Neville. My Neville.

Chapter 8

Today is Neville's birthday. His Grandma and I have been planning a surprise birthday party for him. She had sent him to do Merlin knows what and said it should take him a few hours. In the meantime, I baked his favorite cake, banana, and his Grandmother decorated the living room and dining room. Once we each finished what we were doing, I went and got his presents and set them on the table. I went outside and found him sitting up in a tree. "Love! Come down from there! And please don't hurt yourself." He came down and asked what I needed. I told him to turn around and when he did I wrapped a blindfold around his eyes and startled him when doing so. "Woah! Love! What are you doing?" "You'll see." I walked him inside and took off his blindfold. Augusta yelled "SURPRISE!" Neville looked around in what I could only make out to be pure shock. "Love, are you ok? Don't you like it?" He nodded and sat down and put his head in his hands. I sat down next to him and began comforting him. He looks up and apologizes, "I'm so sorry. I just never imagined turning 17 without my parents. I mean I knew it was going to happen but I just never thought about it and it just hit me." "I'm so sorry, Love. But hey, I'm here Augusta's here and we can go visit your parents today if you want." "Yeah. I think I'd like that."
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The rest of the party goes rather smoothly. We decided that since I can apparate, we'd just apparate to St. Mungos. We made it there without anyone getting splinched. We walk in and the nurse behind the receptionist desk sees Neville and knows exactly who we're here for. She walks us back to the Janus Thickey Ward. Neville points out his parents and we walk towards their beds and sit on the two stools in between them. He turns to his mother and says "Mum, I know you probably don't remember but today's my birthday. I'm of age today. I practically had a mental breakdown this morning because I wasn't prepared to have this birthday without you and Dad. Also, you probably won't remember this after today, but here it goes. This is my girlfriend, Y/N." He motioned for me to come closer to him. I noticed that the woman he was talking to looked dazed and confused the entire time. She reached over to the table next to her bed and grabbed a candy wrapper and put it in his hand. Neville closed his hand on it and chuckled. "Thanks mum." She muttered something that was inaudible and Neville nodded and led me out. "This is the 14th one she's given me. She has given me one every time I came to see her on my birthday since I was 4. I've kept them all in a little box underneath my bed. Most people might see them as trash but they're all I have of Mum at home." "That's sweet, Love. I'm glad you have something from her that means something to you."
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Today our Hogwarts letters came. We were going into our final year. While most people looked forward to their final year, I didn't because I just really didn't have a good feeling about it. Not because it was 7th year, but because of a reason I don't know. It could have been because Snape was headmaster now. He also had a house preference but it was the complete opposite of Dumbledore's. We decided to go get our things from diagon alley that day. When we got to Diagon Alley, we noticed a shop we had never seen before but I knew exactly who's shop it was and not just because there was a giant statue of a familiar ginger out front. "Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Is that the twins' shop?" "Yes. Yes it is." I ran inside to see a very chaotic scene. Bubbles coming from nowhere floating around everywhere, and the twins running around making sure people don't test out the crazy candies before buying them. I bought a couple of candies just for the heck of it and we moved on to get our books. We also bought Neville a new cauldron for potions because Merlin knows he's going to mess up the one he has.
------------THE NEXT DAY------------
We woke up early that morning because we had to get all our stuff packed back up and make it to platform 9 ¾ before 11. We left the house at about 10:30 leaving us with plenty of time to spare. We arrived at Kings Cross with about 10 minutes to spare. We got onto platform 9 ¾ and even the train looked different. I was starting to put more stock into my bad feeling about this year. We loaded our things onto the train and boarded. Everything looked noticeably darker. Snape really was going to ruin this year.
Word count: 839
A/N: It starts to get pretty dark from here. I hope you are all enjoying my story!