It was remarkable how glum a hospital could be, Neville reflected.

It wasn't that the walls were all white, or that the strange unguents from the ward downstairs had a sharp astringent scent that suffused the entire building. It was, he decided, the way the fake cheeriness always fell off peoples' faces once they had left their loved ones and meandered down the corridors to go home. It was probably the fake cheeriness in itself. He couldn't think of anything more depressing than faking being happy.

The door to Ward 49 opened and Neville glanced to his right. He knew most of the people who visited the patients in the ward, by now. Some of them had been visiting for only a few days; some had been visiting for years.

The person who exited was the latter, though he didn't have the familiarity with the ward Neville had.

"Afternoon, Harry," Neville said with a nod.

"Afternoon, Neville," Harry responded. He set his shoulders in that characteristic pause one makes when not sure whether he should continue on his way or stop to converse.

"How's Ginny?" Neville asked, more to keep an uneasy silence from forming than from a need to know the private details of his friend's life.

"About the same," Harry said, despondency drawing his eyes tight. "The Healers still think she'll make a recovery but..." he swallowed and broke eye contact. "Apparently my visiting her is just causing further confusion. She'll be fine until I walk in, and then she'll think we're back at Hogwarts, and she's fifteen again. That's assuming she actually recognizes me that day."

The pain and bitterness in those words lanced straight through Neville's chest. He tentatively reached out and patted Harry awkwardly on the shoulder.

"I know what it's like, mate," he said softly. "It's hard. Some days they're good, they almost seem normal, except..." his throat tightened.

"Except they think you're one of the Healers," Harry finished.

"Yeah. Or the son of someone else in the ward. Or the Healer from twenty years ago coming to tell them their newborn son is dead." Neville spat the last out with a bit more vehemence than he had intended.

Harry cocked his head to the side, a questioning look on his face that still managed to mirror the pain Neville felt.

"That's her newest delusion," Neville sighed, studying the gilding on the frame of a portrait carefully, willing the tears forming in his eyes to go back to where they came from. "Apparently not knowing I was there wasn't bad enough, now she has to believe I never existed."

"I..." Harry mimicked Neville's comforting gesture and grasped Neville's shoulder. "There's not much I can say, except that the last two years...well, I have some small idea of what it must feel like."

Neville nodded, swallowing hard to relieve the tightness in this throat.

"I'm heading back to my flat," he said, somewhat croaking the words. "You want tea? Or something a bit stronger?"

Harry must have understood the unspoken plea behind those words, the sudden intense desire to not be left alone with one's thoughts. Perhaps he had the same plea himself. "Sure," he responded. "Where?"

"That's right. You've never been there." Neville was slightly shocked that he'd never had Harry over. Was it so normal to lose all the bonds from school? He certainly never talked to Luna anymore, and Ron and Hermione had practically fallen off the face of the earth since they had gotten married...

He saw Ginny every week, of course, but she was more or less insane.

"It's fairly close to Diagon Alley," Neville said, breaking himself out of his reverie. "I'll meet you at the Leaky Cauldron and we can walk from there."

Harry nodded. "I'll go say goodbye to the Weasleys. And I'll meet you there."

Neville signed out at the front desk and wandered down the Muggle streets for a time before Apparating to the Leaky Cauldron. It was a gray day, the clouds bleached with sunlight but hoarding it for themselves, the leftover light providing poor contrast among the grays and browns that made up the stones and buildings of the city. They weren't clouds that threatened rain; Neville thought he might have died of melodrama if they had been.

A sharp crack deposited Harry a few yards away from him, and Neville thrust his hands in his pockets and walked to meet him.

"It's just this way. About five blocks. Not far." He began to lead the way, assuming Harry would follow.

"I didn't know you were living in the city," Harry said as he strode up next to him on the pavement.

"About a year and a half now," Neville said. "Gran decided to move to an old folk's home in Greece. I opted not to follow. The Ministry pays well enough, I suppose, and it's not like I need much."

"Just you?"

"Just me," Neville affirmed.

"I thought you and Luna..."

"Luna?" Neville chuckled. "No. She was a good friend, in school, and a sweetheart, but...she was Luna, you know? I liked her and all but she had the uncanny ability to make one feel distinctly uncomfortable. I think she did it on purpose."

"You know, I sometimes got that feeling as well," Harry said with a small smile.

"What about yourself?" Neville asked as they waited for the traffic to disperse enough to cross a road.

"I'm living in my godfather's house still, in Grimmauld Place," Harry said offhandedly, looking at his shoes. "It's a bit of a nightmare, practically a shrine to the glory of being pureblood. Kreacher—the house-elf—he's helped to clean it up so it's not totally derelict but it's still a bit spooky surrounded by the Black family crest and whatnot. It…still feels like Sirius's place. I don't think I'll ever stop feeling like a houseguest there."

"Still, a house and a house-elf," Neville said, desperately trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You don't seem to be doing too badly for yourself. And I heard about your promotion at the Ministry—you've been keeping busy."

Harry cleared his throat, flushing a bit. "That was mostly by accident. I told Shacklebolt that the order of Aurors was in shambles, and so he told me to fix it and gave me the rank to do it. It's really nothing special. Nobody really listens to me anyway…" He coughed and changed the subject. "What are you doing at the Ministry now you've dropped Auror training? I haven't seen you around lately."

"I'm in the field, mostly," Neville responded. "Department of Herbological Resources. They send me to relocate magical plants that somehow set up shop in Muggle areas. Can't have Muggle children strangled to death by Whipthorn, you know."

"I guess not. You like it?"

"It's all right. It's a job." Neville shrugged, debating sharing the news. "Pomona—er, Professor Sprout—wrote me a letter letting me know she was retiring next year, and was going to recommend me as the new Herbology professor."

"That's fantastic, Neville!" Harry said, a bit too heartily to successfully hide the underlying jealousy.

"I don't know if I'll take it if it's offered," Neville said. "I...don't know why. There's supposed to be a life outside of school, right? Seems like I'd just be running back to what I know, running away from the real world."

"Not at all," Harry said, brushing his hair out of his eyes as the breeze blew it about. "It'd be like going home."

"That's a bit what I'm worried about," Neville admitted. "The best years of my life were at Hogwarts. I feel like I should give outside Hogwarts a chance, you know? I don't want to feel like I'm a kid forever."

"I guess," Harry said dubiously. "But you did a lot of growing up at Hogwarts, if I can say so. It's definitely not the worst place in the world to be if you want to find yourself."

Neville was saved from having to come up with a response to that by taking his wand from his pocket. "It's just in here—" he said, gesturing toward a four-story brick building, surrounded by rusting scaffolding and with a CONDEMNED notice in all the ground-floor windows. "Here, take your wand out—it won't let you in without one—"

As they crossed the threshold of the property, the building lost its derelict visage, though it still looked decidedly shabby. Neville opened the front door and pointed up the stairs. "Mine's third floor. If you see a cat, do not pet it—it'll take your arm off, if you're lucky."

They paused in front of a door marked 3B. Neville unlocked it with an iron skeleton key and swung the door inward.

"Come on in."

He glanced quickly around the one-room flat, making sure he hadn't left dirty laundry or old food lying about before stepping out of the way for Harry to walk in.

It wasn't large. A low wall separated the unmade bed from the living area, a door led to the water closet, and the kitchen table was so close to the couch that both seemed almost incongruous. All the furniture was comfortably second-hand, and nearly as scuffed as the wood floor covered with a few worn woven rugs. Plants covered nearly every available surface, leaves and vines in varying shades of green and purple and yellow and red, some of them rustling softly as they recognized that Neville had returned. Nothing was in bloom at the moment, and the Merlin's Whisker there on the windowsill definitely lent a musty smell to the place.

"I know it's a far cry from what you have at Grimmauld," Neville said stiffly, realizing what it must look like. He must look positively destitute, compared to what Harry was used to.

"It's yours," Harry responded, pulling off his jacket. "And it wasn't just handed to you. You...earn it. I wish I could have that…satisfaction." He bit his lip and flushed slightly. "I sound like a poor little rich boy, don't I?"

"Not at all," Neville lied. He walked the three steps to the kitchen and filled his teapot with water. "Earl Grey all right? Actually, you don't have a choice, because it's either Earl Grey or slightly more different Earl Grey. Or perhaps you'd like Earl Grey?"

"I think I'll take the Earl Grey," Harry said with a small smile, draping his jacket across the back of the couch. "That is, unless you have Earl Grey."

"No, just Earl Grey," Neville said with mock remorse, relieved Harry had picked up the banter to get them past that bit of awkwardness. He prodded his wand at the burner under the teakettle and it sputtered reluctantly to life. "It might be a few minutes, my stove's not very good," he said somewhat apologetically. "Biscuits? I think I've got chocolate."

Harry nodded as he lowered himself onto the couch. Neville took down the box of biscuits from the cupboard, decided against using a plate, as he had none clean, and brought the whole box to the low table in front of the couch.

The silence floated down over them like dust settling. Neither one knew exactly what to say. They munched the biscuits and avoided each others' eyes, listening to the teakettle slowly heat up.

"I don't think she's going to get better," Harry blurted, shattering the silence like glass.

Neville quailed slightly. He almost preferred the silence to not knowing how to respond. "Oh?" he managed, knowing it was pathetic and not particularly helpful.

"Something in her snapped that night. Maybe Tom Riddle still had a hold on her, and when I killed him...I don't know. But something inside her snapped and...I don't think she'll ever get better. I never...I never even got the chance to ever get back together with her, and now I won't. I call her my girlfriend but how do I have any right to call her that?" His voice broke on the last word and the biscuit he held broke in two from his grip. He looked up and Neville was dismayed to see tears standing in Harry's eyes. "How can you stand it?" Harry asked, nearly demanded. "You've been going there since before you can remember, seeing your...your parents...in the same condition. How do you do it? How do you deal with the pain?"

"I don't," Neville said simply. He glanced at his hands, then back at Harry. "I stopped letting myself think about it a long time ago." He studied the wood grain of the table in front of them. "Why do you think I never mentioned it at school? Everyone at St. Mungo's thinks I'm such the dutiful son, visiting nearly every weekend now, oh how tragic...but I've never really had parents," he finished bitterly. "It probably would have been better in the long run if I'd just been told they were dead."

"No it wouldn't," Harry said numbly. Neville played back what he'd said and felt the blood drain from his face.

"That's not what I meant," he said quickly, but Harry shook his head.

"I know. But…I won't lie, I often wonder what it'd have been like to trade places with you, know I still had family alive, even if…." He'd reduced the biscuit in his hand to crumbs.

"You'd hate it," Neville said, softly but firmly. "You would. You think it's hard for your girlfriend to be like this? Try having your dad tell you he wishes he had a son like you. Try having your mum dismiss you as the ruddy milkman, and that's on a good day, after they've spent decades recovering! Most days she just sits singing to herself, doesn't even realize I'm there! Most days my dad just lays there staring at the ceiling, tying his shirttails in knots over and over again!" He didn't remember when he had begun yelling. He swallowed, and continued in a normal tone. "And every time I go see them...every time...some nasty little voice in my head tells me that if they loved me enough, they'd snap out of it." He knuckled away a tear almost angrily. "That if I was a better son, someone they could actually be proud of, they'd get better."

Harry looked frozen. Neville stood and turned away, gulping deep breaths. Control. He had to find his control again. Dwelling on it never helped, just made matters worse.

He could hear Harry standing up behind him, take a few steps away, and clear his throat. "Your, uh, your stove turned off."

"Incendio," Neville said quietly. "Stove should pick it up after a few tries."

He heard Harry muttering the incantation and closed his eyes, taking deep, slow breaths. Now was not the time to fall apart. He could do that later, when Harry was gone.

"Neville?" Harry asked. A hand touched his shoulder. Neville opened his eyes, saw Harry standing in front of him, very close – there wasn't much room between the couch and his bookcase—and turned his head to look to the side.

"I told you I stopped letting myself think about it," he said flatly. "Because when I think about it, I start to crumble." He took a deep breath and looked back at Harry.

He had intended to say "I'm sorry." But in that moment, he saw the anguish in Harry's face and knew that it reflected his own. They were both of them wounded, both of them desperate for something to hold onto to keep them from drowning. They were both vulnerable and very much alone in a world that was too busy celebrating their accomplishments to realize what they'd had to sacrifice.

And so instead of apologizing, Neville tipped Harry's chin up slightly and kissed him.

In all honesty, a small part of Neville's mind reflected, it surprised him nearly as much as it surprised Harry, and he had no idea where the impulse had come from, let alone how he'd mustered the wherewithal to pull it off. But once the mouths open and the tongues touch, there's really no graceful way to back down, particularly when both parties are now holding each other so tightly. The same small part of Neville's mind was astonished Harry hadn't pulled away, wondered if maybe Harry needed this fleeting closeness to another human as much as he did. He felt more than heard the small moan and wondered which of them had uttered it, or even if he'd imagined it, felt Harry's tongue lap against his again and decided it didn't really matter. There was a faint taste of chocolate, a wonderful complement to the velvet smoothness that was just Harry.

Eventually, one must come up for air, particularly if both parties have been close to tears and can't breathe through their noses. Neville and Harry came apart with a mutual gasp, Harry reaching up as though to wipe his mouth but stopping.

"I, uh," Harry began, glancing at Neville and then glancing away again. "I...didn't know you were, uh—"

"I'm not," Neville said. "And neither are you." It was taking real effort to keep his voice dropping into a huskier timbre. This wasn't like that. "But I'm damned willing to pretend that I am if doing that again helps half as much as it just did." The bewildered expression on Harry's face spurred a strong need for Neville to explain himself further. "We're two…very lost and lonely friends who are in a very exclusive position to understand one another almost perfectly. And we've got a rare opportunity to offer comfort and let out tension that doesn't hinge on breaking down into tears and hating the world."

Harry cocked his head to the side as if considering, finally not taking his eyes from Neville's face. After what seemed like an eon, during which Neville wondered if he'd truly gotten his message across or had just muddled the situation more, he nodded curtly.

"Yeah. Okay. I'll buy that," he said, and stepped closer to press his lips to Neville's again. It was almost with a growl that Neville shifted his weight and the arm of the couch caught the backs of his knees and they fell backward, Neville pulling Harry down next to him, holding each other tightly to keep from rolling off the edge.

The stove beneath the tea kettle went out again, as though fully aware that its services would no longer be required this afternoon.