Growing - Chapter Ten
I really hope that people haven't given up on this fic, what with the rather irregular updates. I'm not going to abandon it, I promise.
Growing (10/18)
Chapter Ten - As Good as it Gets
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Chapter Summary: Neville works on his Patronus with some one-on-one tuition from Tonks. Remus reveals his plan and Ted misuses a Muggle artefact.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to Nathaniel for the beta work.
Previous Chapter
~*~*~*~
“Okay, now think of a happy thought,” Tonks said for what seemed to Neville to be the fiftieth time that day. They had been standing out in the garden all afternoon working on Neville’s Patronus, but were having little success.
“I know,” Neville muttered, trying to concentrate on a happy thought. Winning the house cup in first year. “Expecto Patronum,” he yelled loudly, focusing all his energy on the white mist escaping out of his wand, trying to will it into a shape.
He hung his wand by his side. “This isn’t really working, is it?” Tonks said, stating what to Neville seemed to be the obvious.
“Maybe I’m just not powerful enough to conjure one,” Neville suggested. He had thought that maybe he was capable of it. He had been doing so well since he got his new wand, but maybe that was false hope.
“No. You’re nearly there. I’m just a lousy teacher,” Tonks announced, just as frustrated as he was. “Remus, give us a hand,” she called. Lupin, who had been trying to disguise his watching of them by reading a book, was sitting in a chair a few metres away.
“Well, tell Neville about how you managed to conjure your first Patronus, that might help him,” Lupin suggested.
“No, you help Neville. I give up. I’m not the teacher here.”
Lupin had a look of disappointment about him. “You’re the one who has to supervise.”
“Well, I can supervise from your chair,” Tonks said.
“No. I think you’re both nearly there,” Lupin replied.
Tonks placed her hands on her hips. “What is with you lately? It’s not like you to pass on teaching someone willing to learn?”
Lupin looked at Tonks sheepishly, it seemed clear to even Neville now that he was hiding something. “I just happen to think that it’s important for you to teach him.”
“Oh no, Remus. You’ve got some crazy idea in your head, haven’t you?”
“Only you would think it’s nuts. Professor McGonagall and Mad-Eye happen to agree with me.”
“Great.” Tonks rolled her eyes. “The three of you have been conspiring behind my back. I’m not a teacher, Remus. I’m an Auror.”
“Which means you’ve got more experience than most of the candidates that have taken the job in the past Merlin-knows how many years.” Neville didn’t know if this was true, yes, Lockhart and Umbridge were hopeless, but from what Neville had heard around the school, Quirrell, Barty Crouch Junior and Snape all knew what they were doing.
“Yeah, but I can’t teach that to a classroom of kids.”
“Yes you can. You just need some practice,” Lupin replied, trying desperately to change her mind.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Andromeda announced. Neville hadn’t noticed her come out of the greenhouse. She was walking towards the house.
Tonks rolled her eyes again. “Well congratulations, Remus, you’ve gone from the bane of my mother’s existence to her favourite person in all of five seconds. That’s a new record.” She sighed frustrated at the both of them. “No, no, no and that is final,” she added on for good measure. And started to walk towards the house.
Tonks wasn’t being very helpful with Neville trying to create a Patronus, but thinking about the alternatives, Neville realised he would take her over another Snape or Crouch any day.
“Umm…That’s fine but can you finish helping me with my Patronus,” Neville called after her. Tonks stopped in her tracks. Lupin smiled at him as Tonks headed back.
Lupin stood around as Tonks began again, using Lupin’s advice. “Okay then. When I tried to summon a Patronus, I was hard stuck for the right happy memory,” Tonks announced. “Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you should try a different one.”
Neville tried thinking about getting an O in Herbology. He tried again, still no shape.
“Maybe a different one,” Tonks tried again.
Neville though of the DA lessons. How he had managed to achieve so much. He tried again. Sill only silvery mist appeared.
“Well, what’s yours?” Neville asked frustrated. Maybe if he had an example he could think of something suitable.
Tonks blushed. “Umm. Well…” She looked down if embarrassed by it.
“Mine’s my best friend revealing that he became an illegal animagus to help with my transformations,” Lupin confessed. “I was so angry at him at the time, and James and Peter too when they announced that they had done it too. They had been sneaking around my back for years to do it. But looking back at it, it was one of the most wonderful things that anyone has ever done for me.”
“So you didn’t have to be happy at the time then?” Neville asked. This was quite a revelation to him.
“No,” Lupin said.
“Okay then. I think I have one,” Neville said. An idea had formed in his mind.
Neville closed his eyes and concentrated hard. Standing by the rubble of his house, only to find out that the house elves had saved his mimbulus, that Trevor was still alive. Finding out that Tonks wasn’t dead. His Gran walking in his hospital room, alive and well.
“Expecto Patronum!”
“You did it!” he heard Tonks exclaim as she gave him a slap on the shoulder. Neville opened his eyes. Standing before him was a sold, silver-white and very large toad.
Neville blushed. Lupin’s Patronus was a dog, Harry’s a stag and Hermione’s an otter, all impressive creatures, and his was a toad. It was embarrassing but oh so typical.
“It’s a toad,” Tonks announced.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. Neville supposed it was his fault for thinking of Trevor as part of his happy memory. If only he had gotten an Owl for his eleventh birthday instead. The Patronus stared up at him with the same bored expression that Trevor so often wore.
“Plenty of people have small animals as a Patronus,” Lupin said. The pair of teachers must have picked up on his disappointment.
“Don’t be embarrassed because it’s not something cool,” Tonks said. “My first Patronus was a caterpillar.”
“Really?” Neville asked.
“Yeah. I was devastated the first time I saw it, this gigantic, slow moving caterpillar. And I got mocked mercilessly by the rest of the trainee Aurors, but when push came to shove, it was just as powerful as theirs.”
“Okay,” Neville replied, still not quite satisfied.
“The form they take on doesn’t matter, they all do the same thing. Actually, me and Seth Proudfoot ended up having a competition to see who’s was the strongest, and I won four out of seven times.”
“What was his?” Neville asked.
“A Jackal,” Tonks replied. If Tonks were indeed telling the truth, then Neville guessed his toad would be all right.
~*~*~*~
They spent the rest of the afternoon with Neville learning to send messages via his frog Patronus. Like Tonks had said, it really was not that hard. All he needed to do was command it with his mind to carry a short message. Tonks and Lupin understood it nearly every time.
Neville tracked down Trevor that evening. He was spending most of his time in the greenhouse, happily living amongst the various species of plant that Andromeda tended to. Lupin and Tonks had gone out ‘on business’, Andromeda was writing letters again, Ted was engaged in some book about espionage and Neville found himself without much to do.
The greenhouse was so calm at night, though Neville did not feel comfortable in the darkness surrounded by so many panes of glass. Kept on thinking that anything could be out there in the night, sitting there and watching him. So Neville planned to not stay long, he would go back into the house before sunset.
Looking at Trevor, happily sitting with the honking daffodils, Neville thought that maybe his Patronus was a toad, because deep down he was like Trevor; rather boring and incapable of doing anything particularly impressive.
Neville got up and went to check on the Mimbulus. His stood by Andromeda’s. You could easily tell the difference, his was bigger, but the others were catching up. There were still no flowers or seedpods or fruit or even branches he could use as clippings.
Neville was starting to wonder whether he was wrong. Maybe they could not be cultivated. Maybe this aspect had led them towards extinction in the first place.
Neville headed back to the house and found a letter from Luna waiting. She was spending her time experimenting with cooking. Neville thought her idea of a strawberry-vanilla-chocolate-caramel cake sounded good, but the eggplant biscuits sounded rather disgusting. Ted had a good laugh when he told him about the later. Neville wrote back telling her about his Patronus.
He then picked up another piece of parchment and began writing.
Dear Gran…
~*~*~*~
A post owl arrived that morning during breakfast. At first Neville thought it might be a message back from his Gran. The night before he had told her about his Patronus, knowing it was something she would be proud of.
Instead the owl was carrying a rectangle-shaped box and landed in front of Tonks.
“Finally,” she exclaimed as she grabbed the box and pulled out her new wand. With a flick she produced an impressive amount of pink and green sparks.
“Where did you get that one from?” Ted asked. Good wands were few and far between in Britain these days with Olivander’s having been closed and the major overseas wand makers being too afraid to set up shop. Instead many cheap wand shops had started charging exuberant prices for wands of very poor quality.
“Well, you know how I had trouble finding a decent wand for myself from any place in Europe? I found a place in New Zealand that will make wands to specification, so it’s practically the same as my first.”
“And it arrived that quickly?” Ted asked. Tonks had only broken her wand a few days ago.
“No. I’ve had this on order for three months. And that’s with them putting me at the top of the line because of my job…that’s why the Death Eaters have taken to attacking Auror’s wand arms. In the hope we’ll not be as effective with defective wands and using our weak arms,” she added quietly.
Ted looked horrified. Neville knew otherwise. It was an old tactic used in many magical wars. Andromeda and Lupin seemed to be unsurprised as well. Very few fighters survived wars with both hands, but this sort of history was not really taught in the Magic of History class. It was handed down the generations when children look at the portraits in their homes and would ask why so many of their ancestors had pieces of them missing.
“Want to do target practice today, Neville?” Tonks asked. “I could use a sparing partner?”
“Yeah, alright,” Neville replied happily. Not many got the opportunity to train one on one with an Auror.
~*~*~*~
Tonks went digging around her room after breakfast and produced a wooden dummy of a person and placed him on the back lawn. “Dad made me this for my seventeenth birthday,” she announced, “for practice and training. It used to run around but one day the charm went a bit funny and it tried to strangle me, so we’re just going to have to sit it here,” she finished, putting it down by the hedge separated the backyards from the neighbours a nearby field.
“Stupefy,” she yelled. A shot of red light emerged from her wand and hit the wooden man in the head.
“Bugger,” she muttered.
“You hit him,” Neville reminded her.
“Yeah, but I was going for the chest,” she stared at her wand hand for a while, and then her wand. “It’s a bit weird using my new wand, it’s a different weight. You try.”
Neville pulled out his wand. “Stupefy,” he yelled and a red jet of light skimmed over the wooden man’s left shoulder.
“Hey, you’re pretty good,” Tonks said, smiling at him.
“Not really,” Neville said. Not compared to her, when she missed she at least hit it, and she was working with a new wand.
“No, when I was your age, I was truly awful,” she said, “and I was the best in my year too.” She pointed her wand and sent out another jet of light, this time wordlessly. It hit the wooden man in the upper thigh.
Neville was far from the best in his, Harry, Ron and Hermione were all really good. So was Draco Malfoy. “Your defence teachers must have been really awful then. Even worse than ours,” Neville said as he did the same wordless magic and managed to send the red jet over the other shoulder.
“Probably,” Tonks said, sending another stupefy charm, this time hitting the wooden man in the crotch. She let out a small laugh. “I learnt more from hexing Charlie Weasley than I ever did in class.”
“I learnt most of what I know from Harry,” Neville said. Harry had made a good defence teacher, in the small time the DA had been running Neville had learnt more useful spells than he had in Defence against the Dark Arts. He sent another curse at the wooden man and hit him in the chin.
“Yeah, but Remus was pretty good, wasn’t he?” Tonks asked.
“Yeah,” Neville replied and told her the story about how he had learnt to get rid of a boggart. She smiled at his story but did not laugh. Neville realised while he told it that dressing Snape up in his Gran’s clothes wasn’t that funny after what Snape had done. Snape was now more than a bully - he was a murderer. Everything he had done now had more sinister connotations in Neville’s mind, and he supposed Tonks’ mind as well.
There was a silence after he finished while he and Tonks continued to hurtle spells at the wooden man. Tonks was now hitting the target in the chest every time, and Neville was proud to be able to say he was hitting it more times than not.
“So what do you want to do when you leave Hogwarts?” Tonks asked, striking up conversation again.
“I don’t know,” Neville said truthfully. “I like working with plants, that’s why I’m here,” he said. “But I also want to be an Auror like my mum and dad. I want to help out in the war.” Neville braced himself waiting for the look of sympathy from Tonks, but she didn’t take her gaze of the wooden target.
“Well, many people have been joining the Department of Law Enforcement lately to help out in the war. Most of the ones I’ve talked to intend to go back to their jobs after the war ends,” she replied.
Neville hurtled a few more curses. “I don’t think that they would take me anyway. I don’t take Potions or Transfiguration.” Neville had been devastated when he realised that he would not be able to get into Transfiguration, but Potions was mixed with the relief that he would never have to work with Snape again (though what with Snape getting the Defence position that did not really work out).
Tonks hurtled a few more curses at the wooden man, with more ferocity to her action. “They’ll let you be an Auror at the moment. It’s war so they’ll send anyone with a wand out there at the moment,” she said, a hint of disdain in her voice.
Neville had forgotten that the Ministry was a touchy subject with Tonks at the moment.
“Did you always want to be an Auror?” he asked, trying to change the subject at bit.
“Pretty much,” she said. “I wanted to do some good. I thought it was about time somebody in my family did - Do you want to do some shield charms?” she quickly asked.
Andromeda and Tonks seemed so far removed from Bellatrix Lestrange; Andromeda with her strange need to have everything controlled and perfect, and Tonks with her passion for the cause; that Neville managed to forget about their relations most of the time. “Yeah, alright,” he replied.
“Great, I’ll go grab some cushions.”
They spend the rest of the time trying to block each other’s stunning charms. Tonks went easy on him at first, but Neville asked her to try a bit harder, and he found himself lying on his back on a pile of couch cushions facing the sky quite a lot that afternoon.
Tonks herself deflected a lot of them; they went spurting off into the garden, hitting the house, greenhouse and plants surrounding them, preventing Ted, Lupin and Andromeda from leaving the house. Neville was quite frustrated that he couldn’t hit her as much as she could hit him. Though one or two got through, leaving Tonks in the same embarrassing position he found himself in quite a bit. He was not sure, but he was pretty confident she had let him hit her a few of the times.
~*~*~*~
Neville’s Gran did not write back to him that evening. He was beginning to wonder if she was not talking to him. Luna wrote back asking if Professor Lupin was going to teach Defence against the Dark Arts again that year. Neville asked again and Lupin explained that it was currently illegal for him to be a teacher and it did not look like the law would change. But he did tell Neville to write back thanking her for the kind wishes.
Lupin and Tonks disappeared shortly after dinner, citing that they had some business to attend to. Neville figured they were going to some sort of meeting. Ted came in the lounge with a box.
“I found the old monopoly set,” he announced. “I was cleaning the garage - don’t give me that look, Andi-” Andromeda had a look of shocked disbelief on her face, “-and I found this, and my old cricket stuff.”
“What’s monopoly?” Neville asked.
“An addiction,” Andromeda replied quickly before Ted could get a word in.
“I’m glad you asked, it’s a Muggle game, which I’ve played around with a bit and now it’s a lot more fun,” Ted announced, smiling gleefully.
Ted and Andromeda proceed to teach Neville the basic game, to get as much Muggle money as one could. The counters would move around the board game and bark orders at the players, and the squares would construct fancy houses and even more impressive hotels that reached three feet in the air and had the players name lit up in neon lighting. Andromeda eventually won. By the end two sides of the board all had brilliant three story houses on them or “Andromeda Towers” hotels decorating them. Neville and Ted didn’t stand a chance.
Andromeda smiled wickedly as she grabbed the last bits of Ted’s money and Tonks and Lupin walked in the room having returned from the meeting.
“You won’t believe what Fleur asked me?” she announced loudly as she walked into the lounge. “Oh, bloody hell. Dad!” she moaned suddenly, covering her eyes with her hand. “I can’t see that.”
“Isn’t that a Muggle artefact?” Lupin asked.
“Which would be why I can’t see it,” Tonks replied.
“It’s not doing any harm,” Ted said while waving his wand and causing Andromeda’s hotels and houses to demolish themselves. “Arthur wouldn’t mind.”
“I’m an Auror and you’re breaking the law. If I were to see that I’m duty bound to report you,” Tonks said, pulling her hand down.
“Considering you and your mother have been committing identity fraud for the past few years, I’m sure you can let me off with a warning just this once,” Ted replied.
Tonks made a small smile. “Neville shouldn’t be allowed to stay here. We’re corrupting him, I’m sure of it.”
“Did Fleur ask you not to have that hair at her wedding?” Andromeda asked. Tonks was wearing her hair short and pink and had done since the morning.
Tonks crinkled her noise. “Actually, yes. How did you know that?”
Ted laughed, “You have a lot to learn about brides. Your mother cancelled our whole wedding when she found out she couldn’t fit into her mother’s wedding dress.”
“Wait, so I’m a bastard because you didn’t want to get married while pregnant?” Tonks asked. “You said it was because you didn’t have enough money to pay a priest.”
“Well, it was that too…but I was eighteen at the time and it was the only thing I had managed to steal off my family,” Andromeda explained.
“You had your revenge though. You threw up all over your mother’s wedding dress at the actual wedding.”
Lupin let out a small laugh, but stifled it quickly. “Thank Merlin for cleaning charms,” Andromeda announced.
Tonks rubbed her forehead and looked to Neville. “Still want to stay here?”
“Oh, every family has got wedding stories like that,” Lupin added. “I remember spending the morning of James Potter’s wedding trying out every hang-over cure ever invented in the hope to get him down the alter without throwing up. We got him there though, he even looked like a million Galleons too.”
“What worked?” Ted asked.
“Sirius told him Lily was pregnant. That sobered him up pretty quickly.” Lupin laughed.
“And as it turned out he was right too. Harry was born eight months later,” he added. They all laughed, including Neville, who couldn’t help but feel like he had missed out on these stories from his own family.
~*~*~*~
When Neville went to bed shortly afterwards, he found an unfamiliar owl in his room sitting by his bed. He grabbed the letter off it.
Dear Neville, His Gran had written, Your father’s Patronus was magnificent, it took on the shape of a Kingfisher, while your mother’s took on the shape of a Heron. They were beautiful together. Yours, Augusta Longbottom.
Neville didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t say anything about how she was doing, or about whether she liked the form of his Patronus. Puzzled Neville went to bed. A Kingfisher and a Heron, he thought, and smiled. They were both beautiful birds.
Next Chapter
Growing (10/18)
Chapter Ten - As Good as it Gets
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Chapter Summary: Neville works on his Patronus with some one-on-one tuition from Tonks. Remus reveals his plan and Ted misuses a Muggle artefact.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to Nathaniel for the beta work.
Previous Chapter
~*~*~*~
“Okay, now think of a happy thought,” Tonks said for what seemed to Neville to be the fiftieth time that day. They had been standing out in the garden all afternoon working on Neville’s Patronus, but were having little success.
“I know,” Neville muttered, trying to concentrate on a happy thought. Winning the house cup in first year. “Expecto Patronum,” he yelled loudly, focusing all his energy on the white mist escaping out of his wand, trying to will it into a shape.
He hung his wand by his side. “This isn’t really working, is it?” Tonks said, stating what to Neville seemed to be the obvious.
“Maybe I’m just not powerful enough to conjure one,” Neville suggested. He had thought that maybe he was capable of it. He had been doing so well since he got his new wand, but maybe that was false hope.
“No. You’re nearly there. I’m just a lousy teacher,” Tonks announced, just as frustrated as he was. “Remus, give us a hand,” she called. Lupin, who had been trying to disguise his watching of them by reading a book, was sitting in a chair a few metres away.
“Well, tell Neville about how you managed to conjure your first Patronus, that might help him,” Lupin suggested.
“No, you help Neville. I give up. I’m not the teacher here.”
Lupin had a look of disappointment about him. “You’re the one who has to supervise.”
“Well, I can supervise from your chair,” Tonks said.
“No. I think you’re both nearly there,” Lupin replied.
Tonks placed her hands on her hips. “What is with you lately? It’s not like you to pass on teaching someone willing to learn?”
Lupin looked at Tonks sheepishly, it seemed clear to even Neville now that he was hiding something. “I just happen to think that it’s important for you to teach him.”
“Oh no, Remus. You’ve got some crazy idea in your head, haven’t you?”
“Only you would think it’s nuts. Professor McGonagall and Mad-Eye happen to agree with me.”
“Great.” Tonks rolled her eyes. “The three of you have been conspiring behind my back. I’m not a teacher, Remus. I’m an Auror.”
“Which means you’ve got more experience than most of the candidates that have taken the job in the past Merlin-knows how many years.” Neville didn’t know if this was true, yes, Lockhart and Umbridge were hopeless, but from what Neville had heard around the school, Quirrell, Barty Crouch Junior and Snape all knew what they were doing.
“Yeah, but I can’t teach that to a classroom of kids.”
“Yes you can. You just need some practice,” Lupin replied, trying desperately to change her mind.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Andromeda announced. Neville hadn’t noticed her come out of the greenhouse. She was walking towards the house.
Tonks rolled her eyes again. “Well congratulations, Remus, you’ve gone from the bane of my mother’s existence to her favourite person in all of five seconds. That’s a new record.” She sighed frustrated at the both of them. “No, no, no and that is final,” she added on for good measure. And started to walk towards the house.
Tonks wasn’t being very helpful with Neville trying to create a Patronus, but thinking about the alternatives, Neville realised he would take her over another Snape or Crouch any day.
“Umm…That’s fine but can you finish helping me with my Patronus,” Neville called after her. Tonks stopped in her tracks. Lupin smiled at him as Tonks headed back.
Lupin stood around as Tonks began again, using Lupin’s advice. “Okay then. When I tried to summon a Patronus, I was hard stuck for the right happy memory,” Tonks announced. “Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you should try a different one.”
Neville tried thinking about getting an O in Herbology. He tried again, still no shape.
“Maybe a different one,” Tonks tried again.
Neville though of the DA lessons. How he had managed to achieve so much. He tried again. Sill only silvery mist appeared.
“Well, what’s yours?” Neville asked frustrated. Maybe if he had an example he could think of something suitable.
Tonks blushed. “Umm. Well…” She looked down if embarrassed by it.
“Mine’s my best friend revealing that he became an illegal animagus to help with my transformations,” Lupin confessed. “I was so angry at him at the time, and James and Peter too when they announced that they had done it too. They had been sneaking around my back for years to do it. But looking back at it, it was one of the most wonderful things that anyone has ever done for me.”
“So you didn’t have to be happy at the time then?” Neville asked. This was quite a revelation to him.
“No,” Lupin said.
“Okay then. I think I have one,” Neville said. An idea had formed in his mind.
Neville closed his eyes and concentrated hard. Standing by the rubble of his house, only to find out that the house elves had saved his mimbulus, that Trevor was still alive. Finding out that Tonks wasn’t dead. His Gran walking in his hospital room, alive and well.
“Expecto Patronum!”
“You did it!” he heard Tonks exclaim as she gave him a slap on the shoulder. Neville opened his eyes. Standing before him was a sold, silver-white and very large toad.
Neville blushed. Lupin’s Patronus was a dog, Harry’s a stag and Hermione’s an otter, all impressive creatures, and his was a toad. It was embarrassing but oh so typical.
“It’s a toad,” Tonks announced.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. Neville supposed it was his fault for thinking of Trevor as part of his happy memory. If only he had gotten an Owl for his eleventh birthday instead. The Patronus stared up at him with the same bored expression that Trevor so often wore.
“Plenty of people have small animals as a Patronus,” Lupin said. The pair of teachers must have picked up on his disappointment.
“Don’t be embarrassed because it’s not something cool,” Tonks said. “My first Patronus was a caterpillar.”
“Really?” Neville asked.
“Yeah. I was devastated the first time I saw it, this gigantic, slow moving caterpillar. And I got mocked mercilessly by the rest of the trainee Aurors, but when push came to shove, it was just as powerful as theirs.”
“Okay,” Neville replied, still not quite satisfied.
“The form they take on doesn’t matter, they all do the same thing. Actually, me and Seth Proudfoot ended up having a competition to see who’s was the strongest, and I won four out of seven times.”
“What was his?” Neville asked.
“A Jackal,” Tonks replied. If Tonks were indeed telling the truth, then Neville guessed his toad would be all right.
~*~*~*~
They spent the rest of the afternoon with Neville learning to send messages via his frog Patronus. Like Tonks had said, it really was not that hard. All he needed to do was command it with his mind to carry a short message. Tonks and Lupin understood it nearly every time.
Neville tracked down Trevor that evening. He was spending most of his time in the greenhouse, happily living amongst the various species of plant that Andromeda tended to. Lupin and Tonks had gone out ‘on business’, Andromeda was writing letters again, Ted was engaged in some book about espionage and Neville found himself without much to do.
The greenhouse was so calm at night, though Neville did not feel comfortable in the darkness surrounded by so many panes of glass. Kept on thinking that anything could be out there in the night, sitting there and watching him. So Neville planned to not stay long, he would go back into the house before sunset.
Looking at Trevor, happily sitting with the honking daffodils, Neville thought that maybe his Patronus was a toad, because deep down he was like Trevor; rather boring and incapable of doing anything particularly impressive.
Neville got up and went to check on the Mimbulus. His stood by Andromeda’s. You could easily tell the difference, his was bigger, but the others were catching up. There were still no flowers or seedpods or fruit or even branches he could use as clippings.
Neville was starting to wonder whether he was wrong. Maybe they could not be cultivated. Maybe this aspect had led them towards extinction in the first place.
Neville headed back to the house and found a letter from Luna waiting. She was spending her time experimenting with cooking. Neville thought her idea of a strawberry-vanilla-chocolate-caramel cake sounded good, but the eggplant biscuits sounded rather disgusting. Ted had a good laugh when he told him about the later. Neville wrote back telling her about his Patronus.
He then picked up another piece of parchment and began writing.
Dear Gran…
~*~*~*~
A post owl arrived that morning during breakfast. At first Neville thought it might be a message back from his Gran. The night before he had told her about his Patronus, knowing it was something she would be proud of.
Instead the owl was carrying a rectangle-shaped box and landed in front of Tonks.
“Finally,” she exclaimed as she grabbed the box and pulled out her new wand. With a flick she produced an impressive amount of pink and green sparks.
“Where did you get that one from?” Ted asked. Good wands were few and far between in Britain these days with Olivander’s having been closed and the major overseas wand makers being too afraid to set up shop. Instead many cheap wand shops had started charging exuberant prices for wands of very poor quality.
“Well, you know how I had trouble finding a decent wand for myself from any place in Europe? I found a place in New Zealand that will make wands to specification, so it’s practically the same as my first.”
“And it arrived that quickly?” Ted asked. Tonks had only broken her wand a few days ago.
“No. I’ve had this on order for three months. And that’s with them putting me at the top of the line because of my job…that’s why the Death Eaters have taken to attacking Auror’s wand arms. In the hope we’ll not be as effective with defective wands and using our weak arms,” she added quietly.
Ted looked horrified. Neville knew otherwise. It was an old tactic used in many magical wars. Andromeda and Lupin seemed to be unsurprised as well. Very few fighters survived wars with both hands, but this sort of history was not really taught in the Magic of History class. It was handed down the generations when children look at the portraits in their homes and would ask why so many of their ancestors had pieces of them missing.
“Want to do target practice today, Neville?” Tonks asked. “I could use a sparing partner?”
“Yeah, alright,” Neville replied happily. Not many got the opportunity to train one on one with an Auror.
~*~*~*~
Tonks went digging around her room after breakfast and produced a wooden dummy of a person and placed him on the back lawn. “Dad made me this for my seventeenth birthday,” she announced, “for practice and training. It used to run around but one day the charm went a bit funny and it tried to strangle me, so we’re just going to have to sit it here,” she finished, putting it down by the hedge separated the backyards from the neighbours a nearby field.
“Stupefy,” she yelled. A shot of red light emerged from her wand and hit the wooden man in the head.
“Bugger,” she muttered.
“You hit him,” Neville reminded her.
“Yeah, but I was going for the chest,” she stared at her wand hand for a while, and then her wand. “It’s a bit weird using my new wand, it’s a different weight. You try.”
Neville pulled out his wand. “Stupefy,” he yelled and a red jet of light skimmed over the wooden man’s left shoulder.
“Hey, you’re pretty good,” Tonks said, smiling at him.
“Not really,” Neville said. Not compared to her, when she missed she at least hit it, and she was working with a new wand.
“No, when I was your age, I was truly awful,” she said, “and I was the best in my year too.” She pointed her wand and sent out another jet of light, this time wordlessly. It hit the wooden man in the upper thigh.
Neville was far from the best in his, Harry, Ron and Hermione were all really good. So was Draco Malfoy. “Your defence teachers must have been really awful then. Even worse than ours,” Neville said as he did the same wordless magic and managed to send the red jet over the other shoulder.
“Probably,” Tonks said, sending another stupefy charm, this time hitting the wooden man in the crotch. She let out a small laugh. “I learnt more from hexing Charlie Weasley than I ever did in class.”
“I learnt most of what I know from Harry,” Neville said. Harry had made a good defence teacher, in the small time the DA had been running Neville had learnt more useful spells than he had in Defence against the Dark Arts. He sent another curse at the wooden man and hit him in the chin.
“Yeah, but Remus was pretty good, wasn’t he?” Tonks asked.
“Yeah,” Neville replied and told her the story about how he had learnt to get rid of a boggart. She smiled at his story but did not laugh. Neville realised while he told it that dressing Snape up in his Gran’s clothes wasn’t that funny after what Snape had done. Snape was now more than a bully - he was a murderer. Everything he had done now had more sinister connotations in Neville’s mind, and he supposed Tonks’ mind as well.
There was a silence after he finished while he and Tonks continued to hurtle spells at the wooden man. Tonks was now hitting the target in the chest every time, and Neville was proud to be able to say he was hitting it more times than not.
“So what do you want to do when you leave Hogwarts?” Tonks asked, striking up conversation again.
“I don’t know,” Neville said truthfully. “I like working with plants, that’s why I’m here,” he said. “But I also want to be an Auror like my mum and dad. I want to help out in the war.” Neville braced himself waiting for the look of sympathy from Tonks, but she didn’t take her gaze of the wooden target.
“Well, many people have been joining the Department of Law Enforcement lately to help out in the war. Most of the ones I’ve talked to intend to go back to their jobs after the war ends,” she replied.
Neville hurtled a few more curses. “I don’t think that they would take me anyway. I don’t take Potions or Transfiguration.” Neville had been devastated when he realised that he would not be able to get into Transfiguration, but Potions was mixed with the relief that he would never have to work with Snape again (though what with Snape getting the Defence position that did not really work out).
Tonks hurtled a few more curses at the wooden man, with more ferocity to her action. “They’ll let you be an Auror at the moment. It’s war so they’ll send anyone with a wand out there at the moment,” she said, a hint of disdain in her voice.
Neville had forgotten that the Ministry was a touchy subject with Tonks at the moment.
“Did you always want to be an Auror?” he asked, trying to change the subject at bit.
“Pretty much,” she said. “I wanted to do some good. I thought it was about time somebody in my family did - Do you want to do some shield charms?” she quickly asked.
Andromeda and Tonks seemed so far removed from Bellatrix Lestrange; Andromeda with her strange need to have everything controlled and perfect, and Tonks with her passion for the cause; that Neville managed to forget about their relations most of the time. “Yeah, alright,” he replied.
“Great, I’ll go grab some cushions.”
They spend the rest of the time trying to block each other’s stunning charms. Tonks went easy on him at first, but Neville asked her to try a bit harder, and he found himself lying on his back on a pile of couch cushions facing the sky quite a lot that afternoon.
Tonks herself deflected a lot of them; they went spurting off into the garden, hitting the house, greenhouse and plants surrounding them, preventing Ted, Lupin and Andromeda from leaving the house. Neville was quite frustrated that he couldn’t hit her as much as she could hit him. Though one or two got through, leaving Tonks in the same embarrassing position he found himself in quite a bit. He was not sure, but he was pretty confident she had let him hit her a few of the times.
~*~*~*~
Neville’s Gran did not write back to him that evening. He was beginning to wonder if she was not talking to him. Luna wrote back asking if Professor Lupin was going to teach Defence against the Dark Arts again that year. Neville asked again and Lupin explained that it was currently illegal for him to be a teacher and it did not look like the law would change. But he did tell Neville to write back thanking her for the kind wishes.
Lupin and Tonks disappeared shortly after dinner, citing that they had some business to attend to. Neville figured they were going to some sort of meeting. Ted came in the lounge with a box.
“I found the old monopoly set,” he announced. “I was cleaning the garage - don’t give me that look, Andi-” Andromeda had a look of shocked disbelief on her face, “-and I found this, and my old cricket stuff.”
“What’s monopoly?” Neville asked.
“An addiction,” Andromeda replied quickly before Ted could get a word in.
“I’m glad you asked, it’s a Muggle game, which I’ve played around with a bit and now it’s a lot more fun,” Ted announced, smiling gleefully.
Ted and Andromeda proceed to teach Neville the basic game, to get as much Muggle money as one could. The counters would move around the board game and bark orders at the players, and the squares would construct fancy houses and even more impressive hotels that reached three feet in the air and had the players name lit up in neon lighting. Andromeda eventually won. By the end two sides of the board all had brilliant three story houses on them or “Andromeda Towers” hotels decorating them. Neville and Ted didn’t stand a chance.
Andromeda smiled wickedly as she grabbed the last bits of Ted’s money and Tonks and Lupin walked in the room having returned from the meeting.
“You won’t believe what Fleur asked me?” she announced loudly as she walked into the lounge. “Oh, bloody hell. Dad!” she moaned suddenly, covering her eyes with her hand. “I can’t see that.”
“Isn’t that a Muggle artefact?” Lupin asked.
“Which would be why I can’t see it,” Tonks replied.
“It’s not doing any harm,” Ted said while waving his wand and causing Andromeda’s hotels and houses to demolish themselves. “Arthur wouldn’t mind.”
“I’m an Auror and you’re breaking the law. If I were to see that I’m duty bound to report you,” Tonks said, pulling her hand down.
“Considering you and your mother have been committing identity fraud for the past few years, I’m sure you can let me off with a warning just this once,” Ted replied.
Tonks made a small smile. “Neville shouldn’t be allowed to stay here. We’re corrupting him, I’m sure of it.”
“Did Fleur ask you not to have that hair at her wedding?” Andromeda asked. Tonks was wearing her hair short and pink and had done since the morning.
Tonks crinkled her noise. “Actually, yes. How did you know that?”
Ted laughed, “You have a lot to learn about brides. Your mother cancelled our whole wedding when she found out she couldn’t fit into her mother’s wedding dress.”
“Wait, so I’m a bastard because you didn’t want to get married while pregnant?” Tonks asked. “You said it was because you didn’t have enough money to pay a priest.”
“Well, it was that too…but I was eighteen at the time and it was the only thing I had managed to steal off my family,” Andromeda explained.
“You had your revenge though. You threw up all over your mother’s wedding dress at the actual wedding.”
Lupin let out a small laugh, but stifled it quickly. “Thank Merlin for cleaning charms,” Andromeda announced.
Tonks rubbed her forehead and looked to Neville. “Still want to stay here?”
“Oh, every family has got wedding stories like that,” Lupin added. “I remember spending the morning of James Potter’s wedding trying out every hang-over cure ever invented in the hope to get him down the alter without throwing up. We got him there though, he even looked like a million Galleons too.”
“What worked?” Ted asked.
“Sirius told him Lily was pregnant. That sobered him up pretty quickly.” Lupin laughed.
“And as it turned out he was right too. Harry was born eight months later,” he added. They all laughed, including Neville, who couldn’t help but feel like he had missed out on these stories from his own family.
~*~*~*~
When Neville went to bed shortly afterwards, he found an unfamiliar owl in his room sitting by his bed. He grabbed the letter off it.
Dear Neville, His Gran had written, Your father’s Patronus was magnificent, it took on the shape of a Kingfisher, while your mother’s took on the shape of a Heron. They were beautiful together. Yours, Augusta Longbottom.
Neville didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t say anything about how she was doing, or about whether she liked the form of his Patronus. Puzzled Neville went to bed. A Kingfisher and a Heron, he thought, and smiled. They were both beautiful birds.
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