Harry peered through the pane glass of the hospital door feeling a heavy sense of dread wash over him. It felt like an eternity ago, when they were both just teenagers, that he had run into Neville here at St Mungo's. He had been the only one to know about Neville's parents and now he had to watch his friend suffer through another blow to the Longbottom family. He stepped back enough to let Neville exit the room, "How is she?"

Neville's face was grave and the five o'clock shadow on his jaw suggested he had been there all night. He gave a heavy sigh and looked to his friend, still wearing his crimson robes from work, "She's stable but without knowing what spell was cast on her they don't know how to bring her back." Neville absently looked back to the room he had just exited and Harry could have sworn he saw the man shutter. Neville had never been too happy about visiting the hospital. His parents had been permanent residents his entire life, as a child it frightened him, as a teenager he felt ashamed and now as an adult he simply accepted it.

However being here again, now seeing his Gran - the strongest, bravest, meanest witch he had ever known - laying frail in a hospital bed was almost too much to bear.

"I'm sure they'll figure it out Neville, you know the best healers in all of Britain are here."

Neville simply nodded, his eyes fixated on Harry's badge. He could still remember the day they had graduated from the Auror Academy together. It had only been natural that Harry would join the ranks of the Auror Corps, given everything he had gone through, being the chosen one and all. There had been so much doubt about Neville and where he would go after Hogwarts but his final year of Hogwarts had been enough to show him the way. Defying Snape's regime, fighting Death Eaters in the corridors, standing up to Voldermort, enduring the flaming sorting hat all to be able to kill the snake and aide in bringing down the Dark Lord. After the War it only made sense.

For a while Neville had been happy to have left. The injury to his knee had been enough to keep him off of active duty and the paperwork wasn't enough to sustain him. He was overjoyed when he had been offered the position of Herbology Professor and he knew there was a part of him that was always going to belong there, in the greenhouses of Hogwarts but there was something else he needed to do now, "I'm going to find who did this to her Harry. I'm going to find them and I'm going to make them pay."

"I know."

Neville straightened up on his bad knee and looked his close friend straight in the eye, "I'm coming back to the Aurors. I have to."

Harry placed a consoling hand on his shoulder, "I know and I'll be right by your side."