New Perspective 1
THE CHOSEN
By Bellegeste
A/N: This and the next chapter go together as they both take place at Neville's grandmother's cottage. Together they were too long for a single chapter, so I have split them… (that's why this one is a little short).
Chapter 6:THE WEAKEST LINK
Long into the summer night, long after her parents had performed the regular night-time locking-up routine (TV – unplugged; lights – switched off; back door – bolted; front door – locked; dishwasher – on), observed with the ritual precision of pilots clearing for take-off, Hermione sat up in bed, pages of notes and jottings spread out across the covers, checking and rechecking the facts, weaving in the occasional strand of supposition, a few theoretical threads… and thinking. Mostly thinking.
It was very late by the time she finally clicked off the bedside lamp and eased Crookshanks out from his cosy wigwam under her bent knees, so that she could stretch out and lie down. At last she fell asleep, a hopeful smile on her lips, as though the white, woolly Borometz itself were snuggled in beside her.
XXX
The front door of the cottage was ajar. Hermione stuck her head in and called.
"Neville?"
"In the kitchen. Come on through."
Trusting to instinct, she followed her nose – and the smell of cooking. He was bending over, peering into the open stove, a quilted mitt swaddling his left hand. Hermione was too late to do anything but wince as he reached into the hot oven with his other, ungloved hand and extracted a tray of freshly baked Eccles cakes(1). Shooting up like a pink-faced, plump jack-in-the-box, he leaped across the kitchen in a shocked pirouette. It said a great deal for his self-control that he managed to get the tray into the air space above the table before dropping it with a yell.
"By 'eck! I always do that! Why do I always do that?" he exclaimed, grabbing his arm and flapping the scorched fingers frantically as though trying to shake them off at the wrist.
Hermione grinned. Some things never changed. Neville Longbottom never changed.
"Here. Run them under the tap." Hermione steered her jigging friend towards the sink, reminded of the time at school Draco had zapped him with Tarantallegra. You could always depend on Neville to dance in a crisis! There was an almost audible hiss as scarlet skin met cold water. "Have you any lint? You want to cover those before they blister."
But Neville was clumsily, one-handedly unscrewing the lid of a pot of clear, green-tinted gel which he had taken off the window sill. With a sigh that sounded almost blissful he plunged his fingers into the goo.
"Sorry 'bout that. Happens all the time - I never remember… Mitt…hand…hand…mitt…" He held up one gloved and one potted hand for inspection, waving them apologetically, incongruous puppet players in a kitchen sink drama.
"There are spells for that kind of thing, you know. Easy ones. Protego! Or Desensio! There's a whole list of them in 'Enchantment in Baking' – Ron's mum's got a copy. I'll have a look next time I'm there." If I'm ever there again. "Or what about a mild Cooling Charm? It must be better than burning your fingers."
Neville shrugged and Hermione could tell that he didn't want her to interfere.
"I tried those," he mumbled. "Got frostbite twice, and when I tried Desensio! my hands went so numb I crushed all my Shrivelfig seedlings. I dropped the teapot too. Couldn't hold my wand for two days. Couldn't even use a knife and fork."
"So your gran had to cut up your food – how ignominious," Hermione sympathised .
Neville humphed.
"Did she 'eck! No, she did Liqueficio! and conjured me a straw!"
He looked away, suddenly busy, wiping gel-slimed fingers down the front of his apron. (Apron? Hermione was tempted to call it a 'pinny' - she wondered about Neville, sometimes.) The redness of the burn had faded and there was no blistering or, apparently, pain.
"It's incredible stuff this," he said evasively, screwing the lid back on. "My gran's own secret blend of Better Balm, Painless Potion and a variety of Aloe Vera extracts. Analgesic, antiseptic and an effective moisturiser all in one! If she sold it on the open market she'd make a fortune. Full of surprises is my gran. You got my note then?"
Hermione sat watching him bustling to find plates, knives, mugs, incongruously at home in the kitchen. Or, almost - he plonked a frosted jar onto the table.
"I'm afraid the jam's frozen. I must have put it in the cupboard which has the Cooling Charm. The butter, on the other hand, is extremely spreadable…" He swilled it slowly to and fro in its dish. "Have a cake. Help yourself. You can eat them by themselves, but they're even better with a blob of jam on top… Oh, lumme, where's the sand?"
Had this been Ron talking it would have been a trick question, or one of his terrible jokes. Hermione was debating whether to answer 'In the sandwich' or 'In the Sahara', when Neville seized a small hour-glass egg-timer that had buried itself beneath a tea-towel, and rushed out of the room, returning much more sedately only seconds later.
"Promised gran I'd turn the Burdock pods every hour," he explained, "and the Lovage. A lot of the trees are setting their seeds early this year and we're overrun with all the drying - still catching up with the summer fruits, you see; not geared up for autumn yet. Gran says it's a harbinger." Of what he wasn't completely sure.
Hermione sipped her tea, saying nothing as yet; Neville chipped away at the block of jam, gouging out an occasional iced raspberry.
"That was scrumptious!" Hermione pressed the last sweet flakes up with her fingertip and dabbed them onto her tongue. "I had no idea you could cook, Neville. Is it a new hobby?"
Pink cheeks grew pinker.
"Me? What? Oh no, no, no - not me! Though I can throw a few leaves together to make a salad if I have to…"
Judging by his waistline, he hardly looked as though he survived on salad.
"My gran made these."
"She's still all right then?"
"Strong as an iron clog! She'll outlive us all, my gran!"
Were they going to sit around making cream-tea small-talk about Neville's family all afternoon? Hermione was bursting to tell him her theories, but first she wanted to hear what was so important that he had asked her to Apparate all the way up to his grandmother's cottage.
"I was going to write to you, but you beat me to it. Your note - you said there were two things?" As if she couldn't guess.
"Mm, yeah." Neville's head dipped and nodded, like a sleek seal swallowing a fish, as though that would hurry the crammed, jammy mouthful down his throat. He dashed a flipper across his lips, wiping away some sticky crumbs. "The first thing is that the Datura's ready. I lifted the first plant for Narcissa this morning; the root's sufficiently developed to obtain a reasonable extract. She says she's going to need one every day for at least a week. So we've got seven days to work out how she's getting it to Draco. What do you think we should do - follow her?"
A week? That tallied with the recommendations in Healers' Herbal. Hermione was positive she was on the right track.
"If you can work out a way to tail her when she Apparates. It's not going to be that simple. OK, let's get back to that in a minute. What's the second thing? And, by the way, how did you manage to get that note delivered? Did you find an owl? You surely didn't Apparate all the way to my house just to post a letter, and then leave without saying hello? Even you wouldn't be so - "
"Did you step over a pool of vomit on your way out? No? Well, can't have been me then," said Neville ruefully. "How is it twerps like Fred and George can Apparate just like 'that'," (he snapped his fingers), "whereas I … No, I got my gran to drop it off on her way to W.I."
"W.I.?" That would account for the jam and cakes then(2).
"Witchcraft Incantation class. She only goes along for the gossip. They have a coven meeting every month on Pendle barrow. I told her we're working on a secret project for the Order, and I needed to contact you urgently."
"Neville, you didn't!"
"She didn't mind. Makes her feel useful. And you can't start getting self-righteous with me, not after all your dodgy stuff with McLaggen last term."
"How do you know about that? You won't tell Ron?"
So she hadn't exactly been Miss Scrupulously Honest… She wasn't proud of it, but Ron's constant canoodlings with Lavender had made her see red - purple – whatever! Who'd been talking? Ginny? Luna? Why was her relationship with Ron always so complicated? On top of everything else, she added 'exploiting grandparents' to the mental list of misdemeanours she had committed over the past weeks.
"I'm staying well out of it," muttered Neville.
Unwinding a cord from a metal cleat on the wall, Neville gently lowered the drying rack down from the ceiling. It was festooned with bunches of Bayberry bark, Balmony and Tormentil. Draped over the top rail was a white and pitifully tiny fleece. Next to it was pegged a little woolly tail, dangling like a catkin from a hazel twig. Hermione's eyes swam with tears. She strove not to give way to them, to remember what she had read in the Nei Jing:
'Traditionally the fleece is spun and then plaited into bracelets, worn as amulets, with the power to balance and revitalise. The tail is the seat of positive Chi (energy).'
"It's the tail, isn't it, that's the important bit? Can I… can I touch it?" Tentatively, reverently, she reached out a hand.
"Go ahead." For Neville, gutting and skinning the creature had taken the romance from the myth along with its lights(3) and intestines. "It's not as though it's a holy relic. It's not Gryffindor's sword, or the Philosophers' Stone. It's not going to cure cancer or Dragon pox, or bring about world peace. It's a lucky charm, like a rabbit's foot… 'heertes-ease brings and Hope', that's all."
Sounding somewhat disillusioned, he quoted the last line of the monk's verse (the only one he could remember). He'd changed his tune since his 'annunciation' in the garden.
" 'Where there's life there's hope'?" Hermione trotted out the maxim shaded with irony. "Or there should be."
"Any idea when you'll be seeing him next?" asked Neville.
"Seeing who? Ron?" Hermione wrenched her eyes away from the fluffy tail.
"Harry! Who else? Forget about Ron – oh, look, forget I said that – but, really, Hermione, he doesn't seem to be making you very happy… Sorry, none of my business. We are going to give this 'ere tail to Harry, aren't we?"
Even Neville couldn't mistake Hermione's goggling relief.
"You didn't honestly think that just because I'd got my hands on a piece of magic fur, I was suddenly going to go charging off to attack You-Know-Who? I'm no hero - never have been, never will be. Oh, it were a nice idea for all of about five minutes, but I was kidding myself… When I said I'd been Chosen, I meant chosen to bestow the Lamb tail on Harry. I'm a link in a chain, with Harry at the end. The way I see it, Hermione, we all have our part to play in this war - you only need one weak link and the chain breaks…"
To Hermione such unselfish, good-natured common-sense was nothing less than heroic.
"We'll have to try to contact Harry. Goodness knows how, with no owls - he's being such a recluse. We could try Godric's Hollow. He said he might head over there once he'd sorted things out with the Dursleys. Maybe he could arrange to meet us. You'd better keep the tail with you, just in case…"
Neville's face fell like a broken broomstick.
"But what if I lose it?"
End of chapter. Rather a mild one, wasn't it? A lot more happens in the next one in terms of plot development and explanation.
Next chapter: NOT TRIUMPHANT BUT TRAGIC. Hermione explains her theory about Narcissa. So how does Snape fit into all this?
1 Eccles cakes: individual, round, flattish cakes with a flaky pastry shell and currant filling. From Eccles, Greater Manchester.
2 Women's Institute. UK Muggle organisation, with a reputation for outstanding home baking.
3 Lights: sheep's lungs