faint indirections (neville/percy, snape/potter - sort of)
note: second (and final) bit
White petals flutter at Alice’s fingers. That boy who comes has come again. He brought these. They look nice on her shelf - she pulls at Frank to look too. White petals in her big white room, curled and slipped and secret. Alice chuckles.
But the boy looks sad today, or thinking, or hoping. When Miss Tea comes, he takes a cup. No words today. No slivers of silver. All those words kept in his chest, or stirred and stirred and stirred into his tea. She touches his fringe and he starts and smiles at her.
“Camellias.”
A nice word. Alice says it back to him.
~
As soon as Neville’s wish has been greedily snatched and crumpled, he feels as exposed as if the words were in six-foot high letters strung over the headmaster’s desk. A ferocious heat prickles up his back. He fingers an invoice in the top of Percy’s in-tray.
As in previous years, Professor Longbottom’s Herbology classes prove to be -
It might have been anything really: original, popular, sub-par, laughable. He swallows. Laughable. Sometimes he suspects he makes no progress at all - still a fat boy with a toad instead of an owl, accidentally sorted. Still, who’s to know? Embarrassment when there’s only yourself to see is nothing but a waste of time.
He scribbles the selfsame hope on another triangle of blotter and holds it out to the smaller of the Wishknots with only slightly shaking fingers.
~
Dear Neville,
We didn’t find any snorkacks. I’m starting to think maybe there weren’t any in the first place. We were in the forest for a month without seeing so much as a nargle, but then I ran out of galleons, and Pablo said he thought they must all be hibernating. I didn’t know snorkacks hibernated, did you? But Pablo is quite poor and perhaps he just needed a bit of money before the baby comes.
But this is my real news. When we got back to San José, he introduced me to someone called Rolf Scamander, who is another explorer he took into the forest, looking for umgubular slashkilters. (They didn’t find any.) Rolf says he’s not giving up and that the next place to look is in the foothills of the Andes. He’s making an expedition to Peru and he’s asked me to go with him. He’s got a funny little beard, and he’s a bit rude sometimes, but I like him anyway, and everyone says he knows more about tracking the umgubular slashkilter than anyone else. I think I will go.
I’m not coming home yet.
Your friend,
Luna.
~
The second interview is almost two weeks later, and lasts considerably longer.
The greenhouse glass is pearly with condensation, but Neville can see a dark shape lurching outside. A swipe of his sleeve reveals it to be Harry crunching across the grass. This is unexpected; even the camellias seem to whisper louder. Neville wipes the dirt off his hands and goes to the door of the greenhouse.
“Harry!”
Harry veers round, and walks towards him with a smile.
“Brave man!” Neville shouts, shivering in his shirtsleeves.
Harry’s eyes drop a little, but he walks forward just as full of purpose. “If a thing’s worth doing.” He shrugs, still smiling, but at his feet.
They go up to the castle together.
“How’s Ginny?”
Harry blows a breath out, and the pale white blast of it curls a foot in front of him. “Very well. Last I heard.”
Oh. Neville wonders what to say.
“It’s fine.” Harry looks at him sideways. “She’s staying with her mother for a week or two. Part of the deal.”
“Do you miss her?”
Harry makes a grunting sort of laugh. “I miss Albus and James.” He pats Neville on the back, as if he’s apologising for the awkward conversation. “They’ll be back.”
They trudge together up the front steps of the castle. “Anyway, I’m hardly suffering for company,” Harry murmurs, as they disappear through the oak door. “Can’t get Malfoy out of the house for love or money. I think he’s run through his booze allowance.”
By the time they reach the gargoyle, they’ve said nothing more. Neville is annoyed with himself for getting lost off in counting the steps from door to study, thinking of the familiar turnings, milepost gashes in the stone walls, the muffled crowing of teenagers in the stairwells. He’s missed the opportunity for a serious chat. That strange secret look on Harry’s face seems like nothing but trouble.
“Are you coming up?”
“Would it help?” If anything at all would help this situation, Neville is pretty sure it’s not him.
“It might.”
He takes a deep breath. “Damage limitation.”
At the top of the staircase, the study door opens on a flood of pale green sunlight and what sounds like a restrained difference of opinions.
“- nevertheless, studies have shown that this fibreglass -”
“Studies? Studies by whom? Some Muggle ambassador for that blasted hocus pocus they call ‘science’? This is my Potions laboratory -”
“Not any more.” There is that light colour again, creeping over Percy’s pale skin, like Uncle Algie’s applejack roses. The headmaster’s arms and legs are folded over each other. Neville regards him with a sudden wild admiration. He looks round at Harry, nudging an elbow at him, but Harry’s busy grinning at Snape. Neither the headmaster nor the portrait seem to have registered their presence.
“Hallo, Percy,” Harry says to Snape. “Hallo, Severus.”
Neville flinches at the same time as something twitches in Snape’s cheek and an eyebrow shoots up to mid-forehead. Here it comes - then Percy turns, his arms and legs coming unhooked, his nostrils still wide with fading irritation.
“Good morning, Harry. Ah, Professor Longbottom. I was hoping to catch you.”
Neville swallows uncomfortably. It is a hard thing to be suspended between desire to show his willingness for whatever function Percy had in mind, and bracing himself against the storm of offended rage which is surely about to burst forth from the wall opposite the desk. What a relief to be guided gently from the room, with a hand held lightly at his shoulder. Snape and Harry are engaged in staring each other down, and don’t so much as turn.
“What was that about?” Neville asks, when the hand is finally withdrawn, and the staircase lowers them slowly down.
“Professor Snape is a little old fashioned when it comes to teaching methods. He’s also a fearful eavesdropper. I was telling Professor Slughorn about the shipment of fibreglass cauldrons we’ve agreed on - totally inert and, for safety reasons, far more appropriate for school-age Potions instruction - and well. There you have it.”
“I’m not sure inertia is something Professor Snape is particularly keen on,” Neville offers, secretly wondering about a fibreglass panel for the front of the portrait. For safety reasons.
Percy smiles at him. “Quite.” They hesitate at the bottom of the staircase, then Percy leans close, as if not wishing to be overheard, and his breath flutters against Neville’s ear. “Actually I think it was the explosions that got him into Potions in the first place. So much scope for shouting.”
~
They are ensconced in Greenhouse Three, two cups of tea to the good, fluxweed nodding approvingly above them, and a third of next door’s crop of camellias promised by proxy to Slughorn for the yearly batch of Felix Felicis, when the black shape floats back over the grounds.
They both watch in silence, two cups halfway between saucer and mouth.
“Should we go up?” Neville says, when the shape has faded into the dark blur of the forest.
He looks back at Percy, who is taking a sip of his tea, head bent, copper and walnut. When he looks up, he’s smiling. “I think maybe a little longer to cool off, don’t you?”
Neville fingers the handle of his cup, as the sun dips behind a cloud and the plants seem to shroud them over like a forest canopy. “A little longer,” he says.
By the time the tea is finished, Neville has a class of Ravenclaws and Slytherins waiting with their earmuffs outside Greenhouse Two, and there’s no time to return to the headmaster’s study. The children straighten as Percy strides past them; two girls on the edge of the group fall silent and look at him out of the corners of their eyes. The sun has come back out and Neville squints into it, one hand on his forehead, not exactly sorry not to be following into whatever aftermath there might be.
For the last two months, Neville has done his utmost to maintain a polite curatorial distance from Snape. Nevertheless, as he walks home to Hogsmeade that evening, he finds it impossible not to think about Snape’s desperate expression after the last visit. By the time he reaches the house, his conscience is pricking him hard enough to be considering an owl to Harry.
“Dear Harry,” he’s murmuring, at a bit of a loss, as he opens the front door. “Dear. Harry -”
“What was that?”
“Oh, Professor, you’re here.” Neville sticks his head round the living room door. The picture tries to peer past him. “I’m er - on my own.”
Crayon eyebrows lower a smidgeon further than is lifelike. “Just as well.”
“Have you been here all day? How did your visit go this morning?”
“How did it go?” Snape’s nostrils inflate. “The boy lacks manners, education, tact and native intelligence. Naturally it went like a blasted dream.” There’s an odd little quirk at the corner of Snape’s mouth, an indication either that Snape is exceptionally badly drawn or that he is peculiarly pleased with himself.
“Naturally.” Neville can feel the frown on his face as he wanders through to the kitchen.
Snape is still there when he comes back with his bowl of vegetable stew and the Daily Prophet, but Neville’s too absorbed in a piece about Hogwarts’ new Defence professor and an alleged misappropriation of dark creatures. He really must return that boggart. There’s also yet another article about last week’s unprofitable raid on the warehouse in Folkestone, and this time the anonymous leak from the Auror Office has the stamp of Malfoy all over it:
‘An almighty cock-up,’ a source close to department heads reports. ‘Some people are born for leadership and some simply aren’t; Potter certainly wasn’t Chosen for his logical thinking.’ A large component of the auror workforce is, moreover, said to be anticipating a welcome change of colours in the MLE Offices in the very near future.
Neville almost chokes on a cube of pumpkin.
“Longbottom. Kindly cease slurping and tutting.”
“Shorry!”
“And don’t speak with your mouth full!”
He swallows, prodding at the Prophet. “I sometimes wonder what they put in the water in Slytherin.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Slytherin,” Neville repeats, then stops. “Why are you in such a good mood anyway? Did Harry slip and crack his head on the desk or something this morning?”
There’s that lip quirk again - unsettling to say the least. “As it transpires, Auror Potter is in need of my assistance. One of my former associates, Rupert Yaxley, is believed to be involved in an alcohol-running and money-laundering syndicate.”
“I know.” Neville pats at the paper in his lap.
He almost expects Snape to be offended that the information has come so late to him, but evidently not so. “Greatly as I mistrust the ability of Potter and his department to penetrate to the heart of the matter, I have agreed to provide whatever information they deem useful. My sense of duty is doubtless overdeveloped.”
Neville stares at him. His chin is lifted as usual, but there’s something about the tone of his voice that is absolutely unfamiliar. The spoon hangs from Neville’s fingers. When no response comes, Snape looks down at him, all the way along that pointed cartoon nose.
“Your dinner looks revolting.”
That’s it. For a bitter, misanthropic, pessimistic, dead bastard, he sounds - happy.
~
Over the two weeks that follow, several things happen: the fluxweed is harvested and Greenhouse Three restocked with winter bulbs; Headmaster Weasley comes to tea six times; the camellias in Greenhouse Four come into full bloom and begin spreading rumours behind Neville’s back; and on one occasion Harry, now a frequent visitor to the school and allowed the freedom of the office password, brings his designated partner, Probationer Malfoy.
“We’re no closer to finding Yaxley,” Malfoy says confidentially. “I don’t personally know what it is they do up there for hours on end.” He sounds miffed not to have been invited. Harry had practically manhandled him onto a stool in the greenhouse, and told him to wait with Neville and the headmaster. Now he sits here, in the pale grey uniform of a rehabilitated Death Eater, looking at least fifteen years older than when they left school. Apart, that is, from the sneer, which is precisely as Neville remembers it. “Can’t you get these plants to shut up?”
A collective gasp rises from the camellias. Neville gives the closest cluster a deprecating look, hoping it will suffice until he has time for a more thorough soothing.
“You know he’s commissioned another copy?” Malfoy looks from one to the other over the rim of his cup, probably aiming for subtle and missing by at least a couple of feet.
“I am aware, yes.” Percy’s spikiest headboy voice. “The artist came last week for some preliminary sketches.”
“And left looking ten years older, I expect. I’ve told Potter it’s all fine with me as long as it doesn’t hang in the outside office with us.” He shudders, sucking air in through his teeth.
Neville frowns. “I thought you Slytherins all loved him. He always took your side.” Malfoy doesn’t look impressed. “He hasn’t changed at all, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Longbottom. Horrible man. You only thought he was nice to us, because you were too busy wringing your hands over how life was oh so unfair to you poor Gryffindors. Those dormitories were freezing.” He takes a sip of tea. “Besides, portraits give me the willies.”
“Hang on -” Neville starts crossly, not even sure where this surreal urge to defend Snape is going to take him, then Percy lays a tea-free hand on his arm. For a moment Neville just stares at it.
When he looks up, Percy is smiling at him with one side of his mouth. Not worth it. Neville lets out a breath, and turns back to say something a little blander, more conciliatory. Malfoy, meanwhile, is looking at the pair of them, open-mouthed like the snitch has just plopped into his hand of its own accord. Neville’s ears are instantly so prickly hot it feels like they might burn right off, and there Malfoy sits, goggling like a first year, for a full five seconds, before clearing his throat with unnecessary drama.
“Anyway. Tell me about the new Defence professor. Is it true he’s been pilfering hinkypunks?”
Another soft gasp from the little tree at Neville’s right elbow. The camellias lean forward to catch more. Luck, my arse. Next time Neville’s going to try grafting them to a crop of Devil’s Snare.
~
Ten minutes more and the headmaster’s had enough. He pleads a staff meeting and stands to shake Malfoy’s hand.
“This has been charming, Probationer Malfoy. We must do it again.”
“I’d be thrilled.”
Nevertheless, he insists on accompanying them up to Percy’s office to collect Harry, and Neville’s fairly certain it’s only in the hope of getting a glimpse of the portrait. He’s first through the door - “in case they’re discussing something top secret” - and stops so abruptly that Neville bumps into him with a boof of air from his lungs. Neville peers into the room.
Over Malfoy’s shoulder, he is just in time to see Harry standing on the headmaster’s green-upholstered mahogany armchair, a bare inch of air between his torso and the rough surface of a painting on the wall behind the desk. The fingers of his left hand trace slowly across a pale cheekbone, a yellow duster in his right smoothes short gentle strokes along the sitter’s neck. Snape’s eyes are closed and his mouth ever so slightly ajar; he seems almost sighing to himself. For a moment Neville’s stomach swoops violently as if he’s stepped out for a stair and found it missing. Then it’s over. Harry pulls back so fast he almost totters, one foot paddling a little through the air to keep his balance. The duster is whipped behind his back, and he smothers a sneeze into a closed fist with a squeak and a bounce of the knees.
Neville’s first instinct - to back out of the door, down the stairs and to keep going until he’s firmly bolted into the furthest greenhouse - is stymied by the headmaster pressed against his back. The three of them stand there, and for at least two it is without doubt one of the most uncomfortable experiences of their lives. Snape stares at them with more contempt than he ever spared a second year splattered in bubotuber pus.
Finally Malfoy’s shoulderblades shift against Neville’s chest, and in his peripheral vision he sees a pair of clasped hands.
“Thank you, Merlin!”
~
Wednesday afternoon. Double Herbology with the first-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs.
“Hold it like it’s a wand, Staveley. Thumb on top. That’s it.” Staveley’s little fat hand grips falteringly on the secateurs. “Remember to tickle just below the leaf cluster. Wait a second - till it leans a bit. Gently. There.”
The camellia hisses against the snick of the secateurs and drops with satisfied hum into the small pile of flowers on Staveley’s workbench. There’s a drift of them rising gradually all around the students. A third will get laid out overnight in the vegetable patch under the anti-crow charms, so that they come to Professor Slughorn dewed and soft.
Neville had spread out the first batch last night, under a glittering clear sky and a sliver of moon, and wondered for the first time why he still lived in that little cottage in Hogsmeade. There were lights still lit high up on the north side of the castle and he’d looked at those pale yellow windows until they burnt purple on the inside of his eyelids when he blinked, then went home just the same, and not even Snape was there to sneer at his hopelessness.
“Sir! Professor Longbottom!” Neville turns with a jerk. Stuart Buggins, a fifth-year prefect, is scurrying across the lawn towards the open greenhouse door. “Can you -” He bends, panting, one hand on the doorframe, the other on his knee. “Can you come to the headmaster’s office. Those plants -” He points back towards the castle.
Neville takes him by the shoulders. “Where’s the headmaster?”
Buggins seems to point harder, his finger waving wildly. “In the office. Fighting them off.”
Oh Merlin. “Stay here. Don’t let them -” Neville gestures at the greenhouseful of first years. There are plenty of things a dozen Gryffindors shouldn’t be allowed to do with a pair of secateurs, but panic sweeps them all from his mind.
Neville dashes in through the entrance hall, feet slapping heavy and flat on the stone flags. Skidding round the turn by the tall suit of armour, there’s the hole where Malfoy’s hex struck the wall by the Charms classroom in fourth year, there’s the statue of Themistocles the owl with its beak missing, there’s the stair that’s been shattered beyond repair for hundreds of years. A rumble of laughter grows louder as the period finishes and children boil out into the corridors, and all the way up to the office, Neville imagines Percy caught round the neck by a thick arm of vine.
When he arrives, it’s not quite as he feared. In the week since Neville was last here, the Wishknots have grown to the size of well-established hydrangea bushes and the branches are snaking across the desk, reaching and twisting for anything in close range. Percy is wrestling one of them for his tie, while the other has spilt his inkwell all across the desk and is rifling through the boxes of paperwork.
This is Neville’s moment! There is a spell for ‘let go’ - and it is - what is it? He fumbles his wand out of his trouser pocket. Begins with res-? rem-? re-? Percy’s opponent is reaching for the collar of his shirt. Neville panics.
“Disgorgio!”
The Wishknots are still for a second, then there is a massive convulsion, Percy staggers forward with a yelp, then stillness again.
Percy and Neville eye each other nervously as a fragment of paper is catapulted out from the middle of Percy’s Wishknot and lands in his hair. He picks it out and Neville has barely a moment to flush with embarrassment and beg him silently not to read it, when scraps begin erupting from both plants, filling the study like a snow globe.
The deluge lasts for at least two minutes and leaves them both ankle-deep in soft shards of white, like camellia petals. Percy’s face is blank and shocked; he must have fed them at least twenty times a day for the last two months to cause this - the pair of them wading around in their joint indiscretions. Neville’s almost cross. He would say something, but there’s a piece of paper stuck to the tip of his tongue; he peels it off, keeping his eye on Percy for any sudden movement. The writing is smudged blue and purple. Professor Longbrlluurr, it says cryptically, drunkenly blurred and chewed. Neville stares at it, as if it’s a clue to be deciphered, then picks up another. Professor Longbddrrrm, says one on his shoulder, and Profoeedr Iomqbcllarrr, one caught in his collar. When he looks up again, a heat flooding his skin, like the sun’s just come blazing out at five o’clock on a December afternoon, the headmaster is just standing there, red in the face, one elbow twitching mechanically against his desk chair.
And it comes down to this. Neville may have been slow at Potions and clumsy at Transfiguration, but if there’s anything he’s learnt at Hogwarts, it’s that there is every reason to accept something when it presents itself to you. He climbs over the ruin of Percy’s filing system, parchment and paper crumpling together and all manner of governors’ reports and Profemmrnr Lommbolllrroms crushed under his heels, and keeps himself walking awkwardly forward, aware of every untidy muscle movement, until he’s two feet away from Percy. And as steady as he can, he holds out his hand.
~
Spring is returning. The south edge of the Forbidden Forest is bright with bluebells and the Snapping Gladioli are beginning to come through in Greenhouse Three, but it’s been a bad day.
This morning the staff finally waved goodbye to Benjamin Murtlegrip. Earlier even than last year’s Defence professor. Percy has been in desperation all afternoon, and at four o’clock a statement of interest owl arrived from Draco Malfoy, which was once again the triumph of hope over expectation, as well as an exercise in extravagantly poor taste.
A tentative dinner plan has had to be cancelled, and Neville trudges home alone. He is annoyed, and by the time he reaches the cottage, his collar is damper and pricklier than the intermittent drizzle warrants.
He throws his cloak over the armchair in the living room and is about to head upstairs to run himself a bath, when something stops him short, suddenly aware of all the hairs standing to attention on the back of his neck. A familiar voice behind him makes him start.
“So you’re still here?”
Neville turns, one hand on his chest. Snape is peering around the room as if it is his own and Neville has made some very unwelcome changes.
“Of course. Where else would I be?”
“At the castle. I fully expected to see you installed as deputy head by now. I imagine I should be relieved.”
“I imagine so. What are you doing here?”
“Since you’re the one who drew the picture, I rather thought that might be within your purview.”
“You haven’t been to my picture for months. Has he said something?”
“Who?” Snape begins sharply, then the clumsy crease between his brows flattens out again and he takes a breath in through the nose. “He brought his brood into headquarters today, evidently from the mere wish to see me smeared with jam and deafened with squawking. That one with the appalling name.” His mouth is drawn tight like he’s going to be sick. Is that possible for a portrait? It suggests all sorts of other bodily functions Neville’s not quite ready to contemplate. “I reprimanded it on its conduct, as any rational person would have.”
The rest of the story is pretty easy to imagine. Neville’s even seen it play out once or twice. Perhaps it’s only really surprising that Snape hasn’t reappeared before now.
“Oh, you needn’t worry, I shall return once the office is empty. We can both get some peace.”
“Oh, well. I’m sure tomorrow you’ll - he’ll be ready to apologise.”
“If he leaves me again with that cretinous Malfoy boy, he’ll have more to do than apologise.”
“Malfoy’s always been afraid of you. He told us.” Neville almost blushes, distracted by the thought of who ‘we’ were. And it comes so easily to the tongue. They’ll have dinner tomorrow instead. Then perhaps… He smiles.
Snape either does not notice, or he affects not to. “Gryffindors,” he snorts. “Do you honestly suppose that a house like Slytherin can be ruled by love? Do you think that I tucked Gregory Goyle into bed each night?”
“No! Merlin, no. But maybe if you’d been a bit nicer -”
The eyebrows descend. “Nicer? Longbottom, I am, as you are doubtless aware, barely of the temper to be nice. Besides, what you win for yourself with your nauseating niceness, some of us manage far more efficiently through discipline and appropriate correction.”
There’s a tight-lipped look to Snape’s picture, a slight arch of one brow, which to Neville’s great horror, seems to signify a profound smugness. Time for that bath.
“I’ll entertain myself,” Snape calls, as Neville escapes up the stairs.
It takes a good twenty minutes to soak out the very concrete image of Snape kissing Goyle goodnight, as well as several more nebulous ones of discipline and - entertainment. Neville stares absently at his belly, which rises like a shiny milky-coloured hill out of the bathwater, thinks of a coppery mop of hair rising and falling slowly on his ribcage.
No one shouts at him as he comes back down the stairs, which is a pleasant surprise.
“You had a visitor,” Percy says, as Neville sticks his head into the living room.
Neville is suddenly smiling so wide his cheeks ache, and there seems no question of bringing his expression under any sort of control. “Hello. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Nor was - um -” Percy gestures at the empty page of paper tacked onto the wall with yellowing spellotape.
“Oh, god. What did he say to you?” Neville sits on the sofa. They touch lightly, knee to knee.
“Actually, he was surprisingly polite. Even had a suggestion or two for the Defence post - neither of them practical, of course. Then he left. He said something to the effect of not wishing to be a third wheel.” Percy looks down at their knees, and Neville reaches across to take hold of his hand. His fingers are unmistakeably those of a gardener next to Percy’s colourless skin, his fingernails scratched, his knuckles scuffed white. “I don’t know what he imagined we were going to do in the middle of the living room.”
Neville laughs. “I think he had some sort of argument with Harry. Merlin knows why he chose to come here.”
“This is where I’d come.” Percy’s looking at him seriously, and Neville thinks suddenly how young he looks out of his school robes. His lips are pink, with that one pale brown freckle that creeps onto the bottom left edge of his mouth. He glances again at the picture, still empty.
“You could always take it down, if you don’t want him here. Fold it into one of your Herbology encyclopaedias.”
“No, I think it’s - I don’t mind.” He rubs his thumb over the back of Percy’s hand, absently reassured by the bump and twist of his knuckles. “It’s good he has somewhere to come.”
When they lean in, Neville wonders if he should have offered tea first, if he should have asked about the Defence job advert, whether his hair will drip on Percy’s neck. Then they kiss, and it’s as surprising as the first time, as patient and kind. A gentle unfurling of lip and hand, a subtle graft of shoulder and thigh. Neville will keep the picture. Perhaps it’s superstitious, but luck like this is not to be tampered with.
White petals flutter at Alice’s fingers. That boy who comes has come again. He brought these. They look nice on her shelf - she pulls at Frank to look too. White petals in her big white room, curled and slipped and secret. Alice chuckles.
But the boy looks sad today, or thinking, or hoping. When Miss Tea comes, he takes a cup. No words today. No slivers of silver. All those words kept in his chest, or stirred and stirred and stirred into his tea. She touches his fringe and he starts and smiles at her.
“Camellias.”
A nice word. Alice says it back to him.
~
As soon as Neville’s wish has been greedily snatched and crumpled, he feels as exposed as if the words were in six-foot high letters strung over the headmaster’s desk. A ferocious heat prickles up his back. He fingers an invoice in the top of Percy’s in-tray.
As in previous years, Professor Longbottom’s Herbology classes prove to be -
It might have been anything really: original, popular, sub-par, laughable. He swallows. Laughable. Sometimes he suspects he makes no progress at all - still a fat boy with a toad instead of an owl, accidentally sorted. Still, who’s to know? Embarrassment when there’s only yourself to see is nothing but a waste of time.
He scribbles the selfsame hope on another triangle of blotter and holds it out to the smaller of the Wishknots with only slightly shaking fingers.
~
Dear Neville,
We didn’t find any snorkacks. I’m starting to think maybe there weren’t any in the first place. We were in the forest for a month without seeing so much as a nargle, but then I ran out of galleons, and Pablo said he thought they must all be hibernating. I didn’t know snorkacks hibernated, did you? But Pablo is quite poor and perhaps he just needed a bit of money before the baby comes.
But this is my real news. When we got back to San José, he introduced me to someone called Rolf Scamander, who is another explorer he took into the forest, looking for umgubular slashkilters. (They didn’t find any.) Rolf says he’s not giving up and that the next place to look is in the foothills of the Andes. He’s making an expedition to Peru and he’s asked me to go with him. He’s got a funny little beard, and he’s a bit rude sometimes, but I like him anyway, and everyone says he knows more about tracking the umgubular slashkilter than anyone else. I think I will go.
I’m not coming home yet.
Your friend,
Luna.
~
The second interview is almost two weeks later, and lasts considerably longer.
The greenhouse glass is pearly with condensation, but Neville can see a dark shape lurching outside. A swipe of his sleeve reveals it to be Harry crunching across the grass. This is unexpected; even the camellias seem to whisper louder. Neville wipes the dirt off his hands and goes to the door of the greenhouse.
“Harry!”
Harry veers round, and walks towards him with a smile.
“Brave man!” Neville shouts, shivering in his shirtsleeves.
Harry’s eyes drop a little, but he walks forward just as full of purpose. “If a thing’s worth doing.” He shrugs, still smiling, but at his feet.
They go up to the castle together.
“How’s Ginny?”
Harry blows a breath out, and the pale white blast of it curls a foot in front of him. “Very well. Last I heard.”
Oh. Neville wonders what to say.
“It’s fine.” Harry looks at him sideways. “She’s staying with her mother for a week or two. Part of the deal.”
“Do you miss her?”
Harry makes a grunting sort of laugh. “I miss Albus and James.” He pats Neville on the back, as if he’s apologising for the awkward conversation. “They’ll be back.”
They trudge together up the front steps of the castle. “Anyway, I’m hardly suffering for company,” Harry murmurs, as they disappear through the oak door. “Can’t get Malfoy out of the house for love or money. I think he’s run through his booze allowance.”
By the time they reach the gargoyle, they’ve said nothing more. Neville is annoyed with himself for getting lost off in counting the steps from door to study, thinking of the familiar turnings, milepost gashes in the stone walls, the muffled crowing of teenagers in the stairwells. He’s missed the opportunity for a serious chat. That strange secret look on Harry’s face seems like nothing but trouble.
“Are you coming up?”
“Would it help?” If anything at all would help this situation, Neville is pretty sure it’s not him.
“It might.”
He takes a deep breath. “Damage limitation.”
At the top of the staircase, the study door opens on a flood of pale green sunlight and what sounds like a restrained difference of opinions.
“- nevertheless, studies have shown that this fibreglass -”
“Studies? Studies by whom? Some Muggle ambassador for that blasted hocus pocus they call ‘science’? This is my Potions laboratory -”
“Not any more.” There is that light colour again, creeping over Percy’s pale skin, like Uncle Algie’s applejack roses. The headmaster’s arms and legs are folded over each other. Neville regards him with a sudden wild admiration. He looks round at Harry, nudging an elbow at him, but Harry’s busy grinning at Snape. Neither the headmaster nor the portrait seem to have registered their presence.
“Hallo, Percy,” Harry says to Snape. “Hallo, Severus.”
Neville flinches at the same time as something twitches in Snape’s cheek and an eyebrow shoots up to mid-forehead. Here it comes - then Percy turns, his arms and legs coming unhooked, his nostrils still wide with fading irritation.
“Good morning, Harry. Ah, Professor Longbottom. I was hoping to catch you.”
Neville swallows uncomfortably. It is a hard thing to be suspended between desire to show his willingness for whatever function Percy had in mind, and bracing himself against the storm of offended rage which is surely about to burst forth from the wall opposite the desk. What a relief to be guided gently from the room, with a hand held lightly at his shoulder. Snape and Harry are engaged in staring each other down, and don’t so much as turn.
“What was that about?” Neville asks, when the hand is finally withdrawn, and the staircase lowers them slowly down.
“Professor Snape is a little old fashioned when it comes to teaching methods. He’s also a fearful eavesdropper. I was telling Professor Slughorn about the shipment of fibreglass cauldrons we’ve agreed on - totally inert and, for safety reasons, far more appropriate for school-age Potions instruction - and well. There you have it.”
“I’m not sure inertia is something Professor Snape is particularly keen on,” Neville offers, secretly wondering about a fibreglass panel for the front of the portrait. For safety reasons.
Percy smiles at him. “Quite.” They hesitate at the bottom of the staircase, then Percy leans close, as if not wishing to be overheard, and his breath flutters against Neville’s ear. “Actually I think it was the explosions that got him into Potions in the first place. So much scope for shouting.”
~
They are ensconced in Greenhouse Three, two cups of tea to the good, fluxweed nodding approvingly above them, and a third of next door’s crop of camellias promised by proxy to Slughorn for the yearly batch of Felix Felicis, when the black shape floats back over the grounds.
They both watch in silence, two cups halfway between saucer and mouth.
“Should we go up?” Neville says, when the shape has faded into the dark blur of the forest.
He looks back at Percy, who is taking a sip of his tea, head bent, copper and walnut. When he looks up, he’s smiling. “I think maybe a little longer to cool off, don’t you?”
Neville fingers the handle of his cup, as the sun dips behind a cloud and the plants seem to shroud them over like a forest canopy. “A little longer,” he says.
By the time the tea is finished, Neville has a class of Ravenclaws and Slytherins waiting with their earmuffs outside Greenhouse Two, and there’s no time to return to the headmaster’s study. The children straighten as Percy strides past them; two girls on the edge of the group fall silent and look at him out of the corners of their eyes. The sun has come back out and Neville squints into it, one hand on his forehead, not exactly sorry not to be following into whatever aftermath there might be.
For the last two months, Neville has done his utmost to maintain a polite curatorial distance from Snape. Nevertheless, as he walks home to Hogsmeade that evening, he finds it impossible not to think about Snape’s desperate expression after the last visit. By the time he reaches the house, his conscience is pricking him hard enough to be considering an owl to Harry.
“Dear Harry,” he’s murmuring, at a bit of a loss, as he opens the front door. “Dear. Harry -”
“What was that?”
“Oh, Professor, you’re here.” Neville sticks his head round the living room door. The picture tries to peer past him. “I’m er - on my own.”
Crayon eyebrows lower a smidgeon further than is lifelike. “Just as well.”
“Have you been here all day? How did your visit go this morning?”
“How did it go?” Snape’s nostrils inflate. “The boy lacks manners, education, tact and native intelligence. Naturally it went like a blasted dream.” There’s an odd little quirk at the corner of Snape’s mouth, an indication either that Snape is exceptionally badly drawn or that he is peculiarly pleased with himself.
“Naturally.” Neville can feel the frown on his face as he wanders through to the kitchen.
Snape is still there when he comes back with his bowl of vegetable stew and the Daily Prophet, but Neville’s too absorbed in a piece about Hogwarts’ new Defence professor and an alleged misappropriation of dark creatures. He really must return that boggart. There’s also yet another article about last week’s unprofitable raid on the warehouse in Folkestone, and this time the anonymous leak from the Auror Office has the stamp of Malfoy all over it:
‘An almighty cock-up,’ a source close to department heads reports. ‘Some people are born for leadership and some simply aren’t; Potter certainly wasn’t Chosen for his logical thinking.’ A large component of the auror workforce is, moreover, said to be anticipating a welcome change of colours in the MLE Offices in the very near future.
Neville almost chokes on a cube of pumpkin.
“Longbottom. Kindly cease slurping and tutting.”
“Shorry!”
“And don’t speak with your mouth full!”
He swallows, prodding at the Prophet. “I sometimes wonder what they put in the water in Slytherin.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Slytherin,” Neville repeats, then stops. “Why are you in such a good mood anyway? Did Harry slip and crack his head on the desk or something this morning?”
There’s that lip quirk again - unsettling to say the least. “As it transpires, Auror Potter is in need of my assistance. One of my former associates, Rupert Yaxley, is believed to be involved in an alcohol-running and money-laundering syndicate.”
“I know.” Neville pats at the paper in his lap.
He almost expects Snape to be offended that the information has come so late to him, but evidently not so. “Greatly as I mistrust the ability of Potter and his department to penetrate to the heart of the matter, I have agreed to provide whatever information they deem useful. My sense of duty is doubtless overdeveloped.”
Neville stares at him. His chin is lifted as usual, but there’s something about the tone of his voice that is absolutely unfamiliar. The spoon hangs from Neville’s fingers. When no response comes, Snape looks down at him, all the way along that pointed cartoon nose.
“Your dinner looks revolting.”
That’s it. For a bitter, misanthropic, pessimistic, dead bastard, he sounds - happy.
~
Over the two weeks that follow, several things happen: the fluxweed is harvested and Greenhouse Three restocked with winter bulbs; Headmaster Weasley comes to tea six times; the camellias in Greenhouse Four come into full bloom and begin spreading rumours behind Neville’s back; and on one occasion Harry, now a frequent visitor to the school and allowed the freedom of the office password, brings his designated partner, Probationer Malfoy.
“We’re no closer to finding Yaxley,” Malfoy says confidentially. “I don’t personally know what it is they do up there for hours on end.” He sounds miffed not to have been invited. Harry had practically manhandled him onto a stool in the greenhouse, and told him to wait with Neville and the headmaster. Now he sits here, in the pale grey uniform of a rehabilitated Death Eater, looking at least fifteen years older than when they left school. Apart, that is, from the sneer, which is precisely as Neville remembers it. “Can’t you get these plants to shut up?”
A collective gasp rises from the camellias. Neville gives the closest cluster a deprecating look, hoping it will suffice until he has time for a more thorough soothing.
“You know he’s commissioned another copy?” Malfoy looks from one to the other over the rim of his cup, probably aiming for subtle and missing by at least a couple of feet.
“I am aware, yes.” Percy’s spikiest headboy voice. “The artist came last week for some preliminary sketches.”
“And left looking ten years older, I expect. I’ve told Potter it’s all fine with me as long as it doesn’t hang in the outside office with us.” He shudders, sucking air in through his teeth.
Neville frowns. “I thought you Slytherins all loved him. He always took your side.” Malfoy doesn’t look impressed. “He hasn’t changed at all, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Longbottom. Horrible man. You only thought he was nice to us, because you were too busy wringing your hands over how life was oh so unfair to you poor Gryffindors. Those dormitories were freezing.” He takes a sip of tea. “Besides, portraits give me the willies.”
“Hang on -” Neville starts crossly, not even sure where this surreal urge to defend Snape is going to take him, then Percy lays a tea-free hand on his arm. For a moment Neville just stares at it.
When he looks up, Percy is smiling at him with one side of his mouth. Not worth it. Neville lets out a breath, and turns back to say something a little blander, more conciliatory. Malfoy, meanwhile, is looking at the pair of them, open-mouthed like the snitch has just plopped into his hand of its own accord. Neville’s ears are instantly so prickly hot it feels like they might burn right off, and there Malfoy sits, goggling like a first year, for a full five seconds, before clearing his throat with unnecessary drama.
“Anyway. Tell me about the new Defence professor. Is it true he’s been pilfering hinkypunks?”
Another soft gasp from the little tree at Neville’s right elbow. The camellias lean forward to catch more. Luck, my arse. Next time Neville’s going to try grafting them to a crop of Devil’s Snare.
~
Ten minutes more and the headmaster’s had enough. He pleads a staff meeting and stands to shake Malfoy’s hand.
“This has been charming, Probationer Malfoy. We must do it again.”
“I’d be thrilled.”
Nevertheless, he insists on accompanying them up to Percy’s office to collect Harry, and Neville’s fairly certain it’s only in the hope of getting a glimpse of the portrait. He’s first through the door - “in case they’re discussing something top secret” - and stops so abruptly that Neville bumps into him with a boof of air from his lungs. Neville peers into the room.
Over Malfoy’s shoulder, he is just in time to see Harry standing on the headmaster’s green-upholstered mahogany armchair, a bare inch of air between his torso and the rough surface of a painting on the wall behind the desk. The fingers of his left hand trace slowly across a pale cheekbone, a yellow duster in his right smoothes short gentle strokes along the sitter’s neck. Snape’s eyes are closed and his mouth ever so slightly ajar; he seems almost sighing to himself. For a moment Neville’s stomach swoops violently as if he’s stepped out for a stair and found it missing. Then it’s over. Harry pulls back so fast he almost totters, one foot paddling a little through the air to keep his balance. The duster is whipped behind his back, and he smothers a sneeze into a closed fist with a squeak and a bounce of the knees.
Neville’s first instinct - to back out of the door, down the stairs and to keep going until he’s firmly bolted into the furthest greenhouse - is stymied by the headmaster pressed against his back. The three of them stand there, and for at least two it is without doubt one of the most uncomfortable experiences of their lives. Snape stares at them with more contempt than he ever spared a second year splattered in bubotuber pus.
Finally Malfoy’s shoulderblades shift against Neville’s chest, and in his peripheral vision he sees a pair of clasped hands.
“Thank you, Merlin!”
~
Wednesday afternoon. Double Herbology with the first-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs.
“Hold it like it’s a wand, Staveley. Thumb on top. That’s it.” Staveley’s little fat hand grips falteringly on the secateurs. “Remember to tickle just below the leaf cluster. Wait a second - till it leans a bit. Gently. There.”
The camellia hisses against the snick of the secateurs and drops with satisfied hum into the small pile of flowers on Staveley’s workbench. There’s a drift of them rising gradually all around the students. A third will get laid out overnight in the vegetable patch under the anti-crow charms, so that they come to Professor Slughorn dewed and soft.
Neville had spread out the first batch last night, under a glittering clear sky and a sliver of moon, and wondered for the first time why he still lived in that little cottage in Hogsmeade. There were lights still lit high up on the north side of the castle and he’d looked at those pale yellow windows until they burnt purple on the inside of his eyelids when he blinked, then went home just the same, and not even Snape was there to sneer at his hopelessness.
“Sir! Professor Longbottom!” Neville turns with a jerk. Stuart Buggins, a fifth-year prefect, is scurrying across the lawn towards the open greenhouse door. “Can you -” He bends, panting, one hand on the doorframe, the other on his knee. “Can you come to the headmaster’s office. Those plants -” He points back towards the castle.
Neville takes him by the shoulders. “Where’s the headmaster?”
Buggins seems to point harder, his finger waving wildly. “In the office. Fighting them off.”
Oh Merlin. “Stay here. Don’t let them -” Neville gestures at the greenhouseful of first years. There are plenty of things a dozen Gryffindors shouldn’t be allowed to do with a pair of secateurs, but panic sweeps them all from his mind.
Neville dashes in through the entrance hall, feet slapping heavy and flat on the stone flags. Skidding round the turn by the tall suit of armour, there’s the hole where Malfoy’s hex struck the wall by the Charms classroom in fourth year, there’s the statue of Themistocles the owl with its beak missing, there’s the stair that’s been shattered beyond repair for hundreds of years. A rumble of laughter grows louder as the period finishes and children boil out into the corridors, and all the way up to the office, Neville imagines Percy caught round the neck by a thick arm of vine.
When he arrives, it’s not quite as he feared. In the week since Neville was last here, the Wishknots have grown to the size of well-established hydrangea bushes and the branches are snaking across the desk, reaching and twisting for anything in close range. Percy is wrestling one of them for his tie, while the other has spilt his inkwell all across the desk and is rifling through the boxes of paperwork.
This is Neville’s moment! There is a spell for ‘let go’ - and it is - what is it? He fumbles his wand out of his trouser pocket. Begins with res-? rem-? re-? Percy’s opponent is reaching for the collar of his shirt. Neville panics.
“Disgorgio!”
The Wishknots are still for a second, then there is a massive convulsion, Percy staggers forward with a yelp, then stillness again.
Percy and Neville eye each other nervously as a fragment of paper is catapulted out from the middle of Percy’s Wishknot and lands in his hair. He picks it out and Neville has barely a moment to flush with embarrassment and beg him silently not to read it, when scraps begin erupting from both plants, filling the study like a snow globe.
The deluge lasts for at least two minutes and leaves them both ankle-deep in soft shards of white, like camellia petals. Percy’s face is blank and shocked; he must have fed them at least twenty times a day for the last two months to cause this - the pair of them wading around in their joint indiscretions. Neville’s almost cross. He would say something, but there’s a piece of paper stuck to the tip of his tongue; he peels it off, keeping his eye on Percy for any sudden movement. The writing is smudged blue and purple. Professor Longbrlluurr, it says cryptically, drunkenly blurred and chewed. Neville stares at it, as if it’s a clue to be deciphered, then picks up another. Professor Longbddrrrm, says one on his shoulder, and Profoeedr Iomqbcllarrr, one caught in his collar. When he looks up again, a heat flooding his skin, like the sun’s just come blazing out at five o’clock on a December afternoon, the headmaster is just standing there, red in the face, one elbow twitching mechanically against his desk chair.
And it comes down to this. Neville may have been slow at Potions and clumsy at Transfiguration, but if there’s anything he’s learnt at Hogwarts, it’s that there is every reason to accept something when it presents itself to you. He climbs over the ruin of Percy’s filing system, parchment and paper crumpling together and all manner of governors’ reports and Profemmrnr Lommbolllrroms crushed under his heels, and keeps himself walking awkwardly forward, aware of every untidy muscle movement, until he’s two feet away from Percy. And as steady as he can, he holds out his hand.
~
Spring is returning. The south edge of the Forbidden Forest is bright with bluebells and the Snapping Gladioli are beginning to come through in Greenhouse Three, but it’s been a bad day.
This morning the staff finally waved goodbye to Benjamin Murtlegrip. Earlier even than last year’s Defence professor. Percy has been in desperation all afternoon, and at four o’clock a statement of interest owl arrived from Draco Malfoy, which was once again the triumph of hope over expectation, as well as an exercise in extravagantly poor taste.
A tentative dinner plan has had to be cancelled, and Neville trudges home alone. He is annoyed, and by the time he reaches the cottage, his collar is damper and pricklier than the intermittent drizzle warrants.
He throws his cloak over the armchair in the living room and is about to head upstairs to run himself a bath, when something stops him short, suddenly aware of all the hairs standing to attention on the back of his neck. A familiar voice behind him makes him start.
“So you’re still here?”
Neville turns, one hand on his chest. Snape is peering around the room as if it is his own and Neville has made some very unwelcome changes.
“Of course. Where else would I be?”
“At the castle. I fully expected to see you installed as deputy head by now. I imagine I should be relieved.”
“I imagine so. What are you doing here?”
“Since you’re the one who drew the picture, I rather thought that might be within your purview.”
“You haven’t been to my picture for months. Has he said something?”
“Who?” Snape begins sharply, then the clumsy crease between his brows flattens out again and he takes a breath in through the nose. “He brought his brood into headquarters today, evidently from the mere wish to see me smeared with jam and deafened with squawking. That one with the appalling name.” His mouth is drawn tight like he’s going to be sick. Is that possible for a portrait? It suggests all sorts of other bodily functions Neville’s not quite ready to contemplate. “I reprimanded it on its conduct, as any rational person would have.”
The rest of the story is pretty easy to imagine. Neville’s even seen it play out once or twice. Perhaps it’s only really surprising that Snape hasn’t reappeared before now.
“Oh, you needn’t worry, I shall return once the office is empty. We can both get some peace.”
“Oh, well. I’m sure tomorrow you’ll - he’ll be ready to apologise.”
“If he leaves me again with that cretinous Malfoy boy, he’ll have more to do than apologise.”
“Malfoy’s always been afraid of you. He told us.” Neville almost blushes, distracted by the thought of who ‘we’ were. And it comes so easily to the tongue. They’ll have dinner tomorrow instead. Then perhaps… He smiles.
Snape either does not notice, or he affects not to. “Gryffindors,” he snorts. “Do you honestly suppose that a house like Slytherin can be ruled by love? Do you think that I tucked Gregory Goyle into bed each night?”
“No! Merlin, no. But maybe if you’d been a bit nicer -”
The eyebrows descend. “Nicer? Longbottom, I am, as you are doubtless aware, barely of the temper to be nice. Besides, what you win for yourself with your nauseating niceness, some of us manage far more efficiently through discipline and appropriate correction.”
There’s a tight-lipped look to Snape’s picture, a slight arch of one brow, which to Neville’s great horror, seems to signify a profound smugness. Time for that bath.
“I’ll entertain myself,” Snape calls, as Neville escapes up the stairs.
It takes a good twenty minutes to soak out the very concrete image of Snape kissing Goyle goodnight, as well as several more nebulous ones of discipline and - entertainment. Neville stares absently at his belly, which rises like a shiny milky-coloured hill out of the bathwater, thinks of a coppery mop of hair rising and falling slowly on his ribcage.
No one shouts at him as he comes back down the stairs, which is a pleasant surprise.
“You had a visitor,” Percy says, as Neville sticks his head into the living room.
Neville is suddenly smiling so wide his cheeks ache, and there seems no question of bringing his expression under any sort of control. “Hello. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Nor was - um -” Percy gestures at the empty page of paper tacked onto the wall with yellowing spellotape.
“Oh, god. What did he say to you?” Neville sits on the sofa. They touch lightly, knee to knee.
“Actually, he was surprisingly polite. Even had a suggestion or two for the Defence post - neither of them practical, of course. Then he left. He said something to the effect of not wishing to be a third wheel.” Percy looks down at their knees, and Neville reaches across to take hold of his hand. His fingers are unmistakeably those of a gardener next to Percy’s colourless skin, his fingernails scratched, his knuckles scuffed white. “I don’t know what he imagined we were going to do in the middle of the living room.”
Neville laughs. “I think he had some sort of argument with Harry. Merlin knows why he chose to come here.”
“This is where I’d come.” Percy’s looking at him seriously, and Neville thinks suddenly how young he looks out of his school robes. His lips are pink, with that one pale brown freckle that creeps onto the bottom left edge of his mouth. He glances again at the picture, still empty.
“You could always take it down, if you don’t want him here. Fold it into one of your Herbology encyclopaedias.”
“No, I think it’s - I don’t mind.” He rubs his thumb over the back of Percy’s hand, absently reassured by the bump and twist of his knuckles. “It’s good he has somewhere to come.”
When they lean in, Neville wonders if he should have offered tea first, if he should have asked about the Defence job advert, whether his hair will drip on Percy’s neck. Then they kiss, and it’s as surprising as the first time, as patient and kind. A gentle unfurling of lip and hand, a subtle graft of shoulder and thigh. Neville will keep the picture. Perhaps it’s superstitious, but luck like this is not to be tampered with.