Neville was often self conscious about his body. Maybe if he’d only been given one thing to worry about–a chubby face but magical prowess, or a squib with the jaw structure of a male model–he wouldn’t have looked back on his childhood and winced. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was, not ashamed of his parents or the life he’d lived without them. Even when he had been most afraid, Neville had known who he was and what he believed in: standing up to Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been truly more terrifying than flying off to the Ministry and fighting death eaters, because at the time, they were some of the only people who were nice to him. Now, years later, he’d fought a war, grown comfortable with a wand in his hand. But he hadn’t lost any weight.
For the first time, Neville didn’t feel an ounce of embarrassment. The little pumpkin girl fit perfectly into the cushion of his shoulder, and her chubby little limbs eased into the softness of his chest. If he’d known all along that he could be a pillow for something so precious, so perfect, he never would have spent long nights dreaming of a six-pack abs and arms like Victor Krum.
He let Harry do the talking, barely looking up long enough to nod and show the Headmistress he was listening. He’d never thought he’d be back in a Transfiguration class–he hadn’t passed his OWLS in the subject, after all, but everything was different now. This wasn’t Hogwarts as they knew it: it was a hodgepodge of lessons, things that would help them in the real world–and a sort of strange reward for defeating the death eaters at seventeen all rolled into one. So when McGonnagal praised them on a job well done–and not an easy one either–Neville absolutely beamed.
“Hear that?” he whispered to the pumpkin baby, rocking her a little in his arms. There was a lullaby his grandmother used to sing him, one she said his mother invented for him, but Neville couldn’t imagine singing it here in this crowded classroom. Not with Draco seated a few desks away, anyway. “We’re going to be really good parents for you.” He looked over at Harry, already opening his mouth to say that ‘Lily’ was fine when Harry left it up to him. He meant to say ‘whatever you like’ or ‘it’s up to you’ but instead, one name came spilling out: “How about Alice?”
“I mean, we don’t have to,” he added quickly. “Whatever you want to name her is okay with me.” But as he looked down at the tiny baby, the name had already stuck in his head. He never got much chance to talk about his parents; their sacrifice wasn’t posted in the papers like Harry’s parents–not that he envied him for that; it seemed more trouble than it was worth. Neville might not speak of her often, but he loved his mother, and his wall at home lined with gum wrappers (a sarcastic, joking suggestion of his grandmother’s that he’d taken seriously) was what little reminder he had of her when he wasn’t in St. Mungo’s to visit. “As long as she’s happy,” he added, then blushed scarlet.
“I know she’s a pumpkin,” he said quickly. But it was already harder and harder to remember that. She really looked so much like a baby. “But…well I don’t think we can treat her like a pumpkin now, can we? She’s a baby.”
"I think Alice is perfect," his eyes softened in understanding. It was something that he had thought about himself, offhandedly even as a teenager. A family of his own, what would that look like, what would their names be? Everything that came to mind was of course the names of his parents, then of his godfather and Uncle Remus. He had more boy names saved up inside his head than girl names...
“If we treated her like a pumpkin I’m positive that we’d get a T and Mcgonagall’s ire which I rather avoid,” Harry joked staring at the little girl- little Alice cuddle up against Neville's chest. It made his heart constrict, seeing something so small within Nev’s arms. He wondered, did he look just like this when he was a baby? He had a lot of pictures in the photo album of his parents as teenagers but not many of them after, and especially not many of himself as a baby. From what he was told most of them had been destroyed or picked up by scavengers after the wreckage. So many things from his home had been stolen that night, and sold off to other magicals, dresses that people claimed as his mothers, his father's extra pair of glasses- anything and everything. By the time that order came about, most everything in his house was gone, a shell, and now it was just used as a memorial for his parents.
"I wouldn't want to anyway," he said in a hushed tone of voice. She was far too human-like to do that too. He couldn't see himself nor Neville just setting her in a basket and leaving her to sit hours on end. It made his stomach twist in knots at the thought. Is that what his aunt and uncle did? Lock his baby self up under the cupboard under the stairs and never let him out? He doesn't remember ever sleeping anywhere else really.
Harry sat the diaper bag up on the desk, pulling out one of the many diapers that were within it. "Here, we better put one on her," he said, having set the diaper near Neville while he pulled out a red onesie with lions all over it. The sight shocked him for a second, not having expected the personalization. 'At least not to this extent,' he thought silently to himself, tilting the bag to the side to see- 'oh wait never mind there are other house themed onesies in here too.' "And some clothes too before she catches a chill." Zipping the bag up, he started unbuttoning the onesie, only startled out of his work at the sound of a high pitch wail.
Turning his head to where he heard the sound he found that Malfoy and Hermione were the second ones to get the spell right. (no surprise there) At the moment the blond child was sitting up in their basket, eyes screwed up, as tears trailed down their chubby cheeks. Both Hermione and Malfoy appeared out of their depth, blinking owlishly over the frizzy hair of the crying baby. It was almost painful to watch them look so clueless, both of them reaching out as if to hold the baby, only to flinch back as the wailing grew louder.
"Now I feel even sorrier for Hermione. She's never really been the best with kids, and Malfoy doesn't seem to know what he's doing either...." It made him wonder what they must have done to make their baby start crying right off the bat, unlike Alice who seemed more than content.
