Title: Just This Once
Characters: Neville Longbottom, Alice Longbottom
Author's Note: Written for the Becoming a Wizard Challenge.
Neville is a chubby little six year old, with ruddy cheeks and a missing tooth and almost no magic whatsoever. It's Mummy's birthday and he brings her presents and pictures he drew himself of flowers and kittens. But she doesn't want to open the presents and barely glanced at the pictures. She's sad.
She's sad, so her little boy leans over and brushes his lips against Alice's cheek, and, for a second, her eyes flash and something changes and she says, "Oh, Neville."
He grows up, but every night before bed, he remembers that flicker he never saw again.