Title: Three Days

Author: Lady Altair

Summary: That's how long she goes, in the flurry of victory, without feeling anything at all.

Rating: PG

Notes: So, I've been writing A LOT lately. I haven't felt...I don't know, dazzled by anything lately, though, so that's the reason why I've not posted in around two months. I've also done a lot of post-DH stuff, and I'm getting homesick for my First Order stories...so I'll probably be making a trip back to Fabian and Marlene and Hestia soon. I've been kicking myself trying to fix up the next chapter of Life in Black and White, which has been written for months but requires some MAJOR retooling because I'm an indecisive ninny and I can't pick a direction and stick with it. Oh well. On with this!

The pain doesn't really set in for three days. That's how long she goes, in the flurry of victory, without feeling anything at all.

It's easy not to. There are so many people crying, so many fresh losses around her, it's easy to find someone to comfort. It's easy to be needed, to playact at strength for those who are broken and scattered – Hannah is broken, too, but the fractures are older, pieces hastily gathered together; flimsy glue lines the faults and it will hold for a little longer. There are so many things to do, it's chaos as the rug is rolled back down under their feet, and Hannah gladly dances in the mess because there is no thought in the step. Somewhere deep she knows when she stops moving, the world will be set and done and she'll have to accept it; she can see the flashes sometimes, has to fix her eyes on the stationary to keep herself oriented in a turn, and she'll dance through a while longer because nothing she sees in those flashes looks much like victory at all.

Three days after, though, the castle is emptying. Fragmented families are dragging themselves home, away from the ruins of the castle, to nurse hurts and bandage wounds and salve over bleeding absences, and no one remembers that Hannah Abbott has nothing to return to. She doesn't remember, either, doesn't remember to be jealous of Susan when her dad leads her out, going on about the breakfast her mum's going to fix, doesn't remember to be jealous of the Weasleys, broken but clinging together, can't remember she's alone until she's standing on the front path before her parents' home in Upper Flagley and all the gardens are overgrown, the once-trimmed lawns wild and flowering.

It's only then she really remembers that letter she'd cried over, all the strokes of black ink that had written her father out of the world. Somehow, back all those months ago when she'd cried in Susan's arms, soothed and cared for by the entirety of Hufflepuff house, she never quite realized it would stick. It was just another horror to be bandaged and forgotten; now she peels back the gauzy white to realize she is still bleeding. Mother was gone, she knew that. But, somehow, she'd still imagined she'd come home to find Daddy. And she hasn't.

Five empty bedrooms, her grandfather's grand piano silent and out of tune in the music room, a conservatory choked with dead and withering things, and dust settled over it all. Hannah wants to run screaming, back to the castle; she can fix the ruin, rebuild walls and scrub up blood and carbon burn from the flagstones, but she can't fill this perfectly sound house all by herself. That is quite beyond her.

Hannah sits in the foyer, her back against the leaded glass of the front door, clutching to her school bag and keening silently because the way her cries echo in the empty house make her sick to her stomach. This house has never echoed before, now every sound she makes rattles around in the emptiness like a dying breath. She takes off her shoes and pads around because the soft, muted clap-step of her flats on the hardwood sounds lonely, reminds her of the dainty snap of her mother's favorite black heels, the heavy tromp of her dad's hideous old leather loafers that this floor will never know again.

The whole house smells of must and abandonment, all of the perfume and humanity she remembers gone stale. Hannah leaves her bags by the front door and wages war on the house. Silently, and all by magic. She's always struggled with silent magic, always needed the words to focus her mind. Out of necessity, though, hating the hollow way her words hang around the house, she learns. It goes too quickly, with magic – she thinks maybe she should've done it all by hand, it would've taken up more time, but…if she puts her wand down now, she's afraid she'll never again pick it up.

There are so many ugly spells twisted in the base of her wand, wound around the unicorn core and she can almost feel the unbalance. She casts cleaning charm after cleaning charm, every single one she knows, Vanishes all the months old food, shines the granite countertops, cleans the glass windows, any spell she can think to spin, to twine the clean thread of light magic and bury the dark.

It's not so easy as that; even when the house shines, the wand in her hand still seems dirty and weighted. She shoves it in the back of the silverware drawer and slams it.

Her room is untouched; it doesn't feel like hers anymore, she's come back someone else and her things don't reach out to claim her. She's still wearing her Hogwarts uniform; not her battle clothes, at the least, but she's so sick of the wool and starched cotton, of the black and yellow tie and trimmed knee socks. Hannah has stained the grey wool and white cotton of the uniform too many times; even clean, it feels like a canvas waiting to be painted with blood and hardship.

She strips and tosses the clothing in the corner, goes to her wardrobe and tries to change. Tries. All of her clothes are too young, too bright, too big. She remembers fretting over her weight, her arms, her belly, her pudgy cheeks. When Hannah looks into a mirror for the first time in months, she wishes the face were familiar. It had been easy to see what the year had wrought on others, easy to feel how Ernie's stocky, solid form had diminished when he hugged her, easy to notice Susan's enviably tall, willowy frame whittle down to bone and spurs, how the shadows under Morag's eyes deepened and her wild riot of curls began to glint with grey.

She hasn't really got a good look at herself in months – Mandy Brocklehurst had said something, wondering why the Room hadn't provided any mirrors in the bathroom; Lavender Brown had looked at her like she was crazy and asked incredulously, "Do you really want to know what you look like right now? If anyone really wanted one, there would be one." Hannah had noticed having to take in her skirts, noticed when her socks grew loose and fell down around her ankles, noticed when her bras stopped fitting and her blouses sagged, but she'd never had the time to add it up.

Thin – she's thin, like she always wished she'd be. Her cheeks are concave, her jawline smooth and sharp, all her puppy fat melted away, but most of her prettiness has gone with it. She looks like a nightmare, all split ends and dry, spotty skin colored like ash. She picks at all the good spots until her face is bleeding and then scrubs until it's pink and tight.

Her jeans sag, so she cinches them around her waist with a belt pulled a few notches tighter and steals one of her father's old shirts – it's too big, of course, but that's the way it's supposed to fit on her, not like all of her old blouses and jumpers that bag and hang, as though to remind her of how much she's changed, how much she's missing.

She stares down the front garden from a vantage on the front step, not even sure where to start. Everything's gone wild, taken the license of absent owners and crawled out to claim the path, the grass, to tangle with each other and climb the brick, weave along the foundations unchecked.

Roses…Hannah narrows her eyes at the roses, blooming up along the trellis and further onto the brick wall of the house. Blooming.

Hannah charges through the tangle to her mother's prized Ruby Rambler roses and rips at the briars with her bare hands, screaming how dare you, how dare you? over and over in her mind because she can't find any voice in her fury.

Her mother had planted them the year Hannah was born, cultivated her rare, beloved rose bushes for years, coaxed them up the trellis, hoping every year for a bloom, a rare and precious flower to admire. They'd never bloomed for her, never deigned to give that gift to the woman who'd cared for them most. They never would.

They are blooming now. In the ruinous wild of Sarah Abbott's abandoned garden, they're fucking blooming.

When she's ripped them all down, and the trellis for good measure, she stumbles back into the house, clutching her bleeding arms to her chest, her father's white oxford shirt stained with that familiar red she cannot seem to escape.

She peels the shirt off and wraps her arms as best she can and falls asleep on the divan in the music room, where she used to fall asleep listening to her grandfather play when she was smaller and her feet didn't hang off the end. The house is silent, and the last thing she thinks before she falls asleep is I'll never sleep in this house again.

When she wakes, in her cinched jeans and a bra made for more ample breasts than she currently possesses, there's a blanket draped across her and a vase on the floor.

Every rose she ripped down is carefully arranged, the little rubies in their centers glittering, and even the ones that couldn't be salvaged are petals and gemstones in a bowl beside the vase on the hardwood floor.

Clutching the blanket, she pads out to the front door. She pushes the slightly ajar door open, steps outside. The long grass is soft under her feet when she steps off the path, and she peers down at the boy rooting around in the flowerbeds.

"Neville?" she asks, stunned. "What are you doing?" He is pink when he looks up, his dear face still bruised and scabbed and healing – better than her face, what with the mess she'd just made of it with her picking fingers. And, of all the strange things, he ducks his head and turns his eyes back to the ground.

"Lovely garden, Hannah, just clearing it up a bit," he says to the ground, his gloved hands pulling up some dandelions and –tigers mauling at each other under the lacebriar bush.

She stands in confused silence for a moment as Neville Longbottom, Fearless Leader and True Gryffindor, roots around in her mother's garden, avoiding her eyes.

"Did you pick up those roses?" she asks, feeling rather suddenly steely, especially for a girl in a dusty blanket and oversized brassiere. He doesn't answer quickly enough, and she whispers in the peaceful garden. "Why would you do that, Neville?"

It's his turn to be stunned, and he looks up at her in surprise. "But…they're Ruby Ramblers. They're beautiful," he says softly. "I've never seen them in bloom, I just…"

"I hate them!" she bursts, wishing she had the vase in her hands so she could dash it down. "I hate them! I ripped them down, I never want them to bloom again! How dare they bloom now? How dare they bloom at all?" She crumples down onto her knees, her arms falling limp and the blanket falling open. Neville goes purple with embarrassment. She looks up, her blonde hair limp around her face and furious tears streaming down her face. "I…I…Neville, it's not fair."

Hannah collapses all the way down onto the grass, landing hard on her shoulder, turning her face into the ground and clutching her hands over her head. There's a still moment of silence before Hannah begins to bawl, and the glue finally dissolves and all her little broken pieces fall apart.

The hand that settles on her shoulder is instantly familiar in a way that the pink-faced, uncertain boy who avoided her eyes was not. It's firm and sure and gentle, what Hannah has come to expect from Neville in these past months. She keens into the long, unkempt grass, writhing and clutching her scabby, blood-tracked arms to her head as Neville's hand strokes down her heaving back. "I know it's not fair, I know," he's murmuring, and Hannah swallows hard, trying to choke down the endless well of despair bubbling in her chest. She pushes herself up on shaky arms, and every bit of pressure on her ribboned palms screams through her nerves.

"Sorry," she mutters after a minute. Neville shrugs, she can see that much out of her peripheral vision; she's not looking at him. She's staring at her arms, the fresh new scabs she's already itching to pick.

"Did I ruin them? The Ramblers?"

She can hear his hesitation. "Some of the roots are left. I can dig them up…they'll grow back if I don't." It's a question: do you want me to?

Hannah gets flustered, flapping her hands and avoiding a decision. "…I don't know. I don't know."

And she doesn't. She doesn't know if that's a piece she can keep, something that can be worked back into the whole. That's the truth of it, now that the temporary mend has come undone: some of her pieces are beyond salvaging. She doesn't know yet if this is one of them.

"Okay," Neville says gently.

They sit there for a few moments more, just long enough for Hannah to realize she's sitting in her front garden, shirtless and with a boy. "Would you like to come in? I can make some tea?" Hannah is quite surprised at how reasonable she sounds. Her voice cracks in a creaky, ill-practiced laugh; "Maybe I could put on a shirt, too?"

Neville smiles at her, a sad half-quirk of his mouth. "Tea would be lovely." He helps her up, careful of her battered arms.

She ascends the staircase, pointing him back to the kitchen. "Be right down," she promises.

At the top of the stairs, the smell of her house, her family, her life gone stale assaults her and another surge of grief sweeps around her ankles, strong and ready to pull her feet out from under her, to scatter the pieces she's slowly begun to gather; she feels like she can't breathe. She holds her breath and pretends it's a choice.

And then Neville's footsteps whisper up to her; well-mannered, well-measured steps along the hardwood hallway. A breath comes. The house isn't silent. That's something.

She puts on some of her mum's makeup, which does a pretty remarkable job concealing all the angry, picked spots, and another shirt of her dad's, carefully rolling up the sleeves over her scratched-up forearms.

The kettle is whistling when she slips back into the kitchen, and they talk over mugs of Earl Grey

"What are you going to do?" she asks. He takes a sip of tea to give himself a moment to think.

"From the looks of your arms," he ventures slowly, "I imagine you're in need of a gardener."

"A gardener?" Hannah looks at him as though she's misheard, and Neville nods with a bit of a grin. "So…you pulled Gryffindor's sword out of a hat. You told You-Know-Who to shove it. You beheaded a giant snake. The Aurors must be beating down your door, and you want to dig around in an overgrown weedpatch?"

"It's not a weedpatch! But, er, yeah. For now, I guess. If you want."

"I…I don't know, Neville," she says, and he wilts. It would be so easy to just say 'whatever', to let him tend or burn the garden as he sees fit, but it feels like a decision, a big one that shouldn't be hers to make. It's not her garden. "It's not you, I just don't know. I don't know if I want to keep the garden. I don't know if I want to keep this house. I'm not sure I can even stay here…it's so empty," she finishes with a whisper. "I'm sick of it being so quiet, it was never this quiet."

"Then come back to my house," he offers immediately, like it's something he's already had planned. "My Gran would be happy to have you. I would, too," he adds, flushing again, and Hannah's heart aches somehow.

"Okay," she agrees, not even needing a moment to consider it. Anywhere but here. She blushes, ducks her head. "I mean, if you're sure it won't be a bother."

"No bother," he assures her, and she stands from the table. He looks up at her, a little startled, and begins to say something like, "We don't have to go now." He cuts himself off halfway.

"I suppose I'll go pack, then," she says, turning back towards the hall and the staircase.

"I'll be here," he promises, but Hannah stops at the door.

"Neville?" Her hand is on the doorframe, studying the notches in the wood, her mother's handwriting, pencil marks pressed into the clean white paint: Hannah, age two, all the way up to Hannah, age 15. She's taller now.

She doesn't look back at him, but he answers, "Yeah?" and she smiles because she can hear the vague, short scrape of the chair on the floor; he's half ready to jump up for her, poised to be out of his seat and by her side if she only says the word.

"You can dig up the roots for the Ramblers. Keep them if you want, grow them somewhere else. But dig them up." And it's then she turns back, a pained smile on her face. And maybe it's not the brave answer, not the honorable solution. Maybe the roses should be left, a memory and a memorial to Sarah Abbott, but Hannah just can't.

"Okay," he says, "Anything you want."

Hannah says thank you, and goes to pack.

(Years later, Neville carefully offers them back, blooms for her wedding bouquet from his lovingly tended trellis. The house and its garden are long sold, nothing left but the roots he'd obligingly dug up and kept.

Hannah carries lilacs and sweet peas down the aisle. She leaves the roses on their graves.)