Wingardium Leviosa.
For many first years at Hogwarts, it was a fascinating charm young wizards and witches learned to make objects fly.
After all, what young wizard wouldn't jump at the chance to fly like an owl, without needing to grow any wings of their own?
Neville Longbottom was no such wizard, and he was certainly no owl either.
In fact, he was more like a plump little penguin hanging upside down from the ledge of Blackpool Pier. Round-faced, short, and small against the might of a stormy grey sea rolling violently underneath him.
What started out as a relaxing getaway to the seaside with his gran and his great uncle, Algie, quickly turned into a life-or-death wager he hadn't fancied betting his lot on.
"Granny, please, let me down! I'll work harder from now on, I swear! Anything but this!"
And even as Neville knew his Gran would absolutely abhor hearing him beg, watching the ocean toil and tumble below his hanging fingertips made him quickly decide with no trouble at all that "upholding the noble Longbottom family honor" was the last of his worries now.
"This hurts me more than it'll ever hurt you, Neville," she informed him. "But as they say, spare the wand, spoil the child."
"No, Gran please don't let go of me!" a teary Neville went on begging her. "Don't drop me, Granny, please! I won't come back up, I tell you! I can't even swim!"
"Then I suppose you'll have to come up with an alternative, won't you, Neville?" Augusta Longbottom answered coolly, her expression as numb as the cold Neville felt through his brown knitted jumper stricken to his pale skin from the punishing rain.
"Augusta," Uncle Algie caught up to them one spell too late on the pier. "What are you doing with my great nephew?"
"Teaching," Augusta responded flatly. "If he is what you call a late-bloomer, there's no harm in getting a head start on his magical education, now is there?"
"Are you barking mad? You're goin' to drown the poor lad!"
"Step back, Algie. He's my grandson, and I owe it to his father to raise him to the expectation of a respectable Longbottom," Augusta defended her hard lesson for Neville on magical "problem-solving". "Sometimes, all children need is a little push in the right direction."
"This is taking it too far," Great Uncle Algie strongly opposed her tactic. "What would Frank and Alice say if they were here now?"
Augusta rounded on him fiercely.
Her determined hazel eyes as unbroken as the charm that held her petrified 8-year-old grandson dangling dangerously over the pier like a gulping plimpy on a hook, ready to let him go to a roaring hungry sea lying in wait 30 feet below them.
"They would thank me for doing them both a favor," Augusta answered confidently. "You may call my methods severe, Algie, but when I am done with him, they may very well save this boy's life. And one day, he will thank me for it too."
"This isn't what they would've wanted for him."
"Then I should consider it a mercy that they have no mind anymore to know their son turned out to be a squib."
"You don't know that for sure about our Neville."
"He is well pass his 8th birthday now, and still shows no sign of magic," Augusta defended her position of concern. "If we wait any longer to intervene, he may lose his window of opportunity to bloom."
"Come on, Auggie old girl, you'll worry yourself right into St. Mungo's, if you keep it up like this. Suppose he shows his magic in his own time, in his own way? Or suppose he never shows it at all? Is he any bit less our Neville?"
Augusta's scowl of resolve only hardened under her brown feathered vulture stuffed hat.
"Godric forbid he ever turn out as any bit less than his father's son," she swore. "My son was not an underachiever. He was a respectable Auror and hero in the Order of Phoenix. Neville has every bit of our valiant spirit in his blood."
"If he is a squib, the boy can't help it," Algie tried to reason with her. "The magic may not be strong in his blood, and he may never show any signs of it like his father. If that is who Neville is, then that's what we have to square away with."
"Algie, he's a Longbottom," Augusta snapped back, her resolve now teetering on the bridge of hysteria. "If the death eaters that took my son from me ever come back for Neville, do you think they'll care that he's only a squib? Do you know how much worse off the squibs have it in our world? Worse than even those bloody muggles, I'd say. I will not lose him the same way I lost Frank. He must do better."
"But he is not Frank, Augusta," Algie reminded her regrettably. "No one, not even our Neville, can ever replace your boy. We ought to accept Neville for who he is, not hold him to the wizard Frank was."
From where he hung over the pier, Neville couldn't see the storm of emotions brimming in his granny's eyes under the noble tilt of her stuffed vulture hat, but he was crushed again by her silence that felt so much like contempt.
It hadn't always been contempt.
Even if he was only 16 months old when his parents were tortured to insanity by the Cruciatus Curse, Neville didn't need a remebrall to know he'd once been warm, happy, and loved. What he couldn't remember was what he'd done to make Gran so cross with him.A family tension that had become painfully redundant between them every time he moused across her path.
But just when he thought things could go back to being "normal" on this seaside family holiday, even for just a day between them, Neville had made the mistake of becoming too excited over an otter just off the pier, letting his guard down when Granny decided that today was as fine a day as any to teach a lesson.
"Your uncle Algie is right," Augusta said at last to Neville.
The heartbreak of her loss going to war inside her with the burden of responsibility for a grandson who continually disappointed her.
"Whatever should be done about you? You're an embarrassment to your parents, and to me."
And like the shattering of a Fidelius Charm, the words ripped deeply into Neville's soul. Reopening wounds in him that might again heal with the gentle coaxing of time. And still, some he'd have to manage his whole life, irreparably scarred.
Alas, it wasn't the last time Neville Longbottom would question if anyone truly loved him.
Would there always be these impossible conditions and high expectations for him to meet, before anyone believed he deserved it?
Was he dangling over a pier because Gran loved him, and she just wanted the best for him? Or was he there because she loved his da, and da couldn't ever remember that she does now?
If Azkaban had beat Gran to taking her revenge on the death eaters that tormented his parents, would Neville, by proxy, be forever punished for what happened that November of 1981?
Neville still hadn't decided which by the time Augusta Longbottom turned back to her grandson floating in the air at the mercy of her alder wood wand.
"Incompetency, however, is a luxury you will not have," she said firmly to her grandson. "Now that your father is gone, you owe it to him to get it right. So, even if I have to break you down like a horcrux to drag the Longbottom spirit out of you, I will do it. I would rather watch you crumble by my own wand than before the unforgivable cruelty that took your parents from us."
"Augusta," Algie pleaded with her. "Don't do it."
"Are you a squib or are you a wizard?" Augusta challenged Neville. "You have from here to the water to decide."
"Granny, no!" Neville cried hoarsely in terror.
But if there was some small inkling of love for him hidden somewhere within her, she did not spare him.
With one light swish of her wand that felt like the weight of 1000 boiling cauldrons against Augusta's aged but iron-willed wrinkling hands, she released the Leviosa charm holding her grandson back from the edge of certain death below him.
Then she turned her back on him.
Unable to watch the last and most precious thing in this world to her fall helplessly from the protection of her spell.
Hoping against hope that this time, Neville's own magic would save him.
Neville's stomach flipped, making him instantly sick with panic as he began free-falling off the side of the pier toward the blustery waves awaiting for him.
He knew he had to think of something quickly, or he'd soon be done for.
10 meters wasn't a very long time to decide.
What would a true Longbottom do in this situation?
What exactly did Granny want out of him?
He wasn't an owl, or a gulping plimpy, and he absolutely wasn't immortal.
For all he knew, he probably wasn't even magical to begin with, really.
He was just...Neville.
If he could only turn himself into something more useful for the situation at hand, like a boat, a kitchen sink, or a garden hose?
But knowing no actual spell, or hex, or charm or any such thing to keep himself from drowning when he met the waves, all Neville Longbottom could think to do was take a deep breath and hold onto it for dear life.
The waves sweeping their wings over his head as the dangerously moving ocean current dragged him deeper from the surface, knowing from the very beginning that he wasn't ever brave enough to save himself.
The last beaming white rays of evanescing daylight fading with him into the darker depths of the ocean. A descent so vast and so lonely, that Neville believed Gran had finally abandoned him.
And even after realizing he may never see the world above again, his darkening descent into the ocean's deep kept going, long after Neville couldn't hold his breath anymore.
Watching the last flurry of his feeble sigh dance up into shimmering bubbles against ocean indigo, and the pearly rays of sunlight that yet refused to give up on him as the sun chased him into the briny deep.
Or at least, Neville only thought she was the sun.