daddy's girl learned fast

[triednottodie]

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[backup_hero]

Neville knew a little bit about showing up on the island looking like you'd just been through hell, so when he came across someone looking just like that on the couch in the rec room, he figured he ought to say something.

"Hullo," he said, pausing nearby, not so close that he was in her personal space. "Did you just get here?" Or maybe, he supposed, she'd just had a bad day.

[triednottodie]

It's hard to tell without her glasses, but Gert'd bet a telepathically-linked dinosaur that he's around her age. Well, that's promising. It'd suck if this was the Isle of the Old.

"What gave it away?" she asks, offering the guy a sort of half-smile, downright friendly by her standards.

[backup_hero]

Neville knew the question was more rhetorical than not, but he still gave her a half-smile in return and gestured at her jawline near her ear. "You've got a little blood..." he started, then just finished with, "You look a lot like I did when I got here. Has someone... I mean, do you know where you are?"

[triednottodie]

"Were you dead on arrival?" Gert asks, genuinely curious. But at his question she nods and adds, " Somewhere around 'in the middle' and 'of nowhere', right? Got the 411 from some Owen guy."

[backup_hero]

"Okay, good," said Neville, with genuine relief that he didn't have to be the one to try to explain. "I wasn't dead, but I had a sword," he said. "And a head."

[triednottodie]

"Okay, that you had to clarify the head thing?" says Gert, eyebrows raising, "Sort of strange."

[backup_hero]

"I mean, another head," said Neville, though that really didn't clarify things well. "A head that wasn't mine. I mean... maybe we should talk about you."

[triednottodie]

"I think your story's more interesting," Gert counters, looking at the guy as pointedly as one can without being able to focus.

[backup_hero]

"Battle always sounds more interesting when you're not in the middle of it," said Neville. "It wasn't a person's head, though. I probably ought to mention that."

[triednottodie]

"Do a lot of dragon-slaying?" she asks, because swords and non-human heads clearly indicate dragons.

[backup_hero]

"Oh no, I didn't meet the dragon, Harry did," said Neville quickly. "And I'm fairly sure he didn't have any reason to kill it."

[triednottodie]

Harry. Dragons. British kid. She's tempted to ask 'Potter?' but that's ridiculous. He doesn't exist.

Does he? It's not like magic's impossible and that Owen guy said something about different worlds...

"When you say Harry, do you mean Potter?" Gert asks a bit uncertainly.

[backup_hero]

"Have you heard of him?" Neville asks immediately. "Seems like a lot of people on the island have heard of Harry, but then everyone back where we come from knows him as well."

[triednottodie]

"Uh, yeah," says Gert, blinking because this guy sounded pretty damn serious. She was having a conversation with a presumably fictional character. She wonders which one and suddenly wishes she could see better. "I have a friend who's a witch," she adds by way of explanation.

It's not exactly a lie.

[backup_hero]

"Oh!" said Neville. "Well, I expect she didn't go to Hogwarts so I wouldn't have known her, but I think nearly everyone in the wizarding world has heard of Harry by now."