Disclaimer: Rowling owns them. She probably owns most of the world by now.
Notes: Written for the first Mid-Month Challenge at lovelingers on livejournal (a Frank/Alice community).
"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there" and it will move." Matthew 17:20
The red of the carnations pulsed against the bleached-white walls of St. Mungo's, reminding Neville of blood and pain. He'd seen too much of that in recent years—between the battle at the Department of Mysteries and the tragic events of this past school year, it seemed as if his world was being pulled into the mire of hopelessness and loss. But Mum loved to sit and look at them, running her fingers through their soft petals and smiling that blank smile of hers. He tried to hold on to that image, engrain it in his mind, so that whenever he saw blood again, he would remember the red of the carnations and Mum's smile and have hope, not the other way around.
Gran thought that his visits were pointless. A woman of absolute efficiency, she was. Ever since the Department of Mysteries, however, Neville'd gone more frequently. At first it was to give Dad his wand back—broken and useless, but a piece of him nonetheless. Dad had refused to touch it, closing Neville's hand back around it and wandering away. Gran told him he didn't understand what was happening around him. Neville believed differently.
He'd thought about Mum and Dad alot, even though he barely knew them. Well, he knew them, he saw them in person. But he didn't know them like he knew Gran. It didn't bother him that much when he was younger. They were Mum and Dad, they were brave heroes, they were what he should be (but never could be)and he didn't need to know more than that. After fifth year, however, it began to eat away at him.
Harry had confided in him, once. Neville was feeling a bit down, and Harry was trying to comfort him in that awkward way he had. Turns out they weren't as different as Neville had originally thought. Harry missed his parents, too. Harry wondered what they were like, what it was like to have them love him. Of course, he didn't actually say all of this—he never truly spoke much about such things. But Neville'd seen the way he looked when they showed each other pictures of their parents. Harry, however, had something he did not. Neville had accidentally overheard a conversation between Harry and Ron—somehow he'd gotten in a Pensieve and seen his parents. He'd actually seen them as they once were.
So Neville began to research. He talked to his Gran, gathering as much information he could from her terse comments (it wasn't efficient to dwell on the past, so she rarely told stories about his parents). There were several pictures scattered about the house, and he began to identify people in them. Then he wrote the letters.
He was very careful about who he contacted and how he asked them. He didn't want pity, just answers. There was an Auror named Kingsley Shacklebolt who must have been close to Mum and Dad. After all, the man was in a picture with the both of them, clapping Dad on the shoulder and giving Mum an affectionate kiss on the cheek. The picture was taken after Mum finished her Auror training, Gran had said. Dad was already an Auror, and looked handsome in his uniform (handsome in a way Neville would never be). He wrote to Shacklebolt first.
The response was surprisingly long. Shacklebolt told him about their bravery. Not just the bravery that Gran stressed, how they stood strong against You-Know-Who and their abilities as Aurors. From what Shacklebolt wrote, Neville finally saw their less obvious bravery. Mum and Dad had refused to let the war ruin their lives. They continued to visit their friends even when times became dangerous. They bought a house and made it a home even when creating a family seemed like a pointless thing to do. They laughed and loved and danced and hoped while the world crashed apart around them.
With slight trepidation, he then wrote to Professor McGonagall. Neville asked her about a rather academic issue: Were magical abilities in specific areas passed from parent to child, especially given that magical parents could have a Squib and two Muggles could have a witch? Thankfully, and rather embarrassingly as well, the professor saw through his question. She wrote that aptitudes were often similar between parent and child, but there was never a guarantee. Then she went on to tell him about his own parents while they were at Hogwarts. Apparently Mum was brilliant at theory in nearly every subject, but sometimes struggled with the application of it. Dad was passionate about Defense, dreadful at Potions, and a bit 'unmotivated' when it came to Transfiguration. Whereas Gran continuously told him how they had aced their NEWTs, McGonagall told him how they had to work quite hard to achieve the Auror requirements.
His final letter was sent to Professor Lupin. It was a stretch, but his research paid off. Professor Lupin had indeed known Mum and Dad, albeit a bit distantly compared to the others. However, he had also known a witch named Marlene, a good friend of Mum's. Between those connections, Professor Lupin knew how Mum and Dad met. It wasn't an epic romance or teenage drama. They had met at Hogwarts, of course, but didn't get together until afterwards. Mum had been the one to ask Dad out for dinner and they were married a few months later. Their relationship was unassuming, but strong enough to endure rough times. They were made for each other.
Overall, he did not learn a whole lot. He learned enough, however, to make him certain that they should never be forgotten or ignored. They weren't just heroes or a tragedy of war; they were people with their own unique dreams and triumphs. And they'd made him who he was.
Neville knows that his plants do so wonderfully because he's there from the moment they're placed in the ground. He watches them, nurtures them, and talks to them while they reach their tiny shoots to the sun. If he didn't do that, they would wither away at the first storm. Mum's carnations bloomed so fully because he had visited often to take care of them. Neville knew even intangible blossoms worked the same way. A seed of doubt, a seed of love. The hands that guided them when first planted could determine how strong they grew. It frustrated Neville that most people don't see it that way. They only see the end result, the flower from the seed, not the hand behind it.
So when most people looked at him and saw a clumsy almost-Squib, he saw himself as a sapling. He knew he wasn't brilliant or powerful. But he had potential—he'd realized after a few years at Hogwarts that the potential was there, just not in the places frequently scrutinized by Gran. Potential of a different sort that he had yet to understand. Neville knew that he would weather the coming storm. He would aide his friends in any way he could. He was going to have to be the sturdy, dependable one, the one that grounded the others while they reached for the sky. Because his power came not from magics or potions, but from the hands that guided his early development.
That's what Mum and Dad gave him—roots. Strong roots. Roots that reached beyond the blank eyes and starched sheets of St. Mungo's. They must have had some impact on the way he grew since they were able to love him so much for the first year of his life. And now he had their stories. He could see who they were clearly now, and the knowledge made him more comfortable with himself. Neville had inherited their bravery, but it was the bravery of remaining loyal to his friends. It was true that he wasn't brilliant, but all that mattered was that he worked hard. No longer did he feel pressured to prove himself in other ways. Their tragedy made him proud and defiant against darkness, not sad and hopeless. Mum's bubblegum wrappers opened a world of affection and love that he hadn't seen before—and he wanted to extend that to the people around him.
With such a new world view, there were other things that Neville began to notice. Every move Mum and Dad made were not the actions of the mindless. He thought he could see their personalities. Shacklebolt had told him about Mum's giving spirit, about Dad's sense of tradition and symbolism. So when Dad turned away his broken wand, Neville gleaned a bit of the man behind the blank face.
All of these thoughts had swirled around his head for months. It was why he visited more often than Gran approved, why he brought Mum flowers, why he talked himself hoarse about his time at Hogwarts and the friends he'd made. Somewhere along the line, while he was finding out who Mum and Dad were, he'd come to the conclusion that they had to find out who he was. And every day brought more hope that someday they would see him. So Neville sat in a stiff chair at St. Mungo's, talking about his summer so far, and watching Mum touch the carnations. Even with an ounce of faith, you could move mountains, and Neville had plenty of faith.