A Light in the Sky

a light in the sky

--

(dawn)

Neville had known him for more than ten years before he really knew him.

"We're more alike than you think," Harry said once during the war, in a moment of Neville's spilling insecurities, on the Order, on life. Spread out on a dried-up patch of grass, Harry's glasses drooped sullenly down his sweaty nose.

"How so?" Neville's voice was glum with doubt. Harry Potter. Noble and handsome and quick. Neville could not see the lines of parallel. So, Harry told him of prophecies, and in particular, the one that concerned them.

"It could have been you." His eyes were flashing a painful green. That green might have been familiar, Neville thought dimly. He tried to imagine that, the might-have-been memory of a screaming mother and a blast of killing light, but that was a moment too far away from him to truly see. "It could have been you," Harry repeated.

"I wish it had been." Neville sounded defiant, though his voice cracked and choked on the vinegar syllables of his words. He fisted the brittle grass beneath him.

Harry chuckled very quietly, but the way he laughed it might have been the saddest moment the planet had ever observed. "Sometimes," he said very softly, "I wish that too."

Neville watched Harry curiously then. His head cocked to the side. Yes. Yes, after all, perhaps they were alike. There were faint shadows under his eyes, encompassing and weary. World-weary. And world-wary.

In the silence that followed the two boys sat solemnly, watching a starless, unchanging night. Until the edges tinged orange, curling and blooming upward like a flame licking black parchment, crumbling and crumbling and falling to dust.

(being)

The next time Neville visited the ward, he took his mother's hands into his own.

"I'm glad," he said, because he knew she would not understand. "Thank you for not dying." He was, for that moment at least (and there would be other moments when he would not be), grateful that his parents were here, rattled but breathing. It wasn't much better, but maybe it was. Maybe it was better than having nothing to touch but photographs so old, they looked too tired to dance, and occasionally, if the stars aligned, wispy smoke images from trembling wands. Reminders of heartaches, though you'd never really forgotten anyway.

But this—it was something at least. At least when Neville held her hand, he could still feel the warmth of her blood pushing stubbornly through her bluish veins. His blood. At least he had, at home in his secret drawer, one thousand and five hundred Droobles Blowing Gum wrappers safely tucked away just for himself. At least under the close scrutiny of a desiring eye, the imprints of his mother's fingers would appear on those waxy candy wrappers. Thin, winding mazes of existence, and somewhere in those never-ending lines Neville hoped desperately that it told a story of the ingrained and irremovable memory of her only son.

(seeing)

When Harry had been too noble to be in love, Ginny had been selfish enough to be heartbroken. Heartshattered. Neville saw her running out of Grimmauld Place, her pretty face pulled down into a collapsing expression. Neville stood frozen as she walked past him, and he wondered how she could walk with all those tears. How could she see?

"Hey," he blurted awkwardly. He turned slightly, as if to stop her, but she was already moving past him, and the shape of her hands as she clutched her purse made him want to cry. When he looked back at the house, his feet grew cold momentarily. He thought it'd been a reflection of himself at first. The waves of sadness on Harry Potter's face, through the window, were surely identical to his own. More heartaches. Always heartaches.

(feeling)

Neville got home, and he sent Ginny Weasley an anonymous bouquet of flowers, carefully picked and groomed, then sat back down onto his cold squeaky couch with a sigh.

(hearing)

Neville entered the gloomy house with lead feet. He could hear the sound of Harry and Ginny, arguing, as they always did. Their voices were like musical scales, rising and falling in synchronized and harmonized notes.

"Did you send these?" She was waving Neville's flowers in Harry's taut face. One hand on her hip and her hair flying as wildly as the petals of the flowers were, she looked beautiful. "Just answer me, Harry! Did you? Was it you?" Her voice was so pleading....

"I don't know," was Harry's reply. The sentence walked on his thin and stretched lips like tightrope. His eyes were tired but also quietly angry, and the pure green of them was even greener with tones of jealousy. "Why, know someone who would send you gifts, do you?"

Ginny threw the offending bouquet to the floor, where the abused plants finally pressed their cheeks to the old, creaky wooden floor, which smelled wet and mossy, reminders of their once-home. "Does it matter? You can tell me good-bye, for any stupid reason you'd like, but I'm expected to wait around for you?"

"Well, yes," Harry said, acting uncharacteristically bullish. "You love me, Ginny. And you should. Just not right now."

"Not now, not ever, then. There are other men in this world."

Harry seemed to have nothing to say to this.

"I just need to know." When Ginny spoke next her voice was gentle. Neville peered in through the door to find Harry sitting on the bed, with his hands clasped in Ginny's.

"What? What do you need to know?" Harry asked. He sounded nearly tearful. "I'm an open book to you, Ginny. I've only ever wanted to keep you safe. You don't exactly make that easy."

"No." She shook her head vehemently. "You're not. Of course you're not an open book. You're not even a closed book. You don't even have a book written. Don't be so condescending, Harry. Don't treat me like I'm being needy, or stupid. You know, there are some days...some days you sit there so quietly, I wonder if it's because there's nothing in your head, or too much in your head. I wonder so much about you, too much of the time. All of the time, really. Do you understand that?" Her face looked so vibrant, even in this instance of desperation. Especially in this instance.

Before Harry could answer, though Neville doubt he would have, Ginny was speaking again. "I want to know if you still care for me, if what you're doing is just your stupid idea of keeping me protected. I want to know if you meant it when you said we should go our separate ways. And if you did mean it, even if it is for a while...I don't know if I can do that, what you want, because your path has always been mine. I don't see a separate way." She moved, until Neville could not see her from his view. But the silhouette of her on the opposing wall showed her hands thrown up in frustration.

Once again, Harry had nothing to say.

Ginny, disheartened by his reticence, grew calm and quiet and if possible, angrier. "I refuse to wait much longer. So just tell me the truth now." Her voice cracked, cracked mosaic-ally. Harry's hand immediately went to her face, smoothing down the imaginary tears, as if that small motion would have stopped Ginny from leaving him. Neville thought it was a rather unnecessary act, because something told him that Ginny Weasley would have waited for him until all the oceans dried, and then some. Neville secretly thought that he'd never seen two people so in love, but these were thoughts that he did not think others, especially Harry and Ginny, could understand. Not now.

"Yes." Neville sat up straighter from behind the door. Harry was nodding now, albeit reluctantly. "Fine. They were mine. All of them."

Ginny's beam spread slowly, and they must have been like a burst of sunlight through the leaves of green trees. She slowly bent down. She retrieved the flowers once more and hugged them tightly to her chest. There was silence when she gazed at him, and he at her.

When Harry tilted his head to capture Ginny's red lips, Neville turned away and began to leave. He couldn't remember what he had come for.

He found his heart hurting a little as he made his way back down the stairs of Grimmauld Place. It rolled around emptily in his chest, and for a strange split-second he thought that it grew completely silent. But he could not be angry with Harry. Neville knew, that if he had just one lie to tell in this world, he too would have said that those flowers were his, completely his, only his. And Ginny would have smiled for him.

(meeting)

He sent her an arrangement every week after that, and each one was different. Harry never denied that they were from him. Ginny never noticed, nor grew suspicious of the fact that Harry seemed to know so many different kinds of plants, and which ones complimented one another. Neville thought then that ignorance wasn't always a bad thing, even if it hurt one lonely boy in the process. Sometimes Neville passed Ginny Weasley's flat on the way to work, and on occasion he caught her through the window, looking happy as she refilled her vase with water.

And one day, she'd caught him lurking around her house.

"Neville!" She waved from her door.

"Hello," he said as cheerily as he could manage. "How are you?" The words were strange, and the sounds were forced by his tongue. This was unfamiliar territory. Pictures of days of Hogwarts flashed back to him, back when they'd all been still children, tucked away safely in the Gryffindor tower with their Gryffindor crests and it was easy to tell who everyone was, their place in the world. Gryffindor. Neville still remembered the color of her dress for the Yule Ball, for they were now the color of every Christmas, and then all the days in between.

Ginny motioned vaguely. "Fine. As fine as anyone could be in these times, anyway. Why don't you come in? We'll have tea! Oh, Neville, I haven't seen you in so long."

Neville was flustered. He shoved his hand in his pockets. "Oh, I can't, I've got...I've...." He looked at her helplessly. He couldn't, he couldn't, he wouldn't.

"Come on." But he did. Ginny laughed and stepped outside to lead him in. She smelled like roses. The kind that he always made sure were fresh for her.

(decoding)

Neville thought that maybe he should have been a little more grateful that she remembered him again. She called for him often, as often as once a week, because that was the sort of person she was: friendly. They had lunch, or tea, or sometimes they met in the park and Ginny fed the ducks. It was because he listened well. Or at least, because she talked too fast and he thought too slowly. Always, however, these short meetings only left him wanting to decorate his walls with dents.

He thought he would die when he saw her at the ministry's annual Christmas ball. It was usually a small light of joy during these unilluminated times, but tonight it was choking and cruel. Harry looked silly and disheveled in a suit too big for him, but the way she held onto him, he might have been the most dashing man on Earth. Neville felt rather small around them. He asked if he could take a picture of the two, smiling as his camera found the focus. Later, he would put the picture in his drawer along with his wrappers, where Harry and Ginny would forevermore gaze not at the camera, but at each other. Occasionally, picture-Harry woud tweak picture-Ginny's nose.

"Harry thought my hair was a little too frivolous," Ginny laughed to him as Neville ladled her glass of punch. She pointed at her elegant hair-do, and the small tiara that sat on her red head. She tripped over nothing, and quickly grabbed the table of food to break her fall. "Oops. Sorry," she giggled. "I'm afraid I'm a little sloshed."

"He's wrong," Neville said weakly. She smiled at him, though he had a feeling that she'd no idea what he was talking about. "You look like a princess." He sucked in his breath, his mind fizzing with the processing knowledge of what he had just told her. Something must have struck unstintingly honest about the way he had uttered the sentence. Her happy face faded into something that was nearly forlorn.

"Thank you," she said firmly. Politely. Her spine's natural curve straightened as she grew solemn and rigid. Neville fidgeted with his suit, wishing he had said nothing at all.

"You look princely yourself, Neville."

She put her hand on his shoulder in a friendly manner. And just for the sake of formality, he thanked her back. But he was not grateful at all. When she returned to Harry again, her face turned fond and sentimental. Harry pretended to be annoyed while she fretted over his loosening bowtie, but his eyes were transfixed on hers. Neville wished he could decipher their language, the things they said to one another when they locked gazes.

(truth)

One thousand and six hundred wrappers sat in his private drawer now.

(gust of wind)

January's lunch date was one he would always remember. Not that he ever forgot a single meeting. She opened her door with big eyes, big because they were magnified with ugly tears. Neville rushed in and knocked over one of her tables with all its ornaments. He was clumsy in his concern.

"Harry's left again." Simultaneously, Neville cursed him and blessed him. He loathed himself.

"Left?" Neville leaned down to look at Ginny's bent face. "Ginny...?"

Ginny whirled away and dramatically sat down on her striped sofa. Her lips trembled when she spoke. "He, Hermione and my brother are gone to who-knows-where again. Just like after Hogwarts, they're gone again. Leaving all the fighting to us." She looked dazedly at him. "To look for the rest of the bits of Voldemort's soul."

"Oh." He had heard, of course. Little parts of the story, the plan. Neville could not feel his legs as he sat next to Ginny. A part of him, a slightly nasty part that he did not particularly like, wanted to tell Ginny that this was what war was. It was losing those you loved. He wanted to blame her and tell her that it was her own fault for deciding to fall in love with the boy-who-had-to-overthrow-the-dark-lord. He wanted to chide her, scold her, until she would see the error in her ways and ask him for comfort. "He'll be back, I'm sure."

"No!"

Neville gripped the arm of the sofa tightly in surprise at her outburst. There was a contortedly angry expression that she wore now. "I'm through with him. That inconsiderate—that...I'm through," she repeated. She looked to him. "Oh, Neville, you're my friend. Don't ever let me return to him. I'll only hurt myself again. There's an entire world out there, and here I've been all these years. I'm tired of it. Promise you'll stop my madness."

Neville wanted to. It would have been so easy to. His mouth opened to form the easy, single-syllable word of agreement. Of course, he could not.

"You know I can't promise that," he settled on instead.

Ginny was gazing at him intensely now, in a way that made him feel like she'd only just noticed his presence, or the way his eyes were wide and sad and anxious.

"You've always been so good to me," she said in a near-whisper. He almost recoiled when she touched her hand to his. "Why are you so good to me?"

"I'm not," he protested, and he believed it. "I'm just me."

Ginny's eyes up close, Neville realized absentmindedly, were actually shades of brown and sage. This was his last thought before she kissed him, slowly and fully.

(tranquility)

The flowers didn't stop. In fact, they seemed more illustrious than ever, blooming bigger, brighter, filling her house with light. Ginny must have suspected, must have known that even the great Harry Potter could not have managed to find the time nor the thought to send her such frivolities every week without, but she never said a thing.

(things unexplained)

He felt guilty every time they ended up like this, sprawled on her soft sofa. It almost seemed like habit now, feeling her snug in his embrace, though in reality they had hardly been together for three months. It was funny how quickly a person could grow used to having someone. Neville, at the age of twenty-one, was learning these things. He felt like a child. What would Harry have said if he'd known? Neville did not want to think it. Perhaps he would say once more, with an angry quirk to his lips, an ironic twist, that the two of them really did have a lot in common.

"Ah, I've got to go," Neville exclaimed suddenly, looking at his watch.

"What?" Ginny sat up with a happy, sleepy face. "You've still got thirty minutes until the meeting, Neville. Stay. Hold me, it's a cold day."

"I really, really shouldn't." He sighed, one hand automatically reaching toward his hair to ruffle it nervously. "I like to get there early, and I thought I'd pick up some refreshments for everyone at the office today. It's been a long week for all of us."

Ginny seemed, oddly enough, absurdly saddened by this. "You're so dependable." With a loud sigh, she put her hands to her face. "You are wonderful."

Neville disentangled himself from her and fidgeted with his clothes awkwardly, not knowing what to say. He settled on a thank you, though he did not really mean it. Dependable was a nice word. Wonderful was a wonderful word. But these were things still too many steps away from what he wanted to be. He wanted to be horrible and irresponsible, messy and angering and heart-breaking--he wanted to be all of those things all the while being irreplacable and indispensable. Neville glanced at Ginny, whose eyes were now far away. He knew. He knew they were both thinking of Harry.

(afternoon)

There were some uncannily good days, too. Neville liked it when he woke up and the sun was shining high and in his eye, until Ginny's red hair would get in the way. She would say, "Wake up, sleepy head! We're going to the park today." And they would.

She didn't mention Harry at all that day, as they picnicked outdoors in celebration of the first day of spring. He sat next to her in their small patch of greenery. Sometimes he liked to think of it as the last peaceful place on Earth. Theirs. His. War spread, but this he still had. The sun was warm on their backs as Ginny held onto his arm, watching the people in the park.

"Look," she laughed, and following her gaze Neville's eyes fell upon an old woman and an equally ancient man, holding hands as they slumbered side by side on a park bench. Neville smiled instinctively, something warm growing in his chest.

Ginny squeezed his arm. "Think we'll ever end up like that?" Her words surprised him. He looked down at her, and for a second it was as if he truly belonged there, next to her, loving her. It was as if he had never been anywhere else, and there had never been anyone else for her. As if Harry Potter did not exist. As if prophecies had never been uttered. As if a different dark-haired orphan had never wanted such rises to power. As if. Neville felt slightly frightened by how much she made him want to forget.

"Yes," he answered boldly, forcing himself to allow being happy. "That'll be us," he said. "We'll grow old together."

"Mmm," Ginny replied, closing her eyes and kissing him soundly. When they broke off, Ginny rolled her head into his neck, breathing deeply, sensuously. Neville tightened his hold around her.

"You always smell the same way." She lifted her face.

"What do I smell like?"

"Bubble gum," she said.

(tyranny)

On the worst of days, Neville was almost angry at the injustice.

Neville had once witnessed her holding Harry as he cried for his dead, but ennobled parents, forever glorified by their so-called ultimate sacrifice. She had cried with him, her face, if possible, even prettier with the raw woe etched into every freckle of her. She did not cry for Neville. She stared at him guiltily, with sympathetic eyes.

Most of all, he hated himself for thinking these things.

(blink; gone)

Ginny was crying in the middle of the night. The tones of her scratchy voice banged on every wall and window of their home. He thought it'd been an attack at first.

"What? What is it? Have you had a bad dream?" Neville scampered to switch on the light, his hands trembling as they cupped her face.

"I'm so sorry," she cried. "So, so sorry."

Neville blinked. He blinked, as if he should find his own tears soon to follow. They never did. When he shook her lightly, asked her what she meant because he knew what she meant but wanted to be wrong, she only repeated the same words. Sorry. So sorry. But everyone was sorry for Neville.

Ginny touched his hair, and he could not find the strength to swat her away from him.

"Do you love me?" Neville asked suddenly, genuinely curious.

Ginny's sobs quieted, stilled by his blunt question. "I...I don't know. I can't answer that, Neville."

"Then you don't," he said recklessly. "I could have been the boy with the lightning bolt scar. Or a cloud, or a star. Or a bloody constellation. Would you have loved me with all of yourself then?"

"Who said anything about Harry?" Ginny was stunned. He could tell by the sound of her slow voice. He felt guilty for it, but he hadn't the strength to stop himself.

"Of course it's about him. It always is, and it always will be. Harry Potter. Who is that?" He was so very, very angry, for the first time in his life. The breaking of his heart, of everything inside of him was palpable. "He's had it easy. His parents, they're dead and they were wonderful and well right until the end. While mine rot away, tucked away from view for the benefit of everyone, so everyone can slowly, slowly forget that they exist--"

He barely even felt the sting when she slapped him. "Neville." There were lines of anger and shock rippling around the edges of her figure. "When did you become so bitter?" She shook her head with narrowed eyes and said, "You know it's not like you. This isn't about you and Harry, or who you might have been, or who has it easier. It's about me and you." She turned quiet and soft, and touched her hand to Neville's cheek. "You're right. I don't love you. I tried. Yes, I'm a horrible woman, but I'm not going to apologize for not being able to care for you the way I wanted. I'm only sorry if--that I've misled you, deceived you into thinking that I did."

He stilled completely for a moment, before his shoulders drooped. Down, down, down. He had the odd sensation of slipping completely under the scratchy carpet beneath his bare toes. He tried to move, tried feel something else, more anger, more rage, but he was left only with moroseness. He searched for something appropriate to say, but it was like trying to speak in water. Instead he opened his drawer impatiently. Ginny said nothing as a few hundred gum wrappers flew into the air before mournfully descending to the ground. At the bottom was Harry and Ginny's picture. He placed it in her palm.

"Look, for once," he said hoarsely.

She stared with pursed lips. Her eyes bore into the image, where she was still trying to fix Harry's unruly hair. Ginny closed her hand into a fist. She was crying. Crying with relief, with hope, with the knowledge of a revelation. Then Neville knew that she had finally seen what he'd noticed so long ago.

(life)

The wizarding world, as it always had ever since Neville could remember, waged on with its war against evil. Neville found himself focusing all of his efforts and time on the Order now. He tried his best to carry out tasks, to feel useful and needed once more, but everyone already seemed to know what he knew. His place had never been in the fire.

When whispers or rumors of the end came, he could not believe it, nor fathom a world without the eminence of Voldemort and the Boy-Who-Lived.

(end)

Everyone thought it a little odd, though they knew it was just how it had happened. Harry had gone a hero, and returned nothing but an exhausted man. There were not many fanfares. Everyone else was exhausted too. People scrambled and struggled to find their humanity again, when the smoke cleared.

Hogwarts had burned in the process of destroying Lord Voldemort once and for all, and though everyone, especially Harry, knew that sacrifices were inevitable, he cried as if the entire unending sky had fallen. He grieved the castle as he had nothing else, not for any of the countless deaths. Neville thought he might understand. He understood many things nowadays.

When they gathered once more to the field that had once been their beloved school, there were only a million blooming flowers that awaited them.

"Oh." Ginny Weasley's gasp made Neville nearly smile. She touched Harry's shoulder. After a moment: "What kind of flowers are they?" Neville was answering before he knew it.

"Hogwarts. Of course, they're hogwarts." The flowers seemed to spread even wider in the sunlight, if possible, as if knowing that Neville was speaking of them. "The idea was mine, actually, and I planted many of them myself and...." Neville faltered, before abandoning his thoughts altogether. There was nothing he could say.

The three of them were quiet. None of them looked at another. Harry was the first to speak.

"Thank you," he said. He was looking straight at Neville. "Thank you very much."

Neville had never felt more sincerity from a single person.

When he went home, he emptied out his drawer, threw the contents into a bin and took a long walk in the chilly weather, until he smelled like nothing at all but the crisp spring air.

(dusk)

There were still days when he missed her terribly. Holes could be mended, but they never truly faded into the pattern of life. Loneliness could be forgotten, if briefly, but it always returned in the silence of nights. Neville did not know what to do with the way his hands had nothing to hold.

The next time he saw Harry was at his own parents' funerals. They had died within a week of one another. Neville was surprised to find that he did not feel sorrow, nor anger. The two of them sat on the open ground once more, just as they had in the beginning. This time, the grass beneath them was not brown and dead. Everything was beginning to fit in so perfectly.

"I'm sorry," Harry said at long last. His voice was laced mostly with pity. "It must be hard. The both of them gone at once, I mean. And well--I don't know." Harry looked at Neville sheepishly. "You know I'm not good at this sort of thing."

Neville smiled weakly. "I know. I'm not, though. Sorry. So you shouldn't be either. It makes me kind of hopeful, that they went together. Maybe my dad knew, when Mum passed first. Maybe he felt the emptiness of her bed and decided that he wouldn't be left alone. Maybe...."

"Maybe love transcends everything, even the irrevocably damaged mind?"

"Yes." Neville laughed a little. "Maybe they're remembering me now. Maybe they'd never forgotten. I hope that. I want to believe it."

"I believe it."

Harry's round stare was fixed upon his face. Neville did not look at him. "What d'you expect you'll do with yourself now?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. I think I'll quit the office job, though. It's plants I love." He nodded toward a nearby string of trees. "I could tell you the names and defining qualities of every single tree over there. I could go on for hours. You'd cry of boredom."

"Neville Longbottom, herbologist. I like the sound of that." Harry grinned winsomely.

"What about you? What will you do?" Neville found himself honestly curious. Things had changed so much in so little time. There were new lines on Harry's young face. He looked off into the open expanse of ground and sky before them.

"I think I'll take a break. I think I'll travel. See things. Take a break."

"With Ginny?"

"No," he said. "Maybe. I don't know."

"She'll be waiting, you know. If you leave her. Just like she always has."

Harry's serious lips twitched a little at that. "I know." Then there were the moments that followed, during which Harry did not say a word at all. Neville was almost perturbed by how still he could keep, and he suddenly knew what Ginny had meant during that fight of so long ago.

"Are you okay?" Neville ventured, his brows creasing.

Harry looked surprised at his voice. "Yea. I'm alright. Of course." There was relief in his voice that brought relief to Neville. "We can all move on. Move on and on and on. You know?" He smiled. "It's over."

And it really was.