(no subject)

[mimbletonia]

Name: Neville Longbottom
Played By: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Relationship Status: Single
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Character History: (Any details involving other characters are changable, obviously, based on what backstory their players have decided on.)

The first month after the Battle of Hogwarts was a jumble of funerals and St. Mungo’s, where his burns and bruises were treated. Neville found himself longing for some quiet, just some space to think. After the horrors of seventh year, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had even an hour of time completely to himself. Finally, a day appeared on the horizon on which he realized he had nothing at all scheduled, and he spent the week leading up to it planning to make tea and maybe grub in the garden.

But before he’d even managed to change out of his pajamas that morning, there was a knock on the front door, and he found himself seated in Gran’s formal sitting room, trying to hide his still-bare toes under the stiff sofa as Kingsley Shacklebolt took up what seemed to be far too much space in the room and asked him to join the Aurors.

“Frank and Alice would be so proud,” Gran said, and before Neville even had a chance to think it through, she was discussing the details with Kingsley (no, don’t worry about the OWLs or the NEWTs, obviously he was qualified, given the circumstances, they needed new recruits with his experience and knowledge, Harry and Ron had already said yes...) and he found himself shaking Kingsley’s hand, agreeing to report for training the next Monday, and realizing, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his pajama shirt was buttoned up the wrong way.

Training went quite well, actually - shooting hexes at Harry and Ron almost felt like old times again, and Neville discovered that he actually enjoyed a lot of the office work - examining lists of assets to see what might not quite be on the up-and-up, keeping track of the leads that were pouring in on the whereabouts of rogue Death Eaters, making sure that that cross-reference charms were properly connected. The first few months went pretty smoothly, and Neville began to think that he really might manage to be quite happy, even if this wasn’t the kind of life he’d imagined for himself. Between his training and evenings out with friends - which was apparently a much larger group than Neville quite knew what to do with, including not only Ginny, Luna, Harry, Ron, and Hermione but also pretty much everyone who had joined the DA in the last year and a large number of others, besides - he was busy and content, even if his plants were rather sadly neglected.

But a day came when the new recruits were fully trained and expected to begin actually working. Neville was put on debriefing duty on a day when several teams were out in the field on arrests, and when the first group of them returned to the office, bloody and bruised, Neville couldn’t stop seeing the faces of all the Hogwarts students who had been tortured by the Carrows, and he had to go quietly hyperventilate in the loo before he could take down any information from the Aurors.

That night the nightmares began.

He used any excuse he could to stay away from fieldwork, immersing himself in twiddly bits of unimportant paperwork and fact-checking that he insisted were important and avoiding the Aurors who assigned fieldwork duties. Over the next several weeks, he stopped going out with his friends, finding that large crowds now made him nervous and that he was liable to jump at any loud noise, and he began to avoid fires, which reminded him of those brief, horrible moments as flame engulfed him, before he realized he could move and that there was still work to be done.

But his avoidance couldn’t last forever, and before long, Neville was sent out to help arrest Thorfinn Rowle. They had tracked him to a village in Wales, and they apparated into the village, surrounding the town square, on a day when they knew he always went to the farmer’s market. During the chase that ensued, Rowle managed shot a hex at Neville that set his robes on fire. Neville screamed and dropped to the ground, slapping desparately at the small flames, even as an aguamenti charm sent by one of the other Aurors to put them out while allowing all of them to maintain the chase shot uselessly over his head. Neville lay huddled on the ground long after the flames were out, until somebody grabbed his elbow and returned him to the Ministry by side-along apparition.

Neville was put on medical leave by Kingsley, who shook his head in disappointment, which only managed to make Neville feel worse. He was sent directly to St. Mungo’s, where one mediwizard shuffled him to another, then another, until he finally ended up in the office of a young witch who cast several cheering and calming charms at him before beginning to root through the masses of books stacked precariously around her desk, muttering things like “...psychiatric evaluation for all Hogwarts students, I TOLD them,” and “Horrible backwards society, don’t they read proper medical journals?” before sending him home with instructions to return to her office the next morning.

He was pale and shaky the next morning, having slept even worse than normal, but relatively calm, and the witch, whose name was Fiona Smark and had apparently gone to a Muggle university after Hogwarts to study psychiatry, listened to his whole story, nodding understandingly, before informing him that he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“Which is only to be expected, I mean really, asking you to join the Aurors, what were they THINKING?”) and that she would be overseeing his treatment.

At that point, Neville completely disappeared from public life. There was some brief furor in the society pages over where he’d gone, but Harry had always been a flashier hero anyway, and people forgot quickly. Only his closest friends knew any of the truth, and Ginny and Luna were the only people he told everything. Gran (who was a great deal more supportive than Neville had anticipated, though he suspected that Fiona may have had a very firm talk with her) told anyone who asked that after everything he had done, her grandson had the right to move to Bolivia to be a goat herder, if that’s what tickled his fancy, and that usually ended the questions.

It was a year and a half before he was even relatively well (though he still dislikes fire, the sight of blood makes him feel short of breath, and the nightmares don’t seem likely to stop anytime soon) - or, at least, had learned some decent coping mechanisms. Neville firmly turned down an offer to return to his job with the Aurors and used most of his small inheritance to buy a tiny cottage outside Malmesbury, Wiltshire - within easy apparition distance of London. It has oil heat and no fireplace (one of Neville’s top requirements) and a large garden which Neville spent the first few months getting just-so - including a pond which he spelled to be half fresh-water and half salt.

Only a few weeks ago, armed with a glowing recommendation from Professor Sprout, he got a job at Slug & Jiggers Apothecary, caring for the small greenhouse they use for plants that are typically sold fresh for potions and helping out at the counter. They pay him just enough for him to get by and let him use a corner of the greenhouse for plants that he can’t manage in his garden at home. He’s just begun to see a few friends outside of his core group again, and is absolutely, completely content with his life.

As far as Neville is concerned, he could spend the rest of his life this way - he’s begun to imagine someday owning his own greenhouse, but his plans for the future don’t include anything more than that. He never, ever wants to be in a position where the lives of others depend on him again.

But Neville Longbottom is a born leader who knows, bone-deep, how to do whatever it takes to win - and he is not a coward.