#( frank longbottom: softness does not negate masculinity. ) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

portkcysa · 7 years ago

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“a hand outstretched across the plane aisle, a constant warm presence, a smile so wide your face aches for days, bouncing a baby up and down on your knee, responsibility laden on your shoulders, bubblegum, a steady hand in all things.“ – ( richard madden, twenty-six, cismale, he/him. ) frank longbottom? yes, i have more information about them. the twenty-six year old pureblood used to attend hogwarts as a hufflepuff. nowadays, they’re an auror, and are currently a order of the phoenix member. from what i’ve heard, they can be quite observant and loyal, but also forgetful and strong-willed. from their records, i can also see that their best subject at school was transfiguration. ( ellie, 18, she/her, gmt. ) – CANON

you may cry, you may laugh, you may feel all things and let yourself breathe through them all, but that does not make you any less a man. your life is glorious, soft, not stern. warmth. enveloping.

quick facts

alignment: lawful good. amortentia: rose perfume on the air. the smell of alice’s shampoo. the yorkshire pudding his mum makes. green tea. baby smell. mbti: esfj. patronus: a labrador. boggart: losing alice. losing neville. soul type: the caregiver. wand: ebony. phoenix tail feather. 8 inches. described as supple, suited to combative magic and transfiguration. zodiac sign: leo. mythological figure: apollo. vice: pride. virtue: charity.

drifters

01. Frank’s never met his dad. He only, really, knows his name: Dominick Francis Longbottom. His mother rarely talked about him - he grew up, alone, with just her.

Dominick died before Frank was born. You see, Dominick was a very highly respected Auror, top of his field, known for his flair for excellent spellwork and a famed inability to sit still. He’d been out on assignment, integrating the group known as the Knights of Walpurgis, which is now known, more commonly, as the inner circle of the Death Eaters. He’d managed to pull it off for years, keeping his and his wife’s political positions to themselves, keeping out of the limelight when any purist-inclined violence made the headlines.

Augusta, of course, was less than pleased by the fact that he kept late hours, and woke up, some days, as early as 4 to head to the Aurors office. She was six months pregnant, in the end, when things went down the drain.

Dominick hadn’t even seen it coming.

One of the other Aurors - young, easily fooled, impressionable - had overheard one of his conversations with the Head Auror at the time. He’d been duped, you see. Duped into telling one of the people they’d been escorting to Azkaban if there were any weasels.

He’d seemed like a good guy, despite the crime he’d been imprisoned for, because he’d get years in Azkaban for it. (Nobody really gave a shit about trading useless Dragon eggs anyway.)

He’d been killed less than two days later.

He’d never even got to say goodbye - he’d been working for three days straight, and hadn’t even been to the Auror office in a week, but the damage was done and he never even saw it coming.

Augusta suspects it was Yaxley, but Frank’s never trusted Avery, nor the Lestrange’s, and he never was told how his dad was found. Just that his dad was dead before he was born, and that he looked like him. (The same jaw, the same smile, the same dark brown hair and grey streak.)

Frank visits the grave whenever he can, and talks to him as if he’s still there, still alive.

He tried, once, to get access to the files around his death. He didn’t get very far - Moody pulled him aside, hand on his elbow, to tell him there was no point - he knew, from experience, that all that it stirred up was rage. And Frank was better than that.

Frank wishes he’d gotten to meet his dad. He hopes that he’d be proud of him - that he’d be proud of the man he’s become. He knows his mum is, despite how she wheedles at him, and preens, and all the tough love she’s given him over the years. It’s always been just the two of them. The lone Longbottom’s, the ones who stranded themselves as far away from London as they could get without moving out of the country.

That was how they were known: the silent onlookers, the ones who rarely came out of their home but when they did, they sought justice in every way they could.

02. Frank wasn’t, exactly, surprised when he was sorted into Hufflepuff.

His magic had come through late - he supposes it’s nothing to do with how his mother raised him (an iron fist, that vulture hat outlasting the ages despite the sad fact that she was merely 32 and already a widow –) but entirely to do with how he viewed himself.

He’d never been a popular kid. He hadn’t got many friends, just the little boy that lived three villages over, the exact same age as he was, the one whose dad had up and left his mum.

He was shy, too honest, and considered a little weird - his mum didn’t send him to primary school, spoke with a proper accent where Frank had a burgeoning Scottish one, and he could do things the other kids couldn’t. He rarely played outside, and the little marbles he played with had once blown up in another kids’ face. Needless to say, that spelled a lonely childhood for Frank.

Frank didn’t mind, though. He had the horses, and the cows, and the chickens, and the dogs. His family may not have been big people-wise, but he had an affinity for animals, and plants, and if his mother hadn’t been sure he was a wizard, he would’ve ended up a farmer.

His first actual display of magic was when the tree in their garden collapsed over the road in and out of the village. It nearly crushed their next door neighbours and their tiny, yellow car, and before anybody could even figure out what they were going to do, it had completely vanished.

(Or, as Frank would tell his mother, “I made it burst, mam! It didn’t disappear! It exploded!”)

It wasn’t much of a surprise when Augusta smoothed his hair back and kissed him on the forehead, that rare grin climbing onto her face.

Pride, shining in her eyes.

03. Auror training was the bane of Frank’s life. All he wanted, all he ever wanted to do, all he could imagine himself doing, was being out there, saving lives.

Of course, his best friend jokingly reminded him that if he wanted to go out that fast, he should’ve just signed up for the Hit Wizard programme and taken the risk that he’d end up dead within a week (an unfortunate downside, occasionally, for new Hit Wizards and Witches.)

He knew he was talented enough. He knew that he was smart enough.

He knew he was good at thinking on his feet, he knew that they could use a man like him because he was loyal, pain-stakingly so, and he’d do anything for the cause, sacrifice or be anything they asked him to be.

There was already a target on his back, so why the hell not push him through training faster than the others.

(His last name was the target.)

They were running out of Aurors, as is. More and more kept leaving. They couldn’t do it, they said. They couldn’t live with the reality they were being faced with. They couldn’t risk their families lives like this, they couldn’t have a target painted on their back for the badge they held in their hands. They couldn’t face the threats that were slowly trickling in, the heat that was turning up and up and up.

Frank couldn’t blame them. They weren’t cowards. They were good people, who had suffered enough, who had gone through enough.

He was saddled with nothing, nothing that he felt was worth it. Worth the risk of losing lives. It wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t what they wanted. But he stuck it out, regardless. He gave himself goals to meet, Aurors to shadow, people to impress.

It made him a success. It made him good at his job.

(And good at the things he did on the side as well.)

04. He’s got the worst habit of attracting strays.

Okay, it’s not like that - not dogs, or cats, or anything. But people. The ones with nowhere left to go. The ones who are either not involved with their families, or those who have lost them.

He always has money on him. More money than he’ll ever need on a day to day basis, but enough to sustain someone for a month, or two. He’s always got his eye out. Always willing to give whatever he can, his money, his time, his effort. (He’s gotten himself into a spot or two, here and there.)

He’d do anything for his fellow Order members.

Anything. When they need help, Frank is always the one they know they can call. (Or, rather, just show up on his and Alice’s doorstep, because he’s known for crumbling at the sight of a friend in need.)

The Longbottom family have always had a lot of money. That’s not to mention his mother’s wealth in herself - she’s the last recorded Selwyn from the main male lineage (and she’s not related to that Umbridge woman, Merlin forbid –) and inherited the entire estate, as well as all the money they had invested in Borgin and Burke’s and several, very successful stores all along Diagon Alley (the least of which being Flourish and Blott’s.)

Some’d say it’s stupidity. That he’s so open, with things like that.

Others? They’d say he’s just too full of kindness. A tap, that overflows, consistently, until it seems like there’s going to be nothing left, but it’s bottomless. A bottomless well of kindness, fed into by a river of kindness, fed into by a sea of kindness.

He does what he can, for the people that he knows have nothing, not because he can relate. But because he just has to.

He can’t sit idly by while people are struggling. No matter the reason.

He’s too selfless. Too ready to give everything that he has. (Some part of him knows that it all stems from Augusta. From Dominick. From the love that he received, the love he never got to feel in anything other than photographs, and memories that never were.)

There’s always been a part of him that wants to prove his mother wrong. That softness can be just as good as sternness, and now he gets the chance to do just that.

constants

frank longbottom, in all things, is a ray of sunshine.

his softness, often taken for weakness, is one of his greatest strengths, over which he has laboured for many, many years.

he’s an only child. he supposes it means he’s always been spoiled, but he hasn’t.

he’s worked hard to get where he is, he hasn’t taken any handouts from his mother (who would never dream of giving him one anyway -) and there is a great sense of pride that he’s proved her wrong, about sternness being the only way to get things done.

(meanwhile, augusta is a part of the order, so - yes. there have been quite a few arguments over the order itself.)

he’s a lover of many things, including plants.

(also alice longbottom, but that’s a given, i mean, look at her --)

he’s worked so hard to become an auror, you guys. it’s been his dream, since childhood, since he learned about his father and his job, and despite his fate, pushed himself so, so hard to make his mother proud, and to feel the pride that he knows his father is feeling, where-ever he is, now.

really does enjoy his work.

(it’s super dangerous, but, when isn’t something frank likes, dangerous? he’s insane, absolutely so, but also adorably so.)

born and raised in scotland, but also surrounded by muggles. so, not a magical neighbourhood. scotland is? still his home, really. hogwarts is, too, but that’s kind of secondary to the little cottage he and his mother lived in. where she still lives, actually, and insists that she’s never to be moved.

joined the order soon after graduation - he was approached by dumbledore, because he does have a particular skillset dumbledore finds particularly useful.

can/does smuggle death eater related case files home with him. the good ruse is that he’s forgetful af, and so is prone to just forgettin stuff anyway (nev inherits this, his poor babe,) and he knows it’s dangerous, but there’s no law really inhibiting it... that’s his logic, anyway.

best friends with kingsley shacklebolt and hestia jones. grew up with them as brief companions, but spent hogwarts with them, as well as alice, and the four are tig HT.

was in the duelling club, but didn’t really? like the spotlight. aka evidence why he doesn’t want to be head auror, but he’s perfectly happy being just a member of the order and an auror, but is a very skilled dueller. incredible, really. don’t mess with the longbottom’s. he inherits it from his mother.

excells in dark magic identification, tracking and transfiguration. there isn’t a spell frank hasn’t heard of, and if there is, it’s likely because it’s being tested in the department of mysteries, and therefore, cannot be discussed.

neville is... frank’s world. he refuses to leave him the same way his father left him. he refuses to do that. he refuses the possibility that he’ll die, and end up leaving a widow and a son behind. he plans to live a long, happy life, with his wife, and his son.

frank re: alice

his dream

will she ever let him breathe?

that moment when the dream girl is his WIFE

he -

is he living or not? he doesn’t know

she smiles like this and his heart aches

seeing her with neville is the greatest feeling in the universe

if they ever went abroad on holiday he’d lose his damn mind

is she teasing him???? he’s dying slowly

alice’s hufflepuff pride, man

imagine this as frank giving alice a flower i want to CRY

going anywhere with this like

HER GLASSES HE’S GOING INTO CARDIAC ARREST

ugh his heart

he’s compromised

taking her on a tour of where he went on childhood holidays

you know when you see someone so attractive you struggle to breathe? yeah frank knows the feeling

he’s in LOOOVE

"got you.”

everyone: frank, breathe

let him be happy with her for the rest of his life

her SMILE he’s combusting internally

will he ever let go? #no

them together is. his fave thing

her laUgH

the way he looks at her? legendary

#incalescent:intro #( frank longbottom: softness does not negate masculinity. )

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