He could have been laying around the Common Room, but instead, on this bright, sunny, bitter cold Saturday afternoon, Seamus was headed down to the Herbology Greenhouses with his dragon-hide gloves. There had been an…incident…with a Venomous Tentacula during the last lesson, so he, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Pansy Parkinson, and Lavender Brown all had to clean Horklumps out of the back garden as punishment. Seamus found this a bit harsh, as the back garden was the size of the Quidditch pitch and currently covered in three inches of mid-December snow.
"Well, the Flobberworms have been a little overexcited as of late," Professor Sprout had said when he brought this up. "Perhaps you'd like to clean the slime off the tank."
So he was going down to the back garden.
He arrived to find the girls already there, waiting for him so they could get their instruction. Professor Sprout handed Seamus and Pansy buckets and passed knives to Susan and Lavender. "Since you five could not seem to cooperate long enough to prune a small Venomous Tenatacula, this will make you all cooperate together. Miss Bones and Miss Brown, you will sever the tops of the Horklumps, which is the best that can be done in this weather. Miss Parkinson, Finnigan, you will collect the tops in those buckets and dump them in this tub when your buckets are full." She pointed to the large wooden barrel behind her. "Miss Abbott, you will follow them and find the ones they missed. I want every one gone, so you will have to work together to get them all. Good luck."
She left them there. There was no way that they could all work together. At least, there was no way any of them could work with Parkinson. That was how this happened in the first place. She wouldn't help and got herself bitten by the Tentacula. It was a group thing, so they all got punished for lack of safety precautions.
This was going to be an unbearable dentention.
Pansy started out by refusing to work, saying she was the one that was bitten, so why should she be punished? Lavender rounded on her.
"Why should you be punished? You were too busy making eyes at Malfoy to notice the teeth coming toward you. If you had even picked up the shears, then you could have at least defended yourself. But you were too worried about messing up your nails…" Lavender continued on like this until Susan said, "Look, let's just get this over with. I kinda want to have a Saturday afternoon with all my friends."
Snow had started falling again as they walked out to the garden. At first, they just each tried to attack by themselves. Seamus, Lavender, and Hannah all got spare knives and the buckets were placed toward the middle of the garden. They divided up the garden in sections and went at it.
After five minutes, it was clear that they simply couldn't find all the Horklumps. So they decided to do what Sprout had said. They followed her instructions and, three hours later, the back garden passed the inspection given by the professor.
Seamus went back up to the castle, wanting nothing more than a long shower to warm him up and get the dirt off. He passed a broom cupboard and heard some banging in there. Remembering the time Neville got himself stuck in a closet, he opened the door to let whoever it was out. Fred Weasley fell out, hitting the stone floor, and Parvati Patil fell on top of him, her shirt half gone. Then Padma and George reached down, pulled them back into the closet, and shut the door behind them.
Seamus was dumbstruck. Apparently there was more than one kind of cooperation.