A/N: So, I'm back to doing challenges and this was given to me by the lovely Alarice Tey. I plan on making this roughly three chapters long, so look forward to the rest!
It's been seven years since the war, and finally, finally, the wizarding world is beginning to settle down.
This is what goes through Neville's mind, every day, as he goes from work to home. It's always the same path - moving from school to wooded path to town to bar, and no one else really understands why he does it. After all, they ask him, aren't the rooms at Hogwarts good enough for him?
It used to be that he would laugh at them when they say that. Now, he purses his lips together and shrugs, then starts the long walk down to Hogsmeade.
They don't ask him why he doesn't floo.
-x-x-x-x-
When he reaches the town, the sun has long since set and stars are now twinkling in the sky above him. It gives the quaint village a surreal look. Or maybe, he wonders, it only looks surreal because he still remembers what it looked like seven short years ago?
Either way, it brings a smile to his scarred face. The skin is still tight, as it always will be, but it no longer hurts to move. Hasn't in years, save for that one winter where it got so very, very cold.
Neville takes a street that leads through a smaller portion of town, where the dirt road is lined with small cottages and hand-run businesses. Each walkway is lined with flowers, in reds and yellows and purples and blues, and the shutters are all open, giving view to happy homes and gentle glows from inside. It's called the residential area but it's far from being just houses. Bars and inns are scattered about as well, giving a place for the fighting couples to dissapear too.
It is one of these homes that he slips inside, one that is more bar than home, more his than hers, and as he hangs up his robe he is greeted with a chipper "hello".
"I was wondering when you would get in, Neville." chirps Hannah, from the other side of the bar. It's long since closed, but she's still down here cleaning everything up. Making sure it more then shines.
Neville gives his wife a smile, moving over to slip behind the bar with her. "Sorry, Hannah. I had to stay late at the castle today."
"Oh? Why?" she asks, and though it's a simple question, there's something else there. Something more - just like there has been for days and weeks and months and, honestly, Neville doesn't know why because he has never been anything but loyal to her.
He wasn't the one that had cheated. No, that would be her. Yet there's so much distrust there now, like she expects him to run off with any old brood that showed up.
No trust, not anymore.
"One of the students has taken ill, and I was disgussing herbs and medicine with Madame Pomfrey." explains Neville, and he pauses because, suddenly, he has lost the urge to hug her. Instead, he snatches up a glass, maybe clean, maybe not, and moves to the tap.
Hannah pauses. Bites her lower lip. Then nods, as though deciding she believes him, and goes back to running her rag across the dark wood of the bar. "Well, I hope it's nothing too bad."
"Mhm." agrees Neville with a nod - but he doesn't say anything else to her for a long while.
-x-x-x-x-
They retire to the same room together. Just like always. Hannah changes into a nightdress while Neville gets a shower, and then they both slip into the large bed together.
"Goodnight, Hannah." says Neville, tugging the blanket up to his shoulders.
Hannah gives him a soft, flighty smile, and then presses herself against him. "Goodnight, Nev-dear."
And he's happy there. He is. Really. He just wonders if she is too.
-x-x-x-x-
Madame Pomfrey floos him early the next morning. Bids Hannah good morning and passes on the offered tea, then promptly informs Neville that their student, Charley Hash, has gotten worse.
"The medicine just cannot wait." explains the elderly witch, arms crossing over her chest. "I know that your plants won't be ready for another week or so, Neville, but if you can't obtain them..."
Neville shakes his head at her, already moving to slip his robes on over his nightwear; a pair of baggy sweat pants and a loose fitting tee-shirt, neither of which match or fit nearly well enough to be out in. "Of course. I'll go into town and see what I can get."
And then he leaves, completely forgetting to tell his wife where he is going.
-x-x-x-x-
It isn't hard to get most of the ingrediants needed for the potion. The apothocary in Diagon Alley handles most of it. What he buys there, he magicks back to his home, along with a note alerting Hannah of the sudden errand that he had to run.
Then, he tightens his robes around him, ignores the fact that people are staring (and they are, he knows, because they always do), and promptly makes his way into one of the back alleys.
It's a small little outlet of shops, all of which popped up after the war. Most of them are family-run, just like Hannah's bar, and owned by survivors of the war. A lot of the ones back here, in this dark and dreary place, are run by Slytherins who couldn't get a job elsewhere.
Neville's chosen destination for the day is The Silver Cobra, which lays at the far back of the street. At one point or another, it had been some form of large storage shed but, after the war, Theodore Nott had bought it and transformed it into an apothacary of sorts. The former Slytherin only dealt in strange and exotic plants, of course, and the more dangerous, the less care he took in handling them.
Personally, Neville thought it was because Nott wanted to be taken out of his misery. And what better way to do that, he figured, then to have it be done at the hands of something you love?
Neville's had the same thoughts, more than once. But then he found Hannah and got married and got better and changed. Has to have changed, and has to give all of that credit to the unfaithful woman that is his wife.
So he loves her, and he'll stay faithful to her, even if he isn't particularly happy.
-x-x-x-x-
The Silver Cobra is actually a frequant stop for Neville, who enjoys purchasing seeds from his former class-mate. Nott doesn't speak to him all that much, but Neville doesn't take it personally. The former Slytherin doesn't speak to much of anyone, these days.
But he's always there, at his shop, caring for his plants. Always - and that's why, when Neville gets to the counter and realizes that it isn't Nott standing behind it, he stops in his tracks.
Partly because he isn't used to seeing any one else in the shop.
Partly because the man behind the counter is Gregory Goyle.