By What Measure the Strong?

The summer had only recently started, and Neville Longbottom's body was still bound to the Hogwarts schedule. So it was that at about eight in the morning, he realized he was starting to wake up.

For a time, he tried to fight it and will himself back to sleep. He had been dreaming, and it had been a good dream, a dream about something, full of vague earth tones that wrapped tendrils of themselves about him and were warm on his lips and brows and nose even as he shivered in their grip that held him and squeezed him and pressed him against that flowing tangle of colors until he felt life seeping out of it and out of him and mixing together and filling them both, and he wanted to be dreaming it still, damn it. But, as he lay in his bed, the sheets went cold. His eyes flicked open, at first chaotically, then in a slow pattern, and then they opened for real, and the colors he saw faded from his dream into the dim blue of his darkened room. The dream's details escaped him as it became a memory, and then full wakefulness seized him, announcing itself by naming the thing in his dream.

"Bugger," he groaned as he tossed aside his sheets and sat up. He yawned, then stretched out his hand and waved his fingers. "Light," he whispered, and smiled as it came to him. He got out of bed.

He went about preparing himself slowly, not feeling any rush to do anything. It was the start of summer and he had plenty of time. Too much, maybe. He was sure that by the end he would want to be back at Hogwarts. Already, he missed his friends. He missed some of his classes. He even missed one or two professors.

Having showered, he dressed for his trip to the Muggle stores in blue jeans and a plain grey t-shirt. He ate breakfast, and then he checked the terrarium where his toad Trevor lived during the summer. As he refilled the Trevor's water dish, he talked to him

"I'm starting it today," he said. "Going to get the plants this morning, then I'm working on the garden some more. I'll clear out some more weeds, and maybe dig you up some nice fresh worms. Then there's Griselda Marchbanks coming over, Gran wants me to be there, and after that, I can start the potions for the soil. What do you think, Trevor? Strengthening potions? I can do those." He laughed softly. Yes, he could make a Strengthening potion now. That, along with five others, which he had learned flawlessly for the Potions O.W.L., hoping he would have memorized the one that came up on the practical. "After all, it needs to be magic dirt, if I'm going to make my own magic plant in it. Well, a new magic plant," he corrected himself. "Now, where's that list of the ones I want to use? I made it right before supper... there was Black Peony, and Julia's Rose, and... Oh, where is it?"

Trevor couldn't tell Neville where the parchment had gone, but hopped sympathetically inside his terrarium. Neville searched the room for a bit, at last finding the crumpled parchment where it had rolled under his bed. "Accio parchment," he joked as he reached and grabbed it, wondering as he did when his new wand would arrive and make the words meaningful again.

Neville unfolded the list he'd made the night before. Flipping open the seed catalogue, he checked prices, then rummaged through his things before finding the wad of Muggle money he'd collected over the years. Back when it had seemed likely he was a Squib, his family had begun putting together a stash of Muggle money for him, and while most of it was kept in a bank, they were always giving him pieces of Muggle cash, or the strangely named little coins. Neville had never figured out why a coin so much lighter than a Galleon was called a pound, and in several years of taking Muggle studies had neither been told nor thought to ask Professor Turple.

"Go dark," he told his room as he walked out the door, even though he knew the lamps would stop burning without his say-so as soon as the room was empty.

Neville's trip into town was an uneventful bus ride. He could have used Floo Powder, as he and his grandmother had done the day before to get to Diagon Alley, but they lived close enough to Higham that the bus ride was short, and besides, the only fireplace he knew of in the Wizard's Quarter was his Great-Uncle Algie's, who he doubted would be glad to have an unannounced visitor at this time of the morning. He couldn't have Apparated into town either, since he still didn't know how to. So, he chose to get the bus, and got off at the garden shop he'd been going to since he was a child.

As Neville walked through the door, his nose was at once assailed by the odors of the fertilizers and pesticides that Muggles used on their plants. He remembered thinking he'd have to do the same thing, and he hated it. The chemicals smelled so much like a Potions accident, only stronger, and to Neville they smelled like failure. It was the one thing he hated about the place.

Holding his breath, he hurried deeper into the store, past the aisles of foul-smelling chemical treatments, and to the counter where the cashier greeted him.

"May I help you?" she asked, a girl not much older than Neville, slight and pale and blonde with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was ugly, he thought. Thin and blonde: just like a girl Malfoy.

"Oh, I'm looking for a couple of seeds or seedlings. I'd rather not wait for them to come from a catalogue," Neville said. "Black Peonies and a few rose varieties. Do you have them?"

"All our flower seeds are on those racks," the girl said, pointing. "Rose bushes are through there, on the right. We only have a few varieties, though."

Neville thanked her and went to look for the roses first. They were the prettier of the flowers, he thought. And, since he wouldn't have to wait for the seeds to grow (again he wished he had his new wand already, since Professor Sprout had taught him several charms for speeding the growth of non-magical plants), he could start blending them sooner. Blending the roses would be easy, he knew, since rose-breeding had long been a Muggle pastime. Mixing them with poppies would be the challenge that required his magic. And, according to his plan, the new flower he made would be a magical one.

Unfortunately, the store didn't have any of the rose varieties that Neville wanted. So, he picked a few packets of Black Peony seeds and took them to the girl at the register.

"Just these?" she asked, smiling cheerfully.

"Yes," Neville said. "Eww, you look like you're Malfoy's sister! You've even got greasy hair like his."

"No luck with the roses, then?"

"No. I'll have to get them by post, I suppose," Neville answered as she rang up his purchases. He wished he'd come to the store a little later in the day. That way the pale, sallow creature before him might have had some other customers to pay attention to. Her face unnerved him. "Be nice!" he reminded himself, hearing the words as a hiss in his mind. "She's just being polite. And it's not her fault she looks like Malfoy. She's not related to it at all: she's clearly a Muggle. Just a nice Muggle, she doesn't know you, she's just bored and wants to chat a little." He glanced up, and saw her eyes. Their color registered in his mind: grey.

He took his change and the bag she put his seeds in, and he ran.

Neville panted as he reached the nearest bus stop. Gasping, he swung his head around, looking for the bus. "Where is that blasted thing?" He wanted to be home, he wanted to be away from the shop, he wanted to be away from that hideously deformed girl in the nursery shop, the freak that looked like Malfoy. "It wasn't him, it wasn't him, it wasn't him" he was telling himself, but he wasn't listening very closely.

He stared out the window all through the ride home, hating the hulking machine that took so long to get from place to place. Thousands of years to think of ways to move about without magic, and this was the best the Muggles could do. "I could have had to live like this!" he thought as the bus stopped yet again for someone to get off, which did nothing to improve his spirits, although it did give them a nice push in the downward direction.

When at last he arrived at home, Neville went straight to his room, where he dumped the seed packets on his desk and flopped onto his bed. He rolled onto his side and glared at the wall, slowly curling his knees up to his chest. He hadn't gotten around to feeling ashamed about panicking because a Muggle girl had reminded him of Draco Malfoy, though that would come, soon enough. Instead, he lay on his bed, hating Malfoy.

"Bloody fucking shit Malfoy, I hate him! I wish Ron and Harry wouldn't always keep me from punching him. I could knock his teeth out. 'Hey everybody, look at Longbottom! He just knocked all my nasty pointy teeth out. Maybe he'll cave my skull in next. I would look so much better, don't you think?' Ugh, he's such a bastard. Scheming, lying, rude, evil, nasty, ugly Slytherin bastard! Thinks he's so special cause he's some rich swine. Probably inbr-"

"Neville? Are you in there?" his grandmother said, knocking on the door and interrupting his personal rant on the matter of Draco Malfoy.

"Yes, Gran."

She opened the door and stuck her head in.

"Neville, dear, are you alright?"

"Yes, Gran. I've just got a bit of a stomachache." It wasn't much of a lie: thinking about Malfoy sometimes was enough to give him an upset stomach. This just wasn't one of those times.

"Oh. Do you need a potion?"

"No, I don't think so. This just came on, and it's not very bad. I'll be fine," he told her. "Yeah, I'll be fine, after I make Malfoy cry. He probably wishes he was a Death Eater, only he's too stupid for them to want him. He's so pathetic. I hate him."

"Alright, dear."

"Might as well be sure she'll want me this afternoon. And Draco Malfoy is the scum of the earth," he thought as she turned and was closing the door behind her. Neville called to her.

"Oh, Gran! Didn't you say someone was coming over today?"

She stuck her head back into the room. "Yes, Griselda Marchbanks will be here for tea. If you're going to be working in that garden today, I'd like if you were cleaned up by then."

"Of course, Gran."

With that, she went back into the hall, leaving Neville in his room, alone except for Trevor. Sighing, Neville went to the terrarium and picked him up. "You hate Malfoy too, don't you?" he asked, holding the toad in front of him. "Of course you do. And you're worth a lot of him, too. I'm worth twelve of him, did you know that?" He smiled at that, the phrase coming to him out of his memory. "Maybe more, now," he added dryly, and the thin smile stayed as it was.

"I can't do this sort of thing," he told himself. "That was so stupid. She wasn't Malfoy, she barely even looked like Malfoy, and why are you obsessing about him so much? Get over it! What's wrong with me? I really am a dumb lump."

He sat down and picked up one of the envelopes of seeds. Absent-mindedly, he started tapping it on the desk. He really didn't feel like working, now that he'd gotten all worked up about his blond tormentor. Although, when he was doing things with plants, it often did cheer him up. And he needed to start, and there was nothing else to do, and the list went on, and so he gave in and started to change into clothes more suitable for weeding and tilling.

*****

His grandmother's friend arrived while Neville was in the shower, so he didn't know she'd shown up. As he stepped out of the shower and grabbed his towel, though, he thought he heard them talking downstairs. He dried off, dressed in the clothes he'd worn into town in the morning, and went to join the two elderly witches. His grandmother would expect him to make an appearance, he knew, as part of her ongoing quest to make sure he developed proper manners. Besides, she was hosting Griselda Marchbanks, head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, who might let something slip about his O.W.L. grades. That could salvage Neville's so-far-lousy day.

"Ah, Neville! There you are!" his grandmother said as he entered the living room, where she and her guest were sitting in two of the room's old, overstuffed chairs, sipping their tea and chatting.

"I'm sorry, Gran. I lost track of time in the garden, and just finished having a shower," he explained. "Hello, Professor Marchbanks."

"Professor? I do wonder why you all called me that at Hogwarts," the ancient witch mused. "I retired from teaching a long time ago. I just test you children now." She took a sip of her tea. "So, you were in your garden?" she asked. "I imagine it's a good one, isn't it Neville?"

The witch was grinning, and her eye seemed to be twinkling. "She knows my Herbology score, doesn't she? Bugger! That one's not going to be any surprise." Neville shook his head. "Not really, at least not right now. I haven't finished clearing out all the weeds that grew while I was at Hogwarts."

"Well, I can't imagine it will take you long to do that," Marchbanks said. "You're clearly capable with plants. They finished marking all the O.W.L. Herbology theoreticals the day before yesterday, and I reviewed the marks yesterday. Can I help it if I remember how my friend's grandson did?"

"So Neville did well?" his grandmother asked.

"I should say so, Agatha. I don't remember his exact numbers on the two parts, but overall, Neville here scored an O on his Herbology examination."

"Neville! That's wonderful!"

"Thank you" Neville said, feeling relived, despite having been certain he'd performed well on the Herbology O.W.L. "Professor, do you know any of my other grades?"

The honorific elicited a slight chuckle from Marchbanks, who shook her head. "I'm sorry, Neville, but the only other examinations we've finished marking entirely are the Defense Against the Dark Arts exams, and there's a bit of a problem with that one. Everything should be finished in a week or two, though."

"What sort of problem?" Mrs. Longbottom asked.

"Well, because of that mess they had at the Ministry Building we decided that it was the most important exam this year, and so we put extra readers on the theory portion, to get it finished sooner. Unfortunately, some people in the Ministry have been pressing for the scoring to get changed this year. That's holding things up, because if they get their way, we'll have to go back and re-read all the theory sections."

Neville's face scrunched up when he heard this. Having just spent a year with Umbridge as his official Defense instructor, he wasn't surprised that the Ministry was trying to fiddle with the exam. "What sort of changes?" he asked.

Marchbanks sighed. "A few of the Minister's assistants have suggested that the theory portion should count more than the practical. I don't like that, and I refuse to change the criteria for this year's grading. As long as that fool Fudge doesn't pass another one of his 'Educational Decrees', I'll win in the end. People are starting to realize that Fudge is the worst Minister we've had for eighty years. Besides, it's shortsighted to discount the practical, and it's unethical to change the way the exam is graded after you all have sat it. Not that either of those have stopped Fudge and his lackeys before."

"Yes, I read those decrees in the Prophet, and heard some from Neville about the way he was interfering at Hogwarts this year," Mrs. Longbottom said. "And that business about trying to sack Dumbledore, dreadful. The whole family was delighted that Hogwarts took Neville, but a few times this year, I did wish he'd gone to some other school where he could get his education free of Cornelius Fudge's notice. And have they offered you back your seat on the Wizengamot yet? You'd said you'd resigned it to protest one of the decrees, but they've all been repealed, and Dumbledore's back at Hogwarts now."

"If they have, I didn't bother to listen," Marchbanks said. "I won't be a part of it until we have a new Minister of Magic, which had better be soon. It was bad enough when Fudge was just incompetent, but now he's trying to use Ministry departments for his own agenda. You knew he brought Harry Potter before the entire Wizengamot on an Improper Underage Magic charge, didn't you?"

"No," said Mrs. Longbottom, starting to cut Neville out of the conversation. "When was this?"

"Late last summer. Dumbledore defended the boy, which was amazing to watch. He always is. Tore Fudge's case apart completely: Potter had cast the Patronus charm, but a witness had seen him and a Muggle being attacked by Dementors. You should have seen the look on Fudge's face when Dumbledore pointed out that Dementors being in a Muggle neighborhood ought to be investigated."

"What?" Mrs. Longbottom demanded. "The Dementors were misbehaving before they abandoned Azkban? He had warning?"

By this time, Neville was feeling more than a little uncomfortable. He was by no means a fan of Cornelius Fudge, who was responsible for Umbridge, but he didn't enjoy listening to his grandmother and his friend talk politics when he wasn't exactly able or invited to join in. Besides, truth be told he had gotten an unexpected benefit some from Umbridge's refusal to actually teach: he'd been able to use every session for the last two months of her otherwise useless class to study his Potions texts, without which he'd have had no hope of passing the theory portion, and since she had never assigned homework worth doing she had given him extra time to practice the six Potions he'd chosen to learn, drilling until he knew that if the practical called for one of those six, he would perform flawlessly on it. Of course, if he'd been examined on any other potion, he'd have done as poorly as Professor Snape so often said he'd do. It was Neville's good fortune that he'd been right about the Draught of Peace, and he believed his gamble had paid off. Unfortunately, he wasn't going to find out today.

He waited a few minutes, not contributing anything to the increasingly irate conversation until both women paused. He then asked to be excused.

"Of course, dear," his grandmother said, waving him off. "Don't leave the house, though. I'd prefer you not spend too much time in town until you have your new wand, and it won't be too long until supper's ready."

"Yes, Gran," Neville said, standing up to go.

"What happened to your wand?" Marchbanks asked.

"Oh, it broke," Neville said.

Then he realized that was the truth, not the lie he'd told his grandmother. "OH FUCK!" he told himself. "Shit, maybe she didn't notice. Got to get upstairs before she starts asking questions. Shit, shit, shit!"

A glance at his grandmother's face as he left the room told Neville that she had indeed noticed the discrepancy. She let it slide, though, perhaps because she had company, or because she was more interested in pointing out more problems with the dreadful state the Minister had allowed the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to descend to. Regardless, Neville was breathless and nervous when he reached his room. He shut the door behind himself and charged to his desk, where he slapped around for a fresh piece of parchment and quill.

When he found them, he stopped. He'd been thinking he would owl off a quick note to someone, giving them news before his grandmother grounded him for his lie. Only, he had nothing to say, yet, except for the normal "Hullo, how's your summer, I hope it is good, I am bored, let's do something, see you soon, Neville" sort of letter, and he wanted to have something more to say. It was a shame that he didn't know any O.W.L. scores besides his own Herbology result. It would've been fun to send off. And there was no point asking anyone for advice about what to do to stave off Gran. There was no way that would get there and back in time. Maybe there was a way to tell her how it broke without mentioning Dumbledore's Army or the battle with the Death Eaters that would satisfy her. He wasn't sure it would be a good idea to tell her about those, and didn't want to make the decision himself. Nor did he want to bother Ron, Harry, or Hermione about it. He couldn't risk one of them thinking it was a stupid question.

He wasn't left with much of a choice then, if he was to write to someone and ask what they thought about sharing the truth with Gran. Ginny was a good friend, plenty clever, and had been involved too, but she was Ron's sister. This of course meant that she lived in the same house as him, talked to him often, and might go to him with the question. And since Ron was part of the trio Neville didn't want to ask, that just wouldn't do.

So it was that the process of elimination left him with one choice: Luna Lovegood. He had nothing against the girl, who was certainly nice, although she was strange. He knew a lot of people noticed Luna, but that had led to her getting nicknamed "Loony." Still, she was a Ravenclaw, and they were all supposed to be clever, and there was no major downside to telling her. It wasn't too likely she'd give him grief about asking if it was a good idea or not to tell his grandmother the truth about the end-of-term events. She might even have good advice. Neville made up his mind: he'd write Luna.

The problem was, he'd only known Luna a year, through the train ride to Hogwarts and their mutual involvement in the DA, and so he wasn't sure what sort of style he should write in. As he wrote, he kept grimacing and wanting to change things, but he wasn't sure how long he'd have before he caught the hammer stroke he could feel coming.

At last he finished, and looked the letter over.

Dear Luna,

Hello. How's your summer? I hope it's good. Didn't you say you were going to Sweden? When are you going? It sounds like quite an adventure.

I was wondering if I could get your advice about something. Remember the battle we had in the Ministry building? Well, I never told my Gran about it, because I didn't want to tell her about Dumbledore's Army, and I don't know how well she'd like hearing about me fighting Death Eaters. Anyway, my wand broke during it, while we were split up before you got knocked out, and the lie I told her about what happened to my wand wasn't a good one. I told her I dropped it in the lake and the Giant Squid ate it. And it was my dad's wand, so she was even madder than she would have been when I told her I'd lost it. Well, today we had company - it was Griselda Marchbanks, and don't tell anybody, but she said all our O.W.L. scores should be ready in a week or two - and I accidentally said I'd broken my wand. So now I know my Gran's going to ask what really happened. I think I can tell her enough about how it broke without telling her about the DA and the fight at the Ministry, but, well, I was wondering what you thought about telling her about that. Have you told your parents? Or should we keep this secret?

Your Friend,

Neville

It wasn't great, he decided, but it would do. He found an envelope in one of his drawers, put the letter in, and sealed it. Opening the door softly, he snuck down the stairs, relieved when he got to the downstairs hallway and heard the two witches still talking in the living room. He walked down the hall, hoping he wouldn't get called in when he passed the doorway, and went to their owl's cage. "Here, Cedfer," he said as he tied the letter to the old nearly black owl. "Take this to Luna Lovegood. I think she's at her house, but I don't know where she lives. She might be in Sweden."

Cedfer hooted derisively at him, as though disappointed that Neville was relying on the owl's enchantments to locate Luna rather than knowing the proper address himself. Neville shrugged it off. He didn't know how they did it, and possibly no wizard did, but wizards' owls always knew where to take things. Cedfer would find the Lovegoods better than he could.

Neville carried the owl to the door and released him. The sun was starting to fall, and he imagined Cedfer might do some hunting before carrying the letter, not that it mattered. Neville shut the door and went back upstairs, again avoiding comment as he passed the living room.

Returning to his room, Neville flopped down on his bed. "Go out!" he told the lights, relishing the darkness when they did. He was tired, though it was early. It had been a difficult day, with the morning's minor trauma and now the stress induced by his impending doom, as well as several hours doing physical work in his garden. Really, he was exhausted.

He kicked off his shoes and stretched out, glad he had no glasses to take off and put away. Sleep would be nice. A nap would pass the time until supper, or maybe he would sleep through until tomorrow. His Gran couldn't pry about his wand while he was asleep. "And maybe," he thought as he yawned, "I'll have that dream again."