"Have you seen a toad?" asked Hermione for the twelfth time, dragging Neville behind her. The doe eyed boy tripped a bit over his own feet, thinking hard that if he wasn't so scared never to see Trevor again, he would stay as far away from the strange and bossy little girl as possible.

She spoke to much, too fast and too determinately.

And her shoes were too shiny, like in this muggle book from Lewis Carol that had been his mother's favourite –he'd shoved it in his trunk, worn out from all the times he'd read it, and all the times before that, when he hadn't known how to read but had looked at the picture, wondering if his mother's hair had looked so charming before the hospital cut them off and put the stink of their cleansing potions all over her.

He recognised one of the boys sitting there and tried to tell her to go away before she did something stupid –Draco Malfoy certainly wouldn't stand to be spoken like that a muggle born no matter how bossy she was.

Neville had never seen the boy conversing with him, so close they could have seen each other's freckles if their skin hadn't been so clear and spotless, but he was just as lovely as Malfoy, and his robes were clearly expensive and Neville felt very stupid, and tried to get the Girl –Hermin, was it? To leave once more, but she stood her ground, frowning at him with a glance that reminded him of his grand mother.

"Well?" she said as though they were too thick to understand and not ignoring her.

"I beg your pardon?" said the Malfoy boy, silver eyes bearing into her in contempt. "Have we met before?"

"Oh!" she smiled brightly and extended her hand: "I'm Hermione Granger."

"Like in the winter tale," said the other boy lightly, sage green eyes looking straight at Neville rather than her.

Malfoy looked at her hand in disinterest, making no move to touch it. Neville though he saw slight disgust in his eyes –he wasn't surprised: a woman handing out her hand to be kissed rather than letting a gentleman honour her couldn't have been raised very well!

"So…I do not know you. Yet you speak to me with familiarity."

She looked slightly unsettled:

"Well…N…Neville has lost his toad."

"Oh, that's sad." Said the other boy "I would feel very depressed if I lost my frog, Lucius gave it to me for my birthday. It's a Christmas sensation from the year 1924, it only eats candy, like in Cut The Rope." He raised a shimmering glass aquarium in which lovely miniature plants from Siberia grew near a lovely frozen little pond.

"My uncle had one, when he was a boy, he told me about it. It's from deep in the lands of the Christmas elves, right?"

The boy beamed at him and nodded:

"It's name is Darla. What's the name of yours?"

"Trevor."

"Are you assured?" asked Malfoy, much more courteous to him, either because he hadn't breeched every etiquette book the first time he spoke, or because he friend seemed to like him.

Neville nodded.

"Which range?"

"Medium short, I think."

"I beg your pardon, this is a living animal we're speaking of, I don't think whether he will be reimbursed if it dies or not is the point!" exclaimed Hermione accusingly, clearly offenced.

Draco and Neville both cast her an incredulous look, while Harry had to refrain from bursting out laughing.

"Hm…An assurance is actually a spell that keeps your animal relatively safe, and binds it to a range not to far about you," said Neville quietly.

Draco cast a glance at Hermione, and whispered something to Harry that made him laugh. Hermione reddened in anger:

"You better get dressed," she barked, as she stalked out, "we're almost there!"

"Where was she raised, the swamp? I'm Draco Malfoy by the way."

"Neville Longbottom."

The green eyes boy smiled merrily from the other side of his blond best friend:

"Harry Potter," he said.

Neville's jaw fell.