lomonaaeren

Part One.

Title: The Secrets of Longbottom Manor (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None, gen
Content Notes: AU, familiars, angst, mentions of the canon fate of the Longbottoms
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Staying at Longbottom Manor for Christmas with his new guardian Augusta Longbottom, Harry can’t help observing some of the problems that Neville has—and trying to help.
Author’s Notes: This is part of my “Children of the Sun” series, and follows Silver Shadow Snake. This will be a short part that covers Christmas of Harry’s first year.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“I—we can just have breakfast here?” Neville whispered as they sat down at a table in the Leaky Cauldron.

“Why not?” Harry asked, a little confused. He had enough Galleons with him from coming here on his birthday to pay for everything. He waved his hand, and Tom waved back to him, grinning, his copper magpie bowing and screeching on his shoulder. Harry walked up to the bar and asked for porridge and sausages and eggs, because he’d seen at the Hufflepuff table that Neville liked eggs.

“Here with a friend?” Tom peered at Neville, seeming to approve when he saw that Neville had a silver familiar. And he didn’t say anything about the fact that Trevor was a toad, Harry thought. He was afraid Mrs. Longbottom was a little ridiculous.

“Yes, his name’s Neville Longbottom.”

Tom whistled through his teeth, and his magpie echoed him. “Terrible what happened to his parents, terrible, terrible,” he muttered, and then tried to push the Galleons Harry handed him back. “No, Mr. Potter, I won’t take your money.”

“Is this because I have a gold familiar?” Harry asked sternly, and Golden reared up next to him, turning his head slowly from side to side as if he thought Tom needed to see the runes written on his scales.

“Well, partially,” Tom said, grinning at him. “But partially because of what you did to save us all years ago, and partially because of what happened to Mr. Longbottom’s parents. Take it back,” he added, when Harry pushed the pile of Galleons at him again.

“But I don’t want to be singled out, and Neville doesn’t like it either,” Harry added, thinking of the way that Neville didn’t even like it when Professor Sprout called on him in Herbology. He would help other students just fine, but he blushed and mumbled when they thanked him. “Can we just eat and be quiet?”

“Can’t do anything about the glances that you’re going to get because you have a gold,” Tom reminded him, although he relented and took Harry’s Galleons.

“I know, but we really do just want to eat and be quiet,” Harry said. He smiled, and Tom smiled back and turned away to cook the breakfast. Harry returned to the corner table where Neville was sitting.

“I’ve never just had breakfast in Diagon Alley without Gran being along,” Neville whispered, his eyes wide. “And never here. She thinks the Leaky Cauldron is dirty.”

“Yes, but she’s not here. And you don’t think the Leaky Cauldron is dirty, do you?”

Neville shook his head and put Trevor on his shoulder. The toad was looking around with eyes as wide as his wizard’s. “No. It’s just that it seems like something we’re not supposed to do.” He spent a lot of time chewing on his lip until the food came, and his face lit up when he saw the eggs. Then he ate them and said to Harry in the middle of eating, “And Gran’s supposed to be your guardian, too, you know. She’s going to be awfully angry.”

“She can get over it.”

Neville choked on his eggs, which made Harry look at him in concern. He wanted Neville to have a good Christmas because he was here, not kill himself eating breakfast. But Neville quickly shook his head to show he was okay, and sat back and drank a full glass of orange juice. “I forget that you don’t know what Gran is like,” Neville finally whispered.

“Ridiculous?” Neville choked again. Harry sighed and gave him a napkin, while Golden stole some eggs off Harry’s plate and munched them. Harry nudged Golden’s nose away with his porridge spoon. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you choke all the time. But she is ridiculous. I understand she misses your dad, but she can’t try to make you just like him. And so what if he had a lion? A toad is plenty good enough.”

“It’s just—toads are small. And they hop.”

Harry tried to remember if he’d heard bad things about familiars that hopped, like frogs and rabbits, but he honestly couldn’t. Professor Quirrell’s familiar was a rabbit, and it was a bad thing that she had been possessed, but no one had acted like it was a bad thing that she hopped. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s so undignified.” Neville was whispering the words into his plate while Trevor croaked with distress and tried his best to lean his face against Neville’s. “That’s what Gran would say. I should have one that walks. Or flies. Or at least swims.”

“I thought toads could swim?”

“That’s frogs.” Neville looked even more depressed for a second. He reached up and took Trevor off his shoulder and put him in his lap to feed him a glob of porridge. “And, you know, it’s not gracefully. Like a fish or a dolphin swims.”

Harry sighed. “Okay, but that’s just what your Gran thinks. No one in Hogwarts thinks badly of Professor Quirrell for having a rabbit familiar. Or that prefect, what’s her name, the seventh-year one in Slytherin? The one who has a kangaroo.”

“Gran would still be happier if I had a lion. Or if I was in Gryffindor.”

“But would you be happier?”

Neville met Harry’s eyes and then nervously looked away again. “What are you saying?”

“That you shouldn’t let your Gran dictate what you feel about yourself and Trevor. And anyway, even if she believes in the hierarchy, she’s wrong because you would still be stronger than you are because you have a silver toad. Was your dad’s lion silver?”

“No, bronze. But, Harry…” Neville trailed off and started picking at his eggs again.

“What?”

“You said the hierarchy was wrong.”

“I know, but so many notions that people have about familiars are wrong,” Harry said, and nudged Golden away from his eggs again. “That doesn’t mean that your Gran is right. You have a good familiar, Neville. And after breakfast, we’re going to Ollivander’s so that I can buy you a wand for a Christmas present and you can have one that’s just your own and not your dad’s.”

Neville gaped at him, which would have been fine, except there was some chewed-up egg on his tongue and Harry didn’t really want to look at it. He coughed a little, and Neville promptly shut his mouth and swallowed, but he was already shaking his head. “Harry—you can’t buy me a wand. That’s not the kind of thing friends buy for each other!”

“Sure, but since your Gran is my guardian right now, that sort of makes me your foster brother, right? And I bet that family members buy each other wands. Your Gran should have brought you one already, but she was too busy wanting you to be your dad.” Harry tapped Golden sternly on the nose as he tried to eat more eggs. Golden curled back and gave him a sulky look. Harry wouldn’t have minded, but he hadn’t had many eggs himself.

Neville didn’t say anything. Harry glanced at him and was surprised to see him blinking back tears.

“Neville? It’s okay, you don’t have to think of me as your brother if you don’t want to.”

“No, I just—I never had a brother. I always wanted one. Gran kept telling me that my Mum and Dad would have had other kids if they were—” Neville swallowed noisily. “It’s just that you’re my friend, and you don’t care about the fact that Trevor’s a toad, and you’re so—you’re golden and you still talk with me like I’m your equal—”

“You would be my friend even if you weren’t my brother. You’re just as important as I am.” Harry thought of telling Neville what Tom had said about wanting to give them breakfast for free, but he decided that wouldn’t make Neville feel better right now. “Anyway, I’m buying you your new wand unless you really don’t want me to.”

“I want a new wand,” Neville whispered. “I just don’t want you to have to spend your money to buy it.”

“It’s my money, I’ll do what I like with it,” Harry said, and that finally pulled a watery smile from Neville. They finished breakfast quickly, so that they could go on their way to Ollivander’s.

And Golden managed to steal a lot more eggs than Harry wanted him to, too.

*

“Mr. Potter? Has something happened to your wand?”

“No, sir. It’s just that my friend and foster brother Neville needs one of his own.” Harry pulled Neville into the shop when he hesitated outside, maybe because he thought Mr. Ollivander looked strange.

Mr. Ollivander chuckled and reached up to touch the antennae of his familiar. It was a large moth that sat on his shoulder and seemed to be watching everything, although its eyes were too small for Harry to be sure where they pointed. And the color of the moth was strange, too, a soft grey that sometimes seemed to be tin and sometimes seemed to be silver. “Ah, Mr. Longbottom. I thought to see you long since.”

Neville gulped. “I-it was my Gran, sir. She thought I could use my father’s wand.” He held it out.

Mr. Ollivander picked it up and held it in front of his familiar, who reared on delicate legs and reached out to lay a fuzzy wing against the wood. “No, no, not suited to you at all,” Mr. Ollivander muttered. “Well, Mr. Longbottom, what struggles do you have with the wand?”

“It doesn’t seem to cast right most of the time,” Neville said. He’d relaxed a little, Harry was glad to see. “And sometimes it does, but the spell is pretty weak.”

“Yes, yes, I can see.” Mr. Ollivander ran his hand up and down the wand, then nodded decisively and put it on the counter. His familiar took flight and hovered above the wand, scattering what Harry thought was wing-dust down with each beat. “The wand is a little suited to you, Mr. Longbottom, in that it embodies some of the qualities that your true wand will have. But you cannot continue using it. A travesty that you have been.”

Neville tried to curl up, but Trevor croaked and Harry put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t mean you’re a travesty, Neville. Just that your grandmother shouldn’t have pressured you to use that wand.”

“Of course that is what I meant,” Mr. Ollivander said, but absently. He was busy dragging boxes of wands out of the stacks. “Now, Mr. Longbottom, you are suited to a wand that is protective and safeguards innocence. Try this one—”

This time, Harry got to watch someone else try wands, and it was actually fascinating. Neville seemed to stand up a little more with each wand that was wrong, as if that was actually reassuring to him that you couldn’t just get the right wand by giving someone a random one and hoping it worked. Mr. Ollivander removed the wands with a small smile that also made Neville smile back.

Harry almost thought he knew the right wand before Mr. Ollivander did, given the way that Golden suddenly swayed and Trevor stared at the pale brown length of wood before Neville gripped it. Suddenly he sighed, and gave it a strong, confident wave Harry had never seen from him before. Soft silver sparks spiraled up from the wand’s tip and hovered beautifully for a second against the ceiling, then dissipated.

Mr. Ollivander nodded. “That is your wand, Mr. Longbottom. Rowan wood with a core of unicorn hair. Powerful protections against evil magic, with a core of innocence. Were your parents not in St. Mungo’s, how they would rejoice.”

Harry stared for a second. Then he said, “But, Mr. Ollivander, Neville’s parents are dead.”

Neville’s shoulders hunched. Mr. Ollivander peered at him with pale eyes and said, “Perhaps I should have left your friend to tell you, but I did not know that you did not know.”

Harry glanced at Neville. Neville just met his eyes and mouthed desperately, Not here. He was clutching his wand with one hand and Trevor with the other, so Harry knew he must be stressed.

Harry swallowed and turned to Mr. Ollivander. “Thank you for letting us come in and get the wand, sir. I’m paying for it.”

“Somehow I thought you might,” Mr. Ollivander said, and held out his hand for the coins. Harry put the seven Galleons in his hand, and started a little as Mr. Ollivander leaned down to whisper to him.

“Go gently, but you must hear this.”

Ollivander was gone, moving into the back of the shop with his strange-colored moth on his shoulder, before Harry could ask him why. He turned to Neville and shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Neville shivered and then lifted his chin. “No, I have to. I should have done it right away, but—that’s the way things are around Gran. She said we weren’t going to, so I didn’t.”

“Is it a shameful thing?”

“No. It’s a horrible thing.”

Harry reached out and squeezed Neville’s shoulder. “Then let’s go back to the Leaky Cauldron and get a room so we can talk without anyone hearing that you don’t want to.”