Written for the 'Photo' challenge at xoxLewrahxox's forum.

Prompt: photos. Write a 100-word or 500-word chapter that features a photo and someone's reaction to it. It could be either the photo being taken or being looked at.

Exactly 500 words.

The Healer didn't know how it got there. She'd been handing out the mail to the residents of the Janus Thickey Ward, as she did every Friday, when she heard a strangled choking noise. She turned away from Gilderoy Lockhart – who was working very hard at signing his name – and pulled back the curtain between the rest of the ward and the Longbottoms.

She found Alice Longbottom on her bed, knees drawn to her chest, clutching two pictures, sobbing. The Healer wrested them away gently and settled Alice back down, stroking her head softly, murmuring quiet words of comfort. Eventually, she calmed down enough to be able to breathe properly again, and a few minutes later she was returned to her normal state.

With a wobbly smile that caused a bit of spittle to run down the corners of her mouth, mingling with tears halfway down her chin, Alice settled back into her bed, allowing the Healer to gently clean her face. With a final reassuring pat, the Healer turned away to tend to the dog-faced woman at the other end of the room, absentmindedly slipping the pictures into the front pocket of her green robes as she did so.

When Bellatrix Lestrange escaped from Azkaban, she laughed. She laughed as she passed the Dementors, she laughed as she gripped her husband's arm with uncut nails, she laughed as she blew open the door to Lestrange Manor. Cold, angry, mirthless laughter. She laughed because she knew that, after all those years, she was right. Entirely, undeniably right. And Alice Longbottom, chubby and cheerful, was wrong, and always would be.

Rodolphus knew better than to ask why his wife was laughing – she would tell him when she was ready. Until then, he was content to sit alone in his study, brow furrowed, hand too tight around a decanter of Firewhiskey.

After changing – even half-crazed from her time in Azkaban, she knew that certain principles of decorum had to be followed – she pulled open the bottommost drawer of her dresser. In the back corner, beneath clothes she rarely wore, was a picture. She withdrew it.

"Rodolphus!"

He appeared in their room a minute later.

"I need you to take a picture of me." He obeyed without question and left when it was done.

Bellatrix sneered. From her bedside table she retrieved a quill and adorned the bottom of the photograph with her sharp, spiky writing

"No matter what you do, you'll never destroy us! And for what you've done, you'll go to Azkaban, and you'll never leave! You'll rot there until you die!" Alice Longbottom cried, brandishing her wand before her.

"Crucio!" Bellatrix screeched, "Crucio! CRUCIO!"

That night, in the midst of changing from her work robes, the Healer felt a lump in her front pocket, and withdrew two pictures. Frowning, she turned them over.

They sent chills down her spine.

Alice. Writhing on the floor as Bellatrix tortured her.

Bellatrix. Laughing in a bedroom she didn't recognize.

"You were wrong, Alice"

Good? Bad? Ugly? Do tell.