Title: ever after
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: ignores epilogue; future!fic; references to canon child endangerment and abuse
Pairings: Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 235
Point of view: third
Prompt: Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood, 'accidental garden manpain'
She thinks, sometimes, that she wouldn't mind lighting the extended Longbottom family on fire. Neville is perhaps the best person she's ever met, and he's still so uncertain, so sure that he isn't good enough, will never be good enough - for her, for Hogwarts, for himself.
Neville, who stood before Voldemort and killed Nagini, who kept the students as safe as he could.
Truly, if she could just perfect the Time-Travel Potion, she would go back and slaughter them all for what they've done to her Nev.
She finds him in the garden, of course, murmuring a story to the Chokevine he insists doesn't have a crush on him. "Will they bloom tonight?" she asks, as she does every time.
"At dusk," he answers, as always, fingers tracing the plant invisible even to her until the sun begins to set. He's so gifted, but even now, twenty years since they were students, the best-beloved Head of Gryffindor Hogwarts has ever had -
"You, my love, are the best man I've ever known," she says.
"Even when you perfect that potion," he says, "I won't let you go back and change things."
She nods, because she truly understands the dangers of time travel. If she punishes the lot of them, what will happen to the man she loves? He'll never be.
"Can threstrals eat Chokevines?" she asks after a moment, leaning into Neville's strong chest.
He sighs.
