Chapter Text
The Lost and Found wasn’t supposed to work.
Regulus almost didn’t cast it, at first, but he held a list of locator and tracking spells in his head, organized simplest to most complicated, and even though he fully expected to need to work his way up to the more serious magic it never hurt to start with the basics.
So, hurrying down the sidewalk away from Grimmauld Place, towards a safe spot for Apparition, he lifted his wand and quietly murmured, “Invenio quodperi, Neville Longbottom.”
And low and behold, the slender length of wood began to glow with soft green light.
Regulus nearly tripped over thin air, and Padfoot let out a startled bark. After a few baffled blinks, the man began to turn in place, holding his wand steady as it searched. The green lightened, until it suddenly flared gold, aimed towards the heart of London. And from the strength of said glow, the Longbottom lad clearly wasn’t all that far off.
“What in the buggering hell,” Regulus muttered. It took him a moment to realize what was also in the heart of London:
Diagon Alley.
-HP-
Neville officially regretted running away.
That first night, after accidentally leaving the Leaky Cauldron behind and being unable to find it again in the dark, he’d settled into an empty alleyway between buildings to curl up into a miserable ball and wait for sunrise. Things didn’t much improve afterward; emerging into muggle foot traffic seemed nigh impossible, so Neville stayed in the alley, nibbling on a scone and drinking from his flask - filled with water, even though Uncle Algernon had winked about putting something else in it when he got older. Maybe pumpkin juice? Neville hadn’t asked at the time.
Anyway.
Once the crowds of muggles thinned a bit, Neville risked edging out into the open and scooting down sidewalks, constantly checking every building he passed for the magical pub. No luck, however, and by lunchtime he’d only gotten more lost. A chubby woman noticed him when she emerged from a shop, and she seemed nice, even offering to share the sandwiches she’d bought. Neville mumbled a few half-hearted answers to her gentle questions, but then she asked if she could walk him to the nearest police station, and he panicked, because that meant the muggle version of Aurors and he’d really be in trouble. The woman glanced away for a moment, and he took the chance to run for it.
By the time he actually stopped running, everything had changed again, and Neville still hadn’t found the Cauldron. He sat on a rather stinky pile of cardboard in another alley behind a restaurant, and cried himself to sleep before sunset.
Well into the dead of night, something woke the boy up - loud crashing nearby, and several voices laughing unpleasantly. All sorts of horrible things sprang to mind, and Neville didn’t hesitate to scurry off once more. Plenty of people were still out and about, but few seemed to notice him, and none cared enough to follow as he hurried past. Eventually, Neville found a small park with trees and plain grass, one area sectioned off with gravel and several odd structures he couldn’t make heads or tails of. But one of them, a round tube big enough to crawl into, seemed a decent enough place to hide for the remainder of the night.
Thoroughly exhausted, he slept well past dawn, until much younger, friendly laughter reached his ears. When Neville cautiously poked his head out of the tube, it was to see a few other children his age- playing.
One girl swung back and forth on some sort of seat hanging from chains attached to a bar overhead; another cheered when she reached the top of a big cage-like mess of metal poles and beams, and two boys took turns spinning each other on a big flat piece of wood with handles branching out from the center.
A few grown-ups sat on a nearby bench, but none of them seemed to notice Neville emerge and look about warily. He carefully edged away, into the trees lining the footpath that went through the center of the park, and found a good spot with plenty of thick bushes where he could sit and hide. And there Neville stayed, for several hours - despite the sleep he’d gotten, he still felt exhausted, and couldn’t quite bring himself to go looking for the Leaky Cauldron again.
Besides.
This was rather the point of running away, wasn’t it? Going far enough away that he wouldn’t ever have to think about disappointing Gran again, finding somewhere to just be Neville, not a failure of a grandson. He had his supplies, and somewhere that people wouldn’t think twice about seeing an extra child, and- Neville could make it work. He could.
He spent the rest of the day trying to convince himself of that, before dusk arrived and the park emptied of muggles, and the boy went to crawl back into the big tube to sleep.
Neville woke up, some time later, to find a dog sniffing at his face.
-HP-
Kreacher came and fetched Harry from the front hall before too long, got him settled in the front parlor with some biscuits and a cup of tea. The house elf kept muttering uncomplimentary things under his breath the whole time, but he still patted Harry’s hand after being thanked, so the boy figured it was more habit than anything else.
He’d just finished the tea and was nibbling on his second to last biscuit when he heard the front door unlock and open.
As quick as he could, Harry jumped out of his seat and hurried down the hall, arriving just in time to see Regulus re-locking the heavy door, Padfoot sitting on the floor with a rather wide-eyed boy clinging to the thick fur around his neck. “Er, hello?”
The newcomer jumped, nearly falling over when he spun to face Harry. “Oh- uh-”
“Mister Longbottom, meet Mister Potter,” Regulus said in his I am far too tired for this nonsense voice. “Harry, this is Neville. Show him to a seat for now, would you? I need to talk to Kreacher for a moment.”
“Sure!” Grinning, Harry waved for Neville to follow him. Which, the other boy didn’t, at least until Padfoot stood and proceeded to tow him down the hallway.
They wound up back in the front parlor, where Harry offered the last untouched biscuit to their guest and the slightly-nibbled one to Padfoot. Both were eaten with differing levels of enthusiasm, before Neville took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “You- you didn’t actually run away, did you?”
Harry blinked at him. “Sure I did. It just turned out that Padfoot was a magic dog, and Uncle Reg found us the next morning so they could bring me here.”
Neville just looked more distressed at that. “But, Regulus Black is a Death Eater.”
“Yeah, until he stopped. And he lets everyone think he’s dead so he doesn’t have to get involved with any of that stuff anymore.” Looking the other boy up and down, with his warm clothes and packed rucksack, Harry hazarded a guess of his own. “You ran away too, didn’t you? Reg was worried you’d gotten kidnapped.”
“I- I did. I thought-” Neville cut himself off with a sigh. “I thought I could be like you...”
“Like me? Why would you want to do that?”
The other boy just opened and closed his mouth silently, and then a second time, before reaching for his bag. After rifling for a moment, he pulled out a book with some sort of Herbology title, and out of that he produced a moving photograph. It took a second for Harry to understand what he was looking at: two babies sitting on the ground, with a couple of grown women, one of whom looked a bit like Neville, and the other- oh.
Padfoot whined, nosing at the photo himself.
“Most of the books they write about you are all wrong,” Neville muttered, not meeting Harry’s eyes. “From the papers, I, I realized you’re probably pretty normal, and- and I thought- maybe I could-” He came to a stumbling halt, red-faced, one hand gently holding the photo and the other curled in a tight grip on the hem of his jumper.
“Well, I’m glad someone thinks I’m normal,” Harry managed to say after a moment’s consideration. “From what Uncle Reg has said, I don’t- well. You said it yourself, there’s books about me that are more make-believe than anything else, but people still read them, and think they know all about me, and they’re just going to be disappointed by just plain Harry.”
Neville glanced from him to the open doorway of the parlor. “Are you- is he actually going to let you go out? Like- to Diagon, and Hogwarts?”
“Yeah, eventually. I’m having a brilliant time here so far, though, I don’t mind waiting until people knock off looking for me.” Harry blinked when the other boy stared at him, as if he’d just said something ludicrous. “What?”
Another glance to the doorway. “You’re sure he’s not a, a Death Eater anymore? He’s not keeping you prisoner?”
“Of course he isn’t. And you aren’t either, Neville; Reg wanted to go looking because he was worried about you.” Inside the photograph, their mums both waved, and the pair of nine year olds watched similar wistful expressions. Padfoot whined again.
“...is it alright if I stay here?” Neville eventually whispered. “I can’t- I can’t go back to Gran. She hates me enough as it is.”
“I don’t mind,” Harry promised, “And I’m sure Uncle Reg won’t either. You don’t, do you Padfoot?” The big dog barked, and proceeded to lick Neville’s clenched fist until he let go of his jumper and patted Padfoot’s nose.
Kreacher popped into the room then, giving the newcomer a squinty glare before turning his attention to Harry. “Master requests another midnight snack for the brat and his guest, Master is sending poor Kreacher to ask what they want.”
“Whatever’s easiest to fix is fine, we don’t want to be a bother.”
“Hmph, not be a bother, the brat says, keeping Kreacher and Master and Master’s unruly brother up so late.” With a snap of his fingers, both the house elf and the empty biscuit plate disappeared, and Harry grinned, expecting they’d be given more treats soon enough.
Neville, however, instead of also smiling, looked as if he’d just been flattened by a stampeding elephant. “Brother? Sirius Black is here?!”
Oh boy. This would take some time to explain...