Author's Note: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy!
The first time Neville met with Selina Sapworthy, he thought his new dream job might end up becoming a nightmare. In the moment, at least, meeting his new boss had filled him with dread. It didn't help that the meeting was at her house, an old manor that dwarfed his family home and looked like it was about two minutes from caving in on itself. The vast garden in front had grown wild and ivy ran rampant on the mansion's façade.
The interior wasn't much better. A house elf, who didn't introduce themself even when Neville tried to engage them in conversation, had guided him through halls that oozed with faded glamour. Cobwebbed chandeliers dotted the high ceilings while the scuffed floors were inlaid with stone. The wallpaper had faded and peeled in places, but had clearly been vibrant and lush in its earlier days. Velvet chairs and settees were dotted in odd corners and other dead spaces, the fabric worn and threadbare in spots, doused by a layer of dust that itched at his nose. The portraits on the walls held sleeping figures. It reminded him a bit of Grimmuald Place before Harry and Ginny had renovated, although maybe the condition had been closer before the Order even moved in. Neville hadn't known what to expect, but he'd certainly expected something more commonplace than this.
The deeper they went into the house the better kept it got. Neville had assumed that Sapworthy's lack of recent work might have been due to family responsibilities or any of the other burdens that had consumed his own grandmother's years. It had started to become apparent, however, that she likely lived alone, with no one but this house elf for company. Of course the house had fallen into disarray if that truly was the case. No two beings could take care of something so large and labyrinthine on their own, using magic or not. It only made sense to focus on the most used spaces.
After an eerily long walk through the twisting halls, the house elf showed Neville into a library. Here the tall ceilings expanded even higher, coming to a peak over the center of the room, each panel painted with magically twisting vines. Shelves covered every wall, packed with volumes, some of which looked as ancient as the ones deep in the stacks at Hogwarts. This room smelled just as musty as the rest of the house, but it looked impeccable.
Selina Sapworthy sat at a large writing desk, in an equally large wingback chair that dwarfed her actual figure. Even at her advanced age the herbologist portrayed a sort of reserved refinement that matched what her home must have exuded once. Her gray hair looked sleek, pulled into one long sheet to the left side of her head, and her long fingers each held a ring, the metal gleaming against her papery skin. She didn't stand to greet Neville, or even say anything to him, just gestured for him to take a seat in one of the chairs that faced her. He sat and the house elf disappeared with a loud snap.
He waited for the elderly witch to say something, anything, but she just stared down at the papers and parchment laid out before her, thinly framed glasses perched on the end of her broad nose. Neville chanced a glance down at those papers. The one at the top of the pile held large, twisting handwriting, a letter of some sort probably.
"So, you're the Longbottom boy."
Neville's head snapped up to attention—a move that he instantly kicked himself for. Staring at her private correspondence probably wouldn't make the best impression on his prospective employer, and doing it so obviously would only make it worse. Still, Sapworthy didn't react. She just looked at him, her gaze unwavering, evoking memories of Neville's early shame-filled encounters with Professor McGonagall. Neville forced himself to look her in the eye. It hadn't really been a question, but he still answered, "Yes, Ma'am."
"Pomona tells me that you've done a fair bit of traveling."
Still not a question, but Neville nodded anyway. He ran his palms over the legs of his trousers, hoping they'd quit feeling so clammy.
Sapworthy's dark gaze went back down to the paper in front of her. They sat in silence, Neville left wondering what to do, whether or not he should try to start a conversation or leave the elderly herbologist to whatever approach she wanted to take in this interview. He settled on looking around the spacious room, sneaking glances at Sapworthy when he could. He compared her in his mind to the portrait at the back of his copy of Winogrand's Wonderous Water Plants but couldn't see much more than an echo in the shape of her features. Of course, that portrait must have been done long ago. The woman before him looked like the grandmother of the one whose portrait he'd seen so many times when flipping back to the index of that volume. Neville shifted in his chair. He couldn't help but wonder again why it'd been so long, longer than his own lifespan, since Sapworthy had published any new work.
"What was the most interesting plant you saw during your travels?"
Her abruptness again propelled him into speech before he could think about what he would say. "I saw a wild Wiggentree in Norway," he said. His face instantly felt hot. Why was that the first thing he thought of? A basic tree he could've seen in England, used to make basic potions and filled with Bowtruckles of all things. He'd seen a Fire Seed Bush, giant Screechsnaps in the wild, almost everything mentioned in Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean. He raised his own Mimbulus mimbletonia!
Sapworthy didn't even look up to take in his answer, though. She simply tutted and shuffled the papers before her.
Her silence only propelled him to explain more, even while his thoughts screamed at him to shut up. "It took me by surprise, that is. I hadn't expected to see one, let alone to touch it. And, well, you know how special that is I'm sure, Ma'am. It surprised me, though, the feeling that went with it. I've read so much about how they protect people who touch their trunks, it was actually a great comfort when I was younger to know about them, but nothing I've read ever told me how calming it felt while you were in contact with the tree. " He thought about the near instantaneous sensation that had overcome him when he touched the rough bark of the Wiggentree's trunk—the warmth that spread through his veins, the ease of his breathing, the honest belief that everything would turn out alright in the end. He wished he could carry that feeling with him everywhere, especially for situations like these.
Silence, still, but Neville could've sworn that he had seen a small smile flash across Sapworthy's expression.
Even if that had been true, relief still wouldn't come that day. The rest of the interview had gone much the same. She asked vague questions, barely looking at him, and he eked out answers. At one point she asked to see the copies of his notes that she'd requested he bring. He produced the papers, all filled with the scrawling records he'd made about the plants he saw on his various trips. She had shuffled through them, her eyes narrowing a bit, and then said that she'd be keeping them as she considered his application. At the end of the meeting he was dismissed with nothing more than a terse, "Good speaking with you, Mr. Longbottom." It hadn't instilled much hope. Yet the next day an owl had arrived carrying a letter outlining his first assignment, with notes about payment at the bottom and a request that he clean up his handwriting before turning anything in.
From there he had told Gran to moderate approval, his great-uncle to much more enthusiasm, and his closest friends to abundant congratulations. Also, a few days before he'd left, there was Hannah. He still felt daft for mucking up every attempt at just talking to her. But at the same time, she'd been so happy for him, so supportive, and she'd hugged him there in front of everyone. It made his chest feel light and buoyant just remembering that moment—a feeling so nice that it had practically carried him to the field where he then sat.
Staring into a dense forest line in the middle of France, however, he was left only feeling like an absolute git as nothing happened. He'd been sent via portkey to observe the Lilium praesidius, or silver lily, which grew in thick bunches there at the outskirts of a small wizarding village. Sapworthy hadn't told him anything about them, just that she wanted him to observe their behaviors and how they might react differently throughout the day. She didn't bother to explain what exactly they'd be reacting to. His preliminary research, which he'd tried to do both in his own library of Herbology books and amongst the selection at Flourish and Blotts, hadn't turned up many results. All he knew for sure was that they were flowers that could glow to help lost wizards find their way. A little bit of hope came when he mentioned them to the clerk at his hotel and she'd smiled and talked about how lovely they were, but after an entire afternoon spent sitting in the sun, watching the flowers where they lay in the shade of the trees at the edge of the forest, that hope had begun to run dry.
His legs ached from staying still for so long. The ground beneath him had seemed comfortable enough a few hours ago when he first sat, but after staring at nothing and barely moving in the time intervening that assessment seemed foolish. Still, Sapworthy's instruction had been to observe, which he thought necessitated some distance from the subject. After sitting for so long and having no notes to show for it, however, Neville decided it was worth interfering and got up.
In the shade of the tree line the breeze carried with it a damp, earthy scent. The flowers seemed just as innocuous up close as they had from afar, but at least Neville could feel like he was doing something by walking amongst them, jotting down notes about their appearance and what he could surmise of their growth patterns. They looked so ordinary, like simple table flowers Gran would dot around the house for decoration. Despite the flower's common name, the petals were actually a peculiar blue gray. It was a color he'd never seen in lilies before—not that he'd researched them much, he'd never had a reason to—but it didn't look preternatural. He thought of the odd, fluorescent colored flowers he'd seen for sale in a Muggle shop, once. Those had looked bewitched, yet they never would have fit here on the outskirts of a small magical village. The silver lilies, meanwhile, looked inherent to the landscape.
He crouched down to one of the plants, gently pinching a petal between his fingertips. The soft material seemed to melt away from its source, tearing from the flower despite his care. He turned it over on his palm, but it looked uniform front and back, its pigmentation lightening only slightly as it tapered to a point. It still seemed like an average petal, perhaps a bit thicker than he might have expected. The longer he held it the more the smooth surface took on a stubbly sensation that reminded him of corduroy. It had begun to shrivel so fast.
More notes filled the page as he jotted down all of these details. The sun fell lower, almost disappearing behind the town at the horizon, and Neville cast a quiet lumos to fill the forest floor with soft light. The flowers looked dull by wand light, though Neville kept thinking he saw something shimmer out of the corner of his eye.
He kicked himself for not bringing a camera, but he didn't actually have one of his own. He'd been able to use Uncle Algie's on many of his trips, but with the short notice for this one he hadn't even asked. Promising himself that he'd ask around town the next day about renting one, or trying to find a camera cheap enough to buy with the money he had on him, he set to sketching the flowers as well as he could on a blank page of his notebook. The result looked mediocre at best, but Neville could live with that. He wasn't exactly artistic.
He remembered the night he'd spent painting with Hannah. All of her smiles and laughter and talk, the openness they'd finally broken through to.
"It's good!" she had insisted when he'd filled a page with as much paint as he'd dared, resulting in a wonky looking seascape that was mostly just blues and greens smeared together.
He'd taken in her uncharacteristically crooked smile and wrinkled nose, the way her hands had clasped together, before surmising, "You're an awful liar."
She had laughed then, her eyes lighting up despite being red from crying earlier. "I'm not lying," she said. When met with his questioning gaze she'd sat up straighter and insisted, "I'm not! Give it here."
He did, and she bounded away from her desk with it in hand, blonde plaits swinging as she went. She'd crossed the short distance to her wardrobe, which already held a smattering of pictures and postcards. Holding it to a blank spot on one of the doors, she had brought out her wand and muttered a quick charm, sticking it there.
"Perfect," she'd said, standing back to admire it.
"Yes, perfect," he had replied, "if you keep that door open you won't have to look at it."
"Neville," she'd said, her voice warm but warning. The expression she had worn matched, eyes serious even as her lips tipped up into a pleased smile. She bit at her lower lip, a halfhearted attempt to tamp down her happy expression.
His breath had caught in his throat, then, and it did the same there at the edge of a forest in France as the silver lilies began to glow.
All at once, it seemed, the plants nearest him shone with blue-hued light. The familiar glow took Neville back to his fifth year at Hogwarts, back to the Room of Requirement and those early hopeful days of Dumbledore's Army. He remembered how the room had glowed silver and blue as everyone attempted the Patronus charm, how the space began to fill with corporeal forms and how even with his father's wand, the one that was never truly his, he'd been able to create a wispy streak of light.
The light spread to more plants. The flowers closest to him gleamed even brighter, and Neville thought he understood now, how lost wizards could use these to find their way. As an experiment, he let his mind turn to his seventh year of school, to the despair and fear that had plagued everyone. In a snap the forest went dark again, illuminated only by his low wand-light and the moon, which was still rising in the purple sky.
"They're Patronus flowers," he exclaimed into the quiet hum of evening, so thrilled at this discovery that he didn't even feel foolish for doing so.
And with that, the worry he'd felt about this job eased away. It wasn't even that he felt confident all of a sudden—he would still get nervous about how he was doing if he let himself think about it too much—but for the time being there was so much else to occupy his mind. He filed through his memories, writing down the varying reactions he got out of the plants. He watched how his own movements might affect them, how the glow would follow him, sticking closely clustered to his current location sometimes, or else simply expand as he went. He took samples of the dirt and the plants, stowing them carefully in his bag and making note of what happened to the plucked flowers, how long they continued to glow and how quickly they began to die. He stayed at the edge of the wood late into the night, his hands in the earth, his head swimming with new information and long held memories.
The following day, Neville woke with a start. His hand gripped his wand before he'd even opened his eyes. Yet nothing out of the ordinary greeted him, simply the bright midmorning sun that filtered through the blinds. He took a breath, rubbing his face with his free hand and wondering what could've spooked him. Sleep had come so easily. Once he'd at last returned to the hotel and trudged into his room, washed the dirt away from his body and fallen into the mattress, his dreams had arrived quickly and remained peaceful. Nothing more than fragments of images flooded back when he tried to remember them, but they were all light and warm—sun-soaked fields of soft grass, a lazy breeze fluttering blonde hair.
A hard tapping noise brought him back to attention. The tension eased out of Neville's shoulders a bit, glad to know what had woken him. The floor chilled his feet as he crossed to the window, which he opened to reveal a stately tawny owl.
Allowing the bird inside, he asked it, "What are you doing here, Suzette?" He couldn't imagine what sort of thing would prompt Gran to send her owl all the way to France. His stomach dropped just thinking about it, and then again when he saw the blood-red envelope she dropped at his feet.
The howler was already hot to the touch when he picked it up. No matter how many times he'd received one of these at Hogwarts, finding the nerve to open them never got easier.
Neville took a steadying breath and set his shoulders. He spared a glance at Suzette, who still sat on the windowsill, her dark eyes watching Neville steadily, almost as if she were daring him. "You might want to wait outside," he told the bird. He severed the seal.
"What in Merlin's name were you thinking?! You should be ashamed of yourself Neville Longbottom! Here I believed you might have outgrown such bumbling foolishness but in fact you've only made a fool of me as well! What am I meant to tell people? I haven't even met this Abbott girl!"
Neville's breath caught. Even with no idea what had upset Gran, it made him sick to hear Hannah brought into it.
"And worse than you keeping this from me in the first place, I had to find out in that rag! The Daily Prophet of all things now knows more about my only grandson's life than I do! Your parents would be ashamed of how you've conducted yourself! Would you have respected them enough to tell them about your little girlfriend? As soon as you finish your assignment you come STRAIGHT HOME! This family will not be made a mockery by anyone, least of all you Neville Longbottom!"
The Howler fell to the floor, smoking faintly. It felt as though the room were tipping and Neville couldn't find his balance. His stomach rolled violently. The words "your little girlfriend" rang in his ears even more than the familiar sort of scolding he'd once heard on a semi-regular basis for all manner of missteps. Just under the current, though, one directive echoed faintly: that rag, the Daily Prophet.
He pulled on whatever clothes were closest and ran downstairs.
"Are there any copies of this morning's Prophet left?" he asked, his voice sounding frenzied to his own ears, even past the obvious need to catch his breath.
The witch at the front desk gave a disinterested nod toward the sitting area, where a few papers lay abandoned on a coffee table.
Neville grabbed one and rushed back upstairs. In his room, Suzette sat on the ground next to his bag. She had worked it open and seemed to be looking for food amongst his samples. He ignored her and began rifling through the paper's pages. It didn't take long to find what Gran was talking about.
A large picture caught his eye, covering half of the page above the fold at the front of the society section of all things. It showed the interior of a luxury box at a Quidditch match, and in the center of the frame stood Hannah and him. He watched as she stepped forward in the picture to embrace him, resting her head on his shoulder as he closed his eyes. Alongside the photo ran the headline: Love with Longbottom Five Years After Mother's Murder!
A fierce, twisting sensation overtook Neville's stomach. The image of Hannah crying as they leaned against the foot of her bed flooded his mind, coming as quickly as the happy memories of that same night had overtaken him the prior evening. He could still feel the warm weight of her body against his, the way her shoulders had heaved each time she gasped for breath. He remembered the searing heat of her tears on his skin as they soaked through the material of his shirt. This would crush her; he didn't even have to read the accompanying article to know that.
Still, he had to know. He moved to sit on the side of the bed, his body not feeling entirely like his own but separate, somehow, near the edge of numbness. He read through it once, and then again, but it still didn't feel real.
Another couple has emerged from the infamous group known as Dumbledore's Army (now defunct). Noted friend of Harry Potter's, Neville Longbottom has welcomed a new winsome witch into his life: one Hannah Abbott. Spotted in public for the first time at a Quidditch match on Saturday, the pair shared a passionate embrace—apparently too caught up in their romance to watch old pal Ginny Weasley in another controversial win for the Holyhead Harpies (see page 32). The couple chose to reveal this burgeoning affair at an unusual time, just days before the anniversary of an Abbott family tragedy. On this day in 1996 Death Eaters brutally killed Abbott's mother, Norah Abbott.
The article went on to describe the particulars of Norah Abbott's murder in painful detail. It recounted everything, where and how her body was found, the pitiful investigation that took place, the lack of closure that still remained, as no individual culprits had ever been named. In fact Neville learned more about the particulars of Hannah's family history from that article than he'd ever heard from her. Guilt weighed in his chest as he read the ridiculous number of details that were included, about her grandparents and extended relations. The only relief that he found came in the brevity with which the article mentioned Hannah's father, listing nothing more than his age and position at the Ministry.
There were also details about Neville and his family, particularly his parents. But all of that was old news by now. Stories about his parents' fates and his participation in the DA and actions during the Battle of Hogwarts had persisted in the press for so long in the months after Voldemort's defeat that there wasn't a story to tell there anymore. Still, he skimmed over the few lines that mentioned his brief stint with the Aurors and felt a flicker of anger when he saw his parents described as "wasting away" and "unstable." They were plenty stable, he thought ruefully, they just weren't really there.
Finally, the article concluded with speculation about their supposed relationship. It might have been laughable, the assuredness with which this reporter recounted false details of a nonexistent romance, if only they hadn't also included the worst truths that haunted his and Hannah's lives.
A series of loud knocks propelled Neville back to his feet, his wand clasped tightly once again. Suzette, still awaiting a new task, hooted softly from her perch in the window. Half in a daze, Neville crossed the room and opened the door.
A flash of red hair strode past him. "Rule number one of being a Daily Prophet headline," Ginny said, "don't open the door without making absolutely sure you know who's on the other side."
Neville's heart surged to see his friend, glad to have anyone he could trust there with him to help hold the weight of this debacle. Still, her blasé greeting grated at him—it felt like all those times at Hogwarts when everyone seemed to know something he didn't but should have. "Only a few people know I'm here," he said. He was almost upset enough to feel no remorse for the way that his voice snapped at Ginny. Almost. "I'm glad to see you," he added quietly.
She hugged him, her strong arms binding his own to his sides. "I'm sorry about all this. If I hadn't invited everyone—"
"We would have missed out on a great game," Neville cut her off. He felt wretched enough for the both of them, Ginny being upset too wouldn't fix anything.
She released him from her embrace, nodding once to acknowledge his words. Her expression was still troubled, though.
"How did you get here so quickly?"
Ginny looked at him as if he'd gone mad. "I apparated, of course. How else would you travel on such short notice?"
"All the way to France?" Neville's stomach rolled. Maybe she was the one who'd gone mad. "There are laws against international apparition, Ginny! You can't just do it on a whim!"
She rolled her eyes. "You act as if I don't know dozens of very important people at the Ministry, mostly people who are quite eager to please me, my family, and my fiancé, mind you." Neville's face must have shown how he felt about that. She took one look at him and said, "Do not lecture me about using people. If that sort of interest in us didn't exist none of this would have happened and I wouldn't have needed to call in any favors. If they're going to treat us like bloody pixies in cages, just kept there for them to stare at, then I'll do whatever I have to in return." She shook her head, her mouth twisted in anger, before adding, "And they crossed a line, this time."
"Several," Neville agreed.
The anger seeped out of Ginny's expression as she turned back to him. "How are you feeling?"
"Not great." The words came out angrier than he meant them to, but the question seemed inane given the circumstances.
"Dumb question," she agreed, nodding again. "If it's any help, Harry and Hermione are already looking into what options you and Hannah have to take legal action. This is pure libel and that image was taken illegally in a private place."
"I think technically we were in public—"
"No, that suite is private and supposed to be protected. They got that picture by illegal entry and then published it, that's wrong!"
Neville sat on the edge of the bed heavily. "I'm not arguing that it was wrong, but that doesn't mean there's anything we can actually do about it."
"Well Hermione's going to go talk to Hannah after she gathers more information. She's also going to ask around her colleagues to see if anyone's willing to help. And I should be able to get information on the reporter and photographer from the Harpies' security."
Neville hunched over, letting his head hang and pressing his palms against his eyes.
The mattress shifted next to him as Ginny sat. "It's a lot all at once, I know."
"I feel…sick? Blind-sided? I-I don't know how you guys deal with this," he admitted.
"It's a bit more expected for us," she said. She nodded down at the floor where the howler lay. "Your Gran knows, then."
Neville nodded.
"I'll have to ask Mum to go check in with her." She slung her arm across his shoulders and sighed. "Is it bad that I'm glad it was you two?"
"Yes," Neville said. He looked at her, incredulous. "This is awful. Hannah's going to be—"
"I know, I know," Ginny said. She frowned, her eyes trained on the ground. "But I'd rather it be you guys, where there isn't really a story and it'll die down quickly. Some of the other people who were there, I just mean, you know…Dean and Seamus were there. That would've been so bad for them, people would've been just horrid."
Neville nodded. "You're right," he said. Still, he couldn't help but think that Ginny didn't know Hannah, not really. She didn't see how deeply Hannah felt things, how much bringing her mother into all of it would hurt her.
Ginny put her hand on his shoulder. "There isn't a story with you two, right? I mean you said, before…It was just a hug, wasn't it?"
"I—er—it was. Hannah…she was just congratulating me on the job." Neville hadn't thought that his voice sounded disappointed as he answered, but the searching look Ginny gave him said otherwise. "What?" he asked.
Ginny gave a gentle smile. "Are you sure about that?"
"Yes," he said.
"Are you happy with it?"
He wasn't sure how much truth he could handle facing at the moment, so he just said, "I'm happy that she's back in my life."
"Oh, Neville," Ginny said, her voice warm and fond in a way that made him feel younger than her somehow. She leaned forward to meet his gaze and said, "You do fancy her."
He nodded. It was a simple truth, but out in the open it seemed enormous.
"That's wonderful! No reason to look so upset about it, you two would be—"
"It doesn't matter what we would be," Neville said. He sat up straight now, looking down at Ginny and not much caring anymore if he sounded angry—he was angry, at the situation in general and maybe even at Ginny herself. The thrum of it rushed past his ears even as he spoke again. "You don't understand, she is going to be devastated by this, she probably already has been. And today of all days! She won't want anything to do with me ever again and I don't even blame her."
"But we're going to fight to get them to retract it, we're going to—"
"That doesn't matter! It's out there, who knows what's going to happen to her today at the inn, can you imagine what she's going through right now? How is she supposed to face customers like this? And her family! She has enough problems there already, this is only going to make it worse. A retraction, printed a week from now if we're lucky, will not fix this Ginny!"
Ginny gaped at him, her eyes wide. He looked at her hands and saw her left thumb worrying at her engagement ring's band.
"And I should be going to check on her right now," he continued, his own hands balled into fists in his lap. "I should be helping her, or just, just being there. But Sapworthy paid for this hotel for the next three days and I should already be back out there researching now. I've got a job to do and I already wasted so much time yesterday because I was too dumb to figure any of it out—"
"You are not dumb," Ginny said, her voice loud and grave enough to make him shut up. She looked down at the unmade bed where they sat and then turned back to him. "Have you eaten yet?"
"No."
"Then we're going to go get some breakfast and then we'll figure out everything you need to get done before you can leave here. And then we'll get to work on your research, I'll help however I can, and then we'll get you home and to Hannah, alright?"
Neville shook his head. "Haven't you got things you need to do? Your wedding's in a month and the Harpies—"
"My wedding needs both of its groomsmen alive and well," she said. She sighed before adding, "And if what I think happened turns out to be true, it's best for everyone that I'm far away from the Harpies' management for awhile."
"You think they let the reporters in?"
Ginny nodded. "Told you you're not dumb." She laughed softly to herself.
"What?" Neville asked.
She shook her head, red hair swishing. "It's nothing." Even as she said it the corners of her mouth tipped up, betraying her lie.
Neville sighed. "Will you please just tell me what it is you could find so funny right now?"
"You're not going to like it," Ginny said, although now she'd let the smile break free, her amusement clear.
"Ginny just say it."
"It just occurred to me," she said, "that you really do have a thing for blondes with dead mums." Ginny fell into a fit of giggles, covering her mouth with her hand in an attempt to suppress the noise, aware of how incongruous it was to their current situation. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Neville just shook his head, unable to keep himself from smiling back just slightly. Nothing was okay, his stomach churned just thinking of everything that lay before him now. He didn't want to do anymore research, didn't want to fight with the Daily Prophet or face Gran's ire. He felt sick even when he thought of seeing Hannah again. Want to or not, though, he had to start chipping away at it all—he didn't have another choice. And it was nice to have a friend there to help him, even with her ill-timed jokes.
"One thing I need to do before we can go eat," he said to Ginny, rising from the bed to go dig for some parchment and a quill in his bag.
He scrawled out his messages quickly, one for Gran and one for Hannah. They weren't much, basically an assurance to Gran that this was nothing more than another ploy from the Prophet. And for Hannah, he'd jotted down only three lines:
Away for work right now but I'll be back in London as soon as possible. They can't get away with lying like that. I'm so sorry, Hannah, you don't deserve any of this.
Neville addressed the messages quickly and affixed them to Suzette's leg. "Here you go, girl," he said, patting her on the head. "To the Leaky Cauldron first, then home, alright?"
The owl gave a loud hoot and took off. Her wings spread out, two dark gashes in the afternoon sky as she disappeared into the distance.
Author's Note: When I started this fic, I genuinely didn't think about the fact that I'd have to create my own fictional plants, including their scientific names, but here we are! My apologies to anyone reading this who actually knows about botany.
Thank you again for reading, it really means so much for you to give your time to this story! Comments and critiques are welcome as always!
