Neville stared unseeingly at the flowers around him, his eyes dry and aching. Beautiful things, they were, magical and ordinary plants both spread in a mazelike pattern, well-kept paths leading through the large indoor garden. He couldn't see much of that from his position underneath a large bush, hidden from anyone passing. But the flowers were beautiful. Plants, he understood. It was somewhat comforting to be among them, even here.

He'd been able to cry about it, once. Now he only crept away, to his secret place. No one would interrupt him here. He had time to think--rather, time not to think. To keep his mind far away from the pain that accompanied any thought of the reason he came in the first place.

It was his grandmother's idea, coming here once or twice every summer. Neville knew he ought to feel the same way, feel some sort of loyalty toward his parents. He did love them. They were his parents, after all, and they'd been great Aurors once, fighting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for years before he was born...but he didn't want to see them now, not that way.

Unbidden, the memory of his father's face rose in his mind, slack-jawed and terrified as the memory of that last night replayed once again. There was no telling what would trigger it, the horrifying screaming...worse when compared with the pictures of the strong wizard before.

Neville's head snapped up, afraid someone was watching him, even here. Just paranoia, he told himself, seeing no one.

Except--a glimpse of movement, behind him. Turning fast, he spotted a girl perhaps a year or two younger than he was, her hair the color of damp earth. It curled in the humidity, framing a thin face with large brown eyes. "How long have you been there?" he demanded, knowing his face was turning bright red with anger and embarrassment. How dare she intrude on him like that? And judging from how silent she was now, she might well have been sitting there for ten minutes and he wouldn't have noticed her.

She stepped backward, a frightened look on her face. He'd taken her for another visitor, but at a second glance he saw that she wore the same loose uniform that all the patients wore, except that hers was dyed in shades of green much like the surrounding leaves. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap," he added, in a gentler tone. Maybe she hadn't meant to come in on him. Just because he considered this bush his thinking place didn't mean no one else could enter the garden--it was a public area, after all.

The girl considered that for a moment, then nodded in place of a comment.

"Why are you in here?"

"I...take care of the garden," she whispered, barely audible.

Neville frowned slightly. "But aren't you a patient here?"

She seemed to be deciding how she could answer that with the fewest words. "I like plants. They let me." A jerk of her head indicated the hospital staff in general.

"I'm awfully sorry," Neville apologized. "I didn't think anyone was in here."

She nodded again.

"I--I should probably leave." He crawled out from under the bush. She followed. It was astonishing how quietly she could move.

"I think you're very brave," came her soft voice, stopping him in his tracks.

He turned. "Why would you think that?" he asked incredulously. "You don't even know me. Believe me, I'm not brave."

"In the summer you come here--often." She seemed to be struggling to get the words out. "No one comes here. People are afraid, or ashamed of us."

She was right, Neville admitted privately, about that at least. "That doesn't make me brave."

"Braver than them." She smiled, a scared, shy smile. "Could you--could you talk with me again? When you come?"

Her sentences seemed to be getting longer, Neville noted. "Yes, I will. If it would be all right with the doctors and everything."

She nodded again, the smile fading just slightly. "I don't want to talk with them," she said, her voice fading even more, "but they say I should talk."

Just then the green door swung open loudly. "Is Neville Longbottom in here?" an attendant asked in the same soothing voice they all used.

"That's their 'don't upset the crazy person' voice," she mouthed almost silently.

Neville understood it perfectly, since they had already been talking so softly, and covered a laugh. "I'm in here," he called, stepping onto the path where he could be seen.

"Good. Your grandmother says you need to go home now."

"All right."

As they walked down the white hallway away from the green-colored door to the garden, the assistant inquired rather tentatively, "Did you see anyone in there?"

"Yes," Neville replied, "there was a girl...what was she doing in there?" He might as well get some clarification from someone not so loath to speak.

"Laurel takes care of the garden...it's the only thing she will do, and that only when she's alone. Sometimes she stays when just one or two people are in there, but hardly anyone sees our Laurel. She's been here longer than almost anyone else, except your parents. All her life since she was three."

Laurel, Neville told himself to remember. He'd just realized that he had never asked the girl's name during their conversation. "Would it be all right if I visited her again? She said she wanted me to, and--"

The attendant stopped dead, catching Neville by surprise. He stumbled and barely recovered himself. "She said?" the attendant asked intently. "You actually talked to her?"

"Well, yes," said Neville defensively. "Is something wrong with that?"

The attendant laughed. "Kid, Laurel doesn't talk. We know she can talk, we've heard her in there talking to her trees, but humans...nope. She hasn't said a word to anyone since the day she got here. If you can get her to talk, you're a miracle worker."

"Well, she didn't say much," Neville admitted, "but she did talk to me."

"Then very likely you'll have full permission to go in there whenever you like--under monitoring, of course."

The attendant had begun walking again, and Neville had to trot to keep up. "How would I go about doing that?"

"Well, since I'm in charge of Laurel, you could start by asking me," he smiled down.

"Okay," Neville said hesitantly, "can I come back to see Laurel again, then?"

"You may. Please check in at the desk when you arrive next time, and I'll get you a pass." The attendant clapped him on the shoulder. "I hope you can get through to her. She's too young to live her life locked up here."

Neville nodded uncertainly, and then they had reached the entryway and his grandmother.

It came as rather a surprise to his family when he asked to return to the hospital a few days later, but when he explained about Laurel they agreed. A pass was waiting for him at the front desk, giving him permission to visit Laurel and be in the common areas of the hospital during normal visiting hours; it would also, the witch at the desk explained, record and report any behavior which might be harmful to anyone.

He knew the way back to his parents' room by now, and the garden door was just in the next hall. Nervously, he entered it and looked around for any sign of the girl.

A small rustle of leaves attracted his attention to where she stood, a hesitant smile on her face. Neville had the feeling that she had meant to make the sound. "Hi," he greeted her, keeping his voice low.

"You came back," she said, barely above a whisper, the smile growing slightly.

"I said I would, didn't I?" He returned her smile, and carefully pulled a small package from his robes. "I brought you something."

Her eyes widened, but she made no move to come closer. He walked over into the plants where she stood and offered it to her. "I thought you might like it...I mean, I figured you didn't get many new things here..." Neville winced at his stumbling speech and stopped talking as she gingerly accepted the gift.

Laurel stared at the book--The Magic of Plants in the Tropics, from Neville's own collection--and the small sachet of seeds for some of the plants discussed, and lifted her large brown eyes to meet his in wonder. "Thank you," she whispered.

"It's nothing," he said uncomfortably. "Er...I realized I never asked your name the last time we talked...it's Laurel, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Laurel Latifal," she agreed softly.

"Latifal?" Neville asked, startled. "Then it was your parents who--?" But he stopped at the look of fear in her eyes.

The Latifals, like his own parents, had been attacked by Voldemort's supporters after the Dark Lord's downfall. Kept alive for a while under the Imperius curse, their house had been used as a refuge for Death Eaters on the run from the Ministry. Later they'd been found dead in their own yard, evidence of the Cruciatus Curse having been used on them--and their young daughter, hidden in a thick bush, terrified. Neville remembered hearing about it, remembered how like his own situation it had seemed...but apparently Laurel had never recovered.

She'd been two or three at the time. That made her his age, or even a year older. She didn't look it, but Neville realized that the impression of a small child wasn't because she was particularly small, but came from the way she held herself...shrunken in, as though she was trying to make herself a smaller target, terrified of everything still.

"Maybe you should put the book away somewhere," he suggested, hoping she would forget his injudicious remark. She seemed to, nodding and leading him through the garden.

Neville didn't even see the door until she opened it, apparently a panel of the garden wall, leading into a room not much different from his parents'. White walls, white furniture, white floor...except that here, unlike any other room in the place, probably, tiny tubs of earth covered every available surface. Some held plants barely sprouting, some were as yet empty, some held older plants almost ready to transplant into the garden. A second door led from it, probably into another sterile white corridor, but it had been blocked with several pieces of furniture. You'd have to be awfully determined to get through that door.

She read his stunned face and smiled shyly, as she put the book carefully on a shelf and laid the seeds atop it. "My room," she explained unnecessarily. "I work here sometimes, with the plants..."

He tried to identify some of the plants, then gave up and followed her back out again. "What do you want to do?" he asked, "while I'm here?"

There was a moment's pause, then, "Some of...the people here...get together around this time of day. If...if you'd like to meet them...I don't normally go, but..." She fell silent again.

Neville covered a wince. He liked Laurel, but to see the other inhabitants of the wing...still, they might not be so bad. And his parents probably wouldn't be there; the attendant had told him they rarely left their rooms. "All right," he agreed, trying hard to keep his reluctance out of his voice. He wasn't sure he had entirely succeeded; Laurel led the way out of the garden, her expression indecipherable.

The lounge was much like every other part of the hospital, excepting Laurel's garden--white and bare. White couches stood against the walls, and there were no tables. Only two people were there, a blond lady with bright blue eyes who might have been rather pretty were it not for the lost expression on her face, and a white-robed attendant. Laurel crept noiselessly to the corner of the couch farthest from the door, and Neville followed her. She seemed to be trying to vanish into it, but she smiled faintly at the patient.

The adult returned a smile almost as uncertain as Laurel's own, but the attendant stood, beaming hugely. "Laurel!" she exclaimed, "it's so wonderful to see you here!" A considering gaze was turned on Neville. "And you'd be her visitor? Young Neville Longbottom?"

He nodded, feeling nervous for no particular reason.

"Well, it's very nice of you to come. Let me introduce you to Polly, here."

"Pleased to meet you," Neville greeted the patient. She reluctantly opened her mouth to speak--but only an unintelligible confusion of sounds emerged.

"She can't talk," the attendant hastily interposed, "at least not in one language. She was trying for a universal translating spell, and it went wrong--we think. Polly can't tell us. She understands everything, but when she tries to talk, or write, it comes out in a whole jumble of languages. Some of them aren't even human. She and Laurel get along rather well, though."

The door opened again just then, sparing Neville from any response, and another attendant entered--a wizard with what looked a bit like a large gray dog. Except its eyes, and teeth...

Almost everyone at Hogwarts had studied werewolves rather closely after Lupin's revelation in Neville's third year. Even Neville remembered some of the characteristics. This was a werewolf.

Neville took a step back in shock, placing himself between Laurel and the newcomer, before he thought to wonder why a werewolf would be in wolf form now, when it wasn't the full moon and certainly wasn't nighttime. "It's all right," the wizard said hurriedly. "He isn't dangerous."

The wolf whined softly and looked at Neville with a very human expression of sorrow in his green-gold eyes.

"Is he a werewolf?" Neville asked, confused.

"We call him a were-human, actually. He was a werewolf, but he tested a potion that was supposed to cure or alleviate the effects--and it didn't exactly work. So he's a harmless wolf with a human mind most of the time, and a human with a werewolf's mind at the full moon," the attendant explained. "We don't know if his bite is dangerous when he's human, or what it does if so, but he's perfectly safe like this. His name is Rufus."

"Oh." Embarrassed, Neville apologized, "I'm sorry. I guess I didn't think." The wolf padded over and touched Neville's hand with a cold nose in obvious acceptance.

Neville sat beside Laurel, looking over at her worriedly. She'd hardly moved a muscle since they arrived. Her face was pale and she trembled slightly, her eyes fixed not on the werewolf but on the attendants.

Rufus pushed his nose under her hand with a sympathetic whine, and Laurel stroked him once. She didn't draw her hand back, letting it rest on his dark-furred head.

A high-pitched, almost hysterical chortle sounded from the hall outside, and a fourth patient walked into the room--if he could be said to walk, with his feet hovering a full three feet above the ground. Forced almost to crawl through the ordinary door, the newcomer was laughing nonstop, his eyes fixed on the attendant who entered with him. "That's funny," he choked out through the giggles, "that's funny!" The attendant wore an expression of long-suffering patience, and didn't reply.

The floating man spotted Neville, and bent down to see him better. "A visitor!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," Neville said, "I'm--"

But the man burst into peals of laughter again. "A visitor--here!" he managed to get out. Puzzled, Neville looked to the attendant.

"An allergic reaction to billywig stings," the wizard said in an undertone. "Not usually too much of a problem, but we haven't been able to get him down--or back to normal."

"Who wants to be normal?" the man interrupted loudly. "Normal's boring, if you folks are any example! Call me Billy, kid," he added to Neville. The attendant rolled his eyes, apparently at the name--probably chosen after the stings--and catching the reaction, Billy laughed louder than ever.

"Well!" the attendant witch said brightly, clapping her hands together. "I'm just thrilled to see you all here. This is Neville Longbottom, our visitor; and Neville, you've met Polly and Rufus and Billy and Laurel, of course. I'm Nancy, and these are Steven and Jonathan."

Just then there was a crash out in the hall, and almost immediately a man's voice calling "Sorry about that!" Another patient walked into the room, black-haired and not particularly tall, his uniform spattered with fresh food stains. "Sorry I'm late," he apologized. "My door was stuck, and then it opened just as the food cart was passing, and I accidentally knocked it over--and then on the way here I took a wrong turn and ended up in the secondary lounge instead--and then I ran into the laundry cart." He shifted uncomfortably with a glance down at his stained clothes, and finally headed toward a couch. The cushions were all covered in plastic anyway.

The attendants shared a look of resignation, as though they'd expected nothing different. "Well, we're just glad you could make it," Nancy smiled. Her continual cheerfulness was beginning to get on Neville's nerves. "Meet Neville Longbottom, our visitor."

The patient had been just about to sit, but at the introduction he lurched up again with a grin. Somehow he managed to get his foot tangled underneath the couch and sprawled facedown on the floor. "Oops," he muttered, pushing himself upright. "Er...sorry. I'm Alexander--call me Alex."

"Alexander the Great, who can't manage a step without falling over something," Billy added with a whoop of laughter.

"Yes, well," Alex muttered. "If I was six feet up in the air I'm sure I'd never trip over anything either." The rejoinder sent Billy into hysterics.

"Anyway," Nancy said, sternly enough to make even Billy give her some semblance of attention. "I don't suppose any of you have anything you wanted to discuss?"

There was no reply. Laurel hadn't moved, and Polly was staring vaguely off into thin air. Alex was holding perfectly still for fear of another accident, and Billy was silently grinning at nothing. Rufus was the only patient who really seemed to be listening to the attendant, and he obviously couldn't answer.

But she didn't seem to expect a response. "All right, then," she smiled, "Alex, you may go first. How was your day?"

Alex fidgeted, with a glance around as though he half-expected the building to fall in on him. "It was, er, pretty good, I guess," he started.

"Unlucky, is what it was!" Billy broke in with a noise that could not be called anything but a giggle. Neville stared at him for a moment. Giggling was annoying when Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown did it at Hogwarts. It was nothing less than scary when done by a full-grown man.

Nancy glanced at Jonathan, Billy's attendant, with barely disguised exasperation. Jonathan whipped out his wand and muttered the words to a strong Calming Charm, and Billy's uncontrollable laughter faded, though he couldn't seem to stop grinning.

Turning back to Alex, Nancy smiled reassuringly. "Go on," she prompted.

"Well, I...spent most of the day in my room," Alex said hesitantly. "I was cleaning up the mess that bird made yesterday, remember."

From Steven's faint grimace, he obviously did. Neville felt more than a little confused.

"Frieda forgot to bring the lunch cart by," Alex continued, "so I left to go find her. I thought she might be in the kitchen but I didn't think I should probably go in there again..."

This time there was a general sigh of relief. Neville looked to Nancy for an explanation, but she was listening intently to Alex.

"I noticed Yeira not far from the kitchens, and I asked her if she knew where Frieda might be--"

But the patient was cut off abruptly by the sudden failure of one of the levitation spells holding the candles aloft. It happened to be just above Alex--and fell directly on his head, splattering hot wax everywhere and catching his dark hair on fire.

There was an incomprehensible shriek from Polly, while Billy burst into renewed laughter and the attendants sprang forward to extinguish the fire. Water from their wands soaked everyone anywhere near Alex.

Dripping wet, his hair singed, Alex managed a shaky smile. "Er...maybe I'd better head on back to my room," he suggested. "I mean..."

Steven nodded a little too quickly, wringing out the hem of his robes. "You might be right. In fact, we should probably end today's session early."

"All right," said Nancy. "Neville, I'm sorry, but we do need to go and take care of things." A glance took in the soggy robes and the water collecting in puddles on the floor.

"Of course," Neville agreed at once, "I understand."

Nancy flashed him a grateful smile and stood, helping Polly over the water. The other patients and attendants followed quickly, until only Neville, Laurel, and Alex remained. The dark-haired man hesitated at the door, looking back at the younger pair.

"I...well, sorry about that," he apologized. "I didn't mean to break it up."

"It's all right," Neville assured him. "I don't think Laurel liked it much anyway." The girl was still pale, just beginning to regain her color, and seemed not to hear Alex at all.

"No, she doesn't. I was surprised she came. I normally don't either, but I heard there was a visitor here and..." He shrugged. "We don't get many visitors around here, so I was interested."

Neville recalled what Laurel had told him and nodded, feeling faintly guilty. Only his grandmother's dedication had kept him coming to see his own parents.

"Look, you haven't really seen much of the place. If you wanted, I could show you around a bit sometime," Alex offered. "I understand if you'd rather not..."

"I'd like that," Neville smiled.

Alex looked startled, then an expression of delight crossed his face. "Really? Great! When?"

"Maybe the next time I come," replied Neville with a sidelong glance toward Laurel.

"Okay. See you then!" and Alex hurried away.

Laurel let out a faint sigh of relief, and Neville turned to look at her. "Don't you like Alex?" he inquired in surprise.

She looked around the room as though to be sure there was no one there, then replied in something below a whisper, "I like him all right, it's just...people make me scared, I suppose."

"Then you don't mind my going with him for a while?"

"Of course not." Laurel smiled timidly. "You ought to see more. Not everyone here is...like me."

Neville frowned, confused. "What do you mean?"

She looked away, her voice barely audible. "Well, I'm insane. Most aren't."

Tentatively, Neville reached over to pat her hand comfortingly. Laurel started slightly at the touch, but didn't move her hand. "I don't think you're crazy at all. I think you're a perfectly nice girl who's had some really bad experiences, that's all."

Laurel turned back toward him, smiling, her expression for once almost unguarded, and Neville was surprised to realize how pretty she was. He cleared his throat uneasily and glanced at the clock on the wall of the lounge. Laurel caught the look and murmured, "Maybe you'd better go. Your grandmother will be getting worried."

Neville nodded. "Maybe so." He stood up, strangely reluctant to leave. "D'you want me to walk you back to your room?"

"That's okay," she whispered. "I can get back by myself."

He nodded, and started for the door, then turned around again. "I'll be back tomorrow," he promised.

Laurel smiled, and Neville walked away feeling happier than ever he had before on a visit to St. Mungo's.