Friday evening was not a time for drunkenness. Friday evening was a time for solitary reflection, surrounded by everything he'd once known except the one thing that actually mattered, a reminder that everything had changed. Everything had moved on, and so had he, even if he didn't want to.

Three o'clock in the morning on Saturday following such musings, however, was the perfect time for a good, maudlin drunk.

The glass Neville took down from the shelf was not at all like the fine cut crystal at the pub. It was a plain, utilitarian glass with a heavy bottom. Hannah, who had known her liquors and how to serve them, would have scoffed. That was mostly why he'd bought them. They reminded him of her the least.

In fact, everything in the flat had been chosen with similar care, the care of someone who desperately wanted to forget. Not of regret or anger - it did not have that passion. A person would look around this flat and feel... not a loss, because she'd never been here, never run her fingers along the fringe of the blanket over the arm of the chair or straightened a picture frame. A lack. There was a feeling of something missing, even though everything that would ever be here was here already. There was no space for someone else. Which was, of course, the entire point.

The whisky he sloshed into the glass was not particularly good, some Muggle bottle that was cheap and only barely on this side of drinkable. It didn't need to be good, it just needed to be strong. He tossed back the first glass with the practised air of a man who had done this many, many times before, suppressing the shudder at the burn of the alcohol as he poured himself another.

He would not need as much tonight, he realised. He'd had two glasses earlier, and though some time had passed he could still feel the warmth in his cheeks. And, he mused, looking into the depths of the amber liquor, he didn't really have any reason to hurry. There were no essays to mark, no lessons to plan for the following Monday, nothing to worry about for another three weeks when the Christmas holidays were over.

Nothing to distract him for three weeks, either. He chose to ignore that.

Draining the second glass was easier. The dull numbness had already claimed the tip of his nose and his coordination was perhaps a bit slower than usual as he tipped the bottle over the glass a third time, the neck knocking against the rim gracelessly. He brought the glass over to his chair and sank down, perfunctorily jabbing his wand at the fireplace. The fire roared to life and then quieted in a sudden hush, leaving him with the shifting embers that he preferred to watch over the dancing flames.

He sat. Just sat. The whisky in his hand wasn't even so much to drink as just hold, swirling occasionally to watch the liquor cling to the walls of the glass before receding back to the bottom. There was no rule saying that one couldn't think during a good, maudlin drunk, after all.

And he had a good deal to think about, and a good deal to try desperately not to think about. Often, the latter consisted of memories from years ago, the ones that he had taken out and examined so many times that they were starting to tear at the creases and fade. The ones that he had to have severely impaired judgement to let to the forefront of his mind.

But tonight, those memories would have been welcome, rather than the fresh new ones that clamoured for his attention. The feeling of a hand on his arm. The sound of a female voice saying his name, shyly, hesitantly.

Oh, Ginny said his name. Hermione said his name. They said it with the comfort of old friends, with all the years they'd known each other behind it. His colleagues said his name, from time to time. But their voices were familiar, and had the velvet edge of a much-thumbed-through book.

Her voice, saying his name, had felt like the first crack of the spring thaw in the ice of the lake.

And he did not want to think about it.

Twenty, she'd said. Well, yes, that would be about right - she had a birthday in September, if he recalled correctly, which would make her one of the oldest students in her year, nearly nineteen when she left school. And in her year away she'd become someone he couldn't imagine in school robes. A young woman, not a girl.

And he did not want to think about it.

Percy Weasley would have a fit if he knew what Neville was trying very hard to not think about. He tried not to think about that, either.

And because he was trying so hard not to think about the new memories that were so troubling, the old ones grasped at their advantage.

They'd discussed where they were going to live, because above the Leaky was no place to raise a baby. Neville had pointed out that he still had rights to the Longbottom Estate; it was perhaps a bit larger than what Hannah was used to, but that just meant they had a lot of rooms they could fill with children, now that they'd finally worked out how to make a pregnancy stick. She had laughed at that, joked that the last few months they had fallen out of practise and would need to make up lost time once Maggie was born.

Maggie. Neville grimaced and took a long gulp from his glass. That was a name he hadn't thought of in weeks. He didn't know what he'd do when he got a student with that name. And god, if she was blonde with brown eyes...

As though summoned, the image of blonde hair splayed across the no-nonsense white linens of a hospital pillow case played in his mind, the brown eyes so tired, so scared. She was terrifyingly pale, her lips nearly colourless, and the sheer helplessness he'd felt knowing he could do nothing as his wife's life bled away steadily in a flow no one could stop -

The glass was empty, and he could not recall having poured it into his mouth but he could taste it. His eyes took a moment to catch up when he turned his head, his mind sluggish as it reconciled the movement and the vision that did not quite match. If he had any more, he'd do nothing but lie awake in a spinning room until the sky turned blue with dawn. If he went to bed now, he might be lucky enough to fall into the dreamless stupor he constantly sought, but rarely achieved.

Settling himself under the covers in the middle of the bed, he let his eyelids droop and breathing slow. He'd tried sleeping on just one side before, but found himself reaching out to the other side and panicking when he found nothing. It was easier, in the middle. It was easier, with just the single pillow. Easier to remember that the bed was empty, aside from him. Easier to swallow.

He could almost hear her. He couldn't really, he knew that, but often, just before he slipped into whatever fitful doze he could manage, he imagined he could.

"You have to move on."

"I'm trying," he whispered, nearly soundlessly. "You can't know how hard it is."

"Keep trying."

"I do. Every day."

It was either still dark or dark again when Neville sat up, blearily rubbing his eyes. The blanket fell away from his shoulder and he shivered as he squinted at the clock. It read half six, but that wasn't particularly helpful. He felt wretched enough that it could either be six in the morning or six in the evening.

Either way, his stomach complained at its neglect, and Neville threw a dressing gown over his shoulders and staggered into the kitchen. Saturday's Daily Prophet lay upon the kitchen table with various envelopes atop it; apparently it was half six in the evening, since the post owls didn't usually come until after seven in the morning. Neville nodded in grim approval; at least he wouldn't have to spend Saturday trying to figure out what to do with himself.

It was still Christmas Eve, and he would still have to figure out what to do tomorrow, but he'd work out that problem when he came to it.

The post was as he expected: Christmas cards from distant relatives he'd never met and probably wasn't actually related to in any way but on paper, an invoice from Flourish and Blotts for a book he'd ordered, and the bright green envelope he knew was an invitation to Harry's Christmas party that he threw every year. He could almost hear the conversation Harry must have had with Ginny over that:

"Of course we have to invite him, Harry. He's one of your best friends."

"He just wants to be left alone. Especially this time of year."

"Then he doesn't have to answer. It can't hurt, him knowing he has people who want him round."

He made as though to put the envelope to the side unopened, as he had done for the past three years, but before it dropped from his hand he changed his mind and broke the wax seal on the back instead.

Merry Christmas!

As is the tradition, we are opening our doors to friends and family for Christmas dinner at four o'clock on December 25th. Please send us an owl if you'll be joining us, and bring a small gift (no more than one Galleon) if you'd like to participate in the gift exchange.

If you'd like to bring a dish to share, please coordinate with Ginny. We love mashed potatoes, but nobody loves eight bowls of mashed potatoes. And if you prefer a particular kind of, say, whisky, let us know so we can procure it. Percy was kind enough to let us know last year that it doesn't all taste like broom polish, but we are obviously philistines who can't tell the difference and so we have no idea what to buy.

We're serious about the mashed potatoes. Please don't bring them, George.

Looking forward to seeing you all,

Harry and Ginny

Neville stared at the parchment for a very long time, hunger forgotten. It was true; since Hannah had died, Neville preferred to spend Christmas alone. In fact, he preferred to spend most of his time alone. He and Hannah had got married years after all their friends and had been gently teased for waiting so long to have children - they'd never made it public how difficult it had been to achieve even the one pregnancy. Seeing everyone with families of their own struck such a chord within him that it was often less painful to simply stay home and wish for what should have been. And he couldn't stand the sorrowful, pitying looks people bestowed upon him when they thought he wasn't looking.

Perhaps enough time had passed that the looks wouldn't be so ubiquitous. He'd been curled around his hurt for more than three years now, unwilling to unwind enough to let others see the wound. And so they'd kept their distance.

But he'd peen pricked with enough thorns and cut by enough razorleaf to know that a wound doesn't heal closed away from light and air. It had taken Molly's gentle pressure last night for him to fully see that it was time to let others examine it, and do what they could. It would hurt, but he'd been hurting. And when he'd been talking, it hadn't been the sharp, destructive pain of loss, but the aching bruise of memory.

Even though he was certain of his decision, his hand shook as he dipped his quill at the writing desk, and he nearly dripped ink onto the paper as he tried to chase down the words to say. The ink on the nib had nearly dried by the time he set it to the parchment.

I can still make a mean fig pudding.

-Neville

It was as though he'd never left.

There were differences, of course. The last time he'd been here, the children had all been much shorter. Bill's hair had not had quite so much grey - but to be fair, neither had Neville's. Teddy had either grown a ridiculous goatee or had simply decided to wear one for the day to irritate Andromeda. And the children that could still reasonably be called children were all taller, voices had become deeper, behaviour had become more or less boisterous or genteel, and definitely different to how they behaved in his classroom.

There was a new face at the table, one that Neville did not know aside from her name, seated to Dominique's left. She had dark eyes and short curly hair and a very nervous expression, and it wasn't until Dominique laid a hand upon her wrist and smiled fondly at her that Neville realised that she was not just a friend at all. That was certainly a new development, but not exactly a surprise.

And then, of course, seated to Dominique's right and nearly across the table from Neville, there was Molly. Of all the changes at the table, she had to be the most profound. He'd never made note of it before - he was not at his most observant during his weekly forays at the Leaky - but she had somehow, inexplicably, become an adult nearly overnight. Perhaps it had been because she had never been far from Dominique at school. Dominique's Veela blood had made her seem a woman before she had been fourteen. The new Charms teacher had been hard-pressed to appear as an adult next to Dominique by her sixth year - the sixteen-year-old girls surrounding her hardly had a chance. They had been a tightly-knit bunch, Neville recalled, in the same House and year and taking most of the same classes.

Except N.E.W.T. Herbology. Molly had been the only Slytherin in his N.E.W.T. classes both years she'd taken them. Neville supposed he'd been too distracted to notice her then.

He wouldn't have noticed her anyway. She had, after all, been a student. He definitely was not noticing her now, either, not with her father sitting at her right elbow and talking animatedly with Hermione about new legislation that had recently been introduced to the Wizengamot. It was possible that there were more awkward things than having the Chief Warlock discovering someone ogling his daughter at Christmas dinner, but not likely.

Not that he was ogling.

Despite all these differences, the shape of the evening was the same as it had always been, and Neville fit into it seamlessly. There was joking and laughter, and he was surprised to find himself joining in, so startled to hear his own snorting guffaw at one of George's friendly jabs at Ron that he nearly choked on his wine. He pretended not to notice the looks of astonished relief that flickered across nearly everyone's face at that, instead focusing on his water goblet until Audrey broke the silence by asking Dominique if she'd managed to find a job yet.

Pudding had been served and they'd all transitioned to the sitting room. The liquor was brought out at last, and Neville could not help but join Percy in attempting to educate Harry and Teddy in the finer points of scotch whisky, firewhisky, and everything in between. Even after several tastes, Harry seemed unimpressed, but Teddy was proving to have quite the refined palate indeed.

"I have to say, Neville," Teddy said almost shyly, reaching out to pat Neville's upper arm, "it's good to see you smiling again."

"It really is," Harry cut in earnestly when it was apparent Neville had no idea how to respond. "We've missed you. Ginny literally did a dance when we got your owl saying you were coming."

Neville looked back and forth between the two of them, at a complete loss for words. "It was time," he said finally. He briefly thought of bringing up his metaphor about wounds and healing but quickly discarded the notion. It would sound uncharacteristically poetic coming from him, and they might think he'd lost his mind.

He was saved from having to come up with an additional response by Molly tapping her father on the shoulder. "Oi. I heard you opened the good stuff. Why wasn't I invited?" She caught Neville's eye and flushed slightly before looking back to her father.

"She can have mine," Harry said magnanimously, handing her his glass before anyone could object. Bemused, Molly took the glass, then shrugged and smelled it.

"Glenkinschie," Neville supplied. "Not my favourite, but it's drinkable."

"Too drinkable," Teddy said, blinking hard before handing the rest of his glass to Percy. "Thanks for the lesson, you guys. I'll want some more, but I have something I need to do before I get too pissed to say it properly."

"What?" Percy asked blankly, but Teddy had already flashed an insufferably smug grin and headed to the middle of the room.

"All right, everyone, can I have your attention?" he called in a loud voice. "And Victoire, if you'll come here?" he asked in a much softer tone, a smile touching his eyes.

Teddy was fiddling with something in his pocket. Neville felt his face go stiff as it dawned on him what was about to happen. His gut instinct was to escape, to relocate himself to anywhere but here, because there was a very large distinction between letting a wound get some air and salting it. He forced himself to take a breath and a sip of scotch. He'd known Teddy since before the boy could speak. He could stay and witness this for him.

"Tori," Teddy said as Victoire stepped forward, luminous in the lamplight of the sitting room. He reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. "I..." Teddy laughed suddenly, looking around the room. "I had a speech. It was all planned. But I'll be damned if I can remember a word of it now. So..."

He dropped to one knee and there was a collection of gasps from around the room. Through sheer force of will, Neville plastered a smile on his face, trying to ignore what felt like a tonne of bricks settling on his chest.

Teddy drew the tiny box from his pocket and opened it, his face shining with the earnestness of love. "Victoire, will you marry me?"

Neville did not hear Victoire's response, but it was obvious what she was going to say. No one ever said no. Well, Hannah had the first time, but it hadn't been a no, exactly, and she'd said yes the second time around. There hadn't been a crowd around, like there were now - people rushing forward to hug or clap the newly affianced couple on the shoulders. Everyone had started talking at once, and no one noticed as Neville slipped out of the room and through the back hallway door into the small garden out behind the house.

It was quiet. A lamp on a pole sensed his presence and sputtered to life, throwing blue shadows against the brick of the back of the house. Neville eased himself down onto a stone bench, his lips twitching in the tiniest of self-deprecating smiles when he saw he was still clutching his glass of scotch. What that said about him, he didn't want to ponder. He did not drink, but stared into the depths of the amber liquid, keeping his mind carefully blank as his heartbeat slowed from its staccato of earlier.

He did not look up when the door opened and clicked shut, nor did he look up when she sat down next to him on the bench. He could not say why he'd been expecting her, but he had.

"It must be hard," Molly said after several minutes of silence. "Watching other people get to be happy."

"It is, sometimes," Neville admitted, not taking his eyes from the scotch. "But they deserve to be. I don't begrudge them that, it's just... difficult to be around." He took a deep breath and chanced a glance to the side. "I'll go in and congratulate them properly in a bit. I... needed a moment."

Molly nodded. "Do you want me to go back inside?"

No. He really didn't. "You can stay, if you'd like. I'm afraid I won't be very good company."

"You're the one who needs company, not me." She stated it matter-of-factly, and Neville wondered just how obvious he was being. Rather than respond and muddy the already murky waters even more, he cleared his throat and lapsed into silence once more.

"It was your wedding anniversary yesterday. Spencer told me." There was a bittersweet pang that plucked something deep within Neville's chest, but he nodded. "What was it like?"

"The wedding?" He could not help but smile, just a little. "Nonexistent. I'd proposed the first time when we were twenty. She was always smarter than me, and said we should wait until I was done with Auror training." He wished he'd thought to bring a glass of water rather than scotch. "That went pear-shaped rather quickly - the training, rather. I cycled through a few Herbology research jobs at the Ministry until I was asked to teach at Hogwarts. Right about then was when she became landlady of the Leaky. I realised then that we were pushing thirty and I'd completely forgotten to ask her to marry me again. So I dug around for a bit and found the ring and the first night of Christmas holidays, I asked her."

He took a moment to swallow, eyes staring into the middle distance. He could still see her in his mind's eye, if he tried. She'd even put on a dress. He hadn't known she owned a dress. "And we decided we didn't want to wait. We didn't want a wedding. So we called all our friends the next night and tied the knot right then and there on the hearth of the Leaky." An exhalation that could almost have been a laugh escaped from his nose. "It was your father who officiated, in fact. He was the only person we knew who could do it."

"I think I remember that," Molly said slowly. "I wasn't there, but I remember Mum and Dad very suddenly needing to get a sitter, and Dad was putting on his good robes."

"That was probably it." Neville nodded and shifted the glass of scotch to his other hand; the one he'd been holding it with had got very cold in the winter night air.

"Do you think you'll ever remarry?" Neville jerked slightly at the question and looked over at Molly in slight disbelief. She seemed just as shocked that the question had come about. "I'm sorry. I - I never think before I -"

"It's all right." Neville sighed to calm his suddenly rattled nerves, watching the fog of breath dissipate as he exhaled. "She wanted me to. She told me." They were approaching dangerous territory, and Neville looked down at the liquor in his hand, wondering if he'd need it. "She knew she was dying before the Healers would admit it, and before I would accept it. She said..." He remembered the words exactly, but... they'd been his for so long. Only his.

He felt the familiar stinging at the corners of his eyes and he reached up to brush away the tears before they had a chance to fall. "She didn't want me to go through the world alone. She wanted me to promise I'd find someone." His throat ached with tears he refused to shed, and he swallowed hard. "I couldn't promise her that. I was sure, so sure that she'd get up and everything would be okay. But she didn't, and it wasn't."

Somewhere on the road in front of the house, a car door slammed. Neville took a deep, shaking breath and closed his eyes. A moment, and he'd be fine. He'd just never put these things into words before, had never said them. It was like drawing poison out of a sting: it hurt coming out but everything would heal faster.

He nearly jumped clean out of his skin when he felt a timid touch on the back of his upper arm, running up and down it in a reassuring motion. He turned his head to look at her, acclimating himself. He was not used to being touched. Aside from handshakes and the occasional quick, friendly embrace, he'd not had any lingering contact with anyone for longer than he cared to count. He hadn't just avoided it, he'd actively discouraged it.

He thought about shifting politely to get some space. Surely that would be less insulting than cringing away. But he saw her eyes, and saw the desperate need to do something comforting behind them, and so he did neither, and let her continue. Nor did he look aside. Her eyes were dark honeyed brown, and she had a smattering of the typical Weasley freckles across her nose and cheeks that stood out against the pink flush of cold.

Irrationally, he found himself yearning to reach out and brush a thumb across those freckles, hand going to the curve where her jaw met her neck, tipping her face upwards and pulling her towards him - which was, quite possibly, the worst urge in the history of the known universe. He was unprepared and unsure he even wanted that kind of interaction with anyone, let alone the girl not even half his age sitting next to him on the bench, her father literally a stone's throw away...

No. If he was honest with himself, he was sure he wanted it. It wasn't just some reflexive compulsion. And that unsettled him more than it had any right to.

Molly had not ceased the comforting rubbing of his arm, even though he had to have tensed somewhat. Slowly, as though he might frighten them both by moving quickly, he twisted slightly on the bench to face her more, reaching out with a hand he felt should be trembling to rest it on her upper arm.

Her lips parted slightly in astonishment, and uncertainty flashed across her face. Neville felt her shiver and her soothing motion faltered, just a bit, and the utter surprise with which she reacted made him lose whatever nerve he'd managed to gather.

"You're cold," he said, startling himself with the sound of his voice. "We should get you back inside."

Molly blinked. "Oh. Yes."

They rose wordlessly from the bench. It was barely three steps to the door, and walking across the garden felt like snapping from a waking dream back into the cold reality of the real world. He held the door for her and followed her into the radiant warmth of the house.

By some grace of luck, no one appeared to notice them rejoining the party in the sitting room except Hermione, who had an arm full of glasses and was taking them back to the kitchen. She glanced between the two of them, her face carefully composed. Molly flushed and slipped past her to rejoin Dominique over by the fire. Hermione watched her go and arched an eyebrow at Neville which said, as plain as day, "Oh, really?"

Neville furrowed his brow in answer, an unspoken "of course not." The accompanying tiny shake of his head hopefully underscored the negation. Hermione shrugged and sidled past him toward the kitchen. He let her by and found his eyes seeking out Molly, silhouetted against the fire, listening to Dominique and Victoire chatter excitedly with a pensive look on her face.

Of course not. That would be as ridiculous as Hermione's expression had implied. He was more than twice her age, and he'd watched her grow up, had taught her in school. And that was quite aside from the fact that asking anyone to put up with him, when everything still reminded him of Hannah...

Of course not.

Neville made his farewells as hastily as possible, congratulated the newly engaged couple, and left. He did not say goodbye to Molly. He told himself it was because he did not want to interrupt the excited conversation she was currently in, and if he repeated it enough times to himself, he might actually begin to believe it.

It was still early, but Neville felt more exhausted than he had in a very long time. It was not until he snuffed the candle with a negligent wave and settled his head into the pillow that he realised he had not poured himself a drink upon returning home. He hadn't even wanted one. He drifted off to sleep before he puzzled out why that may be.