and when i see you
i really see you upside down
- death cab for cutie, a lack of color
People see only one version of Neville Longbottom. If they see him at all.
They see him as fat, as bumbling, as forgetful. They see how he used to be. They have seen him for so long that they forget to see what he is now.
He rages on the inside. He is so much more now. He has changed and grown. That is what people do even when the people who surround them are blind to it.
::
When he met his grandmother at the station, she blinked at him, owl-like, on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, took off her glasses, rubbed the lenses with the hem of her chartreuse skirt, and placed them back on her nose.
"Well," she said, "We had better be going then."
::
Neville grew, shockingly, in the summer after the Department of Mysteries. He always thought of it that way. Not the summer after fifth year. Fifth year meant nothing save the work he had done in Dumbledore's Army. Work that led to that night.
He was gangly, and yet still soft. Just what he needed - a new way to be awkward. He let his hair grow long. He couldn't be bothered.
He boarded the Hogwarts Express as early as he could, avoiding the chatter and bustle on the platform and finding a quiet compartment at the far end of the train. He tucked his legs underneath him, buried his nose in a Muggle novel, and hoped no one difficult would join him.
Luna slipped in without him noticing, just before the train pulled out. When he finally saw her she tilted her head slightly to the left and smiled. "Welcome," she said, as though it were her compartment he had snuck into. She stretched, curled up on the seat, and fell asleep. He watched her breathe, watched the flicker of her eyes, and felt vaguely protective.
Later he would come to see that the protection perhaps was the other way round.
::
Walking past the carriages, Luna hummed softly to the thestrals.
Neville shoved his hands in his pockets and fell into step beside her. "Why didn't we see you before last year?"
"You weren't looking," she said, reasonably. "Don't worry about it. You see me now, right?" Her smile was a flash, was a light, was honey, and then it was gone.
::
Neville didn't see Harry at the Feast, so he cornered Hermione after, on the way up to Gryffindor Tower.
"I don't know," she said, eyes tired. "They expect him to be the savior, but they tell him nothing and they tell us even less."
Neville nodded. "Things have been getting colder," he said, grasping the banister to steady himself as the staircase swung out. "Between the lines in the Prophet. We need to start again. Do you still have the coin?"
"Of course," she said, surprised. "But without Harry?"
Neville stepped around the gaggle of first years and moved towards the boys dormitory. "There isn't a savior, Hermione."
::
When Harry did return, he was quiet and sullen. Nearly colorless. No one noticed; they only thought "we have him back". For better or for worse.
::
The new Defense professor was hopeless. Neville suspected that even with his old wand and fears he might have done a better job.
When the Galleon in his pocket turned warm, he wondered if he would have the chance. Hermione, however, clung to control with color-coded training schedules and lesson plans. The DA rallied around Harry as a figurehead, but Hermione was truly in charge. Neville melted back into the shadows in the Room of Requirement, watching for those who needed extra help and stepping in to work with them.
There was not much now that Hermione could teach him.
::
Neville stayed late one night, researching obscure hexes. "Hiya," Luna's voice soft at the door. "I've brought tea." Neville wanted to laugh at the contrast, in a hidden room with Loony Luna having something as ordinary as tea.
"You're turning round," she said. "No one's watching, are they?"
"They never watch." Neville reached for a biscuit. "Doesn't matter. It's not for them."
"Do you ever wonder if they got it wrong with Harry?"
He looked at her carefully. "That doesn't matter either. He's only different from us because they made him that way. They need him to be the one, and so he will be. I think he'll need us before the end, though, and so maybe it's better that they're not watching."
She reached forward and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. "I'm watching."
He smiled. "Lucky for me you're neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore then."
"Lucky you."
::
Harry was a mass of contradictions, spine of steel in class, staring down Snape in Advanced Potions but chewing his fingernails to the quick in the common room at night. He was sitting by the fire the night McGonagall called Neville out to tell him about the owl from St. Mungo's. He thanked her for the information, then returned, the chatter of his housemates distant as he tumbled into a chair opposite Harry.
They sat wordlessly until the common room emptied.
::
Neville was gone three days for the funeral. His Gran wanted him out longer, but he could not do it, not even for her. The house had reeked of death even before. He gave her a Spiritus Solacium, young and purring in the pot, and arranged to return to Hogwarts.
"I said goodbye long ago," he told her. "I have work to do now."
::
Only when you have seen, truly seen the effects of the Unforgivables, can you cast one successfully. You need to know what you are doing and you need to hate enough to mean it.
Neville had no need of the horrific underground trade in insects and animals. He cast Unforgivables night after night in his dreams. Luna partnered him in DA meetings, and no one took any notice.
The world around them drained free of color.
::
When it happened it was messy and fast and unexpected. Muggles created stories of bombs and explosions to explain it; wizards swore to remember and strove to forget.
Neville shadowed Harry as he always had, casting with a synchronicity born of years of studying and living together. He cast with his whole soul, cast what Harry could not, cast what Harry had never considered, cast amplifications.
Together, they were casting the end.
::
After, Luna found him. No one else had seen him fall. Few had seen him at all. People, after all, see only what they expect.
She took him to his grandmother's home and became the first person in years to stand up to her. "You've done enough," she said softly. "You kept him for us all these years. Now I want to help."
Luna put him to bed, touched his cheek, watched him sideways and upside down, sleeping finally, fluttering, peace. She Charmed his sleep dreamless, sat guard, and waited for the future.
They were centuries old and newborn.