Part Three
In which Neville is a soil-obsessed nerd and Charlie speaks Girl. Fluently.
Neville hung up, mystified. That might just have been the weirdest phone call he’d ever had and he worked in a call centre. The girl had gone on and on and on about that tortoise, and yes, alright, it was a very sad story and the urgency in her dreamy voice as she spoke had sort of made him want to throw his headset down and rush off to the Galapagos Islands to save Lonesome George like, immediately, but he was Neville Longbottom and as a general rule he just didn’t do things like that. He didn’t do much of anything, really, except work part time at the call centre for some extra money while he put himself through Uni.
It had taken him a while (well, a few years) to work out what he really wanted to do, but when he had finally started his Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree (majoring in Environmental Horticulture) he had fallen; hook, line and sinker and he was now in second year and up to the stage where he actually got to play with dirt.
He figured he could put up with the call centre if it meant he would finish up with a degree at the end of it; a degree where he got to talk to plants and didn’t have to worry about washing his hands til the end of the day. The back of his neck would be sunburned and his muscles would ache with real physical tirednessbut his mind would be brilliantly clear and it was such a relief to be free from that nervous feeling that persisted inside him most days. During those quiet, end-of-the-day moments, Nevilled found the sort of clarity that only comes from spending hours outside, pondering these things that make up the world around us, spending time with things that Neville knew had been there long before he was alive and would be around eons after he had passed on. Out there, he felt so much a part of something larger than himself. Neville shook himself suddenly, because he was almost getting profound and that wasn’t something he did either, and there was a ringing phone that needed answering. Sighing, he picked it up.
He didn’t mind the weird calls he received that much really; at least the people who called the call centre actually wanted to speak to him. It was the calling peoples’ houses part (right when they were just sitting down to dinner) that bothered him the most. Usually he just mumbled something and they hung up on him as soon as they heard the constant ringing chatter in the background. They all assumed he was trying to sell them something, which, okay, he mainly was, but he wasn’t one of the pushy ones, and it was more often than not for a good cause.
Occasionally he would get people yelling at him to go back to where he came from, but he was from Sussex and he hated going back home because home was where his grandmother tutted and sighed and adjusted her hat at him disparagingly. It was boring there, and that meant something coming from Neville Longbottom; the boy who had been voted ‘Most Likely to Become a Middle-Aged White Man’ in high school. Parvarti got it worse than he did though; when people heard even the slightest accent they would start yelling abuse, assuming she was calling from some far-flung country and it wasn’t fair at all but Parvati usually just yelled back. She’d been fired three times already but Neville thought she was sort of amazing.
He looked up then as she walked past him, humming a song Neville didn’t know - which is not uncommon - he thought ruefully, and she flicked her headphones at him, winking and sashaying down the aisle. Neville broke off his discussion about the possibility of synthetic Mocassins with Beverley from Chester (“I love the shoes, but hate the idea of real leather; what should I do?”) and caught the headphones, a silly smile spreading over his face. He found himself hoping, not for the first time, that the wink and the flick was some sort of Secret Girl Signal which meant Parvati was actually in love with him but didn’t know how to tell him how she felt, but then she pulled out her phone and started texting and he just couldn’t be sure.
“Oi, Nev!”
Neville’s head snapped up, pausing in his study of Parvati’s fingers clicking furiously on her keypad and turned to see Charlie Weasley standing next to him, knowing smirk in place.
“H-hey Charlie,” Neville said, a bit shame-faced as his round cheeks began pinking and he furtively pushed a piece of paper out of sight on his desk. Charlie, however, was too quick for him and he made a grab for it, picking it up and Neville groaned and laid his head in his hands, knowing what was coming next. There was a sudden stiffening silence, and Neville knew without looking that Charlie had reached the point at which Neville had stopped taking down callers details and instead started drawing a small, original comic strip involving Plant Boy and his one true lady love, Mountain Girl. It just so happened that Mountain Girl bore a striking resemblance to a certain Miss Patil and Neville whispered a silent fervent thank you prayer that he had previously scribbled out the original ending to his comic; a small, slightly pornographic sketch (only very slightly, Neville thought defensively) of Plant Boy and Mountain Girl before Charlie had got a chance to see it. It seemed, however, that even without the porn, the damage was done.
Charlie’s eyes slowly swivelled to meet Neville’s and he whistled softly through his teeth.
“Seriously, Nev? Plant Boy?”
Neville couldn’t think of anything to say to that because he completely agreed with Charlie.
Charlie’s brows were wrinkling as though in confusion and Neville thought darkly that this would never happen to Charlie Weasley. Charlie was the sort of man who would look at home on the front cover of a Mills & Boon; the sort of man girls threw themselves at, begging for a chance to be jilted by him. The sort of man who spoke Secret Girl Signal in twenty different languages. He didn’t write comic strips about a soil-obsessed nerd who faced the perils of grasshopper holes in his leaves and made decisions about which pesticide to choose. Only Neville did that.
“You know you’ve got it bad, right mate? You know that this isn’t exactly normal? Why don’t you just ask her out?”
Neville knew, he knew he wasn’t normal, but there was no way in hell that he could ask Parvati out. Was Charlie some kind of idiot? That was the worst idea ever, it would ruin their ‘best friend’ situation they had going, and there might have been a desperate plea for help in his eyes as Neville looked up at Charlie because Charlie’s expression softened suddenly and he reached out to pat him on the shoulder.
“Never mind mate. It’ll happen eventually,” Charlie said in a reassuring tone of voice. “And if it doesn’t, you can always be a lone wolf like me,” he added jocularly, thumping Neville slightly on the back. “Anyway,” he continued, “you keen for the footy this weekend?”
Neville sighed, because he really, really didn’t want to tell Charlie why he couldn’t come to the footy this weekend.
“I-” His voice faltered for a moment and he didn’t meet Charlie’s eyes as he continued. “I, um, sort of have a wedding to go to,” he said quietly, ducking his head as he heard Charlie exhale slowly.
“This wouldn’t be the one Parvati is attending by any chance, is it?”
Neville mumbled that it was. Parvati had invited him, which was another one of those weird Girl Signs that he thought might have meant something but, upon seeing his expression after she had asked him, she added hurriedly that it was ‘just as friends’ because she needed a bit of support at her cousin’s wedding. Her family could be a bit much and Neville had agreed immediately.
Charlie made a face at him and shook his head slightly. “I’ll just ask Ron then. Have fun with your strange sexless relationship, Longbottom.” He chucked and tousled Neville’s hair a little bit as he sauntered off, leaving Neville’s comic strip lying on the desk in front of him. Neville looked down at Mountain Girl’s smiling face and then up at the real Parvati three desks down from him, now returned from her break. She looked up suddenly and rolled her eyes while pointing at the receiver. He grinned at her and she smiled back and mouthed “love you” and Neville's grin spread even further; the kind of grin that Neville thought made his nose sort of spread all over his face and he struggled to keep it in check as he picked up the receiver again.
He might have been in a weird sexless relationship, he thought, but at least he was in one.
Go to Part Four...