Chapter four

They were all very kind.

Professor Snape was recovering in Saint Mungo's but was expected to remain in padded restraints for several months.

The good news was: I wasn't going to be sent to Azkaban.

The bad news was: I was being expelled from Hogwarts.

The extra bad news was: Gran was coming to fetch me back to Yorkshire.

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The train journey home was mainly silent, with me thinking over what had happened, and Gran sitting bolt upright and grim thinking up different ways of saying how disappointed she was in me.

There comes a time when a boy becomes a man. Or that's how Professor Dumbledore had put it, blinking sadly over his glasses at me.

It wasn't quite how I would've put it, myself - surely not every boy loses his virginity so disastrously! I'd kept my mouth shut, though, and the whole Hogwarts Board had stared pityingly at me before passing a sentence of expulsion.

Gran wasn't thrilled with Professor Dumbledore either, and as soon as the carriage door had slammed behind us she pursed her lips and fixed me with a gimlet glare. "He could've stood up for you more, Neville! Not but what it's hard to explain why putting a teacher in St Mungo's should merit you staying at Hogwarts. I don't know how I'm going to show my face at the coven until this blows over. Really, Neville! I thought I had raised you better."

I squirmed in shame. It honestly hadn't occurred to me to fetch help for Professor Snape, after my smell-hex had hit him, and the word was that he was now in padded restraints in a private ward. Ron Weasley had slapped me heartily on the back and congratulated me on getting rid of the greasy git, after the magical residue had been traced to my personal signature.

I had realised, of course, that Ron hadn't been expelled for putting Professor Lockheart in St Mungo's - but that was because he'd been protecting Harry Potter. There was nothing heroic in my cowardly behaviour, Professor McGonagal had snapped, herding me through the cheering common room. I had silently agreed, flinching from Hermione's horrified stare.

Was that to be the last I saw of my classmates? I didn't know. I stared out at Hogsmeade, and then at fields and villages flickering by. Gran was right, Professor Dumbledore should have said more to back me up – he should've known it was an accident. But really, now I came to think about it, the Headmaster hadn't been quite as friendly to me ever since that day last year when I'd broken his Voldemort figurine. I hadn't even thought he would realise, and had stuck the head back on with Spellotape before hurrying down the tower stairs. There'd been a lot of celebratory fuss that evening with Harry Potter coming in having vanquished the Dark Lord, and when I heard he'd chopped his head off with Gryfindor's Sword, I thought even if Professor Dumbledore did notice he'd be pretty amused.

But no, I'd been summoned to the Headmaster's office, where a twinkle-less Professor Dumbledore had flapped his hands helplessly at the miniature battlefield I'd discovered while trying to complete the mission Hermione had set me of finding Rowena Ravenclaw's Book of Secrets. I'd felt my whole face and neck heat up with embarrassment and had confessed.

Yes, I'd found the battlefield, and thought it looked like fun. I'd picked up the Voldemort and the Harry Potter figurines and enacted parts of that Muggle film "Star Wars" that Seamus was so fond of – last time we'd played it I'd had to be a Wookie. And then I'd played killing the Voldemort figurine and its head had come off, but I'd fixed it and I was very sorry, but nobody really could tell, could they?

He'd looked at me with absolute dislike and I'd never seen the twinkle again in his eye. I suppose the whole set was ruined now.

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In the end, of course, Uncle Algie found me a job with the Ministry, in the Department of Unexplained Results (DoUR), in the Muggle Response Unit. As I had been expelled from Hogwarts, I didn't have one of the coveted GAA(H) - Graduate Administrative Assistant (Hogwarts) - positions, but instead was employed as a MoME (Ministry of Magic Employee) Level 1.5. My supervisor, Mrs Leek, informed me on my first day, and weekly thereafter, that I should have been employed as a MoME Level 1 ("Merlin knows, you're certainly not worth more"), but inflation in the Goblin money market meant that a Level 1 wage wouldn't keep a wizard in socks, so they'd been forced to advertise the position at a Level 1.5 wage. Privately I thought that it was a good thing that I had plenty of socks already.

I usually responded to Mrs Leek's comments with variants of "Mmmm", with the occasional "Hmmm", which saved actually having to listen to what she was saying, a technique I'd perfected while enduring seventeen years of Longbottom family celebrations.

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Life settled into a routine:

5:30am - quick vomit (I hadn't quite got over that potion-induced tummy upset).

5:45am - hike over to the home farm greenhouses and check on my seedlings.

6:30am - quick bath and get dressed in my Muggle disguise (a suit from Henry Poole's, an establishment our family has always patronised for Muggle outfits, briefcase and rolled umbrella).

7am - breakfast with Gran.

7:45am - floo to the Leeds floo nexus.

7:47am - floo to the Sheffield floo interchange.

7:49am - floo to the Epping floo terminus.

7:50am - take the commuter train to Euston Station.

8:10am - purchase Muggle coffee from the stand and carry it carefully up the three steps into the Institute for Historical Musicology's foyer.

8:11am - step through the Muggle-proof turnstile (the one on the left), and take the secure floo down to Basement 5.

8:15am - quick vomit (optional).

8:20am - take my seat (the cubicle furthest from the tea room and toilets), drink my Muggle coffee, which usually tastes strongly of Styrofoam by this time, and contemplate the stacks of impatiently fluttering memos in my in-tray.

8:30am - Mrs Leek arrives and relates intimate details of the ongoing war she and Mr Leek are waging against their neighbours.

9:30am - Mrs Leek pops out to obtain her own Muggle coffee, and I read some memos and draft some responses to the most urgent. These go into Mrs Leek's in-tray.

12pm - lunch either in the staff cafeteria or in Muggle London.

1pm - I do some filing (quite dangerous, on account of the new filing system).

3pm - Mrs Leek puts my draft responses into my in-tray, covered in spidery annotations and comments that reflect bitterly on my employment.

3:30pm - Madame Rosalba, the head of our Unit, emerges from her office and stalks among our cubicles for five minutes of steely-eyed silence, before disappearing back into the office. This regular appearance, Mrs Leek tells me, is the result of a managerial course Madame Rosalba attended, and is supposed to induce a team atmosphere and boost morale.

4pm - make Mrs Leek's changes to the draft responses and put them back into her in-tray.

5pm - Join the general stampede out of the office and head home.

Sometimes my day was enlivened by particularly unusual Unexplained Results reported to the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency by puzzled Muggles, and filtered through to DoUR by the Muggle Liaison Officer (MLO). Mostly, though, the highlights came from discovering the occasional Iced VoVo in the selection of biscuits in the tea room.

Strangely, I'd lost some weight, though my paunch appeared to have increased. Mrs Leek said that I was simply exhibiting the classic physique of the civil servant and recommended I abstain from the Iced VoVos.