1001 Enchanting Housekeeping Tips for Frugal Witches, (c)1894

Author’s Notes: Written for McKay’s Candy is Dandy, Round 3 Challenge. The prompt was “Neville & Fizzing Whizbees”. Thanks to Innerslytherin for beta and hand-holding. Any mistakes left are mine.

After Bellatrix, but before St Mungo's, Neville's mum lived at home. Neville only knew this because the whole family talked about the "Whizbees" incident in such hushed, scandalized tones. He couldn't remember it, or his mum ever having lived with them.

As it was told to him, over and over, Alice's decimated mind would still allow her to do simple chores. If a rag was put in her hand, she could dust; if a box of buttons laid in her lap, they would eventually be sorted. The one caretaking she could still perform on her child happened at bath-time. Gran would fill the tub with a few inches of water - not enough for him to drown in - and Neville would splash his mum and play with his dozens of floating toys and generally become wet enough to be declared clean. Alice could still wash her baby, even if he was a toddler of almost two.

One evening, Neville's laughter rose to the level of shrieks, and Gran found him bobbling atop a churning spout of water, orange and sticky and laughing like he hadn't since that night and never would again. Alice was surrounded by dozens of Fizzing Whizbee wrappers, smiling vacantly as the boy kicked and wiggled, caught by his grandmother's quick wand before he could topple off the roiling water column onto the hard bathroom tiles.

That's when they knew - Alice needed full-time care. In a few months, she couldn't even remember what a button was, let alone sort one from another. Neville eventually came to believe the wrappers she pressed into his hand were just wrappers and not a reminder: Remember when I bathed you, son? Remember when I loved you?

The first time Neville caught Luna dropping a strange sphere into Franklin's bath, he shouted and held the boy levitated over the basin of churning water.

"Neville Harfang Longbottom, what on earth are you doing?!" Luna plucked the child out of the air and gently laid him in the bathwater. The boy giggled and kicked, obviously tickled by the bubbles popping all around him.

"Is that a Fizzing Whizbee? Isn't it dangerous?" He was concentrating all his will on not snatching the boy up and running to the Floo to call St Mungo's. Luna was here. Luna was present. She was not his mum, who had nearly killed him with her fondness for sweets and a misguided attempt to share them with him.

Neville had been pudgy when he was younger because he loved candy so much - his one connection to Alice Longbottom was her empty wrappers and packets. He'd kept them all in a box under his bed. All but the tissues for the sweet that sent her away from him for good.

Luna's silvery eyes regarded him strangely. Everyone had married too soon after the war, and Neville, especially, was as equally unknown to her as he was known. Five years together and she was still chipping away at his shy solitude. This felt like a knowing moment to her. "No," she said slowly, drawing out the 'oh'. "It's an old witch's trick. My mother used to do it with me. I'm just glad the Whizbee makers figured out that it would be easier to sell unflavoured ones rather than force mothers to spell away the sugars and dyes. Look-"

Franklin laughed and burbled, bubbles of spittle joining the watery ones racing up from beneath him in the basin. "It helps get him cleaner after he's been very messy." Luna ran her finger down the boy's cheek tenderly, making a trail in the jam he'd had on his bread for lunch. "And most babies like it - don't you, Franklin?" Luna always spoke to their boy with complete seriousness, her tones tender with love.

Neville muttered a faint "all right" and put his fingers in the water to test it for himself. Slowly, quietly, he told her the entire story of the last time he lived with his mum and Luna knew and was pleased to have yet another piece of her husband's puzzle.

The next time Alice pressed Fizzing Whizbee wrappers into this hand, Neville laughed like he hadn't in twenty years. Like he never would again. "I remember, Mum. I remember."