A/N: Wonderful beta work by megyal
After Uncle Algie threw Neville off the pier to teach him to swim, Neville hid in the garden.
Gran wrapped him in a big towel when Uncle Algie brought him home, sopping wet and shivering. She chided both of them: Uncle Algie for being a fool and Neville for not learning to swim. As soon as Gran turned her lecturing back to Uncle Algie, Neville slipped 'round the corner and out through the kitchen door into the garden.
The Longbottom Garden was the most fantastic garden Neville had ever seen. It had been featured five times in Charms and Garden. Neville spent every family reunion, holiday, birthday party, and get-together hidden in the garden itself.
The walls around Bottom-of-the-Waith were spelled to encourage growth. This meant that at any given time, any season of the year, the walls were covered with thick, multicolored vines.
The path to the garden moved constantly. Sometimes it would lead past the flowering cacti, or the mamboing mushrooms, or meander under the ornery oaks first. Other times it would wander into the whomping willows, through the gaseous grasses, and around the festering ferns.
Neville himself was always boggled by the maddeningly mundane Muggle patch that never seemed to do anything curious whatsoever; no matter how much of Brunhilda's Fantastic Fertilizer ("Guarenteed to turn any witches home into a Forbidden forest!") he used.
Gran always hated the fact that Neville would disappear into the garden. She always told him, "Neville, if you have to lick your wounds, don't lick them like a coward."
Maybe it was the fact that she lectured him after that awful accident, or maybe it was the suspicious look Uncle Algie kept giving him, but that day, Neville went into the garden and did not come back out.
Neville stepped off the path a soon as he was just out of sight of the kitchen windows. The large, green leaves of the Assyria were twice as wide as he was tall. He grabbed one to wrap about the outside of his towel until he managed to go past the Honking Daffodils, into the patch of leaping toadstools. Neville, being still a boy small of stature, was just the right size to be able to lie down in the patch and let the toadstools leap over him back and forth. Individually, leaping toadstools let off enough heat to warm hands in winter. Together, the patch dried Neville and his clothing in a matter of minutes; the toadstools made the entire garden patch warmer than a hot day.
He fell asleep, getting an entire glorious hour of napping before he awakened up to a gnome kicking his face.
The downside to leaping toadstools is that their patches moved on their own when no one was about to look. Neville got up, shoved the gnome away and decided to look for the vegetable patch. Neville, though he had no head for lessons, was very proud of his ability to identify radishes. It was nearly supper time, according to his stomach, and if he was not going back to the main house, he could enjoy a lovely lunch of radishes and carrots.
He stopped once he managed to get through the small maze of flutterbushes because there was a girl sitting in his vegetable garden.
"Why are you standing with my lettuce?" he asked.
She looked familiar. She had the Longbottom nose, thick eyebrows and a tangles of hair and vines pulled up into a very rebellious bun. She waved at Neville, smiling nervously. As soon as he saw the soft pink lines of her teeth correcting spells, he was able to put a name to the face.
"Cousin Asphodel?"
"H-h-h-hi," she stammered. Cousin Asphodel was four whole years older than him and had a twitchy look to her. With Uncle Algie as her godfather, he couldn't blame her. "G-G-G-Gran w-wanted me t-to t-t-talk with you, since you know-" she said.
He could hear the unfinished part of her sentence. Since everyone think you're going to be a squib like me. He gave her a glum nod and settled in down in the cabbage patch across from the lettuce.
She twitched. "It's not so b-b-bad. Muggle School. Th-Th-They can do all sort of brilliant things like turning plays into moving pictures and carnivals and they've even managed to build machines to go to the moon," she said, looking happy for the first time Neville could remember when she talked about Muggles.
Hold on, he thought. "The moon? Really? Like in the comics?" he asked.
She shook her head, making more hair and vines pop out of her bun. "Like in a giant Muggle car that uses fire to push so hard it blows the machine all the way up until it hits the moon." Her eyes brighten at the description. "I want to be the first Squib on the moon, before any Witch or Wizard or anything."
Neville smiled, picturing Cousin Asphodel stuttering with Muggles inside a big car. He had seen one before. He tried to picture himself in the car with Asphodel and couldn't do it. Neville had never been the sort of person to enjoy being shut in small spaces.
He hadn't the faintest clue what he would do if he was a Squib, other than avoid Uncle Algie for the rest of his life. "Do Muggles ever garden?" he asked carefully.
Asphodel nodded. "They can grow anything. I heard they can even grow babies in tubes."
Neville was relieved and disturbed. If he couldn't do magic, he knew he'd like to grow Snapping Roses but he certainly wouldn't want to grow a baby.
"Would you help me get Gran to let me go to a Muggle school?" Neville whispered. He didn't want to admit out loud that he was more than likely a Squib. He knew Asphodel but he had never met a real Muggle and it broke his heart every time Gran looked at the owl post expectantly, as if the Hogwarts letter was due to arrive any day now.
Asphodel pulled a face but makes a small nod. "W-W-W-Wizarding F-folk m-make me nervous. Especially G-G-Gran. C-c-come with me to supper?"
Neville took her hand and helped her navigate her way out of the garden.
For the record: Neville Longbottom continued to hide in the garden before and after his Hogwarts letter arrived; during his school holidays; and especially during every family reunion. He simply made sure he was never too hidden in the garden for Asphodel to find him. Asphodel eventually made it into Muggle America's astronaut training program once she'd learned of England's lack of interest in the area. Neville promptly sent her a dozen heads of lettuce.