For Amandazillah.

In one sense, they were a perfect match as partners--Bill was good at curse breaking; at unravelling layer after layer; at looking at a whole and seeing how it came apart. Neville was good at putting things back together. In that sense, they meshed well, Bill getting quickly to the bottom of a problem, and Neville fixing everything after. They were rarely caught, and rarely did the Death Eaters even know that things had changed. But in so many other ways, they were greatly mismatched, because Bill was Bill, and Neville. Neville was himself.

Bill thrived in the danger, and even when his face was pinched and he talked in a low, harsh voice, even when he whacked vines aside with his wand and shouted and even when he bent over maps and pointed with grubby fingers and just held back from calling Neville an idiot, even then there was something in his posture that said this was what he was built for. Sometimes Neville wondered if it came from growing up when Voldemort was strong, because he saw it in others, not just other Weasleys, though it was there even in Percy, who had been 5 the first time Voldemort fell, but in Tonks, and Professor Lupin, and Fleur. There was a steel there, a knowledge that this, this was what they had waited for, this was what they had learned for, this was why they had learned in the first place. Why they were here.

Mostly, Neville felt resigned to trudging about a lot and ruining his clothing and teaching himself the curses they hadn't learned in Defense class.

But then there was the other sense, the way they fit together as partners because they fit together, short and stocky with scraped knees and dirt on their cheeks and breathless, and Bill's hand belonged on his thigh, and Neville's heel on Bill's back, and in that sense, in that sense Neville didn't think about fixing things or dying or whether he really ought to fight at all, instead of chucking everything and going back to his greenhouse because he was just as much a detriment as a help, bravery be damned. In that sense, Neville just was, and he stopped thinking about anything except for Bill, and more, and the grass beneath his fingers as he moaned.

Bill made them fall apart, and later, much later, Neville put them together.