Disclaimer: Not mine, of course!
A/N: Of all the characters I've experimented with, this is the one I think I had the most trouble with. I've been trying to write this one for literally months. Yet I can honestly say that I'm proud of this, so I hope you like it!

Five Times Alice Longbottom Almost Remembered

A baby screams and screams somewhere close. It is comforting to her.

Where is the baby? She doesn't have a baby, does she?

And yet, the sound is familiar. She has heard it before, she is certain. The sound makes her beating heart ache.

A baby. She definitely doesn't have one of those. Definitely not. She remembers a pretty dolly she thinks she might have seen once, with big brown glass eyes, shining, and a cracked, porcelain face. But not a baby.

Do I?

The baby's screams get slow and stop and Alice forgets all over again.

The wide, blue eyes of the woman both younger and older than the years that mean nothing to her, blink several times as the room around her comes into focus.

She opens her mouth and shuts it again because she doesn't want to speak. Maybe she can't speak. She looks blankly up at her Auntie, the one in the dull blue dress as she helps her into bed.

She didn't like Auntie at first, because her long, black hair reminded her of the monster in her nightmares. She screams and screams, and cries sometimes because she looks so much like her. It is the only time she makes any noise, when her screams of despair manage to break though the silencing spells.

Leave me alone, leave me alone!

Her Auntie was upset at first by it, but she doesn't mind anymore.

She looks over at the bed next to her at the sleeping man. How handsome he looks, with his brown hair and pale, pale skin. How familiar he looks, with hands that she might have known once. Her lips don't move and no sound comes out as she asks him a question he can't answer.

Do I know you?

Red, green, violet lights flash outside the fishbowl of her hospital home. They turn the whole room, into a rainbow of colours. She's stuck in her seat, paralysed in admiration and wonder. They're so bright they're blinding her.

A firework of green sparkles in the sky. The green lights hang behind her eyelids as she shuts her eyes, when she opens them, it's green and everything she sees is green. A vivid emerald.

She's seen the green before, she knows she has, she knows it somewhere deep inside. Locked away.

A pair of bright green, laughing eyes eat away at her as she shuts her eyes.

What do you want?

She screams quietly and cries, sobs throbbing through her as her Auntie comes and takes the rainbow away from her, because she doesn't feel happy anymore.

But the green eyes haunt her as she sleeps.

Please, I don't know you, do I?

But she can't remember, and in the morning they're lost to her.

A nice boy, with cheeks like the reddest apples she's ever seen comes to see her. He looks, through eyes that shine like a porcelain doll's, at her sleeping friend. The one who never wakes.

'Remember me yet, Mum?'

Who you speaking to?

It isn't her, is it? He's older than she is. How can she be a mother?

Grey wisps of wavy hair fall, straggling and long as he brushes her hair for her. This hair isn't hers. She has pretty hair, blonde and shiny. Or maybe it's brown, like the nice boy's hair. She thinks so, anyway. This hair isn't hers.

She grabs at her hair pulling at it, pulling it out, screaming silently, feeling the sounds reverberating inside her head.

'She's not been so good recently.'

Who? Who hasn't been good? She hopes it's not her Auntie.

'You'll have to go, I'm afraid.'

She doesn't want him to go. She grasps his hand in trembling fingers, giving him one of her bubble gum wrappers. Maybe he likes them, too. She thinks that maybe then he won't go, but he does.

Don't go, don't go, don't…

'Come on, Neville, let's go.'

Neville. The name echoes around her empty mind. Neville. Neville. Neville.

Who is Neville?

Someone has dressed her in a long, white gown, that swishes around her ankles and makes her giggle softly, childishly, as she walks through her sunken dream.

She doesn't manage to get very far before they have to turn back.

Where am I?

She stumbles and the hospital gown moves again. She's worn a white dress before, but it was nicer than this one. She has worn one before, a pretty one. Hasn't she? Was there music and dancing? She is trembling. She opens her mouth to scream, cry, complain, no one is ever really sure. Like always, she is their silent mystery.

I want to go home!

She catches some of the papery fabric in her fingers. It feels horrible all of a sudden. There's an itch somewhere on her body that she can't find to scratch. The walls are white and bare, and they're closing in on her. She can't see the sleeping man anymore, she can't see the boy with the cheeks like apples, she can't see her Auntie.

'Alice, dear! Alice… Mrs Longbottom? Can you hear me?'

Who is Alice? Who is she talking to? I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go …