Fic: "Nimbus, Or How to Share a Moment with Family" for bryonyraven
Title: Nimbus, Or How to Share a Moment with Family
Author: fivil
Recipient's name: bryonyraven
Rating: PG
Character(s): Neville, Frank, Alice.
Warnings (if any): -
Author's notes (if any): Hope this suits your tastes - I tried writing them together but it turned out too Alice/Frank to be called gen. Perhaps I'll put those scribblings online once the writer identities are revealed. I found nothing certain about Frank & Alice's DOB's in canon or the Lexicon, so I wrote it so that they both began their first year at Hogwarts in 1965. Oh, and I improvised Alice's mother name, too. My beta knows who she is and I thank her.
1998
Neville is lying outside the Hogwarts castle, on the greenest patch of grass close to the lake, a large oak somewhere nearby. He can feel the grass tickling his palm, everything growing beneath him. He presses his palm against the ground, trying to feel the movement of earth. He's glad things are still growing, nature working the way it always has.
It's not impossible to imagine a different kind of today, a gray one, the ground burned and dead.
He is 17 years old and he's lived through a war. He's fought and been wounded and survived, and as true as the sky is blue this afternoon, he is proud of himself.
What will you do with your life now, he hears a question somewhere in the back of his head. He lets it sail by, much like the idle cloud passing his vision on the otherwise clear sky.
He doesn't answer the question, doesn't want to. It doesn't feel like it should matter right now. There is so much future ahead of him now, and for the first time ever he isn't frightened, isn't worried. He just wants to live the now.
He hears someone call out his name. It's the day of the Leaving Feast. There's much ruckus, much celebration going on in the castle. Joy in every fibre of air.
Standing up, he feels free.
1970
Frank always wanted to be something grand, a name commonly recognised as an achiever of many great things. If he'll fail this Transfigurations exam, however, he won't be. Grand, or otherwise. He'll just die and that'll be the end of that. No more Hogwarts suppers, no more going to the library, no more daydreaming about Alice McNally. The world would never know of the great potential that was hidden in Frank Longbottom, the 5th year Gryffindor.
Nervously he tapped his chest with his fingers as he lay on the grass outside the castle. With each tap he tried to remember a fact from his study book, the five ways of changing the colour of something. The ink spell, was there such a thing? Was he forgetting something?
Studying had never been an impossible task for Frank, but what he enjoyed more was the action, getting to do the spells instead of just reading about them in a book. Learning was fantastic, but only if it had some sort of a practical purpose behind it. Which was why he aspired to do something of real importance in the future, none of that fiddling around with papers his father was so keen on.
Groaning, Frank pressed the book hopelessly against his forehead as if he thought all the information would leak into his brain. This had never happened previously and if such spells existed, he was sure he'd know of them by now. Desperately he pressed his study book harder against his head, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of the leather-bound book. He just needed to study. What was he afraid of?
On the sky above him, clouds were starting to gather but through his book, he could not see them.
1968
Alice was 13 and afraid of three things; people yelling at her, the Slytherin ghost and rain.
Her first fear she could handle just fine, though it always made her a bit self-conscious about what she did and how people reacted to it. She didn't like being yelled at. She'd do anything to avoid it (being nice, shutting her ears, casting a charm, singing). The Slytherin ghost she could easily evade as well. She had learned to walk on only certain corridors, at certain times of the day, and to only look at members of her own house while dining in the Great Hall. She was quick with these things. Quick to learn.
Her fear of rain, however, had been there as long as she could remember. It was completely irrational, of course, a fact that only made it worse. She couldn't understand it, or explain it, she never could have, so she never shared it with anyone. She just kept quiet and stayed inside whenever it rained, closing the curtains so she didn't have to watch it. She had a feeling it perhaps wasn't so serious as she liked to believe - her feeling of gut-wrenching fear had slowly waned into strong dislike by the years.
Still, she avoided rain like poison and had been determined to do so for the rest of her life until she had come to Hogwarts.
Now she was a Gryffindor, and what Gryffindors did was face their fears and conquer them. Which was why Alice was lying on her back on grass outside the castle, facing the threateningly dark sky.
The wind was blowing harder against her robes and she held her breath as she saw the first drops of rain come down from the dark clouds. She stayed still for a minute or two, feeling the rain get heavier, soaking her hair and face and the grass beneath her fingers. She breathed in and out, closed and opened her eyes. It rained on.
She brought her hand to her chest, realising there was no longer a twisting ache there, a worry, a fear. She smiled and then heard a voice.
A brown-haired boy in her year had been studying under a nearby oak tree. He had packed up his books and was now jogging towards her.
"Oi!" he yelled one more time before reaching her. She sat up and looked at him.
"Are you mad?" he asked, slightly out of breath. "It's pissing in here, let's get inside."
She brushed her wet hair off her forehead and stood up. Still smiling, she took his hand and together they ran back to the castle.
"I'm Frank," the boy told her after they had reached the castle and were walking down a corridor towards the Gryffindor dormitories. She squeezed his wet hand and eventually let go of it as they continued down the hallway, watching the rain paint the windows.
I'm fearless, she wanted to say but didn't.
Author: fivil
Recipient's name: bryonyraven
Rating: PG
Character(s): Neville, Frank, Alice.
Warnings (if any): -
Author's notes (if any): Hope this suits your tastes - I tried writing them together but it turned out too Alice/Frank to be called gen. Perhaps I'll put those scribblings online once the writer identities are revealed. I found nothing certain about Frank & Alice's DOB's in canon or the Lexicon, so I wrote it so that they both began their first year at Hogwarts in 1965. Oh, and I improvised Alice's mother name, too. My beta knows who she is and I thank her.
1998
Neville is lying outside the Hogwarts castle, on the greenest patch of grass close to the lake, a large oak somewhere nearby. He can feel the grass tickling his palm, everything growing beneath him. He presses his palm against the ground, trying to feel the movement of earth. He's glad things are still growing, nature working the way it always has.
It's not impossible to imagine a different kind of today, a gray one, the ground burned and dead.
He is 17 years old and he's lived through a war. He's fought and been wounded and survived, and as true as the sky is blue this afternoon, he is proud of himself.
What will you do with your life now, he hears a question somewhere in the back of his head. He lets it sail by, much like the idle cloud passing his vision on the otherwise clear sky.
He doesn't answer the question, doesn't want to. It doesn't feel like it should matter right now. There is so much future ahead of him now, and for the first time ever he isn't frightened, isn't worried. He just wants to live the now.
He hears someone call out his name. It's the day of the Leaving Feast. There's much ruckus, much celebration going on in the castle. Joy in every fibre of air.
Standing up, he feels free.
1970
Frank always wanted to be something grand, a name commonly recognised as an achiever of many great things. If he'll fail this Transfigurations exam, however, he won't be. Grand, or otherwise. He'll just die and that'll be the end of that. No more Hogwarts suppers, no more going to the library, no more daydreaming about Alice McNally. The world would never know of the great potential that was hidden in Frank Longbottom, the 5th year Gryffindor.
Nervously he tapped his chest with his fingers as he lay on the grass outside the castle. With each tap he tried to remember a fact from his study book, the five ways of changing the colour of something. The ink spell, was there such a thing? Was he forgetting something?
Studying had never been an impossible task for Frank, but what he enjoyed more was the action, getting to do the spells instead of just reading about them in a book. Learning was fantastic, but only if it had some sort of a practical purpose behind it. Which was why he aspired to do something of real importance in the future, none of that fiddling around with papers his father was so keen on.
Groaning, Frank pressed the book hopelessly against his forehead as if he thought all the information would leak into his brain. This had never happened previously and if such spells existed, he was sure he'd know of them by now. Desperately he pressed his study book harder against his head, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of the leather-bound book. He just needed to study. What was he afraid of?
On the sky above him, clouds were starting to gather but through his book, he could not see them.
1968
Alice was 13 and afraid of three things; people yelling at her, the Slytherin ghost and rain.
Her first fear she could handle just fine, though it always made her a bit self-conscious about what she did and how people reacted to it. She didn't like being yelled at. She'd do anything to avoid it (being nice, shutting her ears, casting a charm, singing). The Slytherin ghost she could easily evade as well. She had learned to walk on only certain corridors, at certain times of the day, and to only look at members of her own house while dining in the Great Hall. She was quick with these things. Quick to learn.
Her fear of rain, however, had been there as long as she could remember. It was completely irrational, of course, a fact that only made it worse. She couldn't understand it, or explain it, she never could have, so she never shared it with anyone. She just kept quiet and stayed inside whenever it rained, closing the curtains so she didn't have to watch it. She had a feeling it perhaps wasn't so serious as she liked to believe - her feeling of gut-wrenching fear had slowly waned into strong dislike by the years.
Still, she avoided rain like poison and had been determined to do so for the rest of her life until she had come to Hogwarts.
Now she was a Gryffindor, and what Gryffindors did was face their fears and conquer them. Which was why Alice was lying on her back on grass outside the castle, facing the threateningly dark sky.
The wind was blowing harder against her robes and she held her breath as she saw the first drops of rain come down from the dark clouds. She stayed still for a minute or two, feeling the rain get heavier, soaking her hair and face and the grass beneath her fingers. She breathed in and out, closed and opened her eyes. It rained on.
She brought her hand to her chest, realising there was no longer a twisting ache there, a worry, a fear. She smiled and then heard a voice.
A brown-haired boy in her year had been studying under a nearby oak tree. He had packed up his books and was now jogging towards her.
"Oi!" he yelled one more time before reaching her. She sat up and looked at him.
"Are you mad?" he asked, slightly out of breath. "It's pissing in here, let's get inside."
She brushed her wet hair off her forehead and stood up. Still smiling, she took his hand and together they ran back to the castle.
"I'm Frank," the boy told her after they had reached the castle and were walking down a corridor towards the Gryffindor dormitories. She squeezed his wet hand and eventually let go of it as they continued down the hallway, watching the rain paint the windows.
I'm fearless, she wanted to say but didn't.