Breath of Life
by ChatterChick
Summary: They were happy. They were healthy. Their lives were coming beautifully together. Follow Neville and Hannah Longbottom on their journey to start their family.
***updated version as of 04/05/15***
A/N: I was going to reward you with fluff after the last few chapters, but then this chapter took on a mind of its own.
Chapter 7 - The Green House
End of July 2007
After a tense second trimester, Michael had finally eased off the weekly appointments now that Hannah was safely into her third. It would only be a brief break before Hannah neared her due date and the check-ups increased again. But today, Hannah was at St Mungo's for a different reason.
When they reached the fourth floor, Neville and Hannah didn't go to Michael's office, but rather, made their way to the Janus Thickey Ward where long-term patients stayed. While Neville made sure to visit his parents every week, Hannah had only been to visit with him on a handful of occasions. They had usually been large occasions, like introducing her as his girlfriend and then as his wife. She also visited them on major holidays and birthdays.
Today was Neville's twenty-seventh birthday.
Alice perked up at the visitors in their end of the ward. Neville's parents each had a bed and a night stand next to one another, and a curtain that could wrap around the pair of beds for privacy. There was also a table and a few chairs around it for visitors. In the middle of the table was a potted plant Neville had given them one Christmas.
Today seemed to be one of Alice's 'good' days. She was smiling and humming some nonsense tune to herself as she approached them. No one was ever sure if she recognized them or not, but it was easier to pretend that she did. She slowly approached them, and then gave Hannah a rough pat on her cheek before doing the same to Neville. She was usually the liveliest of the pair, and freely moved around the confined ward while Frank was more catatonic and stayed in his bed. Sometimes he'd be sitting up when they came, quietly starring off into space. Today someone had helped Frank into an armchair.
"Hello Mum," Neville greeted her. "How are you?"
There was no response. Once Alice greeted them, she wandered off to her night stand where she kept a little jewellery box with some of her things. She picked up a bright blue button out of the box and gave it to Neville. "Thanks," he quietly replied.
Hannah had witnessed this exchange on every visit. Alice liked greeting her guests with a 'present' of some sort. A gum wrapper, a button, some string, really whatever she had on hand that day.
Alice and Frank Longbottom were only in their mid-fifties, but looked like they had both aged far beyond their years. Both looked very thin and fragile, with papery skin. Frank was balding, with grey hair crowning his head. Alice had white hair herself, that was thin and looked dead.
"Hannah and I have some news," Neville continued in an overly cheery voice. "We're expecting a baby in November. You're going to have a grandson."
Alice seemed no happier or no sadder than if Neville told her the weather was lovely today. Frank stared blankly at the pair of them from his armchair.
"We'll come visit with the baby once he's born," Hannah told them. "So you can meet him."
Again, there was no response from Neville's parents. Hannah hoped Alice would have more of a reaction upon seeing the baby. She at least could tell when people came to the ward, even if she didn't openly recognize them, and responded positively to kneazle-therapy. It would be nice if she recognized a baby on some level.
Hannah and Neville kept up a steady stream of cheerful conversation after that, telling them about the weather, the latest Quidditch games, their plans for the baby. Hannah could feel her cheeks hurting from the false-smile that she had kept up during the entire visit. It was emotionally exhausting, pretending to keep up a normal conversation when Frank seemed so mentally absent and Alice kept wandering off to pace the length of her bed. She didn't know how Neville did this every week, visiting his parents and seeing them in this state. After a little over an hour, they got up to leave.
The moment the door to the Janus Thickey Ward magically sealed behind them, Neville's face crumbled and he covered his face with a shaky hand.
"Neville?" She hesitantly asked.
" 'M fine, just need a moment," came the muffled reply.
Hannah's hand instinctively made its way to his shoulder, rubbing small circles in a gesture to comfort him. Neville so often kept his emotions hidden from the world, rarely letting them see him in pain. Years of being belittled by Augusta, bullied by Snape, tormented by the Slytherins and coupled by many losses in his young life had, brick by brick, put up a rather strong wall. Hannah knew she was one of the rare few who had seen him cry as an adult.
"It's okay," she whispered, pulling him into a one-armed hug.
"I just wish they could understand," Neville quietly replied. "I wish for once they'd know."
xXxXx
Hannah shifted uncomfortably in her bed. Her growing stomach was making it difficult to find a position she could rest in, and these days she was plagued with many restless nights. She had given up on much sleep for the next while anyway, all of her friends informed her she'd be getting even less once the baby arrived. Wearily, she grabbed her wand from her night stand and conjured some pillows. She tucked them in around her, between her legs and a wall behind her back.
Just as she was settling in, Neville starting moving in his sleep.
Hannah's eyes cracked open. He might just find himself sleeping in the spare bedroom if he was going to be a problem.
"Nooo - " he weakly cried out, his eyes fluttering behind the closed lids.
Neville started tossing and turning and any plans of banishing him from their room were forgotten as she tried to wake him up. "Neville? Neville! Wake up love, it's just a dream."
His eyes shot open, and he stared up into her own.
"Hannah?" He seemed confused at his surroundings and his chest was still rising and falling much too quickly.
"You were having a bad dream," she explained. Both of them still suffered from nightmares and flashbacks to the Battle of Hogwarts while asleep, although the frequency had begun to lessen with time. "We're home."
"We're home," he repeated, looking around as if to reassure himself.
Hannah laid onto her side, nestling her head in the crook of his arm, letting him wrap an arm around her. Yawning, she asked, "Did you want to talk about it?"
Neville was silent for a long time. If it wasn't for his open eyes, Hannah would have thought he fell back asleep. "I was at Hogwarts, the Carrows were trying to get me to stop. They brought me to this room down in the dungeons. Only they had you and our son down there - I woke up before - " His voice choked, and he trailed off.
"Shhh, no love, that wasn't real," she said. She gently cupped his face with her hand. "The war's over. The Carrows are dead. Our baby gets to live in peace because his Daddy helped end the war."
"It's not just the war. I'm terrified, about being a good dad- which, frankly, I don't know the first thing about," he confessed. "And what if something happens? Something bad, and I can't protect him from it? We've already lost one of them and there wasn't a thing we could do to stop it. You're going to have to go through labour, and once you're in the delivery room I can't really do anything but just stand there - "
She patiently listened to Neville's worries, hearing him repeat thoughts that had crept in the back of her own mind from time to time.
"You can't let yourself think of the worse-case scenario, Nev, you're going to drive yourself crazy," she sleepily told him, "We just have to believe things are going to be fine."
He still seemed doubtful, and Hannah supposed it was something he'd just have to deal with when the time came. There were no promises she could make that they would all be fine anyway, both knew full well that they were just empty words. A million different things could happen in the future, a million different things could go terribly wrong. But for every thing that could go wrong, there was the much bigger chance that things would go right.
xXxXx
"I ran into Dean at The Three Broomsticks today," Neville began. Neville had been at the school for meetings regarding the up-coming school year all week. Somehow, they usually ended up with a trip to the pub in Hogsmeade during lunch.
"I feel like I should be offended, my husband seen at another pub!" Hannah teased him. "Should I be worried?"
"The Leaky has no competition," Neville innocently replied.
Hannah was amused how he side-stepped that one. Madame Rosmerta had been in the business for decades and certainly knew how to make her drinks just so. Although she had to be loyal to her Leaky, Hannah thought that the butterbeers brewed at The Three Broomsticks were perfection in liquid form.
"Anyway, Dean has an interesting proposal for us. He's recently fixed up an abandoned house in Hogsmeade and was wondering if we're interested."
"Couldn't hurt to take a look," Hannah replied, excitement bubbling up in her chest. They had flip-flopped on the topic of moving ever since Augusta had frightened Hannah by telling her that her children would be sneaking into Knockturn Alley the moment she had her back turned.
They didn't have to rush into any decisions just yet, they would be fine living above the Leaky for the next few years. The thought of having a house with a garden and a backyard and more space certainly had its appeal though. Luke and his girlfriend could take over the flat above the Leaky, which would make more sense since Luke had been stepping up more and more after Hannah had gotten pregnant. Hannah and Neville agreed that if the right house at the right time was made available, they could hardly say no.
They had a sizeable nest egg in their shared vault at Gringotts. Hannah had inherited her parents' house, and after selling it, spilt the value of it with Luke. During his years as an auror, Neville had earned more than he could spend, and had kept some of it aside for his future family.
"I'll owl Dean then, tell him we'll pop by on Sunday."
Dean Thomas greeted them outside a freshly charmed mint-green house in Hogsmeade village. Dean was trying to pursue a career as a wizarding artist, but he renovating abandoned wizarding homes as a side job in the meantime. There were a number of magical homes that had been destroyed during the war when families were murdered or taken over night. The ministry didn't have the time to fix every one, so they put them on the market for next to nothing in hopes that someone would buy and restore them. The last house on Peccary Lane had been Dean's latest project and he was happy to show them around.
Hannah immediately felt at home in the bright and cheerful house.
"It's a modest three bedroom, although there's always room for room-expansion charms or add-a-room transfiguration," he said as he walked them through the house. "No ghouls or ghosts, but there is a colony of gnomes living in the garden and I think a boggart might have moved in under the sink. I'd take care of that before you move in though."
The kitchen walls were charmed a pale yellow and accented with warm maple cupboards and counter tops. The curtains swayed in the summer breeze and the entire room was bathed in sunlight. It was much brighter than their London flat. There was also a lot more room, and a larger table sat in the dining room with six chairs around it.
"The floo in the living room has been re-connected to the network," Dean told them. "And it comes with the usual package, anti-fire charms, burglar-warning charms, and the option to have an anti-apparation jinx placed inside the house."
They climbed upstairs to the second level to the bedrooms, spending time looking at each. The view from the master bedroom overlooked the street. It wasn't too long of a street, and she could just make out the turn that lead into the main part of the village.
"The whole village is under muggle-repelling charms," Dean continued. "There's also The Little Sorcerer Daycare in the village for when you want to go back to work, and there's Athena's Primary once they turn seven. And the main selling feature is that Hogwarts just around the corner, so Neville isn't far and, parents really like this, the kids can visit on Hogsmeade weekends when they get older."
Hannah immediately glanced at Neville, a smile splitting her face. It really was perfect for them.
Dean handed a piece of parchment with the price of the house. It was a very decent price, and Hannah suspected Dean had kept it low it as a favour to old school friends.
"I don't know how we'll say no," Neville said, sharing another look with her. "Can we meet at Gringotts this week to work out the payment and sign the deeds?"
Dean grinned. "Sure, I'll see when Griphook is free and we'll meet then."
By the end of the week, the deeds to the mint-green house were theirs and they were looking at moving in and preparing it for the baby. Of course, they quickly dropped the 'mint' from the name and started calling it 'The Green House'. Dean had gifted them a swinging sign with 'The Green House' painted in green and whittled into the shape of an actual greenhouse. Neville planted Dancing Daffodils around the sign, with further plans to add more gardens during the upcoming weeks.
Today was the day that Hannah would finally get her nursery done. Neville and Luke had been there all afternoon, transfiguring the basic furniture they had purchased it make it look nicer as well as help decorate the room. Hannah wanted to escape the traditional baby colours of purple and green the wizarding world was so fond of, and settled on a nice sky blue for her baby's room.
"It's not sky enough," Hannah wistfully said, "I want the baby to feel like he's outside."
She had the perfect vision for the nursery. The ceiling and upper half of the walls would be charmed to a sky blue. There would be grass and trees and other plants painted onto the walls. A sun and fluffy white clouds would be painted too. All the furniture would be wooden, with painted green vines creeping up the sides. They'd put a few potted plants on the windowsill, and all of his plush animals would be little woodland creatures.
She caught the eye roll Luke tossed Neville as he changed the shade of blue once more.
"I'm not being ridiculous!" She insisted.
"Of course not," Neville gently agreed. "You just want things to be perfect for the baby, but Hannah, we must have gone through at least fifty shades of blue by now."
At least half of them were Luke fooling around, she reasoned. He couldn't possibly believe that -
"Oh no, that's a horrible colour! Change it back."