Hard

She died.

She had an aneurysm, and she died.

After all she had been through -

There was nothing they could have done. It was just him and Dad and Grandmother now, though Dad didn't know it. The nurse said he had looked a bit lost for a couple of days, then he was just the same.

Did you know that an aneurysm is when you get a weakness in the wall of one of the arteries in the brain and it bursts? The pressure is what kills you - it damages the brain.

Neville missed the gum wrappers most of all. They had been ever so slightly sticky sometimes, at others slightly powdery from the dust that came from the machines, and always brightly coloured and happy things even if his mother wasn't. A happy thing. Or maybe she was. He didn't know. Nobody knew what was going on in her pretty little empty head (or at least Neville thought she was pretty, and his opinion was the only one that mattered really.)

Yet, somehow, day to day life was difficult after she'd died. It wasn't as though he'd relied on her, or had seen her that often, or that she'd been there to wipe up his tears when Uncle Algie did something especially painful.

But... well.

He felt so disconnected right now; nothing much mattered, really. He ate mechanically and went robotically to lessons with the intent of listening, but didn't. If he was asked a question he answered, but only with short and insignificant words, enough to satisfy then be left alone.

Neville thought his mother had loved him. But he wasn't sure.

It was hard to tie up his shoelaces, he realised as he bent over the edge of his bed, plump face slightly pink from scrubbing, even though it hadn't been his mother who taught them to tie them. Nonetheless it sort of felt like she had, because that was what mothers did, right? Not that he'd know. The sunlight streamed in through the curtains Dean Thomas had flung open that morning, playing with dust particles in the air like gold powder, strangely incongruous. Surely it should not be sunny on a day like this?

Don't think of the thick red blood oozing almost exquisitely along the creases of her brain, don't handle the wrinkled rat brains in Potions and trail your fingers across them and think ah, yes, this is where it happened, this is where the pressure grew to be too much and her mind - what was left of it - was destroyed with 5cc of O-neg. This is a deeper sort of thought than Neville knows is expected of him, by all the people who see his round, chubby face and hear his stammer when Snape catches him lingering over the brains. But do they know what it is like to lose your mother so young, even if in truth you lost her before you ever knew her as more than the face that sang you to sleep and the breast that fed you warm creamy milk?

Professor McGonagall - smart in her bottle-green robes, tall and strangely motherly that day, had ushered him with silent menace it seemed to Professor Dumbledore's office the week before where Neville had climbed the swivelling stairs and stood politely until his knees gave way on the carpet in front of that desk between all the silver gizmos and gadgets. And then he had bawled like a baby, while the old man and the old woman, neither with children of their own or, presumably, parents of their own now, tried ineffectually to comfort him. As soon as he had got away from their solicitousness - not so long ago he would have beamed to have so much attention all to himself - Neville ran away to the greenhouses and hid in the most dangerous place he could reach as a sixth year, the plants somehow sensing his distress and leaving him alone rather than trying to eat him like they usually did. Professor Sprout found him there later, and while her face with lined with sorrow and pity all she did was hand him a trowel and a pair of gloves and directed him to the nearest planting tray.

So soft the soil between his fingertips, brushing past in tiny particles. Neville planted and planted for two hours with the little round witch he had come to love until he remembered that earth very like this was going to be burying his mother before long. Then he made his stammered excuses and left, not sure where he would go because surely everyone knew by now and he didn't need to face anything from the Slytherins, who had no respect for anyone's grief, even their own.

Later, Harry found him down a slope out of sight just outside the Forbidden Forest, and sat down next to him in silence, doing nothing more than hand Neville a cloak to wrap around his shoulders against the cold. Neville took it gratefully, and Harry gave him a little shrug, and they watched the moon rise together in what approximated comfortable understanding.