Rating:
PG-13
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Harry Potter Neville Longbottom
Genres:
Drama Slash
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 04/23/2005
Updated: 04/23/2005
Words: 1,712
Chapters: 1
Hits: 273

Happiness

Abaddon

Story Summary:
She's not a girl who misses much. [Alice's perspective, with a hint of Harry/Neville.]

Posted:
04/23/2005
Hits:
273

The floor.

The floor is messy.

Not now, perhaps, all spick and span and polish and scratched and faded and old, but Alice knows. Alice knows these things; she is wife and mother and woman, careful and cautious, considerate of her son. The walls are clean and the floors are easy to cross, but there are still doors, handles, cupboards; too many sharp edges and not enough thought. Neville is her pride and joy, a squirming bundle of life who insists on clambering into as many dangers as is possible, and who always must be looked out for and protected. Not coddled, but she is an Auror and risk management in the home is a responsibility she tackles with the same thin-lipped rigour that she does in the world out there.

The building is unfamiliar and the people are strange, but Alice wanders the corridors, always searching, always cleaning, for there is an empty sweet wrapper, and there is a discarded drink carton; there is some paper, there is some cardboard, there is some lint. All must be collected, whether she has to stand on chairs and comb her hand across shelving or hunker down on the floor to sweep her arm is no matter. She cannot rearrange all the furniture, she cannot change the world, but she can clean as she always does and always will and do what she can to reduce the chances of Neville slipping or tripping or sticking his fingers in something that is not exactly suitable for a toddler.

As she cleans, people attempt to speak to her, but Alice cannot, will not hear them. All that matters is her cleaning, and her son, and even if he is in the next room over, always the next room over, the place must be fit for him to live in.

At first, the people try to dissuade her from her task, but Alice is of sterner stuff and stronger stock, and will not be so easily shunted aside. When the floors are cleaned and the cupboards swept, she starts to dig up the tile with her fingernails, clawing at the walls, making them bloody and ragged for there must be something underneath, there must be, she was cleaning, and everything has to be perfect.

After a week of that, she begins to find wrappers and rubbish strewn lightly across the floor, and removes them with bandaged hands. It's almost as if she is being given something to do, but that makes no sense.

She keeps being put in a room with a man who reads the paper, but he doesn't know where any of the mess is, and so she ignores him.

*

Alice can't quite tell the time. She knows that she wakes sometimes, and it's dark, and she's frightened, and she can remember pain and horror and a woman who had long black hair and was more handsome than beautiful. Those times she cries out and wails and hits herself with her hands because she can't find her baby boy, her darling Neville, and she can't protect him or take care of him or steer him past sharp edges and she doesn't know what to do.

Other people rush into the room then, and they hold her down and stop her from hurting herself, and they pour a potion down her throat and she settles into sleep.

When she wakes up, there is lots of rubbish to clean, and calmed by this, she is happy.

Years seem to pass, which isn't right, because she doesn't know where her son is, and he must still be a baby. When she looks in the mirror, that doesn't seem right either, but then she finds something to pick up and all is good again. The man reading the paper ignores her, and she continues to ignore him. Sometimes a boy visits her and holds her hand. Alice makes small noises of frustration and gets agitated because he is getting in the way of her cleaning. He says his name is Neville, the same as her son, and he almost could be her son, except that her Neville is a baby, or a toddler, or a child far younger than this boy who becomes a young man before her eyes.

She knows her Neville is her Neville, and that he still needs his mother; it's why she was cleaning the day before she came here, or on the day she came here, wherever here is.

The boy doesn't talk a lot, but he does look at her with a yearning that makes Alice uncomfortable. She wants to hug him, because he looks so sad, and wonders where his mother is. But he is interrupting her cleaning, and her son must come first, so she pulls a discarded wrapper from her pocket and gives it to him. It should give him something to do besides look at her like that, fulfil some use, and allows her to discard the rubbish. To remove it, he might even go away.

He does.

Alice keeps cleaning.

*

Many nights later, and not one night after all, Alice finds she has another visitor. Another boy, young man really, with messy hair and green eyes and spectacles that makes her think of the Potters, sweet and strong and oh so brave are they, fighting Voldemort and risking their family when their family is all they have. It's what she and Frank are doing, and Frank's mother has simply not been able to stop talking about it, but she and Frank are Aurors, they are trained and bravery is simply another word for work.

The young man sits on the edge of her bed and doesn't look at her. She's learned that sometimes it's better to just sit there and look at the wall and after a while her visitors go away. Her agitation seems just to encourage them to stay, which is not what she wants, not at all.

This young man (not the other young man who visits her at least once a month and makes sure she has clean clothes and helps her eat and takes her rubbish away) very carefully doesn't look at her, like he's embarrassed, and unfortunately doesn't leave. He starts to speak, though, words tumbling from his mouth one after the other, getting faster and faster, and he calls himself 'Harry', son of Lily and James, and he claims to be in love with her son. He develops a whole narrative in which he has grown up with her son, gone to school with her son, and now stands on the edge of asking him out.

He doesn't know what to do, and it all comes down to the simple fact that Neville misses his mum.

The idea is preposterous, and silly, and she has far better things to do, so she thrashes about a bit on her bed and wails (all of which seem perfectly normal) and he goes away and does not come back.

In between cleaning, she finds she sometimes misses his stories.

*

The other boy (the one with pudding bowl hair and a vaguely stout frame and the sad, loving gaze, the one who claims to be her son and always cleans her up when she dirties herself, and he could never be her son because there are some things sons shouldn't have to do for their mothers and that is one of them) arrives at some time which is later, and tells her in a halting voice that he is getting married.

Alice recoils at the news. She isn't sure why he is telling her this, why she has to know, but he has been good to her, better than a stranger should be (what with the state of the world these days, as Frank's mother would say, and shake her head because there was nothing of which that woman didn't disapprove.) Because he is kind, and gentle, and she would like her son to grow up like him, she holds herself and listens as he keeps talking.

Bit by bit, he tells the story, and she realises it the story of the other young man as well, and it is a story she wants to believe. It is a story of loss, and love, and comfort and family, and although this is not her son, not her Neville, it could be, and she hasn't seen her Neville in what seems like forever. He could be getting married one day to someone who loves him and what will she say then?

This is the son she lost, or never had, and she wants him to be happy.

She keens out a low sympathetic note and tries to brush her head against his shoulder, but everything seems cloudy and difficult. Neville - and it's easy to call him that in her head now, it suits, and it's good to have a son, even if only for a time - watches her as she rises to her feet, and Alice wants to tell this serious young man, burdened with all the cares a young man should never have to deal with, that he can be happy, that she is grateful, that she misses her son, that I love you, Neville, or I'm proud of you, my dear, all the ways she would and should say to her boy, but can't, and the tears run down her cheeks before this Neville retrieves a hanky from his pocket and wipes her face carefully, telling her 'you shouldn't cry, Mum, it makes your eyes look all puffy', and in that moment, he is her son and she his mother and Alice has a family again, and has not failed them.

She tries to say what she feels, but only one avenue of communication is open to her. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a wrapper and curls her fingers around it. When she holds her fist out, opening out her fingers with a slow kind of reverence, trying to indicate all the things she needs to express, she watches Neville's face fall and he manages a small, sad smile as he kisses her on the cheek.

As he always has, he takes the wrapper and goes away.