Setting:
Sixth Year, Winter, 1996 – Hogwarts and St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Snow drifted lazily over the black lake as the wind rattled the windows of the Gryffindor common room. Harry sat in the flickering firelight, the Half-Blood Prince's potions book set aside, replaced by a far older, more worn journal. Its pages were scrawled in elegant handwriting, ink faded and delicate.
It belonged to Healer Calandra Virellis, an Unspeakable turned Mind-Healer. Harry had discovered the journal buried deep within the Restricted Section while searching for a spell to mend broken minds. He wasn't looking for himself. Not this time.
He was looking for Neville.
It was a quiet night when Harry walked past the Room of Requirement and found Neville inside—alone, trembling, holding a crumpled wrapper in his hand. It was from his mother, Alice.
"She always gives me these. But she doesn't even know who I am," Neville said softly. "And I pretend like I'm fine. But I'm not. I want them back, Harry. I just—want them back."
Harry didn't know what to say. But he swore to himself that if magic had broken them, then magic could mend them too.
In Virellis's journal, Harry found the spell: Sanamentum Mentis. The notes described it not as a weapon, but a bridge of light—a healing charm that required intense emotion, familiarity, and honest intent.
The spell wasn't listed in any modern book. It was too dangerous, too powerful, too human. But it was real.
He practiced. With Dumbledore's silent approval. With Hermione's help understanding the neural bindings. With Luna guiding him through emotional focusing techniques from her mother's old meditative rituals.
And when he was ready, he told Neville.
The ward was quiet, full of soft whispers and the ghost-like shuffle of broken minds. Alice and Frank Longbottom sat in their chairs by the window, staring into nothing.
Neville held his mother's hand. Harry knelt before her, wand trembling slightly.
"You sure, mate?" Neville asked.
Harry nodded. "I don't know if it will work. But I believe it can."
He placed the wand gently to Alice Longbottom's temple, the other hand clutching her crumpled wrapper—the same one she had given Neville.
He focused on Neville's love. The way he looked at his parents with hope, not pity. The strength of that bond.
"Sanamentum Mentis," Harry whispered.
Light surged—not bright and sharp like Lumos, but warm and golden, like morning sun through curtains. It seeped from his wand into Alice's skin, flickering along invisible paths of memory and soul.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—her eyes blinked. Once. Twice.
"...Neville?" she croaked. A voice unused, but real. "...my baby?"
Neville gasped. His hands trembled. "Mum?"
Frank stirred next. Harry didn't stop. He turned to him and repeated the spell, this time focusing on memories Neville had shared—Frank teaching him how to use a toy wand, laughing with Alice in an old picture Neville kept hidden in his trunk.
"Sanamentum Mentis."
The same golden light filled the room.
Frank opened his eyes slowly and looked at his son—truly looked. "...You've grown," he whispered, voice raw with disbelief. The Longbottom ward was no longer silent.
Alice and Frank weren't fully healed. Not yet. But they were awake. They remembered. Their minds, like broken glass, were being pieced together—not by force, but by love and slow, careful magic.
Healers flocked to study the miracle. Calandra Virellis's name returned to the lips of grateful families. The Department of Mysteries filed quiet papers.
But none of that mattered to Neville.
He cried with his parents in his arms. He hugged Harry harder than he ever had before.
"I don't know how to thank you," Neville said hoarsely.
Harry smiled.
"You already did. You never gave up on them."
The Daily Prophet headline on January 3rd, 1997, was impossible to miss:
"LONG-BROKEN MINDS RESTORED: THE RETURN OF FRANK AND ALICE LONGBOTTOM"
"Teen Savior Harry Potter Revives Lost Healing Spell to Restore Auror Legends"
Photos of Alice and Frank Longbottom smiling faintly at their bedside, flanked by Neville and Harry, splashed across every wizarding publication in Britain—and beyond.
The magical world, still in the cold shadow of Voldemort's return, found something it hadn't tasted in months: hope.
The Department of Magical Health immediately dispatched a delegation to St. Mungo's to confirm the event. The Department of Mysteries, long aware of Virellis's work and its classified nature, was less enthusiastic.
"The spell Sanamentum Mentis was locked away for good reason," hissed Undersecretary Spindlehawk, "emotions make for unstable magic."
But the truth couldn't be undone.
Healer Calandra Virellis, long presumed dead, became a posthumous heroine. Her sealed notes were re-examined, with cautious reverence. A task force was launched to reclassify spells involving soul and mind magic, under new ethical guidelines.
The Ministry tried to spin it, claiming they had always "considered advanced healing methods."
But the public knew better—this was Harry's doing. The Janus Thickey Ward, once a place of hopelessness, was transformed. Wizards and witches with Cruciatus-related psychosis, brain curses, or trauma from the First Wizarding War were suddenly getting visits from hopeful family members.
Three more patients were partially recovered using Sanamentum Mentis under controlled conditions.
But none succeeded as fully as Alice and Frank.
Why?
Because Harry had not just cast a spell—he had believed in the people it was for.
At Hogwarts, the spell became a new subject of study in NEWT-level Charms and Healing Theory, though only discussed in academic circles—too dangerous for casual use.
Professor McGonagall privately praised Harry:
"You've done what no adult dared attempt. You healed not just minds, Mr. Potter… but the belief that some things are worth healing."
Neville Longbottom, once quiet and clumsy, now walked the castle with renewed confidence. He was no longer just "the boy with the broken parents." He was the boy who got them back.
Students whispered about the spell in corridors, calling it The Light of the Mind.
Wizarding Families who had hidden relatives afflicted by dark magic began stepping forward.
Gringotts updated policies to allow guardianship changes based on mental restoration.
Anti-Dark Arts movements used the restoration as proof that love and healing magic were stronger than cruelty and fear.
Voldemort, now aware of Harry's growing power—not just to fight, but to undo the damage he left—began to see the boy not as a threat to be eliminated…
but a beacon to be extinguished before others followed his light.
In the cold silence of Malfoy Manor, the Dark Lord sat unmoving, pale fingers coiled on the arm of his throne-like chair. Around him, the Death Eaters stood tense and silent, waiting for his fury.
"He undid the Cruciatus," Voldemort hissed, eyes gleaming red. "He brought back what I shattered."
Bellatrix trembled slightly. Her once-proud destruction of Frank and Alice Longbottom had been a masterpiece of cruelty—until now.
"Love," he sneered, "is a pathetic thing… until it becomes dangerous."
Voldemort recognized the real threat: not just Harry's power, but the power of his influence. If others believed in this kind of magic—healing, empathy, soul-binding spells—his reign of terror might collapse.
His Orders Were Clear
1. Destroy Calandra Virellis's notes, wherever they still existed.
2. Assassinate Mind-Healers who sought to replicate the spell.
3. And worst of all:
"Bring me Neville Longbottom. Alive. Broken. Publicly."
If the boy whose parents were healed could be publicly tortured—perhaps even re-broken—it would kill the hope Harry had given the world.
Bellatrix smiled through her madness.
"Let me do it, my Lord. Let me take back what was mine to ruin."
But they had misjudged Neville Longbottom.
The boy they remembered—the awkward, forgetful child—was gone.
In his place stood a young man forged by pain, restored by love, and driven by a desire not for revenge—but for justice.
As the Battle of Hogwarts began, something extraordinary happened.
Neville, now a leader in the resistance, stood on the battlements of the Astronomy Tower. He looked down at the gathered Death Eaters and raised his voice—not to taunt them, but to call the broken to rise.
"You think your curses define you! You think what you've done can't be undone! But I am proof that we take back what was taken! We heal! We fight! And we win!"
Behind him stood Frank and Alice, wands drawn—not fully restored, but lucid, present, and ready to fight beside their son.
When Bellatrix Lestrange broke through the north wing, she wasn't expecting Frank Longbottom's silent hex, or Alice's fierce defensive spells.
But it was Neville who stood in front of them as she raised her wand.
"CRUC—"
"Protego Maxima!"
The curse rebounded.
"You think you can take them again?" Neville growled, voice cold with fury. "You already lost."
Bellatrix snarled and lunged, but Neville moved faster. He didn't cast a deadly curse—he cast Petrificus Totalus.
He refused to become what she was.
She was taken down, bound and silenced.
After Voldemort fell, Harry and Neville were no longer "The Boy Who Lived" and "the Almost Chosen One."
They were brothers in arms, both symbols of resistance—but in very different ways.
Neville became an ambassador for restorative magic, helping reform Wizarding Law to include Mind-Healing as a core department within the Ministry.
The spell Sanamentum Mentis was finally legalized—used in trials, recovery wards, and even in magical education for trauma relief.
And in Hogwarts' Memorial Garden, where the names of the fallen were etched in marble, there stood a bronze plaque that read:
**"For every mind restored, for every soul unbroken—
magic is not just power. It is healing.
In honor of Alice and Frank Longbottom,
and the son who brought them home."**
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 2007
Ten Years After the Battle
The greenhouse was alive with late summer bloom—snargaluffs slumbered in deep soil, flutterby bushes twitched lazily, and the scent of honeysuckle drifted on the wind.
At the center of it all stood Professor Neville Longbottom, his sleeves rolled up, wand tucked behind his ear, gently coaxing a venomous tentacula back into its pot with a calm murmur and a knowing smile.
"It's not about control," he told a wide-eyed third-year Hufflepuff, "it's about trust. Plants, like people, need to know you're listening."
After the war, Neville was offered many titles: Order of Merlin (First Class), Magical Defense Consultant, even a seat on the Wizengamot.
But he chose Hogwarts.
Because Hogwarts had always been his real home—and because the next generation deserved to grow under gentler hands.
He taught Herbology, not just as a science, but as a philosophy of healing and patience.
He built new gardens, enchanted with calming charms for anxious students. He taught plant-based calming potions, antidotes for mental fatigue, and whispered stories about the old wars only when it helped a student find courage. On weekends, Neville traveled quietly to St. Mungo's, where his name was still spoken with reverence. He wasn't a registered Mind-Healer. He didn't want medals.
He simply sat with patients.
He would hold their hands, sometimes bringing them enchanted flowers that whispered old lullabies or radiated gentle warmth.
He'd speak softly, sometimes casting Sanamentum Mentis when the time felt right—not always to fully restore, but to soothe, to anchor, to offer a moment of clarity and peace.
He worked with families, teaching them how to connect with the lost, the broken, the wounded.
They called him "The Quiet Restorer."
In his office hung a single photograph:
Frank and Alice Longbottom, smiling, arms around him on his graduation day. They were never quite the people they once were—but they were whole enough to live, to love, and to remember.
And they still visited Hogwarts on holidays. His students adored them.
"Your mum brought me a knitted scarf last year," whispered one girl in awe.
Neville eventually rewrote parts of the Hogwarts curriculum, integrating mental wellness into Defense Against the Dark Arts training. He worked with Madam Pomfrey to create a "Healing Through Herbology" elective.
Harry, now head of the Auror Office, would sometimes drop by just to listen to Neville's lectures and tease him in the staff room.
"Out of all of us," Harry said once, "you're the one who fixed something permanent."
Neville had smiled and replied:
"No. I just showed people it could be fixed."
One rainy evening, a young first-year boy came to Neville's office in tears, afraid of going mad because his father had once been cursed by the Cruciatus.
Neville knelt beside him and pulled out his wand—not to cast, but to let the boy hold it.
"Magic didn't break your father," Neville said gently. "Darkness did. But do you know what healed mine?"
"Love?"
"That, and courage. The kind you're already showing."
The boy sniffled, clutching the wand tighter.
"Will I be strong enough too?"
Neville smiled, that quiet, warm smile that had changed so many lives.
"You already are."
Neville Longbottom's Memorial Garden (Founded 2043):
"The one who grew hope from pain.
The boy who healed minds.
The professor who taught us all that even in brokenness, there is room to bloom."