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Every Saturday, rain or shine, Neville Longbottom followed the same routine.
He awoke early before the sun was up, stretched, got ready for the day. Then he dressed, slowly and methodically. It was December, sweater season. The stone floors of his rooms were cold beneath his bare feet.
Then he made his way down from his quarters in a turret on the south side of the castle to the Hogwarts kitchens.
This early, the dimly lit corridors of Hogwarts were blessedly silent, and his footsteps echoed slightly. He got several glares from portraits who preferred to have a longer lie in on Saturdays.
The elves in the kitchens knew his routine as well. They had prepared a cake for him to take with him the previous night, prettily iced in white and red, carefully pre-cut into slices. It was already in a box, tied with string. Neville wanted nothing more than to be able to bring a home-baked cake, but he had yet to make something that wasn’t totally indelible. Potions and baking were very alike, and he was hopeless at both.
There was snow outside, the grounds looked crisp and clean. There were no footprints to be seen yet and Neville quietly enjoyed being the first to walk across the untouched blanket of snow.
He made his way into the greenhouse on the far right, to cut some of the roses he had cultivated specially. Beneath the warming charms he picked the prettiest ones and carefully wrapped them in brown paper for the trip.
His breath fogged up the air as he made his way to the apparation point on the way to Hogsmeade. He could have flooed, but apparation was more forgiving to baked goods. And roses.
Over the years, especially since he had begun earning a steady salary, Neville had tried to make his parent’s room on the Janus Thickey Ward more homely. The long windowsill was filled with plants, flowers, and small cacti. He made sure to water them every visit, but the nurses had told him that Alice would also do so from time to time. They were housed in a mismatched array of pots and vases, some hand-painted by Alice when she was able to hold a paintbrush steady. In between, he had dotted the few framed photos that he had of his parents before Bellatrix Lestrange had tortured them. On the far side was a glass vase that he filled with fresh flowers every time he visited.
There were a few paintings on the otherwise blank walls, muggle ones, of landscapes from around England. He had found them at a market in Oxford a few years into teaching and thought his parents might appreciate seeing the nature every day, even if it was only in oil renderings. The beds had knitted quilts on them, courtesy of Molly Weasley, and there were always biscuits in the tin on the table.
But it remained a hospital room. And his parents remained patients.
Even the Christmas decorations he had hung up, a string of gently twinkling lights above the arched windows, the felt stars taped to the window, didn’t make much of a difference.
At least his mum was up and about. She was wearing a too large pink dress covered in pictures of clouds, a grey cardigan, and mismatched woolly socks. Neville didn’t question the look. He knew that the nurses had been trying to get Alice Longbottom used to dressing herself again. Her hair, dark but now shot through with grey, was neatly brushed back and wound into a single long plait, and though her face was pale, she looked less tired than she had the week before.
Her large blue eyes looked the same as always. Wide and strangely vacant.
The same couldn’t be said for Frank Longbottom.
His dad was sitting up in bed, which was an improvement, but he was thinner, paler, shakier. He hadn’t been able to walk unaided in years. Then the seizures had come along and he had developed an incurable twitch in his right eye. It was a hard reality to face that his mother was likely to outlive his father by quite a few years.
He hadn’t spoken a word since Neville was thirteen.
There was a wheelchair in the corner of the room, a stark reminder that his father was no longer able to walk.
Neville did the tasks he did every week. He checked the plants, making sure they all had enough water. He refilled the biscuit tin with custard creams and chocolate bourbons. He made sure the boxes and buckets of random items hidden under his mum’s bed weren’t overflowing too badly. He put the Christmas CDs he had picked up next to the CD-Player he had gifted his father a few years ago.
Then he made his way out of the room to find one of the nurses, leaving his mother looking blankly out of the window at the snow-dusted courtyard, the boy containing the cake in his hands. He only saw his parents once a week, and whilst he would get sent a letter if anything notable occurred, he liked to keep in the loop.
“Anything I should know about happen this week?” Neville asked Sandra, who had been working on the ward since Neville was around ten years old. She had a soft spot for his parents, Neville knew. It was why he preferred to ask her about the updates. He knew she genuinely cared.
He pressed the cake into her hands, waving away her thanks.
“You know the Hogwarts elves jump at any chance to make cakes,” he said.
Sandra peered down at it.
“Thank you, Neville” she said. “And I think they had a pretty good week, all things considered.”
“Did you have any events?”
The ward liked to offer activities to the patients, outside of what they usually offered. Sometimes it was short theatre pieces, sometimes it was outings in small groups. One time, there had been a memorable attempt at an opera evening.
“We had a choir from one of the ministry departments here,” Sandra said. “Frank didn’t go, you know how he gets, but Alice really enjoyed it. And she helped hang up some Christmas decorations with one of the other patients afterwards.”
“Any word on whether or not they can try that new potion for Dad’s seizures?” Neville asked. Frank Longbottom had started experiencing seizures a few years ago, and while several potions had been trialed, nothing had really helped for longer than a few months. Neville had been hopeful when there had been an announcement about a new potion blend that it might help. But despite his frequent questions, there had been no efforts made to try him on it.
“Nothing yet,” Sandra said. “But they ran a few blood tests on him on Monday, so hopefully once the results come back we’ll know if he’s a suitable candidate.”
“Right,” Neville said.
There was a large tree stuffed into the far corner of the ward next to a few lilac armchairs, and one of the patients of the ward, a middle-aged woman with bright blue hair, was hanging delicate golden baubles on it by hand. She had been there almost as long as Frank and Alice, though she was more mobile than his parents were.
“Alice asked about you a few days ago,” Sandra said suddenly.
Neville looked at her cautiously. His mum didn’t always recognize him. To have her ask about him by name was certainly rare.
“She asked when you were going to start at Hogwarts,” Sandra said softly. “We told her any day now and she seemed happy with that.”
And even after all those years, it still hurt that his mother didn’t know that he had graduated well over a decade ago.
Sandra reached out and gave his hand a comforting squeeze.
“You should come by next Thursday evening,” she said. “We’re going to make Christmas biscuits with everyone.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Neville told her.
He tried not to think of the last time they had tried to bake and one of the patients had had an episode severe enough to set the ward kitchen on fire. Or the fundraising it had taken to get it fixed. Or the fact that it had taken months to raise the required amount.
He tried not to think about the Summer event two years earlier, where they had invited a rotund lady with the largest hat Neville had ever seen to show the patients how to make flower crowns. He tried not to think about trying to get his parents out of the room while a young man with severe episodes made the windows shatter. He tried not to think about how the man had had blood pouring out of his nose while his rogue magic turned the baskets of fresh flowers into confetti. He tried not to remember the screaming.
When there was a ward full of traumatized people with out-of-control magic, there was always going to be incidents. Neville didn’t hold it against any of the patients. It wasn’t as though it was fun for any of them. But he was still a little apprehensive when these invitations came his way.
Sandra hastily excused herself to go and help a young woman making it snow from the lights further down the corridor. Neville made his way back to his parent’s room.
The ward was unusually quiet.
Neville had been frightened of the ward when he had been a child. Not of his parents, who he loved even when they failed to recognize him, but of the ward itself. He had had nightmares about the long corridor, which to his younger self had gone on forever.
And the patients. Most were harmless, and were too trapped in their own trauma and issues to pay him much attention, but the signs of severe and uncontrolled PCD had haunted his mind for days after each visit. The vacant eyes, the twitchiness. The hands that seemed permanently cramped, the shuffling gait. The strange behaviors. The way magic would explode out of them without much warning.
As a result of both the oversaturation of wild magic and the fact that people who had been tortured enough to wind up hospitalized usually reacted badly, wands were banned in the ward. Neville had had to hand his over downstairs.
Back in his parents’ room, Alice walked stiffly over to the windowsill from where she had been sitting on the bed and Neville walked with her, carefully watching her uneven steps and ready to catch her if she should fall. Her walking had gotten worse over the years, and she fell more often than she had when he was younger.
She ran a trembling finger over the petals of the fresh roses Neville had brought.
“I’ll bring some more next week,” Neville told her, receiving no response.
He knew his mother had loved roses before Bellatrix had tortured her beyond repair. As a result, he now dedicated half of a greenhouse at Hogwarts to growing new varieties in a variety of colors to bring to her. The ones he had brought today were vibrant orange. He had high hopes for the lilac ones he was cultivating.
Alice suddenly yanked one from the vase, crushing the delicate flower between her fingers.
Neville carefully took the flower from her. Alice whined, upset at having something taken from her.
“Let me break off the stem,” he said quietly. “You’ll scratch yourself on the thorns.”
Alice watched intently, a crease between her eyebrows. Her hand kept coming up, as though to take the rose from him but then changing her mind.
Neville quickly snapped the stem and gave his mum only the flower. Alice took it far too roughly, crushing the petals further. Then she made her way unsteadily over to her bed, which had been neatly made as always. She pushed the flower beneath her pillow, as though trying to hide it.
Then she pulled a large glass jar out from under her bed and settled down on the floor with it. Neville sat down beside her, quietly watching her take out buttons, plastic jewels, candy wrappers, sequins. She occasionally held one out to him and he admired whatever it was diligently.
This part of the visit was almost as routine as him bringing flowers. Alice had accumulated quite a collection over the years.
In the other bed, Frank hadn't seemed to even notice Neville's presence. He had been withdrawn, hard to engage, for quite some time.
Then Alice finally found what she was looking for.
She pressed a cheap plastic lion into his hand and closed Neville's fingers around it with unexpected strength.
“Thank you,” he said softly, putting the plastic figurine into his pocket.
Alice smiled at him and he reached out to take her hand. It was cool, and Neville hated the slight tremor he could feel running through it.
He had a box in his room at Hogwarts where he kept everything his mother gave him. His childhood bedroom had held a similar box, much to his grandmother’s chagrin.
Neville wasn’t sure how long he sat with his mum on the floor, looking through her collection of trinkets. He had brought a carpet into the room a few years ago, a soft red rug that he had bought shortly after he started working at Hogwarts. They always sat on it now, when they ran through this ritual.
But an hour later, when he could hear the ward outside preparing for lunch, he knew it was time to go. He had learned that shorter visits were better, for all of them. His parents got fatigued easily, and he knew having someone they didn’t recognize in their room was draining.
And it was easier for him. It never got more bearable seeing his parents so damaged.
“Bye, Mum,” he said to Alice, taking her thin hand in his again. “I’ll see you next week.”
Alice smiled at him, and pointed at the roses on the windowsill behind him.
“I’ll bring more roses,” he promised, before pressing a gentle kiss on her cheek. “I promise.”
Then he made his way over to the bed, where Frank sat motionless, staring straight ahead.
“I’ll see you next week, dad,” Neville said quietly, pulling his dad into a short hug.
Frank did not move or acknowledge him.
Neville made his way slowly towards the exit, occasionally glancing into the rooms that had the doors open. He couldn’t help himself. He recognized a lot of the patients, had seen a lot of them for years.
But the occupant of a room only a few doors from the exit made him halt in his tracks.
Neville almost didn’t recognize him. If it hadn’t been for the telltale white blonde hair, he wouldn’t even have given the hunched over figure a second glance. People sitting in strange places, people hunched over pitifully, it wasn’t exactly a rare sight on the Janus Thickey Ward.
The last time he had seen Draco Malfoy was years ago, at Scorpius’ graduation. He hadn’t stayed very long, he recalled. He’d been using a cane, but he had looked well enough. The same pale, pointed features, the same gray eyes. He had been polite, clearly proud of Scorpius.
The figure curled up beneath the table looked sick.
Malfoy had lost weight since the last time Neville had seen him, that much was painfully clear. His knees looked sharp enough to tear through the hospital issue pyjamas. His feet were bare and tinged slightly blue from the cold. Malfoy was curled up right in the far corner, his thin body pushed up against the wall, his hair cut shorter than the last time Neville had seen him but it looked messy, unbrushed. He didn’t even seem to notice that there was anyone in his doorway. In fact, he didn’t look like he had moved in quite some time.
The room itself was a far cry from the homely efforts Neville had made with his parents’ room. The walls were bare, the bed covered only in the hospital sheets. A suitcase was shoved near the bed, though it was still half-packed. The blue curtains were half drawn, making the room dark and oppressive looking.
Neville knew he should move, should stop staring at Malfoy like he was some museum exhibit, but something had frozen him in place. He had forgiven Malfoy years ago, had done so even more after his son Scorpius had turned out to be one of the nicest students he had ever taught. It didn't bring him any satisfaction seeing him like this.
“Are you wanting to visit Mr. Malfoy?” a voice suddenly asked from behind him and Neville almost jumped out of his skin.
It was Ellen, one of the nurses. After visiting the ward for so many years, Neville knew everyone there well. She was a short woman with a blonde bob, and aggressive blue eyeliner. She had earrings in the shape of Grindylows dangling from each ear.
“No, sorry, just wondering if he was alright,” Neville explained hastily, suddenly realizing he had been lurking in the doorway staring at Malfoy for far too long. “Is it not a bit cold for him to be barefoot?”
Ellen sighed.
“It is, but he won’t keep any socks on,” she said quietly , shaking her head slightly. “Poor dear, he’s been under there since yesterday.”
Nevile didn’t respond. He didn’t know what to say to that. There was too much about the scene in front of him that he recognized. The hunched over posture. The thin limbs. The cramped-up looking hands.
It hurt more than he thought it would to see Draco Malfoy like that.
“I’ll be going then,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll see you next Saturday.”
“See you,” Ellen said cheerfully, before making her way into the room.
“Now Mr. Malfoy, why don’t you come out from under there?” she said with faux lightness, crouching down to see Malfoy better.
Neville made his way out of the ward in a daze, through the double doors intended to ensure no patients wandered off. Seeing Malfoy had thrown him for one. He had heard, of course, that Malfoy had PCD, there were few of his classmates who didn’t.
Scorpius had mentioned it in passing once.
But that it was bad enough for him to be in St. Mungo’s?
That was news to Neville.
He rounded the corner and barreled straight into someone.
“Professor Longbottom?”
Scorpius Malfoy, neatly dressed in slacks and a peacoat, was looking at him in surprise. His signature pale Malfoy hair was windswept, and he was carrying a large bag under one arm.
“Scorpius,” Neville said in surprise. “Sorry, I was lost in thought.”
Scorpius waved away his apology. His cheeks were flushed red from the biting wind outside and he was wearing gloves.
“How are you?” he asked. “It’s been so long.”
“I’m well thank you, still at Hogwarts,” he said in a daze.
And then, because he still wasn’t particularly tactful even though it had been years, he couldn’t help what he blurted out next.
“I didn’t know you father was in here.”
Scorpius sighed and he ran a hand through his hair, messing it up further. His shoulders slumped slightly and he looked a little caught out, brown eyes darting towards the entrance to the ward only a few meters away.
“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business,” Neville said quickly.
He could have kicked himself.
“It’s alright,” Scorpius said quietly. “It’s not some big secret.”
“I didn’t know things were that bad,” Neville said.
“It’s a recent development,” Scorpius quickly reassured him.
“What happened?” Neville asked.
“I moved out,” Scorpius said with a humorless grin. “Albus and I had been planning to move in together after graduation, we did, a few months later it quickly became clear Dad wasn’t coping alone. At all.”
Scorpius sighed.
“Now he’s here sometimes, home with us others. He usually ends up back here when things get too difficult to manage.”
Neville winced. He could imagine what ‘too difficult to manage’ entailed.
“I would prefer to have him at home,” Scorpius explained hastily, and Neville realized with a jolt that he was embarrassed. “It’s just hard because I’m studying and working and Dad...wanders off a lot. And every time I tell him I could drop out to help him he gets upset at me for even considering it.”
“I’m not judging you,” Neville explained quickly. “My parents live on the ward full time.”
“Since when?” Scorpius asked curiously.
“Since I was a child,” Neville said. “I grew up with my grandmother.”
“How are they?”
Neville could read out the unasked questions behind the query. Did they still have any magic, did they shake all the time or just when they got upset? Did they talk to him, did they recognise him? Did they have the terrifying episodes that usually resulted in people making the decision to move their loved ones permanently into a hospital?
The same questions were whirring around his own brain.
“No better but also not significantly worse,” Neville said wryly. “They’re alive. I can’t ask for more than that.”
Scorpius nodded and Neville could feel an understanding between them.
“Dad should be coming home again in a few days,” Scorpius said quietly. “He’s been doing a bit better again. I can’t stand the thought of him being here on Christmas.”
Neville didn’t know what to say to that. Things must have really gone downhill if spending days curled up under a table without socks on was an improvement.
“I have to go,” Scorpius said awkwardly, shifting the large bag in his arms. “I have an appointment with one of the healers in a few minutes. About Dad’s discharge.”
“Alright,” Neville said. “It was good to see you again. And give my best to Albus.”
“Of course,” Scorpius said. “See you around, Professor.”
“How many times have I told you to call me Neville,” Neville asked.
Scorpius grinned at him crookedly over his shoulder.
But for all the lightness and smiles, Neville could read people well enough not to be fooled. He recognized the tightness around his shoulders. The shadows beneath his eyes. The need to explain himself, as though expecting to be judged.
Neville suddenly reached out and caught his arm.
Scorpius looked at him in surprise.
“If you ever need someone to talk to my door is always open,” Neville said. “Having loved ones with this condition is challenging and I know how it can get to you. You know where my office is. You’re always welcome.”
Scorpius didn’t say anything for a few moments.
Then he suddenly pulled Neville into an unexpected hug. Neville returned it awkwardly. Scorpius was as tall as he was, but it was only then that Neville realized how young he was. And how alone he was.
“Thank you,” Scorpius whispered. “Really.”
“No problem,” Neville responded.
Then Scorpius made his way through the door and Neville was left standing in front of the familiar doors alone. He watched Scorpius make his way into the room he knew contained Draco Malfoy.
Neville turned and walked quietly back towards the hospital entrance.
He knew from Harry that Scorpius hadn’t exactly grown up surrounded by the wealth Draco had. Or much family. With Astoria dead, Narcissa in France and Lucius incarcerated, there had never been much family around for Scorpius. And Neville knew PCD didn’t get that bad overnight. Scorpius had most likely been quietly caring for Malfoy in some capacity for years.
In the stairwell, Neville thought about if there was anything he could do to help. He didn’t know Malfoy, not really. He was someone Neville had seen occasionally at parents’ evenings or graduation ceremonies.
But something about the pitiful figure curled up under a table remained in his mind.
He would wait, he decided. If Scorpius took him up on his spontaneous offer, then he would think more about what he could do.
It was snowing outside and Neville relished in the cold on the bare skin of his face, the watery sunshine fighting its way through the clouds.
He hated how cruel the world could be sometimes.