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Neville didn’t dislike weddings, exactly. He liked seeing his friends happy. He liked the food–especially when a Weasley was involved. Mrs. Weasley was the best chef he knew. He liked the flowers.
The flowers were turning out to be a problem, though. Because last month, for Luna and Ginny’s wedding, he’d agreed to do all of their flower arrangements. They were trying to keep the costs down, they explained, and they were hoping he might be able to help them pick out something that would look nice without too much expense. Luna would prefer that they be live plants–she didn’t much like the idea of killing things for what was supposed to be a happy day, and Neville agreed.
So he worked with Professor Sprout and figured out a nifty way to enchant some pots with an extending charm, so that you could fit more roots in there then their size implied, allowing for gorgeous living displays that took up no more room on the tables than vases. It wasn’t a great way to grow things permanently but it worked perfectly for events.
And since then, he’d spent the past month getting requests to do flowers for events every single day. Mostly weddings. The last of the war funerals had finished, and now everyone was turning to happier pursuits, and that meant weddings. It seemed like the whole Wizarding World had decided to get married this summer, and half of them had decided to ask Neville to do their flowers. His fellow Gryffindors, he expected. The Hufflepuffs weren’t a surprise, either, considering he’d been in Herbology alongside them so they knew his skills. But he was the only pureblood in the business, apparently, so the latest letter he’d opened came from Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode, offering him significantly more Galleons than any other patrons he’d had if he would provide flowers for their ceremony in Slytherin colors. He hadn’t decided if he was going to take it yet.
The business wasn’t the problem. He liked growing and arranging the flowers. He liked staying busy. The problem was that everyone at the weddings knew him, since he was a war hero now, somehow, and they kept coming up to him. And asking him things.
Things like, “When is it your turn?”
“When should we expect your announcement?”
“What flowers will you have at your wedding? Are they going to be like this, or have you planned a surprise for it?”
He shrugs them off. But similar questions have been running through his own head.
Because he had thought it was the war. He’d seen Parkinson and Bulstrode making out in the corridors after curfew, seventh year, when he was trying to sneak out to get healing supplies from the Hospital Wing. (Madam Pomfrey left her cabinets unlocked for him, but he had to fetch the supplies himself, to give her plausible deniability.) So he knew that other people got this whole romance thing. But they were Slytherins. They were protected. He was trying to keep dozens of kids alive, holding Hogwarts on his shoulders–it was no wonder that he hadn’t time for things like snogging.
But now the war is over. And he thought it was going to be the same after. That everyone was going to be too overwhelmed, now that You Know Who was dead, to just go back to normal. But they were. Everyone was getting married, except him.
It could have been the war. He thought his friends would understand, if he said he wasn’t ready yet. That he’d lost too much to be ready for something new.
He thought, sometimes in the dark of night, that it could also be his parents. They loved each other, of course they did. But they hadn’t been able to model that love for him. Not the way Molly and Arthur Weasley did for their kids, or the way all the other pureblood kids he had grown up with did. His grandmother had loved her wife, once, but she had died years before Neville was born, so he never saw that either. And he thought that had broken him, maybe.
But as the months passed, none of that seemed quite right. He didn’t feel broken. He didn’t even feel overwhelmed, not anymore. He couldn’t think of anything that was stopping him from going out and finding someone to marry.
He just didn’t really want to.
It would be nice to have an answer to the endless questions. But that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to go out and get married.
The only trouble was, ‘I don’t want to’ didn’t feel like a good enough reason not to, either.
Ginny picked up on his tension eventually. Of course she did–they’d all gotten very good at reading each other’s needs, those last few months of the war. “Hey, Neville?” she asked, when he’d come over for lunch at her and Luna’s apartment. “Are you… doing alright?”
Luna answers before Neville can figure out what to say. “No, I don’t think so. Too many things between his ears.”
Ginny nods. “Care to share any of those thoughts? You know you can talk to me. I know it’s an adjustment, leaving Hogwarts and with Luna and I married, but I don’t care about you any less than when we were living in the Room of Requirement together.”
“I just… everyone’s getting married. And I don’t want to.”
“There’s no one you’re interested in right now, or you don’t want to ever?” Ginny asks.
“Hmm. There’s no one I’m interested in now, for sure. But also… there’s maybe more than that? I don’t… it seems like, if I was going to fall in love, I would have already. I can’t picture being closer to anyone than I am to my friends. I mean, we fought a war together.”
“It’s not closer, exactly,” Ginny says. “I’m not closer to Luna. It’s just… different? I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Our cupids match,” Luna says. “So they get really excited when we’re together. But not everyone has cupids. A lot of people do, but not everyone. So maybe you don’t have any, or maybe you haven’t found a match yet. I’m not sure. They’re invisible, you know.”
“So I might be missing something? Is what you’re saying?”
“Not missing. If you don’t have them, it’s because you’re not supposed to have them,” Luna says firmly. “They’re very particular; it wouldn’t be good for them to live in the wrong environment.”
“How do I know if I have them or not?”
“Usually, they’ll get a little bit excited when you meet someone with similar cupids, even if it’s not exactly a match. You might feel your stomach get twisty, or your face might get red and hot, and you might be drawn towards or away from a specific person. Have you ever felt like that?”
Neville thinks for a minute, but none of that sounds familiar to him. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Then you probably don’t have them. It’s okay!” Luna says. “You know, I don’t have lust-bunnies, myself. I was confused when everyone else’s woke up and they started mating. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.”
“Yeah, and I do have lust-bunnies, but we still get on fine,” Ginny adds. “Whatever you want, you can find a way to make it work. When you were little, I’m sure you didn’t think you’d become a hero of Gryffindor, right? But you’re strong and brave and you can do whatever you put your mind to.”
“Yeah. You’re right, both of you. Thank you for explaining it to me.”
“Of course!” they both say. They really are matching. Then Luna steps away to make tea, and Ginny starts slicing bread for sandwiches. Without saying it, they’re giving him a minute to breathe.
He’s glad his feelings aren’t because of the war. He’s glad this is just him. This isn’t one more thing that’s been taken from him. This is just one more thing that he never had. And that’s okay. He’s learned to be okay with all the things he never had, because he has all the things that matter. Like Luna, and Ginny, and the rest of his friends, and his gran, and his flowers, and enough money to take care of all of the above.
At the Parkinson-Bulstrode wedding, he gets approached again. Not even by someone he knows. By one of Parkinson’s American cousins, who somehow thinks she has the right to business that is his and only his. “So, I hear you’re still a bachelor. Something you’re looking for that you haven’t found yet? I could help you.”
He smiles at her. It’s not his smile, though. It’s borrowed from Ginny, the smile she makes right before she catches the Snitch. “No, thank you. I don’t have cupids, and I’m perfectly happy the way I am. I have everything I need.” The cousin looked at him strangely, but he didn’t mind. He knew he was right, on all three counts.