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Diagon Alley no longer shimmered. It sagged beneath soot and silence, the cobblestones soft with ash, the shopfronts blind with grime. Windows watched like tired eyes, smeared and half-shuttered, too weary to shine. The air smelled faintly of rusted iron and burnt parchment, the scent of a street that had forgotten its name.
At the far end stood The Greenroot , crooked as a broken wand, its doorway swallowed by ivy that grew wild and uninvited. A stubborn patch of color in a city drained of it.
Every morning at six, Neville Longbottom unlocked the door with fingers that no longer shook. The bell above the frame had lost its voice long ago. He hadn’t replaced it. Sound was taxed now, like everything else that made life bearable.
Inside, the light filtered through dust like it was afraid to touch anything. Rows of half-wilted herbs slumped in cracked clay pots. Bottles of bitter liquid lined the shelves, unlabeled and uncertain. He sold what he could, be it shriveled mandrake root, bruised valerian, or potions that barely worked.
He didn’t run the shop out of pride. Only persistence. Only memory. Only the quiet need to keep something alive.
Every day, he watered plants. Not many had survived after the Dark Lord had taken over, especially not when they were burning everything in sight. But a few plants had managed to somehow survive. Demon Bamboo, Poisonous Buxus, and Heart's Groundberry, for example. They were hardy plants that Neville had somehow managed to breed into more…helpful plants.
Poisonous Bruxus, for example, reacted horribly to magic used directly on it. Groundberry was so filling you couldn’t eat for days after it, and Demon Bamboo was so hardy, even a Confringo couldn’t break through it.
Perfect plants for anyone trying to make a quick getaway from Diagon Alley. Not that Neville himself would even try.
“Hello, welcome to Greenroot,” Neville called, his voice hoarse but warm as he misted the petals of a faintly glowing pink plant on the counter. Its leaves curled inward like shy hands, catching the drops as if they were precious.
He didn’t even get the chance to turn.
Fingers hooked into the collar of his robes, yanking him forward with such force that his feet scraped against the floorboards. Neville slammed into the counter, breath stolen from his lungs.
“Are you the one?” a voice hissed, low, panicked, and dangerously unhinged.
“What—what are you—?” Neville choked out, gripping the stranger’s wrists. They were bone-thin but strong, shaking him with the kind of desperation that came from too many sleepless nights. Neville knew it well, had seen it on Hermione’s face before she had disappeared.
“The one who makes the potions!” the person snapped. Their face was too close, a hood shadowing their eyes, with their jaw clenched like a trap ready to spring.
Neville stilled, heart thudding. He gave a single, cautious nod.
Half of him was scared. The other half? Bone-tired and irritated. He’d been manhandled before. Desperate people poured through the crooked door of his little shop all the time, faces sunken, nerves frayed raw by fear and hunger.
Nobody cared that his potions were weak, unstable, sometimes even dangerous. Not anymore. Not in this world. Not when Muggleborns were dragged into the streets for execution while the rest of them stood by, pretending they couldn’t hear the screaming. They just wanted something—anything—to make it stop.
And he was the only one foolish enough to still be giving it to them.
“Amortentia!” The person threw Neville back. “I need Amortentia!”
“That’s a high-level potion, I don’t offer it.”
“You will.” The voice cracked like a whip across the dusty shop. A silver badge hit the counter with a metallic clack, the symbol catching the dim light—twisted vines, a serpent, a wand broken clean through. Neville froze. That symbol was enough to make his toes curl with quiet, crawling dread.
The badge of the Darkguard.
“You will, or I’ll report you.”
It was instinct—pure and practiced. In one breathless motion, Neville had his wand out, pressed tight to the stranger’s throat. He’d had a lot of practice since Harry died. He couldn’t afford to be merciful all the time, not anymore.
His voice dropped, low and rough, like coals shifting in a dying fire.
“What brings a guard to my shop?”
The figure flinched but didn’t back away. Beneath the hood, wide brown eyes stared into his. Not cruel, but desperate. Terrified. Younger than he expected. Maybe twenty, maybe less. Their chest heaved like they’d run here.
“I need it,” they rasped. “Please. —I’ll even swear an oath. I’m not here to arrest anyone. I just… I need the potion.”
Neville didn’t lower his wand. Not yet. The silence between them cracked and stretched like a fault line. He could hear the soft drip of water from the leaky pipe above the small, hidden mandrake rack. His plants quivered slightly, sensing tension in the room.
An oath? That was no small thing. Not these days.
He glanced down at the badge again. The silver gleamed like a knife in the dark.
“I should turn you in,” he muttered. “I should call them and tell them one of their own is sniffing around the Greenroot.”
“But you won’t,” the guard whispered. “Because you still remember what it feels like to want to live.”
Neville stared.
They weren’t wrong.
With a sigh that felt like it came from somewhere deeper than his lungs, Neville lowered the wand.
“Fine,” he said. “But you’ll take the oath now. No tricks, no watching me brew it, and if this leads to even one of your kind kicking down my door—I swear, you won’t live to regret it.”
They nodded, shaky but sincere. “Deal.”
Neville turned away, heading toward the backroom where the cauldron sat cold and waiting. His fingers trembled, just slightly. He told himself it was from adrenaline.
And yet, a part of him still hoped that maybe, just maybe, helping this one would be different.
That night, after his magic had settled, Neville got to brewing.
The shop was quiet. Outside, the streets groaned under the weight of curfew and fear, and the flickering candles inside Greenroot painted gold over the battered walls and tired wood. Neville stood alone by the cauldron, sleeves rolled up, fingers stained with crushed rosehips and dried hellebore.
He had brewed Amortentia once before.
Not for a grade, not even officially. It was hidden work, done under an alcove deep within the bowels of the old Potions classroom. The space was cramped and warm, tucked behind tall cabinets of unlabeled ingredients. A place for secrets. A place for second chances.
Slughorn had been waiting there, his pudgy hands folded neatly over a copper brewing basin.
“I need to prove I can do it,” Neville had said back then. “Just one advanced potion. One. For the recommendation.”
Slughorn had chuckled, his voice rich, like plums soaked in whiskey.
“Dear boy,” he’d said, eyes twinkling with the weight of decades, “Amortentia isn’t about technique. Oh, it matters, of course. Stirring clockwise, timing the rose thorns, letting it breathe before the final whisper of peppermint. But what it really needs... is you. Your thoughts. Your longings. Your regrets. It’s an emotional brew. A mirror, not a machine.”
Neville hadn’t understood his words, not until the war had fully broken out.
“Yours will smell like what you need. That’s the trick. You can’t lie to it.” He muttered to himself, slowly pouring the crushed ingredients in, letting the rose thorns soak in and slowly fall apart. The steam rose, and he let it touch his face. It smelled different now—bitter ginger, burnt oak, and something almost like regret. He didn’t mind it, though.
Hours later, the potion was done, and the man was in front of him. Neville held out the vial with steady hands, though his heart was anything but.
The potion shimmered faintly in the dim light, soft pinks and smoky grays folding over each other like breath on glass. The stranger, still cloaked in ash and desperation, stared at it with wide, feverish eyes.
“Take it,” Neville said. “It won’t last long. You’ve got ten minutes, maybe.”
“Is it—” the stranger’s voice cracked. “Will it work?”
“It’ll do what it’s meant to,” Neville replied quietly. “But that doesn’t always mean what you want it to. The person will be infatuated for ten minutes.”
They took the vial with shaking fingers, cradling it like something holy. Neville saw the hunger there, not just for love, but for relief. For some flicker of feeling that wasn’t terror or rage. They uncorked it.
“Wait—” Neville stepped forward, alarm blooming in his chest. “You didn’t say who it was for. I need to record it.”
Too late.
The vial was downed in one gulp. The stranger swayed, hand clenching around the empty glass as their pupils blew wide and they dropped to their knees. Their breath hitched. Their lips moved without sound. Neville could only watch as tears poured, silent and unrelenting, down their face.
“I remember,” they whispered, voice paper-thin. “I remember her— I forgot her face, I forgot her name—”
Neville's stomach dropped.
“I think you should sit down,” Neville tried to reach out, but the man just continued to laugh, his eyes bright.
The potion shouldn’t have worked like this.
“They made me forget her! But I know that perfume anywhere! The books were right!” The man screamed. Neville cursed, wand out. With a wave, anything incriminating was stuffed away, just in case. “My Alia, I miss you!”
Neville watched as they turned and ran out of his shop, laughing and screaming a name Neville didn’t know.
Crack.
The curse hit him square in the chest. A red bolt from the shadows. One of the guards. They didn’t ask questions anymore. They didn’t give warnings.
The man hit the ground with a wet sound and didn’t move.
Neville stood frozen behind the shop glass, hand still outstretched. The vial sat useless on the floor, glinting in the gutter where it had fallen from the man’s grip.
The guard walked up slowly, face unreadable, and dragged the body away like he was nothing more than another curfew corpse.
Neville didn’t let himself breathe. He just slowly moved on, shutting the door like he hadn’t just seen a man die ten feet from his shop. He slid down the door.
“Sometimes I wish I had a different life.” Neville laughed bitterly. Didn’t everyone wish that?
After Neville had finally gotten a few hours of broken, dreamless sleep, he opened the shop again. No jingle alerted Neville of the person sweeping through his shop like a storm.
“It’s you, right?” the voice rasped, hoarse and sharp.
“Pardon?”
The figure yanked her hood down in one swift motion. Shadows clung to the hollows of her cheeks. Hair limp, eyes dark. Pansy Parkinson. Gaunt and angry, like she'd smoked sorrow instead of cigarettes.
“I heard Henry died,” she said, each word brittle as glass. “After drinking your potion.”
“He told, did he?”
“I’m the one who sent him your way.”
Neville didn’t blink. “Funny, isn’t it?” he said softly. “I couldn’t brew a decent Pepper-Up to save my life, but give me a memory of love and I can bottle it.”
“Make me some.”
Neville raised an eyebrow, finally meeting her eyes. “I’ll need an oath.”
“I’ll give you whatever oath you want if it means I get to remember what it felt like to be kissed without fear, to be touched without it meaning ownership. If it means that for even a minute, I can feel something that isn’t disgust or grief.” A pause. “I’ll gladly embrace death for that.”
“You might,” Neville said. “Curfew’s tighter than ever. The patrols shoot on sight now. You’ve got to be willing to hide that high in your bones.”
Pansy leaned closer, eyes flaring. “I am. I’m already half-dead. The Ministry took my family. My friends. The Prophet calls me traitor scum. I’m sick of surviving like this, sick of scraping crumbs off a broken street.”
Neville didn’t speak for a moment. Just nodded, slowly, as he reached behind the counter and drew his wand.
“Then give me your oath, Parkinson,” he said. “And I’ll give you back your heart.”
As the magic started, Neville couldn’t help but wonder who might have been next to visit his shop.