Chapter Text
As Neville crept out of the library, he, for once in his adult life, wished he was Harry effing Potter; not for any other reason than that bloody invisibility cloak, the lucky, chosen git - whom he cared for deeply, otherwise. Using a disillusionment charm felt creepy in Hogwarts as a teacher. And Ginny and Hermione were cleverer than that.
They were waiting for him around the corner. Herminone and Ginny were like a pair of sentient gargoyles, perched and waiting to swoop down and sink their talons into him.
‘Where is she?’ Ginny whispered sharply, looking over his shoulder, hawklike. The Holyhead Harpies were sorely missing out on her seeker-like abilities, he thought.
‘Busy. Look,’ he breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘She’s…just a friend. I don’t have the time for anything else. Introductions would look odd. I’m going to bring her some tea and then take care of a few things in the greenhouse.’
Hermione looked crestfallen, Ginny slightly irritated. They did a great job of making Neville feel guilty, considering he did positively nothing to deserve it.
‘Of course, Nev. You’ll come to the Burrow for dinner tomorrow night, won’t you?’ said Hermione, reaching out and squeezing his arm.
‘Count on it’ He smiled pallidly; it had been lovely of them to come by. He hated to see them look so sorry for him. ‘I need to thank Molly for the cake, anyway.’
He kissed them both goodbye, his sisters in arms, and headed straight to the kitchens. Neville often resorted to sweets in times of distress, and, considering he knew Harriett also didn’t often partake in alcoholic beverages, figured that maybe her vices may lean towards sugary confections, as well.
He brought tea, biscuits, and pasties, and he and Harriett found a companionable silence after he asked about the new cataloging system, which she explained in detail. It was fascinating stuff; Neville finally found a liking for potions and alchemy alike, once he understood so many of the ingredients involved, and the extensive alchemic research performed to develop the system was impressive. When Harriett wouldn’t stop blinking from exhaustion, she suggested she ought to go to bed, and Neville agreed. He fought her over the tray, insisting she had enough to do without running down to the kitchens, and Neville refused to leave it for a house elf. He pecked her cheek goodnight; it felt a normal thing to do, and hadn’t he done the same just hours ago to other friends of the fairer sex? And felt it rather difficult to walk away. She smelled like roses and tea and he had been close enough to feel her breath catch when he did it.
But after that blunder at the Three Broomsticks last Christmas, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She’d invited him for another little gathering once the holidays started, and he’d been so shocked to see Harriett sitting alone, even after he’d been running a few minutes behind. For a few moments, he allowed himself to believe his hopeful suspicions; that she had invited only him. But when he’d asked after the others, she said no one else could make it, looking awkward. His mortification made him feel ill. Worse than that, two witches from Hogwarts, a couple of years behind his class, recognized him and asked for autographs. He could have sunk into his chair. He left as soon as he politely could after that.
Whatever Minevera had told Hermione gave him a stupid sliver of hope. Where was that Gryffindor lion now? It seemed to only rear its maned head sporadically, impulsively. It never allowed for premeditated thought. Lazy, proud muppet of a cat. It did supply a bit of help in the face of history’s darkest wizard of the twentieth century, but, really, once every decade or so? Sheer torpidity. His Gryffindor lion seemed to be dozing on a sunny rock, completely unbothered by his recent bout of complacency. Sodding beast.
Neville borrowed a broom from Hooch’s spares set aside for staff, and carefully ascended into the warm, evening air, avoiding flying over the lake and remaining safely close to the ground. His flying had greatly improved once he realized he was too tired some days to make the walk outside of the castle bounds to apparate back into his cottage. He made it back without setbacks and ate cake, standing over the kitchen sink. He wondered idly how a diet of tea and sweets still allowed his trousers to fit, and accepted that not eating between the hours of ten o’clock at night until four o’clock in the afternoon might be the culprit. Rooming back at the castle would sort that out.
It took him ages to finally fall asleep. He blamed overconsumption of pastries, shoving flashing images of tortoiseshell spectacles and the softness of a certain witch’s cheek (BUCCAL cheeks, thank you very much) out of his brain, wishing dearly that he possessed a proficiency in occlumency. Wondering at Harriett’s softer bits in the darkness of his room was both a lovely surrender and horrifying.
~
August 14th, 2015
Harriett thought nothing of the snowy owl that brought Minerva her morning mail, just a few seats down. Most of the staff had returned to Hogwarts, those who vacationed away from the castle over the summer readying themselves for the first of September. Neville seemed to go to Hogsmeade less, she noticed, often finding him at the staff table for meals over the past week. They’d made their nightly reading sessions in the library almost a routine, whether for an hour or four. They were lovely and special. Harriett was in very deep trouble as a result.
Two days prior, she’d visited the dungeons to bring Professor Slewyn a book she’d requested on the ethics of love potions - a sixth year had accidentally melted Ophelia’s copy last spring term - when she stopped abruptly in front of her colleague’s work table.
She recognized the love potions at once, based on their color and sheen alone. The smell was new. Compost, humid greenhouse air, the earthy musk of damp wool, butterbeer.
‘Damn it,’ she’d muttered to herself, depositing the book onto Ophelia’s desk and holding her breath and darted for the corridors. It was an incredibly inconvenient confirmation.
Harriett was swathing a good deal of blackberry jam onto her toast when she noticed parchment appear from over her shoulder.
‘Good news from the New World,’ said Minerva, patting her shoulder as Harriett accepted the letter with the hand not brandishing a butter knife. ‘It seems as if Professor Wielder himself has offered his services. I’ll send word back with the details; he won’t require additional funds, and he’ll room with the rest of the staff here at the castle, of course. This is better than we’d hoped for!’ The headmistress seemed pleased as punch at their supposed good fortune.
Harriett gripped the blunt object hard enough that her knuckles whitened. It shook slightly in her hand, and she knew she hadn’t replied to the headmistress yet, but found herself speechless.
‘Are you alright, Miss McKinnon?’ Minerva bent closer to her ear.
‘Yeah,’ she breathed, raising her eyebrows. ‘I, um. I just wasn’t expecting him to volunteer himself.’
Minerva, taking her horror as shocked relief, gave her a satisfied grin, her shoulder one last squeeze, and returned to her own seat, leaving Harriett to read the reply.
Headmistress,
It would be my pleasure to assist Miss McKinnon in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry library. I am pleased to hear of her succession and extend my sincerest condolences for the loss of Madam Pince. Expanding the resource of our latest cataloging system internationally is part of our intended mission, and I would be honored to come in person for the 2015-2016 school year. I will plan on arriving a week prior to the start of the fall semester and will not require salaried pay. If Hogwarts cannot accommodate additional housing, I’d be grateful to hear suggestions for nearby boarding options.
Looking forward to working together,
Ryan Weilder
Head Librarian of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Master of Alchemy and Archiving at Northampton Magical University
Junior Archivist for the International Confederation of Wizards
Harreitt felt her chest squeeze, and considered multiple suspects for this sensation. Reason A: a creeping anxiety, lovingly easing her into a panic attack. Reason B: a very treacherous thrill that Ryan enlisted his own services to help her. Both were proof that both her body and mind must truly detest her soul, which benefitted nothing from either of these choices.
She set the parchment down and huffed. ‘More like the Junior Asshole of the International Confederation of Weirdos,’ Harriett muttered angrily, drawing in a sharp inhale.
‘What was that?’
Harriett looked up and found the seat beside her being dragged against the wooden floors. She recognized the same scent from the dungeons; Neville sank into it beside her. The sleeves of his robes were rolled up, exposing the slightly red, tanned skin of his forearms.
Harreitt realized, despite his fame and earned successes alike, Neville was a bit of a nerd. His teeth were very close to fitting the British stereotype so cruelly depicted in American media - though Harreitt’s parents hadn’t been able to afford braces, and she didn’t care enough to use magic to straighten out her own snaggletooth. His striped wool sweaters often clashed with his robes. He wore sneakers with dress pants. Her inner librarian sometimes wished she could have just ten, innocent minutes in his wardrobe to catalog his sweater collection by color. Since his mother’s funeral last spring, his hair had been trimmed neatly, but before had sported a mop top of dark, wavy hair that gave him more of a disheveled look that was beginning to regrow, and she highly doubted he cared. He was handsome in his own right, undeniably, but in an unconventional, secret way, which she identified with. She considered herself a New England 8, a New York City 7, and an L.A. 4. New Englanders usually isolated themselves enough to care a bit less, away from the metropolises filled to the brim with slimming potions, tanning charms, and bottled hair straighteners. Her glamor magic was laughable. Even so, back to her crush, he was slowly becoming the thing of her most depraved fantasies. Trying to conjure the same thoughts she had in her rooms at night in broad daylight made her wish she could physically attack her own brain with the aforementioned blunt butter knife.
Before she could answer him, he caught her staring and offered a sheepish grin.
‘Sorry. I’ve Scourgify’d my hands a thousand times today. Feels pointless when I’ve got about a thousand spleenwart seedlings to transplant. I’ve been trying to get better about only using my wand, but.’ He shrugged, reaching for a scone, exposing even more of his scandalous forearm. Harriett gulped. ‘I can’t tell if they’re snug enough without using my fingers.’
Harriett felt she could openly stare at his ten digits now. They were very long, and the beds of his nails were blackened, covering the circumference of them. Madam Pince, unlike Harriett’s crude dreams, probably had nightmares about them clutching the library’s precious books.
He withdrew his wand from inside his robes and tapped his hands one at a time, muttering the Scourgify spell under his breath. They appeared slightly cleaner afterwards, though traces of earth remained beneath his bitten nails.
‘I don’t mind one bit.’ Harriett gave him a relaxed smile and plucked her untouched toast from a golden plate.
They both ate quietly for a while, until Neville nodded in her direction, spearing a sausage onto a fork, while Harriett tried not to think about the lilt of Neville’s voice when he was growing tired and so often heard during their twilight hours in the library, with a sort of gravel to it. Sometimes, he read aloud whatever passage he found most interesting, which Harriett thoroughly enjoyed, because it helped her understand the text better, which, inevitably, helped her understand its cataloging.
‘Bad news?’ Neville asked. Harriett followed his gaze to the parchment, her coffee cup holding down a corner where it tried in vain to curl in on itself. ‘You seemed a bit chuffed when I got here.’
‘Wait,’ Harriett said, sighing impatiently, her lips quirking. ‘I thought chuffed meant pleased. It does. Right?’
Neville shrugged, smirking at his plate. ‘Context.’
She pursed her lips, staring at Ryan’s name. ‘I thought the university library back in the States would send someone different.’ She dropped her crust onto her plate unceremoniously, dragging her napkin from her lap. ‘I shouldn’t complain; I’m lucky to have anyone at all.’
Neville furrowed his brows in confusion, seeming to consider this. Debating on the right thing to say, as he usually did.
‘Hoping for someone…more competent?’
‘Actually,’ she said, reaching for her coffee cup with one hand and the parchment with the other and handing it to him, ‘he developed the system. So, he’s very familiar with the work. He’s…sort of an ex. It was never serious, but.’ She wasn’t sure why she was divulging this to him, but knew that Neville wasn’t the type to gossip. ‘Enough to make it a little weird.’ Harriett sipped her coffee, despite the mounting anxiety currently assaulting her cardiovascular system.
Neville grimaced in apology, rubbing the back of his neck before scanning the letter. ‘Ugh, that’s the worst. Is he awful? Should I polish my sword in the library sometime?’
Harriett’s shoulders shook with laughter. Why did he have to be funny, too? Her Achilles’ heel? Ryan wasn’t that funny, she realized triumphantly. His humor was of a false self-deprecating type that she’d realized was a method of fishing for compliments. ‘Yeah, I do want you to do that. But, actually, no.’ She schooled her features into safer territory, nonchalant, as to not appear utterly heartbroken. ‘He’s not that bad; there wasn’t any animosity. We weren’t really ever together. It’s just awkward. Maybe he’s seeing someone, but I kind of doubt it if he’s going abroad for almost a year. I just…want to avoid falling into the same cycle again.’
Neville nodded, listening, his fingers clutched around a glass of water. ‘I was in a situation a bit like that. Years ago. She’s engaged now and quite happy, which is good!’ he added quickly. ‘I actually ended things. She’s great, she’s my friend now. I just wasn’t…’
He trailed off, not elaborating on what he wasn’t. Harriett would have paid ten galleons to hear the rest of that sentence. She read the label to the blackberry jam, its curly cursive script etching behind her eyes. Jam was a condiment, but of the sweet variety. It would go with marmalades, custards, curds, and jellies. And syrups. Organizing things by category helped her heart rate slow to something more human and less that of a hummingbird.
‘I get it,’ she replied. ‘But, with Ryan. It’ll be fine.’
Neville’s eyes narrowed and he studied her face; a flicker of emotion Harriett couldn’t trace flashed over him before he caught himself, shuttering it back into neutrality. ‘You say that a lot.’ He said it quietly, so his voice did the gravel-thing, like studded tires over a fancy driveway with the millions of pebbles all perfectly-rounded and the exact same size. It wasn’t romance-novel growling, but better, because he had no idea he was doing it.
‘What?’ said Harriett.
‘That you’re fine, after explaining how you may very well not be.’
She chuckled weakly, staring into her coffee. Her stomach did the stupid swooping thing again. ‘Weird habit, I guess.’
‘Any English ancestry? Sort of fits the quiet desperation vibe we give off.’
‘What about the hugs?’ asked Harriett, wincing a bit.
‘Oh, right. Poor Ophie didn’t know what to do with her arms. Should have offered to clean the sword for her, after that assault of yours.’ said Neville with mock-seriousness.
Harriett buried her face in her hands, but she smiled behind them. Maybe she just liked dry, English humor and Neville was just moderately funny compared to the rest of them. Maybe she could find a way to circumvent the wards against electronics and find a way to watch a few episodes of Mr. Bean to help acclimate her. Or maybe Neville was actually naturally hilarious and barely aware of it, making it more genuine and, therefore, even funnier, and that was no excuse to continuously daydream about more creative ways to clean his fingernails, that absolutely did not involve her mouth. Harreitt was a criminal. A mind criminal. He was so nice, and brilliant, and she was horrible.
‘This bloke has quite a lot of accolades,’ said Neville, giving the letter one last cursory look before handing it over to her. She swore colorfully in her mind, the ill-mannered villain that it was, that their fingers didn’t ‘accidentally’ brush during this exchange.
‘Sure does,’ she agreed, deflating a bit. Maybe she should sleep with Ryan, if he even wanted to, at this point. Just to get her sinful brain out of the gutter. ‘He’s very smart. Part of the appeal, I guess.’
Neville straightened in his seat. Harriett’s anxiety whispered that maybe he could perform legilimency and was thinking of requesting an Auror bodyguard to protect him against the darkness that was her pathetic head.
‘Guess we’ll have to pull up another chair then?’ said Neville, and Harriett thought his tone alluded to finality. ‘A new hand on deck.’ She watched as he used his napkin to wipe away any excess crumbs from his scandalous hands, entirely unaware of their seductive qualities, and deposit it gently onto his now empty plate. ‘I’ll see you tonight, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ Harriett said, in a tone a little too high to sound totally natural. She wanted to leave, as well, but didn’t want to appear to be following the poor Herbology professor out of the Great Hall.
When she felt it was an appropriate amount of time since Neville’s departure, she left, eager to burn Ryan’s letter in a burning inferno of fiendfyre. The fireplace in her office worked just fine, though felt immensely less satisfying. She watched it curl and blacken before sinking into the logs - probably sessile oak, if she remembered an anecdote from Neville’s book from a few nights ago when she asked why the fireplaces didn’t burn peat moss - before resigning to Poppy up in the hospital wing for a calming draught.