Beyond the Fractured Eden
Notes:
This whole FF is inspired by Love, Death, Robots- episode called beyond the Aquila rift.
Neville wakes up in a greenhouse unlike any he has ever seen, a breathtaking expanse of verdant life stretching endlessly in every direction, its towering glass walls gleaming under a warm, golden light that seems to spill from the heavens themselves, filtering through enchanted panes etched with delicate, swirling runes that shimmer faintly, casting intricate, shifting patterns onto the lush greenery below. The sheer vastness of it is almost overwhelming, a botanical paradise teeming with flora so vibrant, so impossibly lush, that for a brief, blissful moment, he almost forgets to question where he is, how he got here, or why the air feels so impossibly thick with the mingling fragrances of blooming roses, crushed leaves, and the deep, loamy scent of damp earth after rainfall, a perfume so intoxicating it almost drowns out the quiet hum of something just beyond his understanding, something lurking beneath the perfect, shimmering facade of this strange and beautiful place.
And beside him, nestled against his side with a softness that feels at once familiar and entirely foreign, is Pansy Parkinson, her fingers feather-light as they comb through his hair, her touch so achingly tender that it sends a shiver down his spine, not from fear, but from the disorienting sense of intimacy it carries, as though this moment—this perfect, quiet moment—has existed for an eternity, as though it is the only truth that has ever mattered.
The question burns at the edge of his mind, slow and sluggish, like a flickering ember buried beneath a thick layer of ash, struggling to ignite.
"But where is here?"
His voice is hoarse, as though he hasn't spoken in days, maybe weeks, and the weight of the words feels unnatural in his throat, like something borrowed, something stolen. The sound barely rises above a whisper, swallowed by the thick, damp air that clings to his skin like the ghost of an unseen tide.
Pansy exhales, a soft, lilting sigh, the kind that makes his chest ache, though he isn't sure why. She is watching him with a tenderness that feels too heavy, too deliberate, like the way one might cradle something fragile, something on the verge of breaking.
"We made it," she says, her voice smooth and quiet, slipping between the spaces of his thoughts like vines creeping through the cracks in stone. "We got out. We survived."
Her fingers are still running through his hair, slow and careful, as though she is grounding him, as though she is afraid to let go, and for a moment—just a moment—he wants to let himself sink into it, into her, into the warmth of her touch and the honeyed weight of her words.
But there is something wrong.
Beyond the gleaming glass of the greenhouse, past the lush, spiraling vines and the riot of impossibly vivid flowers blooming in perfect harmony, the world is too still. There is no wind. No distant hum of insects. No life beyond what exists inside these walls.
"The war… is over?" he asks, forcing the words out slowly, testing them against the shape of her truth.
She smiles—soft, sad, and knowing, the kind of smile that feels too rehearsed, too carefully placed.
"Yes, love," she murmurs. "It's over. We barely made it out in time."
Something inside him clenches, tightens, coils into a knot of unease.
"Made it where?" he presses. "Where are we?"
Pansy shifts beside him, drawing her legs beneath her, and for the first time since waking, he notices the way the light catches in her dark hair, the way it gleams almost unnaturally, reflecting the golden glow that filters through the enchanted glass like liquid amber. She tilts her head, studying him, as though deciding whether or not to say something that might hurt.
"Neville," she says finally, with a patience that feels practiced. "The world outside is gone."
His breath stutters.
"What do you mean, gone?"
"I mean," she begins, voice dipping lower, softer, as though speaking too loudly might make it real, "there's nothing left. Not really. The spells—those last, desperate curses—burned everything to the ground. The air is thick with poison, the land is barren, and whatever remnants of magic still cling to the ruins are too unstable, too dangerous. Nothing can grow. Nothing can live. It's all… dead."
Neville swallows, his throat dry, his pulse unsteady.
"Then how are we here?"
Another pause. Another sad, knowing smile.
"Because we were lucky," she whispers. "We found this."
She gestures around them, at the perfect, thriving paradise that stretches impossibly far beneath the glass dome—an ecosystem that should not exist, a world untouched by the ruin she claims lies beyond its borders.
The walls of the greenhouse curve high overhead, seamless and unblemished, the glass clear enough that he can see the sky beyond—a sky painted in soft, shifting hues of peach and violet, too perfect to be natural. Beneath their feet, the soil is rich and dark, spilling over with thick roots and tangled ivy that climb the columns like veins. Flowers bloom in clusters of impossible color, deep reds and luminous blues, their petals opening and closing in slow, rhythmic pulses, like something breathing.
Everything here is alive.
But nothing feels real.
"We're safe here," Pansy continues, reaching for his hand, pressing it between her own. "That's all that matters."
Neville exhales slowly, his fingers tightening ever so slightly around hers.
She is warm. Steady. Familiar.
But so is the world she has built around them.
And something deep in his gut tells him that neither can possibly be true.
At first, Neville wants to believe her—wants to surrender to the illusion of peace she so carefully weaves around him, wants to bury himself in the warmth of her touch, in the way she kisses him with a slow, aching tenderness, in the way she holds onto him as though he is something sacred, something fragile, something she is terrified of losing. And maybe, for a fleeting moment, he lets himself lean into it, lets himself fall into the rhythm of this strange, surreal Eden, lets himself pretend that yes, this is real, this is home, this is safe.
The greenhouse is paradise—his own private kingdom of green and gold, of twisting ivy and towering ferns, of luminous flowers blooming in colors too rich, too alive, to be anything but magic. The air is thick with the heady perfume of roses, honeysuckle, and deep, damp earth, a scent that clings to his skin, his clothes, his lungs, sinking into him as if the very world around him is trying to root itself inside his body. Every plant he touches thrives, every stem straightens, every bud blossoms, every vine coils toward him with a silent, expectant hunger, as though the garden itself breathes in time with his pulse.
And yet—beneath the beauty, beneath the intoxicating sense of safety, beneath Pansy's delicate hands carding through his hair and her voice lulling him into something dangerously close to complacency—something feels wrong.
It starts as a whisper in the back of his mind, a quiet, nagging itch, too faint to grasp but too persistent to ignore. A sensation, subtle but growing, like standing at the edge of a precipice in the dead of night, knowing the drop is there but unable to see how deep it truly goes.
Then he begins to notice.
Tiny things, at first—things he might have brushed off if not for the way they begin to stack, one by one, like cracks forming in glass.
The flowers never wilt. Not a single petal droops, not a single stem bends under its own weight. No leaf ever browns at the edges, no sign of decay, no natural cycle of life and death. The greenery remains in a state of perfect, frozen bloom, as though time itself refuses to move forward within these walls.
His reflection in the glass—wrong, off, subtly distorted in ways he cannot quite explain. Sometimes, it lags behind his movements, a fraction of a second too slow, as though it must remember to mimic him. Other times, he swears he catches it watching him, the dark gleam of his own eyes lingering just a beat too long before shifting away.
And Pansy—Pansy—who feels so real beneath his hands, who laughs when he brushes his fingers against the curve of her jaw, who murmurs his name with a softness that makes his chest tighten—she, too, begins to unravel beneath his scrutiny.
When he asks her about the past, about where they were before this—before here—her answers are soft, vague, like words spoken through layers of fog.
"We ran, love."
"We escaped."
"We made it out, and that's all that matters."
Her eyes glaze over when he presses further, her smile stretches a little too wide, a little too tight, like something practiced rather than felt.
And the worst part?
Every time she speaks, every time she tells him this is right, this is home, that they are safe…
A part of him wants to believe her.
And that part of him is beginning to scare him more than anything else.
The nightmares begin soon after, creeping into his mind like tangled roots slithering through cracks in stone, burrowing deep, festering in the hollow spaces of his subconscious where they take hold and refuse to loosen their grip. They are not like normal dreams—not fragmented nonsense or fleeting horrors that dissolve in the light of morning—but something deeper, something that does not fade when he wakes, something that clings to him like damp earth under his nails, something that follows him even in the daylight, whispering its presence in the back of his mind.
He wakes gasping, lungs straining as if he has been drowning in something thick and unseen, his pulse hammering a violent rhythm against his ribs, his entire body trembling with the fading echoes of a terror he cannot fully remember. The scent hits him first—rot, mildew, the unmistakable stench of something long dead and left to fester in the dark. It fills his nostrils, coats his tongue, lingers in the air even as his rational mind tries to insist it isn't real, that it's just a remnant of the dream, a trick of his own mind. But it is so strong, so suffocating, curling in his throat like smoke, thick and cloying, as though the nightmare has not quite loosened its hold, as though something else has been breathing beside him in the night, something unseen, something waiting.
Before he can speak, before he can even fully process the clawing panic rising in his chest, she is there.
Pansy's hands are soft against his face, her fingers threading into his hair, her voice a soothing murmur of reassurance, pressing against the jagged edges of his fear like a lullaby meant to stitch him back together.
"It's nothing, love," she whispers, pressing a kiss to his forehead, her lips cool against his burning skin. "Just a bad dream. It's alright. I'm here."
And for a moment—just a fleeting, fragile moment—he lets himself believe her.
But the scent does not fade.
And when he closes his eyes again, he swears he can still feel something watching him from the shadows just beyond the reach of the golden, hazy light.
It doesn't stop.
The nightmares come in waves, each one more vivid than the last, each one digging its claws deeper into the fragile reality he is trying so desperately to hold onto. He dreams of roots tightening around his limbs, curling over his chest, slipping into his mouth, down his throat, into his lungs, filling him, suffocating him with the taste of damp soil and old, forgotten things buried deep beneath the earth. He dreams of whispering voices—not words, not language, but something ancient, something hungry, something that presses against the inside of his skull until he wakes with a strangled gasp, his sheets tangled around him like vines, his mouth dry, his heart pounding, his body slick with sweat that smells faintly of flowers.
And always, always, Pansy is there to soothe him, to run her hands down his back, to whisper gentle reassurances into his skin, her voice as smooth as silk, as cool as the glass that surrounds them.
"Shhh, love. It's just a dream. It's alright. I won't let anything hurt you."
But sometimes, when she thinks he is asleep, when she believes he has drifted far enough from consciousness that he cannot hear her, he wakes to the sound of her crying.
It is a quiet thing, muffled, as though she is trying to swallow it down, to keep it hidden, to bury it beneath the same soft words she uses to soothe him.
She never sobs. Never lets the sound rise into something broken or desperate. But he feels it—the way her body tenses beside him, the way her breath stutters in the dark, the way her fingers tremble just slightly when she brushes them over his skin.
And the worst part—the part that sends a cold, crawling dread slithering down his spine—is that when he turns to her, when he reaches out, when he whispers her name in the quiet hush of night, she is always already awake.
Her eyes, gleaming faintly in the dim glow of the enchanted glass above them, are always open.
And in that moment, before she smiles, before she whispers reassurances, before she presses her lips to his skin in a desperate, silent plea for him to forget.
He swears there is something else lurking just behind them.
Something that is not Pansy.
One night, when the air is too thick, too still, when the silence stretches out like something living, pressing against his ears, his skin, his very bones, Neville wakes to the sound of something soft—not the wind, because there is no wind here, never any wind—but something fragile, something damp and shuddering in the dark.
A sound like someone weeping.
Or maybe whispering.
The noise coils around him, curling through the tangled roots of his mind like the slow, deliberate creeping of ivy over a forgotten ruin. At first, he thinks it is her—Pansy—murmuring in the half-light, her voice breaking at the edges like she's holding something back, something fragile and wrong. But when he turns to her, her body is perfectly still, her breathing even, too perfectly measured, too still in a way that makes his gut coil with something deep and instinctive. Her face is turned toward him, but her eyes are closed—and yet—he can't shake the sick, twisting certainty that she is not really asleep, that if he leaned in just a little closer, he would feel her watching him from behind those dark lashes, waiting.
The sound comes again.
Low. Wet. Wrong.
It is not Pansy.
And something in him knows this is the moment he should close his eyes, roll over, pretend he heard nothing, pretend he is still dreaming, pretend that everything is fine, that the world is as it should be.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he pushes back the covers, the sheets feeling too heavy, too damp beneath his fingertips, like roots instead of fabric, like something breathing in the dark. His feet hit the cool, earthen floor, and for a moment, he sways, dizzy, as though the entire room has shifted around him, as though he has stepped into something that is not quite his world anymore.
The sound is leading him somewhere.
Calling him.
He follows it—through the paths he has walked a hundred times, past the rows of impossibly vibrant flowers that never fade, never shed their petals, never show the slightest sign of time passing within these walls. The further he walks, the more the air changes, the thick perfume of roses and damp earth souring into something sickly-sweet, something rotting just beneath the surface. The vines that once seemed so elegant, so beautiful, so deliberate in their winding embrace of the greenhouse walls, now twist and coil in unnatural patterns, too thick, too tangled, too much like veins pulsing under translucent skin.
The lights—that golden, hazy glow that had always bathed this place in a dreamlike warmth—flicker now, casting long, spindly shadows that stretch across the floor like grasping fingers, reaching for him, twisting at the edges of his vision.
And the further he goes, the more he realizes—
The greenhouse is bigger than he thought.
Or maybe it is simply changing, stretching and twisting in ways that are not natural, not right, pulling him toward a place that he knows—deep in the marrow of his bones, deep in the parts of himself that still understand fear on a primal, wordless level—that he should not go.
And yet, he keeps moving.
Because the sound is there—just beyond the next row of trees, just past the thick curtain of ivy that drapes like a veil over the archway ahead. The scent of decay is stronger now, something cloying, something wrong, something that makes his stomach turn, makes his fingers twitch at his sides, makes his mind scream at him to stop, to turn around, to run.
He doesn't.
He pushes through.
And there—hidden away in a forgotten corner of this endless, living place—he finds them.
Bones.
Pale and brittle beneath the shifting light, half-buried in the soil, tangled in the roots of a massive, pulsing vine that twists and writhes ever so slightly, as though it is still feeding.
For a moment, his breath stutters, his entire body locking in place, unable to move, unable to think beyond the crushing weight of realization that these are human bones, that they do not belong here, that someone died here.
That someone was left here.
That someone was him.
The breath he sucks in is cold, sharp, like inhaling ice, and suddenly he cannot move, cannot blink, cannot even process the way the bones seem familiar, the way the hollow curve of the skull, the shape of the ribs, the slight fracture along the left forearm—an old break he remembers from when he was thirteen, from falling off his broom during a lesson—matches his own.
No.
No.
No.
This isn't real. This cannot be real.
And yet—the ground beneath him is trembling, the roots shifting, coiling, pulling, dragging, as if recognizing him, as if knowing he has seen too much, as if it has been waiting for him to find himself.
A sickening wave of horror crashes over him, cold and suffocating, as something inside his mind snaps, as the fragile, carefully woven illusion shatters, splintering like brittle glass beneath the weight of truth that comes rushing in, all at once, too fast, too overwhelming, too much. The memories slam into him, fragmented and jagged, like shards of a mirror long since broken, sharp edges cutting deep as they reassemble themselves into something he cannot unsee, something he cannot deny.
The mission—the ruins—the spell.
It all comes back in flashes, in disjointed bursts of memory that feel too real, too vivid, like ghosts of another life forcing their way into his thoughts, screaming to be remembered. He can see it, as clear as if he is living it all over again—the heavy, damp air of the ancient temple pressing against his skin, the scent of old magic and decay hanging thick in the space between crumbling walls, the whispered warnings etched into the stone in a language neither of them fully understood. They had been sent to retrieve something—an artifact, something ancient, something long thought lost—but there had been no warnings, no true understanding of what lay waiting for them in the depths of that place.
And her.
Pansy.
She had been beside him, always beside him, sharp-tongued and quick-witted, rolling her eyes at his hesitation but never once leaving his side. Stubborn, infuriating, unrelenting Pansy, who had been the first to sense that something was wrong, the first to reach for her wand, the first to tell him they needed to go.
But it had already been too late.
The spell—whatever ancient, cursed thing had been woven into the very walls of that place—had already taken hold. He remembers the moment the world twisted, reality shifting like the ground had been ripped from beneath them, the air turning thick, suffocating, laced with something alive, something watching. He remembers the way the shadows moved—not flickering, not shifting with the dim torchlight, but moving of their own accord, creeping along the stone, reaching for them with curling fingers of darkness. He remembers the whispering—soft at first, almost gentle, coaxing, before it became a shrieking cacophony of voices, screaming, pleading, warning.
And then—the thing in the dark.
Not a creature. Not something living, not in the way they understood. A presence. A hunger. A thing made of roots and twisting vines, pulsing with the echoes of every soul it had ever consumed, every memory it had ever devoured.
It had not wanted their flesh.
It had wanted them.
Their thoughts, their minds, their very selves.
And Pansy—Pansy who never ran, Pansy who always stood her ground, Pansy who had always been more than people ever gave her credit for—had turned to him, eyes alight with something fierce and unbreakable, and she had fought.
He sees it now—her magic, wild and desperate, her wand sparking in the dark, her voice steady even as the world came undone around them. He had been fading, his mind unraveling, slipping into the void that stretched out before them, and she had been the only thing holding him together, the only tether keeping him from falling into nothingness.
But the thing had been stronger.
And in that final, terrible moment—when she had realized she could not destroy it, could not defeat it, could not save them both—she had turned to him, eyes dark, mouth set in unshakable determination, and made a choice.
She had given everything.
He remembers now—the spell she cast, ancient and forbidden, something no one should ever attempt, something that burned through her, tore through her, consuming her from the inside out even as she whispered the incantation, even as she pressed a trembling, bloodied hand to his chest.
A binding spell.
A sacrifice.
A desperate, last-ditch effort to save him in the only way she could—by pouring every ounce of herself, her magic, her soul into him, intertwining them, making them one.
It had been meant to save him.
But it had damned them both.
Because Pansy never made it out.
Her body had crumpled beside him, her magic spent, her breath stolen, her soul woven into his, and he had felt it—the unbearable weight of her presence inside him, the echo of her thoughts, her emotions, the way her very being had burned into his own.
She had died saving him, and in doing so, she had left something behind—something not quite alive, not quite dead, something bound to him, something trapped inside this place, this illusion, this nightmare, this endless, living graveyard where time does not move, where nothing wilts, where she still lingers, not as herself, but as something else entirely.
The truth sinks into him like venom, slow and agonizing, twisting through his veins, choking him.
This place is not real.
She is not real.
When Neville wakes again, the sun is warm against his skin, spilling golden light through the towering glass walls of the greenhouse, bathing the world in a soft, honeyed glow. The air is thick with the scent of fresh blooms, the delicate perfume of roses and lilies, the sharp, green bite of crushed leaves mingling with the damp, earthy richness of the soil beneath him. The greenhouse hums with life, a perfect, unspoiled paradise, vibrant and endless, filled with the slow rustling of leaves in a breeze that does not truly exist, the quiet murmuring of unseen birds in the distance, the faint, melodic trickle of water flowing somewhere nearby.
Pansy is there beside him, lying on her side, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder in soft waves, her lips curved into a gentle, knowing smile. Her fingers trace idle patterns against the bare skin of his forearm, feather-light, slow and rhythmic, like the soothing touch of someone who has done this a thousand times before. Her eyes, deep and dark as polished onyx, shine with something warm, something soft, something unquestionably real.
"Good morning, love," she murmurs, voice low and sweet, filled with the kind of quiet intimacy that makes his chest ache.
Neville exhales, slow and deep, the last remnants of sleep slipping from his mind like mist dissipating beneath the morning sun.
Everything is perfect.
The flowers are in full bloom, their petals opening in slow, lazy unfurling motions, as though stretching toward the light, vibrant and immaculate, untouched by decay, by time, by anything other than the eternal, dreamlike serenity of this place. The vines that twist around the towering pillars and archways are lush and heavy with fruit, their emerald tendrils weaving intricate patterns, curling in deliberate, artful loops, as if guided by an unseen hand.
He doesn't remember why he ever doubted her.
He doesn't remember why he ever questioned this, why he ever let uncertainty sink its claws into him, why he ever let the whisper of something wrong disturb the peace she has built for them here.
Because why should he doubt her?
Pansy loves him.
She has always loved him, hasn't she?
And she has given him this—all of this—a world untouched by ruin, a sanctuary where they are together, where nothing can take them from each other, where they can simply be.
His body relaxes, sinking into the warmth of the soft grass beneath him, the air around him cradling him in something almost tangible, something that wants him to stay.
"You were having bad dreams again," Pansy whispers, her fingers trailing up to his jaw, brushing against the faint stubble there, her eyes filled with something unreadable. "But it's alright now. You're awake. You're safe."
Safe.
Of course, he is safe.
She wouldn't let anything happen to him.
She wouldn't lie to him.
She wouldn't—
A faint ripple moves through the air, too subtle to notice, too quick to grasp, like the shifting of light on water, like the flicker of a shadow that should not be there.
For the briefest second, something at the very edges of his consciousness stirs, something that does not belong here, something buried deep, something desperate, something screaming at him to wake up, wake up, WAKE UP—
But the thought never takes hold.
It slips away before it can fully form, vanishing like dust scattered on the wind, leaving nothing behind but a vague, lingering sense of something forgotten, something unimportant, something he does not need to chase.
Pansy shifts closer, her breath warm against his skin, her lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth.
"Come back to me," she whispers against his cheek, her voice barely more than a breath.
And he does.
He lets go of whatever it was—that flicker of doubt, that whisper of something lost, something broken—because it does not matter.
Not when she is here.
Not when he is here, with her.
Because he is happy.
And why would he ever want to leave?
°°°
Outside, beneath the surface, beyond the pristine illusion of the greenhouse, in the cold, unfeeling dark where roots coil and twist in endless, hungry patterns, Neville's real body lies motionless—barely more than a husk, a hollowed-out shell entangled in the web of ancient, pulsing vines that cradle him like a lover, feeding from him, drinking deep from his magic, his memories, his very sense of self.
His skin is pale, slack, stretched too thin over his bones. His lips are slightly parted, his breath shallow, uneven, barely there at all.
The roots curl around his wrists, his ankles, his throat, slipping beneath his skin, sinking into his spine, threading through his skull, wrapping around his mind with slow, insidious patience.
He does not fight.
He does not struggle.
Because he does not know that he is trapped.
He does not remember that this is not real.
The plant does not need chains.
It does not need bars, or spells, or any form of restraint.
It only needs the dream.
The perfect, beautiful lie.
And so, it keeps him there, keeps him dreaming, keeps him docile, keeps him content, wrapped in the soft arms of an illusion crafted from the echoes of a girl who no longer exists, a girl who gave her life to save him, only to be stolen, reshaped, rewritten into a phantom meant to hold him forever.
He does not hear the faint sound of his own heartbeat slowing.
He does not feel the last remnants of his true self slipping away, dissolving into the pulsing, writhing mass that has swallowed him whole.
He does not know that soon—very soon—there will be nothing left of Neville Longbottom at all.
Only a hollowed-out husk.
A body.
A vessel.
An empty thing, trapped forever in a world that never was, dreaming of a
love that never truly survived.
The master piece of the