Every time Neville glanced up from his fork of over-salted beef and cold, lumpy mashed potatoes, he caught Marigold's big brown eyes shyly running away from his.
Had she been secretly sneaking glances at him every time he looked down at his plate to take a bite?
As if she were too bashful to tell him just how fascinated she was by him allegedly "being a wizard".
Neville had given up on trying to explain the events that had happened to him before he showed up in her garden.
How could he disappoint a girl who treated him so nicely, when she looked so happy believing that it was all because of magic that they were friends?
Besides, he hadn't known this fluttery feeling in his stomach often, and he rather liked it.
As much as he never liked being the center of anyone's attention, being seen for what he was was so much more pleasant than being scolded for what he wasn't.
Even though he knew Gran wouldn't be keen on the idea of him staying out so late for dinner, especially with a friend she hadn't yet approved of, Neville was famished, and he really wanted to know more about the girl who reminded him so much of a sunflower, and why she was so thrilled at the idea of him being magical.
It was over his third round of Shepherd's Pie that Neville finally felt comfortable enough to ask her, "Marigold?"
"Mhm?" she hummed cheerily, as she scooped up the last bit of her peas and carrots with her fork.
"Why are you so happy about finding a wizard? What were you planning to do if you ever found...um,me?"
"Ask for three wishes, of course," she answered, as if it should've been obvious to him.
"You mean like a genie or something?"
"Yeah, but everybody knows genies don't actually exist," she informed Neville. "Don't they?"
"I've only ever seen one as a Quidditch mascot," he said. "Even then, my Gran says Genies are rare in Britain."
"Quidditch? What's that?"
"You've heard about wizards, but never aboutQuidditch?" Neville asked, surprised. "How did you learn about magic?"
"My social worker told me about it," she answered. "She said'If I had a magic wand, Marigold, I'd make the world a perfect place for you, and give you your mother back, but I can't.' It's just the way things are, she says. And that's why I need a real wizard."
"You don't have a mum?" Neville asked her sadly, thinking of his own dear mum forever locked away in St. Mungo's.
"I do, she just left one day," Marigold sighed, her cheery demeanor grayed by a melancholy very like Neville's. "She didn't say anything to me when she did. Just walked out our door, as if she was in some kind of trance. I don't know where she is, and honestly, I don't care if she's happier there. I don't want to bother her. I just want to know why she left."
Neville set his fork down slowly, staring down at his last few bites of Shepherd's Pie, unable to stop thinking about his mum and dad being tortured by Death Eaters.
He couldn't stomach another bite for the little lump swelling in his throat.
But Gran had forbidden him to ever cry about how much he wished he still had his parents, and certainly not to other people outside the Longbottom family.
The tragic gruelling fate of his parents was not something Neville really wanted others to know about, which left him ever lonelier in his already isolated existence.
'You should be proud, Neville, proud!' Gran would rip him apart, whenever she caught him sulking in bed after every Christmas visit to the hospital, with traces of tears streaming down his tubby cheeks.'Your mother and father didn't give up their health and sanity so their only son could snivel over them!'
"Magic can't fix everything, you know," Neville told Marigold quietly, imagining again what it was like for his parents to be cornered by Death Eaters. "Sometimes, it's magic that starts the problem to begin with."
"What do you mean?"
Neville sighed, regretful that he seemed to only be making her sadder by making this all about him, and tried to put his own parents out of his head for now.
"What I mean is, I can't actually bring your mum back," he told her softly. "But if I ever do turn out to be a wizard someday, I'll find a way to grant you at least one of those wishes."
"Can it be anything?"
"Er, well-"
"Can you make a puppy appear with your magic?"
"Even if I could conjure a puppy, I'd get in trouble for doing it here," Neville said. "I can't exactly use magic in the muggle world. It's not allowed."
"Not allowed?" Marigold trailed off, glancing back down at her picture book on the table titled,How to Catch a Witch, filled with plenty more of those bogus spells she'd been trying to cast earlier. "Magic is a lie?"
"Not a lie, exactly-"
"Then you're not really a wizard?" Marigold asked him, her face falling at the very idea.
"It's hard to explain."
"Try," Marigold whispered playfully to him, her dewy garden-dirt eyes glimmering gloomily.
"I mean to say, magic just isn't the same for all wizards," Neville felt guilty as he tried to make her understand. "Sometimes, even if you're born into a wizarding family, it's not always true that you'll be...like them."
But hard as she tried to follow him, Marigold couldn't fully grasp the true burden of Neville's dilemma of living up to wizardly family prestige. Like trying to squarely use an alohomora charm on a well-rounded locking charm, the muggle world was just too limited to its own cultural ideologies and practices for the world of magic to fit into it. And weren't there safeguards by the ministry in place, like anti-disapparating charms, that made sure the two worlds never crossed paths?
Making Neville's sudden appearance in hers all the more mystifying.
"I know magic exists," Marigold insisted to Neville. "I just can't prove it yet."
Because she couldn't have been just another ordinary gullible kid dropping into the bookstore that afternoon.
She knew how it looked when she'd asked the lady at the register,"I want a book about spells."
"Ah, how lovely. We have plenty of children's books about magic here. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The Wizard of Oz. Puff the Magic Dragon-"
"No, I don't mean a kid's book,"she told the clerk."I need a book on how to summon a wizard."
"Oh, I see...Perhaps you can ask your parents to help you find that one."
"Well, that's actually why I need a wizard."
"Pardon?"
"I mean I need a wizard,"Marigold had explained very slowly and patiently to the woman who kept failing to understand."So, that they can cast a spell to find people you've lost. Because I can't possibly keep eating leftovers and microwave Shephred's Pie until mum comes home."
"I see. Thatisquite a problem. But you know, if you find yourself a witch or wizard, they will probably want something from you in return for a big wish like that."
Marigold dropped a sandwich baggie of her carefully counted out pounds onto the counter.
"Will this be enough to bring my mum back?"
"It's more than enough for a book, I think," the cashier raised a brow at her, as she rang up the purchase. "Here you are then.How to Catch a Witch.You take care now, lovie.'
"Why do you think your mum left you and your dad?" Neville asked Marigold, once the girl had finished telling him all about her adventure to the bookstore. "I'm sure it wasn't because she didn't love you?"
And after passively flipping through the pages ofHow to Catch a Witch, Marigold shut the cover again, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening to them.
Once she was sure she and Neville would not be overheard, her sugary eyes met Neville's again, in the most serious way Neville had yet them.
"Can I tell you a secret, Neville?" she lowered her voice, so just the two of them would hear. "You have to promise me you won't tell anyone...or else, I might be in a lot of trouble?"
"Why is that?" Neville straightened up to lean in a little closer to her over the table, steadily more worried for his new friend.
"Just promise me, ok?" she asked of him. "I don't know who else to tell."
"You can trust me," Neville assured her. "I-I'm not very good at a lot of things, but keeping a secret, I can do alright."
Marigold took a moment to pull all of her stormy conflicted thoughts together, before continuing to Neville in a hushed voice, "You're not the first wizard I've seen before. That's the reason I know magic exists."
"You saw another wizard who showed you magic?" Neville asked, surprised. "How?"
"I saw him by accident," Marigold told him. "My dad is a gardener for a lot of people. It was just after mum left us, and I was afraid he'd disappear too, so I asked to go to work with him. I was helping him plant cosmos at Tesco-"
"Tesco?"
"It's a supermarket," she explained. "Anyway, I heard someone walk up to dad and ask him about a bath scrub, body wash, and a shower hook. I thought it sounded weird, so I peeked over the azalea bushes where I had been planting the cosmos, and saw a man with red hair standing next to dad. I don't think he saw me there, because he seemed so interested in hearing dad talk about the bath stuff. Dad told him all he needed to find himself was a rubber duck. The wizard told dad thank you for helping him, and then he took out his wand, and said 'Obliviate!'"
"A forgetfulness charm."
"You've heard of it?" Marigold perked up hopefully.
"It makes people forget whatever the wizard doesn't want them to remember," Neville said. "But why would this wizard pick your dad to ask about those things? They seem simple to understand."
"I don't know," Marigold was just as in the dark as Neville was. "But dad hasn't been the same since then. He keeps forgetting things, and it's getting worse."
Neville didn't have an answer for Marigold, knowing so little about how to perform magic himself.
But the answer hedidhave for her was one he'd be willing to throw his whole heart into, if only to repay her kindness.
"Once I'm back in the wizarding world," he promised her. "I'll see what I can find out about the Forgetfulness Charm."
"Oh. Right," Marigold's voice softened in realization. "You can't actually stay here, can you? I'm sure your parents are so worried by now looking for you."
Neville swallowed again against the lump in his throat that never seemed to ever really go away for him.
But he said nothing about it.
It would probably be too much for them both, if he were to explain in great detail why his parents never came looking for him.
Besides, the uncompromising reality that Frank and Alice Longbottom would never again recognize their own son could never be fixed.
Marigold's parents, however, might still have a chance.
Though it was odd indeed that both her mum and dad had been the victims of very strange, unexplainable events, in a very short timeframe between each other.
And even as Neville couldn't yet imagine just how big and strange those circumstances were, he couldn't shake off this gnawing instinct that his meeting Marigold Bronte was never supposed to happen.
That maybe, no matter how happy it made him to be here with her, if he stayed any longer, it would draw the attention of the wizarding world back to the Brontes.
Neville had no idea what that would mean for Marigold, if the "red haired wizard" were to come back, but he couldn't stand for the idea of a memory charm being cast on her too.
Even if it meant he couldn't ever come back to see her in the muggle world, he wanted her to remember everything about him and their time together in the sunflower garden.
"I have to go back now," Neville regretfully told his new friend. "I don't want us both to get in trouble, if I stay."
"But you'll come back though?" Marigold asked him hopefully. "Maybe not right away, but some day?"
"I don't know if I can, really," Neville confessed to her. "Honestly, I'm still not sure how I got here to begin with."
"Don't be silly," she said. "I brought you here by magic. All I have to do is cast the spell again,backwards,and you'll be back home in no time."
"Backwards?" Neville thoughtthatsounded even sillier. "Are you sure that's going to work?"
"Quiet," she ordered him, flipping open her phoney spell book again. "I need to concentrate."
She cleared her throat as she took up her make-believe wand once more.
"Toil and trouble, double, double!"she declared to the garden grandly again."Cauldron bubble and fire burn! Send this boy back to the home he yearns!"
Neville waited.
Marigold waited.
Nothing happened.
"I-I don't think it's working."
"Ehem," she cleared her throat, turning another page of her book to find the reason why. "Maybe you should close your eyes and stand back over there. Just like last time."
"Um, ok," Neville agreed uncertainly, though he did as he was told, because what else was there to do but have another go at this kooky idea of hers.
Following her back to the garden sprinkler, Neville's brown converse stopped opposite to her Mary-Janes, standing on either side of the plastic water toad as they faced each other.
And as Neville took in the girl with the adorably batty witch hat and wand, his heart ached when he realized he had only just found a friend, and now their time together was already over.
"I'm really happy to have met you, Marigold," he told her.
"I'm glad I met you too, Neville Longbottom," said she. "But it's not about what I wish for anymore. It'syouwho wants to go home. And since I'm a witch now, I can give you that wish. Maybe if you just imagine what home looks like, it'll make the spell work a lot faster."
"Alright then, goodly witch," Neville told her more optimistically. "I wish for some place like home, please."
And having bestowed his second most deepest desire in the capable witch's hands, Neville turned his back away from his first deepest desire, and closed his eyes.
"Ready?" Marigold asked him.
"Ready," Neville said, now a bit more sure of himself.
"We will meet again,"she began citing the original spell in reverse. "When the nights are cold and lonely,we will meet again.
"Rose, rose, rose, red."
But just half way through her nonsensical incantation, Neville remembered something important.
"Marigold!" he called to her, turning back around to face her again. "I've just remembered, I forgot to tell you that my favorite ice cream flavor is..."
But upon opening his eyes, Neville found only the sea there waiting for him instead.
Clinging onto a wooden under-beam of the pier he had grabbed hold to, believing it to be Marigold's hand.
A stunned and shivering Neville gradually coming to realize that he was no longer standing on soft green grass, but in murky ocean water waist-deep.
"There he is, Algie!" Gran sounded beyond crossed to have to march down from the upper pier to drag him out of the ocean, with his uncle in tow. "Neville! Neville, stop faffing about and come out of there at once! That water's only yea deep! Can we take you nowhere without you making an absolute puffskein of yourself?!"