And Even The Hollies Lament

He would die soon. The inevitable was imminent.

For a few reasons, he didn't think about the unlikely way he'd die, that despite the cataclysms of his youth time's simplistic progression was what would kill him. He was too ill and weak to think of that, his mind too eaten away by senility and a lifetime of potion fumes, hexes, curses, and knocks on the head. Besides, it wasn't the sort of thing he'd thought of when he'd been able.

Now, he spent most of his time thinking of her, as he had ever since that first train ride. When his wits were with him well enough, he realized that his memory's accelerating decay was leaving the best for last. Well over a century of remembrances had been hacked away, like some thick fruit's husk, and it was getting to the point that soon he would lose his recollections of those seven years at Hogwarts, those seven years with her.

Now, he simply lay in bed, the ward of a cousin's grandchild. He had had no children of his own. Even for Wizards, the laws of biology are unyielding. Reproduction is an effect, sex is the cause.

Neville Longbottom, Wizard, virgin, approached his death.

Caught up in his past as he was, he kept remembering the reasons for his celibacy. He remembered the countless nights he lay in his bed with a whispered "I love you" in the direction of her dormitory the last thing he'd say each day. Now, though his skin hung wrinkled and spotted from the arms that so long ago had cradled her limp form and carried her to safety, he remembered the way she'd felt as he'd silently sworn that she would always have that space in his arms saved for her.

He had been placed in Gryffindor that first year, with her, wondering all the time why. In the intervening decades, he had eventually learned to recognize the Gryffindor traits in himself. He was loyal, recklessly, obstinately, obsessively loyal. He had chosen to love her, and in that moment, he had chosen to forego the possibility of loving any other. That would be betrayal.

Yet, all along, he had known he had no business loving her, and even in the euphoria of his memories of her could feel the nauseating fear he'd somehow had the temerity that one Christmas to hint that she mattered to him. She was the star student, a merciful angel who'd somehow had the generosity and kindness to notice him, and help him through those seven years of hellish labors. She'd even had the halo that the Muggle artists gave to angels: that thick shimmer of brown hair the blind fools around him had called too bushy and ugly, but that he knew could not be more perfect, for it could not be more hers.

Now his memories started to flit around in time, as he remembered moments here and there. He could see her leaning over his petrified body, her eyes glistening in her child face as she whispered an apology to him. That sliver of him still thinking in the present dismissed her apology, for she had done him no wrong save to be too good for him. He was unworthy of her, and he could neither ask her to demean herself for him nor allow her to feel guilty for her perfection. In his love for her, he happily placed his happiness upon his private altar to her. It was to be his private offering to his private goddess. He did not deserve to be with her, and though he might live his whole life wanting it, he had spent that life sparing her the insult of asking to be with her.

But, his mind moved forward, and in a moment he was living through their graduation again. She was first in the class. He was last. It was predictable. And afterwards, as graduates and their families had milled about, he'd glimpsed her through the crowd, and he'd pushed his way towards her, struggling to get close enough to say good-bye.

And now, he completely forgot where he lay, and his mind in its entirety was at the Hogwarts graduation, and he was reaching out to her and trying to get her to hear him calling out her name, trying to get her attention. In his bed, his chin raised a little as his arm lifted a little above his chest, his body trying so hard to move as his memory said it should.

"Herm..." he croaked.