Neville's Island
by Rob Morris
Prologue - I Hope You Have The Time Of Your Life
1998, The Ruin That Was Hogwarts (And Would Once Again Be)
The great hero walked among the victory celebration that he had purchased with his persistence and bravery.
"I'm afraid I don't know where they've gotten to."
He was answering a lot of questions.
"I can't call it for bravery. I just wanted all of it to be done with, and that seemed the way. The rest followed from there."
A lot of questions.
"No, really. I would give all of the credit to the others. Just being around them made me better, if only to keep up."
He was starting to get annoyed.
"Me and...Luna? She's a nice person, of course. Pretty, sure. But I can't see it."
Really annoyed.
"Yes, she sent me a Howler during early Second Year, but it's not a matter I care to discuss. Now, if you wouldn't mind..."
Fortunately, before the next question could set him off, the milling mob of anxious students saw three lights.
"It's them!"
Neville was actually relieved to see Harry, Hermione and Ron, and did not feel a bit like his thunder had been stolen. It was an unwanted thunder after all, and he felt like it might wreck his hearing and sanity if it went on.
"Oh? We just had my House-Elf fetch us some sandwiches. Wouldn't do to survive all that, then starve to death!"
Harry's answer to the crowd seemed too pat to Longbottom. Then again, he now fully understood why the man despised that whole hero business. Just a day or so after his slaying Nagini had him under a scrutiny that was not always pleasant, and often ranged into the hugely uncomfortable.
*But where were those three for the last six hours?*
No, not three, he realized, as he saw Ginny Weasley dart away from her family and allies. Wherever they had been, Ron's sister had been with them.
"Neville? A favor?"
Ginny had in fact darted right up to him.
"Anything, you know that."
She looked about. The Trio had all the attention in the room, more than even a properly-cast Masto Imperius could have given them.
"Should anyone ask...especially my parents...you saw me duck behind the fallen shelves in the Library, loudly proclaiming my intent to take a nap, after Harry and I had argued. Got all that?"
Her face was a mix of pleas, demands and implied threats.
"Ginny, where were you? I mean, you come back, everyone with hair as far off as Harry's, looking like you'd put on your robes in a huge hurry..."
Neville stopped dead in his tracks as the realization struck home. He understood the emotions of a war finally won, even if certain laws said that one can be too young for such a choice.
"You won't tell?"
"Your Mother or Ron?"
"My Mother, but also my Father. I can't say who'd take it worse-yes I can. He'd only faint. As for Ron-well, obviously, we found separate accommodations, but, just before, he looked at a man who is like his own brother, pointed his wand, and said 'You Marry Her, All Right?' before leaving with Hermione."
She smiled.
"Harry responded by saying that I was the only one who could stop that."
Neville made a mental promise then and there to absolutely haunt any teen daughters he might ever have until they were twelve days past of age. But he knew the maturity and strength of this witch, and put his approval or disapproval aside.
"So? Will you stop that?"
Ginny caught distant sight of her mother, and decided to re-enter the room from another angle to keep up appearances and keep herself from a fate that might make her envy the late Bellatrix Lestrange.
"What do you think? And Thanks, Neville."
Mrs. Weasley did not see her daughter stage a new entrance, and greeted her warmly as always. Neville would not have to play cover story for his friends, and he was grateful in that. Should the lie be uncovered, the thought of Molly Weasley and his own grandmother cornering him made him cringe.
"Neville?"
His grandmother had not snuck up on him, though he found that his recent thought-fantasy ended not with him cowering, but rather upset.
"Gran? Is it time already?"
Her smile was tender, and showed the pride she now felt openly. For all that, Neville still felt the upset, felt untoward words rising in his throat. They hadn't risen yet, though.
"It is-if you can tear yourself away from your admirers!"
"I can-this is more important to me than ever."
Her smile didn't leave, but it did become mitigated on her face.
"When was this not important to you?"
Like that, he was once more all of twelve, watching in terror as a floating envelope built to an inevitable explosion while the school's *other* trio snickered and guffawed up a storm. Yet on this occasion, the boy remembered that of that alternate trio, one was in prison, one might be facing it, and the other had died rather poorly. He also remembered that the scared little boy of twelve years was, if anything, more dead than that. The boy rose as a man who waved his wand with a disdainful flourish worthy of Snape himself and dispersed the Howler with extreme prejudice.
"Gran, it's always been important to me. Don't think it hasn't."
Augusta Longbottom seemed not to catch the annoyance in her grandson's voice.
"Well, you raised the emphasis, dear."
Since this fight was the last thing he wanted, Neville walked down his tone subtly.
"I...just meant that all things I hold dear are more important to me, now that we've had a chance to stand down for real this time."
That was the end of the conversation, but the upset was a bee in Neville's bonnet. He needed a friendly face, and the first real defender he'd ever had stood at the ready.
"Well, rather than let it get that far, why not just speak plain to her? Grandson to Grandmother, Truth To Power."
"Would that have settled issues with you and your uncle?"
Harry Potter was just glad to talk with a peer, and he showed this in his whole being.
"Nothing will settle those issues. My Aunt-maybe someday. My cousin-we're actually good. You know, she did pay you huge compliments as she joined us."
"I'd heard that. I'd like to be present as she pays them."
Harry laughed.
"The light in the icebox, eh?"
Neville stared at him, and Potter realized his cultural error.
"Never mind. I know what you meant. But that may not be in her."
A fact Neville knew as such, but he still wanted what he wanted.
"Harry? I talked with Ginny, after the four of you got back."
Neville looked him in the eye and shook his head.
"Man, be careful. Not just for her Mother, but for yourselves."
Potter shrugged.
"I aim to be. We drew a line between us on that matter, and until we're past the giddy-to-be-alive stage, on all other matters as well. I'm not stupid, Neville, but I'm feeling very stupid right now. Like portions of my brain have just shut off."
"Shouldn't you be saying this to Ron, since he knows?"
"Kind of problematic, don't you think?"
Neville conceded that one without further comment.
"Well, as to your brain, it has been up and on for like, seven years, on high alert with interrupted sleep. Maybe it needs the break. If I were you, I'd just rouse it occasionally for advice-if only on certain statutory age restrictions."
Harry seconded Neville's silent concession with his own.
"What will you do?"
Neville knew that it was a great time to get going. Any more sidebars were apt to damp down his enthusiasm.
"I'm going to see my parents, Harry-like I do at the end of every term. And if anyone asks, you tell them exactly that-and why that means what it does. I'm tired of hiding it. I'm proud of them-as proud as you are of yours."
Harry looked like he wanted to say something, and Neville caught this.
"This isn't about the statue in Godric's Hollow again, is it?"
Potter gained a relieved look that Longbottom misread.
"Was I going to go into all that again?"
"Harry-you're happy that they're remembered. I could never resent that-unless you tell that story again-and if Ron doesn't beat me to the strangle."
They laughed and parted ways, but as Potter turned away, it was clear that he had meant to say something else. Longbottom for his part made his way out of Hogwarts, past the barrier against disapparation-if it even still worked anymore. McGonagall had been clear that certain things at the school would never be the same again. A man more confident about himself than he could have once believed vanished and then reappeared in front of St. Mungo's, and he would relish a visit he once actively dreaded.
"Mum? Dad? I'm Home."
He had always also dreaded this place becoming his true home, with people tsking the boy who went mad and was kept in with his mother and father. Yet on this day, he almost ran to see them, stopping only to change his clothes. Though their distant minds would never directly hear him, he wanted to tell them the good news.
*Bellatrix is dead. As that cinema of Harry's said, a house was dropped on her. The House Of Weasley*More than that, the soulless Barty Crouch, Junior had died in Azkaban, mere hours after his partner and their Master. His parents had been fully avenged, to a one.
The staff all knew him, and had a chair-bed set up for him in his parents' ward-it really was like his home, and this time, he didn't mind it. He had a bag chock full of Herbology periodicals Sprout had been set to throw out, so he would have things to read. He told his news, and as expected, their reactions did not involve soliloquies from Shakespeare or Zanderzohn. It was enough that he got to be the one to tell them.
There were of course, other patients, including a regular of such extreme age she was by nature as addled as Frank and Alice Longbottom were by injury. Neville knew her own grandson had stopped visiting ages ago, and thought perhaps she saw him as such, her outstretched arms an indicator of needing to have and give a hug.
"There, there. I'm sorry I don't visit more often."
About five hours in, what can only be called a miracle occurred. As Neville Longbottom would learn, miracles are fleeting things, and deucedly hard to prove, or more accurately, to not have dismissed out of hand. Those who witness miracles are historically subject to immense pain and even ridicule. This would, in his case, make all the difference in the world. For pain and ridicule had often been the two other members of his own personal trio.
Neville was in the ward, sitting next to his parents, with seven staff members about when the miracle occurred. He almost didn't catch it. He saw his mother sit up, and prepared for the ciphering game to see if she indicated a need for sheets being changed, to give him a bottlecap or other keepsake, or point to her parched mouth.
"Could I Have A Glass Of Water?"
His father nodded.
"Yes, That Would Be Nice."
Neville almost blithely took in their request.
"Yes, certainly I'll fetch..."
By the time his mind was able to fully process what had happened, every eye in the place, even to some of the other patients, was locked on Frank and Alice Longbottom, formerly noted Aurors and now noted casualties of the tense aftermath of The First Wizarding War. For they had done the impossible, or at least the unheard of.
"What did you just say? How-did you just say it?"
Growing numb, he fetched them their water. Behind him, the staff was going wild, and another visiting relative looked hard at their mind-lost loved one, then began to cry. In the next twelve hours before any word of this leaked out, it seemed like every medical staff member in Mungo's had been in to see the Longbottoms. In the midst of it, Neville made an uncomfortable choice that would aid him later.
At no time in this did the miracle recur.