TAKE ME WHERE THE FUTURE LIES

Name: Neville Francis Longbottom
Age: 20
Former House: Gryffindor
Wand: 11 inch, cherry with unicorn hair
Patronus: It's weak, and he still struggles to conjure it, but with the help of the DA, Neville can now produce a patronus in the shape of a horse. In many cultures, the horse symbolises strength, nobility, purity, and companionship. It's also often looked at as a symbol of war.
Boggart: The days of Neville's Severus Snape Boggart are long past. Since his third year, he's met and faced a much more formidable enemy: his boggart now takes the shape of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Political view: Neville is completely, one-hundred percent loyal to the Order. Though there've been times where he's been fearful of the actual fighting, or uncertain about his place in it all, he's never once wavered in his stance against You Know Who.
Sexuality: Heterosexual
PB: Dan Stevens.

PERSONALITY

Neville will never be called a genius, either intellectually or emotionally. He's still very much coming into his own as a person, and as a wizard. Clumsy, awkward, naive, and innocent, Neville is easily tricked by his less-compassionate peers. He's also every bit as forgetful as he was as a boy. Carrying around a remembrall never helped, so he switched to trying to write things down. This worked fairly well, unless Neville needed to remember something much later. Then he'd often misplace the notes. He finally got around this when Hermione helped him to learn to record the memory into a quill. With a simple incantation, he was often able to have the quill write what he'd written no matter how long ago he'd done so. The muggle trick of tying a string around his finger was a bit of a help as well.

Despite his faults, however, Neville has many positives working in his favour. He's nothing if not determined. Though he had many shortcomings growing up, Neville worked as hard as he could to overcome them. In some ways, constantly being compared to his father was detrimental, but, for the most part, it was beneficial. Neville used Frank Longbottom for the role model he was, aspiring and working twice as hard to be worthy of being just like him. Though his aspiration was never to be an Auror (and how could it be, with his terrible marks in Potions?), he did strive to be just as capable in his own field-Herbology. He's spent years trying to become the kind of wizard his dad would be proud of.

Still extremely shy, Neville has nevertheless come into his own a great deal. His magic is nowhere near on level with most qualified wizards, but he's come to accept it. Instead of focusing on his weaknesses, he plays up his strengths. Neville knows his strong points are Herbology, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he plays them up. He can actually brew a fairly decent potion without anyone breathing down his neck or barking orders at him, and though his transfiguration is still weak, he still occasionally practises to try and improve at least a little.

Neville is, however, still very insecure. He's quiet unless he's around friends, he still stammers when confronted with enemies, and above all, he fears rejection. It's the reason he's never had a real girlfriend and the reason that he's slow to make new friends. Beneath his inhibited exterior, however, Neville is actually extremely friendly. Once you make a friend of him, you've made one for life, and he's not likely to let small grievances or grudges get in his way. He's viciously loyal and will die for his friends, no matter how much the idea scares him. He's also not much of a rebel, choosing instead to stick to tried and true methods and following rules. Unless it's something that his friends drag him into: Neville's also a bit of a pushover.

HISTORY

Neville Francis Longbottom is the only son of Hufflepuff Alice Johanssen and Gryffindor Frank Longbottom. Their story is a well-known one, but Neville repeats it rarely, if ever. Mere months after the fall of Lord Voldemort, Frank and Alice, both Aurors were cornered by Death Eaters while in Diagon Alley. Both were threatened by Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan Lestrange, and Barty Crouch Jr. The foursome believed the Longbottoms knew the whereabouts of Voldemort since his defeat by the infant Harry Potter. When the couple couldn't answer their questions, Bellatrix fired the first curse. And didn't stop. Long after the Cruciatus would've driven most people through more pain than they could imagine, the Death Eaters were finally caught and captured. But it was far too late for the Longbottoms.

For the first few years of his life, Neville was tossed back and forth between family members, willing to take him in. However, when Alice's mother died, her father couldn't take care of the baby himself. It was then that final custody of young Neville went to his grandmother and grandfather, Frank's parents Augusta and Samuel Longbottom. Samuel died when Neville was only seven, and Neville was by his bedside when it happened. The boy didn't even try to hide his tears, no matter how many people told him to suck it up, that boys didn't cry. He simply wasn't a hard-hearted type, and even as an adult is more sensitive than most.

Compared to most of his friends, Neville was a definite late bloomer as far as his magical abilities. He wasn't, however, as deficient as his family thought. His moments of magic were tiny, and visible only if one was paying attention. Fixing colouring book pages where he'd coloured outside of the lines. Making the flowers he'd picked for Gran a bit brighter. There was never anything obvious enough for anyone to realise he wasn't a Squib. Not until the now-famous incident where his Great Uncle held him out the window and dropped him. The magic mostly appeared when Neville would get emotional, and even now, his magic is stronger during emotional bursts, whether positive or negative.

Like almost all wizards his age, Neville got his Hogwarts invitation letter shortly after his eleventh birthday. The family celebrated, his Gran took him to Diagon Alley for his books, and for once, Neville felt truly normal. He even made a special trip to St. Mungo's to tell his parents, despite Gran's insistence that they wouldn't know one way or the other. He got on the train that first day, Trevor the toad clutched in his nervous and shaking hands, and found a compartment with the first person sitting alone he could find. The trip to school was filled with a million and ten facts about Hogwarts and the wizarding world, some which even he, as a pureblood, didn't know. Hermione Granger was packed full of facts, and while most considered her to have an ego, Neville was more than happy to listen because it meant he'd made a friend.

His first few years at Hogwarts were quiet, but happy. Along with Hermione, Neville found himself making tentative friends with the other boys in Gryffindor tower. The girls he was much more wary of, and he tended to keep his distance. Except for Ginny Weasley. Ginny saw herself as an outsider, as well, and she and Neville quickly became friends. Even later, as they both started to find their way, they remained close. Neville rode out both good and bad times those first years. Starting to tag along with Harry and his friends didn't usually help him any, as it landed him in the Forbidden Forest with Draco Malfoy, into fights with Crabbe and Goyle, and even petrified by Hermione herself. And that was all just first year!

But Neville did a lot of growing up, and quickly. By fourth year, he finally had the courage to ask Hermione to the Yule Ball. Yes, he was rejected, but he was proud of himself just for doing so. And, when she did turn him down in favour of Viktor Krum, he turned to his other good friend, Ginny. As a third year, Ginny wouldn't have gotten to go otherwise, and she accepted his offer. It led to a small, short-term crush on the redhead, but Neville eventually accepted that they were just friends, and that Ginny wasn't quite over Harry. Before long, she was officially seeing Michael Corner anyway.

It was Neville's fifth year when he truly began to come into his own, however. With the creation of Dumbledore's Army, Neville was able to tap into magical abilities he'd never truly had the power to before. With Harry's teaching and Hermione's help, he was learning charms, jinxes, and hexes like he'd only imagined. The escape of the criminals who'd driven his parents to insanity, however, caused Neville to double his efforts. Before long, he was performing even some of the most complicated magic. Not only did his magic improve that year, but he feels he improved as a person, as well. That was the year where he met and got to know Luna Lovegood. Her unique ways of thinking started Neville's brain working in ways it never had before. He also learned acceptance, as most would've shrugged off Luna's wild ideas, but he began to slowly take them in. All of this combined was what helped Neville during his most terrifying task to date: facing Bellatrix Lestrange one on one in the Department of Mysteries. He faced the Cruciatus for the first time, just as his parents had before him, but Neville held strong. With a broken nose, several hexes fired at him, and injured friends, Neville still stood by Harry right up until the very end of the battle.

People knew Neville was with Harry and the others that night. Though tragedy struck, he couldn't help but feel just a little bit excited. For the first time in a very long time, his grandmother openly showed pride in him. She kept saying things about how like his father he was getting, or how much he was growing to look like his mother. She even bought him a new wand, which turned out to possibly be the last Olivander sold before he was kidnapped. It was, as far as Neville was concerned, the start of an amazing term.

When he got there, however, he learned how wrong he was. The DA, which had been such a crutch for him the previous year, wasn't going to be meeting any longer. He thought he'd gotten away from Severus Snape by doing poorly on his potions OWL, but instead found him teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, which Neville had been looking forward to. All he really had were the friendships he'd already developed, and even those seemed to be dwindling, with everyone seeming so distracted all the time. Neville clung as much as he could to friendships with Luna, Ginny, Hermione, Harry, and Ron, even though the others all seemed to be getting on with their lives. Everything changed for good, however, when Death Eaters invaded Hogwarts. Neville, who'd been carrying around the coin once used to summon the DA faithfully, felt Hermione request his help. And, just as he'd done a year ago, Neville showed up at the sides of his friends to help fight Death Eaters. He was injured in the battle, but didn't regret his decision.

He wasn't surprised when his friends left during seventh year to work to fight Voldemort. More than once he considered following, but he knew he would be more helpful after becoming a fully qualified wizard. He did fairly well on his NEWTs, getting an O in Herbology, and an E in the other exams he'd taken. And it was then that Neville decided to fully throw himself into the Order. He helps in any way he can, though he still feels inferior compared to the friends that he feels are more talented and more brave than he is.

Along with his Order work, Neville also works at Magical Menagerie on Diagon Alley. He's still got a knack for Herbology, but currently uses that to provide plants and herbs for his friends and family who are better at potion brewing than he is, including those for the Order. At Magical Menagerie, he assists with selling magical creatures, and the means to take care of them. Ever since his toad Trevor died during seventh year, he's been longing for something else, and working at the shop doesn't help that urge.

Working in Diagon Alley also puts him much closer to St. Mungo's. Much to his grandmother's dismay, Neville finds himself up in Ward 49 quite often after work, simply sitting and talking to his parents about the day's activities. He understands that they don't recognise him, but they do at least seem attentive when he's there, and he can't help but hope someday he'll break through the mental block they've been facing for almost twenty years. He's living in a small, one bedroom flat near the Leaky Cauldron, and though he misses his Gran, he doesn't miss her criticism or her constant scorn over his occasional bouts of pride and optimism.