Music Club - Frog Choir
Fated Survivor
There were many times he had felt like he was a burden to Gran, and to his family.
He was the one that had everyone second guessing whether or not his Hogwarts letter would ever arrive. It had, and that had been a relief, but that hadn't stopped him from thinking about how he could have been better, made them worry less, if only he had been more. Of what, he couldn't actually pinpoint, but he knew he needed to be more than what he was, more like his parents, like everything he was supposed to be.
He had asked the Sorting Hat to Sort him into Hufflepuff, the only way to make sure he would not worry them too much. He had known he would probably find himself involved in dangerous things in Gryffindor, things that he would never be able to survive, or so he thought. As he thought back to everything that had happened over the last year, he still couldn't believe he had survived this long.
The Hat had been right. He was more Gryffindor than he had ever dreamed of being. Clumsy little Neville Longbottom, who never did anything right, could be brave.
He knew they believed in him, but only as much as they could with someone who had only showed his first bout of accidental magic when he was six. Not even he believed in himself. His family believed in him more than he did, and even through that wasn't difficult, he appreciated it.
They didn't truly understand though. They believed it was just something he would grow out of, a phase that would disappear as he grew older, a minor bump in the road that would be fixed with time.
Perhaps it would have been, but never in time for the war they knew was coming.
Dueling in the Ministry had been something that he had never thought would happen to him, and while he had always harbored some fanciful dream of one day getting revenge for his parents when he was younger, he had never expected to duel Bellatrix Lestrange.
In that moment, he realized that the timid person he had been was gone, lost to time and experience. In his place stood who you were now, stronger and more worthy of the belief his family had in him.
He had survived. Now he could fight.