Neville Longbottom and the Issue of Soulmates
It’s not the sweltering late July sun that causes his eyes to clench shut and sweat to drip down his brow. It’s not the remnants of sunburn from yesterday that causes him to flush from the tips of his toes to the tops of his cheeks. It’s also not the shocking sight of Harry The Chosen One Potter snogging Theodore Self-Proclaimed President of the Lonely Bastard Club Nott that causes his brows to fly into his hair.
It’s not.
He abandons his sandals, his friends, and their current game of beach volleyball, ignores the calls of his name, and runs back inside lest anyone think otherwise.
—
He’d known, of course even if on some secret, subconscious level, that this could happen. Would happen, in his case, since soul magic is practically defined as the ability to fuck him and his friends over. But he’d never accounted for it, never dreamed that he—the most average of Gyrffindors, the most pitiful of purebloods, the most novice of herbologists—would be lucky, or cursed, enough to have a soulmate.
It’s proof in a sense that magic indeed inhibits his being and that he has somewhere he belongs unequivocally. He’s so accustomed to loneliness that he’d likely be thankful if not for the circumstances of the war, the underlying fear that comes along with a lack of control, with knowing certain things are set in stone.
That, and well, the soulmark itself.
—
Turning eighteen is supposed to be about friends, and family, and recovering from lingering hangovers. Hermione told him that in parts of the muggle world, it’s about buying spray paint, adopting animals and/or children, or you know, tattoos, if you’re into that, which Neville is decidedly not.
Or he wasn’t, until he woke up.
He initially attributed the darkening of his upper arm as some sort of scratch or bruise or sun damage he’d acquired on their impromptu trip to the coast—the fallout, he supposes, of going on a trip with Luna and their gang of Gryffindors. Theodore Nott comes along too and Neville’s still not sure how that one happened.
So he’d paid it no mind, choosing to not cover it up and still go outside sans shirt, leaving his skin on display. That turned out to be an error, however, since because he paid it no mind, he also didn’t get to see the splotch get thinner, and darker, and more refined—the text of it sitting thin and dainty and almost leaf-like, coiling high around his bicep. The sight of it was shocking, and although initially embarrassed, it would be everything he’d have ever asked for in a mark—perfectly simple, perfectly him—if it weren’t so bloody…vulgar.
—
The only person he tells about it is Luna. Strange magic is her specialty, she’s the least judgemental person he knows, and his love for her is boundless, regardless of the fact that they didn’t work out romantically. She’s bloody blunt about things too, so it doesn’t surprise him when she flat-out tells him that he does in fact have a soulmate, and if doesn’t find said soulmate and soulbond with them by the time he’s nine thousand eight hundred and twenty-six days old, he’ll die a most dastardly death.
—
After that summer trip sealed his fate, he goes back to Hogwarts. Eighth Year is what McGonagall calls it, reparations is what Draco Malfoy calls it, a chance to let bygones be bygones is the general consensus of the rest of his class, but Neville likes to refer to it as the time in which he developed a fear of relationships.
He can’t find it in himself to blame his lonely upbringing or even the soulmate shite for that. No, his fear is due to the lunacy of his so-called friends, who’s love lives turn into a revolving door of chaos he can never quite keep up with.
Ron and Hermione break up. Ron and Lavender get back together. Ginny and Luna start dating. Ron and Lavender break up. Hermione and Blaise Zabini, of all people, come out as a couple right before Winter Hols, only for Blaise to come back in the New Year single and smug and smirking, and Hermione to have eloped with Draco Bloody Malfoy. Daphne Greengrass gets disinherited for falling in love with Anthony Goldstein (a pairing Neville never saw coming, who even are those people), Dean and Seamus celebrate their three year anniversary (surprising most everyone but Neville), and Ron and Lavender proceed to break up and get back together at every opportunity presented.
And then there’s Theo and Harry—who spend the whole year being perfectly perfect and stupidly in love and Neville gets so accustomed to them being joined at the hip that he doesn’t ever ask how their relationship developed in the first place.
—
He ends up getting over it. To an extent.
It’s a little lonely, to be the only single person in your friend group, all while not looking or wanting or waiting for love, but he’s content, all things considered. There’s usually a prize for patience anyway.
After losing his virginity to Hannah Abbott and successfully evading her nearly-endless attempts to rope him into a betrothal, he dates casually. For fun, rather than as a quest to find the one . His days are spent with witches and warlocks and muggles alike, but he finds he never quite clicks with anybody that stirs his soul—almost as if dating is a language and he has no idea how to speak it.
But it doesn’t really bother him, not like loneliness has in the past, especially since nobody he’s met makes sense in the context of his tattoo.
He still isn’t sure what exactly the words on his arm mean—will his soulmate say them to him? Is it something he’s even supposed to understand? Much like dating, and life in general, it makes no sense why he is left to interpret it.
—
One thing he does know how to interpret though, are his feelings. Luna would say he’s something of an old soul, which is probably why he’s not scared of not yet knowing the identity of his soulmate, or why he doesn’t feel like an incomplete puzzle at any given moment.
That realization, combined with his love for plants and the pressure from the newly-wedded Potter-Notts, pushes him to start a business of his own—to something solely for himself. He originally planned to keep it contained to growing medicinal plants and supporting endangered species, but eventually found fluency in the language of flowers.
—
When his nan's funeral takes place on a dreary October afternoon, her casket is surrounded by chrysanthemums for mourning and carnations for remembrance.
—
Eventually, he gains fame because of his florals. Enough so, that, when one of the most highly anticipated weddings of the modern era falls through, the Prophet asks for his comment on each and every bouquet exchanged between the couple throughout their very-public courtship.
Flowers, much like love and romance and the entire concept of soulmates and the specifics of life itself, don’t mean everything. The shape of the petals and the duration of bloom don’t change anything about the nature of one’s relationship, or one’s ability to love and be loved in return.
That being said, despite being alone, nothing is missing from Neville’s life. He’s eight thousand nine hundred and sixty two days old, and although alone, he’s content that what needs to happen will happen.
And then when, two days after the article is published, recently jilted bride Pansy Parkinson storms into his shop, tosses a handful of galleons on the counter and demands a bouquet, snarling how do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower? his jaw drops and his tattoo pulses and he gets the general sense that life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.