“Alice, dear, you and Frank have a visitor! Your son Neville is here to see you, isn’t that lovely?”
Alice Longbottom glanced up at the St. Mungo’s healer, smiled vaguely, and returned her attention to the gum wrapper she was twisting into a knot.
The knot kept her busy. It made sense. It was a comforting thing to do, just as walking around the ward was comfortable. Making knots allowed her to feel useful, as if she really mattered. She knew she had done other things once, things that were just as important, but she had given up trying to remember exactly what.
“Hello, Mum. Hi, Dad.” The visitor slowly approached her, smiling sadly.
That voice…she knew that voice! It belonged to someone important…someone she cared about…she looked up, but could not recognize the voice’s owner. This man looked strange, with unhealed cuts on his face and long, shaggy hair. Disappointed, she focused on her knot once more, barely pausing to glance up when the visitor sat down in a chair he conjured out of nowhere.
I used to do that, she thought, but the thought meant nothing; it was just a fragment…but all the same, an unbidden image came to her…she was younger, and had conjured a chair for an elderly woman to sit in while the woman had held a baby boy…
She shook the thought out of her head. She needed to focus on her knot.
“I just wanted to tell you that it’s finished. We…I dunno…I guess we finally got justice. Voldemort is gone, Harry killed him! Well…I guess Voldemort killed himself…but I helped.” The man smiled proudly, but the smile slid off his face slowly as he shook his head and continued, “And Bellatrix is gone too! Mrs. Weasley killed her. Ginny’s mum, of all people!” The visitor’s voice faded and died, and he stared at the floor with tears glistening in his eyes. “Bellatrix deserved it, but still…it doesn’t change anything, does it…”
Bellatrix…the name sounded familiar…maybe it was the name of that nice healer that brought them food, except Alice doubted it, because Bellatrix didn’t sound like a nice name.
Her earlier memory returned, but this time it was clearer, as if viewed through a camera that had suddenly focused. There had been a smiling man standing next to her, and the man had been someone she loved. She glanced over at the man sitting in the next bed, and recognition hit her. He was the man in the memory. She had loved him. Perhaps she still did, but she couldn’t remember.
The old woman in the memory was familiar, too. She had visited many times before, bringing a boy with her. But who had the boy been? She shook her head again. It didn’t matter if she remembered; the memory would just go away again. Sometimes it made her sad; when she could remember good things, she wanted to keep them, put them somewhere safe where she wouldn’t lose them. The memory with the woman and the man”wait, the man, he was her husband”and the baby boy”that was a good memory.
She looked at the visitor again. There was something so familiar about him. He looked like someone she knew. She recognized this feeling; it was always associated with someone the healer brought…
Alice went back to her knot, but not before she noticed that the visitor was crying. Silly man; what was he crying for? Maybe he would stop if he could make a knot, too. She searched for a gum wrapper to give him.
Her visitor”or was it their visitor? She could no longer remember who the man in the next bed was”sighed. “Mum, I know you can’t recognize me, but please try. I need you. I need you to know who I am.”
Alice found a gum wrapper and pressed it into the strange man’s hands. He smiled sadly. “Thanks, Mum.”
There, she had made him smile! She had done something useful!
The image came into her head again, even sharper than before…the man in the bed next to hers, and the woman, and the baby boy. This visitor had been there. He was…he had been the baby! The baby, the baby that the woman had held…and the woman…she was Frank’s mother! And Frank, he was her husband, the man in the bed next to her! And the baby…the baby was…
Neville. Her son.
The strange man in front of her was her son. Her little boy! He looked battered and worn, to be sure, but he was so tall, and he looked like her! She could see her round face reflected in his. She tried to tell him how proud she was that her son was here with her, making knots out of gum wrappers…but she couldn’t make the words, and now it was slipping away…who had the old woman been?
A sad look crossed her face. There, she had lost another memory. What a pity.
The strange man sighed again and rose to leave. “Good-bye, Dad, Mum…I’ll be back soon.” The nice healer stopped to chat with him, but Alice paid no attention.
She was too busy making another knot.
The Women Who Won by Laurelyn
Chapter Notes: This chapter is adapted from my first-ever fanfic. Read and review, and the rest will come faster!