The Growth

Chapter Four...The Growth

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey towards the stars?

When he arrived in the garden the following morning at six thirty, Luna was sitting by the fountain, talking to Percival. She looked mildly surprised to see him. She rose from her place after giving Percival's still stone hand a sad little pat and walked towards him, hugging her upper body. It was cold this early in the morning, and she was wearing thin white cotton robes and no shoes. Her earrings today were daisies, adding to the illusion of summer created by her manner of dress.

"I don't really like going inside," she said, and it was as if the past day and a half hadn't happened. It took him a while to realise she was simply answering his suggestion for lunch from when they'd last met. "The air is so heavy. And it smells. Like hospital."

"It is a hospital," Neville pointed out.

"I don't like it." She put her head to one side and looked at him, almost childish in her studied cuteness. "Can't we just stay here?"

He smiled then. "Works perfectly for me. As long as you can talk while I pick my herbs."

"You've grown up a bit, haven't you," Luna said, by way of replying.

"A little," smiled Neville. He sat down by his line of pots, opening his gardening case and locating his silver scissors. She crouched down opposite him, fidgeting with her robes, as he started to cut the herbs he needed to harvest.

"In school," she said, "you were always so angry and serious. Focused."

Neville laughed, looking at her with disbelief. "You mean slow and clumsy and awkward."

"Hm? No," said Luna, "angry and serious and focused. Didn't you hear me right?"

"But, no..." Neville shook his head, bemused. "No. That's not me. Is it?"

"We're talking was. And I think so, don't you?" She leaned her head to one side again. "You turned up at every DA meeting, and you never had time for jokes...you just practised, practised."

I was shy, thought Neville.

"You went to the Department of Mysteries and fought grown men and women, murderers and torturers. You were the only one who turned up to fight the Death Eaters on the night Dumbledore died."

Not the only one, thought Neville.

"You fought like no one else during that long year that followed after. You spat in the face of Alecto and rallied the others to stand up and hit back." She paused, stopped picking at her robes for a moment and smiled. "I've always admired you."

How interesting, thought Neville, and then he said it. "How interesting. You've seen another me than I have."

"Oh." Luna looked chastised. "Sorry."

"No! On the contrary. You've seen me as better than I've ever seen myself. I always thought of myself as a disaster waiting to happen."

"That's a bit silly, isn't it?" asked Luna, and because it was her, he didn't say, Not really. Not when that's all you've ever been told you are. When you've heard others describe you as a lost cause, what will you become?

And if you've been called crazy, what will you become then?

"But now," Luna was going on, looking thoughtful. "You seem more peaceful now. I saw you talk with those people, the Healers." He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that she suddenly made a face, but when he looked up, she was gazing over his shoulder vacantly. "You talked so easily, lightly... you laughed a lot. You used not to. Not happily."

"I learned."

"I envy you. It must be nice." She giggled suddenly, a strange little giggle that he couldn't remember ever having heard from her before. "You seem to have good friends. I don't have many friends any more. It's hard to keep in touch these days."

"I'm still here," he said and realised how pathetic it sounded. So banal and clichéd.

Still, it was true. If she talked, he'd be happy to listen.

"How is your grandmother?" she asked him...unusual for her, to ask such a trivial, everyday question. She worked the hem of her robes as she spoke, hands moving restlessly, knotting and unknotting in a nervous pattern.

"Still mean," he said, and he laughed. She looked at him, half-startled again. Maybe it wasn't just that she was unused to laughter from him; maybe it was laughter itself she hadn't heard for a long time. "She's getting older. She has a Home Healer who checks in on her once a day, now. Doesn't really need it, of course, but I suspect she enjoys having someone to yell at and ridicule. Now that I've left, I mean."

The words could have been bitter, but they were said with a smile. Neville cared a lot for his grandmother. He had learned to accept everything she threw at him without a word...and then when he had seen her at the battlefield of Hogwarts, seen her fierce pride as she looked at him, he had known the fondness and the worry behind her harsh words. But because she was one who fought, she didn't know how to relate to him until he did, too.

"And your dad?" he asked, remembering his manners. Luna frowned.

"I don't know, really... I haven't talked to him in a long while." She contemplated this for a second or two, then said quite naturally, "There are lots of rats there, you know."

Neville looked up from his pots, unsure of how to respond to that. "Where?" he asked eventually.

"In Bulgaria," said Luna, "obviously. I haven't gone anywhere else in the last year, have I?"

"Oh." Neville reran the last couple of sentences in his mind, examined them for anything that could throw light on Luna's statement, and found nothing. "I'm sorry, but I didn't understand... What's with the rats?"

She looked at him for some time, then said very slowly and clearly, "There are lots of rats because," she emphasised this by widening her eyes alarmingly, "there are no owls. That's why I couldn't send many letters." She gazed at him, concerned. "Did you follow?"

"Yes." He smiled. "Thank you."

"He never liked this. Me going off. Getting hurt."

"You got hurt?"

"It's a war. Or at least, the aftermath of it, which is still war in a sense. Of course I got hurt."

She said it so casually, only wrinkling her nose a little to signal that she thought his question was an unusually stupid one. Then she pulled her right sleeve up above the elbow to reveal a long scar on her forearm.

"They go for the wand arm, always," she explained. "There's a spell...breaks the arm badly. My bones were all splinters. They did pretty well with piecing me back together, though. Might not be exactly the same as before, but good enough. I can still wave a wand."

"But, Luna," Neville laid his scissors to one side and reached out. "Let me see."

"I doubt you can make it much better," she said matter-of-factly, but extended her arm for him to examine. He touched it carefully, seeing the tell-tale twists of the muscles where the bone had been replaced a little differently than it had been before.

"It's far too advanced for me," he said, admitting defeat, but still kept hold of her hand. "And I believe they did the best they could. Was it in Bulgaria?"

"Mm. And it rained."

There was no trace of bitterness in her voice. She seemed perfectly resigned to continuing her life with a damaged arm. No, not resigned, that wasn't the word, either... accepting, that was it. Accepting whatever life had in store.

He let go of her hand and didn't say, Luna, I'm so sorry or You poor, poor thing or How do you just manage to live on, never despairing, never giving up? Instead, he returned to his harvest and said simply, "If it bothers you at any time, just say the word. I brew a smashing Painkilling Potion."

"So you do potions now?" She pulled her sleeve back down and returned to her never-ceasing plucking at her robes.

"Of necessity."

"I was rather good at Potions. Of course, I was very fond of Professor Snape, that might have had something to do with it. But you were awful."

The usual Luna frankness. Neville smiled. "Yes, I was rather bad at Potions. Of course, I was very frightened of Professor Snape, which might have had something to do with it. It's a lot easier to concentrate on what's in the cauldron now when I'm not afraid I'll find him creeping up behind me. I thought he was the scariest person to ever have walked the earth. Except, perhaps, for my grandmother. I'd have liked to see what would happen if they ever got together. Or no, I'd rather just hear about it afterwards; I wouldn't really want to be there."

"But you're doing potions now?" asked Luna, with a single-mindedness that made him smile again.

"A few. The herbals. The simple ones. The ones I've done so many times I've finally learnt them. Won't ever be a Potions master though."

Luna nodded, slowly, as if she was thinking over his words. "You borrow ingredients," she said, "and practise at home, perfecting the potions you know you'll have to do often..."

Neville laughed, shaking his head. "Not that ambitious, I'm afraid. I rarely do potions at home. I do try to practise, like making my own Sparkling Solution...for the windows...instead of buying it, but mostly I'm too lazy. And I don't take ingredients from here, either...the ingredients cupboard is carefully regulated, and you have to sign for everything you take for your work, writing down the amount you take and for what. Potions ingredients in particular are often expensive and rare, and it's extremely important for Mungo's to always know exactly how much is in stock." He realised he'd given her a lecture and smiled sheepishly, adding, in an effort to sound less serious, "Plus, they smell."

The somewhat long explanation was prompted partly by his vague discomfort about Imp's recent revelation. Hopefully, it would all turn out to have been some kind of mistake, but he couldn't forget the way the Master Healer had looked at him.

Luna was looking at him with her head leaning to one side, still nodding thoughtfully. Then, quite suddenly, she stood up. "I think I should leave now," she said uncertainly. "I believe it's about time."

Neville hesitated, then laid his scissors aside again and rose, brushing his hands off against his robes and turning them black with dirt. "How about," he said, "we eat lunch together tomorrow? Not inside," he hastened to add as she opened her mouth to protest, "but here, in the garden. I can bring some lunch for you, too. I don't think you've ever tried my cooking. That is, if you're free tomorrow and in the neighbourhood."

He was certain she would be, however. Because he thought he knew the reason behind her large eyes, her white robes, and disjointed sentences. He thought he knew, and he hoped he was wrong.

Luna pursed her lips and thought for some time, then looked back at him and smiled.

"Those are very nice robes for you," she said, inclining her head towards his green outer robes. "You look like a flower. I think lunch would be nice." She turned and started to walk away, and he watched her go.

He hesitated, then said, "Luna? You know that Perce doesn't talk unless you say the incantation, right? You know that?"

She stopped and looked back at him, puzzled. "Oh... how strange. I had a very pleasant discussion with him before..." Her brow creased for a second, but then she shrugged and walked around a Venomous Tentacula and out of sight.

She wasn't there the next day, and he ate his lunch alone.

Quote in this chapter by G.K. Chesterton.

This site has been rather unfairly ignored by me for some time now. Will try to get better with updates from now on, now that the rest of my life is a little calmer!

As always, thank to AmyLouise for betaing.