New Perspective 1

THE CHOSEN

By Bellegeste

A/N: Thanks to you all for the very encouraging reviews. Sorry, but the letter isn't from Snape. I thought it would be OoC for him to break cover and contact Hermione at this stage. But he does come into later chapters, I promise.

Chapter 2: A BIT OF EARTH

"Hello?" The whisper was absorbed into the humid air, blotted to nothing by thirsty humus and greedy greenery, sucked into muggy silence.

"Hello?" Her voice quavered. She should not have come. This was a Bad Idea. One of her worst. Her absolute worst. It was all Ron's fault. If it hadn't been for Ron… What was she trying to prove?

'Apparate directly to the vinery,' the letter had instructed. 'Wear a hat'. Hermione pulled her knitted 'tea-cosy' more closely down over her head and poked back a couple of escaping plaits. Already she was uncomfortable, heat and apprehension jointly flooding her glands, dampening her armpits, pasting her blouse to her back. She thought of the note she had left, propped up against the trinket box on her dressing table - at least the search party would know where to start looking…

"Over here!"

A figure appeared from behind the canoe-sized leaves of a banana palm at the far end of the greenhouse, waving something - a trowel maybe, or a cleaver. He was silhouetted now, standing in a shaft of sunlight – the country might have to wait and hope for an Indian summer, but it had turned into an 'Indian' afternoon. Hermione shielded her eyes against the glare, but a glimpse of gingery, mussed hair had sent her stomach soaring and dipping. Ron? It couldn't be! Feeling foolish she saw that it was merely a trick of the light, reflected from the hot, red brickwork of the rear wall, gilding the world through its rich, sunny filter. She was glad she had not called out his name.

"You got my letter then? I wasn't sure how long Muggle post would take, but with the owl situation being what it is - "

"Neville!" Hermione grabbed him by a plump arm and hustled him back into the cover of the palm leaves. "Neville - this is insane! What are you doing here? Don't you realise how dangerous this is? What are you doing here?" She hissed the last question, repeating herself in her agitation.

"You're here, aren't you?" Neville countered, reasonably enough. "Why are you here then?"

"Me? I…? Well, I… I'm here because you sent me that ridiculous letter, aren't I? Do you think I make a habit of popping round to visit the Malfoys? Anyway, that's hardly the point. The point is, why are you here? Come on, we should get out before anyone sees us…" She tugged at his sleeve again impatiently, frustrated by his imperturbability, his totally inappropriate lack of urgency.

"You didn't have to come," he said stolidly. "I thought you'd want to hear about - "

"Look, can we please talk about it somewhere else? Somewhere that preferably isn't on the back doorstep of one of our worst enemies…"

Hermione could hear her voice rising, sounding melodramatic and shrill. Making an effort to calm down she said, "OK, Neville, let's just be sensible about this, shall we?" She might have been talking a jumper down off a high ledge. "I've never done Side-Along-Apparation before, but I think I can make it work…"

"No need." Neville smiled broadly, looking suddenly very proud of himself. "I got my Licence. Yesterday. Passed first time. How about that? My gran got it all arranged as a surprise birthday present. Champion, eh? Last term I thought I'd never get the hang of it in a million years, but somehow it finally clicked. Though, to be honest, it still makes me want to puke. Best not to Apparate too soon after lunch. Come and see the garden."

"What?" Hermione backed away, alarm and mistrust once more rearing inside her, and whipped out her wand. "Halquis! Halquis! Halquis(1" she intoned, scanning for Imperius, using the curse-detector Snape - damn him! - had taught them in DADA. But Neville was clean.

"I've not lost my marbles either," he grinned, savouring the moment, conscious that he was, for once in his life, several steps ahead of Hermione Granger. "There's something I want to show you. You won't regret it, I promise. Keep the hat on till we get beyond the privet arch - your hair's a dead giveaway. Just in case we're spotted. Not much chance of that, but we don't want to take any risks."

Stowing his trowel in the low-slung, multi-pocketed, canvas gardening belt, he sauntered outside, secateurs swinging at his other hip like a Six-gun in a holster.

He's been taking logic lessons from Luna, Hermione decided. Speechless and with many a furtive backward, forward and sideways glance, she sneaked after Neville up the garden path…

XXX

"Whew! About time. Thank goodness," gasped Hermione dragging the tea-cosy off her head and using it to fan her face. "A few more minutes of that and my head would have hatched - like Norbert. What? What is it? Have I got leaves in my hair or something?"

Neville was regarding her with a grave, thoughtful expression.

"Heliaporus mallisonii!" he announced in a 'Eureka' tone of voice.

"If you say so." It sounded like a spell, but, coming from Neville, it was safer to assume it had something to do with plants.

"Your hair - that's what it reminds me of. You look different. It's those twisty tail thingies…"

"Oh, you mean my braids?"

"Aye. 'A profusion of pendulous, rope-like dangling stems…'," he quoted. "Heliaporus. Or, maybe, Aporocactus flagelliformis - that means 'whip-like', you see…"

The 'pendulous, rope-like, dangling' braids writhed like Medusa's snakes as Hermione shook her head and leaned towards him. She was not smiling.

"Forget about my plaits, Neville. If you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going to go home and leave you here on your own."

The threat of abandonment didn't faze him as much as she had hoped. Instead of panicking, he looked disappointed.

"That would be a right shame. It's not often as you get a chance to see… No, I won't say. Don't want to spoil the surprise. I don't suppose even Sprouty's ever seen one - you've no idea how incredible… This way - follow me. Oh, and if anyone stops us - not that they will - I'm Trevor."

"Trevor?" Was he nuts? Or stoned? Some of those exotic herbs were only nominally medicinal.

"Let me get this straight, Neville - you're Trevor? Like your toad? Neville - Trevor - whoever you are – stop a minute. Look at me…"

Hermione stared intently into his eyes, assessing the size of his pupils, and spoke very slowly. "Has someone Hexed you? Can you remember being Jinxed? Or - " the thought revolted her, " – is this some sick Polyjuice experiment? You're not going to start croaking and eating slugs?"

"Don't be daft, Hermione. What do you think I am?" he laughed.

"At the moment I have absolutely no idea." She was piqued now. "But if this is some kind of a joke, you could have done it somewhere we're not likely to be slaughtered by passing Death Eaters. The Malfoys'd stun us and keep us for torture practice as soon as look at us. And what are our chances of being rescued? About as likely as Nero calling the Fire Brigade, or Voldemort setting up a drop-in centre for underprivileged Muggles. Trevor? What's got into you? You're not hoping some misguided princess will rush up and start kissing you? That's frogs, Neville. FROGS!"

When Neville's pace slowed, Hermione congratulated herself that at last she was getting through to him. He had, however, stopped to examine some clumps of partially rotted mulch strewn over the pathway.

"Blasted blackbirds!" he grumbled. "They forage about for beetles and scuffle this top-dressing all over the shop. Thrushes now - they're more like it - they go straight for the snails…" He toed the compost back into the flowerbed.

"Neville! Have you been listening to a single word I've said?"

"Familiarity, that's the key," he said, wiping his shoe on a tuft of vetch. It had to be something I'd react to. People yell 'Trevor' and I jump - comes natural now, second nature… It's generally cos he's escaped again. Wouldn't have been much point calling myself Ludo or Victor or Wronski, now would there?"

"Not unless you were planning on setting up a Quidditch team, no," Hermione replied dryly, wondering where - if anywhere - this conversation was going. Neville ploughed on, a self-sown explorer in search of Helligan(2).

"You wouldn't believe how overgrown it all was - it was obvious no one had been here for months, probably not since Lucius left. Maybe the gardeners all resigned. I bet the Malfoys never used to come out here - probably don't even know it exists. They don't appreciate how lucky they are. All this space going to waste – it's a right shame. The first few days, I did nothing but ground clearance. It's coming on now, but there's still an awful lot left to do… Would have been better, really, to tackle it in the autumn: could have blitzed it with Incendio! - you know, slash and burn approach - but I didn't want to damage the established stock…"

"First few days! Do you mean to tell me you've been here before? More than once? What do you think this is - a playground?"

'Mary, Mary quite contrary, How does your garden grow?' The rhyme seeds drifted into her mind. One of the disadvantages of a Muggle childhood – you grow up equipped with an inconsequential nursery rhyme for every occasion. Or…

"Neville - this isn't just any old 'bit of earth'! Why didn't you call yourself Mary Lennox and be done with it?3 You can't simply Apparate somewhere and start gardening because it seems neglected. It's trespass, for one thing, and for another it's downright delusional! You're scaring me, Treville - Nevor - oh, whoever…"

"And this isn't even the scary part!" grinned Neville. I can explain it all - and I will – but first you must come and see… We'll talk on the road."

And on that less than enlightening note, he set off once more along the gravel walk.

XXX

"So, as you can see, at some stage the height of the perimeter wall has been raised from twelve to fifteen feet - smart move that - it increases the frost-free margin to at least one hundred feet… that's the equivalent of a seven degree average ambient temperature increase, which, climatically speaking, would put us on an agricultural par with, say, oh, somewhere about a hundred miles south of Paris - and that's before any magical adjustment!"

Neville swept his arm rapturously round the Malfoys' walled kitchen garden and launched into a fervent defence of four-way crop rotation and the advantages of the use of marigolds and nasturtiums in barrier planting. His wand jabbed the air, selecting and pointing as he named the crops for Hermione, counting them into his botanical symphony like the conductor of an edible orchestra.

"South wall – tropical and pinery-vinery (that's the glasshouse where we started); West wall – pears, plums and so on. Two! One ! One! Now, over here they've got courgettes, marrows, potatoes, beans - green beans, broad beans, runner beans… Three! One! Have a taste - "

He snapped off a pea-pod, expertly zipping it open to reveal a tight line of petits pois, sweet and crunchy.

"Brassicas – cabbages, sprouts… Two! Two! All sown far too late in the season – had to use Accelerated Growth Charms. I normally try to avoid them if possible. Roots - parsnips, beet, turnips… Three! Onions, caulis… did I mention broccoli?"

The list went on and on, like a litany. When he'd said they could 'talk on the way' Hermione had thought he intended to put her out of her misery. Now however, as the minutes passed, Hermione, could see her chances of a non-horticultural conversation being diced into vegetable macedoine. Valuing her sight, she lagged a few steps behind, out of range of the energetically waving wand. He's doing this on purpose; he's enjoying it.

"Thistles?" she queried, standing back to admire a monstrously spiky, eight-foot ornamental specimen. She'd humour him if she had to.

"Cardoon." Neville put her right. Artichokes were no laughing matter. "Two! Three!"

At each number a short pulse of magic popped from the tip of his wand - coloured sparks for Two!, something paler and more powdery for One! and Three! Curiosity getting the better of her, Hermione had to ask.

"What's with the counting, Neville?"

"Oh, that…" He had stopped to squat beside a laden gooseberry bush, and was deftly tying in the heavily fruiting branch to a supporting cane. "I've pre-programmed my wand with some of the everyday garden spells - saves me trying to remember them every time. The weeds were right up to here," (he tapped his chest) "and it was a bugs' paradise… One! Kills slugs and snails; Two! is for basic weeding; Three! dusts for greenfly… I've programmed up to ten, but to be quite honest after about six I start getting the numbers muddled up anyway. I'm such a dunderhead."

Snape's favourite insult came readily to Neville lips. Hearing it, Hermione eyed her friend acutely. How many times, she wondered, would Neville have had to hear that word for him to assimilate it into his own vocabulary?

"That's all in the past now Neville - no one's going to be calling you that any more."

"No. No, I don't suppose they will. But in some ways Snape was right, wasn't he? I'm chronic. I can't remember the most elementary magic for five minutes. I'm safer not using it, unless I have to. I'm better sticking with my plants and leaving the complicated stuff to clever people like you. 'Save magic for 'mergencies!' that's my motto."

Neville was the first wizard Hermione had spoken to who had managed to articulate Snape's name without the kind of wincing grimace usually reserved for Voldemort. She regarded him thoughtfully but decided to say nothing.

After a sharp shower earlier on in the day, the foliage was still spangled and the air a tangy, aromatic infusion of flavours wafting from the rediscovered currant bushes and espaliered apple trees.

"Smell this!" Neville thrust something green and frondy towards her nose. "No, rub the leaves and then sniff - well? Is that spearmint or what? Isn't it magnificent? And this one - shut your eyes - see if you can guess… Chocolate! That's right - incredible! And come over here - I must just show you this - "

"Neville!" Would she have to shove a tomato in his mouth to get him to shut up? She might as well try to muzzle a manticore. He'd hardly stopped talking since they left the greenhouse - but none of it was what she wanted to hear. Once in the garden, he seemed to shift into a separate dimension of cellulose and chlorophyll, a world where the threat of Death Eaters was no more than a nuisance, no worse than an infestation of downy mildew... He was over-ripe with enthusiasm for the blessed plants – even if they belonged to the Malfoys - happily engrossed in cross-pollination, fruit yields and harvest forecasts. And they hadn't even got to the herbs yet. How could he be happy? How dare he be happy? He was more than happy - he seemed elated. Had he forgotten already? Had he moved on so soon?

"Neville, this is all absolutely wonderful, but I'm afraid I haven't got all afternoon. For the last time, what is going on?"

"Shhh!"

They had reached the wrought iron gate which separated the kitchen garden from the yew-hedged herbery. Neville turned to Hermione, his boyish face beatific with wonder.

"Look!"

End of Chapter.

A/N: Re: Neville's dialogue. I have used the occasional 'northern' term or usage as a means of distinguishing Neville's speech patterns from Hermione's, but without going to town on dialect (as I did in 'Payback Time'.)

Next Chapter: THE BOROMETZ. Why has Neville lured Hermione into the garden? Does he just want to show her his onions? Is the chapter title a bit of a giveaway?

1 Halquis – from the Arabic and Latin interrogatives (hal, quis).

2 Helligan - the 'lost gardens' of Helligan which have been reclaimed and restored over the last decade. Cornish tourist attraction.

3 Mary Lennox. cf The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett. Mary asks her guardian if she might have a 'bit of earth' (referring to the abandoned walled garden).