have to go home. I want my own bed more than anything, and for someone to explain what on earth happened. And maybe a bacon sandwich. My stomach rumbles. Yes, definitely a bacon sandwich. 

I get up and pad past the other patients in socked feet. No reason to disturb them. I’ll find a Healer and get them to discharge me, give me my things. Maybe call Moody. He’s sure to know whatever I’d been doing that caused me to hit my head and lose an indeterminate amount of memory. That seems like a reasonable plan, for sure, something to hold onto.

Except the door is locked. Annoyed, I try it again, thinking it might just be stuck, but no, it’s definitely locked. I rattle the doorknob and knock on it, forgetting for a moment about the people asleep behind me. Who would lock a hospital ward? Only criminals and madmen have to sleep in locked wards. 

“Dad?” 

I look around in surprise. The snoring man who doesn’t know how to hang his clothes up is sitting up on the bed and watching me. His hair is all over the place where he’s been sleeping, his clothes are a mess and he looks like he hadn’t shaved in several days.

“It’s still early,” he murmurs, sleepily. “C’mon, go back to bed.” 

“What?” I say, hoarsely, in a tone half confused and half angry, though really I’m only angry at the door. But from his reaction I might as well have yelled obscenities at him. He makes a harsh choking noise and goes stiff all over, gaping at me with a wide open mouth. It takes me by surprise at first, but then I school myself to calm. This person is obviously just as confused as I am. Did he just call me Dad? 

Probably some kind of mass Confundus charm, I think, comprehension dawning in a warm wave of relief. Some kind of spell gone wrong, or maybe a potion. Maybe we’ve all been hit with it, and we were locked in here for our own safety. That makes perfect sense. 

“Are you all right?” I ask him, gently. He looks about my age - no, maybe a few years younger - early twenties, maybe. His robes are Ministry issue, indicating he must be a fellow Auror, but I don’t recognise him. Maybe he’s just out of training. “You look a bit worn out,” I add, the understatement of the decade. My voice sounds strange. Hoarse. Unused. How long since I used it last?

He continues to look as panicked as though I had threatened him at wand point. Poor kid. 

I try again. “Do you remember what happened at all?” I ask, and try to clear my throat. The hoarseness does not go away. “My mind’s a bit of a blank.” 

He opens his mouth. Closes it again. Open. Close. And then, disbelieving: “You… you’re talking. You’re…” He gets up, getting tangled in the sheets, and nearly falling over as he fights free of them, somehow without taking his eyes off me. He takes a half a step towards me and then stops, as though afraid to come any further. “Dad? Do you know… you know who you are? Where you are?” 

I blink at him. Surely he can see there’s no way I’m old enough to have offspring anywhere near his age. He practically is my age. “I know who I am,” I say, slowly, to make sure he understands. “And I’m guessing…” I do a quick check of the logo on the bedspread, “St. Mungo’s Hospital. I’m… not your dad, though. Sorry,” I add, belatedly. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, since he’s obviously in a bad way, but I can hardly encourage his delusion. Why on earth haven’t they put him to bed properly? He ought to be being monitored. 

“You - ” he starts, and cuts himself off. The expression on his face is hard to read, especially in the dim light coming through the window. He looks scared and confused, but there seems to be some excitement too, strangely. “Wait right there,” he says hurriedly, and rushes past me. 

“The door’s -” I try to tell him, but before I can even finish he pulls out a wand and unlocks the door from the inside. I stare at him, even more confused than before. I watch him wave down a passing Healer and speak hurriedly to her in hushed tones I can’t quite make out. She looks over his shoulder at me, frowning. 

“What is going on?” I demand, which results in almost the exact same reaction the stranger had; she runs off, and the man closes the door again behind her. “Now hang on a minute,” I say, properly annoyed now, wishing more than ever that I had my own wand or at the very least some clothes with proper fastenings. “You’re not a patient, are you? What are you doing in this ward? What am I doing in this ward?” My raised voice is rousing the other patients, but by now I’m quite past caring. “I want to go home,” I say, making it a demand. “You can’t keep me here - ”

“It’s okay,” the stranger says, too quickly, raising his hands and making what he probably thinks are calming motions while his face twists a little to betray more than a little excitement. He looks elated , which doesn’t do anything to ease my growing sense of panic. “It’s okay, just… we’ll have a Healer here in a minute… calm down, Dad.” 

“Will you stop with that?” I snap at him. “Are you mental? I’m no one’s dad. I was only just married…” Hesitation.  How long has it been? Things like relative time seemed to be difficult concepts to grasp. A month? Two months? Surely it’s longer. “I don’t have any children,” I say finally. That at least, I was a hundred percent sure of. 

His face falls. I won’t apologise again, though. If he isn’t under a confusion spell, there’s no reason for him to act this way. “Okay,” he says, low, still holding his hands up as though in defence even though he’s the one with the wand. “Okay, sorry.” 

We stare at each other for a few more awkward moments. “What’s your name?” I ask finally.

“Neville.” He watches me warily as if expecting a reaction. 

“I’m Frank Longbottom. Auror Division.” 

He nods, slowly. “Yes, sir,” he says finally. “Um… maybe you should…” 

Before he can finish, however, the door opens behind him and at least four Healers come in in a tight group. They go past the stranger and block my view of him, while one of them sits me down on the bed again and starts doing about three dozen tests simultaneously, her wand flicking to my eyes, my ears, my chest, in quick succession. It’s impossible to tell what the results are or whether they’re the right ones. They ask me questions, in slow voices as though I am a child or an old person - “What’s your name? How old are you? Who is Minister for Magic? Do you feel any pain?” and so on, until I feel my head spinning. After a few minutes I look up and past them, but at some point the stranger must have left; I can no longer see him. 

The kerfuffle the group of Healers are causing has also woken all the other patients in the ward. None of them seem particularly bothered by it; most of them just stare at us with blank expressions. One man is brushing his long blonde hair with a dazed, but happy expression on his face. None of it is the least bit calming. When they ask me how I am feeling, I tell them I am just fine, and I would like to go home. I want to go home and see my wife. 

They don’t say no, outright, but neither do they assure me of letting me go, either. No one will give me any straight answer as to what happened or what I’m doing here. It’s a good two hours of poking and prodding, after which I’m entirely none the wiser, but they move me to a different room, a private room further down the hall, where there are yet more tests and more questions. Not all the questions are easy to answer. I can give them my birth date, my middle name, my NEWT results and the names of my supervisors, but when asked what I had had for breakfast last I can’t conjure up any sort of answer. They want to know what year it is - that’s a stumper - my best guess is 1979, but I’m not sure. 

Maybe I’m not fine after all. 

Then they all go away again and leave me alone, and I sit there for a couple of hours contemplating what I’ll do when they come back. I plan out a whole speech in my head. I am going home. I am going home to my wife - they can’t stop me. Any other tests they want to do, they can come to me, or I could come back later after I’ve had a little rest in my own bed. They surely can’t object to that. I have no intention of continuing to be locked up like a criminal, whether alone or in a room full of halfwits, it hardly matters. 

When the door finally opens I stand up, ready to make the speech. I know it would probably sound less imposing in hospital pyjamas than it might have if I were in full Auror robes, but there isn’t much I can do about that.

I open my mouth - and feel the words dry up like dust on my tongue. My mother is standing in the doorway, looking at me with eyes full of brimming tears. And she looks about twenty years older than I remember. 

“Where is she?” 

“Frank…”

“Where is she, mother?” 

I’m fuming. And terrified. And all I want to know is where my wife is, and even my own mother won’t give me a straight answer. All I needed to hear was “Frank, you and Alice were attacked…” and nothing else matters. 

“Frank, sit down.” 

“No I will not sit down. Tell me where she is or I swear to Merlin I will get a wand off one of these idiots and tear this hospital down around their ears.” 

“Frank, that is enough.” 

I glare at her, helplessly. 

She looks so different. She’s wearing a stiff black robe that looks like it’s half starch. The wrinkles and lines around her eyes and lips have deepened, and her hair is entirely white, where before it had been a kind of chestnut-brown lined with silver. I sit down. There doesn’t seem to be anything else I can do. “Tell me,” I beg her, my voice still low and rough from lack of use. 

She reaches up a hand and strokes my cheek, shakily as though she is afraid to touch me, like I might break. “It was a very long time ago, dear,” she says.

My heart sinks into my stomach like a stone. “How long?” 

“Frankie…” 

“How long?” 

I don’t quite shout at her, I knew better than to do that even in my highly confused state, but it still takes her a moment before she answers, as though deciding whether to scold me or not. “Nearly twenty-one years,” she says. 

I feel like throwing up. 

“That’s not right,” I say, flatly. “That can’t be right.” 

She takes my hand, I barely feel it, but she draws it into her lap and squeezes it anyway. Her hands feel tough; her fingers are thin and wrinkled, but not frail. “We thought we’d never get you back,” she says, stiffly. As though she is only just holding it together. “They told us it was hopeless. Even this new treatment… we expected maybe a touch of improvement. That maybe we could get you to recognise people, learn them over again. Maybe even talk a little. I never thought...” she trails off, a little sob in the edge of her voice. “Oh Frankie. I’m so sorry. It’s been so long, and it must be… I can’t think how it must be for you…” 

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to feel. I’ve lost twenty-one years? How is that possible?  

My mind is racing, trying to find an explanation that would solve all of this in a  way that actually makes sense. That wouldn’t add up to all those lost years. “Alice,” I choke out. I want Alice. I want to see her and know that she’s… if not okay , then at least there … 

I feel mother’s hand go still in mine. “She didn’t react as well to the treatment,” she says, very low. 

I look up at her, pleading. “What does that mean? She’s not… she’s been…. asleep, like I’ve…” 

She shakes her head, quickly. “No… Frank, you don’t understand. Let one of the Healers explain…” 

“No. I need to know now. Mother, please…” 

“All right, all right.” She takes a deep breath. “You haven’t been sleeping all this time, Frank. You were awake, eating, drinking, walking… being treated, here. You just… you didn’t know who we were, and you didn’t communicate… as far as we could tell you weren’t really capable of conscious thought. Alice did a little better,” she says, after a moment of my stunned silence. “We thought she would have a faster reaction to this new potion. But at first… well, she had some good results, but you didn’t seem to be responding at all, and then Alice… she slipped into a coma, a few days ago.” 

I swear I actually feel my heart break, like a tearing right through my chest. Alice? My Alice? Alone and asleep somewhere, trapped inside her own mind? Unaware of what had happened to her - to us? Dying? 

Is she dying? 

My eyes fill with hot tears; they fall silently down my face but I’m too frozen to wipe them away. Then mother says, “Neville’s been sleeping by your side ever since they stopped the treatment. Just in case something happened to you as well.” 

I look up at her, dazed and confused. “Neville? Who’s…” 

Suddenly I remember the boy in the ward, the one who’d been snoring, who’d called me… 

“Your son, Neville,” Mother prompts me, frowning. “You don’t… Frank? You remember Neville, don’t you? He was only one when you and Alice… when it happened. I know you don’t remember anything since then, but surely you must… ” 

I shake my head, slowly. My son? How could that… that person, how could he be my son? “I don’t have a son.” 

“Frank,” she says, a warning tone, but what am I meant to say? I don’t have a son. 

“I would remember,” I insist. “If I had - if Alice and I had a child, I would remember that.” I take a shaky breath, and seeing her about to argue, change the subject. “Where’s Father?” 

Another pause, and this time I already know the answer. He’d been ill, I can remember that. I doubt he would have lasted five years, let alone twenty or more. “I’m sorry, dear,” Mother says again. 

I shrug it off, forcefully. I feel like my heart is already turned to stone, and there’s no room for any more grief. 

“I want to see Alice.”

She looks so small. She’d always been short, and her round little face had made her look almost elfin when we were teenagers. I teased her about it. Now, lying there, she looks pale and lifeless, and there is nothing funny about it at all. I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting there and I don’t care. Her hand is hot in mine, but nothing can make me let it go. Hot is better than cold. It lets me know she’s still alive. 

She’s sleeping even deeper than she usually does. And she’s older. Much older, it seems to me, much more than twenty years. She looks seventy. Her hair is white. I don’t care to know what I look like now, and I have avoided the sight of any mirrors, even when they let me use a bathroom to wash up and put on some clothes which, while clean, have probably been pulled out of the hospital’s Lost and Found. I am still twenty or so in my head. I don’t want to know what it’s like to see a reflection I don’t recognise. I’ll avoid that as long as possible. 

But there is no avoiding looking at Alice. In her still face I see every bit of evidence I needed of the years that had passed. The Healers have given their clinical explanation of the damage. The Cruciatus Curse. The people who had done it. Death Eaters - I’ve already forgotten the names - but they are all dead or in prison, apparently, which is lucky for them. 

Alice. My Alice. She looks so still. 

At some point, maybe minutes later or maybe hours, I become aware of voices outside the door to the little room. I hesitate a long moment, not wanting to leave her, but morbid curiosity overcomes all other instincts, and I lay her hand carefully by her side and move quietly over to where I can listen. My knees creak a bit now that the adrenaline has all but worn off. Aging knees. 

“…not sure it’s a good idea, at least not yet…” a woman is saying.

“Miriam, my son has lived in this hospital for nearly half his life.” My mother’s voice isn’t hard to recognise. I have that, at least. Distant and strange and suddenly ancient as she is, at least I know my mother. I cling to that. “He is coming home with me as soon as he feels he is ready. Of course he can return for day visits if you find it necessary.” 

“I do.” The answer is short. It sounds like Healer Strout, one of those who had been introduced to me earlier, who has been treating me and Alice and has been involved in this new treatment - the one that has apparently cured me and left my wife even worse off than she was before, with no explanation as to why. “But Augusta -” I blink in surprise at the familiarity of her tone - “please understand… there is a very great danger… the shock he has already had, any more…” 

“He’s had the worst of it,” Mother says. “Since it could not be avoided.” 

“He will have the greatest difficulty acclimating - perhaps a longer rest period…” 

“Miriam, if you are merely going to stand there and make unfounded arguments for keeping him here…” 

“All right, enough.” A third voice speaks, so low it is hardly audible from behind the closed door. A man’s voice. “There’s no point arguing about it. Gran, take him home if it's what he wants.” 

A moment’s pause. “You’re not coming?” she asks. 

“I’ll stay with Mum.” 

I flinch. He calls Alice mum. It still isn’t real to me. It is a piece that doesn’t fit. How dare he? is the thought that comes. How dare this stranger put a claim on her? 

“It won’t do any good, dear,” Mother says. “You heard what -”

“I know. I’m still staying. I won’t do any good at home either. I may as well not do any good here.” 

“Neville, you haven’t been home in eight days. It’s not good for you, you’ll make yourself ill.” 

“I’m not leaving her here alone, Gran. She’s not… if she wakes up and he’s not here… you know what she gets like if anyone tries to separate them.” 

“What about work?” I know Mother well enough to recognise a last-ditch effort when I heard one. 

“Kingsley knows. He’ll understand.”  

That seems to be the end of it. Footsteps moved towards the door; I back away quickly, dreading. But when the door opens, it is just Mother and Healer Strout wearing a reluctant smile.

For some reason I expect to return to the place I thought of as home, where Alice and I had been living since we were married. Perhaps that’s foolish. 

“What happened to our house?” I ask, dully, as we arrive in my mother and father’s house, my childhood home. 

“We sold it, after a year,” mother says. She is holding my arm for a support she surely doesn’t really need, but maybe she thinks I do. “I put the money in trust, for Neville. But it’s yours now, of course,” she adds. 

I couldn’t be less interested in the money. The news about the house feels like a blow to a bruise; another loss of something I had taken for granted would still exist, would be there waiting. Alice loved that house, though when I try I can only conjure up a handful of memories in it. We’d been so busy, working. Fighting a war. 

At least this place seems almost the same; very little has changed. The same old portraits on the walls, the same dark curtains. The same faint smell of lavender.

We go through to the sitting room, and much seems the same here too, except that when I look out the window towards the garden I get the strange sensation of standing in a familiar room in an unfamiliar landscape. Of course the garden would not have looked exactly the same after twenty years, but it’s not just that; what I remember as being neat rows of perfectly manicured flowerbeds and an expanse of bright green uniform grass seems to have given way to a rather haphazard collection of random herbs, bushes and small trees. Halfway down the path there’s a small greenhouse that wasn’t there before. The result isn’t ugly; far from it, it’s beautifully chaotic. “Taken up gardening?” I guess aloud. Mother never much liked getting her hands dirty, but it’s the sort of thing elderly women take up, isn’t it, especially if their husbands have passed and there’s not much else to do? 

“Oh,” Mother waves a hand dismissively. “Neville and his experiments. I had to let poor old Mr Bagshot go, and the man tended my flowerbeds for thirty years.” She shakes her head, quite unaware of how she’s shocked me once again. “Sit down dear, you must be famished.” 

She calls for sandwiches, and in a minute Cook appears with a tray. Her name is Mary and she’s officially the housekeeper, but she’s always been Cook to me, since I was a child. Mother and Father had both always disliked the concept of House Elves, and hired Cook as chef, maid and nanny after the last one died. She’s been with the family ever since. She too, looks shockingly older than I remember, and quite shaken to see me in return, despite surely having been warned I was coming. When I take the plate and thank her she comes almost to tears. “Very good to have you back, Master Frank,” she says. When I bite into the sandwich, it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. There are two slices of bacon, just the way I like it. 

“‘Wonderful,” I manage to say, after swallowing the first bite, and she beams at me. 

“Will you have something made and sent to the hospital at teatime?” Mother asks her as she pours the tea. 

“Yes ma’am,” she says, her smiling fading into a look of concern, a question implied in her tone. 

“Neville will not be coming home tonight,” mother says, in answer, and very carefully does not look at me as she pours the tea. I eat my sandwich and pretend not to have heard. 

“Ah.” Cook nods. “I shall send some fresh clothes as well, then.” She smiles at me one more time, bustles out of the door. 

Mother offers me a full teacup. My hands are shaking a little as I take it, quite out of my control, and I have to put the sandwich down so I can take it in both. I know now why my hands look so strange, it’s not my eyesight at all but twenty-one years of lost time. They look more like my father’s hands than mine. Like the rest of me they feel stiff, rusty; I’m not sure if it’s so long being unused, or if everyone my age feels like this. I’ve never been so old before, after all. 

 “I had your room made up for you,” Mother says, sipping at her own tea. “It’s ready whenever you need some rest.” 

I find I’m not surprised that there's still such a thing as ‘my room’. Mother had not liked me moving out of home, even as a married man, and had always promised my bed would be there waiting if I needed it. The thought isn’t as comforting as it might have been. I don’t want that room, that bed; I want the bed I spent my wedding night in, and every night since that I can remember. More than that, I want Alice with me. 

“Thank you,” I say anyway, politely. I sip tea, eat my sandwich. It’s quiet for a while.

There’s a photograph of my parents on the mantle, in the same place it always was. Looking at it I’m struck once again by the realisation that my father is gone, that I’ll never see him or speak to him again. I wonder what he would say to me. I miss him in a dull, distant way, not the same as the aching hole that is the lack of Alice but still painful. The house is the same but everything in it is different.

Mother’s hand on my arm. “Frankie? Are you all right?” 

I swallow, try to answer; nothing comes out, so I nod instead. I’m not all right, but there’s nothing she can do to help. “You look tired,” she says, squeezing the crook of my elbow. “You ought to get some rest. And perhaps a shave?” she suggests, pointedly. They must have shaved me before, at the hospital, but since I woke up I haven’t let anyone near me with a razor, and they wouldn’t have given me one either even if I was willing to look in a mirror. I probably look a fright, but I don’t much care.

Mother looks tired herself though, dark circles under her eyes. I drag myself back to now, force a smile. I try to think, for the first time, what all this must have been like for her. How I’m feeling about Alice is the way she must have felt about me for the last two decades. It’s unimaginable, and I’m suddenly sure that she hasn’t slept at all since the Healers started the new treatment. She’s an old woman now and the stress can’t be good for her. “You should get some sleep as well, Mother,” I say, putting the cup of cold tea down and patting her hand. “I’ll be up in a minute. Don’t worry, I remember the way.” 

She hesitates, clearly unwilling to leave me to my own devices when my memory is about as reliable as a bucket full of holes, but when I smile encouragingly at her, she relents at last. She stands up, takes my head in both her hands, and kisses my forehead. “My Frank,” she sighs. “I have missed you so.” 

I can’t think of anything to say. She strokes my hair a moment. When she turns to walk away, I notice how deliberately she moves, each step firmly in front of the other, considered, measured. 

When she’s gone, I finish my sandwich and stare into the fire for a while. I am tired, but I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep; there are too many thoughts, too many long-ago memories jostling for space in a damaged mind. Every now and then I remember something that I can’t be sure is even real, if it isn’t my frenzied imagination trying to make sense of it, to fill the empty spaces. 

Suddenly it is almost pitch dark, the fire burned down, and I have no idea how much time has passed. I shake my head sharply, cursing my battered wits, and get up. My legs ache. I’ve noticed how thin I am, how weak the muscles. Results of half a life spent mostly in bed, taking only short steps from one end to another of a single room. I shudder. 

The house is dark and feels abandoned, though I’m sure Mother is in her room and Cook must still be about, somewhere. Still, I find myself stepping quietly, trying not to disturb the stillness. 

The room I grew up sleeping in is up the stairs to the left, and there are several doors between here and there, doors I can’t resist peeking behind. The old drawing room is covered in dust sheets and so is the nursery. The dining room seems to still be in use and so is - to my surprise - my father’s study. 

At the top of the stairs I turn right instead of left, hesitating over the door to the room my parents used to reserve for guests. I’m not sure why, not sure what I’m expecting to find, or not, until I open the door. 

Gone are the neatly folded floral linens, the starch white sheets, the embroidered pillowcases, the inoffensive pictures on the walls. This room is clearly lived in and has been for some time. There are shoes tossed roughly into a corner, a cloak slung over a chair. The sheets and the linens are burgundy, and from one wall hangs a slightly faded Gryffindor banner, the lion’s mouth opening now and again in a silent roar. 

I step inside, thinking I should feel guilty but do not. It’s my house, after all. Turning on the light to see better, I almost trip over a school chest at the end of the bed. A cursory glance inside reveals folded school robes and a pile of books and old parchment. Here is a desk, covered in potted plants; and so is the windowsill; so packed in that it’s quite impossible to close the curtains. The desk also has parchment, quills, inkwells, a few envelopes with letters tucked inside them, stacked. I’m not quite nosy enough to dare to read them, but then I see a box, stuck right at the back behind all the plants. A plain box, well-made, the sort a man might keep his cufflinks in, or important documents. I hesitate over it a moment, then flip it carefully open. 

Inside, there are three medals. Curious. My first guess is some kind of sports award, or an academic achievement, perhaps - something to do with plants, if the haphazard decor of the room is anything to go by. But when I pick one of them up I realise I am wrong; this is a heavy gold medallion strung on a green ribbon. An Order of Merlin, First Class. 

More curious than ever, I turn it over to read the inscription. It says; 

Order of Merlin, First Class

for an act of outstanding bravery or distinction

Awarded in 1982 to

Frank Longbottom, Auror

I drop the thing in shock; luckily it falls onto the soft carpet and barely makes a sound. Cursing silently, I pick it back up and stare at it again. No trick of the light. 

Shaking, I reach for another of the medals. It is the same, another green ribbon, another inscription, identical except that the name I am half expecting to see, this time, is Alice Longbottom, Auror. My eyes fill with tears, again, and I put them down on the desk, catch my breath. 

It happened in 1981, Mother had said, not long after the war ended in that October. The awards then had been given after the fact, to two people who could neither know nor appreciate the gesture. 

Then why are there three of them?

Hesitantly, still shaking, I reach for the last medal. Where the other two were flatly placed, as though on display, this one is almost hidden - an afterthought, tucked awkwardly into the corner of the box. I pick it up to see that it’s another First Class. This time I take a deep breath before turning it over. 

Order of Merlin, First Class

for an act of outstanding bravery or distinction

Awarded in 1998 to

Neville Longbottom

I stare for a while, then put all three medals back and place the box exactly in the position I found it in. Then I go back to my room without bothering to look around more, and collapse onto the bed to sleep in my borrowed clothes. 

When I wake up, I feel a lot better. A bit hungry, but one bacon sandwich a day is unlikely to be enough to satisfy even a skinny, withered body like mine, so it’s my own fault for not asking for more. I sit up, and scratch the stubble under my chin, trying to ignore my aching stomach. 

It’s time, I decide, sighing. I can’t avoid it forever, and I might as well do it while my head doesn’t feel like it’s about to explode. 

I stumble down the hall to the bathroom I used to use, which fortunately is still in the same place, though it’s messier than I remember. The mirror over the sink is huge, and I catch a glimpse of my reflection before I can even close the door, before I’m quite ready. I clench my teeth; make myself look. 

I look, to put it nicely, a mess. I don’t look quite as old as seventy, but neither do I look as young as forty, and my face is so thin I can barely recognise it. I’m so pale I look sick, my hair is shot with grey and cut in a style I would never have chosen for myself, perhaps something easy for the Healers to maintain. I lift a hand to touch my own cheek, watching the reflection for the mirrored movement, for reassurance that I’m really looking at myself and not through a window at a stranger. 

I take a bath, much longer and more relaxed than the one I took at St Mungo’s, in the relative familiarity of my family home. It takes a long time to feel truly clean. When I finally get out I look for a razor and find one, find also a toothbrush and toothpaste that don’t belong to me. I use the toothpaste on my finger, but without a wand I have little choice but to brave the razor, uncomfortably aware of who I know it belongs to; the stranger living in my house, growing plants in my guest room, the Gryffindor with the Order of Merlin. 

The razor is obviously charmed, and I realise quickly that I couldn’t have cut my skin with it even if I’d wanted to - luckily, since my hands continue to shake with an occasional spasm so violent that I might otherwise have slit my throat. There isn’t much I can do about my hair, but I run my hands under the sink and try to use the dampness to shape it into something less flat. 

“So vain,” Alice would say, every time she caught me fussing at my own reflection; straining my arms now, I can almost hear her laugh. She would never do much more than run a brush through her own hair, which was one of the many reasons Mother had disapproved of her at first. Mother did not think much of a woman who didn’t take pride in her own appearance. The only time I’d ever seen Alice upset at how she looked was when her hormones were all over the place, and her feet -

I stop with my arms suspended by my head, staring at myself in the mirror but no longer seeing. I reach for the memory, grasp for it - 

“They’re twice as big as normal, they’d have to be, or I wouldn’t be able to see them!” Her voice echoes out of time. “I’m disgusting, how can you even look at me -” 

My heart pounds. Pregnant. She was pregnant. I sit on the edge of the bath, trying to catch my breath, trying to remember more, but it’s slipping away almost as soon as it came, back into the muddle of confusion that might be memory and might be wishful fabrications, and it’s gone. 

“Frank?” A knock on the door startles me back to the here and now. “Are you in there?” 

“Just a minute.” I splash water on my face, dry off again, scramble into the hospital clothes. When I open the door at last, Mother is hovering, looking worried. “Oh,” she says, brightening a little on seeing my shaven face. “That is better.” She reaches out and pats my cheek. “We must see about getting you some sun.” 

“Actually I wouldn’t mind going shopping.” I do my best to look unshaken by the intrusion of a new memory untethered to anything else I knew. “I need a toothbrush, and some other things. Some new clothes.” 

I see the hesitancy in her face, and am therefore unsurprised when she says, “Why not write me a list? I’ll have Cook fetch whatever you need. As for clothes, Neville won’t mind if you borrow some of his things for now...” 

“I’d rather not.” I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it comes out that way anyway. 

For a moment she looks like she might argue, but she isn’t done treating me with kid gloves just yet; she nods. “Of course. They’d be a little big for you anyway; I’ll see what I can find. In the meantime we must go to the hospital to see Healer Strout.” 

Strout does a thorough examination, cycling through a lot of the same questions I answered yesterday. When she asks again for the name of the Minister for Magic, this time I tell her I don’t have the faintest idea, and she laughs. “I must say, it’s quite remarkable,” she says, scribbling in a thick notebook. “No one could have predicted these results.” 

Mother left me here to deal with Strout on my own, so that she could go out for the things I need. It feels strange to be here, in a building I lived in for so long, and not recognise any of it. 

“And your memory?” the woman asks, glancing up from her notes. By all accounts she’s a competent Healer with a warm bedside manner, but it’s just as strange to be sitting opposite a woman who has seen me almost every day for two decades and have no memory of her. “Have there been any changes?” 

“Well…” I try to explain the flash from that morning, scarcely more than a brief picture, more audible than it was visual. “It was like water through sand,” I sigh, curling and uncurling my trembling hands. “I couldn’t catch it.” 

Strout nods, sympathetically. “I won’t sugarcoat it for you Frank, your mind has taken significant damage. It’s a miracle that you’re sitting here talking to me at all, you realise. Some of the time you’ve lost may come back, in pieces, and some may not at all.  I’m afraid you need to prepare yourself for that.” 

I nod, deciding not to point out that I have already been prepared as much as possible by the experience of that morning. I have no wish to be sitting here any longer than necessary. “I’d like to see my wife,” I say instead. 

“Ah,” she says, and then, seeing my expression, “of course. I will escort you.” 

I find that I do need her to guide me, as the maze of corridors and rooms beyond her office is too much for me; must surely be too much for almost anyone whose memory isn’t so much of a potato masher. “Just down here,” Strout says. 

As we get nearer to the room I can make out hushed voices from behind the open door. There are people already in there, and for a moment I find myself dreading again - but it is not him, after all, but two strangers. They look up startled at us as we come in, stand up hurriedly. 

“Mr Longbottom!” The young woman who steps forward has brown hair tugged back into a loose bun, fuzzy strands poking out disobediently in a dozen places, but is dressed otherwise professionally in Muggle blouse and trousers, her fingernails painted a soft pink. As she offers me her right hand and puts the other briefly to her chest, I notice a silver circle around her left ring finger, a single diamond. I find myself glancing at my own left hand; no wedding ring, and I hadn’t thought to look for it. 

“Hermione Granger,” the young woman introduces herself, “and this,” she indicates the man standing beside her, “is Draco Malfoy.” 

That name is at least familiar where hers is not; at least the family name. The young man certainly has the right colouring for a Malfoy, so pale that the dark smudges under his eyes look purple. I wonder if anyone in this strange future ever gets any sleep. “Sir,” he says, looking faintly awed to see me. 

“Ah, yes,” Strout says, warmly. “Draco and Hermione are the leaders of the little research team behind the new treatment. You have them to thank for your recovery.” 

I don’t know if she expected me to fall down on my knees, but I don’t feel particularly like making a big show of gratitude. I look back instead at the two. “You seem awfully young to be Healers,” I say instead. 

“Oh, we aren’t,” Granger says, quickly; a little too quickly. “It’s… well, it’s a little hard to explain, without… well…” 

“A shock that’ll break my brain?” I suggest, raising an eyebrow. She looks a little taken aback, but Malfoy’s lips twitch into a brief smile. 

“You... just missed Neville,” she says, suddenly a little less sure of herself. “He had to leave for a shift…” 

“Tell me more about this treatment,” I say, brushing aside her deflection. “I’m interested.” 

“Of course,” she says, flustered, and glances behind her. “Well, it started with Draco…” 

“Actually it started with someone else entirely,” Malfoy counters. He’s wearing dark blue robes, quite respectable, and aside from the fact that he obviously hasn’t been sleeping, he is perfectly presented. I remember Lucius Malfoy from Hogwarts and after, a man long rumoured to have been involved with Death Eaters. He was the only Malfoy left, as far as I was aware, and vaguely I recall a similarly blonde, willowy wife; this must be a son of theirs. “Do you recall a man named Severus Snape, sir?” he asks, politely. 

I shake my head, slowly; “No, I don’t think…” 

Granger is digging in her bag, she comes up with a small, thick book. “This was his,” she says. “Draco found it.” She opens it to a random page and holds it out; it looks like nothing less than gibberish to me, and for a moment I panic that I might have actually forgotten how to read. 

“It’s encrypted,” Malfoy says, helpfully. “Luckily I have a bit of insight into the kind of code he used. Between Granger and I, we cracked the whole thing in six months.” 

“Professor Snape developed a potion that eased the aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse,” Granger explains, closing the book again. “There were reasons he needed it… well, we won’t go into it now…”

“When we found the journal we were looking for that potion,” Malfoy puts in. “He left notes indicating that it would be useful, and suggestions for improvements. We think he had you and your wife in mind specifically, sir.” 

I have no idea why that should be; the name is only vaguely familiar, and it seems to me that it has to do with something James might have said, once. Suddenly I wonder where he is and whether he might be able to shed any light on this whole accursed mess. I’d have thought Lily would have come to visit Alice, too, they were such good friends… then again, maybe she had come some other time and we’d missed each other. 

“It took us a while to progress the potion to the point where Healer Strout would approve it,” Granger continues the thread. “We thought it might give you the ability to retain some new information, at most… we had no idea it would be this effective.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Malfoy muttered. “I kept telling you it could have the potential to reverse some of the effects. I seem to recall you telling me not to get a big head.” 

“I see,” I say, interrupting before there can be any more chatter. My head already feels full, and there’s a sharp pain starting at the base of my skull, a silent protest. “So the two of you, totally unqualified, perhaps three or four years out of school? Found an untested potion recipe, tinkered with it a bit, and decided to test it on two people who couldn’t make a fuss if it went wrong?” 

Miss Granger looks utterly aghast. The smile falls completely from Malfoy’s face. “Sir…” he starts, shaking his head. “It’s not quite…” 

“Do you have an explanation,” I go on, ignoring him, “as to why, while I am standing here having only lost two decades or so of my memory, my wife -” I point, without looking, feeling anger start to redden my cheeks - “is lying there in a coma? Well?” 

They look at me helplessly, but I cannot drum up any sympathy at all. They seem barely more than children, as my own sudden age starts weighing me heavily on my shoulders, but that only serves to anger me further. “We don’t have an explanation sir,” Malfoy says finally. “We are… we have been doing our best to come up with one, or better, a solution, since she first… since this first…” 

“Since you poisoned her.” I can’t keep the venom out of my voice, and I don’t try. Granger looks like she might be about to cry.

“Frank,” Strout interrupts, coming to put a calming hand on my shoulder until I shake it off. “Frank, the potion does work. It worked on you. We didn’t do this blind, we did a lot of testing. I gave it my approval, and Neville gave his permission -” 

“Neville?” I burst out, turning to glare at her full force. It’s the first time I’ve said the name aloud, and I  manage to make it sound like a curse. “What does he have to do with it?” 

Strout looks nonplussed, rushes; “He has authority over your healer’s care, Frank, has done since he was seventeen; that was your mother’s wish. And he is Alice’s only next-of-kin still living; Augusta was only a proxy until he came of age. He had every right -” 

“Get out,” I snap at her, at all of them. “I want to be alone with my wife. Go.” 

They leave, without a word, and I go to sit by Alice’s side. She has slept peacefully through all of it, and it might be my imagination, but I think there is even the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. I take her hand, and weep over it until I can no longer breathe. 

Mother comes to fetch me, with a bag of necessary things and another bag of clothes she has bought for me blind; I thank her only perfunctorily. I ought to be embarrassed to have my mother buying me underwear at my age, even the age I am only in my mind, but now I can only feel numb to it. 

“Miriam tells me you met Hermione and Draco,” she says over lunch; my hunger has also dissipated and I can only stand to pick a little at the cold roast chicken. By the cautious tone of her voice I can tell that Strout told her a lot more than that. “Two very smart young people,” she says, pointedly, “to whom we should be grateful - you know they are friends of Neville’s from Hogwarts - well, Hermione is at any rate, Draco is a little more complicated... Frank, are you listening?” 

I grunt, in a way that at any other time would have had her chiding me for my manners. “Makes sense,” I mutter in the direction of my plate. “No wonder it was so easy to gamble with our lives.” 

A clatter; her fork fallen to her plate, she’s staring at me. “Frank, what do you -” 

“What on earth possessed you to give away the healing authority?” I demand, unable to keep the anger back. “To him? I don’t even know him!” 

“Frank,” she breathes, outraged. “Neville is your son, whether you remember him, or whether you like it or not. Once he turned seventeen he became Alice’s proxy automatically anyway, and as for you - I will not live forever, thank Merlin, and I did not wish for that responsibility to be thrust on Neville in combination with the occasion of my death, whenever that should be. I wanted him to get used to it now, while I am still around and can help him make decisions - which I might add I did, in this case, though the final one was his. And you’re here Frank. You’ve come back to us, when we thought you never would. How could you possibly think he made the wrong decision?” 

I put my knife and fork down, making no more pretence to hunger. “I would rather be brainless again,” I say, “than sitting here perfectly aware that Alice is lying back there, alone.” 

She looks aghast. “She isn’t alone, Frank,” she says, in disbelief. “Your son is with her.” 

“Then if she dies,” I reply, with no hesitation whatsoever. “It’ll be on his head.” 

Mother doesn’t know what to say to me, and I have nothing more to say to her, and the rest of the day passes very coldly between us indeed. I go back to the hospital the next morning, see Strout again, but when she asks me if I would like to visit Alice once more, I decline. I know it’s selfish, but it hurts too much. Things might be different if I could make myself believe that she knew I was there, but I cannot; it’s all too obvious that she is blissfully unaware of anything going on around her. And I don’t much like the idea of who I may run into. 

The robes Mother has bought are not a bad fit; much smaller than I am used to, so much smaller that I’m surprised when I’m able to put them on and they’re still a little loose. 

That afternoon I go to the study, pull out some parchment and a quill. I write a letter to James, a very badly written letter, but then I haven’t had any practice for a long time and both my fingers and my prose are stiff. I tell him I wouldn’t mind visitors, if he was free sometime soon, trying not to sound too desperate, like I’m in dire need of a friend who is not my mother, who can fill in some of the giant gaps I’m still trying to come to grips with. 

No way to send it, of course, without going to an owlery; Mother never liked to have the birds in the house where they could leave it in a mess. I give it to her instead; she looks startled for a moment but does not make any protest.

She still refuses to let me leave the house on my own - ridiculous, given my age - so I take a turn around the garden instead. I find that I cannot hate the changes even now I know who is responsible. I was never much in favour of the identical rows, with not a petal out of place, no matter how much pride Mother or the old gardener Bagshot had taken in them. The new plants feel much more alive, much more real. As I walk past, a Flutterby bush goes into full bloom and surrounds me with a burst of sweet-smelling petals, swirling around me before flying off into the air. I don’t recognise half the species I can see, and that’s nothing compared to what’s in the greenhouse.

The tiny glass room is a wall of green, with only a thin path to move around between them. Piled up in one corner are tools, empty pots, a bag and a half of fresh soil. A large pair of dragonhide gloves, the scales soiled dark with earth, are hung on a peg near the door. I stand there for what seems like a long time, breathe in the smell of the leaves, the dirt, and a faint scent of something like tangerine. Walking through to the other side I notice something odd; I’m sure there were some big, old oak trees at the back of the property, I remember climbing them as a child. The old fence has gone too, only the stumps left where it used to be. 

Mother starts calling me from the house. I sigh, wondering what on earth she could want me for now; it’s not as though my schedule is particularly overflowing when I’m not at the Healer’s appointments. 

To my surprise, however, I come back into the living room in socked feet to see a familiar face. 

“Kingsley?” 

He looks around, smiling. “Frank. How good to see you.” 

He looks older, but that’s no longer a surprise, what does come as a bit of a shock are his robes, bright purple and beautifully embroidered and bearing a very specific sigil over the left breast. “Yes,” he says, seeing me staring. “I’ve come up in the world - or down, depending on how you look at it.” 

“You’re Minister for Magic?” I think fuzzily that at least I now have the answer, the next time a Healer insists on asking me. 

“I expect you remember me as the rookie Auror who set fire to his own robes,” Kingsley grinned. He steps forward, puts a hand on my arm. “I had to see for myself that it was true. It’s all the young Aurors can talk about at the moment; you’re a bit of a legend, you know.” 

‘I never asked to be.” 

“Of course.” He nods, lets his hand fall. “Of course. Well, it is still wonderful news; it’s a miracle the Daily Prophet hasn’t gotten hold of it yet, but when they do I’m sure it’ll be front page stuff.” 

Mother has been hovering under the door, she comes forward now with hands clasped. Something is wrong, I can tell immediately. “Mother? What’s the matter?”

She looks at Kingsley, than back to me. “Well, that’s just it dear. We’d hoped to have a few more days, to tell you more gradually…” 

“Tell me what?” I look between them. Was this what everyone seemed so guarded about, the news somehow worse than finding out what had happened to me and Alice? Which was so devastating that Strout was worried about it causing a relapse? 

“There are some things you need to know, my friend,” Kingsley said, his tone much more serious now. “About the war. How it ended. Your mother says you have no memory of the last couple years.” 

“Well.” I can’t argue that. “Not much,” I say, blithely. “Sometimes little… bits and pieces. It’s… jumbled.” 

He nods, his mouth a thin line. “Sit down, Frank,” he says, and I do, because my legs ache with so much sudden use and there’s very little other choice. My stomach is already churning. 

“Spit it out, Kingsley,” I say, when he hesitates. 

He clears his throat, but Mother gets there first, coming to sit in the chair facing me. “I told you about what happened to you,” she said. “About the Death Eaters who attacked you. But I… I didn’t tell you why. It was after the end, you see, and everyone thought we were safe… it was all supposed to be over…” she stops, caught up in a memory so painful I can see it reflected in her eyes. I reach over, take her hand, and she squeezes my fingers so tight it seems like the grip of a grown man, not an elderly lady. 

“They wanted information,” Kingsley says, very low. “About You-Know - Voldemort,” he corrects himself, so firmly that I flinch, even though I’m used to Dumbledore bandying the name about at Order Meetings. “He had disappeared that October, effectively ending the war, and for whatever reason they thought that you would know where he’d gone to. You couldn’t have known, of course, no one did. It was all an enormous waste.” 

“Disappeared?” I repeat, frowning deeply. I had assumed he must have been killed somehow, couldn’t have imagined the war ending any other way. “How did he disappear?” 

Kingsley and Mother exchange glances. This is it, I realise, this is what they’ve been hesitating to tell me all this time, and I steel myself as best I can.  

“There was a prophecy,” Mother says, looking at me as though willing me to understand before she could get out the words. “I never put much stock in such things, of course, but You-Know-Who did, and that was all that mattered. A baby born in July of 1980 was going to be a danger to him. Dumbledore seemed to think that the prophecy could only be talking about the Potter’s boy, or… or Neville.” 

“The Potter’s boy,” I repeat, and in that moment I see a flicker in my mind’s eye; a flash of red hair as Lily leaps into Alice’s arms. 

“You are? Me too, me too!” 

“Harry,” Kingsley says, simply. “It was Harry that Voldemort went to dispose of that night, but it didn’t work, thank Merlin. When he tried to kill Harry he ended up blasting himself into oblivion - for a while, anyway. That’s the short version,” he adds.

The Potter’s boy. Harry. A prophecy. This all sounds quite unfamiliar and yet somehow right, as though it might be something I had read in a history book a long time ago and remembered only in a fleeting, intangible way. 

I look up. “James?” I ask, but something in the pit of my stomach already knows the answer. “Lily?” 

Kingsley slowly shakes his head, and something shatters inside me; it feels so real that I can almost hear it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “He killed both of them that same night.” 

I swallow hard. James had been a full seven years behind me in school, but since he and Lily and the others had joined the Order, we had become good friends. That was the way things were in those days, it was difficult to trust anyone, even the people you thought you knew, but the Order was safe. Sanctioned by Dumbledore. His wild young Gryffindors were a breath of fresh air. Lily and Alice were soon almost inseparable, and Alice never made friends at all easily. And suddenly they were just gone as though they had never been. 

Mother reaches into her robe and pulls out the letter I had given her only a couple of hours ago, James’ name scrawled badly onto the outside of the envelope. She hands it to me and I stare it, feeling at the same time sick at my own ignorance and wishing I could have it back.

“What about the others?” I ask, “the rest of the Order?” Even as I speak I realise with another sick jolt that if James had lived, he would surely have been standing there instead of Kingsley. Kingsley had indeed been a rookie Auror, to the best of my recollection; while still a friendly face, I barely knew him. If not James, it should have been Sirius perhaps, or Gideon, or even Moody, who had trained us. But surely that can’t mean what I think it means. 

“Very few of them left, I’m afraid,” Kingsley says, making all my worst fears real with just a few words. “Many of them were lost in that war, and those that weren’t we lost a few years ago, in the next one.” 

The next one? 

“Minerva is still teaching,” he says. “And unlikely ever to step down, I imagine. Then there’s Dedalus, Elphias  - though he took off to Italy a year or so ago - Mundungus, in the wind as usual, Sturgis Podmore, and Hagrid. That’s all, from your old crowd.” 

That’s all? What about Lupin? The Prewetts? Dorcas? Poor little Pettigrew?

I swallow, find my mouth dry as paper. “All of them?” I ask, and it comes out as half a sob.

Mother gets up, puts her arms around me, but I feel as hard as iron, can barely move to accept her embraces. 

“I’m sorry,” Kingsley says. 

“Dumbledore?” I gasp, unable to comprehend a world in which Albus Dumbledore is somehow not still breathing. But he was old, very old, perhaps he had survived the war and merely drifted off, sometime later… 

“Killed,” Kingsley says, dashing all hope. “By Severus Snape, in ‘97.” 

“Snape?” My head is spinning. “The same Snape who came up with this supposed cure?” 

“Ah.” Kingsley falters, looks like he realises he made a misstep. “That’s complicated, but… yes, the same one. He was in the Order too, the second time around, but he’s dead now too, of course.” 

“Of course,” I say, with a bark of mad laughter that surprises even myself. Mother pulls back, startled. “No wonder you have children brewing your miracle potions,” I go on, “there aren’t any adults left alive to do it.” 

Kingsley’s eyebrows raise, but Mother must have gotten used to my odd starts by now, and she grips my shoulder. “That’s enough,” she says, scolding me as though I were a wayward child. “You do not know what you are speaking of.” 

I try to take hold of myself, and realise that my words must have sounded like the utmost disrespect to a man who has recently come through yet another war, incomprehensible as that sounds to me. I school my expression, clear my throat of the hoarseness that threatens to cripple me again. “My apologies,” I manage to say. “This was all… quite a shock.” 

“I understand,” Kingsley nods. He looks a little sad, more than anything, no anger at all. He gets up, looking uncomfortable, but adds, “I do hope you will call on me if you need anything, either of you.” 

“Thank you, Minister.” Mother straightens to see him out; I can’t quite manage to get up the energy to lift from my chair. 

“Yes,” I say, drowning internally in the sudden and unexpected grief of having lost all of my friends in one fell swoop. “Thank you.” 

I tell Strout I want my wand back, and she’s not happy in the least. “Have you ever tried to do magic while drunk?” she asks,

I shrug, glad my mother isn’t in the room. “Of course, everyone has. But I’m not drunk. As much as I’d like to be,” I add, in muttered tones. 

“For the purposes of this conversation, you might as well be. You yourself just told me that your memory continues to be unstable.”

“You’re saying I’m not in my right mind.” I sit back in the chair, resentfully. “But I feel perfectly well - at least, under the circumstances.” 

“I do understand,” Strout nods, but I doubt very much that she actually understands what it feels like to have woken up anew in a place so utterly unreal. I keep thinking of things I want to say, to ask people I know, only to remember that they’re dead, some of them a long time, so that I can’t even share my grief with anyone who has had considerably more time to adjust. Mother tried listing names, in the hopes that she might miraculously conjure up a friend I had forgotten about, but although I recognised some of her suggestions, they were not anyone I would consider anything like intimates. She did at last land on Arthur Weasley, who had once worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office, and his wife Molly Prewett, who’d I’d gotten to know pretty well through her brothers - didn’t they have a couple of boys? 

Five boys, I am told, and a girl, and she’s sure they’d be happy to meet me. This seems a bit too much like intrusion for my taste, but i have to talk to someone who isn’t my mother or the woman who’s been leading the effort to wipe my arse daily for the last two decades. I can hardly park myself in the office of the Minister for Magic and expect a chat, either. 

Strout wasn’t happy that Mother called Kingsley to give me the bad news - this is no doubt the sort of thing she had been afraid would give me a terrible shock and send me reeling back into gibbering idiocy, but since I’m still sane, the best she can do is try to control every other little aspect of my life as much as possible, including dietary restrictions which, to my relief, do not exclude bacon. In the end though, she agrees to let me have my wand so long as I promise to practice only on inanimate objects - no Apparating, no duelling (ha!) and nothing that could have any chance of harming me or anyone else. The list of restrictions ends up being so long that the whole thing hardly seems worth it, except that I know I’ll feel much more like a wizard again rather than an invalid, once it’s in my hand. 

“Oh Frank,” Mother sighs when I tell her, over lunch. Now that I have my appetite again, I could eat a hippogriff, and am already getting tired of Strout’s menu.

“What?” My heart sinks. “You did save it, didn’t you?” 

“Of course I saved it. I gave it to Neville when he started school.” 

I clench my fist under the table. “Well,” I say, doing my best to sound level-headed. “Tell him I’d like it back. I’m sure he’ll understand.” 

“Of course he would dear, but he doesn’t have it anymore. It was broken, a few years ago. He has his own wand now.” 

I know this shouldn’t hurt me as much as it does, that there are bigger more important things to be upset over, but it feels like just one more thing this total stranger has just taken from me with no warning. “Why didn’t you just get him his own from the start?” I ask, stabbing my baked potato so hard that the fork pings against the plate beneath. “Merlin knows we could afford it.” 

“Because he idolised you Frank, and it made him happy,” Mother sighs. “He was terrified enough about going away to school, and not seeing you every weekend. It made him very proud to have your wand, though in hindsight I should have realised that it wouldn’t suit him. He gets along with the new one a lot better.” 

Now I wish I had not asked. “Fine, fine.” I pour extra gravy over the potato - this, at least, is one tiny thing I can control. “I’ll find another.” 

“I do still have Alice’s,” she says, after a moment, and I almost drop the fork. “If you’d like…” 

I shake my head quickly. “No. No, it wouldn’t… it’s hers.” There’s silence for a minute, while my mind turns and turns. 

I still don’t want to use the wand, but Mother gets it out for me so I can look at it, hold it lightly in my hand. I take it up to my room, where Mother has put away my new clothes.

I sit on the bed and hold the wand. After a minute I wave it, experimentally, but nothing happens. I find myself laughing. “Of course,” I tell the wand, rolling my eyes. “Stubborn. Just like her.” 

When I go to tuck the wand into a random drawer, I find a box which contains three rings. Two of them are Alice’s, her wedding ring and her engagement ring, but I take the third, wider band, and slip it onto my left ring finger.

The Weasleys invite me for lunch at their home at the end of the week. I’m strangely nervous, checking my clothes, adjusting my new haircut. Arthur will meet me at the hospital after my daily appointment and take me by Side-Along Apparition, since I’m not allowed to do it myself, and apparently I’m also not trusted to take the Floo, as though I might forget which grate to come out of. 

To my surprise I recognise the man immediately. He still has a shock of bright red hair despite being in his fifties, and looks, like Kingsley, genuinely pleased to see me. I’m expecting a handshake but he gives me a hug, remarking on how well I look, and coming from him it doesn’t even sound like a polite lie. 

“I hope you’re hungry,” he says as we leave the office. “Molly likes to lay on a spread.” 

“Starved,” I admit. “It’s almost like I’ve been living on hospital food for twenty-one years.” 

He does a quick glance at my face to make sure this is a joke before laughing. 

The house he takes me to could not be more different from Mother’s house, which has been passed down through generations of my father’s family without more than an occasional lick of fresh paint and some necessary updates to the plumbing. This is a proper family home, the kind I’d sometimes dreamed of as a lonely only-child, except held together precariously by what looks like spit and magic. “Come on in,” Arthur says. “I can’t promise the peace will last long, there’s always someone traipsing in or out of the place.”

I catch sight of a number of brightly-coloured toys in a basket in the hall, but Arthur’s children must be too old for them by now. “Grandchildren?” I guess. 

“Two so far, one more on the way,” he says proudly. “Molly does love to get involved…” 

There’s a clattering sound as we approach the kitchen, and as we come through his wife turns to greet us. “Molly,” I breathe, and suddenly I’m no longer standing in the warm, inviting house but -

— at the edge of a graveyard in the drizzling rain, and she’s shivering, standing alone, her husband hurrying away to get the children in out of the rain to where they can be better protected, because even being out in the open right now is a risk, but she’s standing there still over the patch of freshly turned earth. She’s at least eight months along, and her youngest only just turned one a few months ago. 

I take a step forward. “Molly, you should go in, it’s not safe out here.” 

She glances around, red-eyed, and I can see she’s furious, furious with the Order, with Dumbledore, with all of us,

“I’m sorry,” I say, helplessly rain dripping off my hair and into my eyes. “So sorry."  

Alice comes and puts her arm around Molly’s shoulders; Molly turns and buries her face in Alice’s shoulder, and together they turn away from the twin graves, the loose earth blackening with the rain. Somewhere in the distance, a baby starts to wail.

Arthur has managed to catch me before I can fall, manoeuvred me into a chair, “-should go back to the hospital,” Molly is saying, and I manage to croak out -

“No, no, please, I’m fine, just a bit dizzy.”

I drink the water she hastily puts in front of me. 

“Are you sure?” Arthur looks concerned. 

“Yes.” It’s a cruel fate, I think, sipping from the glass, to want the memories, to want to fill in the gaps, and at the same time start to dread them, to hate the way they assault my mind with no warning. “I have these little starts occasionally. I’m sorry for worrying you.” 

“Not at all, dear fellow.” Arthur pats my shoulder. 

“I’ll make some tea.” Molly hurries over to the stove, and for the first time I’m able to take some stock of my surroundings. The kitchen is crowded, mostly by an enormous table that can surely seat at least twelve, and half of that is taken up by various books, piles of ingredients, several bags of flour and two half-decorated cakes on stands. 

“Are you running a bakery, Molly?” I ask, blinking around. 

Arthur laughs, and she shoots him a look - half fond, half irritated. “Not quite,” she says, tapping the kettle to instant boil. I’m pathetically jealous of even this much simple magic. “We’re having a wedding in a few weeks and the food is all I’ve been allowed to help with.” 

“There’s a new test cake every day,” Arthur explains, sitting back in his chair and patting his stomach. “It’s terrible for my waistline.” 

“Well, I want it to be perfect,” she says. “Merlin knows they deserve a special day, if only they’d let me do more - milk and sugar, Frank?” 

“Neither, thank you.” 

“Darling, you mustn’t interfere,” Arthur says, fondly. “Hermione has her own ideas of what she wants…” 

“Yes, I know, I know,” she waves him off, bringing the pot over and pouring into three cups. 

“Hermione?” I say aloud, clinging to a familiar name in a sea of newness, suddenly remembering the engagement ring. “You mean Hermione Granger?” 

“Yes, yes - of course, you would have met her - brilliant girl,” Molly beams. “She’s marrying our Ron, our youngest boy… well, they took their time about it after four years…” 

I think: the wizarding world is small, and apparently still getting smaller by the decade. 

I would have been happy to listen to Molly talk about the wedding some more, but Arthur neatly changes the subject before she can elaborate. “How are you, Frank?” he asks, seriously, nursing his own tea between his hands. “We were all so pleased to hear… but this must be very strange for you.” 

I nod, slowly. “Strange is one word.” 

“We quite gave up hope, I’m afraid,” Molly says, apologetically, sitting on my other side. “After a year… well, except your mother, of course, she was always pushing the Healers to try different things. She was determined you should get the best care.” She puts a hand on my arm. “We were so very glad when she owled and told us you’d like to see us. Is it… she says you don’t remember much…” 

“Of the last twenty years, nothing.” I sip my tea, try to ignore the wide-eyed looks they’re giving each other. “Before that… it’s complicated. Fragments. Like a jigsaw with all the important pieces missing.” 

“Oh, Frank,” she says, but I don’t need her to feel sorry for me; I shake my head. “I saw Kingsley,” I say instead, and from their nods they already know. “He told me… the worst of it. At least I hope it’s the worst of it. What happened to James and Lily… and the twins, Molly…” 

Her face falls a little, her hand tightens on my arm. I realise that I’ve dredged up what for me is still a raw grief but for her is an old wound, scarred over. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, “I didn’t mean…” 

“It’s all right,” she says quickly, forcing a smile. “Quite all right.” 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” I put the cup down, run a hand through my hair. “I don’t know what to say… what to do… I even wrote to James, before I knew.” I haven’t been able to throw the letter away; it’s still burning a hole in my pocket, never to be sent. “Everyone’s being so careful around me, and I understand why, but… I just really felt like I could use a friend or two, I hope you don’t mind...” 

Molly throws her arms around my shoulders. She smells comfortingly like freshly baked bread. “Of course, dear,” she says, her voice catching slightly. “Anything you need.” 

I know intellectually that they’re only a couple of years older than me at most, but being held by Molly, with Arthur patting my knee, makes me feel like a child in the embrace of their grandparents. “I miss her,” I say, in a choked voice totally unfamiliar to my own ears. “I don’t know how to do this without her.” 

“You mustn’t give up,” Arthur says, quite calmly, the tones of a man much used to bringing people back from the edge. “There’s always hope.” 

“And you have Augusta,” Molly adds. “And Neville, of course…” 

I go stiff in her arms, and she must feel it; I can sense her surprise, she draws back a little. “Frank? What is it?” 

I shake my head. “Nothing.” 

She scoffs a little. “I have seven children and two grandchildren, dear, it’s no good trying that on with me.” She sits back, looks me full in the face as if daring me to lie. “Is it Neville?” she asks. 

“I’m sure it’s very difficult,” Arthur says, in a soothing voice which nevertheless makes my heart sink again. “Seeing him grown up. Knowing how much you must have missed...” 

“Of course,” Molly says, “I can’t even imagine. But you must think how lucky you are now, to have a second chance to get to know him.” 

I look down at the table, unable to take Molly’s gaze any longer. I shake my head. “It's not that,” I say. “Maybe it ought to be, but that’s just it… I haven’t seen him. Not since I first… since the first time. I don’t think I want to.” 

Molly’s eyes widen in shock, her hand goes to her chest. “But why?” she asks, horrified, and I find myself struggling for an answer. 

“I have no memory of him,” I manage, finally. “Mother says he’s my son, but that’s all the evidence I have.” I neglect to mention the brief fleeting memory from two days ago, a disembodied voice out of the past which might as well have been my imagination. “He’s a stranger to me. He might as well be a distant cousin who happens to have control over what potions they forced on us.” 

“Bloody hell, Frank,” Arthur mutters, and I look over at him in surprise. The consternation is writ large on his face. 

“I was there when that boy was born,” Molly announces, pink rising in her cheeks. “You don’t remember coming through that fireplace -” she points to the enormous grate behind us, “- in a panic, shouting that Dorcas couldn’t handle it and you needed someone who knew what they were doing? Your poor wife was in labour nearly seventeen hours, so you had better not sit here and tell me -” 

“It’s not that I don’t believe he’s mine,” I say quickly, desperately, cowed by the fiery look in her eyes, crushed at the same time by the details of yet another memory I’ve lost. “I’m not quite that cynical. It’s just… I don’t know him. I have no connection to him, at all, it just… doesn’t feel real.” The memory of the first and only time I saw him, in those first few confused minutes of waking, is already jumbled in with the chaos that followed; I had not known who he was, had not paid attention to his features. When I try now to picture his face, I conjure nothing. I remember instead when I heard his voice through the door, when he called Alice mum, the way it jarred in my ears like a broken bell. All I know is that he likes plants, he was a Gryffindor, and he’s apparently a clumsy fool who can’t keep a borrowed wand in one piece. And he did this to me. To Alice. 

I can’t say that aloud, because I dare not say anything else that might make Molly more furious, and to criticise the use of the new treatment would be to disparage their son’s fiancee as well, but by the look on Molly’s face I might as well have screamed it from the rooftops. I wish I had not said anything. 

“One moment,” she says stiffly, and gets up, leaves the room. 

Arthur is still staring at me in disbelief, and it’s impossible to meet his eyes. 

“How old are you now, Frank?” he asks after a moment. 

I’d rather not think about it. “They tell me I’ll be fifty next year.” 

He nods, slowly. “I don’t expect you will have heard,” he says, clearly making an effort to keep his voice level. “But Molly and I lost a son. A few years ago, during the war. The last war,” he adds, with a grimace, clarifying for my benefit. 

He hasn’t moved at all, but I feel as if he’s punched me in the stomach. I know next to nothing about this second war, except that it had claimed Dumbledore - I haven’t dared ask, and it doesn’t bode well that no one has broached the subject of their own accord until now. “Which one?” I ask, breathlessly and without thinking. 

“Fred,” he says, stone-faced, and my suddenly all-too-obliging brain conjures the image of two identical toddlers, levitating toy bricks to the delight of all. Belatedly I realise that Mother had mentioned six children, but Molly had only a moment ago said seven. 

“Arthur…” I don’t know what to say; he holds up a hand, stalling me before I can stumble through a clumsy offer of condolences. 

“I’d give anything for another day with my son,” he says, not a trace of a smile on his face now, and a shiver goes right down my spine. “Anything. For an hour. For even ten minutes - just to tell him how much I love him.” 

“But I…. I don’t...” I try to explain, fully aware that I’m only making things worse. “I can’t. How can I?” 

“How will you know unless you see him? Speak to him? Have you stopped to consider his feelings in all this? What it must be like to regain a father you’ve never known, only to have him try to deny your existence?” 

No, I realise, I have not, because to me he is still not real, not a real person, and can therefore not have feelings. 

Before I can reply, Molly comes back into the kitchen with something in her hands. “Molly,” I try, but she waves my words away and simply sits down beside me once more. She hands me the thing she was holding, a large, framed photograph. 

There are four people, four teenagers in the picture, clearly at some kind of awards ceremony. I know immediately what award it is, recognising the large gold medallions, the green ribbons. What catches my eye immediately is the skinny boy at the far left, for he’s the very spit and image of James Potter, right down to the glasses, so much so that it takes me a moment to convince myself that it’s not actually him. Beside him is a young redhead, probably one of Molly and Arthur’s boys, and next to him I can recognise Hermione Granger, his arm around her shoulders. They’re all smiling, but not with any genuine joy, only in the polite sort of way you might smile when a camera is pointed at you and you have no other choice. Occasionally the dark-haired boy glances over his shoulder, a flicker of something like concern as though worried about what might be behind them, before turning back to stand obediently in line with the others. 

The boy on Hermione’s other side - for he is a boy, must be no older than eighteen - is standing very straight, slightly apart from the other three, with the same awkward sort of smile. He’s wearing red robes with a black armband, and keeps reaching up to touch the medallion, to make sure it’s sitting straight on his chest. “That’s him?” I say, stupidly, recognising only in a vague way the man I had met in a panic five days ago. It had been dark in the ward, and I had been confused, but still I think I would have recalled that man having my father’s hair the way this boy does, the way it started straight at the crown and made thick, loose curls around the ears. I’ve never worn it that way, could never get it to suit me...

At first I think there’s a scratch or something on the photo, but looking closer I can see that the right side of his face is scarred; he seems self-conscious of it, turning his face now and then so that the image only shows his unmaimed side. 

“What happened to him?” I ask, unable to resist, the same kind of sick curiosity that had me secretively rifling through his things on the first night. 

There’s silence for a moment, ominous. “That’s not really our place to say,” Arthur says finally, which makes me wonder if Mother told them not to broach this particular subject. “He’s a good boy, Frank, that’s all you need to know. A good man, I mean. He and Ron and Harry,” he indicates the boys in the photo, “are in the Aurors now, started not long after this was taken. But they all went through a lot well before that, more than any child should have to go through. You should be proud of him.” 

I look back at the picture, willing myself to feel the way they want me to, but I still find myself feeling more connected to young Harry Potter, of all of them, drawn in by his resemblance to James. I wonder what the four of them did to receive such a prestigious award at such young ages, but I’m interested in the question as it relates to the group, not the individuals. 

I force myself to focus on him, on Neville. Maybe if he looked even a little bit like me - but he doesn’t. I see nothing of myself in him, with the possible exception of the hair. But then I look closer, and he turns back to the camera with a shy smile, and I realise with a terrible sinking feeling that I do recognise him; the shape of his face, the colour of his eyes. 

He looks like Alice.

Mother catches me later that evening in the sitting room, looking at a photo album. It was in the study, not hard to find, and there are hardly any pictures in it, which isn’t surprising. Mother was never the sort for happy family snaps; with an iron-clad memory like hers she never felt the need to document everything. Some of the photos I remember looking at before - my parents on their wedding day, formal portraits of them at official functions, me in my school uniform the first day I left for Hogwarts, me holding my NEWT results. Alice and I at our wedding - more of these, because we had lots taken and I must have given her copies. Then the pictures take leave of my memories; there’s one single photo in the middle of Alice and I sitting here, in this same room I’m in now, looking happy and relaxed on the settee, and Alice is cradling a small, barely-visible bundle in her arms. If you watch the photo for long enough, she turns and kisses me on the cheek.

After that I’m gone from the book entirely and it begins documenting another life altogether - a round-faced boy around six years old, shivering on Blackpool pier in a thick coat between Mother and my aunt Enid, all their hair blowing in the wind. Uncle Archie must be taking the photo. They’re both dead now too, Mother already told me, but only two years ago or so. Archie was much older than my father, so it’s not really a surprise. 

The next picture is the same boy, in a brand new Hogwarts uniform, clutching a wriggling toad. A few more pictures that look like they might have been taken during summer holidays, while the boy gains height and sharp angles in the random, uneven way that teenage boys do. There’s a black and white one that’s been clipped out of a newspaper, that shows the teenage boy and a young girl sitting on the stone steps leading up to the main door of Hogwarts, without much context, their clothes rumpled and stained. And then near the end, the Order of Merlin ceremony, the same picture I saw at the Burrow. 

“Frank,” she says, rushing over as though afraid I’ll have a breakdown, even though I’ve been sitting here almost an hour. 

“I’m fine,” I say, without looking up.  “I thought it might help… bring something back.” 

She stands over me, hovering. “Has it?” 

I close the album, rub my tired eyes. “No, not really.” Since coming back from the Weasleys’, my mind’s been more of a jumble than ever. 

“Perhaps you ought to get some rest.” 

I wouldn’t mind an early night, but I’m getting a bit fed up with hearing those words every time I so much as yawn. As far as I can make out I’ve spent the last twenty years doing almost nothing but sleep. Sleep outside of its appropriate time period, in my opinion, is the enemy. “Is he -” I start, then stop and correct myself firmly, “Is Neville... is he staying at the hospital?” 

She blinks in surprise, but it only takes her a moment to recover. “I don’t think so,” she says, “at least not every night; they’re taking it in shifts, and he does still have to work. I imagine he’s staying with his friends, if he ever does sleep.” 

“Why?” I ask, frowning. It’s not as though I’d thrown a tantrum and forbid him from coming home. At least not out loud. 

“He wanted to give you some time to adjust, dear,” she says, apparently puzzled at my sudden change of attitude. “In your own home, with people you know. We didn’t want to overwhelm you.” 

This is coded and typical of her, even if it’s true. I can practically hear between the lines: and frankly my dear, it doesn’t help that you’ve been an absolute arsehole every time your son’s name is so much as mentioned. Except that Mother would never say arsehole. 

“Mother, what happened to the old oak trees?” I ask, deftly changing the subject. To me this seemed a totally innocuous question, but I see her lips twitch, and she folds her hands in her lap, hesitating as if wondering how to answer. “Mother?” 

“There was… some trouble, a few years ago,” she says, evasively. “During the war. Things had gotten quite bad, they sent someone after me…” 

“A Death Eater?” I sit up quickly, furious. 

She purses her lip, taps the fingers of one hand against the back of the other. “An Auror.” 

“What?” 

She shakes her head. “I’m tired. Let’s talk about this tomorrow, Frankie.” 

“No, I want to know. Why would… I don’t understand, had you done something wrong?” 

“Don’t be preposterous!” 

“Well then why -”

“All right, all right.” 

And she tells me. I listen in growing horror as she describes the way You-Know-Who took over the Ministry in 1997, installing a puppet Minister and beginning a nationwide purge of Muggleborns and ‘blood traitors’. I don’t know the man she describes, Dawlish, but evidently he was a man with no principles whatsoever, happy to follow along with any regime no matter their appalling politics. I’m glad, and not at all surprised, when Mother admits that their duel sent Dawlish to the hospital. “I suppose it was lucky that the only other casualties were the oak trees and a bit of fence,” she says, and she does look tired, which only serves to make me guilty for making her relive such a harrowing experience. “I had to leave for several weeks, and they probably could have gotten through the wards to burn the house down, if they really wanted to.”   

“But I don’t understand. Why would they come after you like that?” 

She hesitates before giving me the answer I don’t want to hear. “Because of Neville.” 

I need more information, and I want it from as impartial a source as possible, but my options are extremely limited. I would ask Strout, but today she seems rushed and busy, and I don’t want to distract her from her other patients, not when one of them is my wife. 

“There’s been no change,” she assures me when I ask. 

I tell her about the dozen or so times in the last twenty-four hours I’ve had flashes of memory, especially the full sound-and-colour vision of standing beside Gideon and Fabian’s graves in the rain. “I’m sure that was real,” I say, rubbing the back of my head. “Sometimes I can’t tell for sure, but I know that was real… except by what you’re all saying we would have had a one-year-old child by then, and I didn’t see him there.” 

“Perhaps he was out of your view,” Strout says, sensibly. “Or more likely you left him in someone else’s care - your parents, perhaps. It was dangerous to be out and about in those days, as you’ll recall.” 

And there was that prophecy, I remind myself, remembering Mother’s explanation of why the Dark Lord had gone after James’ family. The Potters had gone into deep hiding; Alice and I apparently had not, but Strout is right, it would be stupid to parade a baby around in public if he truly was a target - as crazy as that sounded. 

“Why don’t I have any memories of him?” I ask, a little exasperated. “I get flashes of things all the time, and sometimes pictures help, or if someone mentions something that happened… but nothing of him. Nothing at all.” 

“I don’t know, Frank.” Strout wipes her glasses, makes a helpless gesture with her arms. “Maybe those memories are too difficult for you to process at the moment. It could easily just be a random function of the way your mind was damaged. Or, it could be trying to protect you from something.” 

She could have just stopped at I don’t know. 

“Incidentally.” She reaches under the desk, and hands over a thick morning edition of The Daily Prophet. “This came out this morning. I thought I’d better let you know; I don’t believe your mother subscribes anymore.” 

I take the paper in both hands and look at it. The front page has a large picture of my face. Not the face I have now but the face I remember; it’s the formal portrait they take of you when you join the Aurors and every ten years after that, to be used in case of funerals or, I suppose, in situations like this. There’s a smaller one of Alice, too. The headline is: FALLEN STAR AUROR’S MIRACULOUS RECOVERY, and the article reads:

It has come to light today that on Monday this week, a controversial treatment at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries finally saw miraculous results. Frank Longbottom O.M. (49), a former Auror who was hospitalised in 1981 after extended exposure to the Cruciatus Curse, has made a significant recovery, it is alleged. Healer Miriam Sprout (62), who supervises the Janus Thickey ward for long-term spell damage, confirmed that Mr Longbottom, formally unable to communicate, recognise family and friends or retain any memory, has now returned to his family home able to speak and aware of who he is. His wife, former Auror Alice Longbottom O.M. (48), injured similarly in the same attack by Death Eaters in 1981, has been in a coma in the hospital for two weeks after being started on the same treatment. 

‘Frank is doing quite well,’ Healer Strout assures readers, ‘and is slowly renewing his connections to family and friends as his mind continues to recover.’

The treatment, she explains, is the result of a coordinated effort between her team and a couple of researchers who discovered notes by the late Professor Severus Snape O.M. (1960-1998), which detailed a potion proposed to lessen the lingering effects of the Cruciatus Curse. This potion, developed as it was during Professor Snape’s controversial tenure as Headmaster of Hogwarts, during which dozens of young children were tortured and imprisoned, might be considered by some to be a risky basis for such a treatment despite his posthumous exoneration and award of the Order of Merlin, 2nd Class (1999). However, Healer Strout confirms that all necessary precautions were taken. 

Hands shaking slightly, I make myself turn the page. Here is a picture of, by the caption, the late Professor Snape himself, a dark-haired, sour looking man, and opposite him another Auror portrait, this one slightly better quality and obviously more recent. This time I recognise him straight away - dark brown hair, scar slightly faded, a faint smile. Alice’s cheeks, chin, eyes.

Frank and Alice Longbottom are well known, the article continues, not only for being influential members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement during the later years of the First Wizarding War, and former members of the original Order of the Phoenix (full story, page 6), but as the parents of Neville Longbottom, known to many as the Hero of Hogwarts or the Sword of Gryffindor after the Battle of Hogwarts in May 1998. Longbottom (22), who followed in his parents’ footsteps to become part of the Emergency Auror Recruitment Squad (EARS) in 1998, made a short statement in response to reporters’ questions last night. Quote: ‘My father has made more improvement than we thought was possible, and we’re very pleased to have him home. He is having daily checkups and working hard on starting a new life in an unfamiliar time. Please respect his privacy during his recovery. My mother unfortunately has reacted differently to the treatment but is in a stable condition and we hope to see her improve soon. Again, if you have questions I’ll do my best to answer them, but please leave my father alone until he’s ready.’ When a reporter from Witch Weekly Magazine asked Mr Longbottom to comment on the rumours of an affair between him and Harry Potter’s long-time girlfriend Ginny Weasley (21), he replied, ‘I’m not going to dignify that one with an answer.’ 

I fold the paper, put it down carefully. “You didn’t name the researchers.” 

Strout nodded slowly. “Yes, well… there are a number of reasons, mainly that it’s best if the press doesn’t get wind of Draco Malfoy’s involvement just yet. He’s just as controversial a figure as Professor Snape, unfortunately, but they did know each other well which makes him vital.” She looks uncomfortable and I don’t blame her. 

“Mother told me about the Death Eaters at Hogwarts,” I say, to give her an out. She looks relieved, unaware of how I’m still trying to make sense of it all, of the fact that Mother ended up duelling an Auror because said Death Eaters could not control rebelling students, and one in particular. 

“Ah, yes. A very dark time. It’s incredible that none of the children were more permanently injured by what they called ‘lessons’. Strout shudders. “We have Professor Snape to thank for that.” 

“Do you?” I glance over at the folded paper. “That article seems a bit uncertain.” 

Strout tosses her curly hair back and shook her head. “Some of us,” she says, in a more pointed tone than I have so far heard her use, “have a more informed opinion on the subject than reporters at the Daily Prophet.” 

After the hospital, Mother escorts me to London to get my new wand. She has the sense not to hover over me, but keeps a close eye, glaring at passers-by so that they keep a wide berth. It’s not busy, but it’s more people in one place than I’ve seen, literally for as long as I can remember, and despite my protests of being perfectly capable, it is a little overwhelming. I’m relieved when we finally reach Ollivander’s. 

It’s a long time since I’ve been in here - as far as I know - but it doesn’t look much different to how I remember it as an eleven year old. Quiet, high shelves lined with boxes. Maybe a bit cleaner than I remember; not so many dust motes in the air. I ring the bell, expecting to see an older Ollivander come through from the back room, but to my surprise the person who appears behind the counter is a young woman. “Hello!” she says, cheerfully, looking between me and mother, and her face splits into a wide smile. “Good afternoon Mrs Longbottom.” 

“Miss Lovegood.” Mother crosses her hands over her handbag. I glance over at her, surprised at the fondness in her voice. For the last week I haven’t heard her speak that way to anyone except me - if you don’t count the brief conversation I eavesdropped on that first day in the hospital. “I had quite forgotten you worked here.” 

The girl beams up at her. “Well, most people don’t think about buying wands much, until they need one.” She looks with interest between the two of us. “How may I help you?” 

Mother nods at me. “My son, Frank. Frank, Luna is one of Neville’s friends.” 

“Hello,” the girl says cheerfully, totally unsurprised. “I heard you were feeling better. Would you like a wand? Mr Ollivander isn’t here - he needs lots of rest - but I’m his assistant. I can help you find one.”

Taken aback, I can only stand back and out of the way as she starts searching through the boxes on the shelves, humming as she goes. “Is she all right?” I ask Mother in an undertone. 

“Oh, yes dear,” she says, smiling faintly. “Go ahead.” 

Dubiously I stand there and allow the girl to put wand after wand into my hand. A few of them throw sparks, but nothing dramatic, nothing that feels the same as the wand I remember. “I’m sorry,” I say after a while, for some reason feeling bad for taking up so much of her time even though there are clearly no other customers on a weekend afternoon in May. “Maybe there was only one wand for me.” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “Hold on a moment.” She goes into the back for a moment, comes back with an enormous ledger. “What date did you get your first wand?” she asks, and to my embarrassment I can’t even work out the maths in my head to get the right year. Mother gives the answer - to the day, of course -  and Miss Lovegood looks up the record of my old wand. “Looks like those unicorn hairs are all gone, but we have one in stock that uses wood from the same tree,” she announces, happily. “Just a minute.” 

She produces a box even dustier than some of the rest. “Oak and dragon heartstring,” she says, “eleven inches.” 

I know immediately when I touch it, because it sends a warm tingling feeling all the way up my arm. When I wave it, a stream of multicoloured sparks emerge in a wide arc. Experimentally I flick the wand towards the empty box it came in, making it levitate and spin in the air. Miss Lovegood claps her hands with excitement, and I can’t help grinning a little. At least here is something I remember, I know instinctively how to do. At least I won’t have to redo seven years of magical education, even if I can’t remember the year I started. 

Miss Lovegood gives us a heavy discount. I would have insisted that there’s no need, but Mother, ever frugal, quite happily accepts. 

We do a little more shopping, some more clothes and other basics, and a few people give me startled looks. I don’t recognise them, so I assume they must have seen the morning's Prophet. I don’t mention the article to Mother, in case she decides it’s no longer safe for us to be out in the open. I’m enjoying the relative freedom, the fresh air, the familiar cobbles underfoot. “I thought I might stop by the Library,” I say, as casually as I dare. “I’d like to see if anything good has been published in the last twenty years.”

She looks dubious, so I add, “Maybe some reading would be calming.” 

After a moment she agrees, and even acquiesces to leave me alone for a couple of hours while she runs some other errands. This is lucky, because I’m not really in search of relaxing reading materials. The Prophet has given me an idea on how to get the information I need. 

The London Wizarding Library is a deceptively small building accessible only through a special entrance behind Gringotts. I used to come here all the time, being an avid reader in my youth, and as soon as I walk into the cool, softly-lit entrance, I feel quite relaxed and at home. 

“Excuse me,” I ask the bespectacled witch behind the front counter. “I was wondering if you keep copies of old newspapers?” 

“Of course.” She reaches for a stack of cards, taps them lightly with her wand. “Any particular issue, or time period?” 

“Ah… 97-98, I think.” 

She nods, somberly. “A popular request.” The cards in her hands flip back and forth as she rifles through them with her wand; eventually the pile stops, and she hands me the top card. “Filing cabinets in room four,” she says. “You can search by keywords with the card.” 

“Thank you.” 

Room four is floor to ceiling with large, ancient filing cabinets. I use the reference on the card to find the right drawer, and when I open it it extends magically, several feet longer than the actual depth of the cabinet. I start by flicking through later issues of 1997. There’s an announcement about Pius Thicknesse’s appointment as Minister on one front page, unsurprisingly free of any open suspicion, and later on a short article about Severus Snape and Alecto and Amycus Carrow being hired by Hogwarts. “Absurd,” I mutter to myself. From here most of what I skim through is clearly propaganda, with some highly disturbing reports about questioning the rights of Muggleborns and applauding the notion of putting them on a register. After an hour of this sort of thing I’m starting to feel a bit sick. What on earth were we doing twenty years ago? What did the Prewetts and the Potters and the others die for, if it only meant that something like this would happen less than a quarter-century later? 

Feeling another headache come on, I decide to speed things up a little by using the catalogue card. I pull it out and regard it for a moment, pulling out my brand new wand. I tap it, lightly. “Harry Potter.” 

This proves to be an ineffective search term as the name brings up a ridiculously long list of results, so many that the text on the card becomes too small to read. 

I sigh. Try again. “Neville Longbottom.” 

This time it’s a shorter list. All the results appear in May 1998 and beyond, nothing before that.  I take a deep breath, open another cabinet, find the relevant issues. 

A lot of these papers feature pictures of Harry on the front page and on subsequent pages. Now that I’ve seen so many pictures I can distinguish him better from James; the eyes especially are very different once you look behind the glasses, and there’s a serious, determined look about him where James was always looking for the next opportunity to make a joke. Apparently all this prophecy nonsense resulted in him being called the ‘Chosen One’, which seems like altogether too much pressure for a seventeen year old - or anyone. The Prophet spends about a month after the end of the war hero-worshipping the poor boy, putting together all the scraps of information they can about how he finally managed to defeat You-Know-Who (Harry defiantly uses the actual name in interviews, I notice) and I find myself reading these in depth despite my better judgement. 

There are details about the Battle of Hogwarts that are truly disturbing, including the death of Remus Lupin (who I’d somehow assumed had been killed a lot earlier) a sixteen year old, and of course, Fred Weasley, only twenty. Neville is mentioned in these pieces but only really in passing: along with fellow students Seamus Finnegan and Neville Longbottom, etc., and I’ve almost completely forgotten what I originally searched for until one of the papers from later May finally yields a full profile, headed by a big photograph, much more casual than those I’ve seen so far. He’s standing in a nondescript grassy area, in jumper and trousers and holding, oddly, an enormous sword across both palms. This looks like an awkward pose requested by the paper, but further down there’s another photo, much more casual, the same boy in school robes and his arm in a sling, sitting beside a pretty-redheaded girl. It looks like the Gryffindor common room behind them, and they speak occasionally to each other, unsmiling, a gesture of comfort. It’s captioned: Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley at the end of his sixth year (photo: Colin H. Creevey). I recognise the photographer’s name; having just read it among the list of casualties. 

I check the time; only another twenty minutes before I have to meet Mother, and only now have I found what I’ve been ineffectually looking for all this time. I grit my teeth and settle in to read. 

NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM: SWORD OF GRYFFINDOR

By Amelia Glass

There are many incredible stories to have emerged from both the Battle of Hogwarts, the resulting sudden change in regime at the Ministry of Magic, and the several months preceding. One this reporter is privileged to tell today is that of Neville Longbottom (17), whose bravery and leadership during this school year and the battle itself have led to his nomination for an Order of Merlin, first class, and immediate entry into the new EARS initiative alongside fellow war heroes Harry Potter (17) and Ronald Weasey (18). This initiative, the Emergency Aurors Recruitment Squad, was started by the new Minister for Magic as a direct response to the loss of many Aurors in the department over the last year, and recruits are not required to have completed neither any Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests (NEWTs) or the usual three years of training but only, in the words of Mr Shacklebolt, ‘mental toughness, a demonstrated skill and experience with duelling, and the determination to do what it takes to restore Wizarding Britain to a state of peace’. Fortunately, if anyone can be said to have the latter in spades, it is Neville Longbottom. 

He blushes when I put it so to him, and regrets aloud that he would have preferred to have been able to take his exams. ‘When I was little all I wanted was to be an Auror,’ he says, ‘but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted it like this.’ While some of his fellow seventh-years are likely to consider repeating their final year when the school reopens in September, an idea supported by presumptive Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, Neville admits that he is unlikely to do so. “There’s just too much to do here,” he says. 

I ask him more about his childhood dreams, assuming correctly that his ambitions were fuelled by the legacy of his parents, both of whom were Aurors in the late seventies and early eighties. Yes, he wanted to follow in their footsteps, particularly those of his father. “Gran used to talk a lot about Dad, how great an Auror he was,” he says, referring to Augusta Longbottom (70), who raised him after his parents were brutally attacked by Death Eaters following the fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in 1981 and permanently hospitalised. “So I was desperate to be like him, really, like both my Mum and Dad. But once I started Hogwarts I really didn’t think it would ever happen. I wasn’t much good academically and I was rubbish at Defence Against the Dark Arts, which is sort of an important prerequisite.” 

Some of Neville’s teachers, however, think differently. I spoke to Professor Pomona Sprout (65), who has taught Herbology at Hogwarts for over thirty years and says she has never had a more talented student. ‘I’m certain he would have achieved an Outstanding NEWT,” she says. “Very gifted in the subject, and unbeknownst to me he spent most of the year secretly growing plants that could be used as weapons, which is something I’ve never even considered. I hope he can eventually take it up as a career, as the field could really use someone with his passion and imagination.’ 

In a short statement by owl post, Headmistress McGonagall (72) admits that while his academic record has not always been stellar, he is ‘an extraordinary young man who has been a credit to both Hogwarts and Gryffindor.’ She adds, ‘I am honoured to have been his Head of House.’ 

It is true that Neville’s history with Defense Against the Dark Arts in particular has been varied, owed mostly to the unfortunate circumstances of a new teacher every year in the position, which has long been rumoured to be cursed. I ask him what it was like when he found out that Alastor Moody, his fourth year Professor of Defence the Dark Arts, turned out to be not only a Death Eater in disguise, but Bartemius Crouch Jr., one of the same four who had tortured his parents into insanity. His first surprised response is heartbreaking. 

‘No one’s ever asked me that before.’

When I express surprise and consternation, he explains: ‘Well, there was a lot going on at the time, you know… Harry had just seen You-Know-Who come back, and poor old Cedric Diggory was dead, and no one knew what was happening, it was chaos. But yeah, when I heard that, it was a difficult thing. Moody - I mean Crouch - he had taken a special interest in me, and we met alone in his office several times. He let me borrow books from him, and he’d talk about how he knew my parents and everything when they were Aurors together.’ 

This is something I had not known, and my stomach turns horribly, but it goes on and my eyes refuse to tear away from the page. 

 ‘There was one class where he showed us the Unforgivable Curses. I don’t know if that’s something the real Moody would have done or not. But he did them on spiders that he enlarged for us to see, and he saw that I got very upset when he did the Cruciatus Curse. So he asked me to come to his office after and we talked about it, about why I was so upset, and he told me he understood. It was nice to have someone who said that, because back then none of my friends even knew about my Mum and Dad. I thought he was being nice, but then later I found out who he was and I realised he understood because he was there, he did it. That was pretty bad, yeah. Gran was furious when she found out too, but he’d been Kissed by then so there wasn’t much she could do.’ 

When I ask him if he considers the Dementor’s Kiss an appropriate punishment for Crouch, he says no. ‘Not for anyone’. One of the other notorious instigators of the attack on the Longbottoms, Bellatrix Lestrange, was killed during the Battle of Hogwarts, reportedly by Molly Weasley (53). The others have since been returned to Azkaban prison, which now uses human guards. Neville believes this is where they should be, alongside those who in their turn spent this school year torturing him and his fellow classmates. 

‘Oh, they should absolutely rot in hell,’ he says with considerable feeling when I ask him about Amycus and Alecto Carrow, formerly the Defence Against the Dark Arts and Muggle Studies Professors respectively. ‘It’s bad enough to hurt people the way they do, but they forced us to hurt each other as well, and that’s unforgivable to me. Some of us might never recover from that.’ Neville has a scar on his face from his ordeals at the hands of the Carrows, which was not magically treated in time to heal properly. He says it does not bother him as much as the way some of his schoolmates are suffering physically and emotionally, particularly Lavender Brown (18) and Michael Corner (17), who both remain in St Mungo’s Hospital. He also says he has been devastated by the death of sixth year Colin Creevy, a Muggleborn who while unable to attend school this year due to the restrictions imposed by the Ministry under Minister Thicknesse, made his own way onto the Battlefield in coordination with the rest of the underground student group known to themselves as Dumbledore’s Army (the D.A.) 

I ask Neville how he came to be part of this controversial school club, famously started by Harry Potter some years ago. It was members of this same club who infiltrated the Department of Mysteries in 1996, a confrontation which resulted in the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named being made public knowledge, the beginning of open warfare in the Wizarding World once more. Neville was injured during this encounter. ‘We all were,’ he says, with his characteristic polite seriousness. ‘We were six teenagers outnumbered two-to-one, it’s unbelievable none of us died.” Why were they there in the first place? ‘Harry needed us.’ 

The D.A., created as a response to the incompetent Professorship of Senior Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge that year, continued into the following school year under Harry Potter’s leadership, but when the Chosen One wisely decided not to return to Hogwarts in September 1997, the position was open and Neville filled it. ‘The DA helped me a lot,’ Neville remembers. ‘It was a lot easier to learn without the classroom pressure. After Crouch, you know, I definitely wanted to get better at Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Harry and Hermione were really good teachers. Actually we taught each other, and that was great. I tried to continue that this year, because Carrow was teaching us Dark Arts, not Defence. We brought in younger kids to teach them how to defend themselves, it was a necessity. Then we started taking the fight to them, getting people out of the dungeons, booby traps and so on….

I read with a growing sense of horror and admiration the account of my son’s seventh year at Hogwarts. It’s like reading a novel; I keep having to remind myself that it’s real. 

Miss Glass then goes on to describe the Battle of Hogwarts and Neville’s role in it, for the reader’s benefit; his responses to her questions become short, factual, impersonal, and she has to fill in the gaps. He led a group of students and former students into battle. He used plants as weapons, the only thing he seems willing to talk about at any length. He shouted down He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, defying him to his face. He survived being set on fire. He drew an antique sword out of the sorting hat - hence the epithet given to him by the media shortly afterwards. He killed a snake - this part is confusing, it seems to be important to the tide of the battle but I don’t see why, and Glass doesn’t seem to understand it either as she sweeps broadly over the events without dwelling on the details. 

He has been called the Hero of Hogwarts, the Sword of Gryffindor, a seventeen-year-old general whose role was imperative to enabling Harry Potter to destroy the Dark Lord once and for all. When I ask how he feels about being considered a hero by so many, his answer is striking. 

‘It’s nice for people to say that. But I’m not who people should be talking about. We should be talking about the real heroes, the people who fought and died so we could be sitting here talking today. Some of them were my close friends, my teachers. Colin Creevy, Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin. All the others. I really hope people don’t forget their names.’

A fund has been set up in memory of the casualties of the first and second of May, which will go towards supporting children whose parents, primarily Muggleborns, were killed over the last year as a direct result of the reign of terror and anti-Muggle sentiment in Wizarding Britain. To this fund Neville and his grandmother Augusta have jointly donated approximately one hundred thousand galleons. 

I ask what is next for him. 

‘I’m going to do whatever I can to stop something like that ever happening again. I’m going to be there for Harry, whatever he needs.’ But doesn’t he want anything for himself? ‘If I did, I guess it would be to get to see more of the world. Hopefully I’ll get to do that once we have real peace here.'  

I pick out three or four books at random, just in time for Mother to come and fetch me. She talks to me and I make automatic answers, not really hearing. My head is too full. I hardly eat anything at dinner and go to bed early, knowing I’m unlikely to get even a little sleep. 

By the next morning I’ve made up my troubled mind; I can’t avoid him anymore. Ignoring his existence won’t make him go away, nor will it change what has happened to either of us. From what Mother says he is dividing his time between the Aurors and the hospital, so I will look for him there. At least, so I tell myself, though I’m not entirely certain my resolve will hold. 

Before I can do anything, however, there’s the appointment with Strout to get through. It's been a week since my sudden recovery, so she does an in-depth examination - more questions, more trying to dredge up events from my past that feel like they happened to someone else. At the end we play a memory game with cards. My results are below average, which isn’t really a surprise, but also not abysmal. My short term memory isn’t really the problem. 

“Frank, I want to talk to you about your wife’s treatment,” she says eventually, putting down her quill. 

I look up at her in some surprise. “Do I have a say in it?”

“Legally… no,” she says with an honesty that I at least appreciate. “You are still considered to be incapacitated, but we thought you might like to be consulted.” 

We, she says, but I don’t ask, only nod.

“We are considering restarting Alice’s treatment,” she says. “There hasn’t been any improvement, or deterioration, and frankly at this point we don’t know what else to do. You are our only other test case, and you recovered several days after we took both of you off the treatment. It’s possible that if we continue it…” 

My heart leaps a little. The idea that Alice might not just wake up but be cured in the same way I have is almost too much to hope for. “Is there any reason to expect…” I start, trying not to let my emotions get the better of me. I used to be practiced at this, being an Auror, but that practice is marred by twenty years of rust. 

“Before the coma we did see some improvement,” she says, carefully, not wanting to raise my hopes too high. “Only barely outside the margin of error for our tests, but some.”

I think about it. This treatment is what put my wife in a coma. What if they give her more and it kills her? Or makes her a vegetable? I take a deep breath, feeling utterly incapable of making a decision. I’m unprepared, after only dealing with this situation for a week. It shouldn’t be up to me, I realise with a horrible stomach-clenching regret. There are people who have been facing this for twenty years. For their entire lives. “What does Neville think?” I ask, daringly. 

Then the answer I’m half dreading, half hoping for. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” 

Strout leads me back through the maze of hallways and identical doors. I was planning on steeling myself before going in, but it turns out that I don’t even get the chance, because there are two men standing in front of the door to Alice’s room. They’re talking together in low, hospital-quiet voices, and they shake hands solemnly as we round the corner. One of them is Draco Malfoy, turning to leave, he sees us approach and stops, eyes widening a little, one hand going back to tap the other on the elbow. The broader man in a casual jumper and trousers turns, sees me, freezes. The scar isn’t nearly so noticeable as it was in the photos; three years faded it’s barely visible, so it’s not really any wonder I didn’t notice it when I met him the first time.

“Draco,” Strout says, cutting through the awkwardness in the air that threatens to engulf us all. “Glad you’re here - a word about dosage, if you don’t mind? Neville, your father has a question for you.”

Pointedly she draws Draco aside into the hall, leaving us staring at each other. He looks utterly uncertain, wondering perhaps if he ought to speak, maybe remembering what happened the last time he tried. In the end I pull myself out of it long enough to spare him. “Mind if we go inside?” I ask, nodding towards the door. 

He nods quickly, opens the door for me and holds it open. Once inside he pulls it ajar behind us. 

I go over to Alice, look down at her. I touch her face with my fingertips, soft. “I can’t tell if she looks sick,” I say, without looking away from her. “Or if it’s just the terrible lighting in here.” 

I hear him shift. “Yeah,” he says, a little hoarse - but not as hoarse as I still am. “It’s pretty bad.” A long silence, then… “Did you want… to ask me something?” 

I stand up properly, make myself turn to look at him. “Yes.” Quietly. “Strout told me about restarting the treatment. Is that what you want to do?” 

He only meets my eyes for a second. Then he looks away from me, looks down at Alice instead. His mother, a mother he’s never known. “I… don’t want to hurt her,” he says, very low. “But I can’t… I can’t watch her just lying there anymore either, just… helpless.” He swallows. “Draco thinks it will work.”

“You trust him?” 

He hesitates, considering, perhaps, whether to try to assuage me or tell me the truth. “A year ago I would have said no,” he says, finally. “Well, laughed in your face first, and then said hell no. But… without him we couldn’t have got this far. I wouldn’t…” he stops, looking at me quickly and then away again. “We wouldn't have you back. He was the only one who really believed in this from the start.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Oh? You didn’t?” 

His lips twitch, a hint of a grim smile. “Honestly, after all this time… and then I didn’t exactly have the biggest confidence in the inventor of the original potion, either. We… didn’t get on.” He shrugs. “I can admit when I’m wrong, though. This has to be better than doing nothing.” Looking back at Alice, his expression desperate. “It has to be,” he says again, soft. 

I nod slowly. Then I go past him, to the door, open it wider. Strout and Malfoy are still standing there, waiting nervously. I tell Strout that I’ve agreed to the treatment. I’m aware that I owe Draco Malfoy an apology and probably an enormous debt of thanks, but I can’t quite bring myself to it at the moment; I close the door again instead. Neville’s still standing in the same place against the wall, watching me cautiously like I’m a dungbomb waiting to go off. 

“Now that’s decided.” I pull forward a chair from beside the bed, slide into it with a deep breath. ‘Maybe it’s time we talked.” 

The way his face lights up makes me instantly ashamed. I remember what Arthur said to me in vivid detail, and I know I can no longer take what I do have for granted, even if I don’t yet fully understand it or how it came to be. “Okay,” he says, stepping forward hopefully. There are no more chairs, so he shakes a wand out of his sleeve and conjures one out of the air. It’s a little wonky at the back, I can’t help but notice, but doesn’t wobble or break when he sits on it which is all you really need from a temporary chair. 

“I am… sorry it took so long,” I say, suddenly struggling to find the words I so laboriously went over and over in my mind last night instead of sleeping. “I’ve found this whole situation very… difficult to adjust to.” 

“I understand,” he says, quickly, so quickly that I can’t help wondering if he’s also been practicing this conversation just in case. “Honestly I can’t imagine what it must be like… Gran’s been on me to come home for days but I didn’t want…” He stumbles over his words too, so nervous he can’t decide what sentence to finish. “Not til you wanted to see me,” he manages finally, flushing red at the top of his cheeks. “I know you don’t remember having me...” 

“No.” I tap my fingers lightly on my knee, trying to concentrate my own nerves. “I have been doing a bit of research, though. Turns out you’re quite famous.” 

“Oh....” The blush darkens, he makes a face that suggests he’d really rather I hadn’t. “Not really.”

“Ah, so you aren’t the Sword of Gryffindor I’ve been reading about?” 

He groans, covers his face with one hand. “Oh, hell.” 

I find myself smiling, amused by my own ability to tease as much as his obvious discomfort. “You can imagine my surprise,” I go on, emboldened, “on finding that not only do I have an adult son, but one who earned himself an Order of Merlin by the age of seventeen.” 

He looks up at me again, unsure. 

A deep breath. “I’m proud of you.” 

His lips part slightly as his jaw drops in surprise. Pleased surprise, for in the next moment a wide smile spreads across his face. “Thanks, Dad.” 

I flinch; I can’t help myself, I regret it straight away at the look on his face, the smile straightaway fading. “Sorry,” he says, quickly, and as much as I want to brush it aside, tell him it’s fine, I find I can’t, quite. “Would you… rather I called you Frank?” 

“Perhaps… that would be best,” I say, making myself meet his eyes, willing him to understand that it isn’t personal, only that I am still unable to completely reconcile in my mind the concept that I am to this man what my father was to me. Not that I ever called him dad either, my parents were too conservative in those days to allow it. “For now.” 

He nods, to his credit not a trace of disappointment on his face - or perhaps I simply cannot yet read him well enough.

Silence for a while, but a more comfortable kind. We both look at Alice, to avoid the awkwardness of accidentally meeting each other’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry about your wand,” he says finally. “Gran... told me you were upset about it.” 

“I’m afraid I was, rather; I’m a fifty-year-old brat, apparently.” 

That makes him laugh a little.

“Mother said you wanted it because you looked up to me as a child,” I say, fingers brushing lightly against the back of Alice’s wrinkled, unfamiliar hand. “I expect she told you lots of stories about me - edited a bit, I imagine.” 

I can practically hear him flush. “Yes… she talks about you a lot. Always has since I can remember. Never in the past tense either, she always gets angry at people for doing that. She smacked me once for doing it.”

I look up, surprised, but he only looks slightly wistful.

“What about Alice?” I ask, after a moment’s effort to drag myself back to my previous train of thought. Neville’s eyes turn back to his mother’s face. “What did she tell you about her?” 

He hesitates. “Well… not much,” he admits finally. “Only that she was an Auror too. I found a bit in some old papers, and she even let me read a few letters they found, once she thought I was old enough…” he stops, reddening again. “I’m sorry, that probably seems like a huge invasion of privacy -”

“That’s okay,” I say, keeping in mind that my first act on going home had been to go poking around in his belongings. I can’t object even if I wanted to.

Looking at Alice, I try to find the words. This seems important. If the treatment doesn’t work, he should know.

“She’s a spitfire. Bullheaded. A temper like you wouldn’t believe, sometimes. I was a year ahead of her in school, we were like fire and water. I was studious, not obsessively or anything but I felt that things ought to be done the right way, the way we were taught. Alice was impatient, she was always after the quicker way, the more exciting way. When we were in training for the Aurors it was the same. I did things by the book and she kept pushing me to think outside the box.” I smile, despite the overwhelming sadness that threatens to sink me as I stare into her still, lined face. “In a practice duel she’d knock me on my back eight times out of ten. I wanted to impress her. She had so much energy that sometimes when she would just walk down the street, I’d have to run to keep up with her. Mother didn’t like the idea of us as a couple, she would say Alice was too wild or too impulsive or too plain, even. But I thought - I still think - she’s the most incredible person I know.” 

This might be the most I’ve spoken at a time since I regained my voice; my throat is dry and tight by the time I’ve quite finished. When I dare to look, Neville is watching me with his lips slightly parted again, that look of awe, a faint glistening in the corners of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says finally. “She… sounds amazing.” 

“She is.” I stand up. “Better come along.” His head twitches up, puzzled. “I think it’s about time you came home, don’t you?” 

Mother is very pleasantly surprised when both of us arrive back at the house. Usually she has to come and get me, or Strout or one of the other Healers are obliging enough to take me by Side-Along Apparition, since I’m still not allowed to Floo, and pop back again. But this time it’s Neville with his broad arm carefully around my waist. Somehow he’s a half a head taller than me, which doesn’t seem fair, though I somehow remember that Alice’s father was over six feet. 

The first thing Mother does is insist that he wash and change. “I was only at Harry’s, Gran,” he says, rolling his eyes - but not, I can’t help but notice - in her actual direction, and she’s too busy packing up her embroidery to notice. “Not living in a sewer.” 

“You’ll be much more comfortable when you’ve bathed,” she says, in a tone that doesn’t brook argument, and he obediently trudges out of the living room and up the stairs. 

Mother at least does not ask me why I’ve had a sudden change of heart, which it must seem like to her, though for me it’s actually been quite gradual. She only berates me a little for not warning her ahead of time. I nod along and take it on the chin; I couldn’t have warned her if I’d wanted to, for I hadn’t been at all sure I could even go through with it, and I would have hated to disappoint her in that way. 

I go out to the garden. I’ve come to really like it out here, despite its relative unfamiliarity to the rest of the house. Out among the seemingly random arrangement of plants and trees, my thoughts and memories don’t feel crowded up and claustrophobic in my head. Out here they can drift peacefully around, slowly enough that I can catch one or two if I like to try and examine it further. 

When it starts to rain a little I take refuge in the greenhouse, breathing in the thick scent of the moist black earth, the brightly-coloured flowers. I recognise less than half of the species, and I’m just examining a bush yielding flowers of a very usual shade of bright blue when the door opens. 

“Oh.” 

I realise suddenly that I’ve been in here a long time, doing very little other than stare around, half-seeing. Neville is standing in the door, dressed down in rough clothes, his hair still damp and cheeks pink from bathing. “Sorry,” he says, “should I-”

“No, no, it’s fine.” I stand up straight, brush off the back of my robe where I’ve been leaning against one of the raised planters. “I was just… thinking.” 

“Peaceful in here, isn’t it,” he says, smiling, as he picks up the dragon hide gloves and slips them onto his hands. He goes to the big cabinet full of drawers, pulls out some tools and little labelled boxes. “Especially when it’s raining.” He motions upwards to where the drops are making little plonking noises against the glass before streaming and running down the sides, perfectly visible from the inside. He is right, there is something very comforting about being warm and dry from the inside of such a view. 

“These are all yours?” I ask, a question not really requiring an obvious answer.  “Is it difficult to maintain, by yourself?”

“I wouldn’t put them in if I couldn’t manage them.”

 It’s maybe the most confident thing I’ve heard him say, and I cannot describe how very strange it is to have a man - not quite a stranger but difficult to qualify otherwise - remind me of my wife so very strongly in one sentence. It’s almost as though she is somehow standing beside me. My breath catches; suddenly I would rather be somewhere, anywhere else, but to flee now would be both cowardly and inconsiderate; I’ve already done enough damage in this relationship, so I stubbornly hold my own feet to the floor. He goes on, oblivious to how he’s stunned me. 

“None of them need daily care; I couldn’t do that with work, being out for three nights or more at a time. But I like to check them over as soon as I get home.”

“What’s this one?” The flower I’ve been looking at is emerging from a thick green stalk, and its stamen is bright pink; I don’t know much about flowers, but it’s very pretty. 

“Ah. That’s a crossbreed. I called it an Augusta hibiscus; Gran thought I was being grandiose, but she does like them. Cut some if you like - the dining room could probably use some fresh colour.” 

Pleased to have something to do with my hands, I take the offered clippers and put together a bunch of the most impressive blooms while Neville waters and trims the rest of his experimental garden. For a moment, the peace in my mind returns. 

That evening we all have a celebratory roast dinner together with the flowers arranged on a vase in the middle of the table. Mother is in good spirits, I can tell how pleased she is to have us both here, but my mood is sombered by thoughts of Alice, and I can tell Neville is thinking about her too. He would have liked to stay with her. 

“Really Neville,” Mother sighs, fed up finally with his lack of engagement in the conversation. “I’m sure she’s quite all right; she doesn’t need you hovering over her at every moment.” 

This seems a bit harsh, to me, but I’m already starting to realise that his relationship with her isn’t the same as mine. She’s a little short with him, practically stern, and he’s politely deferential as though she were a distant aunt, or something, not the woman who raised him from a year and a half old. ‘Not while she’s asleep,” he sighs. “But if… if she wakes up… I don’t want her to be alone, that’s all.” 

“Well, you just said yourself that young Draco is staying with her tonight, so she won’t be.” 

He tips his head, begrudging agreement, food speared uneaten on the end of his fork. “Guess so. I suppose if it happens, he can’t do much worse a job at explaining things than I did.” 

He’s talking about me. In his defence he wasn’t expecting me to wake up suddenly like that, and I hadn’t exactly been receptive to what he was saying. “Had a whole speech planned?” I guess, smiling with apology. 

“Only for the last ten years or so.” He smiles back at me. “Sorry I was so useless.” 

I can’t say anything to this.

“How is Harry dear?” Mother asks, clearly trying to steer the conversation somewhere else. 

He shrugs. “Fine. I mean, fine as he can be with Hermione in full wedding mode.” 

I look up, puzzled. “I thought she was marrying Ronald.” 

“Oh, she is - sorry - right now they’re all living together in Harry’s house, since there’s more than enough space for them all and their new place isn’t quite sorted yet. She’s driving them both a bit batty with organising. I got to help make table settings on my one evening off,” he adds, ruefully. “Ginny would be there too but she’s at some kind of Quidditch training camp in the Highlands. Sounds awful, but of course she’s having a great time.” 

“Ginny…” 

“Ron’s little sister. Harry’s girlfriend.” 

“Ah.” I nod, remembering. “The one you’re meant to be having an affair with?” 

Mother looks shocked. Neville groans and covers his face. “Oh, not you too.” 

“What’s this?” Mother demands, and belatedly I remember that she doesn’t read the paper. 

“It's nothing, Gran - Skeeter started a rumour, that’s all, and now every time either of us so much as wave to each other the Prophet reprints it, no matter how many times we tell them it isn’t true. I assure you there is nothing going on between me and Ginny.” He stabs his lamb rather harder than is required. 

“Well,” Mother calms down a little. “It wouldn’t be the worst match, you know…” 

“Gran!” 

“I’m just saying, it’s a good family, very prolific…” 

“GRAN!” He looks mortified and I can’t really blame him. 

“You’re an eligible young man dear, we will have to start thinking about these things someday soon.” 

“Well you can forget about Ginny,” he says, firmly, “we are friends , that’s all, and even if I was interested - which I’m not - she’s extremely unavailable. It’s bad enough the press obsessed with the idea of me trying to steal Harry’s girl without you latching on, please...” 

“All right, all right.” She waves away his protests. 

“Sorry I brought it up,” I say, caught between amusement at his protests and disquiet at Mother’s attitude. I had forgotten how she could be when she got her mind set on something; the first year after I told her Alice and I were seeing each other - courting, to use her language - had not been easy. I vaguely remember being subtly presented to several girls much more suited to her tastes, until I finally put my foot down by presenting Alice with my own grandmother’s ring. 

Cook has outdone herself. I strongly suspect certain ingredients were included that were not on Strout’s approved list, but I’m hardly about to object when everything is so delicious. There’s even a fine lemon sorbet for dessert, perfectly light after the rich meat and thick sauces. 

“An early night, I think,” Mother says when we are done. “Or I shall have indigestion. Don’t stay up too late, will you boys?” 

Boys. 

“No, Gran.” 

I’m not tired. We retire to the living room instead. I had planned on asking some questions of him, getting to know him perhaps in a more personal way than by reading about him in the paper. But now that I have the chance I find my throat quite dry, and my mind empty. 

“I hope you aren’t bored,” he says, shyly. “I think there are books in the study that are yours, or you could borrow some of mine if you want.” 

What I want is some way to make this less damned awkward, but no ideas are forthcoming. “Thank you. I will keep that in mind.” 

He nods. “Anything you want to -” 

He is interrupted by the fireplace opposite, the large one which is the only one in the house connected to the Floo Network. It bursts suddenly into life and the flames burn green for a moment before revealing the face of a young man with freckles and red hair. Neville goes over quickly. 

“Sorry mate, I know you’re busy with things at home - ” The voice of the man echoes faintly, as if he’s speaking from inside a cave or a large room. 

“It’s fine, what’s going on?” Neville goes to one knee by the fire, blocking my view, but I still hear. 

“Er, bit of a problem, just heard from McGonagall. Apparently Hagrid heard from the centaurs that there’s a human body somewhere out in their patch of the Forbidden Forest.” 

“A dead body?” 

“Well if it wasn’t before it probably is now. The centaurs are pissed, no one’s meant to be in their territory. After the months we spent working on a treaty...” 

“Not a student?” Neville’s voice is strained, breathless. 

“First thing McGonagall did was count them. They’re all accounted for so far but she’s doing a double check now. All the teachers seem to be fine too. Must be someone from outside the castle.” 

A sigh; relief. “Will they let us get to it? The centaurs?” 

“Hagrid says yes, if we’re quick about it. They won’t let us bring Harry though, you know how they feel about him, so we’re one short. You know the forest better than any of us, and I’m not keen on going in there without you, to tell the truth - ”

“No, fine, fine. I’m coming. Wouldn’t want you to take a wrong turn and end up in an Acromantula web.” 

The face laughs nervously and is gone. 

“Better go,” he says, with an apologetic look back at me.  “You all right?” 

I tell him I’m fine, and he’s gone too, without even stopping to change back into his robes.

I try to sleep, but sleep is a bastard who refuses to cooperate, I can only lie awake and stare at the bare ceiling. In one day I gained myself a son, a son I can’t stand to call me Dad, and now he’s out there somewhere I cannot follow and I don’t know how I should feel. My stomach hurts with an emotion that’s impossible to name. I know I want him to be okay, but do I want it for myself, or for Mother? Or for Alice, lying still and unknowing in a bed miles away. 

She didn’t want children. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time with this. I always knew I’d have them eventually, out of necessity if nothing else; as the last son of my family I didn’t have much of a choice, but Alice had no respect or appreciation for the old traditions. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” she used to say, “but don’t hold your breath.” The words are so clear, she said them so often, I can hear them now as though she were lying right beside me. Next to that memory the faint echoes I have of her big-bellied with child seem little more than wild imaginings.  

It’s almost properly morning again by the time I hear faint noises from across the hall. I get up, dazed from lack of sleep, go to look around the door to his room. He’s changing in the dark, only the faint dawn light starting to peek through the curtain to see him by. He starts instinctively and looks around at me, his pyjama shirt still hanging off his arms, jumper dumped unceremoniously on the floor. “Frank? You… are you okay?” 

“Yes.” I don’t even know why I'm here, what I expected to see. Hearing him should have been enough, but here I am, staring like a fool. “Sorry. Did it turn out all right?” 

“Oh.” He pulls the shirt on. “Yeah, actually. Turns out it was an old werewolf who’d been living wild up there for a while. Maybe since the war. Died of exposure - or old age, or both maybe. He never hurt anyone - that we know of - so the Ministry’ll bury him properly, and there won’t be a war with the centaurs just yet.” He steps closer, looking concerned. “You look beat. Did you wait up for me? You shouldn’t have, you need your rest.” 

That round face, made to smile but unsmiling. Those brown eyes, as readable as a book. That look, like he continues to carry the weight of the world. I could cry. We are the same to each other; a total stranger, with a familiar face. 

“I will now,” I say, as calmly as I can. “Goodnight.” 

“Goodnight,” he says, puzzled, tired. 

I close the door and flee back to my own room. My stupid heart is pounding. 

Enough. Enough. 

I may not be able to fully accept that he is my son, but it’s impossible not to see that he’s Alice’s son. That will have to be good enough.

Each day of the next week passes thus: I wake, have breakfast, go to my daily appointment at St Mungo’s. I’m now allowed to Floo by myself, a relief, a tiny freedom, but still no Apparition in case I splinch myself. I practice magic in Strout’s office while she satisfies herself that I’m not so rusty as to be a danger. After the appointment I spend an hour or so by Alice’s side in her room. I would stay longer, but now that Strout has decided I’m not going to have a breakdown, she wants me out of the hospital as much as possible for my own good. I’m both guilty and glad to have an excuse; I find the place oppressive, claustrophobic, some part of me perhaps subconsciously aware that I’ve spent the last two decades staring at nothing else but the pale yellow walls. 

Someone always takes over the vigil from me, usually either Neville or Draco or Hermione. The first time I see each of the young researchers I offer a carefully rehearsed gesture of gratitude for their work and an apology for my behaviour the last time we spoke; they are very understanding. Draco seems to have forgotten my insults altogether and says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I wonder if he’s genuine, but there’s no real way to tell. 

I go home. I read the books I borrowed from the library or whatever is lying around. I convince Mother to renew the Daily Prophet subscription so I can get some idea of what’s going on in the world, and fortunately the news is much less personal on a daily basis, with the exception of a couple of articles speculating wildly about why I’ve gone into seclusion. I’m not sure what I’m meant to be doing, but they seem to expect to see me dancing down the street or chugging drinks at the Leaky Cauldron - with which of my dead friends, they never specify. Kingsley pops by again, and now that I’m better informed and less volatile we can have a proper talk. He and Neville banter like old friends when they pass in the hall. I ask my questions, I get answers. I start to feel less unmoored in a strange and unfamiliar world. I let the old memories come to me as they will, and they come less and less.

When it gets to be too much, which it does often, I go to the garden. Even when the weather is bad, when I can take shelter in the damp heat of the greenhouse, I feel much more relaxed out among the strange, jungle-like collection of native and exotic plantlife. Around the side of the house is my favourite spot. Here there’s a large plot where several rose bushes are starting to bloom, white flowers with yellow so dark it's almost gold on the very edge of their petals, like they’ve been dipped in paint. These are Neville’s gift to his friends Hermione and Ron, for their wedding, the blossoming carefully planned to coincide with that swiftly approaching day. They aren’t anything magical, but they are nice to look at. I wonder how he manages to do that and keep up with all his experiments, on top of being a full-time Auror and spending several hours at St Mungo’s every day when he isn’t working. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly I don’t see him much. He comes to dinner when he can, but by the evening he’s almost always gone again, called away for something or other. Mother acts as though this is normal, but I overhear her despairing to Cook in the kitchen - “That boy will be the death of himself before me! The way he runs around you’d think there was still a war on!” 

I’m pleasantly surprised therefore when on the next Friday he comes to let me know that the Weasleys have invited us to dinner at the Burrow on Saturday, with their family and some other friends. The wedding menu has been finalised and Molly wants to test it out on the party. I’m privately overjoyed to be asked; the isolation is starting to get to me, no matter how good it is for my health. I also know I need to face Arthur again, to show him that I took his words to heart. 

“You better let me know if it gets to be too much,” Neville says, radiating concern. “All the Weasleys at once can be a bit… well, there are a lot of them. We can leave whenever you want.”

“I’ll be fine.” 

I mean it too, but my confidence wavers a little when I arrive in the best of my new robes - a little late thanks to Neville making a mess of himself in the greenhouse and having to change - to a house much fuller and busier than it had been last time. There seem to be people everywhere and the vast majority of them have red hair. 

Neville introduces me first to Ronald, who I recognise both from the photographs I’ve seen and his head in the fire a week ago. He’s perfectly polite, if a bit uncomfortable, like he doesn’t quite know what to say. I can’t blame him, I’m already frowning to come up with anything other than ‘Congratulations’ for a wedding that hasn’t happened yet. 

“Neville!” A girl appears from somewhere and throws herself into his arms, just as red-headed as the rest of them. I’ve seen her in a photo too, I think. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” 

“Gerroff, you great big pixie,” Neville mumbles, goodnaturedly, holding her easily off the ground with one arm. “How was Quidditch camp?” 

“Oooh, quick, someone take a picture!” A young man with a missing ear hollers from the kitchen doorway. “We'll sell it to the Prophet and make a killing.” 

“Piss off George,” she calls back. She makes a face at Neville and hops back onto her feet. “I can’t believe they refuse to drop that angle; I’ve half a mind to snog you in public just to make them all faint and drop their cameras.” 

He grins. “Better not. I’d rather not have to duel Harry for your honour.” 

“I can duel for my own honour, thanks very much.” She looks curiously around his shoulder at me. “Hello.” 

“Ginny this is Frank, my father,” he says, in the same formal way he introduced me to Ron. “Frank, my friend Ginny.” 

“Best friend,” she corrects him, offering me her hand with a beaming smile. I like her immediately. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.” 

“Likewise.” I smile back. 

“Sorry we’re late,” Neville says. “I spilled dirty water on my trousers.” 

She laughs. “Don’t worry, it’s probably best; this way you don’t get roped into any pre-dinner chores. Oh here he is - Harry! Harry, come and meet Frank.” 

There he is indeed, looking more like a young man than the skinny teen I’ve seen in photographs, dressed in Muggle clothes like Neville and the rest of them are, round spectacles, the scar on his forehead faded and barely visible. “Mr Longbottom,” he shakes my hand, “welcome back.” Hell, he even sounds like James. 

“Harry. I knew your parents… I’m so very sorry.” 

He smiles faintly, and I remember yet again that Lily and James died over twenty years ago, that the recency of their loss is in my mind only. He doesn’t need words of sympathy now, for people he surely can’t even remember, who never got any older than the age he is now. I feel an idiot. “Thank you,” he says anyway, and sounds like he means it. 

Hermione is here, of course, and I meet all the rest, mostly young Weasleys - George, Percy, Bill - and their various family members. George’s girl, Angelina, Percy’s fiancee, Audrey, and Bill’s wife Fleur and their two young children, three and one year old girls as silver-blonde as their mother. Fleur is clearly pregnant again, as well. The last living Weasley boy, Charlie, is apparently abroad but will be back for the wedding. That fills out the groomsmen, and there are two more young women in the wedding party also. One of them is Luna Lovegood, the girl who sold me my wand. She’s very pleased to hear that it’s working well for me. The last is a tall, thin girl with dark hair down to her waist. She might once have been very pretty, but her face has been cruelly marred with thick ragged scars, leaving one eye drooping almost shut and her mouth lopsided. The scars are similar to those Bill has on his face, though she makes some more effort to hide them by wearing her long hair pulled forward to cover her face. When she shakes my hand her touch is as light as air. 

“This is Lavender,” Hermione introduces her. “My other bridesmaid.” 

“Still not too late to change your mind,” Lavender says, without much emotion. Hermione ignores her. 

Arthur comes and claps me on the back, clearly pleased to see Neville at my side. Molly is too busy coordinating the cooking of what looks like a dozen different dishes to do much more than say hello, but she smiles widely at me. It seems I am forgiven. 

We sit out in the garden under magically heated lamps at one long table. I’m a bit of an outlier, the odd one out, sitting between Neville and Arthur, the voices all around a constant jumble of noise. Everyone is very kind, asking how I am, though I don’t have much of an answer to give. Instead I watch the little girls, especially the baby one, Dominique, as she tries to spoon her own, less fancy meal into her mouth without much success. She and Victoire are the first children I can remember seeing up close since 1980. I wonder if watching them might trigger any memories, but it doesn’t. I’ve started to accept that those particular memories are gone; I will probably never recover them.

“It must be very strange,” Bill is saying, unknowingly echoing my thoughts. “Like time travel, only worse.” 

I smile. “Alice told me once that we can all travel in time just by living. For a minute it even sounded clever. But I’ve never time-travelled the conventional way, so I can’t compare.”

“Harry and Hermione have!” Ron announces from further down the table. Most people laugh. 

“It was a long time ago,” Hermione says sagely. 

“And it was very illegal,” Harry grins. Percy rolls his eyes. 

I ask to hear the story, since almost everyone seems to be in on it, and I get it told to me in a confused sort of way, the details being argued back and forth across the table. I get further confused when Harry starts talking about Sirius Black; I have to get him to explain the circumstances by which he came to be chased by Dementors in the grounds of Hogwarts. 

“You all right?” Neville asks me, in an undertone. 

I shake it off, the dread feeling, the reminder that all my friends are bones buried deep in the earth, and yet some of them had years of life that I can never share.

Hermione hastily wraps up the tale, perhaps seeing my discomfort. “Very interesting,” I say, though I’ve only grasped maybe half of it. “I’m sure I was never doing anything so adventurous at fourteen.” 

“Adventure tends to happen to us whether we like it or not,” Ron says, shrugging. 

“You should tell a story about Neville,” Audrey suggests. She seems a pleasant young woman with fastidiously styled hair and spectacles, out of place in this loud, friendly place, a bit like I am. “One Frank won’t have heard.” 

“Oh, no,” Neville groans. “Let’s talk more about the mad stuff Harry’s done.”  

“How about the time we all met Fluffy?” Ron grins, latching onto the idea. “Remember that?” 

“Course; I still have nightmares,” Neville says flatly, but his lips twitch a little into a telling smile. 

“The time he tried to take Crabbe and Goyle at once?” George pipes up. “During the Quidditch match, remember - he was what, ten?” 

“Nah, tell the one about the Snape Boggart,” Ginny laughs. “I wasn’t even there but we all heard about it. Classic.” 

“I hate all of you,” Neville mutters, rolling his eyes. 

“I could think of some worse stories,” Ron replies, teasing, with his mouth full. Hermione nudges him in the ribs and he chews more politely. I can tell that Neville is uncomfortable only with the attention; he isn’t afraid that they would really say anything that might sully my opinion of him. There is trust at this table, the kind that reminds me yet again of days gone by. The kind of trust I had with Lily and James, and the others. 

Talk turns back to the wedding, much to Neville’s relief. The courses come and go one by one, all delicious, and I focus not on trying to be an entertaining guest but merely to follow the conversation, testing my own comprehension skills. It is tiring, and by the time Molly brings out a small version of the cake she has planned for us to taste, my energy is starting to flag significantly. I determine to stick it out through dessert and then make my excuses, but in the end I don’t get the chance to do either. 

“What’s he doing here?” Ron says aloud, suspicious, and heads turn to where a pale figure is running full-pelt up the hill towards the garden gate. It’s been dark for a while now, so it’s difficult to make out a face. 

“Oh no,” Neville says, paling himself, and gets up. 

“What is it?” Nearly everyone is half out of their chairs, and Ron and George both have drawn wands. 

“Draco,” Hermione breathes. 

Draco was meant to be watching Alice. 

Neville runs, and I find myself running with him, only a step and a half behind. 

“Sorry,” Draco pants, leaning heavily on the gate as he reaches it. “I know I shouldn’t just turn up here, but I tried your fireplace and your Grandmother said you were here so I tried their fireplace and no one was in there…” 

“What happened?” Neville asks. 

He clutches his heaving chest. “You have to come back to the hospital, now.” 

My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach like a stone, but then he catches his breath, and a wide smile spreads across his face. 

“She’s going to wake up.” 

Strout’s diagnostic tests have lit up like a Hogwarts Christmas tree. Neurons are firing brightly where they have not in weeks. Not in years. Hope blossoms in my chest for the first time since I can remember. “Any minute now,” Strout says. 

“Are you sure?” Neville asks. I can practically hear his heartbeat. I can feel it echoing mine. 

I can’t take my eyes off Alice’s face. She looks the same. Peaceful. 

Strout takes Draco and Hermione out to wait with Mother. Too many people at once might be overwhelming, she says, as though it isn’t already overwhelming enough. 

Only the three of us now.

“Neville.” I don’t want to sound unfeeling, but right now my thoughts are for her, only for her. “Perhaps you should stand back a little. Let me try to explain…” 

He knows I’m right; he nods. He remembers how confused I was when I awoke. I’m still confused. 

“We don’t know how much better she’ll be,” he reminds me, bracing himself and me for disappointment. It’s a disappointment he is used to and I am not. “Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t speak, or even look at you…” 

Grimly I nod. If she doesn’t know me I simply will not leave her side until she does. Deep down I know that’s my Gryffindor side speaking; brash, illogical. But the alternative I cannot face. I have nothing of the last twenty years, and without Alice I have no future; it is as much of a blank as the last two decades. Unthinkable.

He stands by the door and I sit with her and hold her hand. We wait. I start to talk to her with words only she can hear, not of anything in particular but whatever comes to mind, of how many children the Weasleys have had, how they are somehow grandparents. How Kingsley of all people is Minister for Magic. How Ollivander has been replaced by an impossibly young girl with kind eyes. How strange it all is without her. How much I miss her. 

I’m looking at her hand, but when I look up next, she is staring at me. 

“Alice?” 

She blinks. “Frank?” 

A gasp from behind me, poorly muffled. 

“It’s me,” I say. I try not to cry. Twenty-one years since I last heard her voice. She sounds hoarse, like I did at first, not at all like herself, but it’s enough. It’s enough. “It’s me.” 

She’s staring at me, at my old face, at my grey hair. “You look like your papa,” she says, dreamily. 

“Alice… I’m so sorry love. Something happened, an accident, and you lost a lot of memory, we both have. It’s been -” 

“Neville?” 

She’s looking past me, looking over my shoulder, to the tall man pressed against the door, trying to be invisible. He stares back at her. 

“You know who I am?” he asks, breathless.

She sits up; I don’t dare try and stop her. “Of course I do,” she says, voice crackling like an old radio. “You visit all the time.” 

Silence for a moment, as we both stare at her and she stares at us, varying levels of disbelief. 

“You remember,” he says. 

She reaches out a hand. Unsteadily he comes, to the other side of the bed, tears brimming in his eyes. Their fingers touch. She is still, and he is shaking all over. “Mum...” 

“Oh, my baby. Come here.” 

She holds out her arms and he falls into them, sobbing. Beside her tiny frail body he looks like a giant. She holds him tight and rocks him gently, and then she turns her white-haired head to look up at me, tearful, but smiling. 

Suddenly, in her eyes, I see him. Not as the man he is now but red-faced, wrinkled and squalling, the way he was on his very first day of life. I see him fat-cheeked and spit-mouthed, giggling so hard he falls all the way onto his back and rolls like a bouncy ball with legs. I see him looking up at me, single-toothed and serious, as though he somehow knows that I am kissing him goodbye for the last time. 

“Neville,” I say, and he looks up at me with red eyes, and he knows that I see him. That I know him. 

“Dad.” 

I put my arms around both of them, and feel the future rush back in.