The Adventures of Scarhead Neville, ...

"Mr. Longbottom!" Professor McGonagall's voice snapped as she headed towards the end of the row.

Neville looked up at the stern-faced professor and gulped. Her lips were in that straight line again and her nostrils had flared. He had been trying to transfigure a bird into a fish, but the poor thing was flapping on his desk, its beak gasping for air.

The Hogwarts seventh years were becoming more and more advanced in what they transfigured. Neville, though, was still having great difficulty. He quickly glanced at Hermione Granger, who was happily placing a light blue beta fish into a bowl. She made a fishy-face at it but quickly regained her studious composure when she saw Neville looking at her.

"Mr. Longbottom," McGonagall said, quickly switching the tortured creature back into a full bird, "this level of transfiguration is very dangerous! If you can not do this correctly before the end of this week, I will have to seriously consider dropping you from this class!"

Hermione gave Neville a look of deep sympathy. Neville scowled at the parrot sitting on its perch next to him. It squawked happily, glad to be out of that half-way hell.

******

Harry and Hermione were sitting in the common room later that evening. Ron was out on the Quidditch pitch for one-on-one practice, having given up on Snape's homework ages ago. Harry was finishing up his Potions essay when Neville stalked into the room, looking very sullen.

"Oh, don't worry about it Neville," Harry tried to console him.

Neville gave a half-hearted chuckle, "That's easy for you to say, Harry. At least you can get it to change from feathers to scales!"

"That's just 'cause today was a relatively good day for me," Harry replied, still focused on his parchment. "I had loads of trouble turning rats into bats last week. Best I could manage was to make it look like a miniature Thestral."

A slight smile drew itself across Neville's face. "Still," he continued, "it's N.E.W.T. year and I can't be dropped from Transfiguration. Gran would have a fit! Ever since I told her I wanted to be an Auror she's been telling anyone with ears..."

Hermione had taken a brake from studying her color coded Arithmancy chart after Harry had mentioned his mini-Thestral. She had always been sympathetic towards Neville, especially when it came to schoolwork. He had shown such inspired progress in Dumbledore's Army in their fifth year. Ever since then, she had been confident that he could handle most anything that was thrown at him.

Well, except when Harry and Ron were tossing that quaffle in the common room, but he's never been good at Quidditch, she thought to herself. Honestly, those two. I wish I had docked more points for that incident, especially since--

"Hermione? Everything okay?" Harry said, breaking her silent tirade. She hadn't noticed she was glaring at him.

"Erm, yes. Sorry, lost myself for a bit. Long day," she said, convincing Harry. "If you'd like Neville, I can practice with you," Hermione offered.

Neville perked up. "Really, Hermione? You'd do that?"

"Of course I would. It'll give me a chance to practice as well. We can use the Room of Requirement. Harry, you should come too. Your fish still had some dodgey scales on it," she reminded him.

Harry gave a slight scowl at Hermione, but nodded in agreement. Harry wanted to get top marks this year, and it would be nice to help out Neville. Besides, it was just the proper excuse he needed to break away from his theory of how wormswood was less potent than wolfsbane when stirred counterclockwise.

Harry stared at his essay. Snape wouldn't buy this even if it came with a free blood flavoured sucker, he thought morosely as he crumpled his parchment.

******

They got their things together and headed out of the common room. Ginny was sitting by the fireplace and waved goodbye to them. Harry could swear he saw her wink at him, but walked quickly out of the portrait hole before he could be sure. Perhaps she was just winking in their direction. But people don't just randomly wink, do they? Not unless they have a nervous tick or something, he concluded. In the Weasley family, though, that was completely possible. Living in that small a house with so many people was bound to make some of them a little on the crazy side.

They set out for the Room of Requirement just before seven. The halls were echoing from the Ravenclaw after dinner study session. Nutters, Harry thought to himself. If it wasn't for the sleeping draughts their prefects slipped them, they'd be at it all night.

After a bit of well rehearsed hall maneuvering, they came to the wall they were looking for. We need a place to practice transfiguration, they thought, concentrating hard. The door appeared and they stepped inside. Hermione went over to the bookshelf to and began to browse through some rather large Transfiguration books. Around them was a menagerie of birds, all waiting to be transfigured into fish.

"Neville," Hermione said thoughtfully, "maybe it's your wand movement. Let's practice that first. I need a mirror," she demanded of the room. A hand-held mirror arrived on the desk.

"No no, a full length mirror," she said huffily. The hand-held mirror disappeared and a full-length mirror stood beside the desk. She stood both Harry and Neville in front of the mirror to practice wand-waving. It was getting late, and Neville thought his arm was going to fall off after having waved his wand for what seemed to the thousandth time.

Hermione's a bit evil, he thought bitterly. She seems to be getting a perverse enjoyment out of this. No, that's not nice. She's helping me after all. Just keeping reminding yourself of that, Neville. Mistress of Pain, no; Good friend, yes.

Harry had mastered wand-waving long before Neville had and was changing birds into fish while Neville was still stuck in front of the mirror. Harry dropped another goldfish into the aquarium that he had asked for when the door swung open.

"Well well, what have we here?" came a bored voice. Draco Malfoy, in all his pale and evil splendor, had walked in on their transfiguration lesson.

"Sod off, Malfoy," Harry muttered.

"Shut it Potter. You lot are out past curfew. I think that's worth some points being taken away, don't you?" he said, smirking. Hermione rolled her eyes and turned to Malfoy.

"We're not allowed to take points from other houses and you know it, Ferret," she said scathingly. It still awed Harry how Hermione could speak with such venom at times. It just scared Neville. He was always scared of wetting himself when she spoke with that rancor in her voice.

"Well, then I'll have to get someone who does have that happy ability, now won't I, Granger?" he said, smirking even wider. He looked around and his eyes stopped on the transfiguration books that were opened on the desk. "Do you think this Squib can actually do magic then?" he asked, laughing as Neville's head drooped in shame.

Hermione glared at Malfoy and replied with that same note in her voice, "He's not a Squib, Malfoy. And I don't even see you taking Advanced Transfiguration."

Malfoy took a few steps closer, until he was almost nose-to-nose with Hermione. Harry stepped forward, ready to beat the crap out of Malfoy if the opportunity presented itself. Neville returned to his wand-waving, deciding it was best not to get involved. He glanced at the books, and saw an incantation written on the first page.

It won't actually work, he thought, but it's better than just waving this thing around like an idiot.

He heard Malfoy call Hermione a few choice words. Well, 'Mudblood' mostly, but there were some other colorful ones thrown in the mix. Harry charged at him, his right arm prepared to punch. Hermione tried desperately to pry the two apart before either of them got hurt. Actually, all she wanted was to stop Harry from landing a punch, getting detention for a month, and missing out on his studies. Malfoy could go lick a grindylow as far as she cared.

Neville waved his wand and muttered the incantation while looking into the mirror. To his horror and surprise, a blue stream of light came out of his wand, hit him and then ricocheted to where Malfoy, Harry, and Hermione were brawling.

Everyone paused and looked at Neville, who dropped his wand and looked positively shocked at what he had done. Hermione quickly walked over to him, trying to shake off the stun of the spell.

"It's all right, Neville, at least no one was hurt," she said quietly. Then she paused. She looked up at Neville and gave him a look of repulsion. "You bloody squib!" she hollered, "you hopeless, mindless, daft arse! What are you playing at?! Waving your wand like that and muttering random incantations."

Malfoy pushed Harry off of him, "Don't talk to him like that! He didn't know!" Malfoy stopped and looked at Hermione. Harry got off the ground.

"I'm so sorry everyone," Harry sobbed. "I don't know what I've done."

"Oh bloody hell," Neville spat out. He sighed heavily before attempting to readjust his glasses that weren't there.

Hermione gave Draco a long, hard look. "Damn," she said, looking Draco up and down. "I'm damn sexy. No wonder I'm like catnip for ladies."

Draco gave Hermione the scathing look that was Hermione's trademark I-want-to-kill-you-right-here-and-now look. Draco walked over to Harry and placed a consoling arm on his shoulder.

"Neville, just tell me which spell you did. It was obviously a switching spell. We'll look up how to reverse it."