Disclaimer: Not mine, of course!
A/N: I've had so much trouble acknowledging that this is the end, because I've loved writing this story, and I hope you've loved reading it. To everyone who's ever read, reviewed, alerted or favourited this story, thank you more than I can express! I wrote this longer chapter as a thank you. I tried to write what I think love is throughout this story; it's pain and sadness and joy and excitement, and I tried again to epitomise that in my finale. I hope so, so badly that you like it. To all those who've followed these story, this one's for you, with my sincerest thanks.

Hannah Abbott and Neville Longbottom

Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone - Leonard Cohen

Hannah is a fresh faced eighteen year old, with bags under her eyes, blood on her face and hope buried deep in her heart. It's cliché to say that she's seen so much because she hasn't. She's seen destruction and loss, but that's all. And that really isn't much. Her Hufflepuff heart tells her that things are going to get better in her life.

Over the year, the horrible, soul destroying year, it's Neville that she grows to love and to admire. He's the one that her Hufflepuff loyalty moves to. And they don't have anything immediately, but it's him who moves her shaking body to a nurse, and it's her shoulder he cries into when it all comes crashing down.

You're alive!

A few months after the war has finished, Neville has an apartment of his own and Hannah's been living in the Leaky Cauldron, in one of the rooms that Tom could be renting for far more money than she's paying for it. He never asks her to leave or to pay more. He just understands, and when she goes for days without coming out or getting anything to drink, he'll bring her up a meal in the evening and doesn't ask for knut in return.

Tom was her parent's friend, when they'd had been alive, and her mother had always told Hannah that if she was in trouble, she should go to Tom. Hannah isn't surprised.

Neville starts to come in and visit more often when she's helping Tom behind the bar (which she does, because he asks her to. Years later, Hannah realises that if he hadn't, she might never have recovered like she did, or as quickly as she managed), but she doesn't even notice until Tom points it out to her later.

They're sitting having a hot chocolate at the end of the day, and Tom points it out. Hannah blushes profusely and giggles nervously. But she hasn't felt quite so alive in almost a year.

The first time they are alone in his flat, somewhat accidentally, the air seems to crackle with fear and confusion. After they've been though so much, this should be easy. Hannah suddenly recalls her breakdown before her O.W.L.s, and feels just like that all over again.

She's an ordinary girl. She always has been, and she's always known it too. Why would Neville Longbottom (her friend, someone she admires, a hero of the entire wizarding world) want to have her in his apartment, after work?

But he wants her there, he assures her, and he's just as scared, just as excited as she is. They're the same, normal, wonderful person. Really, that might be why they work so well.

Still, he's not quite completely comfortable around her until she's met his parents. Poor Alice, and Silent Frank, about whom she's sympathetic and understanding (just like always), and after that, Neville smiles a lot more. So does Hannah.

Twenty-two, and she's working at the Leaky Cauldron, with Tom. She has amazing prospects, with her grades from school; she'd been offered jobs at the Ministry, that meant that she could be employed in a high profile, high paid position in a decade. But Tom offered her a job too; Tom, the man who has no one in the world, no real friendship besides hers, who has helped her so much. So she takes the job with Tom. She doesn't earn endless amounts of money, and she doesn't wear suit-robes and have a boss she can't stand.

It means that none of her friends from Hogwarts forget out her, because when they come in for lunch from their high-flying jobs, Hannah is there waiting with Pumpkin juice, a kind smile and a ready ear. Her friendships grow, and she is content.

Really, it comes as a delightful surprise when later, Neville suggests they get married right there in the pub. (And they do, Tom gives her away and their friends are there, and even though neither of them have biological family who can be there, they start this next stage of their lives with the people who've been their family since they can remember.)

I - I - Of course! Of course I'll marry you!

After her mother died, Hannah became scared, completely terrified of children. From the age of seventeen, Hannah had no mother, and she could hardly remember her father anyway.

There is an irrational, bitter disappointment on her tongue when the third, fourth, fifth tests come back positive too. Isn't this what most girls waited years for? She should feel excited, a great love for the foetus growing in her womb.

She doesn't. It doesn't feel real. Her stomach still looks the same as it did before, not quite flat, but not because there's a child growing there. She doesn't really recognise that there is any difference. But she's scared. More scared than she's ever been. More scared than she was in the final battle.

There's going to be someone relying completely and utterly on her and Neville, and she doesn't know how to do handle it. She feels selfish, because Neville's so happy, and she wants desperately to be happy too. Neville drops to his knees and hugs her around the stomach, and there's a tiny part of her that's glad of the tenderness, but her mind is overwhelmed by the dreadful fear that's wound tightly around her heart.

She doesn't know how either of them are going to manage to be parents at all.

Over the course of her pregnancy, her excitement does grow, but the fear doesn't leave her either. Every second she is consumed by the need to do this properly, to not do anything to damage their baby. Ginny Potter floats around easily with her pregnant stomach, looking radiant and carefree.

Even when her daughter (Alice Olivia Longbottom, they call her) is born, the fear doesn't go away. It gets worse, and she spends whole nights just watching her sleep, and if she didn't have Neville, then she doesn't think she'd be able to do this.

I- I'm pregnant.

Tom is Alice's godfather, and Luna is her godmother. Hannah loves their choice. Luna is great with Alice, she's a gentle and irreplaceable friend who both Hannah and Neville love like a sister.

The only time that Neville tells her off outright is when she tells him that Luna is better with Alice than she is. She doesn't know what leads her to say it; depression, exhaustion and years of not being good enough are hard to shake off. She knows that Neville appreciates that, but he is so cross with her. He says that he's watched her watching Alice, and no one else he knows would show that much care or love for the baby, no one will ever do what they do for her.

She storms off angrily to Tom at the pub, and spends the night there in one of his rooms. Tom doesn't say a word, he just lets her in, gives her hot chocolate and tells her to go to bed. She sleeps fitfully and leaves in morning without a word. She returns home, holds her Alice so close that she wets her crown with tears.

Neville hugs the two of them and they stay like that for a long time. Hannah can't ever, ever imagine leaving again. She can hardly remember, in that moment, what drove her to that anyway. She doesn't ever think of leaving again, because the prospect of a life with no Neville, and no Alice in it is too much to bear.

When Tom passes away, he leaves Hannah the pub. It's an incredible legacy to leave behind, and even though she misses Tom, who was a dear, dear friend to her for so many years, the pub is a part of him that's hers now.

Their home in Godric's Hollow is wonderful, it is. It's close to Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione, and not too far from Luna and Rolf, and all the children are there. But as soon as the pub is left to her, she wants that to be home. Though Neville is reluctant, he wants to make her happy, so they move their life to London.

They still see their friends frequently, and they see older friends too, who pass through the pub every day. And Hannah makes a good landlady. It's just like when she used to work there, before leaving to have Alice, and she loves it.

Alice, with her will of fire and immovable impatience isn't too keen on it. She says that she misses James, which Hannah knows is ridiculous because they still see each other at least weekly, and they'll be at Hogwarts together in a few years anyway (though that is a thought which brings tears to her eyes). Frankie is five, four years younger than Alice, and he loves it because he's always been a chatterbox, and being around all these different people everyday is exciting for a child like that.

Being in the pub, Hannah smiles a lot more often, and Neville can see how happy she is. Moving there was the right choice for them. Being able to crawl into bed next to her each night and know that she is going to be smiling never fails to be wonderful.

When he becomes a Professor, that is the thing he misses the most. Even when he was so close to not taking the job, it was Hannah who told him that he should take it. He's glad that he did, and even though she smiles and laughs when she sees him off at the station, there are tears in her eyes that she never quite manages to hide from him.

You know I want you to be happy. 'Professor Longbottom' suits you.

The years melt into each other, and her children leave her for school, leave school for life, and before she really realises what's going on, she is a grandmother for the first time; closer to sixty (sixty!) than thirty.

She's so completely average, and she notices things about herself that she never did before. Her breasts aren't quite where they once where, she's recognising cellulite that she'd managed not to spot before and she certainly more huggable than she was when she was younger. She's got lines around her eyes and mouth from a lifetime of smiling. But Neville tells her that she's still beautiful, and she believes him. He's never been the sort of man to speak with insincerity, so when he tells her, none of those imperfections matter.

She's still giddy when people call her Mrs Longbottom, when she's out or when she goes to work in the pub (because if she ever stops, she's buggered, so she doesn't, not even when she gets older still, and people start to think she should, she doesn't. She just passes the pub onto her son, and works afternoons). It takes her mind off the fact that her husband isn't there. She might have got her children back from Hogwarts, but her husband is still Professor of Herbology. She misses him, but she loves him, so she does what she has to do.

When she starts to push ninety, she finally starts to slow down, and her body begins to show the toll that time has taken on it. She's old, and the years show, so it really comes as no surprise when she doesn't wake up next morning. Neville kisses her cheek, just like he did when they were shy teenagers.

And before the lights go out for the final time, nothing matters. All her memories melt away. Everything she's ever clung to for comfort turns to dust. She forgets about the children she's given life to, and the tears she's shed, and the times she's laughed and smiled and felt lighter than air.

As Hannah falls into the darkness, she knows that some things are eternal, after all.

I love you, Neville.