THE PRIDE OF ALICE AND FRANK LONGBOTTOM

THE PRIDE OF FRANK AND ALICE LONGBOTTOM

"Neville, dear, please hurry, I've got other places to be after we visit them, you know," Augusta Longbottom said, hurrying through the pathway of the busy street, as Neville Longbottom, her grandson, rushed behind her, trying to catch up. She was very quick and active for her age, and she had a certain grin on her face. Most of the people walking down the street busily, with a certain pace in their foot, looked around wildly glaring at the woman wearing the long green dress, with a bright red handbag and, most peculiarly, a stuffed vulture perched upon her pointed hat.

Neville looked around at the people staring at her, as she 'galloped' up the street, ignoring the bystanders.

"Gran, I seriously think you should take off the vulture," he said, rushing towards her. She looked awestruck. "Neville," she said flustered, "you just fought You-Know- ah, well, Voldemort. You shouldn't be afraid of a little public eye."

It had been two days since term had ended. After Neville's seventh year at Hogwarts, which was a rather occasional one, he had returned to his grandmother's house and decided to visit his parents at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. He was very excited to tell them about the news of how he had helped in the vanquishing of Lord Voldemort, the same reason his parents went insane.

"Ah yes, we're here," Augusta said, breathing heavily, looking down the street. She panted as they reached a very old dingy building of red bricks. A huge sign on the front read 'Purge and Dowse, Ltd'. Augusta walked up to the store window, and peered through it at the inanimate dummy staring into nothing, and said out, "Hello, me and my grandson here, we've come to visit my son and daughter, Frank and Alice Longbottom," she said with swelling pride. 

Both of them moved through the window, and reached the other side of it, stepping into St Mungo's.  It was quite crowded... People in lime-green robes were walking in a random haze through the hospital, with clipboards and piles of papers with official markings on them. Witches and wizards with all sorts of peculiar ailments sat on a wooden bench by a corner. One of them kept vomiting slugs into a rusty metal bucket, reminding Neville of his second year at Hogwarts, when Ron Weasley had the same problem. Another witch had moss-coloured webbed hands, and interestingly enough, she had a frog's head. She looked at him and smiled opening her mouth, revealing a huge sticky tongue layered with sticky goo-like saliva oozing out of her mouth. She immediately closed her mouth as spit started to drool all over the bench. The wizard looked at her with bloodshot eyes, looking pale.

"Come, dear, we don't have time," she said, pulling Neville up the stairs as he was looking at a hairy wizard who kept breathing fire and clucked like a chicken after each breath. He gave a low hiccup, which turned into a rather well-distinguished cluck. 

"There we are," she said as they reached a landing which led to a corridor with the boldened words 'SPELL DAMAGE' written at the front of its entrance. They pushed open the double doors, which creaked a little, and walked on through the corridor. They walked along the corridor and stopped when they reached the Janus Thickey ward. There were transparent windows on the locked doors into the ward, and through the window, they saw an old woman in lime-green robes sitting on a chair by the bed of someone near the door. Augusta gently tapped on the window and smiled as the Healer turned around and smiled pleasantly. 

She took her wand from the nearby desk, pointed it at the door, and said "Alohomora!" in a sing-song voice. The lock clicked and Neville pushed open the creaking door and rushed up to the far end of the ward, where the shadow of two people was falling on the curtain hiding them. 

"Mum! Dad! It's me!" Neville exclaimed as he pulled open the curtains. A woman with a very thin face, pale as ash, sat there idly, along with a man who looked as carefree as her. They both stared at him unknowingly, and it painfully reminded him of the dummy at the entrance to the hospital.

Neville felt something was wrong; normally, they would lend him their hand and he would sit on their bed, stroking it for the entire time. But something was different now. 

"Gran, what's up with them?" he asked Augusta, who looked equally flustered, and he could see her face growing paler as she looked at Frank and Alice leering. The Healer seemed to be at a loss for words. "Well, we have been trying our best, but it feels like they are forgetting everything nowadays... Sometimes, they open their mouth and try to say something starting with 'N', but can't succeed..."

Augusta looked as if all the colour had left from her face. She looked very pale, and sat down on a bed, shivering throughout her body. Neville stood there, shaking and staring at his parents, who now found Neville's toes interesting, staring at it gloomily.

He was absolutely shaken. He knew there were others with much worse conditions than this. Even his friend Harry Potter had lost both his parents as a baby, his godfather just two years ago and many others. But, Neville thought, this was much worse- Harry's parents could at least identify him. The thought did not offer much justice to Neville's mind. He felt feverish and started to collapse. His own parents forgot him-

"Neville, get up," his grandmother pulled him off the ground. He wanted to cry, but for some reason couldn't... His grandmother was there... If he cries, she will... He must try to stay strong...

He slowly sat on his mother's bed, beside his parents. They both had now found the vulture on the hat quite fascinating. "Mum... Dad?" he called out quietly, and there was no response. He felt a very hot teardrop standing at the edge of his right eye. "Mum? D-Dad?" he called out again, and they slowly turned around, as if interested in knowing where the voice was coming from.

Neville sighed. "Y-you kn-know V-Vol-Voldemort?" he said, shaking. "H-He's gone now, th-the same man wh-who k-killed M-Muggleb-borns," he said, shaking. "Neville,-" her grandmother cut in, but he interrupted her.

"-a-and B-Bellatrix? B-Bellatrix L-Lestrange? You r-remember her?" 

Alice Longbottom winced, and Frank slowly shrugged. Neville widened his eyes.

"B-Bellatrix? Y-you remember? Sh-she did th-this to y-you," he said, now with a little more hope in his voice. Alice looked back at him. She slowly moved a feverish hand towards Neville, who started to break down into a stream of tears. He took her hand and brushed it against his face, feeling the comforting hands of her mother on his face. He heard many weeps, and as he looked up, saw his grandmother sobbing into a purple handkerchief, and what amazed him most was that his mother was crying too. He cried into her hands, tears flowing down her arms and his shirt. He looked to his left and saw his father weeping tears. 

"Sh-she's dead, she's killed, Mum, Dad," he said with a tone of bright hope. He looked up and saw, to his greatest relief, the face of his mother and father smiling at him.

"A-and I h-helped to kill V-Voldemort," he said, not knowing how they would react. For a moment they paused. 

The next thing he knew, they both had thrown themselves onto him, hugging every bit of him possible, roaring out cries into the echoing ward. Tears just kept flowing down their eyes, and crying out loud, they embraced him very tightly. The old Healer who had stood there, crying, decided to give them some privacy and left the room, pulling the other patients outside. Augusta sat there, crying out loud too. She walked towards their bed, and as she came into view, Frank looked at her with wide eyes and tried to say something, as he kept muttering, "M-Mu-M-", with sobs coming in between the words.

"It's okay, it's okay," she said, crying, as she pulled him and Alice into a hug.

As they stopped hugging and withdrew about five minutes later, Alice looked at Neville and said, her eyes full of tears, "M-Mum..." (Neville cried out with happiness, on hearing her talk to him) "...D-D-Dad... L-Love... N-Nev-Neville... P-Proud," she said, stammering out loud with sobs in between. He wept into her clothes as he pulled her into a hug. What was just a minute of hugging felt like an entire eternity for him; he was happy beyond knowledge.