(III) - 'The Empress'
While it was warm outside – an average blue-skied summer day - the greenhouse air was hot and thick. The glass building was one of Neville's favourite places when it was like this: a living presence that made the air smell green and slicked down his forearms with sweat. He was sat at the far bench, a collection of cactuses, pots, and swirls of soil laid out in front of him.
"We went out, somewhere just down the main street," he said as he pried a cactus free from its pot and transferred it to a larger one. "And she ordered tea. I thought coffee was the default; I might have even said coffee, when I asked. You have tea when you visit someone, but coffee when you go out." After packing some extra soil around the base, he took his wand and touched the tip of it to the cactus, making the soil pulse a little momentarily. There was dirt on the handle of his wand; some of it had rubbed off from his soily hands, but most was just osmosed from being in the greenhouse during repotting.
"That's what I like about her. Like a lot." Neville slid the finished cactus to the side, enjoying the grinding ceramic sound and enjoying even more that nobody was there to object to it, and grabbed a fresh empty pot. "I guess that's what they call 'down-to-earth'? I never really did understand that completely." He considered for a second the parallel of the phrase and his hands scooping more soil into the pot, and continued to speak.
"We talked. For a few hours - it was getting dark outside when we left. We..." He stopped because he couldn't remember what it was they had talked about during that time. He could recall facts, stale and lifeless things that detailed their conversation, but it was nowhere near enough to fill up that space of time. The rest was filled with vital memories: the fuzzy sunlight distorting through the windows, a hand that kept absently pushing back rogue strands of hair, a brilliant smile that spread from mouth to cheeks and roped the eyes in for good measure. These were living thoughts, vibrant but also impossible to catch. Neville knew that if he tried to put them into words, he would be constantly feeling like he was missing an important detail.
He also felt like he was no longer alone in greenhouse, and he was correct.
Ginny stood at the end of one of the long benches, her arms folded beneath her breasts, a wry smile on her face. That smile was making Neville very aware of a few things, like that throughout the day he may have run a hand through his hair once or twice and gotten dirt in it, or that the shirt he was wearing didn't have any sleeves.
"It's not unusual to talk to plants," he said after a moment. "There's been a number of studies showing they can respond positively to being spoken to." At this Ginny just raised an eyebrow, that cocky little smile still in place. It makes her look like Harry when she does that, he thought very clearly.
"These cactuses need a lot of extra care. I Apparated to bring them back, and I don't think it agreed with them. They're from Australia, the needles produce a sap that's good for-"
"Neville, do I have to ask you outright, or are you pretending I didn't hear what you were talking about?"
With anyone else Neville might have suspected some exasperation, but he could tell that little smile of Ginny's had crept into her words. He shrugged, and picked up the tray of cactuses - it was heavier than he expected - and carried it down to Ginny's end of the bench, where the sun was especially bright. She was watching him, waiting for details, and as he set the tray down he watched her back for a moment. He hadn't seen Ginny for some months, and in that time she had swelled beneath her robes, bringing into his head a number of inappropriate descriptions like ripe and full and heavy.
He sat at the bench and she followed, only breaking her gaze with him to ease down onto the stool. "Hannah Abbott," he told her.
"I remember Hannah. She picked up how to Shield really quickly."
"Mmm, that's her." Neville rested his hands one on top of the other on the bench. He hadn't remembered that immediately, but Ginny bringing it up made him recall the prismatic flash of a hex being absorbed in a Shield Charm, and that all-encompassing smile.
"So, how did you meet? Get back in touch, I guess I should say."
"She's been working at the Three Broomsticks for a little while; I made it a habit of going there for lunch while I've been here." He scanned Ginny's face, and it was clear she was waiting for him to continue. "We got to talking."
"And?"
"And, that's all there is." He stood back up, planning to tend to one of the creepers growing up the lattice he could see from across the bench.
"That sounds evasive." He looked back at her, and while her arms were back to being folded, her smug smile had reemerged too.
"I asked her." He took one of the free scouting shoots from the creeper and hooked it into the framework. "And she knew what I was going to say, and agreed before I finished." Neville thought Ginny might have some comment at this, but as he turned to face her she was only smiling; it was a big smile that, in the greenhouse light, lived up to words like beaming and radiant. He felt the smile spreading to his own face, and Ginny laughed a little, her hand moving to cover her mouth.
"It's nice in here, isn't it?" she said, indicating around the greenhouse as she effortlessly shifted the subject.
"It is. A little dirty today, though," Neville replied, moving on to the next creeper.
"Dirty is alright. The rest of the school feels like it's been abandoned. I didn't even see any of the ghosts."
"Oh, them," Neville said. "They're all doing something in the dungeons. The Fat Friar asked me if I wanted to attend - swears he could smell one of the flowers I was keeping, wanted to repay me."
"Ghost flowers?" Ginny asked, skeptical, and Neville shook his head.
"No, some terrible-smelling thing that grows in swamps. I thought it might be something useful if I could dry the flowers out, but it smelled so awful when it bloomed that we couldn't keep it around. Greenhouse three had to be aired out; and I got an invitation to a ghost party - a disaster all around."
"How did you manage avoiding that? Ghosts get pretty single-minded."
Done with the creepers, Neville went to collect another tray of plants. These sat on the opposite side of the greenhouse, and he gave Ginny a smile as he walked past her. "I'm very busy, aren't I? I've got a lot of work to do to prepare before the students come in. Lessons to plan, greenhouses to clean, northern rock ferns to grow." He indicated to the tray of plants with a tip of his head.
"Mm, there's usually students here. That would make a difference," Ginny noted. "What's a northern rock fern? I don't remember ever doing those."
"They're actually incredibly boring, most of the time," Neville admitted as he took the tiny ferns out from the tray, one by one, and sat them along the length of the bench. "But they change into different colours if they're fed a couple of common potion reagents. They also can live on relatively little water and sunlight, I thought they'd make an interesting project for the first-years."
Ginny smirked (but there might have been something else there with it; a kind of knowing, or pride - if a smirk could have pride) and said, "You have to fill me in on a secret."
"What's that?"
"The other professors, do they live here when school is out too?"
Neville laughed as he sat back down with her. "It's easy to stay and hard to stay away. I think I've seen everyone at least once this summer. Some more than others."
"Who?"
"Minerva, a lot." That felt foreign still in his mouth, but less so than 'Headmistress McGonagall'. "I think she misses having an actual class to teach, but she'd never say anything like that. Firenze, too - he said he was going up north somewhere but he hasn't skipped his afternoon walk around the grounds that I've seen. Oh, and Professor Binns. I don't think he stops teaching, to be honest - just keeps lecturing to an empty classroom."
Ginny laughed and he joined her. He could see her dropping her eyes as if to imagine the ghostly professor nattering to an empty classroom, and it made him laugh harder: it was pretty easy to imagine.
When they were still again, Ginny asked with a breath, "So how does it feel? Being the youngest professor Hogwarts has ever seen."
"I'm not the youngest ever, I think. But I am up there. Down there. Whichever would be right."
Ginny paused for a moment - a long enough moment for Neville to notice the gap in conversation. When she spoke again her tone was different, but he couldn't have said how.
"Are you worried? Nervous, at all."
"About what? Teaching?" She nodded affirmation.
"Not really..." It wasn't a thing he'd had to think of. "I was practically a professor last year anyway, the way Professor Sprout had me apprentice. And it's not like, I don't know, it’s test or anything, where I think I'll forget everything halfway through. I know what I'm doing."
Ginny was looking down at the bench as he spoke, but as he finished she raised her eyes back up to meet his. Neville thought she could have been looking at her stomach, too, but dismissed this thought quickly.
"I suppose you're right," she said, standing. "And best of luck." The beaming and radiance were back in her face, and Neville wondered for a moment if they'd ever actually been gone.
"I'll need it," he said.
She quickly reassured him with, "No you won't." Ginny then planted her hands in the small of her back and stretched, craning her neck as she did so. When she looked back at Neville, she seemed to have remembered something momentarily forgotten.
"Those... what are they, rock ferns? Do you have any to spare?"
"A couple," he answered. He had checked the roster of new students three times and had made neat little stacks of empty pots with the exact number, then after a moment of consideration added two for any potential mistakes (one for each class), another for the student that would inevitably get jostled or sweep their arm a little too wide and crack the pot on the floor, yet another for a potential miscounting on the roster, an extra three in case of mites or aphids or some other pest, and then half a dozen more for anything he hadn't thought of right away.
"Could I have one? It's for Harry - he needs a plant in his office, but he's so bad at keeping them alive."
Neville thought for a moment. "These should be fine indoors. Are you Flooing out, or Apparating from Hogsmeade?"
"Flooing. I'm not really supposed to Apparate much, so…" She glanced down for a moment.
"Ah," Neville replied, feeling dense. He stepped past Ginny and picked up one of the potted rock ferns. "Flooing should be fine," he said, handing her the pot. "Just brush the dust off when you get back."