The characters and world of Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowlings, and I'm certainly not making any money off of them, just borrowing them for my own amusement.
Chapter 1 – A Surprising Offer
The earth was dark and warm as it crumbled through his fingers, settling softly around the large Daffundus bulb. Once the bulb was covered, he took generous handfuls of the ensorcelled wood chips and packed the last layer into the pot.
Neville settled back on his heels to admire his work for a moment. This was the last plant in Mrs. Dunwall's order, and due to the hastening spells he'd placed over the greenhouse, all the flowers would be ready for planting within two weeks.
True, he could have them ready in less than a week's time, but the resulting flowers would be weak and dying within only a few months of planting.
As far as Neville was concerned, anyone who didn't have the patience for good plants deserved what they got, but he refused to do shoddy work so he often sent customers who wanted quick fixes or hurried work to the Tanner greenhouses or to Mr. Yurritt's plant shop.
His rivals were quick to give customers want they wanted, though those same foolish people would have to come back again and again to replace dead and dying plants.
He got up from the last pot lining the left side of the greenhouse and checked the layers of spells woven into the building. He made sure the temperature settings were still correct, that the misting spells would go off at the right times and that the hastening spell was still lightly touching each plant. Everything seemed fine.
The light flowing in through the glass ceiling was shifting from yellow to an orangey-pink glow. Neville moved quickly out the door since he was hungry and it was past time for dinner.
In the outer hallway he walked past five doors, each leading to one of his other active greenhouses. The greenhouse hallway added and subtracted doors as he needed them. Currently, since it was still the bare end of winter, his business had little demand but things would soon pick up for spring and the hallway would grow longer as he added doors for new greenhouses.
At the end of the hallway he went up a short flight of steps which emerged next to the pantry of his kitchen.
The kitchen was echoingly large, with stone walls and deep-set wooden cabinets. Soft red rugs broke up the cold flagstone floors and modern cooking appliances on the counters lessened the medieval look.
The room seemed comfier and homier than it had any right to be, with warm light pouring in from the large window above the sink and the French doors lining the left wall.
The view outside was of brown grass and barren trees, with low rock walls outlining what would be a thriving herb garden once summer came.
Neville rummaged about in his fridge and set what he would need for a turkey sandwich on the table.
The table was a wooden giant. It was meant for older, busier times when the kitchen would have been a mad swirl of cooks and servants readying the evening meal. The lords and ladies, his ancestors, would have been waiting one floor up in the great dining hall.
When he was a child his Grandmum had forced him to eat in the cold empty hall, with just the two of them chewing away as flames leaped and spit in the fireplaces lining the walls. Since his Grandmum's passing a few years ago, Neville had ignored traditional etiquette. These days, he ate his sandwich off the kitchen table.
He rocked back and forth on his rickety stool as he ate, thinking about the planting orders that would come in with the spring. A light tapping on the kitchen window pulled him from his thoughts. The light coming in was now red from the setting sun and gave a devilish air to the owl perched on the window sill.
A bit surprised, since his normal mail came in the mornings, Neville let the owl in. It glided onto the counter and waited patiently as he closed the window on the bitter winter breezes coming in from outside.
He grabbed a bit of turkey from his sandwich fixings on the table and let the owl feed as he opened the letter it had brought.
After reading the first sentence, he sat down, missing his stool and landing quite ungracefully on the floor.
"Mr. Longbottom,
We would like to offer you the chance to procure a Lumen Thesaur seed due to your exemplar work in the field of Herbology. Such an opportunity is rare, and we will require a quick response concerning your participation.
As owners of the Slush & Slime potions company, we often find rare plants, but we are not interested in growing our ingredients ourselves.
We will require its first blossom each year. In return for caring for the plant, any other blossoms or seeds will enter your possession.
A contract is included with this letter, if you wish to work with us simply sign and return it with our owl.
Yours Truly,
Mr. Raugh and Mr. Riffe"
By the time Neville got himself off the floor, the only light in the kitchen was coming from the fireplace on the north wall.
"Stay right there!" he ordered the owl, which merely blinked at him from its new perch on the fridge. He then ran off to find a pen from one of the many storage rooms that took up what was left of the manor's basement besides the kitchen, greenhouses, and unused servants quarters.
He quickly returned, after having made a horrible mess of the linen room's accounting books. Dutifully scanning over the small print, he didn't see any nasty surprises or loopholes so he signed the paper with a messy, sharp-edged version of his name and stuffed the contract in the snoozing owl's face.
With an irritable click off it's beak, the owl shook its dusty brown feathers and lightly grasped the paper. It took a few moments for the bird's impatient stare to get through to Neville before he remembered to open the window again so the owl could get out.
The owl took off with a muffled hoot of indignation at Neville's scatterbrained actions. Neville ignored the owl and sat down dreamily on his abandoned stool.
To imagine, such an opportunity landing at his doorstep! Though he did have his own collection of rare plants which he regularly sold to the local potions shop owner, the Lumen Thesaur was incalculably valuable and impossible to find.
Known by most as the "Treasure of Heaven," the small, prickly bush looked unremarkable and was distinctly unmagical for most of its life. When it bloomed, however, the flowers literally glittered with raw magic. It only produced one to two flowers a year, so Neville would be taking his chances on getting any flowers at all from his deal, but that wasn't the point!
The Lumen Thesaur was a truly wild plant, and only the best Herbologists could hope to raise it in a greenhouse, and few got the chance to try. The plant was rare because of its potency and controversial history.
Potions made with Lumen Thesaur flowers were exponentially stronger, making a simple headache remedy a permanent cure against hangovers and migraines, and a polymorph potion became an transfiguration potion complete with the person's memories and abilities. It also made mild poisons deadly and weak children's curses unbreakable.
Throughout wizarding history the plant had been hunted to the point of extinction. The only reason it hadn't disappeared entirely was because every few centuries it's use was banned as a dark art. This usually happened after a Dark Lord had found a plant and misused its power.
It had been a few centuries since the last tame Lumen Thesaur had died, and with speculation that the species had died out it had gone off the dark arts list.
Neville rocked back and forth on his stool, dreaming about the world-wide recognition he'd receive from the Horticulture, Herbology and Husbandry (HHH) Association if he managed to grow the seed successfully.
Unfortunately, he gave little thought to the negative consequences raising such a rare and powerful plant could have.
He honestly figured he'd get an award, maybe an invitation to speak at an HHH Association meeting, but nothing more.
His Grandmum had told him, once, when he had asked to be in a children's theatre class, that all the world was a stage. She had told him, her feathered hat wobbling with each sharp nod of her head, "how can you be a star on stage when you aren't a star in your own life, boy."
She probably meant to make him less shy, less introverted or maybe just a little tougher. He realized then that he was only a small, bit player on the grand stage of life. Though grand adventures and wars and fights and romances would and did happen around him, he would never have a starring role.