Neville Longbottom felt very lucky that he'd been invited to the baptism of Harry's baby. He considered Harry to be his best friend. Neville had really grown up alone. Oh, every once in a while his gran would invite some one his age to visit, but for the most part Neville had played around his family's manor alone. When he got to Hogwarts though, things were different. He didn't really know how to start making friends. He'd met Hermione on the train, and she'd helped him look for Trevor, but that wasn't really making friends.
He'd lived in the dorm room with Harry, Dean, Seamus, and Ron, but he'd been too shy to really make friends at first. It wasn't until Hermione moved in and came up with her beat the Ravenclaws at their own game studying plan that he'd really became friends with anyone. Hermione was a force of nature when it came to studying, and somehow Neville had ended up being the goto person for Herbology. That's when he really started to become a friend, not just someone who lived in the same room.
Harry and Hermione were a couple, though they had at times denied it. Both of them wanted friends, Lavender had once said it was an almost desperate want, though, and close ones. Ron had been the first, and sometimes still they were referred to as the trio. It wasn't really a trio though. Dean, Seamus, and Ron were more of a trio, now; especially with how involved the three were in playing football. Neville wasn't as athletic as those three. He often found himself sitting with Hermione or watching her for Harry when he had Quidditch practice. Harry had been a bit protective of Hermione since he'd found out that she was having his baby. Neville wondered if he'd still be that way now that Jimmy had been born.
Being there when Harry finished playing Quidditch had led to a lot of conversations between the two, making Neville feel closer to Harry than any of the other boys in Gryffindor. He wasn't sure if Harry felt the same, but to Neville, Harry was his best friend. So he was glad to be at the Friary Church that morning, and now attending the picnic in Hermione's back yard. His mum was with him.
Mum, that was someone he'd longed to really have. She'd been in Saint Mungo's for most of Neville's life. Now that she wasn't, he was learning what it really meant to have a mother. She'd fussed over his muggle suit, adjusting its fit, and wondering about its appropriateness. Neville had to tell her that Harry wanted his friends in either navy or gray, and he liked the gray. He'd worn his Gryffindor tie, just like Dean and Ron had, though both of them had chosen navy suits. He suspected that Ron's was transfigured. Dad had complained that he didn't get to help Neville with his tie, but Neville really relished his mum's attention in the morning. Getting up at six wasn't really how he wanted to start his summer holidays, but he'd do that for having breakfast with his mother.
Now though, the suit had been discarded in favor of a swimming suit and a t-shirt. The t-shirt had been borrowed from Harry. His mother had apparently thought that he'd be wearing the t-shirt under his dress shirt, and Neville hadn't put that on. So Harry had offered him the red Vauxhall t-shirt, explaining that the Granger family was a bit fanatical about the auto brand. Neville wasn't sure exactly what an auto brand was, but he thought the silver logo was rather appropriate for a Gryffindor.
As he stepped out into the Granger's back garden, Neville caught a whiff of the grill. They were having something called hamburger for lunch. The back garden was filled with Hermione's friends from both Hogwarts and Crawley. There was a pool, a rectangular above ground one, currently filled with a bunch of Hermione's friends from Crawley, and someone had set up a back garden badminton set. He wanted to head over to where Harry was watching Ron and Seamus challenge Ginny and Hermione in badminton, but his mother intercepted him.
"Tuck your shirt in, Nev," his mum said, as she stood in front of him, interrupting his view of Ginny and her very distracting bikini.
"Mum, we don't tuck t-shirts in anymore," Neville said, as his mum ruffled his hair. "And I'm just going to take it off when I get in the pool.
His mum looked around, then smiled. "I guess you have to fit in," she said before pulling a stack of pictures out of her purse. "Now, if you'll introduce me to Harry, I have some pictures to show my godson."
"Mum, there are muggles here," Neville whispered.
"Don't worry, they've been properly charmed," his mum said.
Neville led his mum over to Harry. "Harry," he said, causing his friend to look away from where he was obviously admiring Hermione. Hermione was wearing a bikini, which he'd been told was a modest one, or at least that's what she'd called it when they were defusing Mrs. Weasley's reaction to Ginny's. You could still tell that she was recovering from her pregnancy, in the roundness of her once pregnant belly, but it was obvious that she'd been working to reduce that. Little Jimmy was laying in a baby carriage next to Harry. Harry's left hand was resting on the edge of that carriage.
"Neville, care to join me to play the winners?" Harry asked.
"Maybe," Neville began, glancing over at Hermione and Ginny again. Ginny's bikini was practically painted on compared to what he normally saw witches wear swimming. "Harry, this is my mother, Alice Longbottom."
"Mrs. Longbottom," Harry acknowledged, nodding his head slightly.
"Neville has told me a lot about you," Neville's mother said. "I admit to considering going to Little Whinging and cursing your Aunt and Uncle. Be assured that as your godmother, I will not allow any such return to those bloody bastards."
"Mum!" Neville responded. He'd never expected to hear his mother cursing. It didn't quite fit with the image of a mother that he'd built up in his mind over the years.
"Don't tell me you haven't heard those words before, Neville," his mother remarked. "You did have a year at Hogwarts, and I doubt the dorms have changed a bit from when I was there. The boys were always cursing, not so we'd ever tell on them to our parents, though I did hold Frank's dirty mouth over his head a few times when we were dating. Anyway, Harry, I brought a large collection of pictures of you and your parents from back before Frank and I were cursed. I might have included the great toddler bath escape in Longbottom manor."
"Oh no," Neville said, remembering the picture of he and Harry giggling while running wet and naked from his gran, who had apparently volunteered to wash the pair. It was one, if not the, most embarrassing pictures that Neville knew of. "If she's included it, you'll want to destroy it or at least hide it, Harry. And promise me that if you don't, it never gets to Hogwarts."
"What's this, you've got embarrassing pictures of Harry?" Hermione asked, the game apparently over. She took the pictures from Neville's mother. "Revenge is mine."
Neville looked at Harry, a question on his lips. He didn't have to ask.
"Hermione, dancing with a broom, just wearing a colander as a hat," Harry supplied. "I actually thought it was cute, but she finds it embarrassing ... or was it bare assing."
"Harry!" Hermione said. It looked like she and Ginny had just won. "I told you about those embarrassing pictures. They're not to be known. And once I find yours, you'll realize why."
"I doubt it. It will kind of be nice to have pictures like that, like everyone else does," Harry said wistfully.
When Neville looked back at his mother, he saw an expression that he'd seen on her way too much. He knew the next words out of her mouth by heart. You just had to swap names and a few things, to get what he'd been hearing since the day his parents had left Saint Mungo's.
"Harry, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you," his mother said, her hand reaching down to grasp Harry's. Her voice dropped down to almost a soft sob. "I should have been there for you, when your parents were gone."
"I know you couldn't," Harry said. "At least I know why you couldn't. I don't know what happened to my godfather. Father Ed doesn't know what happened to Sirius Black, either."
"I'm not sure either, but I'll find out for you," Neville's mother said, enveloping Harry in that bent over from the side hug that Neville had grown so used to her giving him.
Neville was sure that if his mother had hugged Harry like that when he'd started Hogwarts, Harry would have found it uncomfortable. Thanks to Hermione's hugs, that was no longer quite true. There was still just a slight twitch of Harry's shoulders as Neville's mother tightened her hug, but the smile on Harry's face was large and echoed the one on Neville's own.