Neville clumsily lugged his heavy trunk down the stairs from his bedroom, scraping the wall on the way down, and piled it alongside his remaining belongings. It was now mid-August and today Hermione’s parents were coming to pick him up and take him to stay with them. They had agreed Neville would stay a couple of weeks at their home in Hampshire, then they would take him to the Hogwarts Express on 1st September. So Neville had to pack up everything he needed for the year.
“Is that everything?” asked Gran from the kitchen.
“Yes, Gran.” Neville plodded into the kitchen, pulled up a chair and sat down.
“When are they getting here, do you know?”
“No. They were staying with someone in Manchester overnight, then coming straight up here this morning.”
“You know it would have been far easier for you to have made your own way down there,” said Gran. “You could have taken the Knight Bus. I don’t like the idea of these Muggle cars, they’ve always seemed terribly dangerous to me.”
“They wanted to come, Gran. They seemed to think it was important.”
“Probably want to avoid as much magic as possible around them. Muggles tend to, so I’ve heard.” She walked over to Neville and brushed down his mop of hair. “Now you behave yourself there,” she warned. “Remember they’re Muggles and they have different ways of doing things. Try not to embarrass yourself and remember particularly you can’t do any magic there, you won’t get away with it. Alright?”
“OK, Gran,” Neville mumbled. He poured himself a drink of water and settled down to wait. He felt nervous and uncomfortable, but quite excited, similar to how he had felt a year ago leaving for Hogwarts. He never reacted easily to new situations, he knew, and he’d never spent any long period of time away from both home and school.
Less than half an hour later there was a firm knock on the front door. Gran opened it with Neville hovering behind. He was momentarily surprised by the couple standing there, though he really shouldn’t have been. They looked so, well, Muggle-like. The man had close-cropped dark hair and was wearing a grey Muggle suit and his wife wore a plain-looking floral outfit. Behind them bobbed Hermione with an impatient grin on her face. “Hi Neville!” she said breezily.
Hermione’s father extended his hand which Gran took politely. “You must be Mrs Longbottom,” he said. “I’m John and this is my wife Helen. And this must be Neville,” he continued looking past Gran. “Hello, young lad.” Neville shifted nervously and didn’t reply, he never knew what he was expected to say.
After the introductions were over, Neville helped to load his things into the Grangers’ car, which was a shiny new BMW. He said his goodbyes to Gran and then settled down into the back seat of the car alongside Hermione. “Put your seatbelt on,” she said.
“What’s a seatbelt?” asked Neville.
“Oh, sorry,” said Hermione and showed him what to do. They set off. Neville found that car travel wasn’t too bad after all, but it was incredibly slow and dull. Having taken the Hogwarts Express a couple of times now, he should have been aware how long it took to cross the country, but still he found himself rather bored. He passed the time by staring out of the window for long periods or talking to Hermione. Being used to seeing her in Hogwarts robes he was surprised by how Muggle she looked as well. She was still the same Hermione however, chattering excitedly about the coming term as Neville sat and listened.
They stopped for lunch at a motorway service station just past Birmingham. Neville felt very self-conscious among all the Muggles bustling about and brushed his hair down to cover his scar. He seemed very out of place in his un-Muggle clothes. He stuck close to Hermione and kept very quiet. Mr and Mrs Granger asked him a few polite questions but Neville noticed they avoided talking about magic in public.
By the time they eventually got to Hermione’s house Neville was tired and uncomfortable and glad to be out of the car. The Grangers lived in a small, quiet town on the edge of the New Forest. They had a pleasant, modern house next door to the dentist’s surgery where they worked. Hermione had carefully explained to Neville what a dentist was and Neville found the idea fascinating, if a little barbaric.
The first impression Neville had of the house as he entered was of how white it was. Unlike the colourful, if faded, walls of his home, the rooms in this house were almost all painted or wallpapered in shades of white or cream. This made it seem both bright and empty to Neville. The house was far from empty, however. The walls were covered in framed pictures and photographs, mostly landscapes but several were of Hermione at various ages, usually smiling and clutching some award. Neville found it oddly disconcerting how the pictures were frozen in place and didn’t move or change as he would normally expect.
It was the kitchen that most surprised Neville, filled as it was with strange machines both large and small for all sorts of household needs. Neville did know that Muggles used machines for many things as they couldn’t do magic but he’d expected their machines to be more, well, mechanical rather than like ornaments or furniture. He had a fun half hour with Hermione learning about the various devices such as the “toaster”, the “freezer” and the “microwave” which even Hermione admitted she had no idea how it worked.
After dinner the four of them sat out in the garden with cold drinks and talked together. Neville found that now in private Hermione’s parents were quite comfortable in discussing the wizarding world. They seemed fascinated and very inquisitive about everything to do with wizard culture and history. Neville did his best to answer their questions but there was so much he didn’t know, such as when Hermione’s father asked whether Neville thought wizards and non-wizards could ever live side by side in the future.
“It just seems terrible to me,” he said, “that in this modern age we still have people hiding away in this country because they’re ‘different’ in some way, as though all the equality and tolerance we’ve learned over the last fifty years was for nothing. Surely now we can find some way of bringing wizards out of hiding. Think of the good you could do for the world.”
Neville didn’t know what to say. “I guess we’ve got comfortable living away from Muggles,” he said. Mr Granger seemed to react to that word.
“Daddy doesn’t like the word Muggle,” said Hermione. “He thinks it makes us seem different or abnormal in some way.”
“We’re just as normal, just as human as you are,” said Mr Granger. “I don’t like labels being attached to any group large or small, it only divides people. Think of the damage we’ve done to the word “witch” over the centuries. It’s not fair to our Hermione that the word that describes her is an insult to most people.”
“There are worse words than Muggle that some people would use about you or Hermione,” said Neville.
“Really? Like what?” said Mr Granger, but Neville wouldn’t say, he’d been brought up strictly by Gran that certain words were beyond the pale and shouldn’t be spoken.
“There are some wizards who really hate Muggles,” he said to explain. “Did Hermione ever tell you about this?” Reluctantly he raised up his fringe to expose the scar on his forehead. The Grangers nodded sympathetically. “There was a war,” he said. “These wizards, they called themselves Death Eaters.” The name was still uncomfortable to say. “They wanted to take over and get rid of everyone who wasn’t all wizard, anyone who wasn’t born to a wizard family, who wasn’t pure-blood as they called it.”
“Someone like Hermione,” said Mrs Granger. Neville nodded and everyone was silent for a moment. The conversation ended there and Neville was glad, because he found it was still painful to talk about it. Gran had taught him all about the war, except about what Neville’s parents had done then. Neither of them wanted to talk about that, it hurt too much. Though Neville had never really known his parents and so didn’t miss them as such, it remained uncomfortable to think about them.
The question again arose in Neville’s mind why You-Know-Who had wanted to kill him. He wasn’t a Muggle-born, indeed by the Death Eaters’ standards he was a pure-blood. So why had he been targeted? Was it revenge? He knew his parents had been involved in the war in some way, but why kill him as well? It was a question he couldn’t answer.
He slept uncomfortably that night in the Grangers’ spare bedroom in a bed he wasn’t used to, visions of a face with piercing red eyes dancing into his dreams, as they often had recently. The next morning he came down to breakfast and asked for three slices of toast even though he didn’t really like them, just to watch the toaster in action. Muggle inventions, he thought, weren’t all that different to magic, if all really magic was, was that it made the unexpected possible. Wizards should give Muggles far more credit than they do, after all despite all their limitations they’ve done remarkably well for themselves.
After Mr and Mrs Granger had gone to work next door, Neville and Hermione sat in her room and talked. It gave Neville the first opportunity to explain to Hermione why he hadn’t replied to any of her letters and the strange appearance and warning of the house-elf Dobby. Neville told the story of Dobby’s visit while Hermione listened politely until he had finished.
“I’ve don’t think I’ve heard or read about these house-elves before,” she then said. “Are they quite common? Do they all work as servants?”
“I don’t know,” replied Neville. “I’ve never heard of any who didn’t work as servants. It’s always seemed to be, well, the way they are. It’s their job in life, to work for wizards. Of course, only the richest wizards have them, mostly the big, old pure-blood families. I don’t know anyone who’s got one. Harry might, he’s quite rich it seems. Malfoy definitely will. Other than that I don’t know.”
“They must be really expensive to employ, then. How much do they get paid?”
“Oh, they don’t get paid. They like to work. Like I said, it’s kind of their reason for being.”
Hermione looked completely shocked and was temporarily speechless, which was a very uncommon occurrence. Neville wondered if he’d said something wrong. He was inclined to put his foot in it from time to time, but he couldn’t see what it was this time. Eventually Hermione said “You mean they’re slaves? That’s horrible. And they like it that way? Hasn’t anyone done anything about it? I mean, hasn’t anyone asked them if they like it? I bet they’re treated awfully, and it’s just nobody listens to them. If Daddy heard about this, he’d go nuts!”
Neville stared at her for a while in disbelief. What was she going on about? House-elves worked for wizards and were happy. Everyone knew that. That was the way it had always been. Surely there was nothing wrong with that? Or was there? He’d never even considered the possibility before. Did that make him bad? He didn’t think so, but he was very confused. He just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
“Does this mean you won’t be going back to Hogwarts?” asked Hermione.
“Of course not,” said Neville. “I only said that to get rid of him.”
“But what about the danger? What about his warning?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s really anything. That house-elf was more than half barmy if you ask me. Kept headbutting things. Probably nothing more than his own crazy imagination.” Hermione’s face suggested she disapproved of this description, but she said nothing, and the conversation moved on to other things. They talked over the events of the previous year, but Neville was still reluctant to discuss his encounter with Voldemort. He’d done his best to forget it, but it wasn’t easy.
When Mr and Mrs Granger returned in the evening, they had an excellent evening meal which Neville ate eagerly. They then settled down to watch television, a Muggle invention that seemed to combine the wireless with moving photographs. Neville took a lot of convincing that it wasn’t in fact magical, but in fact after a while became rather tired. The news stories of Muggle life didn’t interest him particularly and after a while he left with Hermione and they went back to her room.
Later Neville felt thirsty and went downstairs to get himself a drink. As he passed the living room, he heard Mr and Mrs Granger talking. “He’s a very quiet boy, isn’t he, John?” said Mrs Granger. Neville listened more closely from behind the door.
“Well, remember this is all new to him, Helen,” replied her husband. “He’s bound to be a little nervous. This is like a foreign country to him. Besides, we should go easy on him. He’s had a difficult life, losing his parents so young. Imagine if that had happened to either of us.”
“It’s amazing there could be a war happening right under our noses and we never knew anything about it. They do hide themselves well, don’t they?”
“They do. It’s just so sad that they have to.”
“But why do they have to, John? I’ve never understood why they do it.”
“They’re afraid, Helen. So often it comes down to just that. There are so few of them and so many of us. We’ve treated them terribly in the past and they had to escape. They were lucky they had the ability to do so. Now it’s just become a habit, a way of life for them. But really, I think that fear is still there, even if now it’s buried deep, almost subconscious. You heard what Neville said, there are plenty out there who hate us. That’s a legacy of fear, it encourages hate groups. You see it all over the world among minorities. Remember Helen, a few abilities aside, they’re exactly the same as us. Never forget that, or we’ll lose touch with our Hermione. We know she’s special, but it’s nothing to do with the fact she’s magical. It’s because she’s brilliant.”
There was a pause for a while and Neville wondered if he should leave. Then Mrs Granger said “Well, it’s all too much for me to understand. But I do worry about Hermione all on her own at school, so far away. I’m glad she’s found a friend, and I think Neville’s alright. It makes me feel a little better.”
Neville felt a little better as well at the overheard compliment as he left to finally get his drink of water. He was also quite thoughtful as well. The truth was, like so many wizards, especially pure-blood ones, he’d never given Muggles much thought in his short life. But Mr Granger’s words had changed that for the moment. After all, he’d always known there were thousands and thousands of wizards in Britain, but he’d never stopped to consider there were millions and millions of Muggles, trying to get by themselves. Just the last two days had given him a new-found respect for Muggles. Maybe his own attitude could change too. He sat in bed thinking about it long into the night.
Neville Longbottom and the Chamber of Secrets by Sonorus
Chapter Notes: In which Neville travels to stay with Hermione’s parents and learns a little of Muggle life.