Neville had always been proud to be the son of Alice and Frank Longbottom. They were the brave people who defied Lord Voldemort and gave up their minds to protect him as an infant. They had been on the front lines of the war and had given up the heroics to protect him.
Neville knew he would never resent them but being their son, the son of the couple who were the pride of the Longbottom family, had always put a lot of pressure on him to follow in their footsteps: to be brave and courageous and everything that emphasised the Gryffindor their family stood behind.
It meant that his love for plants was never good enough. The fact that he managed the greenhouses with the help of only his own house elf at the age of eight meant that he was nothing like his father, who had been insisting on flying around on his broomstick and visiting friends.
Even worse was his lack of magic.
All that did was make him more of a disappointment.
The hopeful questions from his great aunts and uncles had turned into silent questioning looks by the time he had turned nine. It only made him feel worse when he visited his parents at St. Mungo's, knowing they had sacrificed everything they had for him: a person that wasn't even certain to get into Hogwarts.
Their sacrifice seemed more and more pointless with every day that passed.
And with every desperate attempt from the extended Longbottom family to wrestle magic from his body. It had been unsuccessful for years, with him knowing that they didn't really want to hurt him. The fact that there were always others around, ready to save him if need be, helped but didn't curb the fear that he really was just a squib. The embarrassment of the Longbottom family; of Alice and Frank Longbottom.
It was only his plants that snapped and moved around like they would for anyone else. They didn't offer him pity or words of encouragement. Each of them just existed in their own little worlds, caring perhaps only for the next time they would be tended to.
But his time with them grew shorter as he grew older – lessons took up his time, and the various tests that insisted he had magic but had no way of drawing it out. There was dancing and politics and the insistence that he would be the Longbottom Lord one day – he knew it was an empty promise if he never received his Hogwarts letter.
And Neville had tried everything he could think of: he had tried everything the books on accidental magic said could cause him to produce magic, within reason.
He had tried willing plants to grow just a little faster than he knew they would and bringing dying plants back to life, because that was something he really cared about and magic usually helped plants.
He tried daily to summon the can of water to himself in the greenhouse, but it refused to budge.
He had tried unlocking locked doors, because that was said to be simple enough that some toddlers were able to accomplish it with their accidental magic.
He had snuck into the library after his bedtime for extra research and was forced to suffer a cold for the next few weeks as punishment from his grandmother.
His grandmother didn't seem to think that he was trying. That upset her the most, and Neville had often caught her staring wistfully at his parents' portrait. He often believed she wished they had given him up instead of sacrificing themselves, even if they both knew his parents would never have considered such a thing.
Neville wasn't sure if he would have faced this much pressure had he been anyone else's child. He barely knew his parents and wouldn't give them up, but…
There was that very small part of him that sometimes wished that they had just given him up to those Death Eaters.
They could have had another child.
One that had more magic than him and would be less of a disappointment.
That was all the past now. There was nothing he or anyone else could do to change what had already happened.
All Neville could do was continue to hope that his magic would somehow show itself.
Written for Badass Lyrics Inspire Badass Fics [We're alive yet deprived and alone; Neville Longbottom]
