An Average Wizard
[A/N at the end]
Huge thanks to Emiliya for the beta! x
For as long as Neville could remember, he had always thought himself an average wizard; more often than not, he had thought himself even less than that. He had always been surrounded by people who were far greater than him. People who were braver, smarter, more popular, and far more athletically inclined than he could ever dream of being. People who were more worthy of being granted magical powers than him. People like his parents, who had been so brave that they had suffered a fate worse than death to protect him.
Before he left for Hogwarts, his grandmother made it a point to thrust his parents' greatness on him. Every evening, she would recount tales of his parents' exploits and successes both at school and from their life after. To any other child, resenting the people you could never quite live up to would be the most obvious way to go. To Neville, however, his parents represented the sort of people that he wanted to be one day. They were his inspiration for wanting to be something more than the average person that he felt himself becoming.
The first time that he felt like something other than an average wizard was when he was nine. Up until then, his whole family — and even he — had thought that he was a Squib. To his grandmother especially, the thought of having a Squib in the family was completely incomprehensible. Had it not been for his uncle throwing him out of a window, Neville would have probably resigned himself to living a Muggle life. In fact, he had been so resigned to his ordinary future that he had gotten into the habit of watching the local Muggle children walk to and from school in the morning and afternoon. Thankfully though, when his uncle had dropped him out of the window, instead of falling to his demise, he had simply bounced along the grass and landed, unharmed, next to the fence.
For the next two years, his grandmother had a renewed interested in him and began to form illusions of grandeur when it came to his future. Whenever he bumped into a table, or dropped something on the floor, the telling off that he had become accustomed to never came, and instead his grandmother told him that it was an accident and to help himself to a biscuit, or two.
The disappointed scowls and looks of disdain that were interspersed through her stories of his parents disappeared entirely and Neville couldn't remember a time when he had been happier. Instead of being the butt of all his family's jokes, he was now the favourite cousin. The person that everyone imparted their hopes and dreams on, the person that was given an extra trinket or two in their Christmas stocking, and the person who everyone was excited to talk to at the rare gatherings they had.
When Neville turned eleven, his excitement at going to Hogwarts reached fever pitch. He had heard so much about the magical school where his parents had learned their craft and honed their skills. The place where centaurs lurked in the forest and a giant squid swam in the shadows of the Black Lake. It was a place of endless possibilities, and for a boy who had never quite seemed good enough for anyone, Hogwarts was a place that he could become the person his parents would have wanted him to be. To become the son that his parents deserved, and his grandmother felt she should have.
Needless to say that his grandmother never really got the grandson she had envisioned having. New wand or not, to her he was always going to be an average wizard. A less than average grandson. Not worthy of the family name, and not worthy of being related to her.
Harry Potter on the other hand, was exactly the sort of person that his grandmother would have loved as her grandson. He was athletic, talented, intelligent, brave, and an extraordinary person who could seemingly never put a foot wrong. He was the antithesis to Neville, but he was also who Neville strived to be, but always fell short of.
It didn't help that he was an underperformer in almost every subject at Hogwarts, except for Herbology and Charms - both subjects that were deemed 'weak' and 'useless' by his grandmother. It didn't help that he was always a little too chubby, a little too flat-footed, and a little too big toothed. It didn't help that every year, while Harry was off saving the school and the people within it, he struggled to pass his Potions lessons. Any other person in his position would have developed a deep resentment for the Boy Who Lived, but not Neville.
Harry Potter was his friend, and everything that he had achieved was as a result of his hard work. It was hard to hate someone when they were similar to you in some ways. After all, neither of them had parents to write to every day, neither of them lived with particularly warm members of their family, and in many ways, they were both two sides of the same coin. But where Harry was extraordinary, Neville was average.
His fifth-year had brought about a change in his outlook. He had had enough of being the boy on the sidelines, and it was one fateful visit to St. Mungo's that changed the course of his year. He had never expected his friends to find out about his parents, and he had never expected to feel like a burden had lifted itself off his chest. Now that his friends knew about his parents, perhaps they could understand why he was the way he was.
He accompanied them to the Ministry, he fought alongside them as they battled Death Eaters, and he was beside them when they suffered great losses and glimpsed the monster that haunted the pages of their history books.
Sixth-year had been the birth of the new Neville. Partly spurred by his experiences at the end of his fifth-year, and also because of the new wand he had received from Ollivanders, any remnants of the past Neville shed gradually away throughout the year until he emerged in his final year as an entirely new person.
When he was eleven, he had never thought that he would be capable of decapitating the head of a snake, leading a student rebellion, or defying extremists — but he had. These weren't the actions of an average wizard. They were the actions of gods and heroes, the actions of men who were courageous and extraordinary — men who were the opposite of him.
And yet, he had done exactly that. Of course, he would never have been able to do any of it without the tools that he'd been given. Tools that were embedded with magic that was far more powerful than what he could wield. Without his wand and without the sword of Gryffindor, he would have achieved nothing.
"Hey Neville," someone said as a hand clapped over his shoulder and patted it softly. Neville turned his gaze away from the shattered window and smiled weakly at Harry. "How are you?"
Neville had seen Harry in different states of injury and disrepair, but never had he seen his friend look so — for lack of a better word — shit.
Harry's face was streaked with smudges of dirt and blood. His iconic round glasses, which were cracked in one lens, had dug so deeply into the bridge of his nose that it left a groove on his skin. He looked like someone who had crawled out of the pits of hell itself, and yet his eyes, lined with worry and housing deep bags, were both alight with adrenaline and exhausted beyond belief.
"I'm pretty knackered actually," Neville admitted. "You?"
"Same." Neville nodded in response and stayed silent as he let his eyes wander around the Great Hall.
He watched as people navigated fallen window panes, stone columns, and wooden benches to get to their families and friends. In one corner of the now ruined Great Hall were the Weasleys in a mixed state of grief and relief as they huddled around one another and took it in turns to kneel over a body draped in velvet purple cloth that had been brought down from the Headmaster's office.
Neville had never been completely shielded from the ways of the world. He knew how brutal people could be underneath their everyday facades. He'd seen the bodies of the dead before, had seen the brutality of wizardkind first hand. But he had never seen anything like what he had last night and what he saw now.
Limbs and bodies were scattered around the hall, covered partially underneath different coloured curtains, tapestries, and sheets. Every few minutes or so, more bodies would be brought in on stretchers, in people's arms, or levitating in the air, and be added to the growing expanse of the dead on the floor of the hall.
"Listen, I just wanted to come find you and say thanks," Harry said, eyes glancing at the dishevelled hat at Neville's feet.
"I think I'm the one that ought to be thanking you," Neville said. He tore his eyes away from a small family weeping over a small girlish figure. A girl too young to be gone.
"I couldn't have done it if you hadn't killed the snake." A part of Neville had no idea what he meant, but another part of him knew that when it came to Harry, taking him for his word was often the best way to go.
"It wasn't me, it was this." Neville picked up the hilt of the sword that he'd decapitated Nagini with and shrugged. He'd had no time to dwell over why the sword had appeared, but had it not, he, and everyone in the vicinity, would probably be dead. "I just picked it up and swung it. I didn't really do anything. I don't even think I should've pulled it out."
Harry shook his head and ruffled his hair, a few broken sticks and leaves falling onto his ripped and bloody jeans.
"A sword's only as good as the person who wields it," he said. Harry groaned as his joints cracked in protest as he got to his feet. He wavered slightly on the balls of his feet and Neville lifted his hands in case Harry fell over backward. Steadying himself, Harry smiled and looked at him. "Besides, you never needed to kill Nagini to know you were worthy of having the sword, Neville. You always were."
Neville was lost for words as Harry patted his back a few times, said that he'd see him later, and walked off towards the Gryffindor tower - why he was headed there, Neville didn't know. But his final words lingered, even as Harry disappeared amongst the throng of people that clamoured into the Great Hall - a vulture topped hat among them.
All his life, he had felt like an average wizard, and the first time that he had felt like someone worthy of being his parent's son had been when he had held that sword in his hands. Worthy or not, it was the sword that lay next to his leg that had made him feel extraordinary. He didn't know if the rush of power and strength that had flowed into him when he'd cut the snake's head off was adrenaline or old magic embedded into the sword, but whatever it was, for one second of his ordinary life, he had felt like he was something more.
As he went to pick up the sword again, he had barely touched the tips of his fingers against the cool metal hilt before it disappeared right in front of him. Whether it was the sword or not, as Neville surveyed the hall once more, he felt different. He didn't feel like the average wizard who had scraped through his OWL's and been the odd one out among his brilliant friends. He didn't feel like someone who wasn't worthy of the Longbottom name. For the first time in his life, he thought himself extraordinary, talented, brave, and a million other superlatives that he never would've dreamed would apply to him.
He was Neville Longbottom, slayer of snakes, wielder of the sword of Gryffindor, and far more than just an average wizard. As the vulture topped hat came closer towards him, he took a deep breath, braced himself, and was rather relieved when he was enveloped into a warm pair of arms as a familiar voice whispered in his ear that his parents would've been unbelievably proud of him.
Author's Note
WC: 2119 [Google Docs] 2122 [Word Counter Online]
QLFC Round 7
Team: Montrose Magpies
Position: Seeker
Prompt/s: Green Lantern (2011) - I chose to interpret this prompt by using the element of some sort of object/artefact making someone feel more powerful or giving them extraordinary abilities.
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