Unplottable

21 - Neville

Neville had always had loved plants; even as a boy he had always had a few potted plants around, much to the displeasure of his grandmother, who thought they were messy. In Neville's eyes, plants were peaceful and mostly uncritical; they were water-cool and green, but, unlike Trevor the toad, they usually stayed where you put them. Neville loved their unobtrusive, living presence because in the presence of plants, he never felt he had to be anything more than he was.

The plants usually reciprocated his feelings: If Neville cared for a plant, it usually thrived and grew to an extent which sometimes amazed other plant-lovers. Last year, he had learned that, at least partially, this was due to his music magic: He had realised that he had always hummed to plants without giving it a second thought before Professor Varlerta's teaching. Therefore, the discovery that through music he could communicate with plants was not entirely new to him.

In his last Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, however, he had tried something new, and had elicited a result far beyond his expectations: When he had played his flute, Coaxing the plants to reveal who was hidden in or among them, the shrubs had responded by practically spitting people out. Professor Varlerta had been awed; so had Neville. He had never thought of persuading a plant to do anything more than they naturally liked to do, namely thriving, growing, and maybe blossoming. The idea to Coax a plant to do something else for him had come to him spontaneously. Now he had to see what he could make of his unexpected ability.

For almost half a year now, Ginny, he and Professor Varlerta had been practising Coaxing living things by musical means. So far, they had practised on animals and on each other; Professor Varlerta had announced they would start on human volunteer subjects in February, and then, some day, try to Coax people who did not expect them to want something of them. All three of them were making progress, but Coaxing living things was no easy task, and for Neville it was the hardest. His rabbit, for example, had never come to him when he called, or lifted a single paw in obedience; frequently, not even Trevor the toad complied with his melodious wishes. He could by now persuade Ginny and Varlerta to do simple tasks for him, but sometimes he suspected that they just knew his tunes, understood what he wanted and only obeyed him to encourage him. This suspicion raised his feelings of hopelessness. It seemed the thing he was best at was supporting Ginny's Coaxing by his tunes: If she took the lead and he fitted himself into her rhythm, her success notably improved.

Supporting Ginny was all very well, but by itself, not entirely satisfying. Upon his recent discovery, Neville was overjoyed that there appeared to be something he could do better than the others. After the lesson with the Gryffindors, the three of them had gone out into the Forest to Coax some plants. Neville had been the only one who could persuade a tree to bend over so he could climb on it, or make a patch of moss shake out the water in it so he could have a dry seat. Ginny and Varlerta were impressed; neither of them had managed much more than making trees sway a little for them.

"This is a special talent you seem to have, Neville," Varlerta told him. "You have to work on it - you never know when it will become useful." She also talked to Professor Sprout, who agreed to do a special project with Neville, a project which might even count as an extra NEWT. Neville was glad about it. Apart from his special studies with Professor Varlerta, he had only gotten four OWLs - in Herbology, regular Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms and Divination. The last ones he had passed quite narrowly, in fact. It would impress his Grandmother, not to mention improve his career chances, if he managed to bring home six NEWTs after all, four for the regular classes (if he made it through them) and two for special projects. Professor Sprout had told him she might try cross-breeding plants that would not normally cross-breed, employing Neville's help to persuade the plants to procreate. Somehow, Neville found it indecent to persuade plants to do such a thing, but had decided he would listen to all Professor Sprout had to say before he protested.

For now, Professor Varlerta had assigned him an hour in the greenhouse, trying to make the plants move according to his will. At first, Neville could not believe he had been set such an easy task - plants had always greeted him with movements of their branches and leaves. Convinced he must have misunderstood, he had asked her for confirmation. It was only then that he realised that plants did not greet just everyone by a slight rustle of leaves, by wrapping their roots across fingers. It seemed that there was something special about his relationship with plants. Neville wandered aimlessly between the rows of plants, his flute in one hand, the other one idly stroking the leaves of the plants he passed. True, he had gained some special abilities through his training with Professor Varlerta, and he was the singer of Hogwarts' only rock band now. Therefore, he now felt much less inadequate than, say, during his first four years at Hogwarts. However, his powers of music magic weren't as strong as those of Ginny or the teacher, so he felt a bit inferior even in their training hours. Now it seemed that if he played to plants, he could do things not even Varlerta or Ginny could do. He had seen them try: Plants might move a leaf every now and then if they played to them, but the plants certainly did not seem over-enthusiastic to be Coaxed by them. Neville played a few questioning notes. In response, the nettle he faced rolled up its leaves so that he could touch it without getting stung. He smiled, knowing that to the plants at least, he was special.

In the best of spirits, he walked up to the band room when his hour in the greenhouse was over. The rest of the band was already there; Rhonda and Joolz were tuning their guitars, while Ginny and Kay, who had nothing to tune, were sitting there, watching them. Neville plugged his microphone into the small P.A. and adjusted the volume, nodding a greeting to his band members as he passed them. The subdued noises of musicians warming up the sound of their instruments enveloped him, a sound he had come to love.

"I've written a song," Kay suddenly said from her corner. All eyes turned to her; all instrumental noise ceased. Neville was surprised to hear Kay's voice, because the younger Slytherin girl did not often speak up during band practise.

"A song? Well, I hope it's not synthie pop," Ginny said without enthusiasm.

"You haven't even heard it, Gin," Joolz said with slight disapproval in his voice.

"True," Ginny admitted. "Let's hear it, then, Kay." She gave Joolz an apologetic smile.

Kay selected a slightly squawky, organ-like sound on her Muggle keyboard. Then she played a couple of slow minor chord arpeggios, slightly sad, but nevertheless with a steady beat. Joolz looked over her shoulder, probably trying to figure out which chords she was playing, fingering on his fret board as he listened to her. When Kay started over from the beginning, Joolz played a few chords with her, but they clashed audibly with hers.

Kay interrupted her playing, pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote down a couple of letters, some of them decorated with a 'minus'. They were the names of the chords she was playing, Neville realised. Joolz frowned over them for a minute while Rhonda looked over his shoulder; Kay helped by telling him which chord contained which notes. Joolz scribbled a few more letters on the piece of parchment and tried out a few chords on his guitar; then he asked Kay to play again. When he joined in with her this time, it did not sound quite as dissonant as the first time, but his rhythm sounded funny with hers. After a few bars, he reduced it to playing his chords on the first beat of the bar.

Looking over his shoulder, Rhonda joined in on her bass guitar, playing the root of each chord in time with him. Her low notes seemed to give the music structure; Ginny must have thought the same, because she enhanced them by playing the bass drum in time with Rhonda. Shortly after, she tentatively started to play the high-hat, supplying a basic rhythm. After a while, Joolz stopped playing his chords altogether, but switched to a line of single notes, a tune that weaved itself into Kay's arpeggios. With the reduced guitar and bass and Ginny's sparse rhythm, the music had a gentle, slightly melancholy feel - the feel of a ballad.

Neville, who had been humming bits and pieces of a melody to himself, felt disturbed by Joolz' single notes at first, because his own ideas did not fit in with them. However, after he had changed the melody just a little bit, he found he rather liked the way the two tune-like phrases seemed to have something like a musical conversation.

His own melody gradually took shape; after a while he felt it was good enough to be sung over the microphone. He did not have any proper lyrics yet, just a little rhyme that seemed to have come to his head out of nowhere: "If there's a place for everyone, there is a place for me; so give me time and I will find the way that's right for me."

He must have repeated the phrase twenty or thirty times in different variations when Rhonda finally stopped. The others stopped with her, rubbing their hands or wrists. Neville realised they had been playing that song - or part of a song - for quite a long time, and that he himself was a little hoarse.

"I like it," Ginny simply said and smiled at the younger girl, partially making up for her former prejudices, Neville thought.

"Me, too," he said and then looked around for the water jug, wanting to cool his throat.

Rhonda and Joolz agreed. "It's quite a hit - we will put it on our first CD," Joolz said. Kay beamed at him. He, however, blinked at Ginny. Ginny blinked back. It was as if the two of them were sharing a private joke.

"Don't we need a band name before we put out our first CD?" Rhonda asked, raising her eyebrows at them.

"You-Know-Who," Ginny suggested offhandedly.

"You can't have a band called 'You-Know-Who' if your father is running for Minister of Magic," Rhonda chided her.

Neville downed his glass of water. Were they really going to argue now?

"Could we maybe get back to the song?" Joolz asked, a hint of impatience in his voice. Everybody nodded.

"Kay, was that supposed to be the verse or the chorus?" Joolz asked the Slytherin.

The younger girl shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's all I've got," she said apologetically.

Joolz turned to Neville. "What would you say?" he asked. "You're the singer."

Neville swallowed. Was he supposed to make a decision? After taking a few seconds to make up his mind, he said: "For me, it's a chorus, because, er, I've got that phrase to sing, and...."

Ginny nodded. "Yes, that's what I thought. It's quite catchy."

Everybody agreed with her, so Kay said: "Alright, it's the chorus then. I could see if I can find a verse for it if you want me to."

"Maybe we can all try to think of something, and then we'll take whatever fits best," Joolz suggested. Neville smiled to himself. He had some kind of idea for a verse in his head, even though he could not sing it out now, let alone put it in writing. He would try to figure it out when he got some time to himself. Suddenly he fervently wished he was playing guitar; it would make things easier. Somehow, the flute did not seem to be the best instrument for writing songs on it. Maybe he should ask Professor Varlerta; he knew she was busy, but she had always agreed to help him with everything that concerned music. But first of all, he would try to write a verse on his own.

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After finishing his load of homework, Neville decided that even though it was quite late now, he would find the time to pin down his idea for a verse in some way. It had been swimming in his head for the rest of the evening, but he was afraid that if he went to sleep without conserving it in any way, it would be lost in the morning. Therefore, he waited for the common room to empty: He did not feel comfortable with practising his flute with anybody else around, let alone with trying to find a tune that existed only as fragments inside his head. However, a couple of fifth year students were still up, griping about OWLs and convincing each other they would all fail miserably at everything if they did not spend the whole of this particular night studying. Neville felt like telling them that they still had a couple of months until OWLs, and that they should hurry on to bed immediately, but he knew they would not listen to him. Therefore, he just had to wait for fatigue to get the better of the younger students. To spend his waiting time usefully, he hummed the tune from his head very softly. To keep up with its structure and to get an idea of its rhythm, he kept the time by tapping on his right thigh. It helped: The idea in his head started to take shape. After a while, Neville felt he could make some notes on a scrap piece of parchment. He did not write down actual music notes, but tried to help himself remember the tune by writing down a couple of numbers and cryptic signs that were to signify the rhythm and pitch of his melody. Then he suddenly realised that all the time, he had had words in mind which might go with his tune: "They say that people are just like a jigsaw puzzle, to fit into each other, form a whole."

Well, maybe this was the way to memorise his tune, he thought: Maybe he could just remember it together with the proper words. It should be something which stated not two people were the same, but that they were all needed, that they belonged together. If people were a jigsaw puzzle, then each of them had his or her place, each of them was needed - even he was. Neville felt that his lyrics should be about himself, about his place at school and in the band, but also about something bigger, about society as a whole. If the simile of the jigsaw puzzle was accurate, if everyone was needed, then everyone was valuable. Yes, this sounded like the kind of thing he would have liked to express with his lyrics. But how could he put these things into words, what's more, into lyrics which rhymed?

Toying with the words, suddenly eager to produce the lyrics for a whole verse, he wrote down a couple of lines, but still had trouble with the rhymes. He jotted down a couple of words that had potential, but did not get his intended meaning across: What should he rhyme with 'whole'? 'Common goal'? Well, maybe. Certainly not 'coal' or 'foal', he decided. Or should he rhyme something with 'the same' - perhaps 'game', at least much rather than 'lame' or 'tame'? Yawning, he realised he wasn't quite sure what he wanted; after a few more failed attempts to write a whole verse, he decided he might as well call it a day. He would try again the next afternoon whenever he got a few precious minutes to himself. As he had pondered over the words, the tune spun around in his head; he was sure he would not forget it anytime soon now. Gathering up his belongings, he rose and half-stumbled up the staircase into his dormitory, leaving the common room to the fifth years.

Tired as he was, he had expected to sleep as soon as he had closed the curtains of his four-poster behind him; however, as soon as his head touched his pillow, he felt a strange surge of adrenaline take hold of him. He had to think of the way Ginny and Joolz had smiled at each other during practise, how often they seemed to smile at each other these days. Thinking of that seemed to hurt him. And then, of course, there was Rhonda, beaming up at Joolz whenever she had the chance. Neville would have bet the bass player was interested, too, if not in love with the guitar player. However, did Joolz reciprocate these feelings? If Neville had had a say in this, the two of them would have walked the hallways holding hands, snogging their mouths off. A Joolz enamoured with Rhonda was a Joolz who was not interested in Ginny, his Ginny. He was sure that Ginny was at least thinking about the handsome Ravenclaw Keeper. However, Neville had weathered the storm of Ginny being in love with Harry, and Ginny with being in love with Sirius - what did one unavailable candidate more or less count? Only if Joolz suddenly decided he fancied Ginny, things might get out of hand. Neville suppressed his feelings; jealousy would surely not help him in any way. Suddenly he envisioned the band as a jigsaw puzzle, fitting into each other musically, but also in another way. Which way would the pieces fit in the end? he wondered. Couldn't Joolz just hook up with Rhonda and be done with it? For the guitar player, it seemed there was more than one option, while Neville did not even consider any option other than Ginny for himself.

And then, he thought shortly before his eyes finally grew heavy and he drifted towards sleep, there was Kay. Far too young to be entangled in the complicated net woven among the other four band members, she seemed to hold things in balance precisely by being an outsider, a bit of a misfit among the sixth years: Her presence, at first unwelcome, now something they accepted as normal and given, always reminded him that whatever else would happen among the members of that band, primarily they were meeting to play music together.

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The next afternoon, Neville went to look for Ginny to pick her up for their training with Professor Varlerta. As she wasn't in the common room, he asked Rhonda to look for Ginny in the dormitory; however, the bass player told him that Ginny was not in her room, either. Shrugging, Neville thanked her and walked down to Varlerta's building by himself, expecting to meet Ginny there sooner or later.

As it was, Ginny came twenty minutes late. She apologised to Professor Varlerta, saying that she had had to pose for a press photo with her family. "Promotion of family values, you know," she said, turning her eyes heavenwards. "Dad didn't want us to do it, but I suppose they made him. He said he didn't want his family involved in the elections, but everybody kept telling him it was for a good cause, so he finally gave in."

Varlerta shrugged. "I suppose I can see his point, both of them, as a matter of fact. If they publish a picture of your big and thriving family, many people will associate this with the well-being of the dwindling caste of witches and wizards. All Malfoy's got to show for himself is one son, and that son isn't even educated in Britain anymore."

Ginny sighed. "Yeah, right. We are one big and happy Weasley family, always cheerful, always healthy, and we always agree on everything. Only that Ron and Fred are ill, and nobody is supposed to know about it; and George is running a business that Mum hates, even though she supports him for Fred's sake, and George is going out with Fred's ex, and Fred doesn't even comment. Only that Percy and Dad are always arguing about Ministry stuff, and Percy thinks his father is incompetent and has to be blackmailed by mum to support him. Only that Mum doesn't really want me to play drums, and she doesn't want Bill to keep his hair long, and Bill doesn't like Charlie's new girlfriend, and Dad isn't too sure about Mum getting a job now. No problem. We are one big and happy Weasley family."

Neville stared at her, open-mouthed. He had always envied Ginny for her big family, for her friendly parents, her many siblings, and maybe even for her father who was running for Minister of Magic. He had had no idea that so many conflicts were boiling under the smooth surface of a press photograph in which everybody was exhibiting a public smile. Now he saw that Ginny's life contained more conflicts than he had thought. He felt like going over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder, but felt that this would have looked a bit silly, so he didn't.

"Two more weeks," Varlerta murmured. "I wish I knew what is going to happen. The prognoses all contradict each other, and some say that Malfoy will surely win, while others say your father's got the best of chances. I understand that you feel a bit like a hypocrite if you let them take your family picture like that, but I'm sure you want your father to win, Ginny, don't you?"

Ginny shrugged. Then she said in a small voice: "I suppose I do. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want Malfoy to win, or anybody who shares Malfoy's views." After a short pause, she continued: "I always wanted to belong to a rich and important family, you know. I remember when Ron came home from Hogwarts for his first summer holidays, he was a bit depressed because everyone else seemed to be rich at school and we weren't. I remember that he used to play with me a bit even though I was only his little sister, and we used to pretend that we both were rich and important, too." She grinned, and said to Neville: "And then my brothers brought Harry Potter home for the holidays, and goodness, I was so impressed, because he really was rich and important. I was such a stupid kid then." She stretched and then said: "I would have loved it back then if my Dad had suddenly become 'important', but I suppose I don't care anymore. I mean, he is important as it is, to us anyway, and I certainly don't need any people fawning over me because I'm somebody's daughter."

Neither Neville nor Varlerta responded. Suddenly, Ginny looked a bit embarrassed. "Er, I suppose we should start Coaxing our rabbits again, shouldn't we?" she said as if to break the silence.

Varlerta nodded and opened the baskets in which she kept three fluffy, cute and extremely stubborn rabbits. Then she said softly and apparently to no one in particular:

"I really hope your father does win this election. Keranta knows, we do need a bit of support for our struggle against Voldemort. There have been repeated acts of violence again, and as you both know as members of the order, there is the threat of an overrun of Azkaban, too. We could really, really do with some support from the Ministry rather than with someone who is openly an enemy of Dumbledore and his supporters."

Neither Ginny nor Neville replied. Suddenly the teacher grinned; Neville thought that she looked very, very tired. "Listen to me," she said to them, "here I go with worrying you two again. I dare say you've got enough on your plates with our little long-eared friends here."

And with these words, she reached into the basket and handed each of her apprentices a furry bundle of rodent stubbornness.

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