Neville Longbottom stood in the Headmaster's office. He had been out of Hogwarts for several years. He was a grown man, independent, and considered one of the bravest men from the Battle of Hogwarts. Somehow, however, whenever he faced McGonagall, he always felt like a little kid again, who had once again forgotten the password for Gryffindor Tower.
"As you can see," McGonagall was telling him crisply, "Madame Sprout's retirement came at a most inopportune time. We are already introducing a new Transfiguration teacher, and our Defense against Dark Arts teacher has only been here for a couple of years. You are the perfect candidate. Your scores in Herbology are excellent, and you will be a familiar sight to many of the children who are starting this year, children of your own fellow students. You will have lodgings in the castle, and the job pays quite well."
Funny, this. Neville had not, in fact, applied for this job. He had received a letter asking him to kindly visit, and now she was talking as if the decision was already made and settled. "In addition to these duties," McGonagall continued, "you will become the new Head of Gryffindor House."
"Wait…" This startled Neville. "Me? Head of House? I-I… I mean… you… you were… and…"
"Yes, Longbottom, Head of House," she answered with that same crisp tone, and Neville felt as if he was back in Transfiguration Class. "It was permissible for me to oversee the House while we have been rebuilding and dealing with the losses of the War, but I cannot continue to be Headmistress of Hogwarts and Head of Gryffindor House. The Headmaster – or Headmistress – must be separate from the House system, because I must be the Headmistress of all of the students regardless of Sorting."
She took a moment to glare at the silent, still, innocuous-looking Sorting Hat. Neville had no idea why.
"You need not arrive before September First, but you may wish to do so in order to re-familiarize yourself with the grounds and move into the Head of House living quarters," McGonagall said, and just like that, it was settled.
And why not? Neville thought to himself, as he left her office, still feeling as if his head was spinning slightly. What was he doing with his life anyways? He'd wandered from job to job, looking for a purpose, hoping for a comfortable situation where he, Neville Longbottom specifically, was needed. Perhaps this was the place.
As he left, McGonagall sat down in front of her desk and started checking paperwork. The Hat spoke drily. "And there he goes. A greater candidate for Hufflepuff I never knew, until I put him into Gryffindor. I hardly had the courage to try again after the failure of Pettigrew! But Longbottom was my realization into greatness. He is quite possibly the best Missort I ever made. When he first arrived, he was terrified of his own shadow, but in his final year, his courage was enough to produce Godric Gryffindor's sword from Godric Gryffindor's hat! And now look at him. Head of House."
"You know very well," McGonagall snapped irritably, "that he was the best candidate because he was the only candidate. The other Gryffindor graduates have been seeking their own fortune in entirely different places." She was all the more irritable because she knew that the Hat had a point; had she her pick of recent Gryffindorians, she probably would not have found one she preferred more than Neville. "Now hush. I have plenty of work to do without this silliness."
"As you wish, Headmistress," said the Hat, and it did not speak again for nearly an entire hour.
The Bulstrode family lived in a lovely, grand, Victorian house of the sort that was usually seen occupying a small patch of ground in the midst of a city. This one had been lifted from its original spot and placed in the middle of the country. The rain was still falling steadily outside the windows as Millicent ushered her children from the green-flamed fireplace into the drawing room. Esme immediately set out to find her father and tell him all about their trip. "Drucy," Millicent said. "Hold on for a moment."
Drucy wondered if her mother was going to explain that odd look on her face, or tell her what Ollivander had been discussing in his shop for all that time. She didn't. "Drucy, I got you the basilisk wand. I want you to practice with it every day. I want you to be entirely comfortable with it before you leave for Hogwarts. Alright? But when you're at Hogwarts, well… don't talk about your wand core. And remember…"
Drucy already knew the drill. "Don't speak Parseltongue."
"Why?" Drucy asked Esme, as the two sisters settled into their beds. Though their house was large, the two had shared a bedroom since before Drucy could remember, and she was glad. Her sister's presence comforted her when she was afraid of the dark. "Why doesn't Mom want me to speak Parseltongue? And what's wrong with my wand? Mr. Ollivander didn't seem to think there was anything bad about it."
"Haven't you been paying any attention?" Esme shook her head. "No, of course not. Look, Drucy. Parseltongue is rare, because the only family that has consistently produced them has been Slytherin itself. Just about a year before you were born, a Slytherin Parselmouth turned out to be one of the most evil wizards in history, and now everyone's all on edge about Slytherins, old pure-blood families, and Parselmouths. We do as well as we do because Mom was smart enough to keep her head down and her mouth shut when everyone else was looking for someone to blame."
"It's not fair," Drucy grumbled. "Lumos." The basilisk wand lit obligingly. "I didn't do anything to any of them, and I don't want to. Why can't they just leave me alone?"
"That's not the way the world works," Esme sighed. "Look, follow Mom's advice, ok? She's smart. Smarter'n you and me. Smarter'n she looks. She's just looking out for you."
"Yeah…" Drucy sighed, and shook her hand slightly, extinguishing the wand. She put it on her nightstand next to the Butterfly Maker, which was sending sparkling butterflies up into the room. Her eyes closed slowly and she fell asleep.
Drucy startled awake when something stung her nose. When she opened her eyes, she couldn't see a thing in the room for all the sparkly butterflies floating around! As she sat up, another one flew into her face and dissipated with another slight sting. She waved her arms around, grumbling, until she had cleared enough butterflies to press the button and turn off the Butterfly Maker. The butterflies were still thick in the rest of the room, fluttering about and occasionally bursting into sparkles and dissipating as they hit various objects in the room… books, toys, furniture, curtains…
As five of the butterflies hit the curtain all at once, Drucy saw another few golden sparks appear and a small flame begin to feed on the cloth. "Esme!" she squeaked. "Esme, the curtain's on fire!"
"Aguamenti," her sister's sleepy voice said, and Drucy looked up to see her half-sitting in bed, a small stream of water exiting her wand, quickly extinguishing the flame. Drucy scooped up her own wand and, with an order of "Lumos", investigated the damage. It was only a small scorch mark.
"That's really neat," Drucy said, impressed. "Do you know how to make the butterflies go away?"
"Mm-mm," Esme murmured, shaking her head sleepily.
"Aguamenti," Drucy tried, pointing her wand. Nothing happened.
"That's an advanced charm," Esme said, putting her wand back down. There were only a few butterflies in the room now, and none of them were very close to each other. "I can't even do more than a little bit, and I've been practicing. Now go back to bed." With that, she put her head down and was soon fast asleep again.
Drucy lay back down, but she couldn't get back to sleep. Her mind was still humming with the events of the day. "I'm gonna get a drink of water," she said quietly, but her sleeping sister did not answer. Setting her wand back down beside her bed, she pulled on her robe and wandered out of the room. On her way to the kitchen, she saw light spilling out from under a doorway, and heard her parents speaking. She paused when she heard her father's voice raised. She never had heard her father sound anything but calm and cheerful, if slightly distant.
"What kind of world are we making for our children," he was asking, "if a girl can't even own a basilisk wand and speak Parseltongue without being marked as a villain? These things used to be the height of honor! In our grandparents' generation, she would be a genius and everybody would want to help her succeed."
Her mother's tone was sharp, but there was a certain, slight gentleness in it that she reserved for her husband and children most of the time. "The blowback is natural, it's to be expected, and it's just plain going to happen for a generation, maybe more. The world is partly what we made it, but we inherited our parents' fight, and we ended it. Drucy needs to understand that."
Her father murmured something she couldn't hear, and her mother answered back quickly. "Now you don't believe that, you never did. Do you know how I know that? Your daughter met a Muggle-born in poverty and her first thought was that she wanted to help him. She did, too. She laid out over half her own private spending money for him, with hardly any struggle at all."
"You said that Ollivander told you that would save her," Drucy's father said slowly. "That it was important, because of the basilisk wand. It would keep her from becoming the next great evil."
Her mother sighed. "I know, I know. She needs to be innocent, but that's going to get her trampled. She needs to be generous, but that's going to make her life more difficult. She has to be everything she is to master that wand, and she has to be everything she isn't to get through Hogwarts in one piece. I'm… frightened for her."
"Aww, it'll be alright," her father started to say, but Drucy heard no further. She hurried back to her room and buried herself in her bed, beginning to cry quietly in confusion and fear. Why couldn't the world be simple?