Subplot

7 - Neville

Neville carefully closed the zipper of his borrowed jeans. Dean's warning had filled him with a vague apprehension. He had never worn such a piece of clothing before, because the dress code of his Grandma was no less strict than the one at Hogwarts. Wizards wore robes, Muggles wore trousers, she'd say. Now here he was wearing an ill-fitting sweatshirt of Harry and the strange, tight jeans of Dean Thomas.

"We're going out to a Muggle town, so you'd better look like Muggles," Professor Varlerta had told them. Neville tried to pull the tight sleeves of Seamus' denim jacket over the baggy sweatshirt sleeves, wondering how in the world Muggles ever managed if they knew neither magic nor ordinary clothes. Then he laced up his shoes - they were his own, at least - pocketed his wand and his recorder and went to the Common Room. Ginny was already waiting for him, looking as if she was born in jeans, sweatshirt and trainers, the only odd-looking thing about her the smaller shaman drum strapped to her back.

After the 'Icy Fingers' incident, Professor Varlerta had decided they were not to go anywhere without taking along their instruments. Ginny was constantly complaining about it; Neville was glad that his recorder was so small and light. But today he was going to get another instrument, something more powerful than a recorder, Varlerta had said. That's why she was taking her two apprentices to a Muggle music shop.

When the two trainees knocked on the door of Varlerta's building, the teacher came out to the car straight away. She was wearing black denims, a green jumper and a black leather jacket. Out of one of its many pockets she produced a small glass flask and a silver spoon. She let two drops of a bluish potion fall on the spoon, put it into her mouth and then magically cleaned the spoon.

"I don't really like it if I can't see myself, so I take this every time I use the Invisibility Booster. If you want some, too, you can have it."

Both Ginny and Neville asked for the potion and got two drops each; then the teacher got behind the wheel, Ginny sat down next to her and Neville let himself fall on the backseat. The car was already vibrating with impatience. Varlerta gave the steering wheel a pat, pushed the tiny silver button on the dashboard, and off they went into the air.

The view was breathtaking. Neville, to whom sitting on a shaky broomstick was nothing short of a punishment, enjoyed flying now from the relative safety of Drifter's backseat. The towers and turrets of Hogwarts were already starting to grow smaller and smaller among the autumn landscape of red and yellow. The lake looked like a blue-grey puddle; Neville could see the fang arms of the Giant Squid rippling its surface. On the other side of the castle, the Quidditch teams were practising. Most of the pitch was taken up by the team in red and gold, while the Slytherin team, made up almost totally of newcomers as so many of the old team had left the school, were more or less pushed to the edge of the field. Neville could see Hagrid harvesting giant pumpkins, while - he squinted to see the tiny figures - Professor Sprout was making caretaker Filch clean the outside of the greenhouses.

Ginny seemed to be unimpressed by the view and rather started to go through the box that sat in a compartment right before her. Neville looked over her shoulder. The box held CDs, shiny discs that had music on them, as he had recently learned. Some of Varlerta's CDs looked like they were something for children: One of the covers showed the upper body of a rather dumb-looking angel protruding from a flying star, while another showed the picture of a red-haired little girl playing away happily at a piano, accompanied by a pixy with a mandolin.

"I don't think so, Ginny," Varlerta said to her. "Molly would probably soap my mouth if I played music containing bad words to her daughter. - So would Agatha, come to think of it," she added, looking over her shoulder at Neville.

The CD covers looked odd indeed: One showed a black-haired woman wearing make-up and a red satin dress who was lying in shallow water as if she had drowned. On the back of another there was a suckling boar supported on forks, the word 'undertow' shaved into its fur. Varlerta rejected a CD with a cover displaying a landscape coloured by sunset, termed 'Welcome to Sky Valley' and another showing a man's head bent back as if in pain, fittingly termed 'The Bends'.

"We'll go for nice mainstream for now, I think," she said and selected a CD of a female singer. Ginny tapped her foot with the guitar riffs of the first song while Neville tried to figure out why the singer was so angry.

After a while of flying above the clouds, Varlerta dipped down a bit and turned down the volume of the CD player.

"See there, the stone circle?" she said and pointed at the landscape. Indeed, in the middle of a deserted moor here and there spotted with white sheep stood a small stone circle. Neville and Ginny made agreeing noises. Varlerta flew up into the clouds again as they had left the circle behind them. She was navigating mainly by using a small compass she had installed next to the steering wheel.

"We're going there to experiment, next week or so," Varlerta told her trainees. "I believe the stone circles to be spots of special power that can be used for Strengthening. They are one of the main reasons that I came back to Britain, actually." Then she turned the music back up again, singing along at times with her pleasant, though by no means remarkable voice. Neville was a bit embarrassed by this, because in his family, proper adults did not sing, but of course he did not tell her.

When Varlerta dipped down once more, she landed the car neatly on a deserted little road right off the main road. Then she pushed the button, which meant, Neville supposed, that they were visible to everybody else again. They drove on the ground now and soon turned into the main road on which they would enter the Muggle town the Muggle way, as Varlerta had termed it. Drifter did not seem to like this; Varlerta constantly had to tell it to keep its wheels on the ground. Obviously the teacher was in the best of moods, humming along softly with a song in which the singer claimed she was not the doctor.

The Muggle town was noisy and dirty, Neville thought. He had hardly ever seen anything of towns besides Diagon Alley and King's Cross station, which was nothing like these narrow streets lined with strange shops, laundromats, pubs and restaurants. There were Muggles everywhere, walking along the pavements, looking into shop windows, mothers pushing prams, children riding bikes. The streets were jammed with cars, all of them driven by Muggles. There was a constant horn-beeping and engine-roaring around them. Neville also noticed that many drivers seemed to shake their fists at Varlerta or make worse gestures as she speedily wormed Drifter through the packed streets. Finally the car jumped into a parking spot which obviously annoyed an elderly man driving a fancy Bentley. Varlerta turned off the music and told the car not to trust any strangers, then turned to Ginny and Neville.

"Remember, you are Muggles here. Leave your instruments in the car and your wands in your pockets. Do not talk about spells, or magic, or knuts, or anything, let alone do any magic. And please don't call the people in the shop Muggles, it will only confuse them. If there's something you do not understand, ask me quietly instead of alerting the whole shop.

"I want you to choose instruments. That goes especially for you, Neville, but you should also have a look around, Ginny. Maybe we can solve your problem here, which would be great, because no one sells magical instruments in the whole of Britain anymore. Choose what you like and don't worry about the money - within reason, I mean. But keep in mind that many of these instruments require proper training and a lot of practising. I may not be able to teach you as I've never played a proper brass or wind instrument. We might even have to get you a Muggle teacher. Well, let's go in now."

The music shop consisted of several large rooms filled with more musical instruments than Neville had ever seen. Varlerta approached the shop assistants, idly standing around in a corner and, assuming her broadest American accent, briskly told them to help her niece and nephew choose nice instruments, decent ones, not the cheap stuff. The shop assistants looked quite eager after that. The woman went off with Ginny, while the man asked Neville what he wanted. Varlerta told them she'd be gone for half an hour and left the shop.

The man wanted to get Neville interested in pianos, but Neville knew one thing: He wanted an instrument that resonated by means of his voice, a brass or wind instrument.

"A trumpet is always a nice instrument for a young man," the assistant told him, "or maybe a trombone or a flugelhorn?" He went away several times to fetch the instruments that gave off a brassy glow and told Neville what to do with his mouth. Then he fetched a colleague of his who could actually show him. Neville tried to get a note out of the trumpet and the trombone, but couldn't. The assistants told him not to worry as this was normal in the beginning, but then showed Neville a clarinet and saxophones of different sizes. Neville rather liked the tone of the soprano sax but could not make any of these instruments emit any kind of music either. Again, the assistants assured him that it wasn't easy for beginners, but to Neville none of these instruments felt quite right.

"I played a recorder up to now," he told them shyly. "Don't you have anything that's more like it? Something like a flute?"

"You don't want to play the flute." One of the assistants frowned at him. "It's, you know, a bit of a girls' instrument. The boys at school would laugh at you. You should really go for the saxophone."

"Can I just try?" Neville asked, and of course he could. The moment the shop assistant had assembled the long, silver traverse flute, he knew he had been right to insist. The flute felt cool in his hands; he could see his tiny reflection in its silver surface. The assistants told him where to put his fingers and how to blow it, and when Neville tried, the flute rewarded him with a clear, resonating note. The shop assistants both looked impressed.

"That's not bad at all, boy," one of them said. "Maybe you can be a second Ian Anderson." They showed him about a dozen other traverse flutes and Neville tried them all but stuck with the first instrument he had played.

Meanwhile Varlerta had returned, carrying a small plastic bag from a CD store and a stack of mail. They were all Muggle envelopes addressed to her and with American stamps on them, one of them fairly large. Ginny was with her, looking a bit defiant; obviously she had not chosen an instrument for herself. "I wanted to get my own drum set, but she wouldn't hear of it," she told Neville.

Varlerta bought several packets of guitar strings, a few pairs of drumsticks and a Teach Yourself to Play Flute-book. She paid for them and for Neville's flute with quite a bit of strange, papery Muggle money, put the strings and sticks into her large coat pocket and handed the plastic bag with flute and book to Neville. The female shop assistant who had gone off with Ginny looked at her reproachfully, but Varlerta ignored it and took her two assistants back out where Drifter was waiting for them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As they were flying home while dusk was falling, listening to strange rock sounds, Neville found himself wishing they would never arrive. Dark grey or ink-blue clouds sped past them; in the very west, a hint of purple remained as a memory of the sunset. Below them, a million lights the size of pinpoints told a glittering tale of people living there, oblivious to the magical vehicle gliding through the sky. Coming from the four strange Muggle speakers the music flooded through him like the soundtrack of a dream. The heavy, droning guitars and even the distorted, passionate vocals of the male singer, the simple flow of the music melted into his visual experience. Remotely, he noticed that Varlerta had abolished her 'No-music-with-swearwords'- policy only too obviously. Everything around him was becoming unreal, the strange, noisy Muggle world behind them and the world before them, a world he was used to but did not quite feel at home in. All there would ever be now were he, Ginny and the teacher at the steering wheel.

As much as he fancied his little illusion, he found it impossible to uphold it, especially as he noticed that Varlerta frequently consulted her small silver wristwatch and was obviously keeping her foot on the accelerator. All too soon, just when the singer howled 'Don't try to take me away, like I can't live without you' in a rather non-romantic tone, the familiar towers of Hogwarts could be made out as black silhouettes against the dark blue sky. Within a couple of minutes, they landed neatly on the lawn in front of Varlerta's building.

"Hop along to the castle, you two," Varlerta told them. "I've got plans for tonight and I'm already a bit late."

"Why, what are you doing?" Ginny asked audaciously.

"I'm going out with a man, of course," the teacher replied tartly, then corrected herself. "Actually, I'm just taking out a friend for a drink on his birthday."

"But I want to practice," Ginny complained. "You said I could play on your drum set. I'm sure Neville wants to try out his flute, too. Can't we stay here while you are out?"

Neville felt obliged to nod and make agreeing noises to that. Of course, he could play his new flute in Gryffindor Tower as well, but he did not feel very confident about it. He'd much prefer the relative isolation of the soundproof building.

"Alright, alright, you two. Get inside and enjoy yourself." Varlerta slammed the car door and went to unlock the door of her building. Neville and Ginny followed her into the main room, her 'music laboratory' as they had started to call it.

"Just make sure you do not miss your curfew, or if you do and get into trouble for it, don't you dare blame it on me." With these words she disappeared into what Neville guessed must be her private quarters.

Ginny went to the drum set at once, sat down, retrieved the sticks and broke out into a sudden burst of noise. Neville sat down on the squashy sofa standing in the far corner of the room and took the case of his new flute out of the vile plastic bag that came from the Muggle music shop. The case was plastic, too, he noticed, and its blue velvet lining felt artificial as well. But the instrument inside... well, that was the real thing. He took out the pieces of the silver flute, assembled them and turned the shiny instrument in his hands.

Right next to him the door of Varlerta's private quarters opened and the teacher emerged, dressed in black witches robes once more. Neville thought these robes were somehow different from the ones teachers usually wore; it was shiny and elegantly cut. Varlerta's high-heeled boots of red dragon hide were hard to miss indeed. Over her arm she carried her cloak.

"Well, enjoy yourselves, kids, and don't roam the grounds after dark. When you leave say 'Rock 'n Roll High School', that locks the door. If you are still here when I return, you'll be in trouble." And with a slight wave of her hand she was gone.

Neville felt a strong urge to try out the flute on his own, if only because Ginny was making such a tremendous amount of noise again. He tried the door of the adjoining room, which seemed like an ink-filled cave behind its large glass pane. It was unlocked. When Neville made the magic torches light up, he found the room held a couch and a table supporting a large flat device with innumerable buttons and strange plastic levers. On the shelves lining the walls he saw speakers, a CD-player and many more things that he would not have been able to name a few weeks ago. Varlerta's electric guitar with its glimmering mother-of-pearl decoration, which she often kept in this room, stood outside on a stand in front of the amplifier, however.

After closing the door, Neville felt disappointed because it hardly closed out any of the noise Ginny was making on the drum set. He almost turned to leave and find another silent place when he saw a lever near the door that said 'Sound Block.' After pushing it, the room fell into almost complete silence. Satisfied, Neville settled down on the sofa and took the Teach Yourself to Play Flute-book out of the plastic bag. He scanned through it, looking at pictures of flute players and at drawings showing the reader lip and finger placement. Also there were a lot of the weird little music notes Varlerta had shown him. Neville frowned. They did not make sense to him. After trying to figure out how to put these dots into music for a while, and what to do with the silver flute in his hand, he put the book away and put the flute to his lips. In the shop it had seemed so easy. He had just blown into it, used his fingers to close some of the keys, and music had come out of it. Why not try that again?

He played for a while, though unsatisfied with the tone he was producing on the instrument as well as with not knowing where to put his finger to produce which sound. Maybe Varlerta was right, that it was one of those instruments you had to really learn and practice. But he did not want to wait until someone provided him with a Muggle music teacher. Maybe he should try to make sense out of the black dots after all. With the recorder, it had been relatively easy: Add a finger, and out came a lower note, or pretty much so. Did the traverse flute work the same?

Finally, Neville took his old recorder out of his robes' pocket. It was wrapped into a crumpled piece of parchment on which Varlerta had written down which note had which name and how to play it on the recorder. There were also a few simple melodies notated on the sheet. Varlerta had said they might be helpful for doing magic or for adding Strength to someone else's spell, for example if someone hit their class with an evil curse again. He could play them by now, more from his memory than from the notes, though when he found out he had forgotten one of them, he managed to reconstruct it with help of the half-cryptic writing. After playing the tunes on the recorder, Neville took out his flute, trying to find out what he had to do with it to play the same tunes.

It was a slow, note-to-note process, but after a while, Neville thought he had made his way through two of the tunes on the flute pretty well. He stretched, then rubbed his upper lip. It hurt a bit. Suddenly there was a rap on the door.

"Come in," he said. Ginny opened the door and sat down on the edge of the sofa, leaving the door open.

"How is it going?" she asked. "Can you play on it yet?"

"A little," Neville said evasively, but when she implored him, he demonstrated his success.

"They are to support a spell, or a Shielding. Varlerta wrote them down for me."

"We should try to do something with that," Ginny said enthusiastically. "Like, I try to Coax something and you support me with these tunes, and we'll see if I do any better then."

"Shouldn't we go back?" Neville asked. "We should probably be in bed by now. She said if we get into trouble we are to blame ourselves, and she'll be angry if she gets back and we are still here."

"Oh, don't be such a spoilsport, Neville," Ginny chided. "Didn't you hear her? She's got a fancy date. She won't be back for ages. Let's just try it a little, just five minutes or so, then we can get back to the castle."

Neville considered. He hated to get into trouble, and he felt he was far from ready to do magic on the flute he had touched for the very first time that day. But it was hard to say no to Ginny's pleading words and the joy in her eyes. Just when he was about to agree, they heard the noise of Varlerta's key in the lock.

"Noxos!" whispered Ginny, pointing her wand in the general direction of the outer room. Immediately, all the magic lights in both rooms went out. Pitch black darkness surrounded them. Ginny closed the door of the small room. Neville and she cowered down into the far corner, able to observe the larger room through the glass pane when the magic lamps were re-lighted a second later. Neville started when he saw that the person entering with Varlerta was Professor Snape. Dressed in flowing black robes accentuating his night-blue hair, his bat-like figure filled the hodgepodge 'music laboratory' with a menacing presence.

The two teachers obviously were wrapped up in an animated conversation. Torn between curiosity and fear, Neville sneaked to the lever near the door and undid the Sound Block. Now Ginny and he could overhear what they said.

"Sorry about the mess," Varlerta's pleasant tone was lined with a trace of irony. "It's of course entirely the kids' fault. They've been practising here all night, throwing stuff all over the place, I suppose. I always keep my things in perfect order, as you know." This, of course, was a blatant lie, but Neville suspected not only that Professor Snape knew that, but also that Varlerta knew that he knew.

"You are too permissive with your students," he told her in a condescending voice. "Especially your - er - assistants." His tone stated clearly that he would have found a different, less kind name for Ginny and Neville. "I appreciate your sympathetic concern for the underdog, but you are clearly taking things too far. Especially that Neville Longbottom. It's nice of you to feel sorry for him, but you have to admit that never in Hogwart's long history has it harboured a student less talented than him."

Neville felt hatred overwhelm him. Right then, he would have liked to take his flute and play Professor Snape to death, if such a thing was possible. Professor Varlerta was one of the few teachers with whom he felt comfortable. If he made a mistake, which happened rather frequently, she showed him how to put it right, but also told him not to worry about it because, as she said, mistakes were part of every decent learning process. And she never compared him with anyone, neither with his classmates nor with Ginny. Now Professor Snape would make her see 'Neville the Fool' through his eyes, he feared. However, Varlerta seemed to be rather amused.

"Oh, you're at it again, aren't you? Well, please kindly permit me to see for myself whether or not he will accidentally tear down this building and get all of us killed."

"You don't trust me, then?" Professor Snape raised his left eyebrow. Neville was not quite sure whether or not he really was angry with her. If Professor Snape had raised an eyebrow at him in class, usually terrible things had followed. However, it might be different with Varlerta, as she was also a teacher. She seemed to think the same, because she laughed.

"Oh, Verus! I'd trust you with my life without thinking twice about it, and with everybody else's if I really had to, but don't ask me to take your word for something which sounds just like a matter of opinion to me."

This seemed not to go down to well with Professor Snape, but when Varlerta motioned for him to sit down on one of the sofas, he swept a confusion of cables off it and sat. He was now facing the glass pane with the two students behind them who hoped they were invisible in the darkness. Neville heard Ginny hold her breath next to him; he tried to crawl deeper into the dark corner. However, Professor Snape did not even look into their direction but surveyed the large 'music laboratory', the instruments hanging on the wall or resting against amplifiers, the open boxes of screws, wires and small colourful plastic beads that somehow had to do with electricity.

A minute later, Varlerta returned from her private quarters with two goblets and a bottle of wine. She sat down next to Professor Snape, then made a face and got up again because she had sat on a screwdriver. After removing it, she magicked the cork out of the bottle and poured. The grim Potions Master accepted a goblet from her hands. She turned her face to him as if to utter something in the way of 'Cheers', her goblet raised, but he ignored her and said:

"Don't you think you are overdoing it a bit with your Muggle nonsense? I do not doubt that you know a thing or two about fighting the Dark Arts, but - you can't really believe that all this" - he indicated the room filled with musical instruments and numerous music utensils with a swing of his goblet - "will help you any against Lord Voldemort, can you?"

Varlerta sighed and placed her untouched goblet of wine on the floor next to the sofa, careful to put it down out of the reach of her dragon hide-booted feet.

"I know I didn't convince you last time, even though I did make you set your own head on fire with my Muggle nonsense. But just give me another while, and I'm sure you'll see that my work is useful for all of us, not in terms of attack, but in terms of defence. I will build up a wall of sound that can protect us against the worst curses. When I'm ready, I'll prove it to you."

Now it was his turn to laugh, but Neville knew this was his usual Professor Snape laughter, which was neither joyful nor friendly. There was a distinct green shimmer in his hair now.

"I'm sure the Dark Lord will be really impressed when he sees you facing him, armed with your pretty little guitar. He will just dissolve into thin air when you play the first note, won't he?"

Professor Varlerta's face darkened in a way that Neville had never seen before. Her eyebrows almost joined into one line above the bridge of her nose, and her chin moved out.

"Don't push it, Verus," she said to him, not laughing now. "I respect your work, and you could do me the decency of trusting me to do mine."

"Your work -" his voice was audibly raised now - "is to teach the students at this school to defend themselves against the Dark Arts at a time we really need it. We are facing the worst, in case you haven't noticed. When I saw that Dumbledore had hired you, I thought for once in his life he'd chosen the right person for the job, not the usual unqualified scum he picked up from the gutter for it in recent years. Knowing you, knowing your history, I believed you up to it. Now I am a tiny bit disappointed to see you are teaching them" - he was positively shouting now, his face a grimace covered by a few poisonously green strands of hair - "music!"

Flushed with anger, Varlerta opened her mouth as if to reply, but then got up from the sofa rather abruptly and walked a few steps towards the glass pane, hands clenched, breathing heavily. Obviously she was fighting to control herself. After a minute she turned her back to the two students and faced the Potions Master.

"Let's get a few things clear, Verus." Her hands were moving around in large gestures. Neville could see them trembling. "I am not, I repeat to you for maybe the hundredth time, teaching my students music for fun. Neither am I teaching them only music. I'm following the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum for each school year rather narrowly, and the few adaptations I made are due to recent developments in the field of magic. However, I am developing and employing a few methods that will revolutionise a few fields in magic, namely Strengthening and Shielding. And these include the utterly useless and ridiculous Muggle art of music, like it or not!"

Professor Snape had risen from his sofa and walked over to the glass pane as well, leaning against it and making a rather bad show of being cool and condescending.

"I hate to destroy your pleasant dreams, Valerie, but it's a bad, bad world out there. I thought you knew, but the years seem to have taught you nothing." Through the glass the two teachers could be seen as black silhouettes now, facing each other, only a few feet away from the two students hidden in the darkness. Professor Snape was standing so close to Professor Varlerta that she was forced to bend back her head a little to look into his face.

"Don't you want me to take over the burden of a job that is obviously too much for you?" he said with the farce of a friendly smile. Varlerta was obviously fuming. She took another step towards him, poking him in the chest with her wand, her nose only an inch or two from his.

"Verus, you force me up the room partition! Do you hear me? You are driving me completely nuts with your unfairness and ignorance. But I'll show you, and I'll show you tonight! You want to see my methods work? I'm challenging you to a non-limit duel. You hear that? Non-limit, right here and now, and then you'll see that my silly Muggle arts will protect me against any evil curse you could possibly hurl at me."

Neville heard Ginny whimper at his side very, very softly. He took her small, cool hand to comfort her, though his own heart was beating against his chest. These two adults, what's more, teachers, were they completely out of their minds?

Professor Snape apparently did not want to duel with Varlerta, however.

"Oh, what an intelligent suggestion. I'll use Unforgivable curses, and have the regulation committee carry me off to Azkaban a minute later. In case you haven't noticed, you're back in a civilised country with laws and other strange things beyond your comprehension."

"This building is not only soundproof, Verus," Varlerta said in a voice that suddenly sounded completely calm again. "I knew I had to do some rather delicate research here, so I asked Dumbledore to make it magic-proof as well. Nobody on the outside will know what's going on in here, you can trust me with that. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested it."

"Ridiculous!" the Potions Master replied vaguely. Varlerta sat down on the sofa and started to unlace her red boots.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, sounding rather worried. There was a trace of blue in his hair.

"Taking off these boots. The high heels don't really come in handy in a duel, you know. I might trip and sprain an ankle." She pulled off her right boot and started on the left one.

"You can't really mean it," he exclaimed. "Listen, I do not entirely agree with your methods, but there's no need to - wait, leave your guitar on the stand, I don't want to duel with you!"

"We might as well get on with it. I'm just in the right mood for it," Varlerta replied grimly and strapped the guitar over her shoulder. Then she dug out two pairs of fuzzy pink earmuffs and handed one to Professor Snape. "It's going to get pretty loud now. You'll need protection or your ears will be permanently damaged."

"Didn't you hear me? I don't want to duel!" he shouted at her.

"Nope," she replied and shut off all sound by putting on her earmuffs. "Imperio, Crucio, just go ahead with everything that comes to your mind. I'm armed against it, as you'll see." With these words she put her shimmering plectrum - a dragon scale, Neville knew - to her strings.

Neville felt nauseous. He did not want to see the things that would follow, did not want to see Professor Snape apply the kind of torture to Varlerta that had driven his parents to insanity. All he wanted was to get out of this stuffy little room, to run for it. But now Varlerta was working away at her strings, turning to the amplifier to build up a feedback. The noise appeared to shake the building; he could feel the floor vibrate. Quickly Neville crawled to the door and pulled the lever once more, blocking out most of the sound. Now they could feel it rather than hear it.

Huddled in the corner, Ginny trembling at his side, Neville watched the two teachers with dread and fascination. Professor Snape, his face a mask of anger, had his wand pulled out and pointing at Varlerta who was concentrating on her electric guitar. Then he shouted a word; Neville thought it might very well be "Imperio!" Varlerta visibly tensed up, but kept playing, a grim smile on her lips. Snape waited for a moment, then tried again, but did not seem to succeed. Veins protruded on his forehead; a bead of sweat rolled down his left cheek. Suddenly he moved both of his arms forward with force, his black sleeves flying in a wide arch, his wand slashing the air until it pointed at her, his mouth open wide as he screamed the word. "Crucio," Neville whimpered softly to himself.

The floor seemed to move in spasms; Professor Varlerta swayed for a second, her face distorted, but she did not stop playing. Neville had the impression of an invisible but tangible force moving back and forth through the room. Suddenly it was Snape that started to twitch. With a jerk he pulled his wand down. His left hand went to his forehead. Varlerta stopped playing, turned down the volume of the amplifier which was still emitting feedback, put her guitar on the stand and went to the Potions Master, putting a hand on his arm. He shook it off.

The scene appeared strangely mute after all the noise that had preceded it. Suddenly Neville remembered the Sound Blocker. He went to turn it off, returning to his corner with extreme care to move silently, believing that he had unblocked the sounds he and Ginny might be making as well.

"I'm fine, don't worry," Professor Snape spat at Professor Varlerta. She took a step backwards and looked at him.

"So what do you say about my methods now?" she asked. Neville noticed that both teachers looked rather dishevelled and were breathing hard. It took Snape a moment to reply.

"I'll say that unless you've tested it against Avada Kedavra, it is not safe to rely on it."

"Don't be silly. You'd have to be crazy to do that, out of your mind, or suicidal."

"It seems you do not trust your wonderful method overly much yourself, then. - Well, thanks for taking me to the Three Broomsticks for my birthday, but I suppose I'd better get to bed now as I have some important business to do tomorrow." Professor Snape ran a hand through his hair, its emerald green spotted with dark stains of sweat. Varlerta just stared at him and said nothing as he raised a hand in way of parting and then walked out into the night.

Apparently it took her a while to recover. Then suddenly she picked up her red boots still lying on the floor and hurled both of them against the door with force, uttering a stream of swear words worse than any Neville had ever heard so far. Most of them were directed at males in general or at particular parts of their anatomy. Then Varlerta turned on her unshod heels, opened the door to her private quarters, turned off the lights with a wave of her wand and slammed the door behind her.

Neville sat there in the dark, not daring to move. After what seemed an eternity, Ginny tugged at his sleeve.

"I think it would be safe to go now," she whispered and felt her way through the darkness. Neville did not think so, but followed her as staying put was certainly not a good idea. They made their way through the cluttered 'music laboratory' out into the grounds, then ran across the lawn back to the castle. Neville was terrified of running into Professor Snape somewhere, but they were lucky. Not before they had Coaxed the Fat Lady into opening for them at that late hour and had entered the sanctuary of the Gryffindor common room did they dare to speak.

"If he ever finds out we witnessed that he will kill us," Neville whispered, appalled by the magnitude of his fear. Ginny, pale, wide-eyed and shaking, nodded.

"So will she, I think," she replied and headed off to the girls' dormitories.