Days After Death

When Harry catches him by the arm, his mind clicks in confirmation of what he now knows. Neville has been avoiding him.

It’s this that sets him off.

It would’ve been fine if Neville had just been busy. It would’ve been fine if he had simply forgotten about writing to him if he had written to Ginny instead. It would’ve been fine if James’ condition had simply slipped his mind in the heat of all the marking and all the exams he has to grade and what-have-you. It's that tense time of year when every seventh year eagerly awaits a grade amicable enough to send them off into the world without any doubt of their capabilities— a make-it-or-break-it moment. Well, he’s never experienced it himself. But he can guess that’s what it’s like.

He had thought the same for James until a week ago when the Headmistress had firecalled Ginny and him during their supper.

So. Neville.

Harry has seen him grow in confidence– taller in height and slimmer in weight during his years as an auror, and heavier again when he retired to teach Herbology. Apparently, he’s quite firm with the students in his class, but his kids tell him he’s still got that gentle streak. His kids tell him he lets them eat in class as long as it doesn’t interfere with their work. His kids tell him that he’s kind enough to pull them aside privately if they fail a test. Or, at least, that’s what Lily told him when Neville did that with Albus. Albus doesn’t talk about Hogwarts much. Especially now.

They’re standing in the middle of Diagon Alley, and Harry’s caught him coming out of Gringotts from picking up what looks to be a check in his hand. It would be his bi-yearly mortgage money. Harry had threatened to fire his entire team if they didn’t keep tabs on Neville and tell him where he was when alone. He had been envisioning this confrontation for the past four days now. Or maybe a decade. Every tidbit or hiccup in this long delicate line of events and memories that made up ‘Harry and Neville’ were blurring together in an indecipherable knot, and Harry lacked the patience to take the time to unravel every grievance.

Neville was the one who killed Nagini, and those violent supremacists in Glasswell, and he once killed a bedridden House Elf asking to be put out of her misery. She had suffered the same afflictions as his parents, from tortures similar to what Alice and Frank Longbottom had to undergo. Neville had quit being an auror after that. He remembered having a fight with him about it and things not being the same since.

Fine. That would’ve been fine too, if Neville blamed Harry for that. Harry knew he was a dick at times. He knew he had a self-importance issue. He’s vaguely aware that it could be playing up right now, in part. But it never needed to be if Neville had so much as given the time of day to be a good fucking mate for the first time in ten years.

“Harry,” Neville says, fixing on his plastic smile. Shit, has he always been looking and smiling at Harry like that? Had Harry just been blind or stupid to it? “You’ve caught me by surprise– how are you holding up?”

A flurry of responses comes to mind. Half of him just wants to punch the shit out of Neville and apparate away and go cry somewhere.

“My son tried to kill himself,” he snaps instead, “how the fuck do you think I’m holding up?”

How would he feel? If it were Alice instead? How would he be holding up?

There goes that smile. It melts instantly, and the sudden heaviness in Neville’s eyes becomes apparent. He touches his hand to where Harry continues to grip his arm, but Harry feels unstable– rabid enough to doubt the look of sympathy in his eyes. It seems overexaggerated. Everyone seems overexaggerated these days. Like they’re all made of foam, like they all knew it was coming in the end.

“I’m so sorry about James,” Neville says, his voice gentle. Or it seems gentle. Harry doesn’t know anymore. The plan to find and punch him wavers in its vividness. “How is he holding up?”

“I don’t want to talk about James,” Harry says. He feels possessive over the whole situation. He doesn’t even talk about it with Ginny, no matter how hard she tries to break through to him.

An image comes to mind, unbidden. Ginny is curled up on the starchy, tough hospital seat, her hands wrapped around her drawn-up knees like a teenager, her head resting on top of them. But she’s not asleep– she’s watching their son, lying still and unresponsive in the hospital bed. It’s silent except for the steady beeping of the monitor and her quiet weeping. She’s still like a husk.

She’s been watching James ever since she found out about what he had done. He knows she asks the same questions he does.

Where did we go wrong? Are we terrible parents? Did we not love him enough?

It’s why he can’t comfort her– or talk to her, for that matter. He has no answer, or none that she will like.

Deep down he knows the blame lies with him and his inadequacy. He knows he hasn’t loved James enough. He hasn’t loved anyone enough. He doesn’t have that sort of love left to give and he’s a terrible, wretched father who’s trying at a sense of normalcy, pretending, playing a role that will carry his family onwards without them knowing any better.

And still. He can’t talk to his wife. His second child hates him. And his eldest is lying in a heap of his own making.

So Harry doesn’t care if he’s being a dick. Maybe if he was more of a dick a few decades ago, he wouldn’t be so fucked now. Maybe the world would’ve imploded under Voldemort’s rule. Maybe that would’ve been better, if this never happened. Harry would trade the world for James gladly.

“You haven’t said a goddamn thing. You haven’t visited us. You haven’t visited James. You haven’t written Ginny and me anything besides one letter each. And it was like getting a fucking doctor’s note. What the fuck kind of letter was that?”

Neville flushes and looks away.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I thought you would be so worried about James’ condition now, you may have been relieved to know I’m taking care of his NEWT scores–”

“We don’t care about his fucking scores!” Harry yells.

Some passersby stop and stare at them, whispering to each other. Harry couldn’t care less, but Neville’s nervous gaze sweeps over them, swallowing up their narrowed eyes and pinched expressions. Harry can see the gears shifting in his head, calculating the time they have before some paparazzi from the Prophet appear out of nowhere and make their own uneducated assumptions as to why Harry Potter is cussing out his longtime friend and companion.

For some reason, Neville’s hesitance only serves to piss him off more.

“Scared for your reputation?” Harry asks in disgust.

“No, I’m scared for your reputation,” Neville hisses at him. “What’s happening with James is supposed to be kept secret for his sake, right? But you look a few seconds away from shouting it to the world.”

“I’m a few seconds away from lunging on you,” Harry snaps.

Neville looks as if Harry had just slapped him. His eyes are so wide it’s almost comical.

“Why?” he asks, aghast.

“Because you haven’t tried!” Harry throws his hands up. He laughs, and he can hear the hysteria coming from it, the desperation of it. “Friends are supposed to try for other friends– and you haven’t! We made you Albus’ godfather and you still haven’t tried! You haven’t tried in years!”

He’s screaming at him now, he knows. People are gathering in concentrated puddles of murmuring and conspiracy. There’s a journalist there, Harry can sense them more than he can actually see them.

Neville grips Harry by the other arm, his jaw set. Harry wonders if Neville is angry at him too. Good, he’s tired of others being sad with him.

“I’m going to apparate us now,” Neville mutters, before promptly doing just that whilst holding onto Harry.

It’s suffocating for a moment, and when Harry feels he can breathe and orient himself again, he looks around and finds himself in the heart of Neville’s house.

Neville’s home is plastered with the imprints of a nuclear family. There are the stereotypical parts, like the slightly dated family photos of him and his wife and three kids from a few years ago on the mantelpiece, along with his late grandmother. There’s the antique clock in the corner, the old carpet he stands on that’s been there for years, there are inked marks on the wall signifying how tall his kids are with little dates inscribed on them all. But then there are the parts that Harry only knows of because he’s Neville’s friend– like the arts and crafts cupboard that exists under the television, because Hannah is big on the arts. There are the pot plants that grow on the windowsill and hang off the ceiling that he knows are the result of Neville’s love for them. There’s a bunch of permission forms lying on the tabletop concerning an excursion for Auggie, their youngest child, who is a Muggle and is asthmatic and, consequently, Ginny and Harry’s godchild too. Back during the adoption process, it had taken almost two years for Neville and Hannah to properly adopt Auggie into the wizarding world. The paperwork hadn’t stopped there, it seemed. Muggle schools were very conscientious about the safety of their students.

Neville is watching Harry watch his house. Harry tries to think of the last time he was invited here, but he can’t. Perhaps six months? Neville is always at Hogwarts. It’s always just Hannah and Auggie here, and he doesn’t get on with Auggie like he does with Teddy. Auggie likes Ginny more anyway.

“Is Hannah home?” Harry asks in a quiet voice.

“No.”

He turns to Harry now, crossing his arms over his chest.

“So what’s all this now, hm?” he says sternly, like he’s scolding one of the misbehaving tweens in his class. “I haven’t ‘tried’ in years?”

Harry scoffs.

“When you’re friends with someone, you have duties,” he says, though a part of him knows he’s pulling words out of his arse. “Like, Ron and Hermione– we have dinners. We exchange letters. I visit Ron at his shop. We talk about things and about his life and my life and we joke and we aren’t distant and cold and acting like business acquaintances with each other.”

He knows the feeling is justified somehow, he just doesn’t have the words nor the rationality to string them together coherently enough to communicate.

“Well,” Neville says patiently, “I can’t have dinners with you– I barely get to have dinners with my wife in the home we made together. I do exchange letters when I can, but there’s hardly anything to update you on. And I can’t visit you either because I’m at Hogwarts most of the time, looking after your kids.”

Harry narrows his eyes.

“Some fucking job you’ve done at that.”

Neville looks enraged for a second before his face relaxes and he rubs a hand over it. He shakes his head, hand still covering half his face, smooshing into his cheek, fingertips pressing into the skin.

“I’m not doing this with you,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m not the meek little boy you knew in Hogwarts, I'm not going to just take you like this anymore. You always project your issues onto me because I've let you do it every single time. I let you do it because I know why you do it, I know how you see yourself and how you’ve seen yourself in me.”

A beat. Harry feels a sharp pain in his chest that he ignores. He concentrates the burning he feels behind his eyes and in his throat to the palms of his hands– now balled into fists that Neville pays no mind to.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on! You only really became close with me after you found out about how close I was to your fate, how I was the only one who could even relate to what you went through when you lost your parents. You really think you treat me fairly? Don’t you remember how you blew up at me very similarly when I quit being an auror? How you dogpiled everything on–” he stops and sighs, running his hands through his hair. “You know what? No. I’m not going to air this out with you.”

“Why not?” Harry snarls. “You’re doing a fine job. You’ve clearly been wanting to.”

“It’s cruel to do so. You’re not in the right headspace. You’re grieving.”

“I told you to–!”

“I think–”

“–keep your mouth shut about James! Don’t ever fucking talk about him. I don’t want to talk about him, I told you that,” his voice breaks humiliatingly. “Don’t talk about James.”

“Harry, you should go home.”

“No, say your fucking piece. Tell me how you know me so very well. Tell me what you think, how I'm a disgusting friend, a shitty husband, an even worse father–”

Neville looks horrified.

“No–!”

“No, just say it! Say it!”

He knows there are tears in his eyes now– he can feel his vision go wonky, see Neville’s appalled face twist and blur with the rest of his rigid figure. He feels lightheaded and stupid, and he’s not talking about James but James is all he can think about. James, unresponsive due to his head injury, his left calf completely purpled and bruised, his face slack and unrecognisable due to the swelling.

The worst are his fingers. They’re fine now, but when they brought him in, the fingers on his left hand were bent at odd angles, snapped from his body falling onto it.

Harry can still remember those tiny fingers wrapping around his thumb when James was a baby, can still remember those fingers gripping his hand or his robes on instinct when he was old enough to walk but young enough to need someone to catch him in case he fell, can still remember sticking small coloured band-aids to them every time he got a scratch. Harry used to kiss it better and perform a small healing spell, something non-verbal, to heal whatever nicks got on James, whether it was his delicate fingers or bony knees or chubby arms. Every time Harry would take the band-aid off ten minutes later, his cuts would be magically healed. And James would always believe his dad had healing kisses until he was about eleven.

Eleven.

Oh, fuck. He’s going to be sick.

Harry keels over, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. He doesn’t know if the choking or the nausea or the dizziness will get to him first. He makes a broken sound in his throat, some raw, animal-like cry that claws its way up through him– the closest thing he’s ever done to wailing.

He can feel hands on his back, firm, but the voice he hears is unsure, flitting with nervousness. It feels like there’s a film blocking him from understanding or perceiving the words that fly out of Neville’s mouth.

Harry’s mind jumps to Amos Diggory for a moment. How hilarious is that? To think about someone he hasn’t thought of in years. He thinks of Cedric often, but rarely does he think of Amos. And James isn’t even dead.

But it’s too close. And it was self-inflicted.

That’s what terrifies him the most. Harry knows what it means to give up his life, knows the cost of it, the disassociation right before it happens. His last coherent thought had been of Ginny, and then what? Seconds had passed where he had thought of nothing at all. When Harry recalls King’s Cross, recalls a place that may have never existed, that he can barely envision besides false memories and a deeply ingrained, sick part of himself he can’t (or refuses to) expel, he feels a sense of serenity so unlike the rest of his life it frightens him. What if he had never married Ginny? What if he had never had James? Would he bother to remain still?

So Harry knows a little too well– and when he stares at the broken body of his son, he knows he can never leave, only entertain the thought. But James? What would he do when he wakes up?

Would the brief whiteness in his King’s Cross be better than the fluorescent white lights of the hospital? Would that peace be worth breaking his parents’ hearts? Would it be worth Albus and Lily’s too?

Harry wishes he could trade places. He’d give anything.

Neville rubs at his back rhythmically. His words take shape slowly– he’s repeating the same thing, over and over.

“It’s okay,” he’s saying, like he’s practised, “you’re okay. It’s okay, you’ll be okay.”

The black spots in his vision start to fade, the chest spasms and pain are easing slowly, and he’s gulping down air to calm himself, removing his glasses to wipe frantically at his eyes. Harry doesn’t think he’s ever broken down so rawly after the Headmistress had firecalled him, not even when alone with Ginny.

“I’m sorry,” Neville says instead. It sounds like he means it, like there’s genuine grief there. “I’m sorry you’re going through this. You shouldn’t have to– after everything–”

He stops himself. There’s a hidden ‘but’ there, and it feels important. Whatever unsaid is floating along the edges of the carpet Harry has his hands and knees in, he’s sure it’ll be the dealbreaker of their friendship. Neville isn’t going to prance back into the boy he knew just because Harry wants it to happen. Harry isn’t going to change any time soon, either.

So.

It’s fine. Harry doesn’t care anymore.

Neville conjures a tissue so Harry can wipe his face.

When he recovers, he says, “I left him. When he turned eleven, I promised to be there for his birthday. But I wasn't. I left him.”

They both know who he’s talking about. Neville pats his back again, not knowing what to say.

“Let’s get you home.”

Harry’s always thought love was something that had to be earned and provided for. It didn’t come for free. He had to prove himself first. He thought he was doing that by making the world a safer place for his children. Everything was for them, really. He’d sacrifice Ginny’s good graces for his children’s safety too. He’s so scared that his fame, his legacy, would be the cause of their doom somehow. Like monsters seeking out demigods to get back at beings they can’t touch. But Harry is no god. He can’t strike them down with a bolt of lightning, but he can hunt them the best way he knows how.

And yet.

His baby almost died. It was by pure chance that he survived. And the monsters remain in the dark.

Maybe he was doing it wrong the whole time.

He doesn’t know anymore. Maybe he was absent for nothing.