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Ever since Neville could remember, he’d thought tattoos were the coolest. A few years back, Luna got a tattoo of a crumple-horn snorkack on her lower back, where her jeans met her shirt. After they’d grown serious as a couple, Oliver Wood got one of a quaffle on his right bicep and Marcus Flint got one of a goal hoop on his left bicep. And Neville lay awake at night sometimes, watching the dragon on Charlie Weasley’s back flap its wings and wiggle around seductively at him.
When Neville turned eighteen, he’d desperately wanted a tattoo of a severed snake head and a flaming sword of Gryffindor. He was sitting at the magical tattoo parlor, sleeve rolled up, when he decided it was too conceited. He wasn’t some humble Hufflepuff, but he didn’t really need something declaring to the world that he’d destroyed Voldemort’s last horcrux.
On Neville’s twenty-first birthday, he nearly got a tattoo of ivy that started at his neck and wound its way around his arm, ending on the back of his hand. But, the more he thought about it, the more he thought it sounded better than it would probably look. Besides, ivy was kind of boring and encroached on plants around it.
On Neville’s twenty-fifth birthday, he was feeling a bit old. He considered commemorating his move to Romania by getting a tattoo of a dragon. All the workers at the dragon reserve had one of some sort, in some location. Admittedly, the workers had gotten him a bit drunk, and at that point it seemed like an excellent idea. But then he’d spent the rest of the night snogging Charlie and the urge to get a tattoo vanished.
Neville got the owl telling him about his gran’s illness a month before his twenty-seventh birthday. After she passed away, he thought he might remember her by getting a tattoo of a vulture hat on his chest, over his heart. But the pain of loss was still too fresh. Though he would have worn it in loving memory, he had a feeling he would have also thought about his old potions professor in drag whenever he caught sight of his reflection.
“You’re beautiful, you know.”
Wearing a white tank top and a pair of scarlet boxers, Neville fought valiantly with the tea kettle that seemed impervious to every spell he threw at it. His “just out of bed” hair stuck up in a dozen different directions and the lower part of his countenance was covered in stubble. Beautiful was not the word he would have used to describe himself, but he threw a look over his shoulder and gave Charlie a smile. “You’re just saying that because it’s my birthday.”
Charlie shrugged and snapped the Daily Prophet in his hands to straighten it. He squinted at the top right-hand corner. “Oh, is that today? I must have forgotten.”
Neville gave up on the tea and sat down at the table, not in his chair but on Charlie’s lap. “Thirty-one,” he said with a sigh. “And still no tattoo. If only I could work up the courage.”
“It’s not about courage,” Charlie said with a laugh, wrapping his arm around Neville. “It’s the fact that your body’s perfect the way it is.” He kissed Neville’s bare shoulder then his neck then his lips.