Chapter 3:

Disclaimer: All Characters belong to J.K. Rowling and her absolutely brilliant mind! (In case she reads this, which is doubtful, then she should know that I'm NOT kidding!)

A.N.) I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's kind of funny...

There were two weeks left to summer vacation and Neville couldn't see how he was going to survive them. He had written to Hannah twice since Diagon Alley and she still hadn't written back. He was worried that he had done something terribly wrong and that not only did Hannah not feel the same way, but now Neville was pretty sure that she wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
These thoughts were bothering him one Sunday afternoon when his grandmother came in and
gave him something much worse to think about.
"Neville?" she said as she walked into the living room and found Neville with his brow furrowed wearing a look of intense worry on his face.
"Mmmm?" Neville answered in a preoccupied sort of way.
"Well, I was just coming to tell you that your Great Uncle Algie wrote us."
Neville immediately forgot his worries about Hannah and looked at his grandmother with panic in his eyes. "Oh no! Please tell me that he isn't coming to visit. Please!"
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Neville!" she said scoldingly. Neville flinched. He hated when she used that tone of voice, which was most of the time. "He's your uncle. I'm surprised at you!"
"But Gran!" Neville said in an exasperated voice, "He nearly killed me last time he was here. Imagine if I hadn't bounced all the way down the garden and into the road! You'd have a squashed up pancake instead of me!"
"Hmm. Maybe a squashed up pancake wouldn't manage to break everything in this house." his grandmother said in a way that was quite unlike herself. She sounded as though she actually had a sense of humor! "Anyway," she continued, "your Great Uncle Algie isn't coming for a visit," Neville breathed a sigh of relief, "he's coming to live here so, so you'd better behave yourself!"
Neville gaped at his grandmother.
"Don't look at me like that! After lunch I want you to go upstairs and clean up the spare room. Uncle Algie will be arriving the day after tomorrow." With that she walked briskly from the room leaving Neville still gaping after her in shock.

Two days later, Neville stood in the hallway by the door waiting for his Great Uncle Algie to arrive. He was wearing a new sweater that his grandmother had bought for him and which was making him itch all over.
He was just contemplating whether his grandmother would be very mad if he changed, when there was a knock on the door.
Neville froze. This was it! The end of his entire being was standing just behind that door...
There was another knock on the door.
"Neville!" his grandmother's voice came from the kitchen, "Answer please!" Neville smelled the unmistakable scent of something beginning to burn. "Oh dear." He heard his grandmother
say to herself, "there goes the quiche!" Neville sighed, pulled himself together and answered
the door.
In the doorway stood a tall man, not too tall but above average all the same. He had neat gray hair quickly turning white and a small bald patch on the back of his head. His nose was quite long and he had large gray-green eyes. Looking at him at first glance, one would never begin to assume that this man held a level of wickedness equal to that of Fred and George Weasley put together!
"Neville, my boy!" he shouted. Great Uncle Algie always shouted. "So good to see you again! You've grown, you have! Why, last time I saw you, you were small as a mouse with magical abilities to match. Hope that's changed since then!"
"Hello Uncle Algie." Said Neville unenthusiastically.
"Algie!" Neville's grandmother walked in smiling at her brother, "How are you?"
"Same as always, dear sister, same as always, if not bit put-out about this whole ordeal with Enid. Threw me out of the house, she did! Said I had finally gotten on her nerves. Can't imagine what she meant!"
"I wonder..." thought Neville.
"Yes, I heard about that." Said his grandmother with pursed lips. "But tell me Algie, what in Heaven's name did you do this time?!"
"Do? I didn't do anything!" Uncle Algie said in a saintly tone that fooled nobody.
"Now, now Algie, I find that very hard to believe! Out with it!" replied his grandmother.
"But really! I didn't do anything I haven't done before!" Great Uncle Algie continued defiantly.
"I'm waiting! What was it?"
"Very well, I forgot our 63rd anniversary. But it's not like I haven't forgotten one before!" he exclaimed as Neville's grandmother groaned. "If I've told her once, I've told her a hundred times, my memory is just no good!"
"Oh poppytosh! You and I both know that your memory is perfect." She said scoldingly.
Neville winced. He wondered how Great Uncle Algie could continue looking so jolly after his grandmother used that tone.
"Well perhaps it didn't help when I told her that I think anniversaries are a waste of time and money, but they are!" Uncle Algie said solemnly.
"Oh Algie, you insufferable imbecile!" Neville's grandmother heaved a great sigh and then stomped off to the kitchen.
"Well, that's done with." Great Uncle Algie said, staring after her before turning to Neville. "So Neville, young lad! Where's my room?"
Neville sighed like his grandmother and began walking up the stairs.

The rest of the summer was a nightmare.
On Great Uncle Algie's previous visits, he had tried to get Neville to reveal his magical abilities by catching him off his guard. His new project was to relieve Neville of his clumsiness. This, needless to say, was not a very good idea. Great Uncle Algie would creep up from behind Neville and shout "BOO!" at the top of his lungs, obviously hoping that Neville would get used to sudden movements and noises. The only thing he managed to do, however, was to make Neville even more jumpy than usual. Neville found, over the next two weeks, that he was constantly looking over his shoulder, terrified his Great Uncle might be lurking nearby.
Once, Neville was walking though his garden, watering his plants, when a foot stuck out from behind a tree next to the path. Neville had tripped, fallen flat on his face and sprained his wrist, the same wrist he had sprained in his first year after having fallen off a broomstick. The foot, of course, had belonged to Great Uncle Algie, who told him, as his grandmother came rushing outside, her face gray with worry, that he had only been trying to make Neville catch himself when he tripped. Neville's grandmother was beside herself with fury and she forbade his Great Uncle to go anywhere near Neville for the remainder of the holidays. This having happened only three days before the end of vacation, it was a small comfort.
But worse than his trouble with Great Uncle Algie, was his trouble with Hannah.
Neville had written to Hannah several more times over the summer, and he still hadn't received a reply. He started to wonder if his letters weren't getting through to her at all but knew that wasn't the case. And so he began to constantly scold himself because, whatever it was, he was sure it was his fault. Of course, he couldn't see what he had done to make Hannah stop speaking to him, but he knew he must've done something.
And along with everything, there was always that knowledge that Voldemort was out there, ruining someone else's life, destroying hopes and dreams...
All in all, Neville reached the end of the vacation in lower spirits than when he'd started them.

The night before he was to return to school, a letter arrived. It was not, as Neville thought for a fleeting moment, a letter from Hannah, but it was addressed to him. It was a letter from his Great Auntie Enid whom Neville liked much more than his Great Uncle Algie.

Dear Neville,
How are you darling? I'm doing just fine (and you can tell that to your blockhead of an uncle!). I'm writing to check up on you because your grandmother wrote me and told me what my idiotic husband did. I hope your wrist will be all right and I hope your year at Hogwarts will be fun. I don't believe I've ever told you how proud I am that you were accepted dear. Just remember to listen to your teachers and always dress warmly and don't worry about being clumsy. You may not know this, but when I married your Uncle, he tripped on his shoelaces walking down the isle, and somehow managed, at the reception, to bump into a busboy and sent him flying headfirst into our wedding cake! You'll see, you'll grow out of it.
I love you dearly!
Great Auntie Enid

Neville finished the letter and smiled. Though it hadn't been from Hannah, it made him feel so much better to know that his Great Uncle Algie had probably been an even bigger klutz than him.
But the fact remained that Hannah still hadn't written to him and he still didn't know why.
"Oh well," he said to himself, as he got ready for bed that night, "Tomorrow I'll talk to her and find out what's going on." He got into bed, and was just drifting off to sleep when...
"Oh no! I forgot to buy my potions ingredients!"



A.N.) Enjoy! I thought the story needed some humor so bare with Great Uncle Algie...
Thanks!