Chapter Text
Neville halted halfway up the stone steps leading into Saint Mungo’s Hospital, the cold wind lifting the hem of his coat as if urging him onward. He tightened his grip on the bouquet of soft yellow lilacs he held. The petals trembled in the draft, and he realized someone was standing in his path.
Harry Potter.
He stood just a few steps above Neville, hands shoved in the pockets of his jumper, hair looking even more windblown than usual. For a second Neville thought he had simply run into him by chance, but Harry’s expression was too deliberate for that.
They exchanged their greetings. Neville tried not to sound as startled as he felt.
“So, what are you doing here?”
Neville shifted his flowers to one hand and rubbed his palm against the leg of his trousers. He tried to force light humor into his voice as he said “I mean, it is good to see you but…you look entirely too healthy for someone to have successfully dragged you back to the hospital. ”
Harry glanced down towards the steps, then lifted his gaze again with the same quiet resolve Neville had seen a few too many times during their years at Hogwarts to not recognize.
“I’m actually here to meet up with you,” Harry admitted. “I know you come to see your parents every Sunday at this time. I wanted to join you this afternoon.”
Neville felt the breath punch out of him.
“Join me? But… why?”
Harry exhaled slowly. His fingers tightened around the strap of the old satchel he carried. “I was cleaning out my parents’ cottage. Sirius and Remus had boxed up a lot of their letters years ago. I started going through them yesterday.”
Neville nodded, unsure where this was going.
Harry swallowed. “Your mum was my godmother.”
The wind kept blowing. Neville felt it ripple across his cheeks. He wished it would stop already, just like the thumping of his heart in his chest.
He stared at Harry, searching his face for any signs that this was some sort of joke, but Harry never joked about these kinds of things did he?
“Oh,” Neville said softly. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “It was in one of the last letters she ever wrote. She talked about how excited she was to meet me. Said she would make sure I didn’t grow up too much like my father.” He huffed, almost a laugh, except it fell a bit too flat for that.
Neville’s eyes turned sad. “There isn’t much left of them, Harry.”
Harry’s eyes softened with the same weight. “There isn’t much left of my parents either Nev,” he said.
Neville nodded. He did not trust himself to say more without his voice breaking.
The two walked inside.
The lobby of Saint Mungo’s smelled faintly of sterilization charms and mint tea. The walls had been repainted since the war, a lighter shade of green that almost made the place look cheerful. The nurse behind the counter greeted Neville like an old friend, a warm smile lifting her round cheeks.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Longbottom,” she said. “Here to see your parents?”
“Yes. And… I have someone with me today.” Neville gestured slightly toward Harry.
The nurse’s eyes widened in pleasant surprise. “Mr. Potter. Welcome. Third floor, as always.”
Harry gave a small nod of thanks, and the two of them took the lift up. Its gears rattled in a way Neville suspected was not entirely intentional, but by now he found the sound comforting. The lift chimed softly as they reached the familiar hallway of the Janus Thickey Ward.
Neville stepped inside the room first.
His mother sat in her rocking chair, wrapped in her yellow sundress. He had bought it for her last spring. The fabric was fading slightly, but she looked peaceful in it. She rocked slowly, humming to the baby doll she cradled in her arms. Brushing an imaginary curl from its imaginary forehead.
Her eyes stared past the room, unfocused yet still so gentle.
Neville heard Harry’s breath catch just slightly, before he smiled. It was not a pitying smile. Something tense uncoiled in his chest.
Across the room, Neville’s father sat hunched over a chessboard, mid game with no opponent. His old quidditch shirt hung loosely on his thin frame. One of the pieces hovered above the board in his trembling hand, frozen in the same eternal hesitation it had been in for years.
Harry stepped toward him. “Hello, Mr. Longbottom,” he said. “The Ballycastle Bats have a new Keeper. Absolute disaster, if you ask me. Ron has not stopped ranting about it.” He chuckled, even though Mr. Longbottom did not look up.
Harry kept talking anyway.
For the next hour they spoke to Neville’s parents together. Neville introduced Harry as if his parents could truly understand. Harry talked about his friends, and Neville talked about herbology. Harry laughed quietly, at self disparaging jokes that got no response, and made no comment when Neville’s mother suddenly switched songs.
After a while, Neville watched Harry with a familiar warmth born from kinship.
In hindsight Neville did not know why it surprised him. Harry’s best side always came out when he was interacting with the most vulnerable members of society. Plus the war had forced both of them to see things no one should ever see. Compared to that, this room was almost peaceful.
Neville liked to think his parents were at peace. It made it easier.
The words rose in his throat before he fully understood why. Maybe it was because it was Harry. Harry never ran away from hard truths. Harry never looked away from pain. Not when you needed him too.
“The healers asked me if I wanted to put them to sleep again,” Neville whispered.
“...I said yes this time.”
Harry turned his full attention onto him. Clearly listening.
Neville felt his throat tighten.
“I still haven't decided on a date,” Neville said.
“I just… I do not know. You know my Gran passed a few months ago. And I thought about what would happen to them if anything ever happened to me.” His fingers trembled as he rubbed at his eyes. “They would spend the rest of their days in this room. And no one would come visit them.”
Harry looked down. Neville could see that quiet understanding settle into his friend’s features like the last light of a sunset.
“I thought maybe now was a good time to finally let them go,” Neville finished.
Harry politely looked away as Neville rubbed at his eyes.
For a moment there was only a gentle, companionable silence between them. Neville kept his eyes on the edge of his father’s chessboard while Harry watched a dust mote drift lazily through a beam of afternoon sun.
Then Harry finally spoke.
“Ron and Hermione told me they were getting married last week.”
Neville looked up at him immediately. Harry was staring down at his shoes from where he sat beside him, shoulders slightly hunched, the way someone sits after hearing something that should make them happy but instead makes something inside them fold in on itself.
Neville cleared his throat. “Ginny and you…”
He did not finish the question.
“Broke up.” Harry’s voice was curt.
Neville did not ask for clarification. And he was grateful Harry did not look at him and ask a similar question about Neville’s own abysmal love life.
If Neville never again had to think about that disastrous blind date last week where he accidentally made some poor girl cry by mentioning that no one had ever told him they loved him during his childhood, it would still be too soon.
He hadn’t even meant anything by it honestly. It had just accidentally slipped out with the casual flow of conversation, but his date had taken it as some form of tragic confession. The evening had ended with her blotting mascara from her chin while Neville sat there, wishing desperately he could apparate out of his own skin.
He understood, truly. Ron, Hermione, Ginny. They had all survived the war like Harry and Neville, but before that, they had been normal. They had grown up with parents who hugged them without hesitation. They had laughed in kitchens that smelled of dinner and warmth, learning what love looked like under the comfort of parents that were alive and whole.
Neville had had his grandmother.
He did love her, in his own way. It was the same complicated kind of way a greenhouse plant grows toward the sun even when the sun itself is harsh.
Grief had made his grandmother emotionally unavailable on her best days. On her worst days, Neville could still remember the way her face twisted whenever she looked at him too long. How she would say, “you look so much like your father”, then fall into a brittle silence for the rest of the week, as if just looking at him physically pained her.
Harry, Neville knew, had not even had the harshness of the sun.
Neville stood abruptly from his chair. The soft scrape of wood against tile. He cleared his throat again, forcing his voice into something steady. He said his farewells to his parents. Harry chimed in with a polite goodbye of his own. Neville waited a heartbeat longer than necessary for a response he knew would not come, then turned and forced his mouth into a strained smile.
“Come on then,” he said. “Let’s get going. There is a great pub in the Muggle world I like to visit after these meetings.”
Harry smiled. It was small but sincere. “That sounds nice.”
They signed out with the nurse, who gave Neville her usual sympathetic squeeze on the hand. The two of them stepped outside into the crisp air, walked a block from Saint Mungo’s, and were just about to step through the brick archway leading into Diagon Alley when it happened.
A massive explosion ripped through the street.
The ground shook beneath their feet, the force of it knocking Neville sideways and causing Harry to slam a hand against the wall to steady himself. Windows rattled. Birds scattered. For a full second, everything blurred together in smoke and sound.
Neville blinked hard, coughing against the sudden sting in the air. Harry’s eyes were already scanning the street.
“You alright?” Harry asked tightly.
“Fine,” Neville said, though his ears were still ringing.
They exchanged a glance. A single silent nod passed between them.
And then, like the Gryffindors they were, they ran straight toward the fire.
As Neville sprinted, he had the sudden, absurd realization that at least seventy percent of the problems in his life were entirely his own fault. He kept doing things like this, and he was old enough now that it was kind of pathetic if he just kept blaming it on Harry Potter’s chaotic luck by association.
They skidded to a halt in front of Gringotts.
People were screaming and rushing away from the bank. Half the marble facade had collapsed inward, and the other half burned fiercely. Goblins shouted orders in rapid, furious bursts. Parents pulled children behind them. Smoke billowed from the front steps like a living creature.
Above the chaos, one single cloaked figure hovered on a broom. The air shimmered around him with the force of a shielding charm as witches and wizards hurled spells upward in futile blows. The figure didn’t seem to care. He simply raised one gauntleted hand high above his head.
A deep metallic gleam caught the light.
“Is he holding something?” Harry shouted to Neville over the din of the crowd.
“I can’t tell!” Neville yelled back, already squinting hard.
Then he saw it.
On the back of the gauntlet, carved in thin golden lines, was a symbol so notorious that Neville’s blood instantly ran cold.
The symbol of the Deathly Hallows.
The cloaked figure’s voice boomed across the square.
“All shall bow before the glory of Death once more!”
He followed the declaration with a hideous, distorted laugh.
Neville had just enough time to shout Harry’s name. He whipped around and dove toward him, shoving both of them onto the ground. He felt the impact jar through his shoulders, felt Harry’s breath leave him in a choked grunt as they hit the cobblestones.
A pulse of magical energy exploded outward from the gauntlet. It rippled across the square, swallowing everything in its path.
~
How curious…
A child of Cadmus, and another of Ignotus.
To think the Peverell blood endures, after all these centuries.
Yes… I see it now. I shall send you there.
The most amusing of all timelines.
For my most delightful of all playthings.