Nothing So Sweet:
A/N: Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry! The delay for this was absurd! I hope you're still willing to read it! I'll try to compensate by posting this chapter and the next with only a week interval, ok? Sorry, guys!
Chapter 6: A lot of choking and Embarrassment for Neville Longbottom
"Neville, dear, are you ok?" At this, Neville choke on his porridge. The old lady next to him started patting him on the back while rolling her eyes. "Unbelievable!" he could swear he heard her muttering to herself. "One would think you'd have changed at least a bit on the last seven years!"
"I'm sorry, Professor McGonagall." He mumbled to the headmaster. She narrowed her eyes at him exactly as she had done so many times before when he was younger. He coughed once more before correcting himself. "Sorry, Minerva." She smiled. "I was distracted."
"I could tell that much." She sniffed. "May I ask what's bothering you, young man?"
Neville pondered on the right answer to that question.
"I suppose I'm just impressed I survived a whole semester here." He finally said. This was only partially true, he knew, but it seemed to convince her. She laughed:
"Well, can't say I'm impressed; ever since I saw you take charge of the D.A. …" The headmaster said with her usual fierce look. "I knew you were nothing but a natural leader!" Neville looked away, his face gone absurdly pink from embarrassment. Professor McGonagall snored:
"Now, now, don't you be silly, lad. There's no reason to act coy. I'm just pointing out the obvious…"
"Seriously, Professor…"
"Minerva." She corrected him again with a severe tone before saying: "If I might add I was actually rather slow to my conclusions. Albus knew from day one exactly how valuable you'd be to all of us."
Neville sank in his chair, staring at his porridge already aware of what expected him. Whenever the late headmaster was mentioned, he simply knew the conversation would become way too passionate to be stopped and that hoping for a change of subject would become mere wishful thinking. It was not, as some might think, that he despised the subject or the long conversations with his new boss, not at all. He just couldn't bare the jolt of compliments everyone seemed to hold for him whenever the Great War was the subject.
To his surprise, however, McGonagall didn't say anything for a while, he could still feel her gaze on his face but she didn't say a word. When her eyes finally looked elsewhere, he allowed himself to breath again.
"You know, Longbottom…" She started and his lungs were swiftly contracted again. This was the hard part of working on the place you'd had grown up, he thought, more often than he'd like he'd still feel like an awkward 11 year old who didn't know how to behave in front of the teachers.
"Yes?" He forced himself to speak once he realized the woman was expecting some kind of reaction from him. Professor McGonagall – no matter how hard he tried, he wasn't able to call her any other way – stared at him with an inquisitorial eyebrow raised:
"Are you sure the end of semester is the only thing on your mind?" He chose this moment to drink from his pumpkin juice on what he thought to be both a bold and a smart attitude. With that, he actually believed he had put an ending to the conversation but McGonagall was just too wit. "Because I recently realized that you and Miss Abbott are no longer together." Neville spit most of his juice on the table as a result from the shock. The students on the Great Hall didn't bother to turn around; most of them didn't even flinch in surprise. After six months of daily accidents it had become quite clear to everyone that Professor Longbottom had some coordination issues.
"Just as I thought." She said as she took a sip from her tea, not at all worried with the man choking loudly right next to her. "So the two of you had a little quarrel? That's sad; Miss Abbott is an adorable girl…"
"Hannah and I we…we weren't an item, ma'am." Were the first words Neville managed to say as soon as he was able to breath evenly again. His boss stared at him, a hint of doubt on her severe eyes: "Now, that's nonsense." She took off her square spectacles. "Weren't the two of you spending every second of your free time together? If I'm not mistaken, she even came for a visit here once or twice." Neville was now literally purple from all the embarrassment:
"Y-yes…I mean, no! No, we weren't. Yes, we did that but no, no we weren't together. We are…we were only good friends." He stuttered.
"Were you?" The headmaster's eyebrows went up again and she started cleaning her glasses with a piece of cloth she took from her vests. "I find that hard to believe. What kind of abysmally big argument could put an ending to such a close friendship between two adults?" Even though she had underlined the world "adults", he knew she was using the same tone she used with students who were misbehaving.
"Things are complicated…" He whispered, too afraid to face the woman.
"Complicated?" Why – oh why – was Professor McGonagall suddenly so interested in his personal life? He sank even more in his chair, wishing he could be as small as he felt at that moment, so he could run and hide (even though he knew that even if he managed to transform into something else, she'd still be able to find him with her cat senses). "I do understand Miss Abbott can be a little…hard to deal with sometimes; the poor girl, her nerves get the best of her." At this, Neville raised his own eyebrows. He often thought of his new friend Hannah as an alley cat – it even seemed ironical the fact that she actually lived in an alley – she never trusted anyone, she was always prone to mood swings. He had already lost the count of how many times he had had to drag her out from stores and restaurants to stop her from picking fights with lazy attendants or annoying costumers. She wasn't aggressive but it didn't really help when she made ugly faces to happy couples or bubbly teenagers, she was in a constant bad mood but he had gotten used to it, he had fun with that. It wasn't the reason for their fight at all. Thinking about it, he thought, he actually missed that a bit.
"Well, she wasn't always like this…" He tried; he had a theory that all her attitude was just a self-protection mechanism. Professor McGonagall looked puzzled for a second:
"You are not serious, are you?" She put her glasses back on. "I can't recall one day in that child's school years in which she didn't get into trouble because of her temper."
"You mean getting into fights?" He had almost forgotten to be embarrassed now. All that information was news to him. "That can't be true. Hannah was made prefect." That he knew for sure, even with his failing memory. Hannah was the only he had the guts to ask for help when Trevor went missing. After a while, she even memorized his toad's favourites hiding spots.
"Fights? Merlin, no! The girl was a sweetheart; she'd never even raise her voice to anyone. Her problem was…well…It was a lot like yours, really. Don't you remember the little incident involving Miss Abbott on you kids' O.W.L.'s?" Neville face went very puzzled and the woman took a deep breath, resigned. "Oh, who am I trying to fool? Of course you wouldn't remember."
"I'm sorry?" He said hesitantly. McGonagall waved him off.
"It's alright; I'm more than used to your memory by now, kid." She smiled patting him on the shoulder, after taking a deep breath she continued: "Anyway, on your fifth year, Miss Abbott had an emotional breakdown during one of your classes, don't you remember any of that?" Neville stared at her, clueless; she shrugged. "Hum. You'd think someone would remember a girl bursting into tears during classes…"
"She burst into tears?" That didn't sound like Hannah at all. Of course, she sure did a lot of crying but it was – most of the time – very composed and usually induced by a large amount of alcohol.
"Oh, but that was just the beginning, really. She cried and cried, screaming that she was just too stupid to take the exams and that she'd just have to leave school…" Neville couldn't help but try to picture the image in his head and chuckled. "She only calmed after a strong dose of Calming Draught."
"Wow."
"So, when the actual test came, she did great in most everything. Except, maybe, for her Transfiguration test…" the professor seemed to be lost in thoughts for a second. "When she multiplied one simple ferret into a flock of flamingos." Neville laughed out loud, even McGonagall had a little smirk on her face as she continued. "Can you imagine? She had Griselda and me running around, trying to capture a very scared bunch of pink gigantic birds…" Neville now had tears in the corner of his eyes from all the laughter; however, he still froze when the woman placed her hand on top of his. Minerva looked at him with kindness through her harsh eyes:
"That's why I say you and Hannah have the same problem, my dear." She patted him gently on the hand. "You two show the same meaningless lack of confidence that causes all kinds of disasters. I clearly remember telling Pomona on how she was strictly forbidden to let the both of you work together during Herbology classes. That's how I found out you were good at it, actually; cause she was shocked that I thought of you as clumsy. Forgetful maybe, she said, but as talented as anyone could be when it came to plants." Neville blushed again but his chest was filled with pride, he smiled.
"Oh, Neville, and talking of big birds..." She looked at the enchanted ceiling where the mail was just arriving. Among white, brown, grey and black owls a huge blue bird of paradise appeared. Neville's mouth popped open. He wished from the bottom of his heart that the bird was destined to someone else – maybe the Care of Magical Creatures teacher – but he knew there was only one person in the world that'd use that kind of birds for communication purposes. "It's from Luna Lovegood." Professor McGonagall answered his question before he could say anything. The bird flew right into his bawl of porridge ad making a huge mess. This time, everyone turned their faces to look; Neville's face became purple for the third time that morning. Professor McGonagall stood up:
"I received one of this myself this morning in my office. It's an invitation; apparently Miss Lovegood is getting married."
"What?"
"Well, she doesn't call it a wedding, I wasn't really able to understand but it sounded pretty much like a wedding to me."
"B…but…" Neville couldn't understand anything anymore. McGonagall was losing her patience so she just took a deep breath and said: "All I'm trying to say here, Mr. Longbottom, is that you'll need a date for the ceremony and that the fact that you won't invite Miss Abbott to go with you just because you two had a little quarrel sounds quite stupid. Especially when such friendship seemed to work greatly for the both of you, don't you think? It's clear for me that the both of you together can work a better way to walk out of disasters. It's like adding two bad lucks and getting a normal one."
"I don't see your point, Prof…Minerva."
"Oh lad, you tire me! Miss Lovegood herself told me that she was dying to meet Miss Abbott so is more than natural that she'd send you a spare invitation."
"How did she even know about Hannah?" The whole situation was so confusing that he even forgot to deny the rumors about his relationship with Hannah. Professor McGonagall looked at him with a knowing look.
"For that," she said contracting her lips. "I'm afraid you'll have to check out the rest of your mail."
"My mail?"
"The Daily Prophet to be exact."
"Oh no."
A/N:This was a confusing ending, I admit, but the whole thing is to be explained on the next two or three chapters (I'm afraid we'll only know more about Luna's "wedding" after Neville and Hannah make up and that'll take a while). About their fighting and everything it isn't really something important, they're both overreacting a little. If I do it right, you people will understand easily how their personalities crashed in a bad way causing all this. Anyway…Wish me luck! And, as I promised, the next chapter will be up really, really soon. It's already written, it just needs some editing!
Please, review, ok? And, once again, SO SORRY!
P.S.: Oh, I also edited grammar and spelling mistakes also as time line mistakes from the other chapters. If you spot something, please tell me ;D!