Title: If Love is a Labor
In case you missed this originally, this fic contains SPOILERS FOR DH. Title comes from "Swing Life Away" by Rise Against
Little-known fact about Neville Longbottom #354: he was unsuccessful at influencing the Sorting Hat.
"Hufflepuff," he'd pleaded inside his head. "Please, I can't do it, I can't be a Gryffindor, I don't care if she'll be disappointed, I can't do it. I would be really good at Hufflepuff, I swear!"
"You would indeed," the Hat had told him. "But don't you want to reach your full potential? Don't you want to be everything you're meant for?" And before Neville could even begin to think of an answer, the Hat had shouted "Gryffindor!" and that, as they say, was that.
He still thinks about that sometimes. Overall, Neville knows that he's glad to be a Gryffindor, to have become the person he is today, but there are still moments when he wonders if it all might just have been easier to have been sorted to a different House.
Certainly, conversations like these would be easier could he have them with someone other than Professor McGonagall. He adored her, but mostly from a safe distance, as a heroic figure of myth and legend. He was not entirely comfortable with her sitting across from him at a table in St. Mungo's, so close and so genuinely proud of him. This was not the first such conversation they'd had over the past year, but they were all fairly similar: Neville slightly fidgety, Professor McGonagall beaming but slightly bemused that, of all people, he was leading an underground resistance.
Not that hers was an uncommon reaction. There wasn't much of anyone who could quite believe what Neville had done. Neville couldn't much believe it.
But it was, all in all, kinda nice to be grinned at, to feel the love of his schoolmates and his head of house happy and proud and telling him what a true Gryffindor he was. And when she patted his shoulder awkwardly and told him how sorry she was, he could appreciate the honest caring in the gesture and ignore, almost entirely, how out of place the affection seemed.
Nevertheless, it was a relief when she left his room. He needed the time to process, to judge the wisdom of his next move. He knew that he could wait all he wanted, that it wouldn't really matter, but he'd learned a lot about responsibility and futile actions, and something told him that sooner really could be better, at least for his own sake.
So, he pushed himself up, steadying himself on weary legs. As he walked through the halls, a medwitch clucked her tongue at him, but all he had to do was mumble "Need to see my parents" and everyone left him alone.
Frank and Alice Longbottom were where they always were, the only thing in his life that hadn't changed overnight. He pulled a chair up by their beds and sat there for a moment, pretending their empty smiles were merely expectant, waiting for what he had to say.
"Bellatrix Lestrange is dead," he finally said, voice hoarse. "Mrs. Weasley killed her. Thought you might like that." He smiled, continued on. "I tried to do it. I thought it'd be justice or something. I did, uhm, I did sorta help kill y-Voldemort. Something about his soul? I'm not really sure. I just, you know, chopped a snake's head off." The mundanity of the description was not lost on him, and he let out a nervous giggle as he added "With the Sword of Gryffindor. I pulled it out of the Sorting Hat."
His parents just kept smiling, and the words began to pour out of Neville, words that he hadn't even meant to say. "The Hat asked me, wasn't I glad I wasn't a Hufflepuff, and I wasn't, I really wasn't, because it hurt so much and I was so scared but…I had to do it. People keep telling me you'd be proud."
And then he got to the part he'd come here for. "Gran died. She went out fighting, but it was too much for her heart, I guess. I…uhm…I thought you should know."
No reaction, and then his mother moved, and for a moment his heart burst as he thought she was coming back, but she just handed him a gum wrapper and grinned.
Neville realized that he was just about at the end of his rope, that he was burnt and cut up and his parents were never going to get better and his gran was dead and he could barely choke out a goodbye before leaving the ward.
He collapsed on a bench in the empty corridor and just tried to breathe. He didn't hear the heavy footsteps in the hall until they stopped in front of him. "I just heard," came the impossibly gentle voice.
Professor Sprout sat down next to Neville, pulling his head down to her shoulder and letting him sob quietly. Neville felt faintly embarrassed, but also incredibly exhausted, and it wasn't like this was the first time Sprout had seen him cry. She'd always been a soothing presence for him, someone who liked him for what he did right rather than expecting him to perfect everything he did wrong. "You made us all very proud," she whispered, kissing his hair, and for the first time, he heard the words without detecting any undercurrent of surprise.