There was a lot to envy about Harry Potter. In fact, Neville envied him almost everything: his courage, his talent, his unerring sense of right, his desire to save even people he hated, his friends who would never leave him, his modesty, his surrogate family (the Weasley’s), even his fame and influence in the Wizarding world. When Harry Potter said something, people listened. He envied him his Muggle upbringing (at least then Neville would have had some excuse for his poor performance at school). Merlin, sometimes he even envied him Ginny (although he had been watching that pretty Hufflepuff Hannah Abbott for some time...).
There was no shame in envying all of this of Harry; most people did these days. Occasionally some highly ambitious Ministry official piped up and spoke out against Harry Potter because they were so envious of his influence. Unfortunately that never boded well for them... after all, Harry did save the Wizarding world and anyone who didn’t like him wasn’t liked by the general people.
But there was one thing that Neville never told anyone he envied. It made him feel so terribly guilty, so traitorous.
He envied Harry his dead parents. You see, Neville’s own parents were not dead, but for him they might as well have been. He couldn’t remember them as real people. They were tortured for information and as they refused to give any, earned themselves a permanent ward at St Mungo’s. Neville was barely one year old at the time.
So Neville was brought up in constant fear of his strict Grandmother, who wanted Frank back so desperately that she couldn’t accept Neville being Neville. Everything he did was compared to his father, and most of the time he couldn’t achieve what was expected. Sometimes he wondered if it was Gran’s pressure that led him to fail so miserably at school... but that didn’t matter now. He knew she loved him dearly. Everyone has their own way of dealing with extreme grief, and sometimes it hurts others in the process.
Some of Neville’s earliest memories were of his parents. They almost looked normal as they lay in their beds, but something had always haunted him about them, made him hate and love visiting them at the same time.
He only realised what it was much later. It was their eyes. So empty and hollow. The eyes that didn’t recognise him, their own son. The eyes that didn’t recognise each other. The eyes that he couldn’t look at for long without feeling overwhelmed by emptiness.
But at the same time, he couldn’t stay away. They were his parents, after all. He didn’t know them, but he loved them. Sometimes this love was all he had to hold on to. And there were the gum wrappers too. He always kept them because they gave him the tiniest prick of hope. Maybe they could recover. Maybe someday he would talk to his parents and hear them respond.
Harry had never had to suffer this. He didn’t have to have his hope chipped away slowly with every visit when they still didn’t recognise him. He didn’t have to see their hollow eyes. Harry could at least imagine how his parents might have been. Every time Neville was told a story of what his parents were like, the image of what they were now wouldn’t leave him. Those blank faces. Empty bodies.
Both Harry and Neville had grown up without parents, but at least Harry didn’t have to have it rubbed in his face every time he went to St. Mungo’s. At least the evidence of dark magic didn’t stare him in the face emptily.
Sometimes Neville wondered what it would be like to wear Harry’s shoes. After all, of all witches and wizards alive he was the person who was almost dealt that hand. He was almost the Boy Who Lived... but would he have lived? Would his mother have died for him? Would his parents’ friends have betrayed them? Would their places have been reversed and Harry’s parents tortured? Would a lightning-shaped scar be etched into his forehead? Would Gran have been more proud if he were Harry? Would he have carried the weight of the Wizarding world on his shoulders all through his schooling? Would he have been able to make that final sacrifice?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
There was no way of knowing.
And really, it didn’t matter. What had happened was in the past. It was over with. No matter how hard he wished, imagined or dreamed, he couldn’t change it.
What he could do was live his own life, the life he had been born into, not the one he wanted. What point was there to making choices he wasn’t allowed to make?
It was time to drop his envy. It wasn’t like Harry had chosen anything that happened to him anyway. It was time to love his parents as they were, to love his Gran the way she was, to accept Harry for who he was and accept himself for who he was.
Time to move on from the horrors of his past, from the emptiness.
Time to get on with his own life, finish his teacher training, plant some new plants... and maybe to ask out Hannah Abbott.
The Emptiness by The_Real_Hermione
Story Notes:
Mental Disorders Warning is for the Longbottoms' insanity.
Chapter Endnotes: Hope you enjoyed it. Please review!