Written for marksykins. Just because. (and thank you :D)

Title: Growing Pains
Pairing: Harry/Neville
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1096



At breakfast they were babies. They grappled with their grapefruit, shoved bits of waffle a tad too large into their mouths, and gulped down tall glasses of milk or pumpkin juice to see them off to class. They left their forks and knives in a clatter on plates made sticky by too much syrup, and wadded their napkins over the mess when they pushed away in haste so as not to be late. They laughed with different people over the morning anecdotes, to be sure – Harry with Hermione and Ron, Neville with Seamus, Dean – but it was enough that they were laughing, in spite of everything.

Then in History of Magic they were ordinary students, bored and bent over their desks, their messes of scroll paper and quill. The low sound of Binns’s voice was like taffy in the air, so dense it had to be tugged, twisted, drawn and battered before it could be digested, and even then it was thick and laborious on the tongue. Ron slid an unflattering stick-man scrawl of Draco Malfoy towards Harry; in a few lazy quill strokes Dean realized a caricature of their phantom professor boring himself to death, and passed it carefully to Seamus, then Neville. The pictures met in the middle, and at the innocuous scratch-slide of one into the other, fingers met. Neville glanced up and Harry smiled, and in that gesture more than paper was purchased.

After, in Potions, they were victims, prisoners of war in Camp Gryffindor, where red and gold were six-pointed stars splayed across their chests as they worked desperately, alone and yet united, to stay the loss of further points, because that was the best they could hope for in the thick of potions and prejudice. And when Neville’s concoctions threatened to burst the cauldron entirely, Harry nudged Hermione, who sat between them, and she leaned over, innocent as you please, and sprinkled ash in the mess to neutralize the worst of it. And when Harry was taking too much heat, resolute but still helpless under the press of Snape’s scowl, the snap of his robes, the gleam in his Slytherin eye, Neville dropped a vial in the space between desks, finding courage only in what he was used to – clumsiness and terror. And after, as Neville left the class, pale and shaking from the lecture he’d taken upon himself, Harry came up and clapped him firmly on the shoulder, and the smile grew warmer, stronger, so that as Harry moved for the next class Neville remembered to breathe properly again, no longer worried the trickle down his trousers might be anything other than fear-sweat.

And so maybe it was gratitude that later made one a teacher and the other a disciple in Herbology, where Harry’s only claim to a green thumb was the time he’d curled his pre-pubescent fingers about Godric’s sword and stabbed up, up, up into the maw of the Basilisk and come out dying and victorious, with a spatter of dark, wet viridian over his clothes, his face, his fist. Neville smiled bracing encouragement as Harry -- quick with a blade, a wand, but helpless about the slender stalks of dittany -- raised his soiled hands and dirt-smudged face from the mass of shrubbery. Careful, it burns, came the soft admonishment, but when Neville’s gaze darted up to inspect Harry’s palms, the flush in his rounded face told Harry it might not be the plant making everything so warm.

The favour was returned in Defense Against the Dark Arts, as Harry guided and Neville yielded. Here wand-play outdid hands, and need out-weighed kindness, but nonetheless in the rapid-fire of Stand-Draw-Hex-Turn-Repeat Harry bent to Neville’s ear in passing and gave him word-strength enough to stand his ground – in real combat I’ll be right here behind you. Some days, though, even that wasn’t enough, as names and titles became means to separate born wizard from failure in the minds of the faltering, until only The Boy Who Lived could see how much The Other Choice had survived, too. And then even though Harry was behind him, vowing to stay there as long as it took, a new and frightening maturity took hold, the acknowledgement of smallness, a loneliness in a world far, far too big.

And so in those long hours of the day, the boys grew alone, fighting inner demons no others could tackle, much as they might like. At practice after class, one was a star player; the other, a face in the crowd. One sliced through winds, rains, and warring houses to snatch for gold; the other bundled his hands against the cold, the sleet, and cheered for House and Housemates without much hope of being worth anything more than ten points in the spotlight, already used up in his first year at school. And it was hardest there, in the waning hours of the sun, the day, for their solidarity to stay them, because it was a frightening thing, to be growing up alone.

But when they survived the shifting and parting of viewpoint and ally there was thankfully night, and when sore muscles and uneasy thoughts of smallness collided in the showers after everyone else had left, they were finally men. Harry closed his eyes as he scrubbed what scars he could from his lean, tense frame, his mouth just parted with the softest aching moans as he bent his neck to the protest of stiff joints. With the spray a heavy, deafening patter around him, he couldn’t hear Neville from across the showers, but when he turned at last, reluctant but cleansed, he saw him, huddled over in a corner trying to shield his softer, fuller body against all sight, and Harry stopped before the stall. Neville looked up, startled and confused, but worn still into an age that understood regardless. So when Harry opened his mouth to call the name, to know it on his lips, to say what thanks or commiseration the day, the growth, the ageing had earned, and found only another mouth to meet his movements he knew it to be innately right. Action tasted better than words between them, in any case.

At breakfast the next morning, Harry’s grapefruit still got the better of him and Neville still smiled self-consciously, afraid to laugh at a joke spilled elsewhere along the table, and the day was just starting, just waking, just breaking against them all over again, but it was all right; it was normal.

Because growing up all at once, they knew, wasn't worth growing up at all.