The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Sweets and Studies- CH26

A/N: Rejoice, for my oral exams are over!!! Seriously one of the most terrifying experience of my life to date :O

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

When Neville thought of Yule, he thought of the harsh scent of chemicals and crisp white sheets and an emptiness inside him he tried to fill with crumpled sweet wrappers.

His Gran had been taking him to St Mungo's to visit his parents for Yule for as long as he could remember. When he was younger, back when there was still hope they could recover, when every week it seemed there was a new Healer with a new idea for a new miracle cure, it felt like they were there nearly every day. By the time he'd left for Hogwarts, however, he only saw them maybe once or twice a month. Gran couldn't bear to watch her once-promising son, so strong and broad and handsome in the portraits hanging about the house, so charismatic and talented and promising to hear everyone talk, wasting away in a hospital bed, blank faced and drooling. Not even a husk of who he had once been.

When he was younger, back before Great Uncle Algie had dropped him out a window and he'd proved he wasn't a squib, Neville used to dream that the Healers would find a cure and his parents would take him away from Gran and her cold disapproval and her even colder anger that he was all that was left of her legacy. He dreamed that they would live together like a real family; that his mum would hold him in her arms and tell him she loved him and his dad would smile down at him and say how proud he was to have a son like Neville.

Except sometimes those dreams would be a nightmare. Sometimes his parents would be cured and they'd be just as disappointed as Gran in their failed squib son. Those nights he'd wake up in tears, secretly grateful that his parents would never be healed and he'd never have to face their disgust in him, the way everyone else in the family was disgusted by him.

The squib Longbottom. The shame of their line.

If Great Uncle Algie had broken his neck when he dropped him headfirst out that window, Neville didn't think anyone would have been anything except relieved.

Or maybe he'd just have been brain-damaged and ended up in the Janus Thickey ward with his parents.

He knew the ward well enough by now that Gran didn't have to come in with him. She usually just took him to the lobby and told him when she expected to be back by and left. Neville didn't actually mind– he preferred it. He got to have what he had left of his parents all to himself.

Healer Maisie Briggs was on duty, a cheerful bit of tinsel wrapped around her pointed witch's hat. Busy with another patient, she barely had time to kiss his cheek and wish him a merry Christmas (Gran would have thrown a fit to hear the muggle celebration thrown about by "proper magical folk") before waving him on through, undoing the spells that kept the residents of the Janus Thickey ward locked inside.

Frank and Alice Longbottom were laid out on beds next to each other. They were always kept together, unless one was ill and had to be kept isolated for their own safety or the safety of the other patients. Healer Maisie said they were calmer and happier when they were together.

She said they were always calmer and happier when he came to visit too.

The ward was festive today. Sparkling snowflakes had been charmed to fall from the ceiling, dissolving into nothing halfway down, colourful tinsel was wrapped around the rails of the beds, wreathes decorated the walls and fat white wax candles in protective bubbles floated about the room.

Even his parents looked festive. Someone had changed their usual white hospital gowns for themed pyjamas– his dad's were red and green checks while his mum's were blue with snowflakes. His dad was staring at the ceiling, his eyes lifeless as glass. A bad day, then. His mum, though, was sitting up and she turned slightly when she saw him, her hands twitching out towards him and Neville reached to grasp her hands in his.