Fourth Helping of Neville
Officially Unofficial Don Juan de Neville Fest installement 4.
682 words
0 smut (I swear, there is smut coming next installment- I'm just starting to set the scene.)
Parvati ascended the stairway to the Common Room nervously. She had tried to take extra care with her appearance, while still trying to look appropriate for digging in dirt and potting soil. It had been no easy task to combine the two! Parvati surveyed the room, locating Neville watching a game of Exploding Snap being played by Dennis Creevy and Euan Abercrombie. She approached the small group and Neville turned, as if sensing her presence.
“Hello, Parvati. Are you ready to be off?” At Parvati’s answering smile and nod he paused, “do you have your gloves, then?”
“Yes, in my robe pocket.”
As they threaded their way through the common room Seamus looked up from his Gobstones game, “Got a date, Longbottom?”
Neville looked coolly back at him and said levelly, “Parvati asked for help with Herbology. Since I needed to check on a project in one of the greenhouses, I offered to help her today.”
Seamus quickly lost interest in teasing Neville. “Figures”, he muttered under his breath, “I see Neville walking with half of the pretty girls at this school and they all just need tutored in Herbology. If it wasn’t such a boring subject I’d help some of those girls. They could sure attend to my root.” Seamus chuckled at his joke and briefly pitied Neville for being so clueless when it came to girls.
Neville and Parvati quietly made their way to the greenhouse. For some reason, Parvati couldn’t think of anything to talk about other than the weather. Once inside she resigned herself to learning about plants. Neville faced the door and performed unfamiliar spellwork, Parvati didn’t know what all of the spells were, but she recognized the glow of the Imperturbable Spell.
Neville smiled once again and explained, “I put an Imperturbable Spell on the greenhouse; I also placed an Obscuring Charm and a Security Charm. Nobody will be able to hear us, see us or come inside. However, we will be able to see outside and if anybody comes within 4 meters of the building, a discrete alarm will alert us.”
“Oh, brilliant” Parvati was amazed by the spellwork and forethought. She looked around the greenhouse, trying to guess which plant might be Neville’s project. “What are you working on, Neville?”
“I’m trying to find a way to speed the maturation of Mandrakes.” At Parvati’s blank expression he explained, “Mandrake is used in a lot of restorative potions and antidotes. I think that it is going to be very much in demand soon, and I want to try to speed up the process to try to increase the supply. Do you realize,” Neville said thickly, “If there hadn’t been enough Mandrake on hand after Katie got poisoned, Ron would have died? How many people will be poisoned or have need of a potentially life-saving potion in the near future?”
Parvati was shocked. She hadn’t thought about such things before. She tended to be more sensitive and intelligent than most people gave her credit for, but it had never dawned on her that the plants they learned about every day could be vital to the survival of… people she knew, people just like her, maybe someday even herself. “How are you going to make it mature faster?” She asked thoughtfully.
“I’m not sure I can, but Muggles are doing what’s called hybridizing, that’s where they take two, or more, plants and try to identify the components of each plant that has the characteristics they do like and put them together to form a new plant, very similar to the dominant one. So it might be a matter of trying to introduce, say the rapid growth potential of Devil’s Snare to the Mandraketo get a faster growing Mandrake. Then again, those two might not go together very well at all. Can you imagine a Mandrake that attacked a person with vine-like tentacles? As if Mandrakes aren’t bad enough as it is.” Neville laughed at the mental image.
Parvati looked at Neville with wonder and admiration. He was much more than she ever could have imagined.
682 words
0 smut (I swear, there is smut coming next installment- I'm just starting to set the scene.)
Parvati ascended the stairway to the Common Room nervously. She had tried to take extra care with her appearance, while still trying to look appropriate for digging in dirt and potting soil. It had been no easy task to combine the two! Parvati surveyed the room, locating Neville watching a game of Exploding Snap being played by Dennis Creevy and Euan Abercrombie. She approached the small group and Neville turned, as if sensing her presence.
“Hello, Parvati. Are you ready to be off?” At Parvati’s answering smile and nod he paused, “do you have your gloves, then?”
“Yes, in my robe pocket.”
As they threaded their way through the common room Seamus looked up from his Gobstones game, “Got a date, Longbottom?”
Neville looked coolly back at him and said levelly, “Parvati asked for help with Herbology. Since I needed to check on a project in one of the greenhouses, I offered to help her today.”
Seamus quickly lost interest in teasing Neville. “Figures”, he muttered under his breath, “I see Neville walking with half of the pretty girls at this school and they all just need tutored in Herbology. If it wasn’t such a boring subject I’d help some of those girls. They could sure attend to my root.” Seamus chuckled at his joke and briefly pitied Neville for being so clueless when it came to girls.
Neville and Parvati quietly made their way to the greenhouse. For some reason, Parvati couldn’t think of anything to talk about other than the weather. Once inside she resigned herself to learning about plants. Neville faced the door and performed unfamiliar spellwork, Parvati didn’t know what all of the spells were, but she recognized the glow of the Imperturbable Spell.
Neville smiled once again and explained, “I put an Imperturbable Spell on the greenhouse; I also placed an Obscuring Charm and a Security Charm. Nobody will be able to hear us, see us or come inside. However, we will be able to see outside and if anybody comes within 4 meters of the building, a discrete alarm will alert us.”
“Oh, brilliant” Parvati was amazed by the spellwork and forethought. She looked around the greenhouse, trying to guess which plant might be Neville’s project. “What are you working on, Neville?”
“I’m trying to find a way to speed the maturation of Mandrakes.” At Parvati’s blank expression he explained, “Mandrake is used in a lot of restorative potions and antidotes. I think that it is going to be very much in demand soon, and I want to try to speed up the process to try to increase the supply. Do you realize,” Neville said thickly, “If there hadn’t been enough Mandrake on hand after Katie got poisoned, Ron would have died? How many people will be poisoned or have need of a potentially life-saving potion in the near future?”
Parvati was shocked. She hadn’t thought about such things before. She tended to be more sensitive and intelligent than most people gave her credit for, but it had never dawned on her that the plants they learned about every day could be vital to the survival of… people she knew, people just like her, maybe someday even herself. “How are you going to make it mature faster?” She asked thoughtfully.
“I’m not sure I can, but Muggles are doing what’s called hybridizing, that’s where they take two, or more, plants and try to identify the components of each plant that has the characteristics they do like and put them together to form a new plant, very similar to the dominant one. So it might be a matter of trying to introduce, say the rapid growth potential of Devil’s Snare to the Mandraketo get a faster growing Mandrake. Then again, those two might not go together very well at all. Can you imagine a Mandrake that attacked a person with vine-like tentacles? As if Mandrakes aren’t bad enough as it is.” Neville laughed at the mental image.
Parvati looked at Neville with wonder and admiration. He was much more than she ever could have imagined.