Different Like Me

Neville Longbottom sat down on the porch swing, wincing as the old wood groaned miserably beneath him.

He sighed, bringing his nervous hands together for warmth. The storm was far stronger here in Lower Tadfield than back in London.

He didn't mind the cold, really. It was rather refreshing compared the unnatural infernos of the past couple of weeks. And he knew that sitting here on the creaking porch swing, suffering the biting cold, was worlds better than what he would have to endure when the Johnsons arrived.

He sighed again. He hated this part of his job. The telling.

Greasy Johnson had been a causality of war. Not that Neville thought there was anything remotely casual about it. Not death, that is.

Casual... Neville let the word form in his mouth. Casual. Perhaps Greasy's death was casual - Neville was fairly certain that no one had planned to kill the boy (Not that he was a boy anymore... it was rather amazing how the human mind could steadfastly maintain an image leftover from childhood. So, for Neville, Greasy would always be a boy). No, he was sure that whoever had targeted his Uncle Algie hadn't planned on taking out the lumbering would-be heroics of the Muggle neighbor boy visiting his aunt, the deaf woman next door. Maybe the murderers were taken by surprise ... maybe they weren't. Either way, Neville reckoned that an unplanned killing of a Muggle was perfectly casual.

And that's how Neville came to be sitting on the Johnsons' porch in Lower Tadfield in the late afternoon in the middle of a raging winter storm.

His fingertips were tingling now. He wished he could remember the Warming Spell that Hermione had patiently shown him again just last week. But he couldn't. Not that it was surprising.

He could almost hear a jeering laugh, raspy but not unkind, wrapped up in the blistering gusts of wind. He looked up. The snow was really falling down now, the wind making it seem as though it was coming in sideways.

The laugh was a bit louder and Neville strained his eyes to see into the blinding whiteness of the Johnsons' front yard.

"You're not very good for a freak, you know," he heard, words pulled from a nearly forgotten memory.

Neville laughed aloud, just as he had all those years ago.

"Yeah? Well you're not a very good bully," he'd retorted and then watched as surprise had clearly replaced irritation in the other boy's face.

That had been the year that Neville had learned to stand up for himself. Of course, Greasy had never really been a threat. Not because Neville was a wizard... but because Neville was, in fact, correct about Greasy being rather atrocious at bullying.

Now, he was a fairly good "accidental" bully... his clumsiness alone accounted for half the black eyes and broken noses at Lower Tadfield Preparatory School. But he hadn't actually hurt Neville. In the early days of their acquaintance (neither would have called it a friendship), before anyone knew or believed that Neville was indeed a wizard, he'd always been able to get out of Greasy's way. So, he was never inadvertently tripped, pushed, or squashed by any of Greasy's ungainly movements.

This brought relief for them both in the form of an uneasy truce. They certainly didn't like each other- each one suspecting that the other was as aberrant as humanly possible. But Neville seemed impervious to Greasy's ham-fistedness and Greasy was ignorant about Neville's Squib-level magic.

Other than a few weeks every summer spent as neighbors, Greasy and Neville had little in common. Neville and his Gran came to stay with his uncle for the first part of the summer while Greasy's parents went on holiday, sending him to keep his elderly deaf aunt company. Thus, the two had been thrown together since they were children.

"I always knew there was something different about you."

Neville shuddered as though someone had whispered the words into his ear, trailing hot breath across the back of his neck.

How many times had Greasy said something like that to him?

Neville closed his eyes to the ferocious storm, flashes from childhood swimming in the mottled redness behind his eyelids.

"...something different about you..." he'd said, when Gran had let slip something about visiting Neville's parents on the long-term care ward of Saint Mungo's.

Sure, Greasy hadn't known what that had entailed. But he could figure out that Neville's parents weren't exactly around the ways parents should be. And Gran's musty old hat with the vulture sitting atop told him plenty about what it had been like to grow up with her as his guardian.

Greasy could have been cruel about it. But he wasn't. He'd just stared at Neville then, his brown eyes squinting from the sunlight, looking too small for his plump childish face. And after a long silence, he'd mentioned that he'd been adopted. And that he wondered what his real parents might be like. Neville didn't really have anything to say in return. So they didn't mention parents after that, choosing instead to go trudge through the frog farm that was Uncle Algie's backyard.

"I knew there was something..."

That time, Greasy had caught him talking to his frog, Trevor, his wand in his right hand. No telling how long he'd stood there watching, either. The fact that Neville hadn't been able to enlarge his pet probably didn't detract from the overall effect of a wand, some Latin phrasings, and the sheer earnestness that the spell would eventually work. In other words, Neville hadn't had to be an effective wizard for Greasy to realize that he was a wizard in the first place.

Again, Greasy could have been spiteful about the whole thing. Instead, he'd been quiet. He'd taken a seat on the old log, right next to Trevor, and then asked him if he'd like to see his collection of fish. Greasy had taken to bringing some of his more prized tropical fish with him now that his summers with his aunt had begun to stretch longer and longer.

So Neville found himself talking about his first year at Hogwarts while Greasy proudly discussed the finer points of maintaining his fish collection. Though Greasy asked about Hogwarts, he didn't talk about his own experiences with school. Neville had heard about fights, the Johnsonites, and a rivalry with the Them from Uncle Algie.

"Knew you were different..."

Those words- one of the last times Neville could remember hearing them- had been said between gasping breaths, awkward hands, teeth banging loudly, and lips mashing together. They'd been in Uncle Algie's backyard looking for Trevor. After it had gotten dark, they'd given up their search to drink some of Greasy's stash of cheap whiskey. Neville could no longer recall how they came to be kissing and groping each other.

They didn't do that again. They didn't even speak of it. They really didn't get along... more like they'd grown quite adept at tolerating each other, all faults included. But their differences and their similarities were always there, as solid as the ground under their feet. They knew it. And they accepted that ignoring it was an alright strategy. Neither was in a hurry, after all.

After graduation, Neville didn't get back to his uncle's very often. He'd still hear about Greasy from time to time, through either his uncle or his Gran. And late at night, when the horrors of his day tried to catch up with him, he'd close his eyes and sometimes think of sharing peaceful summer afternoons with a tall awkward Muggle boy.

The news of Uncle Algie's death hadn't been much of a surprise. Like so many wizards, Neville's uncle had been targeted. That he was elderly and living alone just made him all the more vulnerable for attack. He'd insisted on staying in his own house, despite countless pleadings from Neville and Gran and even formal warnings from the Ministry. But Neville could clearly remember him smiling, that tired old grin, stretching out across his wrinkled face, "But who'd look after my frogs, boy?"

That day had been the last time he'd seen Greasy, too. Neville hadn't bothered disguising himself from either his uncle's sharp eyes or Muggle sensibilities. So when Greasy had walked over to his uncle's yard, he'd encountered a sleep-deprived soldier of a wizard, complete with torn bloodied robes, mussed hair, caked with dirt and other far more insidious substances, and deep bruising along his face and neck.

Greasy had stood there, openly staring at him, taking in details and pondering their ghastly implications. Neville could see him come to an understanding right before his eyes.

"I always knew you were different, Neville." And that had been the last time Neville had heard those words.

He'd nodded in return, too exhausted to say anything. And Greasy seemed to understand.

"I'll look after the old man," he'd said, his voice low and deep. "I'm living here now. My aunt needs me. So I'll keep an eye out for him, too."

Neville didn't even try to argue about the futility of whatever kind of protection Greasy might offer against those who would inevitably come after his uncle. He could only hope that Algie would be able to get out in time... and that Greasy wouldn't try to get involved.

So the news about his Uncle Algie's murder wasn't a surprise at all. And that Greasy had been killed at the same time shouldn't have been a surprise, either. But it was. It was a raw painful searing kind of shock. It tore at him like a knife, gutting into his stomach - ripping and gnashing sensitive flesh.

It was achingly cold and the tingling in Neville's fingers had long since stopped, as had much of the sensation of feeling in any of his exposed skin. Neville wondered when it had gotten dark. Surely, he hadn't been sitting here that long?

A pair of headlights blinded him then, reflecting brightly against the fallen snow and lighting up the entire yard. He blinked rapidly, noticing crustiness around his eyes. He wiped his bare unfeeling fingers across his cheeks, hoping to dispel any of his obvious weakness. He'd already had his time for grief. His job was to be strong for the Johnsons now.

He stood up as a huddling couple slowly approached the front porch. He allowed himself a sigh.

And one last time, he heard the faint whisperings of a boy's voice, telling him things he'd never said aloud, assuring him that they weren't so different after all. And Neville drew on this quiet strength as if it were a source of magic.