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I. Our Plates
It started, as many things did, with the war.
Neville knew he had never been the smartest of wizards, nor the strongest, nor even the most creative, but if he knew anything, it was a planting schedule. With skills he had honed since he first toddled into the greenhouses of the Longbottom Estate, Neville could plan out exactly what he needed to do and when to get every seed in every plot, just in time for the best possible harvest each year. He could weigh which plots had become nitrogen-depleted in the previous season against the blood moon that would grace the skies in late August and time the mid-season planting just so, and always be certain he could finish the second harvest before September 1.
And well, it just so happened that the most important part of running an army — more important than casting strong spells or distributing shield charms or even leading a brave charge — was the logistics of coordinating precisely who needed what where and when: making sure the freshly brewed potions resupplied the safe houses just before they were needed after a battle, making sure everyone knew who to talk to if they needed help and how to escalate their concerns, knowing precisely which resources were available to him and where, and most importantly of all, making sure everyone got fed.
“No, Ginny, you really can’t just multiply the potatoes indefinitely, Merlin.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? Luna said Hermione was stretching their rice last I heard—”
“And I’m sure it nicely distracts them from what they’re actually doing, which is starving.” Neville barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes at her shocked gasp. “This isn’t news, Ginny,” he tried more softly. “Food can’t be duplicated indefinitely, Hermione knows that. Just like she knows how their wand use is being tracked and how to put up whatever wards they need to stay safe, she knows this too.”
“That’s fine and all,” Ginny huffed, “but if you won’t let me multiply the food, then what are we supposed to do? We’ve got a dozen kids hiding in the Room of Requirement now, and the house elves are being watched too closely to get away with asking them to make any extras for much longer, and I know there’s that passage to Aberforth’s that they don’t know about, but he can’t keep feeding this many of us night after night. If nothing else, a Death Eater will get curious about where he keeps disappearing to, and then everything will be blown, our hiding spot included. So tell me, what can we do?”
Which was how Neville found himself outside the school, one or two DA members already disillusioned behind him, apparating out to the muggle grocery stores night after night. They gathered rice and lentils and oats in large canvas sacks, tomatoes and broth and every kind of bean in tins he kept carefully stacked in a designated section of the Room of Requirement, and those few luxuries he couldn’t bear to let the children keep going without: a bar of chocolate, a bag of hard sweets, cans of long-lasting milk for their tea or porridge.
As the year went on, their stores steadily increased, until he had enough tins and dried goods hidden away to feed his army for a week, a month, and finally a year if he really had to. He kept up the grocery runs, even after Harry was spotted riding a dragon out of Gringotts, even after the end was in sight, even afer they claimed the war was over, because how could he really know for sure? How could he trust that what they claimed was the end was truly the end, and not just a pause for now?
So he stayed ready. He kept up the store at Hogwarts, but added his own stash to the long-disused basement below Longbottom Manor. Little did he know that the others of his people, of the DA who had worked with him and the children they’d fed, had chosen to do the same.
II. Our Lands
Years passed.
Wounds healed, or so it appeared to most. Arrests were made, shops reopened, and life went on, but not as it always had, not quite.
“Ginny?” he asked, straightening from where he’d been pulling weeds in the Hogwarts gardens as a favor for Professor Sprout and taking off his gloves. “What brings you here?”
“Have you heard?” she asked, her eyes darting around, catching sight of a group of Seventh Years a few paces away, chatting as they sat against an old oak tree.
“Heard what?” he asked.
“Italy just reported to the IGC about their FeverFew harvest for the summer. It’s an all-time low. Again.”
“Hmm,” Neville replied, unsurprised. It fit too well, unfortunately, with his own rather lackluster efforts this year.
“Hermione is in a tizzy, but there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the sixth year in a row of record-low production, and they’ve said the Queen’s stockpile is too diminished to adequately cover the potions needs of her people. They’re refusing to export.”
“That’s… unfortunate,” Neville said carefully.
“Unfortunate! It’s a disaster! The big three magical schools have all just started for the year, so Dragon Pox Cures are having their annual spike in demand, not to mention cold and flu season is just around the corner, and the most important ingredient for all of them is completely off the shelves!”
“Hmm.”
“I heard Timothy, the new clerk at Slug and Jiggers, you know, saying that just yeserday Astoria Malfoy was in, offering a thousand galleons for all the FeverFew they had, their entire stock. And they gave it to her! I couldn’t believe it.”
“It’s not just FeverFew that’s getting harder to grow,” Neville said, the words tumbling out before he could really think them through. “Nor is it just Italy having problems. Norway stopped exporting Mandrake Root a decade ago, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ribbon’s Weft sold in London at any price, and I’ve been having a harder and harder time finding Gilly Weed when I need it, too. Even the Whomping Willow isn't doing well, I’ve been picking up more and more shed branches from her lately.”
“Have you?” Ginny said, an odd look in her eyes as she turned her head to the tree and studied it. “I thought it had been looking a little thin lately, but well, I convinced myself that surely it couldn’t be so. Who ever heard of a magical tree simply dying, out of nowhere? Especially with you to look after it, and Professor Sprout?”
“Yes…” Neville mused, studying the tree as well. “Who ever heard of such a thing…”
“I should get back to Hermione,” Ginny said, wringing her hands now. “I only wanted to see if you knew anything.”
“Nothing specific, I’m afraid,” he said with a small smile. “Only that the season here has been just as bad, and it’s only been getting worse year by year.”
“She won’t like to hear that.”
“No, I suspect not. But there is an alternative you could try, I’m surprised Hermione didn’t suggest it herself.”
“Oh?” Ginny asked, hope lighting her eyes.
“Yes, ask her about where to find some paracetamol, it’s a kind of Fever Reducer Potion muggles use; she should know what kind of stores carry it. Or if you’re really in a pinch, you could try whipping up some willow bark tea. Ask around about dosage from someone who was better at Potions than me though, one of the Patils maybe, or I think Zabini was decent?”
“Paracetamol, willow bark tea,” she repeated to herself. “Paracetamol, willow bark tea. Thank you, Neville. Just… thank you.”
She tugged him into a quick, close hug before stepping back, her hands firmly on his shoulders.
“Really Neville, you are a life saver. I’ve got to go, but thank you.”
With one more hug she left, trodding through the fields to the edge of the Hogwarts wards where she could apparate away. And as she left, Neville thought, a quiet worry growing in his breast.
III. Our Hearths
From there, the problems grew more and more numerous, until it seemed that someone was coming to him for something new each day. Another magical animal gone extinct, another critical potions ingredient dwindled to nothing, another threat to his people coming from every direction all at once.
They still were his people, at least in his head. Despite how much time had passed, despite the way they’d grown up and moved on and grown so independent now, raising children of their own, at the end of the day, they were still his and he was still theirs.
So when they came to him with their problems, he did what he could to answer them, and those stashes he’d not-so-secretly been keeping all this time continued to grow as well, stocked now with not just a mountain of food sufficient to feed a hundred people for a hundred years, but also with clothes and medicine and soap and water and on and on, everything he could think of that his people might need.
When they came to him hungry, he showed them how to navigate a muggle grocery, and when they came to him sick, he showed them the muggle drugs that could replace the potions they were more familiar with, and when they came to him cold, he offered them a place in his home, because what was the point in having hundreds of empty rooms in that manor if not to fill them with the people he cared for?
And when they came to him with the problem of dropping fertility, of so few new infants being born each year, of so few of them being magical, of how their numbers were so small, how compared to the muggles who multiplied so fast, it was only a matter of time before wizards might as well not exist at all… Then, Neville had to research.
Unlike the rest, it was not a problem he already knew the solution to, and so he had to dig. First, he dived into the medicine, to see if St. Mungo’s or Maximilian’s or St. Ygritte’s Magical Hospitals knew anything of the cause, or anything of the solutions. When that failed, he checked the muggle world, only to see that by and large their fertility was fine, that any drop in birth rates could be explained as the result of medicines they chose to take or muggle culture changing over time or any number of other voluntary actions. Finally, he dug into his library, where Longbottoms of old had recorded their lives, their problems, and what solutions they had found for them.
It was there he found the journal of Gerald Longbottom, the sole Longbottom survivor of the Great Purge of 1611, and his unusual solution to just the same problem.
He knew it wasn’t ideal, and he knew that there would be pushback amongst his people, especially among those who had been raised with muggles, or raised Christian, or considered themselves to be a more modern sort of witch.
But he also knew it could work.
He found evidence of just how well it could work in the Longbottom Family tree, which sprouted five new branches after five of Gerald’s sons, who continued producing an abundance of wizards in each of those lines for generations. He found it in the Black Family tree, a copy of which had been brought into the family library with his great-aunt when she married his great-uncle, and just like the Longbottoms, he saw the same solution after the Great Purge leading the family able to continue on for centuries thereafter without interruption. The Malfoys, the Prewetts, the Notts, the Weasleys, the Smiths… on and on, in every Noble House he checked, in every family name that survived, he found the same solution.
Knowing that, knowing how desperate his people were, knowing how much they needed this solution, he carefully organized his research and presented it to his people. They shouted, they raged, they looked into their own histories, their own families, and finally they put it to a vote.
The motion passed.
The next day at dawn, Neville did as his people asked of him. As the sun rose, he spoke his vows to one witch and then the next, down the entire line until he was wedded to all of them, all 67 of his people. Though some of his people left him over the action, moved out of his grounds or stopped talking to the others entirely, calling it too drastic or an abomination or even worse, it wasn’t long before his actions bore fruit. Over the next year, 13 healthy, magical infants were born at his manor, another 33 of his wives grew pregnant, and St. Mungo’s declared it a miracle.
It didn’t matter what they asked of him, Neville would do whatever his people needed him to do to secure their futures, and nothing would ever convince him otherwise.
IV. Our Gates
From then on, the Compound, as his people had taken to calling it, grew all at once from a simple manor home into almost a village. While some of his people chose to stay in the original house with him, others desired more privacy, building their own cottages on his lands to raise his children in twos and threes. A rotation was set up, to ensure he saw each of his wives at least once a month, and when new witches joined his people, he married them too, eager to share his blessings with them, to ensure that they too could have a part of building the next magical generation.
All was not perfect though.
Tensions were rising outside his gates, and there was very little he could do to stop it. Shortages of magical ingredients were causing riots and looting in every major magical city in the world, Diagon Alley included, and governments worldwide were ill-equipped to resolve the underlying fears. As in his youth, certain pureblood wizards had taken to blaming the muggleborns among them for their woes, and shockingly enough, they’d found a child of You Know Who to rally behind.
Worst of all, however, were the threats that reached towards his home directly, the wandering muggles who stumbled too close to his ward boundaries in their ever-increasing desire to clear the earth of its trees, and then refused to let it go when his wards prevented them from stepping onwards, refused to turn back home or continue their walk in another place.
One muggle became two, which soon became a team of seven permanently encamped not a five-minute walk from his boundary. When they failed to complete their task, whatever it was, within a month, the team grew to 20, then 50, and soon he could see muggles prodding at his metaphorical gates from every angle surrounding the property, trying uselessly to peer in at all hours of the day.
They grew from the initial surveyor, a muggle in a vest armed only with a pen and a clipboard, to a team armed with sledgehammers, to what could almost be called an army of men, well-trained and well-armored, and utterly relentless in their poking around at the edges of his property.
And then came the day one drew his gun.
Neville never knew what happened, why the muggle's weapon was drawn or why he’d shot it. All that mattered was that one moment, his little Lucille was chasing after her crup, Ladies Janine and Rose trailing along behind her, and the next, Lucille was lying dead among the trees.
That was the day that Neville decided never again. Those people would not be tolerated near his home any longer, nor would any in the future. If his wards were no longer strong enough, no longer magical enough to keep his precious daughter alive, then so be it, he would deploy muggle means instead.
That day, each of the 52 muggles outside his home got a shot to the head that matched dear Lucille’s, and that day his people declared war.
No longer would they live in fear, no longer would they die.
Neville would protect them.