Robes rustled as everyone took their seats around the long wood table. A cup of steaming tea awaited each of them, but Neville was fairly certain that his hands were shaking so badly that he'd spill if he tried to pick it up, and anyway, tea tended to make him anxious. He didn't need any more anxiety this morning.

"Are we all here?" Professor McGonagall asked crisply, and after she had taken a quick glance about the table, she nodded. "Good. Please let me be the first to welcome you back to a new year at Hogwarts. It would normally be useless to go through introductions, but as we have four new staff members this year, I hope you'll indulge me.

"First and foremost, I'd like to announce that Tycho Thatcher has graciously agreed to take up the post as Head of Slytherin House, now that Horace Slughorn has gone into his second retirement. He will continue his job as Astronomy professor in addition to his new duties." Thatcher gave a single nod of acknowledgement at the murmurs of congratulations that floated across the table. "Taking the place of Horace as Potions Master is Tobias Caine, who has recently come to us from New Zealand."

Neville leaned forward despite himself to look at the new Potions Master; the man looked to be very close to Neville's age, which was a surprise. It was not the first time that Neville was startled by the realisation that he was actually an adult, and that others his age were also adults. It was very odd.

"Moving on, we have River Brighton, our new Muggle Studies professor, and her sister, Robin Brighton, who will take Defence Against the Dark Arts." The two women sitting directly across from Neville smiled nervously; he was startled to see that they were his own age, as well.

"And finally, I am very pleased to welcome back Neville Longbottom, who will be assisting Pomona Sprout with her first and second years and eventually taking all her classes by the end of the year. As most of you know, I will be passing on the role of Headmistress to Pomona at the end of this school year. This will necessitate some flexibility on her part and Neville's, but I have every confidence that they are up to the task."

There was actually some scattered applause from the older professors he had once had as teachers, which made his cheeks grow hot as he grinned awkwardly.

Professor McGonagall let the noise die down before letting her own small, warm smile become a more serious line. "Now. The students will be arriving in two weeks, which would normally give us plenty of time to prepare the castle if it wasn't for a problem that has arisen over the summer holidays. Those who arrived earlier this week know precisely what I am referring to." She twisted her lips wryly. "In short, we seem to have a boggart infestation."

"Plague, more like," Professor Caine quipped, his accent strangely incongruous. "I had three in my quarters alone."

"The Astronomy tower is completely overrun," Professor Thatcher added gravely.

"It is a definite problem with no easy solution at the moment," Professor McGonagall agreed. "Nobody knows how boggarts reproduce, but they have the run of the castle now, and we can only hope that we can decontaminate it in two weeks' time."

Clearing her throat, Professor Sprout looked around the table. "Actually, just before this meeting, Neville suggested something rather brilliant to me that I hope he'll share with all of us."

It felt rather like he'd swallowed his own tongue as all the eyes turned to him. Bollocks. He hated speaking in front of people. He'd rather hoped that Professor Sprout would have just shared the flimsy idea he'd had herself.

Well, there was nothing for it - and he would have to become accustomed to speaking in front of people anyway, if he was going to have students. He pushed that panicky thought to a small corner of his mind as he took a deep breath. "Well, a boggart is defeated by laughter, right? Um, the bloom of the Alantris plant - its fragrance contains the same chemical as the pheromones humans give off when they laugh. It's why you feel good when you smell one. I was just thinking, if boggarts don't like laughter, maybe they won't like the Alantris flower."

"Do you think it would work?" Professor McGonagall asked, directing her question to both Professor Sprout and Neville.

"There isn't anything in the literature saying it's been used for that application before." Shrugging, Professor Sprout looked at Neville. "I think we ought to try it."

"But," Neville interjected, "we don't have any Alantris blooming right now, and you can't buy the essential oil because it sours after a few days. It'll take three full moons to mature a vine for blooms, and we've just missed one - so we're looking at three and a half months, at least."

Faces fell around the table as the time frame sank in. "Longbottom, I'd like you to cultivate as many of these vines as possible, and see if there's anyone in the country who has any that we can use sooner. In the interim, we'll focus on containment and banishment. We'll spend today in pairs, inspecting the dormitories and commonly-used classrooms." Professor McGonagall sounded determined. "It won't do to have hundreds of boggarts lurking when the students come back."

 

 

"So, are you the Neville Longbottom?" Professor Caine asked as Neville followed him through the door to the Potions classroom.

"I certainly hope there's only one," Neville replied, peering about the classroom and actively suppressing the dull unease that washed through him. There was no reason to hate this room anymore. "It's a bit of an unwieldy name, yeah?"

"A bit." Professor Caine flashed an impish grin. "Maybe I'll just call you Nev."

Neville shuddered as he bent to look under a table. "Do that and you're inviting me to call you Toby."

"You're not my mum," Professor Caine laughed. "But you could call me Tobias if you wanted. I reckon we'll be working together fairly closely."

Startled, Neville straightened. "Do you?"

"Well, yeah." One of the cupboards creaked as Tobias opened it. "Herbology and Potions are more or less hand in hand. I was actually going to ask how much you get to control your own curriculum this year, because I'd like to do some joint lessons."

Joint lessons. With Potions. Neville may have no reason to hate this room anymore, but that didn't mean he wanted to spend any more time in it than was necessary. Thankfully, he was saved from having to formulate a response by a sudden rattling in a supply cupboard at the far end of the room. Both their heads whipped around at the sound.

"Ah," Tobias said. For a moment his confident exterior slipped, just slightly. "I haven't dealt with a boggart since I was about fifteen," he said, "and it was not elegant."

"Longer than that for me," Neville replied, swallowing. "But I can give it a go."

It was much easier said than done, especially with a near-stranger at his back. Even knowing what would emerge from the cupboard didn't ease Neville's mind at all; in fact it did quite the opposite. Being in this Potions classroom emphasised just how much he did not want to open that cupboard and have Snape step out. Of course he'd heard Harry's exoneration of the professor - so many times that he thought he might gag if he heard it again - but that did very little to ameliorate the antagonism that had existed between himself and the worst teacher he'd ever had.

His hand paused on the handle of the cupboard for a moment while he gripped his wand, and then Neville wrenched the door open, taking a steadying breath.

Immediately, his eyes were dazzled by a shockingly bright light; searing heat pressed against his cheeks like a physical blow. He gave a yelp of surprise as he jumped back, the visceral terror flashing through his body like ice water. He slammed the cupboard door shut before he even realised what he was doing and stood staring at it, breathing rapidly as his heart drummed against his ribs.

Well. He hadn't expected that.

"That's not what it used to be," he said out loud, mostly to shatter the silence that suddenly seemed too loud. His heartbeat refused to slow, and his legs felt shaky; he lowered himself into a chair without a single thought to what it must make him look like.

"So they're true. The stories," Tobias said after a long moment during which Neville tried to slow his breathing to something more calming than gasps.

"Dunno." Shaking his head to clear it, Neville leaned back in his chair. "Most of them aren't. Which ones are you thinking of?"

Tobias's eyes flickered back to the cupboard; its handle was rattling again. "That He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named set you on fire."

Neville's mind very stubbornly refused to let that memory come forth into his thoughts; he felt ill just knowing that it resided somewhere in the jumble of memories of that night. "That one's true."

As though to himself, Tobias nodded faintly. "My boggart's the same," he said, eyes still on the cupboard. "Never did suss out how to make it funny." He suddenly seemed not at all like the confident, lackidaisical man Neville had met in the staff room. "I was trapped in a burning house when I was seven. Last thing I remember before I passed out was seeing my pyjamas catch flame."

There wasn't any good response to that, so Neville said nothing. Now that he was thinking of it, he didn't know why he hadn't predicted this; he very clearly remembered three years ago, when he'd tried to Floo for the first time since the war ended and had been unable to step into the flames. Even knowing they couldn't hurt him hadn't helped, and he had learnt to Apparate out of necessity.

"So what do we do now?" Neville asked after several more moments of sitting and watching the handle of the cupboard door rattle. "I can't just go to McGonagall and say I can't do it because it's too scary." His stomach twisted in shame at the mere thought of it.

"And facing it together won't help much, since that won't confuse it." Tobias shrugged. "I suppose we could team up with someone else, but..."

He didn't have to finish the sentence. Neville had known him for perhaps half an hour, but he already knew that Tobias's pride wouldn't let him admit defeat any more than Neville's would.

"I assume trying to put it out ends disastrously?" Neville ventured.

Tobias nodded fervently. "Makes it worse, at least for me. Because of course when you're pouring water on it, your biggest fear is that it doesn't do anything."

"Right."

They fell quiet again. The great tower clock chimed the hour and echoed across the grounds outside. The boggart rattled at the cupboard door, and an answering rattle sounded from within a desk drawer. Neville and Tobias both looked at each other and winced.

"They can't actually hurt us," Tobias said, not sounding at all certain of the truth of the statement.

"I don't know," Neville replied doubtfully. "That one felt awfully hot."

"But it didn't burn the cupboard, or anything in it." Walking over to the cupboard door, Tobias put his hand on it. "Door's not even warm."

Perhaps his hand had released the catch on the door. Perhaps this boggart was simply a very strong one. It likely was a combination of both, because the door to the cupboard swung open and Neville had a split second's view of a wall of bright orange flame before it expanded with a whoosh that seemed to suck the air from his lungs.

Time slowed to a crawl; Neville felt as though he was moving through treacle as he lunged to his feet, brandishing his wand before him, but the flames were faster than his eye could follow. Before he had time to blink they had raced to set afire every surface in the room, licking at the stone ceiling and turning the air stiflingly hot.

"TOBIAS!" he bellowed, raising a hand to his face to ward off the heat. He lurched away from the chair he'd been sitting in as it, too, caught flame, devoured in a wreath of bright yellow and orange and white; the sight made something like a fist squeeze around Neville's spine and constrict terribly.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't even move. Tobias stood not two paces away in a similar state of terrorised paralysis, eyes wide and reflecting the sinuous dancing of the flames as they roared and began to crawl towards them both, creeping forward along the flagstones of the floor as though they were made of well-seasoned firewood.

"There's no way out!" Tobias shouted, the note of hysteria in his voice plain. His head swivelled around, surveying the rapid progress of the flames as they closed in, his expression becoming more and more panicked.

Heart racing so quickly Neville was astonished it didn't burst, he raised his wand and pointed it wildly at the flames. "Aguamenti!" The feeble stream of water evaporated the instant it left his wand, the puffs of steam dissipating immediately. As though offended by the gesture, the flames appeared to collect themselves like a rolling wave and rushed inward towards them all at once.

Neville had no time to collect himself; the searing heat surrounded him as he cried out, dropping his wand as he reflexively cowered and covered his face with his arms -

He almost didn't hear it over the crackling roar of the flames, but after several moments, it hit him: Tobias was laughing.

It was a manic, hysterical laughter, the kind that is drawn from very deep within the stomach and calls forth tears and nearly hurts. Neville wrenched open one eye to look at Tobias in disbelief before it occurred to him that he wasn't burning.

Neville looked down at his own hand incredulously; though surrounded with a halo of bright flame, the flesh beneath was not blistering or peeling. It was intensely uncomfortable, but -

The relief felt like a punch in the stomach; strong as it was, Tobias had been right: the boggart couldn't hurt them. He was not at all surprised to find that his next exhalation was laughter nearly as desperate as Tobias's as he groped for his wand.

"RIDDIKULUS!" he managed to gasp between one breath and the next.

The flames immediately dissipated with a loud CRACK, leaving in their wake a pale, thin smoke that wafted this way and that before disappearing completely.

Curling helplessly in on themselves, Neville and Tobias very slowly regained control, gasping and hiccoughing until all that was left of their laughter was a tiny relieved giggle that rippled through their stomachs at unpredictable intervals. Neville stretched out to lie on his back, taking shaky breaths and feeling weaker than he could ever recall.

"Tiny gods, I am never doing that again," Tobias gasped.

"To hell with saving face," Neville agreed breathlessly. His stomach hurt. His ribs hurt. He doubted he'd ever laughed so hard in his life, and he could feel that relieved giggle trying to bubble its way out of his chest. "Godric and Merlin, I can't believe that worked."

"What exactly happened?" Wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his robe, Tobias pushed himself to a sitting position, still breathing heavily.

"Laughter," Neville said, bringing himself up to rest on his elbows, knees bent. "Apparently it doesn't care what kind of laughter it is. We were practically rolling with it."

"You're telling me." Tobias pressed a hand to his midsection as though it pained him, which it probably did. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll wait until you grow that vine." He chuckled, and there was still the slightest edge of hysteria to it.

"Forget growing the vine. I know a gardener in Manchester who has a whole trellis full of blooms. I think I'll be visiting him very soon." He still felt light-headed as he pushed himself to his feet, but offered his hand to Tobias anyway to hoist him off the floor.

Now, as the adrenaline began to sour in their veins and their rational minds took over, was the perfect opportunity to feel awkward. They had, after all, been shockingly exposed, their terror on full display, and that sort of vulnerability was not an easy thing to reconcile with a stranger.

"So, joint classes, you said?" Neville asked after a moment of casting about the room for something to look at. "What do you know about Herbology?"

"I get by," Tobias responded, leaning back against a table. "What do you know about Potions?"

Neville laughed as he leaned against the table next to Tobias, crossing his arms. "I don't get by so much as avoid it entirely." He gestured around the room. "I did not have good experiences in this dungeon."

Eyes sweeping the walls appraisingly, Tobias nodded. "I don't know that I like this classroom. I think I'll ask the Headmistress if I can relocate." He dug an elbow into Neville's side, and the casual contact both made Neville jump and fostered an inexplicable warmth in his belly, beneath the ache of laughter. "And then maybe I can coerce you into participating in my evil ruse of linking Herbology and Potions, like they should be in a proper school."

Suddenly recognising that warmth for what it was, Neville grinned and dug his own elbow into Tobias's side. "I melt cauldrons. You might find it rough going."

"Melt a single one of my cauldrons, Nev, and I'll sneeze on your Heliotropes while you sleep."

"Sneeze on my Heliotropes, Toby, and I'll creatively re-label all your reagents."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Neville did not make friends easily; he was too shy, too reserved, and too self-conscious to make that leap with most people. However, as Harry had once said when he'd reminisced about how he had become friends with Hermione, there are some things that you can't do without becoming best friends with a person.

Apparently, facing the brink of death and coming out the other side unscathed was one of them.