Springfic: "Good Intentions" for lazy_neutrino
Title: Good Intentions
Author: Turningleft
Recipient: lazy_neutrino
Character(s): Neville Longbottom, Millicent Bulstrode, Luna Lovegood, Ron Weasley
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~1,550
Warnings (highlight to view): None
Summary: "Perhaps they're concocting a nefarious plot," offers Luna. In which Luna and Neville have the best of - but very misguided - intentions, and Millicent Bulstrode doesn't know what to think.
Author's Notes: The first thing that popped into my head here was something dark, but as the request asked for a happy ending, I decided to go for something more mainstream in tone. The idea for this came from incognito when she made the suggestion of writing something a bit strange to lead to an open-ending for a possible friendship between Neville, Luna and Millicent, and this is what I came up with. I owe a thousand thanks to both incognito and cmere for looking this over for me and assuring me that it turned out all right. Any mistakes left are my own. I hope you enjoy this, lazy_neutrino!
Good Intentions
It happens on a sunny Tuesday morning in early October. Luna and Neville are on an expedition to find Gobbling Hummingbelles (Luna is convinced that they - whatever they are - have a nest outside the castle, and Neville can't help but indulge his best friend) when they see a group of students standing in the middle of the Quidditch pitch, huddled close and whispering fervently to one another.
Neville stops and grabs Luna's hand, tugging her under one of the Ravenclaw stands. "What are they doing?" he asks, peering through a small tear in the blue fabric. "They don't have any brooms with them."
"Perhaps they're concocting a nefarious plot," offers Luna. Neville looks at her, unable to determine if she's being serious or not. A moment later Luna tugs at his sleeve. "Look," she says. "They've left their bags sitting by the Hufflepuff stands."
"We should just go," says Neville. It's too late, though, and Luna is already dashing over to the yellow and black Hufflepuff section before Neville can finish his sentence.
"Damn," Neville mumbles, shifting slightly. Taking a deep breath, he casts a quick glance towards the group standing at the pitch and then dashes after her, running as quickly as he possibly can.
"This one belongs to Crabbe," Luna says, poking at a particularly dirty-looking bag with the toe of her shoe. Luna peers inside and then says, sounding almost disappointed, "I don't see anything in here."
"I don't think that we should be going through their things," Neville says.
"I think that this belongs to Millicent," Luna determines after examining some rather messy-looking writing scrawled on an old, yellowed piece of parchment.
Neville can't help but be curious. "How do you know Millicent's handwriting?"
Luna finds a strange-looking bottle hidden in Millicent's bag a moment later. "Cabernet," she reads off the label. She turns to Neville. "What do you think this is?"
Neville considers the bottle carefully, turning it over in his hands. "It must be something illegal," he says, nodding meaningfully at Millicent.
"We better drink it then," Luna says. "We have to make sure it's safe - what if she uses it to poison Harry?"
Neville appears slightly concerned by this suggestion. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Luna," he says, motioning with his free hand towards the bottle. "If it's poison, well, you know."
Luna smiles broadly at him and sticks the bottle inside her bag. "Let's go back up to the school," she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him back towards the pathway.
-
The next morning, Neville is late to breakfast, and by the time that he enters the Great Hall it's already buzzing with talk, students leaning against one another and whispering hurriedly, softly. Neville strains to hear them on his way to the Gryffindor table, but their whispers are low enough that he can only make out a word here or there.
"What's happening?" Neville asks Ron, sitting down beside him and reaching for some toast.
Ron perks up slightly at the chance to have a legitimate excuse to ignore Hermione's nagging and says, "Rumor is that someone stole something from one of the Slytherin's bags yesterday, but none of them will say what it was, or whose bag it was."
Neville chokes. "What?"
"I know," Ron chews loudly and then adds, "I reckon Snape is furious."
Neville twitches slightly, his fingers clenched tightly around his steaming mug of coffee. For some reason he can't quite understand, it's Millicent - not Snape - that Neville is worried about. From what Harry's told him, Snape seems too preoccupied this term to really pay that much attention to something as small as a missing bottle. But, Millicent is a different story, and he can practically feel her gaze drilling into the back of his head. He knows, without a doubt, that Millicent knows it was him. Luna. Them. He isn't quite sure how she could know, but somehow, he knows that she does.
-
Luna meets him on the seventh floor a few hours later, her fingers curled tightly around the neck of the bottle. "Hello," she says, studying him. "You're early, you know."
"Yeah," Neville replies.
Luna hums to herself and then says, "I think we need a room that is sufficient to test this bottle."
"A room sufficient to test this bottle?" repeats Neville, slightly confused.
Luna nods and walks down the hall. "I think the Room of Requirement will be able to help us, don't you?"
Neville frowns, but follows her nonetheless. "Don't you have Potions, Luna?"
Luna turns back and smiles at him. "Professor Slughorn won't mind if I'm late, he'll probably think a Vapid Venuazing got hold of me."
Neville isn't sure how to respond to that, so he doesn't.
They come across the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy a moment later. Luna gives Barnabas a wave and walks past the wall across from it three times, her eyes closed tight as she concentrates, her fingers tightening around the cork necklace hanging around her neck. A moment later a door appears and Neville says, "Luna."
She opens her eyes and glances at Neville and says, "Come on. We should go before Filch comes."
They push the door open and walk inside the room, their eyes adjusting to the dull, low lighting. It's not what either of them had expected - Neville had assumed the room would look like a potions lab to test the substance, but instead it looks more like one of the common rooms. There's a fireplace in one corner, a couch and a few chairs scattered across the length and width of the room. "This is odd," Neville says.
"Perhaps we simply don't know what we need," Luna says wisely, casting him a long look.
Neville shrugs and takes a seat on one of the chairs.
-
An hour later, neither one has any idea what is in that bottle. But, at this point, they do know one thing:
It's certainly not poison.
Luna laughs beside him, waving her glass around wildly, sending some of the red liquid spilling over the rim. "A square has four different endings," she says matter-of-factly.
Neville furrows his brow and says, "Why are you talking about squares? We were just talking about McGonagall, weren't we?"
"I don't know," Luna says, taking another sip from her glass. "This is very good poison," she adds a moment later. "I wonder if Millicent has anymore."
Neville feels like there is something distinctly wrong in that sentence, but he can't seem to figure out what it is. More than a third of the bottle is gone, but neither is any closer to figuring out what it was. "Perhaps it's like firewhiskey," Neville says softly, swilling some of the drink around in his glass.
Luna pauses. "I don't think so, it's a strange color."
Neville is just about to reply when, a second later, the door swings open. Millicent stands in the doorway, looking annoyed and, strangely enough, vaguely amused. Neither Neville nor Luna seem to understand how she found them, and Neville vocalizes the question for them. "What are you doing here?" he asks, looking at her in what he hopes - but doubts - is an intimidating way.
The other girl rolls her eyes and twists the bottom of her silver and green tie between her fingers. "You two took that Cabernet from my bag."
"We thought it was poison," Luna says happily, beaming at Millicent.
"How did you find us?" asks Neville, trying to overshadow Luna's comment with his own.
"It's the Room of Requirement," Millicent says slowly, as though speaking to children. "All I had to do was require seeing the two of you, and here I am." She stares at them for a moment more and then says, "You are two of the weirdest people I've ever met. It's not poison, it's alcohol, you idiots. Muggle alcohol - got it from a girl in my town over summer holidays."
"Oh," Luna says, sounding slightly disappointed. "So you don't think we'll die, then?"
Both Neville and Millicent stare at Luna for a moment.
After a second, Neville bows his head and says, "Sorry. We were just trying to help our friend -"
"You thought I was going to poison Potter?" Millicent rolls her eyes at them. "I'm sorry to inform you of this, but not all Slytherin's are nefarious evildoers, Longbottom."
Neville feels the need to defend himself. "It was Luna's idea," he says petulantly, sulking down in his seat.
"We had the best of intentions," Luna adds, slurring slightly near the end as she take another large gulp of Cabernet. Then, a moment later she holds the glass out and says to Millicent, "Would you like some?"
"You know what they say about good intentions," Millicent mumbles, but she accepts the glass anyways.
"What do they say about them?" Luna asks curiously, leaning forward in her seat and then promptly falling out of it.
Millicent stares at her for a moment, then raises her glass to her lips. "Nothing," she says. "You wouldn't understand. Tell me about this nefarious plot of mine, then, why don't you?"
Luna grins and begins to tell Millicent of what exactly they thought she was up to, and Neville leans back in his seat, marveling at the fact that the three of them can sit in a room together with no curses or words flying between them.
He thinks that maybe, he'd like to try it again sometime. After all, Millicent doesn't really seem so bad.
For a Slytherin.
Author: Turningleft
Recipient: lazy_neutrino
Character(s): Neville Longbottom, Millicent Bulstrode, Luna Lovegood, Ron Weasley
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~1,550
Warnings (highlight to view): None
Summary: "Perhaps they're concocting a nefarious plot," offers Luna. In which Luna and Neville have the best of - but very misguided - intentions, and Millicent Bulstrode doesn't know what to think.
Author's Notes: The first thing that popped into my head here was something dark, but as the request asked for a happy ending, I decided to go for something more mainstream in tone. The idea for this came from incognito when she made the suggestion of writing something a bit strange to lead to an open-ending for a possible friendship between Neville, Luna and Millicent, and this is what I came up with. I owe a thousand thanks to both incognito and cmere for looking this over for me and assuring me that it turned out all right. Any mistakes left are my own. I hope you enjoy this, lazy_neutrino!
Good Intentions
It happens on a sunny Tuesday morning in early October. Luna and Neville are on an expedition to find Gobbling Hummingbelles (Luna is convinced that they - whatever they are - have a nest outside the castle, and Neville can't help but indulge his best friend) when they see a group of students standing in the middle of the Quidditch pitch, huddled close and whispering fervently to one another.
Neville stops and grabs Luna's hand, tugging her under one of the Ravenclaw stands. "What are they doing?" he asks, peering through a small tear in the blue fabric. "They don't have any brooms with them."
"Perhaps they're concocting a nefarious plot," offers Luna. Neville looks at her, unable to determine if she's being serious or not. A moment later Luna tugs at his sleeve. "Look," she says. "They've left their bags sitting by the Hufflepuff stands."
"We should just go," says Neville. It's too late, though, and Luna is already dashing over to the yellow and black Hufflepuff section before Neville can finish his sentence.
"Damn," Neville mumbles, shifting slightly. Taking a deep breath, he casts a quick glance towards the group standing at the pitch and then dashes after her, running as quickly as he possibly can.
"This one belongs to Crabbe," Luna says, poking at a particularly dirty-looking bag with the toe of her shoe. Luna peers inside and then says, sounding almost disappointed, "I don't see anything in here."
"I don't think that we should be going through their things," Neville says.
"I think that this belongs to Millicent," Luna determines after examining some rather messy-looking writing scrawled on an old, yellowed piece of parchment.
Neville can't help but be curious. "How do you know Millicent's handwriting?"
Luna finds a strange-looking bottle hidden in Millicent's bag a moment later. "Cabernet," she reads off the label. She turns to Neville. "What do you think this is?"
Neville considers the bottle carefully, turning it over in his hands. "It must be something illegal," he says, nodding meaningfully at Millicent.
"We better drink it then," Luna says. "We have to make sure it's safe - what if she uses it to poison Harry?"
Neville appears slightly concerned by this suggestion. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Luna," he says, motioning with his free hand towards the bottle. "If it's poison, well, you know."
Luna smiles broadly at him and sticks the bottle inside her bag. "Let's go back up to the school," she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him back towards the pathway.
-
The next morning, Neville is late to breakfast, and by the time that he enters the Great Hall it's already buzzing with talk, students leaning against one another and whispering hurriedly, softly. Neville strains to hear them on his way to the Gryffindor table, but their whispers are low enough that he can only make out a word here or there.
"What's happening?" Neville asks Ron, sitting down beside him and reaching for some toast.
Ron perks up slightly at the chance to have a legitimate excuse to ignore Hermione's nagging and says, "Rumor is that someone stole something from one of the Slytherin's bags yesterday, but none of them will say what it was, or whose bag it was."
Neville chokes. "What?"
"I know," Ron chews loudly and then adds, "I reckon Snape is furious."
Neville twitches slightly, his fingers clenched tightly around his steaming mug of coffee. For some reason he can't quite understand, it's Millicent - not Snape - that Neville is worried about. From what Harry's told him, Snape seems too preoccupied this term to really pay that much attention to something as small as a missing bottle. But, Millicent is a different story, and he can practically feel her gaze drilling into the back of his head. He knows, without a doubt, that Millicent knows it was him. Luna. Them. He isn't quite sure how she could know, but somehow, he knows that she does.
-
Luna meets him on the seventh floor a few hours later, her fingers curled tightly around the neck of the bottle. "Hello," she says, studying him. "You're early, you know."
"Yeah," Neville replies.
Luna hums to herself and then says, "I think we need a room that is sufficient to test this bottle."
"A room sufficient to test this bottle?" repeats Neville, slightly confused.
Luna nods and walks down the hall. "I think the Room of Requirement will be able to help us, don't you?"
Neville frowns, but follows her nonetheless. "Don't you have Potions, Luna?"
Luna turns back and smiles at him. "Professor Slughorn won't mind if I'm late, he'll probably think a Vapid Venuazing got hold of me."
Neville isn't sure how to respond to that, so he doesn't.
They come across the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy a moment later. Luna gives Barnabas a wave and walks past the wall across from it three times, her eyes closed tight as she concentrates, her fingers tightening around the cork necklace hanging around her neck. A moment later a door appears and Neville says, "Luna."
She opens her eyes and glances at Neville and says, "Come on. We should go before Filch comes."
They push the door open and walk inside the room, their eyes adjusting to the dull, low lighting. It's not what either of them had expected - Neville had assumed the room would look like a potions lab to test the substance, but instead it looks more like one of the common rooms. There's a fireplace in one corner, a couch and a few chairs scattered across the length and width of the room. "This is odd," Neville says.
"Perhaps we simply don't know what we need," Luna says wisely, casting him a long look.
Neville shrugs and takes a seat on one of the chairs.
-
An hour later, neither one has any idea what is in that bottle. But, at this point, they do know one thing:
It's certainly not poison.
Luna laughs beside him, waving her glass around wildly, sending some of the red liquid spilling over the rim. "A square has four different endings," she says matter-of-factly.
Neville furrows his brow and says, "Why are you talking about squares? We were just talking about McGonagall, weren't we?"
"I don't know," Luna says, taking another sip from her glass. "This is very good poison," she adds a moment later. "I wonder if Millicent has anymore."
Neville feels like there is something distinctly wrong in that sentence, but he can't seem to figure out what it is. More than a third of the bottle is gone, but neither is any closer to figuring out what it was. "Perhaps it's like firewhiskey," Neville says softly, swilling some of the drink around in his glass.
Luna pauses. "I don't think so, it's a strange color."
Neville is just about to reply when, a second later, the door swings open. Millicent stands in the doorway, looking annoyed and, strangely enough, vaguely amused. Neither Neville nor Luna seem to understand how she found them, and Neville vocalizes the question for them. "What are you doing here?" he asks, looking at her in what he hopes - but doubts - is an intimidating way.
The other girl rolls her eyes and twists the bottom of her silver and green tie between her fingers. "You two took that Cabernet from my bag."
"We thought it was poison," Luna says happily, beaming at Millicent.
"How did you find us?" asks Neville, trying to overshadow Luna's comment with his own.
"It's the Room of Requirement," Millicent says slowly, as though speaking to children. "All I had to do was require seeing the two of you, and here I am." She stares at them for a moment more and then says, "You are two of the weirdest people I've ever met. It's not poison, it's alcohol, you idiots. Muggle alcohol - got it from a girl in my town over summer holidays."
"Oh," Luna says, sounding slightly disappointed. "So you don't think we'll die, then?"
Both Neville and Millicent stare at Luna for a moment.
After a second, Neville bows his head and says, "Sorry. We were just trying to help our friend -"
"You thought I was going to poison Potter?" Millicent rolls her eyes at them. "I'm sorry to inform you of this, but not all Slytherin's are nefarious evildoers, Longbottom."
Neville feels the need to defend himself. "It was Luna's idea," he says petulantly, sulking down in his seat.
"We had the best of intentions," Luna adds, slurring slightly near the end as she take another large gulp of Cabernet. Then, a moment later she holds the glass out and says to Millicent, "Would you like some?"
"You know what they say about good intentions," Millicent mumbles, but she accepts the glass anyways.
"What do they say about them?" Luna asks curiously, leaning forward in her seat and then promptly falling out of it.
Millicent stares at her for a moment, then raises her glass to her lips. "Nothing," she says. "You wouldn't understand. Tell me about this nefarious plot of mine, then, why don't you?"
Luna grins and begins to tell Millicent of what exactly they thought she was up to, and Neville leans back in his seat, marveling at the fact that the three of them can sit in a room together with no curses or words flying between them.
He thinks that maybe, he'd like to try it again sometime. After all, Millicent doesn't really seem so bad.
For a Slytherin.