Pairing: Percy/Neville.

Rating: PG.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters owned by J.K. Rowling.

Summary: Neville visits St. Mungo's and has a talk with his mother.

Author's Note: Pre-slash.

My mother's hands are always cold.

My father screams if I touch him or even look his way for too long, but it seems to calm my mother if I hold her hands; it quiets her still more if I talk to her. She doesn't know who I am--she doesn't know who she is--but I tell myself that buried inside the madness there's a bit of her that knows me and is reassured by my presence. And every Sunday afternoon of every school holiday, I sit in this room holding her cold thin hands in mine, and wishing that she'd wake up from her nightmare and remember who I am.

Gran never comes in with me; she usually spends the hour talking to the doctor--about my parents, I presume, but we don't ever mention it. When I was quite small, a nurse would stay in the room with me, but now I go in alone. Just a boy, come to talk to his mother. It would seem almost normal, but for the bars and protective spells.

It doesn't matter what I say to her; she doesn't understand much of anything. The Death Eaters stripped all that away, long enough ago that this is the only way I remember her. So I can tell her anything, safe in the knowledge that she, at least, can never laugh at me.

My mother is the only one who knew that, my first two years of school, I threw up every week before Potions. I don't do that any more; Professor Snape still scares me, but it wasn't just the boggart that Professor Lupin taught me how to face.

She's the first one I tell that Professor Sprout thinks I'm a natural with magical plants, and wants me to sign up for an advanced course as one of my extra subjects next year--just me and two other students. The others are both Hufflepuffs, not surprisingly; they're usually the best in Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures, the things Professor Sprout calls "solid, everyday, practical magic." The way she says it, I can almost be proud of myself.

I think I should have been a Hufflepuff. I'm not brave, not really; I can barely face my Potions master, let alone You-Know-Who. And there are so many Hufflepuffs in our year. When we have Herbology with them, Gryffindor seems like a tiny little island in a sea of only half-familiar faces.

With that many people in the House, I might not have to be alone.

My mother's the only person who hears that, too. Not that the other Gryffindors mistreat me--any more than they mistreat one another, at least. But Ron, Harry, and Hermione have been through so much together that no one else seems to matter to them, and Seamus and Dean have been inseparable since we were Sorted, and Lavender and Parvati keep to themselves most of the time. And then there's me.

That's another reason I don't think I'm meant to be a Gryffindor. All the rest of them--the brave ones, the strong ones, the clever ones--fit in. I look around the common room at night, and they all seem to belong there, even the first-years. They'd be missed if they weren't around. Except for me.

And except for him.

He's everything I'm not: clever and brave and well-enough-respected by the teachers that he's Head Boy this year. But sometimes, I watch his face when he's supposedly studying, and I see him looking at the rest of the House having fun, and I think he might be everything I am, too.

And my mother doesn't know what I'm saying, so I can tell her how often those times that I watch him actually are, and that I've memorized the expression he gets when he's trying to concentrate on something. I can tell her that I sketch hazel eyes in the margins of my History of Magic notes. That he's always patient when I forget the password into the tower, and that I don't always (usually, yes, but not always) really forget. Sometimes, I just want an excuse to talk to him.

He's not even good-looking. Not really. Not like Justin or even Fred and George. He's too skinny, and too tall, and too serious. I've told myself all that a thousand times, but I don't care.

No one else will ever hear about this. Not Gran (I disappoint her enough), not any of my classmates, and certainly not him. He'd be kind about it, I'm sure, at least to my face; he might even feel sorry for me, but I get that enough. I'm not deaf, and (my Potions marks aside) I'm not stupid; I know what they say. Poor Neville. Clumsy Neville. Stupid Neville. Forgetful Neville. Pathetic Neville.

I've never heard him say any of that. I don't want him to start. I want--I deserve--that much, don't I?

Maybe he wouldn't laugh. I hear Ron and the twins making fun of him; Ron does an imitation that would be funny if it wasn't so cruel. And they're his brothers. So maybe he knows what words can do.

But there'd be pity in his eyes, and I don't want to see it. So my mother is the only person I tell.

When I was younger, I used to imagine what it would be like if my parents had never been tortured. If we had our own house, and they knew who I was, and Sunday afternoons were spent together, still, but not here. If I had a normal family, instead of living with Gran.

But these days, I think of how hard it would be to get through my life without being able to let anyone know who I really am, and a tiny bit of me is horribly grateful to be sitting in this room with my mother, holding her hands that are as smooth as marble and as cold as death.