Chapter Text
Living with his grandmother is a near-constant domination of himself. Frank was never overly interested in plants; when Neville first shows his curiosity, Augusta eyes him with something bordering distrust before she locks all the greenhouse doors and hides the key. When Neville’s Great Uncle Algie accidentally drops him out a window, he bounces.
Frank would have flown , Augusta says, and hands him his father’s wand. He wonders what he’s supposed to do with it… every book on magic he’s ever read said that you don’t need a wand, really, but it’s a focussing channel. Using another witch or wizard’s wand would do you no good, because each wand is near-uniquely suited to only a few people to ever live.
He takes it to the hospital and puts it in his father’s hands. They stare down at it together, and Frank says something garbled but deep, gaze flicking off to follow a squirrel that’s climbing a tree outside their window, and Alice laughs a little before stopping quickly, as though she’s frightened of being caught. Neville takes the wand with him when he leaves.
(He doesn’t tell Augusta he took it. He doesn’t tell the nurses about the sparks that flew from his father’s wand when the man held it, or the near-frustrated look that appeared on the man’s face afterwards.)
He goes to Ollivander’s secretly, gets his own wand and a wand holster with a holding pouch to place a second wand inside, special-made. His father’s wand, a piece of the man himself, will walk beside Neville every day of his schooling.
His grandmother buys him a toad, affecting a slightly-less-grumpy facade outside their home, but he can tell she’s disappointed in the way the cats weave away from his feet, how the owls coo and fly his letters willingly but don’t approach. She leaves too fast to hear the shopkeep’s confused explanations of how they’re usually so well-behaved, I wonder what’s gotten into them? And he sits still and quiet until she finishes packaging everything he’ll need for his new toad and then smiles and says, don’t worry about it. The vulture on her hat scares everyone away , and it startles a laugh out of her.