Chapter 9: Just the Perfect Blendship
"Bit unwieldy, isn't it? A broomstick."
Hearing the frown in her voice, Neville and Ron turned their heads down the line to witness a very rare sight: a Hermione Granger appearing, for once, unconfident in the task set before them. The first years were out on the Quidditch pitch on a crisp fall day, readying for their first flying lesson.
Ron cleared his throat. "A broomstick is only as unsteady as its rider. If you're not firm with it, it won't obey your commands or listen to where you want to go."
"An excellent point, Mr. Weasley!" Madam Hooch suddenly appeared almost like a ghost in front of them, overhearing the advice. "Did everyone hear that?" She prompted Ron to repeat the observation, which (blushing as red as his hair) he did.
Hermione still appeared skeptical. "I've heard that broomsticks serve as a symbol of steadfastness in wizarding culture." She glanced up to ponder Ron. "For instance, isn't it true that most wizards and witches will mount a broomstick and ride off together upon getting married?"
The query only made Ron flush further. "Reckon I've heard it told like that," he mumbled.
Hermione pursed her lips in bemusement, taking this in curiously. She finally shook her head to clear it, tossing her bushy, chestnut curls. "Well, I'm never doing it."
"What, getting married?" Ron cracked, wrestling with a smirk. "Bloody wonder why…"
She glowered at him balefully. "Mounting a broomstick. And certainly not at my wedding. When I get married, I'll expect my husband to keep both of our feet on the ground."
"Well, unless you aim to get hitched to Madame Hooch, I suggest you stop thinking about the future and start thinking about mounting your broomstick now when she tells us!"
"Patience, Mr. Weasley, patience," the Quidditch referee clucked, as she circled back to their little bunch. "Mounting your broomstick won't be for a time yet. For now, I want you all to practice what you so eloquently pointed out earlier: taking command of your broom and telling it what you want it to do. Now, when I give the signal, you are to all raise a hand over your broomstick and tell it, in a loud, clear voice, to come 'Up.' Off you go, then!"
Despite her insistence that she would never mount a broomstick in her life, not even when she was legally wed, Hermione nonetheless summoned her broom into her hand on the very first try. Next to her, Ron watched it all happen with more than a little incredulity, baffled at how even an unconfident Hermione Granger could nonetheless manage to accomplish something of professed little interest to her on her first attempt. The youngest Weasley son quickly focused back on his own broom, calling for it to come "Up!" Nothing happened.
"Up… Up!... UP!" Ron's hand was actually twitching, as if he could someone summon the broom to him by sheer force of will. Quite abruptly, the broom finally did move, only to miss Ron's hand completely and whack him in the nose instead.
Amused, Hermione lifted a hand to her mouth to hide a soft giggle. Neville showed no such compunction, roaring with laughter.
"Oh, dash it all, shut up, Neville! ….." But Ron's blue eyes couldn't help but twinkle a bit too, even as he had to pinch his bashed nose and prevent some bleeding.
It only made Neville feel marginally better that, thanks to Ron, he wasn't the only one to have struggles in handling a broomstick. Though, at least Ron's broomstick had moved, whereas his was remaining stubbornly still on the grass.
His mind drifted back to Ron and Hermione's debate on the steadiness of broomsticks and its symbolic meaning. He wondered, as he now physically stooped to lift up the broom in order to better examine it: had his parents rode a broom like this one off into the sunset, following their wedding? If it apparently was such a romantic, magical tradition….
For some reason, Neville's broom chose this moment to start wiggling, even though he had bypassed the assignment of bringing it up into his grip and simply lifted the broom by hand. Startled, Neville unconsciously straddled the broomstick, hoping that sitting on the thing might better pin it down instead of trying to grapple with it using only his fingers.
As it turned out, this only made things worse.
"Mr. Longbottom! … Mr…. Mr. Longbottom! ….." A reprimanding Madame Hooch started to move in, possibly to intercept him, but it was too late: now with a passenger, albeit an unwitting one, the broomstick made clear that it had no master as it now shot off, taking Neville with it on a careening, wild ride over the greens just beyond the Quidditch pitch.
Thankfully, neither the broom nor its ride got very far, wobbling uncertainly before finally flaming out a couple hundred yards beyond the class…. and in such spectacular fashion that with a sharp CRACK!, Neville felt something break.
"Everyone out of the way!" Madame Hooch was on him before he could fully come out of his daze, helping Neville to his feet. "Oh, oh, ohhhhh… broken wrist…." she tutted, stealing an arm around the boy. Liquid spasms were shooting up Neville's forearm, debilitating enough that he couldn't focus in on what Hooch was shouting to the rest of the class – something about them all staying here and on the ground.
He didn't notice in the confusion that he had left his Rememberall behind – a gift he had received in the owl post from Gran just that morning. Later in the Hospital Wing, Ron brought it back to him, recounting how he had needed to instigate a brawl against that prancing peacock Draco Malfoy to retrieve it. "Of course, that Hermione went and fetched McGonagall…" Ron concluded the regaling of his tale bitterly. "That Harry Potter, though – he helped! Even if he showed what a bloke fighting like a mouse would look like…."
Neville merely sighed, tucking the Rememberall into his pocket. One thing was for certain: he was most definitely not good at flying.
So began an odyssey of trial in error in which Neville tried to discover which subject – any subject – he could actually be good in. It was disheartening to realize, time and time again, that everything he did try was something he was horrendous at.
Take Charms, for example. In one of their very first lessons, Professor Flitwick gave everyone the simple task of trying to use magic to make an object fly, rather than just themselves.
Neville muddled through the swish-and-flick motion of the spell, same as everyone else, but like before with his broomstick, the feather set at his place did not respond. It was only the barest comfort that some of the other boys, like Seamus Finnegan, Harry Potter and Ron, were having just as little luck. Seamus actually managed to light his feather on fire instead of levitating it.
"Wingardium Levio-saaaaaaaa!" Growing frustrated, Ron began beating on his feather with the tip of his wand – at least until Hermione stayed his hand.
"No, no, stop – Stop! You're going to take someone's eye out, if not your own! And besides, you're saying it wrong – it's Levioooooooosa! Not Leviosaaaaa!"
Ron shoved his feather towards her, grumbling. "You do it then, if you're so clever! Go on, go on!"
Hermione lifted her wand with calm and quiet dignity, performing the swish and flick. "Wingardium Leviosa!"
Immediately, the feather took to the air, causing a hush to fall over the classroom.
"Oh, well done! See here, everyone! – Ms. Granger's done it!" Flitwick squeaked. In what was rapidly becoming a norm, Hermione was the first out of their year to accomplish the feat.
Neville nodded to her admiringly; Ron, meanwhile, turned away and folded his arms over his schoolbooks, stewing.
Ron was still stewing as he led Neville, Seamus, and Dean Thomas through one of the back courtyards on the way to dinner.
"It's Leviooooooosa!..." he mimicked their star classmate. "She's a nightmare! Honestly!" Abruptly, he lurched forward as someone knocked into his shoulder from behind; Neville distinctly heard the sound of a sob carrying past him. The quartet of boys swayed to a halt and watched as Hermione's bouncing curls hustled into the throng.
"I….. think she heard you," Neville pointed out, caught too tightly between a sense of friendship to the one mate he had managed to make and his own code of ethics to chide Ron further.
Ron, for his part, looked unperturbed. "So?" he let the jealousy continue to seep into his voice. "She must realize she's got no friends!"
Feeling uneasy, Neville begged off accompanying his friends straight to dinner and doubled back for the Common Room instead, using the deposit of his books and schoolbag as a pretense. On the return trip down to the Great Hall, however, he was passing by one of the girls' bathrooms when he thought he heard the sound of soft crying emanating from within. Even after needing to cock his ear and listen over what was clearly the noise of someone letting the tap run, Neville recognized from the timbre of the sniffles alone that it was Hermione. He felt an urge to help the poor girl, and only the regulations surrounding gendered bathrooms held him back. He hurried down for dinner, and quickly informed Ron, hoping that, even if he couldn't necessarily find the nerve to confront his buddy for his harsh words, he could at least guilt Ron out of them.
"Hermione's been in the bathroom on the third floor damn bloody near all afternoon, crying." Neville was disappointed when the implied subtext behind this report didn't seem to register to Ron, who was too busy stuffing his face with food. "Ron? Are you listening to me?"
"What?" Ron garbled through a mouthful. "She'll calm down; birds often do…."
An unusually loud clap of thunder shook the students out of their evening meal revelry, the rumbling heralding in the exact same moment a terrified and dithering Professor Quirrell.
"TROLL! IN THE DUNGEONS!" Quirrell was scampering between the House tables, jittery as a mouse. "TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!"
At the staff table, Dumbledore rose from his place.
"Thought you ought to know…." This was all Quirrell managed before he keeled over, facedown into a dead faint. The entire student body dissolved into pandemonium and only the Headmaster's bellow for calm settled them.
"Everyone will please – not panic! Prefects, escort your charges back to their dormitories. Teachers, will follow me to the dungeons!"
Ron's mood, which had been on a downward backslide for more than half the day, seemed to descend even further at not only the prospect of being torn from his food early, but also from having to take orders from his officious older brother, Percy.
"How could a troll get in? Fat jolly good Halloween this has turned out to be…" he was grumbling when Neville suddenly grabbed his arm.
"Hermione! She's still in the bathroom; she doesn't know!"
It incensed Neville nearly to the point of chastising words at how Ron had to actually take a moment to think about it. His best mate really only acquiesced to seemingly get away from Percy, warning that his "brother better not see us!"
Neville and Ron slipped out of the back of the line and pelted over to the third floor corridor, going the other way. They skidded up short at the ominous sounds of crashing and screaming clearly coming from inside the girls' loo.
"Of all the bloody bathrooms it had to pick…..!" Ron snarled, but he leapt with Neville for the door, hoping it wasn't locked. The handle gave without any resistance.
The boys emerged into a bathroom that had been almost completely leveled. It was though a small pipe bomb had been detonated inside. Busted sinks were spraying water everywhere, and one stall, possibly two, had already been flattened. Amidst green splinters, Neville caught a glimpse of bushy brown hair.
He didn't know where he found such charisma in his own voice, even as he bellowed, "Hermione, MOVE!"
Remarkably, she obeyed, commando-crawling into the next stall over that was still standing. With hardly any spell repertoire in their wands, Ron and Neville's first instinct was to seize splinters from the demolished bathroom stalls and hurl them feebly at the oafish creature, amidst Hermione's cries for help.
"Hey! PEA-BRAIN!" A hefty chunk of green wood hurled by Ron actually found a mark, getting the brute's attention and forcing it to switch targets. Swinging a heavy club, the beast drove Ron and Neville back. Staggering, Neville nervously went for his wand in his robes. He waved it largely without thinking through what kind of spell he was hoping to cast, seeing as he hardly knew any yet. Unfortunately, the power behind his wand arm was too strong, enough that Neville's wand actually flew out of his hands, spinning end over end straight at the thing, useless.
Despite accidentally giving up his own, most effective weapon, Neville's wand, by some happenstance, actually landed straight in the troll's nostril, wand tip up. Ron made a disgusted face.
"Uggh!"
It would seem that the only thing Neville had managed to accomplish was to make the troll even more mad. Lowing in anguish and rage, the troll darted forward with surprising speed and suddenly the world was spinning, until Neville found the blood rapidly rushing to his head as he dangled upside-down by his ankle. He watched as, now inverted, gravity compelled the Rememberall to fall out of his pocket.
"DO SOMETHING!" he hollered to Ron.
"What?"
Neville's vision rattled as his body was lurched during the troll's attempt to whack him with the club, like some kind of human piñata. Incredibly, despite having trapped its prey in close quarters, the oaf still managed to miss. Though Neville knew it wouldn't be long before it landed a lucky hit.
"ANYTHING!" He couldn't see what Ron was attempting from his inverted vantage point, and he groaned. "Hurry up!"
Hermione, however, could watch as Ron dove for his robes, brandishing his wand. "Swish-and-flick!..." she prompted.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" In a bit of happy irony, Ron said it perfectly.
In the intervening years, Ron would retell the legend to anyone who would listen in any social context – Auror training, DA meetings, even his own wedding reception – and claim how he had actually been aiming to levitate Neville out of the troll's grasp. As it was, what happened instead was much better, especially in the makings of a good cocktail story: Ron actually managed to Levitate the troll's club out of its wielder's grasp, and then let it fall with a CRACK! onto its owners head.
Neville nearly landed on his own head as the troll dropped him, and he scuttled back like a crab to barely avoid the troll collapsing forward into an unconscious heap on the bathroom tiles.
It took a moment or two before Hermione hesitantly emerged from the bathroom stalls' ruins. She looked something akin to amazed. "Is it…. dead?"
"Don't ruddy think so," Neville saw spots of gray dance before his vision as he struggled to his feet. "Just knocked out."
Ron was the one to stoop and tug Neville's nearly given-away weapon and pass it to him. "Your wand, partner."
"Uggh! Troll bogeys…." Neville could find nothing except his robe sleeves to wipe the snot off, silently registering how Ron was now also recovering his Rememberall and slipping it back into his pocket. "Mate, you really need to not make a habit out of returning all my stuff…"
"So stop losing it then….!" Ron chuckled, and even Hermione brightly laughed.
The nervous laughter quickly petered out at the sound of running feet invading the blown-apart bathroom. Clasping a hand to her heart, McGonagall looked in danger of going into cardiac arrest on the spot.
"Oh! Oh my goodness….! Ex-Explain yourselves, both of you!" she spluttered, her mortified gaze landing first on the boys.
Ron and Neville had barely opened their mouths to stumble through some explanation before Hermione bailed them out for trying.
"It's my fault, Professor McGonagall."
Ron and Neville tried to hide their shock, even as they exchanged a bewildered look. It was nothing compared to McGonagall, who appeared truly baffled. "Ms. Granger….?"
"I went looking for the troll. I'd read all about them and thought I could deal with it on my own. If Neville and Ron hadn't come and found me…. I'd probably be dead." She surreptitiously sent the boys a shy smile.
It was just a believable enough alibi to be plausible, and McGonagall took the bait. "Be that as it may – it was an extremely foolish thing to do, and I honestly expected more of you, Miss Granger! Ten points deducted from Gryffindor, for your serious lack of judgment!"
Hermione hung her head and shuffled from the chaos to leave. The Deputy Headmistress rounded on Neville and Ron. "As for you two gentlemen: …. Well, I hope you appreciate and realize how fortunate you are. Not many first years, and green ones at that, could take on a fully-grown mountain troll and live to tell the tale! …. Five points…. will be awarded to each of you…." and she seemed to grind out her verdict reluctantly. "…..for sheer, dumb luck!"
Neville and Ron grinned at each other, departing from the carnage with little more than a nasty bump on the head for one and a perhaps unfortunately over-inflated ego for the other. They met Hermione waiting for them outside, and the trio walked back to the Gryffindor Common Room in companionable …. well, company.
"And cheer up, Hermione – we earned your lost points back!" Neville bucked her up.
"Reckon we deserve that," Ron opined. "Mind you, we did save her life!" He and Hermione shared small smiles, the bushy-haired, bookish girl even blushing slightly.
From that moment on, by unspoken agreement, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't do without helping liking each other, and knocking out a fully-grown mountain troll is one of them.