A Scoundrel's Staycation Ch. 54 (Harry Potter) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Harry gets to fixing things.

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There’s an argument to be made that he should take Alice and help her elsewhere… but Harry’s own offended pride won’t let him do the smarter thing here. Maybe his priorities are a bit out of whack, but Augusta Longbottom has angered him in a way that nobody else has managed so far since he arrived in this world.

Not even the mysterious wizard killer or this universe’s Bellatrix Lestrange had pissed Harry off quite this much… and they’d tried to kill him multiple times and succeeded (temporarily) twice!

Augusta hadn’t made an attempt on his life… but she had made an attempt on his honor. And sure, one might consider it laughable for a scoundrel like him to be concerned with honor… but it didn’t change the facts. The Longbottom Matriarch had asked him to cross a line that Harry would not ever cross. She wanted something truly reprehensible from him.

For that… he would make her watch.

Of course, that didn’t mean Harry was going to be stupid about this. Even as he stands there at the side of Alice Longbottom’s bed he can still feel Augusta doing everything in her power to try and expel him from her ancestral home by use of the manor’s magical wards.

While Harry could potentially have helped Alice while continuing to fight Augusta off, there was no reason for him to do so. Not and risk the very woman he was trying to save. And so, as he stands over Alice… he whips his head around and pins Augusta with his gaze.

“Enough.”

As that word reverberates through the room, filled as it is with magical power, Harry reaches out and takes ahold of Augusta’s connection to her ancestral wards. And then… he breaks it. The old witch’s eyes widen and a cry escapes her lips as he snaps the bond in twain without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

It’s not something just anyone can do, especially in the midst of all that power, in the heart of the wards. And yet Harry does it all the same, immediately diminishing the bombardment that Augusta had been sending his way. The sensation of magic trying to throw him out goes away almost completely, even as the Longbottom Matriarch starts to collapse to her knees from the magical backlash.

Before she can fully fall however, Harry reaches out with a hand and his magic alike.

“No. You’re going to watch.”

Augusta is instantly frozen in place, paralyzed and unable to move or speak. All she can do is move her eyes and breathe as she remains where she is, half-fallen but still as a statue. Once his magic has taken ahold of her, Harry barely spares her a second glance though. Instead, he turns to the woman on the bed before him.

The stasis spell keeping Alice alive and perfectly preserved will have to go, of course. But not immediately. The thing is, this particular magical spell only stills and preserves the body… the mind remains aware. Of course, given Alice’s insanity, Augusta probably didn’t think it mattered too much one way or another. Or she just didn’t care.

Regardless, Harry pulls out the Elder Wand and slides it right through the stasis to press the point to Alice Longbottom’s forehead. And then he intones one word.

“Legilimens.”

In an instant he finds himself diving into Alice’s mind. He’s not too worried about leaving Augusta at his back as he does so. She’s contained for now and clearly doesn’t have any servants left at this point. Instead, Harry puts his entire focus on the task in front of him… exploring and ultimately repairing Alice Longbottom’s fractured mind.

The damage that Bellatrix and her fellow Death Eaters had done to Alice on that fateful night the day after his counterpart and Voldemort had both ‘died’ was… substantial. It always was with Alice and Frank. Fortunately, this wasn’t Harry’s first rodeo. He’s healed Neville’s parents before, albeit not in his first life much to his chagrin. But in future universes, Harry has helped other Nevilles reunite with their parents.

… This will be the first time he’s healing Alice’s mind alone however. And with no grown son waiting on the other end to greet her and hug her. Even as Harry begins his repairs, he finds himself grimly considering that fact and wondering what sort of life Alice can even hope to lead.

Even still, one thing is certain… he won’t leave her in Augusta’s clutches. No matter what, he won’t let the old bitch keep her claws in Alice.

Memories pass him by. Images of torture break through fragments of happiness. Alice’s childhood and Hogwarts years are the easiest to reconstruct because they’re the furthest away from the torture she suffered. The closer Harry gets to said torture, the harder it is for him to fix what has been broken… but its not impossible. It just takes a couple of tricks he’s learned over his lifetimes.

Like for instance, rather than forcing Alice’s mind to fully confront the torture that shattered it in the first place, Harry dulls the memory of the pain caused by the Cruciatus Curse. Another way of putting it is that he drains the color from the memory, turning it black and white and making it feel more removed in Alice’s mind. She’ll remember it, as awful as it was, but she won’t have experienced and felt it quite as deeply anymore.

Past that night of torture, Harry starts to get into more uncharted territory. While this isn’t that far off from the usual time he’s healed other Alices in the past, there’s simply no denying that this Alice Longbottom’s experiences are far removed from those others.

This one, even if she wasn’t in her right mind to experience all of it, lost her husband and son and was then moved from St. Mungo’s to this place where Augusta had her put in stasis, a living hell that would have driven her insane if she wasn’t already insane.

It’s no wonder then that when Harry comes to the end of the road, he finds the last fragments of Alice’s sanity clinging to a memory that simply never happened.

“Very good Neville! Very good!”

The remembered playroom is brightly colored, much more so than the bedroom that Augusta Longbottom had stuffed her dead son’s comatose wife into.

Alice sits in a chair watching a young Neville play with blocks… and not just as a muggle might, but quite literally floating them in the air, moving them around him. As she claps and praises him, Neville giggles, happy as can be.

The entire memory is surreal… but to be fair, it’s also false. Neville was born a day earlier than Harry and therefore only one year old when his parents were driven insane by Death Eaters. Alice never got to see her son grow up to this age, she never got to experience moments like this. It’s a pretty little lie but a lie nonetheless, something manufactured by a broken mind to try and hide from the reality outside of her head.

Its not the first time that Harry has had to pull Alice out of such a thing, dragging her from a manufactured happy memory into the real world so she can be reunited with her husband and son. Of course, the problem here is… there’s no husband and son to reunite her with this time around.

“Alice.”

He calls out to her anyways, his voice quiet but steady as the realness of his presence cuts through the falsehood she’s constructed for herself. Alice twitches but does not look his way, keeping her eyes on Neville playing as she continues to smile. Harry sighs and tries again.

“Alice.”

This time, a full body shudder goes through Neville’s mother. And then, between one second and the next, the environment has changed. Neville and the playroom are gone and instead Harry stands behind Alice as she sits by a window in St. Mungo’s long term ward for irrevocable spell damage.

The sudden silence is loud enough to wake the dead. Harry grimaces as it permeates every piece of this memory, thrumming like the beginnings of a migraine or headache. Finally… Alice speaks. Her voice is small and soft, her presence tiny and diminished.

“They’re both dead.”

Not a question… a statement. She knows what happened even if she wasn’t in a state of mind to truly react to the news. She knows what’s been done to her, how she’s been kept as a potential method of reviving House Longbottom by her crazed mother-in-law. And she knows her husband and son are gone and aren’t coming back.

Harry lets out a heavy sigh and nods.

“Yes. Frank and Neville are… gone.”

“And you want me to go back out there and what… be a normal person again? Rejoin society? Act like I haven’t already lost everything that made life worth living?”

Harry grimaces again. That was the clincher wasn’t it? Harry had done all of the hard work when it came to repairing Alice’s mind. He’d rebuilt her from the ground up, reaching out with an open hand to drag her out of the depths of her torture-induced madness.

… But it wouldn’t mean anything if she didn’t reach back. All of his work was waiting for these last remnants of her true sanity to connect with it and utilize it, like someone using a crutch or a cast for a time until they could fully heal.

The problem was, normally she had good reason to reach back. Her husband and son waiting for her. But this time around…

“All I can offer you is my condolences. You’ve lost much, Alice. But… giving up isn’t the answer. Would Frank want you to give up? Would Neville?”

Alice finally turns her head from looking out the window to stare at him. She’s crying tears of blood down her face, her eyes bloodshot as she gazes at him in silence for a long moment, letting Harry know his cliched platitudes were not helpful nor appreciated.

Harry just goes quiet, recognizing that any apology at this point wouldn’t be accepted. Nor is his opinion, it would seem. Alice would decide one way or the other what was going to happen next… and he would abide by that even if it meant she chose not to go on.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Alice speaks again. This time her voice is raspy and dark.

“Who did it? Who killed my husband? Who murdered my boy?”

Harry resists the urge to arch a brow at that.

“They say it was a curse, all-encompassing and singularly focused on the death of every wizard in the British Isles.”

Alice scoffs.

“They say that, certainly. But they also know better. Augusta knew better. She spoke to me at times, less for me and more for herself I imagine. She knew it was no simple curse… but no avenue she tried allowed her to hunt down the perpetrators. She even became Chief Warlock to be able to leverage the full resources of the Ministry and still… nothing.”

The faintest hints of a smile encroach on Alice’s wan face as she hums.

“… I think it drove her a little mad.”

Harry holds in his derisive snort at that… but Alice’s gaze still sharpens on him all the same.

“You know something more though, don’t you? You’ve survived where nobody else did… where my husband and son did not. You still draw breath.”

Harry slowly nods.

“I do. And though I don’t know the full story, I can tell you this much… Bellatrix had a hand in this.”

Alice’s entire body jerks and she suddenly looks more wrath-filled than Harry has ever seen her. Her hands in her lap claw at air as she snarls the name.

“Bellatrix…”

Not wanting to mislead her, Harry elaborates.

“She was brought in late. Whoever was behind the deaths took her from Azkaban when they cleared out the male inmates there. But she’s part of all of this. She’s working for them. And I’m in the process of hunting her and them down.”

Silence falls again for a long moment before Harry finally speaks.

“… I promise you I’ll secure justice… no matter what you choose next.”

His words hang in the air, the implication lingering between them. Because ultimately, Alice had some very solid reasons for just… not continuing on. And if she did choose that route, Harry would honor it and bring her to her final rest, no matter what the repercussions. And he would avenge her and her family too, no matter what it took.

There was, after all, a verifiable afterlife in the wizarding world. She could go see Frank and Neville again right now… if she chose to. It was just a matter of whether or not Alice would leave matters to him… or take them into her own hands.

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A/N: Remember to Vote, leave a Like, and let me know what you think!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uxiXhviPxP4I52MFzrVmUoPeIeZ3G75UQxOkffqNyh0/edit?tab=t.0