HP fic: The Wooing of Hannah and Neville, part 5 (Complete).
Title: The Wooing of Hannah and Neville.
Author:
pathology_doc
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: NC17 (mutually consensual activities).
Notes/warnings: Last chapter. If I get any more ideas, I'll call it a sequel. Depending on what Pottermore reveals about the timing of various critical events, this fic may be an AU by the end - but hey, what fic isn't to some extent? As always, canon is book over film. Hope you enjoy.
Neville's first day of camping went well for him. It was bright, it was sunny, his pack fit well, and there were plenty of plants to collect.
Day two started out sunny and then everything changed.
"It looks to me," he said as he stopped briefly to shift his pack and tame a wayward bootlace, "like it's going to rain."
Hannah sniffed the air. "It's... yeah, I think we're going to get a bit wettish."
"Let's see what we can do about that," Neville replied, drawing his wand as he stood.
Hannah caught his hand in mid-draw. "Um... no, Nev; that's not what camping is about."
Neville gave her a look of surprise that she remembered well from school, and which was one of the things she found so endearing about him. "It's not?"
She shook her head and he slid his wand back into its sheath, asking "You mean Muggles don't mind getting soaking wet and freezing cold and blisters on their feet and all that?"
Hannah nodded. "Yep. Part of the game." She took his hand and led him further along the trail. "And if we were really doing it properly, our tent would be no bigger inside than it is on the outside and we'd constantly be battling for room with our packs and having to do our cooking outside when it wasn't raining, and stuff like that. Makes for cosy nights, though."
The look that Neville gave her when she said that spoke volumes, most of which would not be on the open shelves in a public library. "Yeah, I bet," she laughed. "Wait till we get so soaking wet we have to strip off and dry our clothes. Like I said, we're fair game. But our packs and especially our maps are another matter. If you know a good waterproofing spell for those, go for it."
Neville remembered the one Hermione had taught Harry for his glasses and promptly applied it. "Speaking of maps, how far have we got to go?"
"Next camping ground is five miles," Hannah replied. "There's shelter there, and... oh, I spoke to Grandpa before we left. When I told him we were going hiking, he told me to look out for trench foot and make sure I changed my socks regularly."
"Trench foot?" Neville asked.
"Yeah, apparently if your feet stay wet for too long in shoes and socks, your toes drop off. Good old Grandpa - I think seeing me so happy with you has given him a new lease on life."
Well, Neville thought, in that case we'll have to see how much happier we can make him. "That's good. Do you mind if I come along again next time we visit? I'm finding his company quite enjoyable."
"Sure thing. I think we'll call on him when we get back, actually."
"What, just to prove you still have ten toes left?"
Hannah laughed out loud. "Something like that, yeah." And with that, the first fat raindrops began to fall.
They stopped for the night in a small clearing in the woods, soaked through, the only bright spot being that the rain had spent itself out and reduced to a fine drizzle. Once they had set up the tent and Neville had cast a set of charms to give them privacy, Hannah announced that she was going to treat Neville to Muggle camping fare.
He watched with fascination as she set up the little Primus stove, opened the packs of dehydrated food and added the right amount of water. "Wow," he finally said. "Muggle magic."
Hannah grinned at him. "I reckon Harry, Ron and Hermione could have done with a bit of this when they were on the run, don't you? Now while that's bubbling away, let's go inside and get changed."
Neville undressed with one eye on Hannah, whose khaki hiking clothes were so wet and so plastered to her that they showed off her curves very effectively and changed his mind completely about this whole walking-in-the-rain business. Well, he corrected himself, so long as he could do it with her. When she stripped off her shirt, her bra was yellow with black trim. When she pulled down her trousers, her knickers were black with yellow trim. Her socks of course were her usual choice of black and yellow striped.
"You never let Hufflepuff House go, do you?" he asked, jokingly.
"More like it never lets us go," she replied.
"Well fair enough," he replied, dropping his own trousers to reveal boxer shorts with red and gold rampant lions. "I sort of guessed what you'd be wearing and dressed appropriately."
"You know what?" Hannah said as she peeled her dripping socks off, "I'm soaked to the skin. Throw me a towel out of my pack, will you? Better still, I'd be grateful if you'd do the drying."
He dug briefly around in the pack, which was a larger version of the bag of holding Hermione had used and was designed for easier access to the bulkier items one might put in it.
"Start at the ankles," she said as he got the towel out, "and work your way up."
The first thing he noticed, now that her socks were off, was that she'd painted her toenails alternately black and yellow. He looked up at her quizzically. She was grinning ear to ear. "I know, it's a bit adolescent of me - but I was in a mood for fun this morning, so while you were taking the charms down I did a little decorating." She wriggled her toes.
"You won't catch me doing that," Neville replied as he worked his way up her legs with the towel. "Okay, maybe if I'd been a girl."
"But if you'd been a girl, you wouldn't have been able to..."
Neville stood up and cut her off with a kiss. "No, I guess not," he replied, pressing himself against her.
She ran a hand down his bare chest, and would have continued further had she not remembered dinner cooking outside. "While I am quite hungry for you, Neville dearest, I think our dinner's ready. Let's leave this until after we've eaten," she said. "Should be some dry clothes in the bag as well, let's get them on and go rescue the stove."
"I do have the protective charms set out that far," Neville reminded her.
"Clever boy," she said, smiling at him and ducking out as she was to grab their dinner while Neville busied himself casting drying spells. Fortunately it was warm as well as wet, or she'd have ducked straight back in.
"What do you think?" she asked when they were dressed again and done eating.
"Not bad. I think I'd rather not eat it every day," he replied, "but it's more than fine if you're a Muggle and you don't have bottomless packs the way we Wizards do."
"Remember that our packs take off the weight, too," said Hannah. "That's just as important." She whipped out her wand and pointed it at the collection of small tin pots and multi-purpose cutlery that comprised their 'dishes'. "Scourgify," she said, then she began to break the stove down for re-stowage.
"Can I ask a silly question?" Neville asked as he watched all this go on. Next time, he'd give it a shot - it looked simple enough.
"Sure."
"What's all the mail you're getting these days? Secret admirers?"
Hannah laughed. "If they are, they're going to be mighty disappointed!" she said. "But seriously, they are of a sort. Remember the night I came in exhausted and told you I'd give anything for the Leaky to serve coffee on my late shifts?"
He cast his eyes longingly and lovingly over her curves. "I remember the next morning somewhat better, I have to admit."
She saw this and snuggled against him suggestively. "Oh, don't worry - so do I. But you said something in reply which gave me the idea - 'Muggle drinks at the Leaky' - and I thought: why does that just have to mean coffee?"
"Oh, so you've been bringing in the Muggle equivalents of mead and firewhiskey and so on!" he replied as she nodded enthusiastically. "How did that work out?"
"Well, that's what I wanted to know," she said. "So I left leaflets on the tables asking people to write in. Would you believe that with the Wizarding population almost evenly divided between the Houses, nearly forty percent of Muggle drinks are being bought by Slytherins?"
Neville almost jumped out of his skin. "WHAT???!!! I don't believe it!"
Hannah shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't either when I first read the letters, but it's true. I even brought them along if you want to look."
Neville shook his head. "No, no. I believe you, dear. It's just... well, it's almost as bizarre as if Draco Malfoy suddenly announced he was in love with a Muggle. How the hell do you explain that?"
"No idea. What's worse, a fair chunk of those Slytherins are former Death Eaeters to boot. And that's a puzzle beyond the powers of my poor little Hufflepuff brain to sort out."
Neville swept her into an embrace and kissed her. "Don't underrate yourself, Hannah love. You have a very good brain, or you wouldn't have made this thing work."
"I'm glad you think so," she replied. "Maybe it's just that I'm tired after a long walk, and I have you to distract me."
"What's so distracting about me?"
"Oh, you know - that air of dash and handsomeness you've got about you."
"I thought dash and handsomeness were Harry's forté."
"Yeah, but Harry's dashing and handsome in a way that's attractive to girls who like good Quidditch players. He's the Ministry's poster-boy for Auror training. You're dashing and handsome in a quiet way. You're the poster-boy for insecure motherless Hufflepuffs trying to find their way in the world, and if I had even half of poor old Colin's skill at making pictures I'd have covered my walls with posters of you. But that's alright - there'll always be one in here." She tapped her chest with one finger.
"Oh Hannah..."
She rolled him on top of her, began kissing him. "Dear Neville."
What followed lasted quite a while, and when they were finally done they had barely enough energy to wriggle into Hannah's sleeping bag and extinguish the lights before falling asleep.
Two Weeks Later.
Thereafter, the weather behaved itself and their holiday went pretty much according to plan. Neville collected plants, Hannah took pictures, they marvelled together at parts of Britain neither had ever seen before, and at odd assorted times they quietly (and occasionally not so quietly) vented their mutual passions upon each other. Evenings before bed found each with three piles in front of them. For Neville, it was plants, Herbology texts, and increasing lengths of parchment stuffed with scrawled notes. For Hannah, it was two piles of mail - unopened and opened - and a large ledger book. At last, however, the day came when they knew they must return to the real world.
"I love holidays with you," Hannah whispered to Neville that evening as she lay curled up against him.
"They are rather fun, aren't they?" he replied. "It's going to be good to get back, though. Poor old Mumbulus will be getting lonely, to say nothing of the stock at the shop. Wortley's going to be glad to have me back, and I imagine the Leaky will be glad to see you, too."
"I'll be glad to see it," Hannah said. "Then we can work our arses off for another ten months and do this all over again. Unless of course you've got better ideas."
"Give me time to work something out," Neville told her. "Something will come up, I'm sure."
"I bet it will," she replied mischievously, stroking the front of his pyjamas. "You know, I think bringing a second sleeping bag was a wasted effort."
"It has sort of worked out that way, hasn't it? You could almost say bringing pyjamas was a wasted effort, Hannah dearest, except that I've had far too much fun taking yours off night after night. Do you own any that aren't black and yellow?"
"One pair. I'll wear it tomorrow night when we're home."
"I can hardly wa... oh Hannah, speaking of being unable to wait..." He directed his eyes downwards, where the cloth of his pyjamas was bulging upwards under Hannah's expert manipulations.
She nibbled playfully at his ear. "Am I making things hard for you, dear?"
"Not exactly in a bad way," he replied. "Though things could get rather messy if you keep this up."
"What do you think the Scourgify spell was invented for?" she quipped back at him. "But if you insist..." She slid his pyjama bottoms down, followed likewise with her own and climbed atop him. "The usual, my dear?"
"I don't see why not," he replied, feeling the familiar slick warmth enclose his erection.
"We shall try something different tomorrow night," she told him firmly, whipping off her pyjama top even as he slid his hands up to caress her bust. "And then I'll tell you what it is I've been working on the last couple of weeks. But for now..." She lowered herself to him, smothered him with kisses, felt his hands cup themselves lovingly around her backside and shortly disdained to think about anything except how nice a way this was to end their holiday.
The Next Evening.
"Not going to work today, dear?" Neville asked as he sauntered through the door, the smell of a dozen different herbs still on his hands.
Hannah sat at their desk, paying close attention to what seemed to Neville to be a piece of Muggle mail. "Shift got cancelled," she said distractedly. "Lots of young witches looking for work, so we put a couple on short shifts to try them out and there went mine. How are the plants and potions?"
"The potions are old Wortley's problem. The plants survived - just. Good thing I set up all those self-care spells before I left. Wortley's a lot of things, but when it comes to looking after plants he's almost exactly the opposite of me. What came in the mail?"
"Something dad forwarded," Hannah said, turning to face Neville. "Dear, do you know what life insurance is?"
"Sort of. Harry mentioned it to me once as a metaphor for Horcruxes, so I got him to explain it. Something about paying someone to give you money when you die, isn't it?"
Hannah shook her head. "It's... a little more complex than that, but you've got the basic idea. Neville, when my mother died there was an awful fuss about her life insurance - no known cause, and all that - and it took a long time for things to be settled. The long and the short is that the insurers have finally paid out and oh God, Neville, it's huge." She nervously laid the letter aside on the desk. "I feel like someone who's just had great power placed in their hands and is terrified they'll misuse it. Hug me please?"
He did, for almost a minute. Finally, she whispered "Thank you. I feel better now."
"Are you sure? You look just like you did before your OWLs."
She smiled weakly at him. "You noticed, did you? Well maybe I do, but... it's both a terrifying not-calm and at the same time an exciting one."
Neville sat on the bed and pulled her over to sit next to him, noticing that she seemed to be trembling slightly. "Is the exciting bit to do with what you were doing while I was playing with plants?" he asked.
"It is, yeah. Can you guess the rest, or do I need to give you more clues?"
"It's to do with this place, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah, it is."
"I may be ignorant of Muggle ways, but Wortley's shop is a business and the same rules apply in both worlds. You're not just an ordinary waitress or bartender; are you, Hannah? Waitresses don't normally get to check the books, let alone take them home."
"They don't, no. But the Muggle drinks idea was all mine - well, the inspiration was yours but the implementation was mine - so old Tom let me handle it myself, especially when I showed them I could turn a tidy profit. And I've been suggesting a whole lot of other things that worked out too, so old Tom listens to me. A lot. And all that mail and all that paperwork was people writing in and telling me - mostly - that they liked my ideas and suggesting more, and me figuring out which of them I could pay for out of my own little slice of the budget."
She took his hand, feeling how clammy her own was in comparison. "It's heady stuff," she continued. "Wonderful if you get it right, disastrous if you get it wrong. And if I got it wrong now it wouldn't wreck the Leaky - like I said, it's no more than a side project - but in a few years I couldn't be so sure."
A light began to dawn in Neville's mind. "Are you telling me you're thinking of buying into the business?"
"No," she said. "I'm not. Or rather, I was until I opened that letter. Now? Now I can buy the business. The whole thing. Outright." She moistened fear-damped lips. "I could own the Leaky Cauldron and everything in it by this time tomorrow if I wanted to."
"Merlin's beard!" whispered Neville.
"You said it."
"Then what are you scared of?" he asked her. "If you know you can do a good job of it, go ahead and do it."
"Well... I'm not so sure. Right now I'm just a young witch who's made a few good or lucky guesses and managed to capitalise on them. I... Neville, I want you to help me talk myself out of taking that leap. Just help me keep my head on my shoulders and working at this thing slowly and surely for a few more years, until I've got a bit more experience and... well, a bit more wisdom. Stop me until I know it's not all a fluke. Otherwise it'd be like making Harry head of the Auror Office and Minister of Magic on the spot just because he beat Voldemort."
"You want my wise advice and my steadying hand?" Neville asked.
Hannah gave a brief, soft laugh. "Yeah, well... like Dumbledore said all those years ago, it takes more courage to stand up to your friends than it does your enemies - and I need you to stand up to your best friend for a while. And I..." She squeezed his hand. "I need you, Neville."
"How long do you want to wait?" he asked, almost scared to believe what she meant by that last sentence.
"Wait for what?" Hannah asked. "To take control of the Leaky? I don't know - maybe as long as it takes you to finish your education in Herbology. But for you? I don't want to wait another day."
Neville looked shocked - but it was, Hannah thought, a pleasant kind of shock. "Are you asking me to marry you?"
"No, I'm asking you to ask me. That is... if you want me that much."
"I didn't know you wanted me that much," he replied. "I mean, I always hoped. And you're a lovely person, you know."
"Just right for you?" she asked.
"Someone once suggested I should marry Luna," he told her. "I think because we were the only two out of that little group of six of us who fought all three battles who hadn't, you know, paired up. And she is lovely, but she's just..."
"Too strange?"
"Yeah. I need someone ordinary, Han... and you're just ordinary enough in your own extraordinary way."
She smiled at him. "It's nice to know that being a boring old Hufflepuff can have its benefits."
"You, boring? Merlin, no. But even so, dear Miss Ordinary Boring Hannah Hufflepuff Abbott, will you do Mister Ordinary Boring Neville Gryffindor Longbottom the honour of being his quite possibly not so boring wife?"
Hannah giggled. "One condition."
"What's that?"
"You are not bringing the Mimbulus* mimbletonia into our bed. I come first; it comes second. If that plant walks in, I walk out. Get it?"
"Yeah." Mimbulus* had after all been only a crutch to get him through his parentless loneliness and the terrors of school. He loved it still, but not that much - and certainly not as much as he did her.
"Then you've got me."
Four Years Later.
"Now this is a hoot," said Hannah as she cuddled against Neville just before lights-out and read the invitation they'd just received. "Professor-emeritus Pomona Sprout wishes to invite Professor-elect and Mrs Longbottom to her retirement party, to be held at the Leaky Cauldron on August fifteenth of this year. RSVP by return Owl Post or to Hannah Longbottom, care of the Leaky." She laughed. "Shall we bother replying? It's not as if we can't be there, is it, what with me running the function and you taking her job next year!"
"I guess we should, at least to her," Neville replied. "You know, just for the record and out of politeness."
"You sound like Hermione sometimes, you know that?" she teased.
"You did say you wanted my wisdom and steady hand," he retorted. "And we can't exactly reply to ourselves, can we?"
"Hey, I wasn't complaining. And if I'd wanted Hermione I'd have... well anyway, I'm glad I've got you. Speaking of Hermione, I do hope marrying Ron has mellowed her. Can you imagine having her for a mother if she were anything like when we started school?"
"I think you'll find she's changed quite a bit," Neville replied, laughing. He remembered the bossy eleven-year-old well, and an adult version sounded far too much like his grandmother Augusta. "I wonder what sort of parents we'll be one day."
"I've got no idea," Hannah said. She took his hand and squeezed gently. "Let's find out."
THE END.
* = Corrected from Mumbulus Mimbletonia as quite rightly pointed out by hazy_crazy
Author:
pathology_doc
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: NC17 (mutually consensual activities).
Notes/warnings: Last chapter. If I get any more ideas, I'll call it a sequel. Depending on what Pottermore reveals about the timing of various critical events, this fic may be an AU by the end - but hey, what fic isn't to some extent? As always, canon is book over film. Hope you enjoy.
Neville's first day of camping went well for him. It was bright, it was sunny, his pack fit well, and there were plenty of plants to collect.
Day two started out sunny and then everything changed.
"It looks to me," he said as he stopped briefly to shift his pack and tame a wayward bootlace, "like it's going to rain."
Hannah sniffed the air. "It's... yeah, I think we're going to get a bit wettish."
"Let's see what we can do about that," Neville replied, drawing his wand as he stood.
Hannah caught his hand in mid-draw. "Um... no, Nev; that's not what camping is about."
Neville gave her a look of surprise that she remembered well from school, and which was one of the things she found so endearing about him. "It's not?"
She shook her head and he slid his wand back into its sheath, asking "You mean Muggles don't mind getting soaking wet and freezing cold and blisters on their feet and all that?"
Hannah nodded. "Yep. Part of the game." She took his hand and led him further along the trail. "And if we were really doing it properly, our tent would be no bigger inside than it is on the outside and we'd constantly be battling for room with our packs and having to do our cooking outside when it wasn't raining, and stuff like that. Makes for cosy nights, though."
The look that Neville gave her when she said that spoke volumes, most of which would not be on the open shelves in a public library. "Yeah, I bet," she laughed. "Wait till we get so soaking wet we have to strip off and dry our clothes. Like I said, we're fair game. But our packs and especially our maps are another matter. If you know a good waterproofing spell for those, go for it."
Neville remembered the one Hermione had taught Harry for his glasses and promptly applied it. "Speaking of maps, how far have we got to go?"
"Next camping ground is five miles," Hannah replied. "There's shelter there, and... oh, I spoke to Grandpa before we left. When I told him we were going hiking, he told me to look out for trench foot and make sure I changed my socks regularly."
"Trench foot?" Neville asked.
"Yeah, apparently if your feet stay wet for too long in shoes and socks, your toes drop off. Good old Grandpa - I think seeing me so happy with you has given him a new lease on life."
Well, Neville thought, in that case we'll have to see how much happier we can make him. "That's good. Do you mind if I come along again next time we visit? I'm finding his company quite enjoyable."
"Sure thing. I think we'll call on him when we get back, actually."
"What, just to prove you still have ten toes left?"
Hannah laughed out loud. "Something like that, yeah." And with that, the first fat raindrops began to fall.
They stopped for the night in a small clearing in the woods, soaked through, the only bright spot being that the rain had spent itself out and reduced to a fine drizzle. Once they had set up the tent and Neville had cast a set of charms to give them privacy, Hannah announced that she was going to treat Neville to Muggle camping fare.
He watched with fascination as she set up the little Primus stove, opened the packs of dehydrated food and added the right amount of water. "Wow," he finally said. "Muggle magic."
Hannah grinned at him. "I reckon Harry, Ron and Hermione could have done with a bit of this when they were on the run, don't you? Now while that's bubbling away, let's go inside and get changed."
Neville undressed with one eye on Hannah, whose khaki hiking clothes were so wet and so plastered to her that they showed off her curves very effectively and changed his mind completely about this whole walking-in-the-rain business. Well, he corrected himself, so long as he could do it with her. When she stripped off her shirt, her bra was yellow with black trim. When she pulled down her trousers, her knickers were black with yellow trim. Her socks of course were her usual choice of black and yellow striped.
"You never let Hufflepuff House go, do you?" he asked, jokingly.
"More like it never lets us go," she replied.
"Well fair enough," he replied, dropping his own trousers to reveal boxer shorts with red and gold rampant lions. "I sort of guessed what you'd be wearing and dressed appropriately."
"You know what?" Hannah said as she peeled her dripping socks off, "I'm soaked to the skin. Throw me a towel out of my pack, will you? Better still, I'd be grateful if you'd do the drying."
He dug briefly around in the pack, which was a larger version of the bag of holding Hermione had used and was designed for easier access to the bulkier items one might put in it.
"Start at the ankles," she said as he got the towel out, "and work your way up."
The first thing he noticed, now that her socks were off, was that she'd painted her toenails alternately black and yellow. He looked up at her quizzically. She was grinning ear to ear. "I know, it's a bit adolescent of me - but I was in a mood for fun this morning, so while you were taking the charms down I did a little decorating." She wriggled her toes.
"You won't catch me doing that," Neville replied as he worked his way up her legs with the towel. "Okay, maybe if I'd been a girl."
"But if you'd been a girl, you wouldn't have been able to..."
Neville stood up and cut her off with a kiss. "No, I guess not," he replied, pressing himself against her.
She ran a hand down his bare chest, and would have continued further had she not remembered dinner cooking outside. "While I am quite hungry for you, Neville dearest, I think our dinner's ready. Let's leave this until after we've eaten," she said. "Should be some dry clothes in the bag as well, let's get them on and go rescue the stove."
"I do have the protective charms set out that far," Neville reminded her.
"Clever boy," she said, smiling at him and ducking out as she was to grab their dinner while Neville busied himself casting drying spells. Fortunately it was warm as well as wet, or she'd have ducked straight back in.
"What do you think?" she asked when they were dressed again and done eating.
"Not bad. I think I'd rather not eat it every day," he replied, "but it's more than fine if you're a Muggle and you don't have bottomless packs the way we Wizards do."
"Remember that our packs take off the weight, too," said Hannah. "That's just as important." She whipped out her wand and pointed it at the collection of small tin pots and multi-purpose cutlery that comprised their 'dishes'. "Scourgify," she said, then she began to break the stove down for re-stowage.
"Can I ask a silly question?" Neville asked as he watched all this go on. Next time, he'd give it a shot - it looked simple enough.
"Sure."
"What's all the mail you're getting these days? Secret admirers?"
Hannah laughed. "If they are, they're going to be mighty disappointed!" she said. "But seriously, they are of a sort. Remember the night I came in exhausted and told you I'd give anything for the Leaky to serve coffee on my late shifts?"
He cast his eyes longingly and lovingly over her curves. "I remember the next morning somewhat better, I have to admit."
She saw this and snuggled against him suggestively. "Oh, don't worry - so do I. But you said something in reply which gave me the idea - 'Muggle drinks at the Leaky' - and I thought: why does that just have to mean coffee?"
"Oh, so you've been bringing in the Muggle equivalents of mead and firewhiskey and so on!" he replied as she nodded enthusiastically. "How did that work out?"
"Well, that's what I wanted to know," she said. "So I left leaflets on the tables asking people to write in. Would you believe that with the Wizarding population almost evenly divided between the Houses, nearly forty percent of Muggle drinks are being bought by Slytherins?"
Neville almost jumped out of his skin. "WHAT???!!! I don't believe it!"
Hannah shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't either when I first read the letters, but it's true. I even brought them along if you want to look."
Neville shook his head. "No, no. I believe you, dear. It's just... well, it's almost as bizarre as if Draco Malfoy suddenly announced he was in love with a Muggle. How the hell do you explain that?"
"No idea. What's worse, a fair chunk of those Slytherins are former Death Eaeters to boot. And that's a puzzle beyond the powers of my poor little Hufflepuff brain to sort out."
Neville swept her into an embrace and kissed her. "Don't underrate yourself, Hannah love. You have a very good brain, or you wouldn't have made this thing work."
"I'm glad you think so," she replied. "Maybe it's just that I'm tired after a long walk, and I have you to distract me."
"What's so distracting about me?"
"Oh, you know - that air of dash and handsomeness you've got about you."
"I thought dash and handsomeness were Harry's forté."
"Yeah, but Harry's dashing and handsome in a way that's attractive to girls who like good Quidditch players. He's the Ministry's poster-boy for Auror training. You're dashing and handsome in a quiet way. You're the poster-boy for insecure motherless Hufflepuffs trying to find their way in the world, and if I had even half of poor old Colin's skill at making pictures I'd have covered my walls with posters of you. But that's alright - there'll always be one in here." She tapped her chest with one finger.
"Oh Hannah..."
She rolled him on top of her, began kissing him. "Dear Neville."
What followed lasted quite a while, and when they were finally done they had barely enough energy to wriggle into Hannah's sleeping bag and extinguish the lights before falling asleep.
Two Weeks Later.
Thereafter, the weather behaved itself and their holiday went pretty much according to plan. Neville collected plants, Hannah took pictures, they marvelled together at parts of Britain neither had ever seen before, and at odd assorted times they quietly (and occasionally not so quietly) vented their mutual passions upon each other. Evenings before bed found each with three piles in front of them. For Neville, it was plants, Herbology texts, and increasing lengths of parchment stuffed with scrawled notes. For Hannah, it was two piles of mail - unopened and opened - and a large ledger book. At last, however, the day came when they knew they must return to the real world.
"I love holidays with you," Hannah whispered to Neville that evening as she lay curled up against him.
"They are rather fun, aren't they?" he replied. "It's going to be good to get back, though. Poor old Mumbulus will be getting lonely, to say nothing of the stock at the shop. Wortley's going to be glad to have me back, and I imagine the Leaky will be glad to see you, too."
"I'll be glad to see it," Hannah said. "Then we can work our arses off for another ten months and do this all over again. Unless of course you've got better ideas."
"Give me time to work something out," Neville told her. "Something will come up, I'm sure."
"I bet it will," she replied mischievously, stroking the front of his pyjamas. "You know, I think bringing a second sleeping bag was a wasted effort."
"It has sort of worked out that way, hasn't it? You could almost say bringing pyjamas was a wasted effort, Hannah dearest, except that I've had far too much fun taking yours off night after night. Do you own any that aren't black and yellow?"
"One pair. I'll wear it tomorrow night when we're home."
"I can hardly wa... oh Hannah, speaking of being unable to wait..." He directed his eyes downwards, where the cloth of his pyjamas was bulging upwards under Hannah's expert manipulations.
She nibbled playfully at his ear. "Am I making things hard for you, dear?"
"Not exactly in a bad way," he replied. "Though things could get rather messy if you keep this up."
"What do you think the Scourgify spell was invented for?" she quipped back at him. "But if you insist..." She slid his pyjama bottoms down, followed likewise with her own and climbed atop him. "The usual, my dear?"
"I don't see why not," he replied, feeling the familiar slick warmth enclose his erection.
"We shall try something different tomorrow night," she told him firmly, whipping off her pyjama top even as he slid his hands up to caress her bust. "And then I'll tell you what it is I've been working on the last couple of weeks. But for now..." She lowered herself to him, smothered him with kisses, felt his hands cup themselves lovingly around her backside and shortly disdained to think about anything except how nice a way this was to end their holiday.
The Next Evening.
"Not going to work today, dear?" Neville asked as he sauntered through the door, the smell of a dozen different herbs still on his hands.
Hannah sat at their desk, paying close attention to what seemed to Neville to be a piece of Muggle mail. "Shift got cancelled," she said distractedly. "Lots of young witches looking for work, so we put a couple on short shifts to try them out and there went mine. How are the plants and potions?"
"The potions are old Wortley's problem. The plants survived - just. Good thing I set up all those self-care spells before I left. Wortley's a lot of things, but when it comes to looking after plants he's almost exactly the opposite of me. What came in the mail?"
"Something dad forwarded," Hannah said, turning to face Neville. "Dear, do you know what life insurance is?"
"Sort of. Harry mentioned it to me once as a metaphor for Horcruxes, so I got him to explain it. Something about paying someone to give you money when you die, isn't it?"
Hannah shook her head. "It's... a little more complex than that, but you've got the basic idea. Neville, when my mother died there was an awful fuss about her life insurance - no known cause, and all that - and it took a long time for things to be settled. The long and the short is that the insurers have finally paid out and oh God, Neville, it's huge." She nervously laid the letter aside on the desk. "I feel like someone who's just had great power placed in their hands and is terrified they'll misuse it. Hug me please?"
He did, for almost a minute. Finally, she whispered "Thank you. I feel better now."
"Are you sure? You look just like you did before your OWLs."
She smiled weakly at him. "You noticed, did you? Well maybe I do, but... it's both a terrifying not-calm and at the same time an exciting one."
Neville sat on the bed and pulled her over to sit next to him, noticing that she seemed to be trembling slightly. "Is the exciting bit to do with what you were doing while I was playing with plants?" he asked.
"It is, yeah. Can you guess the rest, or do I need to give you more clues?"
"It's to do with this place, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah, it is."
"I may be ignorant of Muggle ways, but Wortley's shop is a business and the same rules apply in both worlds. You're not just an ordinary waitress or bartender; are you, Hannah? Waitresses don't normally get to check the books, let alone take them home."
"They don't, no. But the Muggle drinks idea was all mine - well, the inspiration was yours but the implementation was mine - so old Tom let me handle it myself, especially when I showed them I could turn a tidy profit. And I've been suggesting a whole lot of other things that worked out too, so old Tom listens to me. A lot. And all that mail and all that paperwork was people writing in and telling me - mostly - that they liked my ideas and suggesting more, and me figuring out which of them I could pay for out of my own little slice of the budget."
She took his hand, feeling how clammy her own was in comparison. "It's heady stuff," she continued. "Wonderful if you get it right, disastrous if you get it wrong. And if I got it wrong now it wouldn't wreck the Leaky - like I said, it's no more than a side project - but in a few years I couldn't be so sure."
A light began to dawn in Neville's mind. "Are you telling me you're thinking of buying into the business?"
"No," she said. "I'm not. Or rather, I was until I opened that letter. Now? Now I can buy the business. The whole thing. Outright." She moistened fear-damped lips. "I could own the Leaky Cauldron and everything in it by this time tomorrow if I wanted to."
"Merlin's beard!" whispered Neville.
"You said it."
"Then what are you scared of?" he asked her. "If you know you can do a good job of it, go ahead and do it."
"Well... I'm not so sure. Right now I'm just a young witch who's made a few good or lucky guesses and managed to capitalise on them. I... Neville, I want you to help me talk myself out of taking that leap. Just help me keep my head on my shoulders and working at this thing slowly and surely for a few more years, until I've got a bit more experience and... well, a bit more wisdom. Stop me until I know it's not all a fluke. Otherwise it'd be like making Harry head of the Auror Office and Minister of Magic on the spot just because he beat Voldemort."
"You want my wise advice and my steadying hand?" Neville asked.
Hannah gave a brief, soft laugh. "Yeah, well... like Dumbledore said all those years ago, it takes more courage to stand up to your friends than it does your enemies - and I need you to stand up to your best friend for a while. And I..." She squeezed his hand. "I need you, Neville."
"How long do you want to wait?" he asked, almost scared to believe what she meant by that last sentence.
"Wait for what?" Hannah asked. "To take control of the Leaky? I don't know - maybe as long as it takes you to finish your education in Herbology. But for you? I don't want to wait another day."
Neville looked shocked - but it was, Hannah thought, a pleasant kind of shock. "Are you asking me to marry you?"
"No, I'm asking you to ask me. That is... if you want me that much."
"I didn't know you wanted me that much," he replied. "I mean, I always hoped. And you're a lovely person, you know."
"Just right for you?" she asked.
"Someone once suggested I should marry Luna," he told her. "I think because we were the only two out of that little group of six of us who fought all three battles who hadn't, you know, paired up. And she is lovely, but she's just..."
"Too strange?"
"Yeah. I need someone ordinary, Han... and you're just ordinary enough in your own extraordinary way."
She smiled at him. "It's nice to know that being a boring old Hufflepuff can have its benefits."
"You, boring? Merlin, no. But even so, dear Miss Ordinary Boring Hannah Hufflepuff Abbott, will you do Mister Ordinary Boring Neville Gryffindor Longbottom the honour of being his quite possibly not so boring wife?"
Hannah giggled. "One condition."
"What's that?"
"You are not bringing the Mimbulus* mimbletonia into our bed. I come first; it comes second. If that plant walks in, I walk out. Get it?"
"Yeah." Mimbulus* had after all been only a crutch to get him through his parentless loneliness and the terrors of school. He loved it still, but not that much - and certainly not as much as he did her.
"Then you've got me."
Four Years Later.
"Now this is a hoot," said Hannah as she cuddled against Neville just before lights-out and read the invitation they'd just received. "Professor-emeritus Pomona Sprout wishes to invite Professor-elect and Mrs Longbottom to her retirement party, to be held at the Leaky Cauldron on August fifteenth of this year. RSVP by return Owl Post or to Hannah Longbottom, care of the Leaky." She laughed. "Shall we bother replying? It's not as if we can't be there, is it, what with me running the function and you taking her job next year!"
"I guess we should, at least to her," Neville replied. "You know, just for the record and out of politeness."
"You sound like Hermione sometimes, you know that?" she teased.
"You did say you wanted my wisdom and steady hand," he retorted. "And we can't exactly reply to ourselves, can we?"
"Hey, I wasn't complaining. And if I'd wanted Hermione I'd have... well anyway, I'm glad I've got you. Speaking of Hermione, I do hope marrying Ron has mellowed her. Can you imagine having her for a mother if she were anything like when we started school?"
"I think you'll find she's changed quite a bit," Neville replied, laughing. He remembered the bossy eleven-year-old well, and an adult version sounded far too much like his grandmother Augusta. "I wonder what sort of parents we'll be one day."
"I've got no idea," Hannah said. She took his hand and squeezed gently. "Let's find out."
THE END.
* = Corrected from Mumbulus Mimbletonia as quite rightly pointed out by hazy_crazy