Chapter Three: Back to Reality
"And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.”
-Eponine, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
~ ~ ~
The sun shone through the window, illuminating everything in the dorm to a magnificent shade of scarlet. Beams of light worked their way through the cracks in between the curtains hanging around their beds, and lit up the insides of the four posters. Neville’s eyes fluttered open, and he closed them again, a blissful smile spreading across his face. Before he could fall back asleep, he opened his eyes again, and sat up. He pulled open one of the curtains, and blinked the burning sunlight out of his eyes.
He opened his trunk and rummaged through everything that had been crammed in there the day before. “Mmph,” he murmured, throwing a few of his school books onto his bed. He’d have to organize them later that day, an event he was never very fond of. His bed creaked with age as his massive volumes were thrown onto it. Finally, he found his robes and an outfit he was satisfied with for the first day of classes. As he began to change, he hummed a quiet song to himself to break the crusty silence.
He could hear stirring in one of the beds, and laughed out loud as Seamus emerged, his hair sticking straight up as though there was some sort of hair magnet dragging it up. “It’s too early…” Seamus said with a cough. “What time is it?”
“Seven,” Neville responded busily picking up his new leather backpack and filling it with books. “Classes start in an hour. You might want to hurry up,” he continued, tying closed the top of his bag.
“Oi! You three!” Seamus shouted to the rest of his sleeping dorm-mates. “Get up; we don’t have a lot of time. Hurry up, hurry up!”
Dean woke up first, poking his head from his curtains. “Time already?” he asked sleepily. “Ah, we better hurry up… Harry! Ron! Get up!” he shouted, throwing his pillow across the room at Ron’s bed.
Ron pulled back the curtains and glared at Dean. “Thanks for waking me up…”
“You can thank Seamus,” Dean said, nodding towards Seamus. “He’s the one who woke me up.”
Ron turned to Seamus with raised eyebrows.
“Don’t look at me!” He pointed towards Neville. “Nev woke me up!”
Neville turned a deep shade of red. He hated his nickname more than anything. “Well, would you have preferred to sleep through your first class?”
“YES!” Seamus, Dean, and Ron all shouted.
“’Specially if it’s potions.” Harry slipped out of his bed, laughing to himself. “Ron, you really are something, you know that? You get mad at Dean, Seamus, and Nev for waking you up, when you go along and wake me up too.”
They all laughed, except for Neville, who glared at Harry for using his ever so hated nickname; he had told them many times that he hated it, but that just made it all so much more fun to them. He checked his watch and raised his eyebrows. “Seven fifteen!” he announced, pulling on a navy blue sock. He slipped his shoe over it and swung his bag around his shoulders, heading towards the door. “I’ll see you later.” He slammed the door behind him and ran down the stairs.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” Ginny shouted, with a grin. Her brilliant red hair was pulled back with a few bobby pins into two glossy, yet casual braids. “I’ve been down here since six forty five! What’s taken you so long?”
“Over slept,” Neville responded with a grimace. “Everyone else is still sleeping. They’re angry at me for waking them.” He laughed, and put his hands in his pockets. “Sometimes I feel like if it weren’t for me, they’d have detention every day.”
“Well, good thing you’re here,” Ginny added.
“Well, should we head down to breakfast?” Neville asked, gesturing towards the portrait hole.
“That might be a good idea.”
They both headed towards the portrait hole, backpacks around their shoulders. Neville let Ginny crawl through first, followed quickly after. Packs of first years bustled by nervously, slowing them down considerably. “Oh come on…” Neville heard Ginny whisper with a frustrated groan.
Finally, they reached the Great Hall and settled almost directly in the middle of the Gryffindor table. They could see Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson all sniggering about something at the Slytherin table across the hall. Neville narrowed his eyes, but Ginny just shrugged and began to pour orange juice into a goblet.
Neville picked up a piece of toast and began to butter it as a prefect walked by and handed out their schedules. “Herbology first!” he exclaimed, taking a bite out of his toast.
“You’re lucky,” Ginny responded, scrunching up her nose. “I have Divination first. I think I may pull a Hermione and drop it.”
“You only have one year left,” Neville pointed out, picking up a sausage. “Are you nervous for O.W.L year?”
“A little,” she admitted. “But Hermione soared through hers, and she said she’d help me study, so I’m hoping it will be okay.”
“It will be,” Neville assured her. “You’re definitely smart enough. Even without Hermione’s help, I’m sure you’d pass with flying colors.”
Ginny smiled, and started to respond, but Neville didn’t hear it. All of her words were over powered by Harry and Ron’s laugh from farther down the table.
“So,” Neville overheard Ron say. “What’s up with you and Hermione?” He stuffed a waffle, whole, in his mouth. “You two seem pretty … close,” he continued once he had swallowed his mouth full of waffle. “Eh?” He nudged Harry playfully on the shoulder. “Eh? Eh?”
Harry had to put his goblet of orange down and swallow it before his juice could shoot its way out of his nose. “Yeah, how’d you notice?” he asked sarcastically. “Yeah, I asked her to the next Hogsmeade trip.” A grin like no other lit up his face; his eyes twinkled their merry emerald. “And you? I think I’ve seen you around with somebody… I don’t remember who though.”
“Yeah, I’ve got some things going on,” Ron said with a devilish grin.
“Oh?” Harry raised his dark eyebrows, losing them in his jet black mop of hair.
“Colleen Wilson,” announced Ron proudly. “She’s a Ravenclaw in our year. I never really noticed her until yesterday; you know when we were separated trying to get into the carriages. I ended up with her and some random Hufflepuffs who refused to talk. Anyway, we got to talking and…”
“And that’s why you came into the start of term party in the common room late?” Harry interrupted, laughing quietly to himself.
“Something like that,” Ron said, joining in Harry’s quiet chuckles.
Neville began to tune them out. He wasn’t up for listening to them talk about their thriving love lives when he had been struggling since his first year. “Hey, Neville?” Ginny tapped on his shoulder a few times. “Maybe we should “ Neville?”
Neville jumped, he had completely zoned out and was staring vaguely at a first year, who had shuffled away nervously under his unfocused gaze. “Wh-what?”
“Classes start in five minutes. You have to get all the way down to the greenhouses don’t you?”
“Oh, you’re right!” He stood up and swung his back around his shoulder nervously. “Good way to start off the day, though. I’ll see you!” he said as they filed out of the Great Hall. When they finally got out of the hall, they bid their goodbyes and headed their own ways, Ginny to the towers, and Neville to the greenhouses.
Herbology was, in fact, the perfect way to begin the school year. The first lesson was on Inficipuffs, a subject that Neville was an expert on. He proudly got to show off his knowledge on the first day. Finally, when the bell rang, he pulled off his dragon hide gloves, stuffed them in his bag, and headed out of the green house. He exchanged quick waves with Ginny as she headed down to Care of Magical Creatures. She was shortly followed by Pansy Parkinson who sneered at him, causing his smile to vanish immediately.
The walk up to Defense Against the Dark Arts was not the easiest he’d had. Frantic first years shuffling by to their next class. Finally, he reached the corridor and began pushing his way past. As he walked, he pulled out his new wand and turned it around in his hands; he hadn’t noticed the delicate grain before today in the sheer excitement of it. He could feel power itching to make its way out. The handle was almost warm with this sort of energetic buzz. He smiled down at the wood when…
BAM!
A door opened, hitting him hard on the forehead. He blinked dots out of his eyes and massaged his temples furiously. “You okay?” a distant voice asked.
“Yeah…” he responded vaguely, not even bothering to see who it was who talked to him. Once the massive crowd, attracted by the noise, started to trickle in size, he pushed his way through and into the classroom. Finally, his vision focused back, and he glanced around the room for a few moments. Hermione was just settling in between Harry and Ron, staring intently at the empty teacher’s desk.
Neville sighed and made his way to the back of the room, where he sat next to a Ravenclaw in their year who he had only seen in the library on few occasions. Before he could reflect on all the times he had run into this student, the teacher appeared in less than a dignified grand entrance. He was cradling nine too many books in his skinny arms, and had a very flustered look about him as he dropped the stack of books on his desk. The old desk creaked, as though whining from the stress. “Good day,” he said stiffly as he straightened up.
“Good day…” echoed the class dully.
“I’m Professor Proditirus,” he continued, shuffling through an old bag, and pulling out what apparently was a class list. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get the choice whether all of you really should be in this N.E.W.T class.” He cleared his throat importantly, and went on. “But, I suppose what’s done is done, and you all must have done at least mildly well on your O.W.Ls. So, we will begin with the attendance…” He began to call out everybody’s name, his unusually large eyes never taking a pause. Finally, he stumbled upon Neville’s name and looked up. “Longbottom, Neville,” he said in a hushed tone.
Neville raised his hand meekly, and whispered, “Here!”
And he continued with the list, not even a single look at Neville. He stumbled again once he reached “Potter Harry!”
“Here,” Harry responded with a glance to Ron; he was used to all of the attention.
“Right,” Proditirus said, once he had made his way through the entire list. “I will give you a brief outline of the class this year, and then we will begin.” For the second time, he cleared his throat with an extremely irritating air of importance. “We will begin for the first half of this year with magical theory, and then tentatively go into blocking curses in the second half.”
There was a loud mumble making a wave through the room. Neville smiled however, this may give him a chance to do better than he would have… before he could continue his hopeful thoughts, a hand shot up with such intent that he was sure it would reach the sky if physically possible. “I hope you are aware,” Hermione said, just as importantly as Professor Proditirus, “that we are in the N.E.W.T class, and therefore we are more advanced.”
“Yes, I am aware," Professor Proditirus snapped back at her. And the conversation ended there. Proditirus’s stare cut deep into her usually in charge tone, and so, although stubbornly, Hermione pulled out her parchment and quill. “So,” Proditirus began with a little more pride than he had recently displayed. He continued talking, while nobody really listened, except perhaps Hermione. Finally, Neville’s focus came back, and he listened to the last bit of his lecture. “We would be able to delve a little farther, but the Ministry will not allow us to …And what the Ministry says, goes.”
“Oh no,” Dean Thomas groaned. “Not another Umbridge…”
“We will begin,” Proditirus cut through Dean’s words. “With the theory behind the Protego spell.” Nobody dared to say anything. However basic it may be, Proditirus’s huge eyes cut like butcher knives into them. “The Protego spell was invented by Miriam Proudfoot in the early seventeenth century when her great aunt was killed by dark wizards. When she heard the story, that she was hit with nine dark spells at once, she made it her goal to invent a strong, yet simple blocking spell.”
Neville let his mind wander, while he vaguely wrote down key words. The lecture continued, and continued… Something about Proditirus’s voice seemed to make the world slow down to a pathetic crawl at the same rate as some sort of dying snail. He tapped his fingertips on the old wood desk for what felt like hours, when finally the bell for the next class rang from one of the high towers. Neville folded up his notes and slipped them in his book, as the rest of the class began to shuffle out. Swinging his back around his shoulder, he walked out of the classroom. He could feel the eyes of the professor on him, causing the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
He pushed a few people aside to get out of the classroom faster, and gasped for breath once he made it into the corridor. There was something about that man … In a wave of blurry brown hair, Hermione shuffled passed, hunched over by the number of books in her bag. Neville began to follow her, but Harry and Ron passed by him and reached her first. Scowling, Neville turned around and pushed his way through a tapestry, a shortcut which he was pretty sure only a few other people knew about.
He climbed up a steep staircase, passing by paintings that he was almost positive were moved there because they were simply too hideous for the main corridor. He had this class off, since all of the sixth years were either in Potions, Muggle Studies, or Divination. Once he reached the top of the stairs, he was painting slightly from the nearly ninety degrees climb.
He passed by a few seventh years that didn’t currently have a class either, and reached the portrait hole. He murmured the password and crawled through, only to find an empty common room. Of course, everybody else was probably at their class. Taking advantage of the silence, he jogged up the stairs to his dorm. Clothes were flung across the other boys’ beds. Obviously, they had been in a great hurry to get down to breakfast.
He sat down on his bed and picked up his Herbology book, reading his homework on Inficipuffs vaguely. It wasn’t really necessary to look more into them, since he knew so much about it, but he had nothing better to read. He dropped the book on his bed, and leaned back into his pillows, his thoughts taking him far away from homework.
Professor Proditirus seemed so familiar… It triggered a memory pushed so far to the back of his mind that he wasn’t even positive where it came from. He didn’t know why all he could think of was his parents… The fear in Alice’s eyes at the sight of that healer caused guilt to come pouring out of him… He could feel his nose begin to tingle, a sure sign that tears would follow. He took deep breaths, and fought the tears back with all his might. He rolled over to his side and closed his eyes, tiny tears clinging to his eyelashes. It was only a matter of seconds before he could feel sleep leading him towards his dreams.
It felt like only fifteen minutes later when he sat up, eyes wide open. It was just quick nap. He hadn’t missed anything… Checking his watch, he gasped loudly. He had slept for an entire hour. Charms was already half over! He jumped out of his bed and snatched his wand off his bedside table. And he began his sprint.
He passed by groups of rather rude paintings who shouted curses after him for making so much noise. Finally, he reached the marble staircase and ran down the stairs two at a time. Right when he was approaching the third floor, Peeves appeared, cackling merrily.
“Oh! Little Longbottom!
With his arse so long and droopy!
One would guess why his face droops too!
But only Peeves know, mummy and daddy are loopy!”
He zoomed off, making loop-the-loops in the air. He had invented new songs every few months to terrorize Neville. He tried not to get upset about it though; Peeves was just Peeves. How he found out about his parents, Neville had no idea. He supposed that he overheard Dumbledore or something like that.
He turned once he reached the charms corridor and sprinted down the hall. Finally, he reached the door and flung it open. “Sorry I’m late, professor!” he gasped.
Professor Flitwick raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’d say it wasn’t the best start to the new term… but I’m sure you have a good reason. Take a seat Mr. Longbottom.” He gestured towards an empty seat next to Hermione. He blushed and mouthed, “Fell asleep,” to Hermione who was staring at him with her what-were-you-doing-that-made-you-so-late stare.
Professor Flitwick cleared his throat, and continued with his lecture. “As I said earlier,” he said, bouncing on his heals, on top of his pile of books. “The Amitilius spell can locate an object for you, if you cast it on the object right when you receive it. If you lose it, you cast the charm again, and it will trigger your memory.”
Neville, once again, let his mind wander. He didn’t have to know this; he could have Hermione help him with it later. Tapping his fingers on the desk, he sighed and stared out the window, listening vaguely as Flitwick lectured about the founder Eloise Goodrich and, upon loosing her valuable ancient Mesopotamian icon, invented the spell so it would not happen again.
Finally, the class ended, and Neville packed up his bag. “Were you even listening?” Hermione asked, almost offended.
Neville turned around to face her, blushing a deep red. “Er…” he began.
“Of course I was!” Ron protested. Hermione raised a cynical eyebrow.
Of course she wasn’t talking to me…I Neville thought turning back around and starting to shuffle out of the classroom.
The rest of the day was as lonely as ever. People busily pushed passed him all day with the intent, he could have guessed, to knock him over.
Finally, he found himself sitting in bed, staring into space at night. All of the other boys in his dorm had just gone to bed, and he waited until it was safe to get up again. Ron’s light mumbling in his sleep echoed off of the bare walls, and Neville sat up. He slipped his feet into light blue slippers and tip toed across the dorm to his favorite window. He sat down in the window sill, staring out at the numerous stars flung into the sky. A burning star fell from the sky.
Neville sighed as he saw this. He would have bet that another student or teacher was sitting in their dorm or office, watching the same star fall. He closed his eyes, taking in its burning glory. “I wish…” he whispered, “I wish that she would notice me…”