Author's Note: Heads up, there's alcohol consumption in this chapter that doesn't model the healthiest of behaviors. It's nothing outrageous, but I wanted to let you guys know. I hope you enjoy the chapter! Thanks for reading!
"Tell me again why I can't go to the Leaky Cauldron?" Neville asked.
Across the table, Hermione shot an annoyed look at Harry. The three of them sat in Gran's dining room. For her part, Neville's grandmother was on the other side of the door to the kitchen, listening to every word they said. She only stayed that far away, Neville knew, out of respect for his friends rather than any benefit on his part—that was only incidental.
"Just give us twenty minutes to catch up, mate," Harry said.
"And to make sure that you are on the same page about what Hannah thinks before you go blustering in anywhere," Hermione said. Her voice was stern, but her dark eyes didn't hold any malice.
"Wouldn't it make more sense for me to find out what Hannah thinks by talking to Hannah?"
Hermione frowned. "At this rate, I'm not sure she'd be able to get a word in."
Harry muffled a laugh, turning it into a snort that he tried to play off as a cough.
Neville wasn't actually mad at his friends for keeping him there, in fact he appreciated their efforts to look out for him and make sure he was prepared for whatever discussion he and Hannah would have once they finally saw each other. That was the problem, though: he still hadn't seen Hannah. That, despite the fact that he'd arrived home from France the previous night. Of course he couldn't have gone then, it was late, past midnight, and he'd had to tend to the bloody mess of his finger, the nail of which had splinched off on the journey. (Just because Ginny had gotten him temporary permission from the Ministry to apparate internationally didn't mean he wasn't properly nervous when it came to actually accomplishing the feat.) And then when morning had come, he had Gran and her questions to face. The whole morning was a refrain of the same answers he'd already tried to give her in the note he'd mailed.
"No, it's not true. I didn't know until I got the Howler. Hannah's my friend, Gran. Yes, the Prophet's rubbish. I am angry, I just—No, not until I can talk to Hannah. It's her decision too. Don't say that. I dunno, we haven't been able to talk. I need to finish my work first and then—Of course I want to set it straight but how we do that isn't just for me to decide. I've told you, she's not my girlfriend. It's all a lie. Well, yes, that bit is true. It's vile."
At the end of each round of questioning, Augusta looked her grandson in the eye. "The heathens," she'd say. "Treating you like this, after all you've done."
Neville would just shrug in response. Still, the sentiment wasn't lost on him, and he felt his chest swell each time his grandmother said something to that effect.
After he'd finally escaped Gran's questions he still had to finish the assignment from Sapworthy. Rewriting his notes in so much haste probably didn't have the desired effect of tidying his handwriting, but it would have to do. In any other circumstances, Neville might have delighted in this process. The lilies were truly interesting. He could have spent weeks there at the edge of that forest, testing the varying effects of his memories, the time of day, the density of the flowers. He'd brought back so many samples of the plants and soil that cataloging them took nearly as long as copying his notes had. And after all that, he still had to go see Sapworthy.
The old manor house wasn't any less ominous than it had been on his first trip, but this time Neville didn't have the mental capacity to care much. He had plenty of other things to worry about, things that wouldn't be left behind when he disapparated.
Sapworthy was in her study again, sitting in the same chair behind the same desk. Everything looked so similar to his first visit. In fact, Neville could almost pretend that the intervening weeks hadn't happened, if only he could have forgotten the way that his life had been upended in that time.
They discussed his trip and the research. Sapworthy read through the notes while he sat there in silence, his knee bouncing quickly, as if it could actually move the meeting along. Neville kept waiting for her to mention the article but she never did. He supposed that was for the best. Still, it made him a bit paranoid. What if she had already decided that she didn't want to work with him anymore so it didn't matter that he'd been featured in the Prophet's latest scandalous story? Or what if she'd already drawn some sort of horrible conclusion that she had decided to just look past? Neville reminded himself that the most realistic option was that she simply hadn't seen it and, given that it didn't appear as if his boss got out much, hadn't been able to hear about it from anyone else either. Still, as he left the house, he let out a breath of relief that he hadn't needed to talk about it with anyone else before getting the chance to see Hannah.
Or at least, he thought that would be the case. When he got home, however, he had been surprised to find Harry and Hermione waiting.
"I suppose you haven't seen the others," Hermione said then.
Neville sat back in his chair, resting his arms on the table. His body carried the weight of the past week deep in his bones. "Who?"
"Not 'who,'" Harry said. "The other articles?"
The weight doubled. "Oh. No, I haven't." Watching as his friends shared a worried look, Neville sighed. "How many are there, then?"
"A few," Harry said.
"Nine," Hermione amended, inducing winces from both boys. She rattled off the names of several publications, some of which Neville only had a vague knowledge of, then finished by saying, "Witch Weekly was the most egregious, of course. They really invested in an attempt to dig up every bit of information about you and Hannah that they could, even things from school."
Before Neville could ask what information, exactly, Harry added, "You're forgetting Seeker Weekly."
"You're joking," Neville said.
Harry shook his head. "They printed an article about ways to 'maximize romance' at matches, and introduced it talking about you. They even used the picture from the Prophet."
"Bloody hell," Neville said. He might have gone for a stronger swear, but not with Gran looming on the other side of the door.
Hermione said, "Once it gained traction in the Prophet—and wasn't immediately disputed—the others took advantage of the publicity. It's good business provided that they don't mind being loathsome little pests." She frowned down at the table before saying, "We would have asked for a retraction right away, but Hannah was very hesitant about officially doing anything in response."
Neville bit at the inside of his cheek. He knew that he should have gotten home sooner, that it would have helped Hannah handle this. He knew that she probably didn't want to do anything drastic before talking to him, and he'd stayed in France all that time making it impossible for her to defend herself. A flush of shame started to storm his face.
"When I went to talk to her with Susan that afternoon, she said that she didn't want to draw this out any longer than it would have to be. She thought that fighting them, at least in an official, legal way, would only sustain it as an issue of public interest."
The flush grew stronger, though now the shame took on a different shade. She just wanted her name out of the press. Why would Hannah care about his opinion when he was the reason she'd wound up in a fictional public relationship in the first place?
"She's not wrong, of course," Hermione continued. "I just wish I would have explained better how this would go on regardless of how you two react. Maybe she would have seen that fighting back straight away would help, long term anyhow."
"Plus you really wanted to do another Quibbler article attacking the Prophet," Harry said, grinning conspiratorially.
"Hush," Hermione told him, though she'd gone a bit pink in the cheeks and seemed to be fighting off a smile. "I'll remind you it worked rather well the first time."
Neville ran his hands over his face. "Wait, Ginny told me that we were asking for a retraction?" Ginny had only stayed in France for a day, but she'd been sending him messages via her patronus on a semi-regular basis ever since, and Neville could have sworn that one of them included something about a retraction.
"That was decided yesterday," Hermione said, "Ginny gave us your blessing to do it and Susan brought back Hannah's, so we started writing up the papers, but the notice wasn't actually sent until this morning, and it'll likely take them days to respond."
So that was it. The first step that could be taken already had been, and he wasn't needed for it. Really, Neville thought, it might have been better for Hannah if he'd just stayed in France after all. Going to see her now would only force her to think about the whole mess. Yet, they did need to talk sooner or later. Even if it wasn't the two of them on their own then at least in a group where they could be face to face. And besides, he missed her.
Apparently having taken Neville's silence for despondence, which to be fair wasn't entirely off, Hermione leaned forward in her chair with a soft smile. "There's a wonderful lawyer from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who I've worked with a bit and she's offered to help out in any way. Tackling antics like these in the Wizarding press has been a pet project of hers for quite some time."
Neville tried to smile back. "That's great. Thank you. But honestly, if Hannah still doesn't want to do any more after we talk I'd just as soon drop it too."
Harry nodded. "Alright, but if—"
"They brought my mum and dad into it," Neville said. If anyone could understand how that complicated things, Harry had to. "I know that everyone already knows, and that it wasn't nearly as bad as how they talked about Hannah's mum, but, if I can manage it, I don't want that to happen again." He raked his hands over his face. "Don't get me wrong, I want to fight back, I want to hold them accountable and make them pay for hurting Hannah and for doing that to me. I want the Prophet and everyone else who ran with this to know that they're tossers." Jaw clenched, he took a deep breath before continuing. "But if getting that means making things worse for Hannah and letting my parents get mocked and their accomplishments diminished, that's too big of a cost. I can't do it, not like that."
Hermione looked at Harry for a moment before telling Neville, "That makes perfect sense."
"I get it," Harry said.
Neville nodded, not meeting their eyes. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."
They spoke a little while longer, gathered there at the end of the long table that his family used to fill. Harry and Hermione gave Neville more detailed accounts of the new articles, most of which focused on Hannah, as less had been written about her over the years. Harry did mention that a picture of Neville and Ginny from the Yule Ball had been included in Witch Weekly ("Gin about snorted tea out her nose when she saw it."), but most of the things said about him had only concerned his brief stint with the Aurors. Some pieces had republished old news about his parents, with the same dismissive language as always and the same focus on the Death Eaters who'd hurt them rather than the people who Frank and Alice had been, who they still were. That hurt, but on some level Neville had grown accustomed to it. He hated to think that Hannah would have to do the same.
When he finally apparated into the courtyard outside of the Leaky Cauldron, Neville was greeted by the pop and blinding flare of a camera flash.
"Here to see your girlfriend?"
He didn't wait to see which of the people crowded there had shouted the question, instead pushing through the doors to the inn.
It wasn't packed inside, but an uncomfortable number of eyes still lurked, tracking his every step. Keeping his head down, Neville walked towards the stairs but stopped short.
When he looked up, his gaze landed on Tom, who stood behind the bar, mindlessly polishing a glass. It brought back memories from when he'd been young and passing through with his grandmother. Back then, he had always pressed his meek frame closer to Gran's legs while under Tom's gaze, the old man's knowing looks and toothless grins having made the hair stand up on the back of his neck as long as he could remember. Now, however, the innkeeper's steady expression wasn't frightening or even admonishing—which Neville reasoned would have been understandable given the gaggle of reporters stationed outside and the tumult that had surely troubled the inn ever since the article came out. If anything, Tom's pale eyes seemed to pity what they saw. Still, the innkeeper's gaze felt heavy enough that it nearly compelled Neville to ask for permission just to go upstairs. As if he could hear Neville's worries from across the room, Tom nodded at him and turned his attention elsewhere.
It was Susan who answered Hannah's door, barely cracking it open at first. Neville watched as recognition overtook the slim visible slice of her face and then she was throwing the door open wider and practically pulling him through.
"It's about time," she said, her voice light. Susan smiled at Neville with a warmth that didn't sit well on his conscience.
Hannah sat on the end of her bed, leaning against one of its posts with her bare feet braced against the opposite one. She bit her lip when she saw him.
"Hi," he said. He nearly stumbled over his own feet when Susan let him go.
"Hi," Hannah said, her voice quiet.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner, it was—"
"It's no problem."
"Really, I would have—"
"It's really alright."
Neville wanted to believe her, but Hannah wouldn't quite meet his eyes.
Susan cleared her throat, startling them both into looking at her. She had gathered a bag and her coat. "I should probably be going."
Hannah swung her legs down and crossed the room to stand before Susan. "You don't have to leave. Stay, please." Her widened eyes seemed to plead a silent argument with her friend.
Neville looked away.
"No," Susan said. "No I can't. I'm sorry. You have so much to catch up on. Besides, I haven't even told my family my good news yet, I need to go over there tonight."
Susan squeezed Neville's arm affectionately on her way to the door. "Have a good evening, you two."
"You as well," Hannah said.
"See you, Susan," Neville said with a nod.
When the door shut Hannah still stood somewhere behind him. He was keenly aware of her presence there and of each step she took that approached him. She strode right past, wand held aloft, voice low and hurried under her breath. Neville couldn't make out her words but it wasn't necessary. Protective charms, he knew well enough.
That task done, Hannah retreated to the desk again. The room seemed to shrink the moment their eyes met. Neville turned as she passed this time, trying to keep the connection even as Hannah avoided it—a ship chasing the glare of a lighthouse even as it spun away. She started to tidy her desk, laden with empty teacups and various containers of snack foods in addition to its usual disarray of papers and projects. At the edge stood a wine bottle and two stemmed glasses, from which Hannah cleaned all signs of use with a silent charm.
"Would you like something to drink?"
"Oh, I'm alright," he said.
"There's wine," she said. She turned to him with the bottle, which he now saw was half drunk, in hand. "It's already open." Hannah shook her head slightly and then looked at Neville bashfully. "We were celebrating."
Neville nodded slowly. "Susan mentioned good news?"
"She's been promoted." Hannah said. Her mouth smiled prettily, but her eyes didn't. "She's earned a promotion at the ministry and I can't even manage my waitressing job." She gave a hollow laugh. "If Susan weren't the kindest person I've ever met I'd wonder why she bothers with me."
Studying her expression, Neville didn't think he'd ever seen Hannah's eyes look so sad, not even when she'd cried in front of him. He took a deep breath. "I'm so sorry about all this."
Hannah's face fell. "Don't," she said. She turned back and poured crimson colored wine into one of the glasses.
"Hannah, I—"
"Stop it, would you. Everyone keeps insisting that I hear how sorry they are. I'm tired of it. It's not going to change a thing. The Prophet could print its own apology on the front page and nothing would be different." Her hands were squeezed into fists at her sides and she was back to not looking at him.
"I'm not saying it to change anything," Neville said.
"Fine." Hannah picked up the wineglass and took a sip.
"And I think that it would make a difference."
"It doesn't matter. We both know it'll never happen."
"Not if we won't fight for it."
Hannah's eyes cut towards him in a glare. "Can you honestly tell me you think things would be better if we drew more attention to ourselves and this mess?"
He couldn't, but then he couldn't bring himself to say much of anything. He hadn't even thought about what had just come out of his mouth, it just did. A reflex, that was all, and perhaps, on some level, the need to get Hannah to just look at him. Now that her gaze pinned him to the spot, though, Neville could just barely look away from Hannah's eyes long enough to glance down at her parted lips. He certainly couldn't convince his voice to work.
The day's last glints of sunlight that glowed through the windowpanes caught on the loose strands of Hannah's hair when she shook her head. "That's what I thought," she said in response to his silence. "Have you even seen the sorts of things being printed?"
"Uh," he struggled to clear his throat, "I've heard about—"
"That is not the same thing."
Wine almost splashed out of the glass when Hannah slapped it down. She knelt, retrieving one glossy cover after another from the deluge that flooded from the opened desk drawer. Finally she pulled out a copy of Witch Weekly. Neville walked towards her and just barely caught a glimpse of that picture from the quidditch match splashed on the corner of the cover before Hannah began flipping the pages furiously. When she got to the section she wanted, she stood and shoved the magazine into his chest.
"WHO'S HANNAH?" was printed in bold block letters and underneath that read, "Here's everything we know about Neville Longbottom's new love!" The page was littered with more pictures than text. A little blonde girl with her hair in plaits who smiled a missing-toothed grin at the camera, a picture of the same girl, a few years older, with her parents standing behind each of her shoulders, Hannah as Neville had first known her in her school robes, a yellow and black scarf woven around her neck. The picture that stuck out to Neville the most was from the Yule Ball. Ernie Macmillan had an arm wrapped around Hannah's shoulders. It was odd, but Neville didn't remember that they'd gone to the ball together—he didn't even remember Hannah being at the ball, if he were entirely honest. That night had been fun, but looking back Neville supposed his focus had only been on a small group of friends, all from Gryffindor in those lonely days before Dumbledore's Army had arisen. The various younger versions of Hannah smiled up at him from that page, but his mind snagged on something about that last one, with her pink dress and her hair worn in an elaborate looking updo. It took him a moment to realize that next to it, printed smaller, was the picture that Harry had mentioned of Neville and Ginny from that same night.
"Where did they get all these?"
Hannah shrugged, crossing her arms. "I don't know, I don't know where or who they could've gotten those from and that's part of the problem."
The way Hannah's voice cracked on the last word made Neville snap back to attention, watching her carefully.
"I swear I'm not trying to make things more difficult for you," she said, and her voice sounded choked. "Maybe it's cowardly of me but they've already dug this much and I don't know what they'll do if we fight back and I can't—I can't let them do that to me, or my father, or my mother's memory. And I know—damnit," she cut off to wipe angrily at her eyes before crossing her arms once more. "Merlin knows they've already treated you and your family so horribly and I hate that I've helped them do it again, and maybe you and the others are all right and I'm being stupid, but I—I just—I can't take that risk." Tears shone in her eyes again when Hannah shook her head at him and said breathlessly, "I'm sorry Neville, but I can't."
She started to turn away from him but Neville reached out with both of his hands, letting the copy of Witch Weekly fall noisily to the floor. He caught her above either elbow and guided her back towards him.
"We'll figure it out," he said. "There'll be something new that will take the attention soon enough."
"And when d'you think that'll happen? Before they corner my father? Before they begin to hound Susan like they've done to me here? Or do you suppose they'll just wait by my mother's grave for me to visit?" Hannah's face had reddened and a stray tear finally broke free. "They've already been there, you know. There's a picture of it in one of these fucking rags."
The space between them evaporated. It was a mystery who had moved first, but his hands found her back and her cheek pressed against his chest. Hannah didn't cry, or if she did it was the quiet sort that she could keep to herself, not the earth-shaking waves of despair he'd been privy to in the past. Neville felt the weight of her silence in the pit of his stomach. Something about it unnerved him.
"I could kill them for it," he said. The anger came as a surprise even to him, but Neville's voice was thick with it. He moved his hand up to cradle the back of Hannah's head, fingers buried in her soft hair.
"You don't mean that."
"I wish I did."
"I don't."
Neville pressed his lips against Hannah's head, a gentle kiss that fell near her hairline. The floral smell of her filled his nose.
It was a thoughtless gesture—why hadn't he thought!—not in the sense that he didn't mean anything by it, but rather that it had happened naturally, on instinct, without any sense at all really. He froze.
Hannah pulled away from him, not roughly, but still. It felt decisive.
"You're sure you don't want something to drink?" she asked, reaching for her own wineglass and taking a long sip without waiting for an answer.
A noncommittal noise was all he could offer. Neville rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms against his trousers and had the vague thought of trying to disapparate despite the charms Hannah had set in place.
For her part, Hannah apparently took the noise as a reversal. With a heavy pour she emptied the bottle into the second glass and handed it to him with a bright smile that looked almost painful. "I should have asked before, but how has your grandmother taken all this? And you haven't told me anything about your France trip yet."
Neville obliged her questions and began talking, thankful for Hannah's ability to steer them towards something that at least resembled normalcy. She perched on the end of the bed again and he settled the short distance across the room in the armchair she'd once transfigured.
The longer they chatted the sillier it seemed to have panicked at that slip of affection. What did a kiss on the head mean anyway? Neville dwelled on it while relating details about the silver lilies and Gran's Howler. He'd immediately feared that it was an obvious declaration of love to which Hannah's reaction had certainly felt like a rejection. But as she smiled and nodded and engaged with his story of the past week's events, Neville began to consider that maybe she'd interpreted it some other way. After all, it could've been a simple display of affection between friends. He'd do the same to comfort Ginny or Hermione if either of them had life-altering events happen that he was in part responsible for—wouldn't he? And if Hannah's reaction had seemed cold perhaps it was just because it was all so sudden. Besides, it'd been a bit paternalistic if he really thought about it, the sort of thing his great-aunts and uncles always greeted him with as a child.
Somewhere between the talking and mulling this all over, Neville drained his glass.
"I'm glad your research was interesting," Hannah said at one point. "It made for good distraction, didn't it?"
"I s'pose so." Neville considered the empty glass in his hand, the warm feeling in his chest. "Still wish I could've been here."
A small smile alighted on Hannah's lips. "It would've been much more boring, I assure you."
"But maybe, if I could've made things easier at all—"
"There's nothing you could've done. In fact if you'd been here every day since they published the wretched thing it would've only given them more fodder."
"Then I should've asked you to come to France—or you should've stayed with your grandparents. They haven't been bothered like this, have they?"
A scowl creased her brow. "If we're going to discuss that I'll need more wine."
"What happened?"
She ignored the question, instead pulling up a paper takeaway bag from where it'd been hidden on the floor to the far side of the bed. From there she pulled out the new bottle and with a quick charm she'd uncorked it.
"Would you like any?" The question was thrown over her shoulder at him as she refilled her glass.
Before he gave a response she'd already begun to cross the room. She stood over him, carefully pouring the wine into his glass as he stared up. His eyes lingered on the soft column of her neck, the delicate ridge of one collar bone that had been exposed as the oversized t-shirt she wore slid down one shoulder. His mouth went dry.
It wasn't until she'd turned away again that he found his voice.
"Hannah, your grandparents?"
"We had a fight," she said, her back to him and her hands braced on the desk.
"About all this?"
"Yes, a bit. And other things." She drank from her glass and then turned to frown at him, arms crossed. "Before you go and start feeling all guilty and responsible, just, just don't, alright? It'll be fine."
"How's your father taking it?"
"I dunno." Another drink. "He...well I haven't seen him."
"What?"
"He'd already left the house that day when I went there, and then I fought with my grandparents, and that's been it really."
"He hasn't come to see you? Your grandparents haven't checked in?"
A sip. "It's barely been a week. Who knows what they're facing. Besides, I've hardly been approachable, holed up here like this."
"Susan's come. Hermione came. I'm here."
She paused with the glass at her lips. "Yes, but I didn't shout at you a week ago."
Neville smiled in spite of himself. "No, but you have a bit tonight."
"Sod off," she said, her face serious for a moment before she fell into a fit of giggles.
Neville fell with her, and soon neither seemed capable of doing anything but laughing. It was made all the worse when Hannah tried to stop but wound up snorting quite cutely instead. If only he were braver, Neville thought, he would have crossed the room then and there to kiss her properly, backing her into the desk and holding her there until she forgot all about her family's problems and the reporters and that bloody article.
When the room began to quiet again, Neville watched Hannah's mouth quirk to the side.
"You could come sit over here with me, you know," she said, nodding at the bed.
"I'm alright here," he said. It was hard to ignore that his heart rate had ticked up at the mere suggestion.
"Oh come off it. If we're going to keep talking you might as well make yourself comfortable. You should hardly be uncomfortable with it." She laughed ruefully, "Haven't you heard that we're in love?"
Neville tried to laugh along without it being obvious how forced it was. If walking away from him before had been a potential rejection, what in Merlin's name was this?
"Well all right," Hannah said, stalking to the side of her bed. "You stay over there as long as you like, but I'm tired and a bit drunk and I'm lying down."
Outside of the grimy window, the sun had long since set. It left Hannah's room bathed only in the dim glow that reached up from the streetlights and still open businesses of Diagon Alley below. In that low light Neville couldn't quite make out Hannah's facial expression from across the room. She'd settled against her pillows, one leg languidly draped over the other, but with her torso still upright enough that she sipped her wine without issue. Neville drank his as well, and they fell into the sort of companionable silence they always seemed to find together.
It was almost pleasant, if you forgot all of the context that had put them into that scene. Then again, that was true for many of Neville's most cherished moments in one way or another.
His mind was contending with that thought when the noises started. If they hadn't grown comfortable, if it hadn't been so quiet, they might have missed them. As it stood, however, Hannah's head whipped towards the door. Rumblings came from the hall, echoey and low noises that could have been nothing. But in light of the journalists still plaguing the inn, and the lengths to which they'd already gone to create a story, it was hard to imagine anything that wasn't sinister lurking on the other side of the door. Neville watched as Hannah, her eyes still averted, groped blindly for her wand where it lay on her nightstand. He didn't have to see her expression clearly to understand what she felt. Her body language alone screamed with fear.
He moved to the open side of the bed. There he could sit between Hannah and the door, his wand at the ready as well. The noises continued, although now there seemed to be voices mixed in.
"Probably just people trying to find their rooms," Neville murmured.
Neither of them acknowledged that if he'd actually believed what he said it wouldn't have come out as a whisper.
They sat side by side, wands drawn, for several tense minutes that, had it not been for the reality of his watch, Neville might have thought lasted hours. When at last the noises receded and remained sufficiently at bay, Hannah relaxed next to him. The change was so drastic that he felt the mattress shift with it.
"I know I'm being a coward," she said, wand still clasped in her hand even as she'd let her body recline into the pillows again.
"You're really not." He started to stand, but Hannah's hand on his arm stopped him in his tracks.
"Stay here, would you?"
Neville tried to keep his voice light when he said, "I left my drink by the chair."
"Just summon the bottle," she told him, matching his tone. He would have quipped something else in response, but before he could Hannah retracted her hand and stared up at him with her eyes wide. "Please, Neville."
"Okay." He made himself smile at her before doing what she'd said. He mumbled a quiet, "Accio wine bottle," and caught it out of the air, his fingers wrapping firmly around its neck. Warmth pooled in Neville's stomach when he looked down to find Hannah smiling up at him, her wand lying next to her abandoned wineglass on the nightstand once more. He busied himself then, kicking off his shoes and setting them neatly by the end of the bed before returning to sit beside Hannah, his legs stretched out next to hers even as he sat up much straighter—relaxing seemed like a risky proposition at the moment.
"See," Hannah said once he'd settled in, "More comfortable, more practical too."
Neville sipped the wine. "This is not more practical," he said, motioning to her with the bottle. "But I s'pose I'll give you that the bed has its advantages."
Hannah only pressed her cheek more firmly into her pillow in response.
Neville bit back a smile. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, in part to keep any more embarrassing thoughts from slipping out.
"I'm remembering something," she said.
"What's that?" Neville asked, busying himself with another sip of wine.
"It's not a happy memory."
"I don't mind."
"Of course you don't," she said, smiling fondly at him. "But we can't all be worthy of wielding the sword of Godric Gryffindor himself, can we?"
"You're making it sound much grander than it was."
"You didn't watch it happen. From my perspective it was rather grand."
"Well, from mine it was terrifying."
Hannah propped herself up on one elbow, her face tilted towards his. "And yet you still did what you had to. That's the point, isn't it?"
Neville only drank more wine in response. As he lowered the bottle Hannah took it from his hand, their fingers brushing. She raised it to her lips for a long drink of her own. Facing Hannah in that moment, Neville almost longed for another monstrous snake. At least the right move had been obvious then.
Hannah passed the wine to him before dropping back onto the pillows, blonde hair splayed out under her. She took a deep breath and, without looking him in the eye, said, "Do you remember how loud the noises outside the Room of Requirement would be? How we'd all go silent and pray that no one would figure it out, that the Room would protect us?"
The mere thought made his chest grow tight, his breath shallow. "I do," he said.
"Lately it's all I can think about at night."
Neville began to pick at the label on the wine, his thumb nail sliding under its edges, as he listened.
"You'd think that these papers and magazines would have more interest in all of that if it's salacious details they're after. What we all lived through in the castle...it must make for a more interesting story to read than the drivel they've written about who our families are or that I'm a waitress and you trained with the Aurors for a bit." She sighed. "Though I suppose they got their shocking bits as well, didn't they? With my mum and your parents."
Maybe it was the wine loosening his tongue, but curiosity pricked at Neville. "Why haven't you ever asked me about what happened?"
"What?"
"With the Aurors. You've never asked."
Hannah's eyebrows drew together. "Should I have?"
"Most people seem interested in it," he said. His face flushed—why did he always end up sounding so daft? "I just mean, I dunno, my perspective's off because of Gran. It's all she seems to care about sometimes."
Hannah considered him, her face serious. "Do you want me to ask?"
A pause, and then, "Yes."
"Why didn't you stay with the Aurors, Neville?"
He told her everything. It had been nearly a year since it all came crumbling down around him and he hadn't talked at length about it with anyone, but now he couldn't stop talking. And not just about the way it ended, even though that was all he'd had her ask about. Neville had to tell her the beginning too. He needed Hannah to understand the context of it all.
It wasn't as if he'd joined the year long training program for the Aurors on a whim. After finishing school, while the events of the war were still too raw to call memories, it had looked like the natural course for his life. Why else would he have lived through it all, if not so that he could stop the unspeakable things that had happened to everyone he loved from ever happening to anyone else? So he'd set to work. Even through the brutal training exercises, the endless testing, the impossible standards, Neville had only forced himself to work harder. And Gran had been proud. It didn't matter how late he returned home, how many family events he missed, how loud it got when he practiced various spells and tactical maneuvers. The only thing his grandmother seemed to care about then was that Neville had turned out so much like his father after all. The night that he'd officially completed the training program, after attending the short ceremony that the Ministry held to honor those officially joining the Aurors, she'd even surprised him with a celebratory dinner at the house. Gran had made all of his favorite foods and invited his friends along with Uncle Algie and Aunt Enid, and she'd looked at him all night with the sort of pride he'd only ever seen from her in light of the battle at Hogwarts.
After the rush and tumult of training, the reality of the job set in. Instructors had prepared them to take down Death Eaters, to battle the absolute worst parts of the Wizarding World. But that work was set aside for only the most experienced Aurors and those, like Harry, who had what was deemed special insight. Most of what Neville did with the Aurors was round up the lowest rungs of Voldemort's following, people who couldn't even claim the title Death Eater. Sure, most of them practiced some sort of dark magic on occasion, but dealing with them never felt like the noble work the Aurors had sold him on. It seemed that his job was actually just punishing sad people from desperate backgrounds who'd been warped into believing that what they were doing was right. Necessary work, yes, but that fact alone didn't make Neville feel good about doing it.
And then he took his first holiday. Uncle Algie was going to the countryside for a week and invited Neville along. Wading through the soft sway of the grass that surrounded the estate where they stayed, the sun warming his skin despite the bite of early winter that hung in the air, he could breathe again. The weight he'd carried for so long had eased away. He couldn't bring himself to pick it back up.
"Looking back," he said, "I don't know why I ever thought I'd be able to manage it."
As Neville had spoken, they'd each moved, trying to stay comfortable. Now, they found themselves each lying on their sides, their faces close enough that when Hannah let out a small laugh Neville could smell the sweet wine that lingered on her breath.
"What are you talking about?" she said, smiling at him. "That's rubbish. Of course you could—you did manage it, you were an Auror."
"Who didn't last a year on the job."
"Because you realized you didn't want it. It's not like you performed poorly and got sacked, you chose to leave."
Neville sighed, rolling onto his back. How could she understand, how could he explain it to make her see? "It didn't feel like a choice," he said. "Even everything that happened at Hogwarts and with the D.A., none of that was a choice. I fought through that because there wasn't any other option. Staying with the Aurors, continuing to fight against the same enemy as always and work through whatever made it so hard to stomach, that, that would have been a choice."
"That would have made you miserable."
"Yes, because it turns out that even after everything in the war, I can't cut it. I can't fight by choice, not even against fucking Death Eaters."
"Neville, look at me," Hannah said. She reached over, her fingers brushing his chin as he turned back toward her. "There's nothing wrong with you for that. It is not a bad thing."
"It is when you plan your whole future around it."
"At least you had a plan." She shook her head and a strand of hair fell across her face. "And you weren't too afraid to admit it wasn't working. You tried."
Neville brushed the hair away from her eyes, letting his fingers linger on the side of her face as he tucked it behind her ear. "What d'you mean?"
Something in her eyes looked panicked and her voice sounded quieter when she told him, "Nothing, it's—I'm being silly."
"But—"
"It's late. We should probably get some sleep."
Neville wanted to push, he wanted to know what she thought, everything that was troubling her and anything that could help make her feel better. But he wouldn't goad her. Not on top of everything that had already happened that week. He was about to get up, to put his shoes on and slip out the door, when Hannah's hand found his.
"Don't go," she said.
He squeezed her fingers in his. "I won't," he promised.
Author's Note: Thank you for giving your time to this story! Comments and critiques are welcome and extremely appreciated! Thank you so much to everyone who's supported this fic so far. There's a ways to go but we're definitely heading into at least the latter half now.
