Growing

Chapter One: Persuasion

Author's Notes: Thank you to my ever-wonderful beta Nathaniel.

~*~*~*~

Neville Longbottom poked his spoon at his porridge, lifting out a large portion. He then turned his spoon slowly and watched the porridge as it slopped back into the bowl. His Grandmother sat at the other end of the table staring at him.

"Don't play with your food, Neville."

Nobody was particularly pleased with the shortened end of the year at Hogwarts due to the tragic nature of how it came about, but Neville suspected that few were more sorry about it than he. Neville hated the idea of Hogwarts closing early or - Merlin forbid - closing for good, with every fibre of his being. Shorter terms meant longer holidays, and longer holidays meant more time spent alone, at home, with his Grandmother.

It was not that he did not love her greatly. It was just that he found himself incapable of liking her. He had tried many years ago. He had attempted to get to know her, what she liked and disliked, and what she felt passionate about. But last summer he came to the realisation that she would never like him, for being him, simply Neville. She wanted Frank, his courageous, brilliant father, whom Neville was nothing at all alike. Hermione had once told him that people who didn't like him for who he truly was were not really friends. He had taken that approach ever since, even with his relatives. This, unfortunately for Neville, meant he had very few friends.

Though his Gran was one of the nicest people in his family. His distant aunts and uncles seemed to pop into his life every few years and remind him of the family legacy he was expected to continue. Neville would rather they did not. He would much prefer they became nice human beings, find a person of the opposite sex who could stand to be around them for more than five minutes at a time, and produce their own heirs to the Longbottom name and leave him in peace. Though at least his Great Uncle Algie who had given him a Mimbulus mimbletonia had moved to Latvia.

Hermione, Ron, Harry, Ginny and Luna liked him for who he truly was, but they were justifiably absorbed in their own lives at the moment, and as a result Neville was denied any company over the holidays. And so he was left to spend his summer with his Gran, Trevor his toad, and Blinky and Dusty, the two house-elves of the Longbottom household.

Neville had been home for a week and he had now healed completely from the events of the night of Dumbledore's death. Now he found himself rather bored moping around an old rotten house that was far too big for its occupants. At least the vegetable garden he had started last summer outside his room was growing well, under the tender care of Blinky over the year it had survived his absence. This summer he was planning to expand it and even to try and build a greenhouse; he had been saving up his pocket money all year.

His silent misery was interrupted by the screech of a post owl. A letter addressed to him missed the table and landed in his porridge with a soft 'plop' before the owl circled once and flew away. Neville scraped the porridge off the envelope and inspected the contents. It was addressed in green Hogwarts ink to him. He allowed himself a small hope that maybe Hogwarts would open its doors again before opening the letter cautiously.

Dear Mr Longbottom.

Would you please meet me for an urgent meeting in Professor Sprout's office at noon. You may use the Gryffindor fireplace to floo.

Yours Sincerely

Professor Minerva McGonagall.

"What is the letter about?" asked his Grandmother from the other end of the table.

"I have to go to Hogwarts. To meet Professors Sprout and McGonagall."

Neither he, nor any other student he knew had ever been asked to go to Hogwarts during holidays before. Though his sense of curiosity about the matter was, as always, accompanied by an acute sense of dread. But the letter was a welcome change the monotony that was life with his Grandmother.

"I wonder what that could be about. They can't remove you from the school, I've seen to that. You must tell me all about it when you get back."

Neville longed from some excitement. He decided he would be there on time.

~*~*~*~

The Gryffindor common room was deserted, much like the rest of the school. There were still the ghosts and portraits, but not a sign of any person, student or staff, and without them Hogwarts seemed to stand alone and empty. The Fat Lady grumbled as Neville stepped out of the common room, saying it wasn't her job during the holidays to shuffle students in and out. Neville apologised.

Neville walked into Professor Sprout's office at exactly twelve noon. While he had been very careful to be on time, unfortunately the Professor was not. He had plenty of time to gaze around at the plants sitting in pots around her office next to the Greenhouse. They were mostly harmless plants, but he saw some aconite sitting in the corner. The flowers sitting atop of its long green stem had flower into a magnificent shade of blue.

Professor Sprout walked in the office with Professor McGonagall in tow. It was unusual for Professor Sprout to be late, but for Professor McGonagall, it was down right strange.

"Apologies for the lateness, Neville," Professor Sprout muttered as she sat down at her desk. "A meeting with the board of governors took longer than we expected...Can we tell him?" She looked to Professor McGonagall.

"He will find out soon enough, I see no harm in him being the first student to know," replied his stern Head of House who was now standing in the corner by the door.

"Well then, good news Neville, Hogwarts will be opening next year and Professor McGonagall is now the official head mistress." She seemed quite cheery at the news. Neville smiled, he didn't know what he would do without Hogwarts. It was the only place where he ever felt close to belonging.

"That's good news," he replied.

McGonagall didn't look too happy, more deep in thought. He didn't know her that well, but he believed that she didn't want to become headmistress in such circumstances. Not with Dumbledore murdered on the school grounds. Neville would also hate to have to be the successor of Dumbledore, he was a great man, and nobody was expecting there to ever be a greater Headmaster.

"Yes. Well, to the matter at hand," she said.

"Yes, yes." Sprout looked at him. "Neville, you applied for the Flitterbloom Fine Herbs summer internship some time ago." She smiled at him. "Well, I'm pleased to inform you, that you were this year's successful applicant. There is a job there all summer if you want it."

"Yes!" Neville replied at once. Summer positions were new to Hogwarts in general and only limited to care of magical creatures, herbology and muggle studies - subjects that did not require the actual use of magic in any way. The one he had applied for was new that year, but he had sent in his application near six months ago and not heard back so had believed he had missed out.

"I would listen to Professor Sprout before agreeing too quickly Mr Longbottom," replied McGonagall. Neville couldn't imagine giving up the opportunity. Flitterbloom Herbs was a premier supplier of potions ingredients. Their plants were quite expensive due to their high quality and rumour had it that the owner of the company only sold potions ingredients in order to fund research. For Neville, who would be quite happy to grow plants for the rest of his life, this was where he could get started. From there he could open his own greenhouse, grow his own plants.

"Yes, well. How do I put this..." She paused and looked sadly at Neville.

"Do you know who runs Flitterbloom, Mr Longbottom?" This was an odd question for Professor McGonagall to be asking, but Neville knew the answer anyway.

"Err...Demeter Willows." McGonagall gave Sprout a grave look.

"Demeter Willows is an alias the true owner uses for the purpose of business and her own personal safety. Her real name is Andromeda Tonks," replied Professor Sprout sadly. Neville knew the name from somewhere. He had an itching feeling in his mind that he should remember something. The two Professors were only making it worse, giving him those sad looks.

McGonagall, who was much more used to Neville's blanks than Sprout decided to summarise matters, "I think we had better get to the point. Neville, Andromeda Tonks is a brilliant herbologist and thinks you have an enormous amount of potential. But...however, her sister is...Bellatrix Lestrange."

Neville felt his stomach tighten up at the mention of her name. He remained quiet, but he could feel the blood run from his face. "She was thrown out of her family at a young age for marrying a muggle-born, and she's a lovely person, nothing like her sisters," Professor Sprout added, making an attempt at a smile. "She just didn't think you would want to spend any time around her, knowing... err...what her sister did."

Neville remained quiet. Professor McGonagall pulled up a chair next to him, sat down and looked him in the eye. "It is a difficult situation. We will not think any less of you if you do not, but she's in the green house waiting to meet you."

He stared into space. He couldn't think. Professor McGonagall obviously sensed this. "We will give you a few minutes to think about it." And with that the two Professors left the room, leaving Neville alone with his decision.

Neville decided it was the story of his life. Having something he really wanted given to him and then to have it corrupted in some awful way. He wondered what his parents would tell him to do. Having no memory of the people his parents were, he was forced to imagine what they would want him to do. They were Aurors. Neville had little experience with Aurors, with the exception of two. A handsome black man who had duelled two Death Eaters at once in the Ministry, and a young woman, who had been there at the Ministry and again a weeks ago at Hogwarts. What he had noticed about them was that they were both brave and capable.

And then there were the Aurors he had not met but had seen, the ones who nearly killed Professor McGonagall on the night of the Astronomy OWL.

Deciding that line of reasoning was futile; he tried to picture Andromeda Black. Long black hair and grey hooded eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange and an unpleasant sneer, similar to the one Snape would terrorise him with, were all he could see. She taunted him when he had met her at the ministry, threatened to do to him what she had done to his parents.

Neville was afraid of Andromeda, he realised. He had always been afraid of Bellatrix Lestrange, but this was now tainting all that were related to her. His parents had not been afraid of the real thing. They had stood up and fought. Neville decided that if his parents had not been afraid of her then he would not be afraid of her sister.

He made up his mind, got off his chair and walked up to the Professors waiting in the corridor to the greenhouse, determined. "I want to meet her."

Professor McGonagall beamed at him. He knew he had made the right choice, for a Gryffindor anyway. "Well, I have work to do. Good luck, Mr. Longbottom." With that she walked off in the direction of the Headmistresses office.

Professor Sprout led him into the greenhouse. It was the same as it always was, plants towering to the ceiling in impressive shades of green and occasionally shades of purple, red, yellow and even blue. The plants were separated by narrow spaces to walk down, two students had to squeeze to get past each other. The air was magically humid and warm in some areas, and dry and cold in others, to cater for the specific needs of certain plants. Neville loved the smell. Well not always, sometimes the whole greenhouse smelled of manure. However, it was days like the current one that he loved it. The smell of water on the foliage combined the scents from the flowers and the fresh soil. He was home. Neville felt calm in a greenhouse. He used it when he was afraid, as a place where he was safe, and being in it helped him steel himself for what was approaching.

Professor Sprout turned a corner to where the students worked and the first person he noticed was nothing like his internal picture. In fact, it was a man in his forties sitting at the student's worktable, looking decidedly bored. He had curly black hair, long and tightly tied back. He possessed a small mass of red stubble at his chin and a pair of dark brown eyes.

He got up, revealing that he was a large, towering man, and headed towards the pair. Neville noticed he was dressed like a muggle, wearing dark blue muggle pants, and a black shirt with no tie.

"Wotcher!" He stuck his hand out and smiled. "You must be Neville." Neville shook his had. "I'm Ted."

Professor Sprout was looking over his shoulders. "You'll find Andi in the Wormwood," he mentioned to her. "Andi!" he promptly called over his shoulder.

"Coming!" Neville heard a female voice calling from around the corner. Andromeda Tonks emerged, and to Neville's relief looked very different from her sister. She was tall and thin with grey eyes. She differed from her sister in that she had chocolate brown hair instead of black and a few freckles on her tanned skin. But the whole air about her was different, whereas Bellatrix looked haggard due to years in prison, Andromeda had aged well with laugh lines present around her eyes. She did not look at all like the woman in his nightmare, rather someone he could imagine being a friend of his mother's.

She smiled at Neville and crossed the room in quick confident strides. She held herself in the way that Neville's Gran was constantly trying to make him adopt, like a pureblood that owned the world. Neville had never quite achieved this himself, but he could recognise it when he saw it.

Andromeda pulled a green dragon's hide glove of her hand and put her hand out like her husband had done and smiled at him. "Hello." Neville shook her hand and said hello back.

"Your Wormwood's looking great, Pomona. Much better than mine at the moment."

"Thank you, though I think it may just be the Hogwarts soil rather than any special trick I use."

"Yes, I'm going to show up here one day with a few bags and a shovel and steal some. Just you watch me." She laughed.

What followed was an uncomfortable silence. Neville noticed she was wearing clothes the looked like robes from a distance, by up-close was just a very long green muggle skirt and a fitted white blouse.

"I read your application, written on your Mimbulus Mimbletonia. I though it was great. Which is why I'm giving you the position." She smiled hesitantly.

"Thank you," Neville managed.

"Well, don't thank her yet," replied Ted. "She's going to have you running around after her all summer, I would call it torture rather than a scholarship."

Andromeda Tonks turned and glared at him and he realised what he had said. This was followed again by another uncomfortable silence. Neville found a sudden interest in the looking at his shoes.

The tall woman let out a sigh. "Neville...." She was looking at Neville, but Neville found he could not look at her. "My sister has ruined your family. I wish I could apologise for her but I can't, her actions are her own. I wish more than anything that I could undo all the things she's done, not just to you, but all the other lives she's ruined. But I can't." Neville looked up from his shoes, she did seem earnest.

"You have amazing potential, Neville, from what I've heard. All I ask is that you do not hold my sister against me... Please." There was a pleading look in her eyes.

"All right," Neville mumbled not really sure if it was a good idea. Then again, he told himself, he was never sure if anything was a good idea.

"Brilliant," came Ted Tonks's voice from behind his wife.

"Well, good. You can floo to our place at six tomorrow morning and I'll put you to work then." She still looked slightly uncomfortable. Andromeda told him the address, 26 Dominion Road, a cottage not far from Chester, near the Welsh border, what he would need for the morning and wished a safe trip back to his home. Ted did as well, and also apologised for placing his foot in his mouth.

Neville sat down at the student's worktable for a while after they left. They seemed like a nice couple and she seemed very different from her sister. He was ashamed at himself for being so quiet; he hoped above all else that he hadn't blown his opportunity by not talking. Mentally he was kicking himself. He thought he had been making so much progress. He had courage; he knew that, he had fought Death Eaters twice, including Bellatrix Lestrange. It was just whenever someone mentioned his parents he still clamed up.

He was frustrated. Hermione had cornered him in his fifth year after Christmas and told him that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he could. But Neville had never felt comfortable to do so. Various teachers, Professor McGonagall, Professor Lupin, Professor Sprout and worst of all the man masquerading as Professor Moody; which to this day made Neville feel sick to think about; had all given him similar sentiments with the same result of silence reached.

Neville lamented his inability to talk about what he spent so long preoccupied with for a moment, said goodbye and thank you to Professor Sprout and headed back through the empty corridors to the Gryffindor fireplace.

~*~*~*~

Neville arrived back at his Gran's home two hours after he set off, through the fireplace in the spare room. Gran did not like getting soot all over the carpet so only guests were allowed to use the fireplace in the main lounge.

The Longbottom House was a big, old building with wooden panel walls, red fabric, and the Longbottom family crest decorating its long windy corridors and many darkly lit rooms. Neville realised he should know more about it and its history, but he was more ashamed of it than anything to ask. To an outsider or a guest, or somebody just looking at the house from the road that ran out the front, the house looked stately and well kept. But the people that lived there, Neville, his Gran and their two house-elves knew which parts of the house to avoid due to their being ruined by the damp, whole rooms and the second stairwell were to be avoided for fear of the floor giving in. However, it looked as stately as ever, and as his Gran was always telling him it was the impression that mattered, and it was the impression that he was ashamed of.

He believed if his friends were to ever see his home, at least half of them would hold it against him. Ron and Ginny would not say much but Neville knew inwardly they would be cursing him for having such a large home for just him and his Gran, whereas their large family lived in a much smaller one. Hermione would openly protest about the family house elves. Neville agreed with her in a way about freedom, but if Blinky and Dusty were to get clothes, who would clean? The manor was too big and his Gran too old for her to do it herself, and Neville was away at school a lot and not allowed to do magic anyway.

As a result of his eternal embarrassment of his own position, Neville never invited his friends home when his Gran asked him to. Every year she tried to have a birthday party for him, too meet some of his friends. He declined every year but never had the heart to tell her it was because he did not think any of them liked him enough to not think of him differently when they saw where he lived.

At least his parents had been of the same mind as him. They had owned a small, now abandoned, cottage not far away. Neville had been there of course, when he was a baby and too young to remember, but not since the night the Death Eaters broke in.

Neville wandered through the house and eventually found his Gran sitting in the lounge, reading the Daily Prophet. Neville had already read it. The headline was about a Death Eater attack on a muggle family in York, who apparently had a child who had just finished her first year at Hogwarts. Neville worried that one day he would see some family he knew in the papers, or a family of a person that he knew, the Weasleys, the Grangers, the Lovegoods, even Harry's extended muggle family, though Neville did not know their name.

He dreaded most of all the possibility of an attack on his Gran and him. He was not capable of protecting her should more than one Death Eater show up on the doorstep; and even if it were only one, he would probably still lose. He told his Gran this once and she told him to stop being silly. His parents had put the protections on the house, and someone came from the Ministry every year to test their effectiveness. This reassured Neville when he was a child scared of a Death Eater coming to get him in the night. As he got older he realised that his parents had put protections on their own house, and yet Death Eaters still managed to get in somehow.

"What was the appointment with Professor Sprout about?" She didn't take her eyes of the paper.

"I've won a scholarship. A summer job with Flitterbloom Fine Herbs."

His Gran peered over the top of the Prophet, She wasn't too happy about his fascination with Herbology. She was always saying that herbology, like potions and charms, was for those who could not perform any real magic. She wanted him to be an Auror like his parents, she was always telling him how great his father and mother were at it and wondering where all their talent had gone. Neville knew she still held out a hope that he would one day reveal himself to be as brilliant at Defence Against the Dark Arts as Harry and then go off and join the Auror Academy. "And you're accepting this?"

"I start tomorrow."

She emitted a noise of disapproval, which Neville had heard so many times he could just ignore it. "And who runs this company?"

Neville had thought about telling her the truth, but decided against it. Finding out who the owner of the company was, was just enough for his Gran to put an end to his hopes of making it in herbology. "Demeter Willows, she's a really well respected herbologist."

"I've never heard of her. 'Willows' is not a name I've come across before, obviously not one of the old families then. Are you sure it is safe?"

"Yes, Professors McGonagall and Sprout thought it was fine."

At the mention of Professor McGonagall name, his Gran put down her paper.

"You saw Minerva. She didn't happen to say anything about the future of the school?" Gran loved a bit of new information.

"It's opening again next year and she's the new Headmistress. It was announced today." Neville felt quite proud of himself being able to deliver some gossip to his Gran, he knew she did love telling her friends news.

"Excellent. I believe my old friend is no Dumbledore, but she will do a fine job. I must go tell Lavinia."

With that his Gran went off to the study to write letters to her friends, leaving Neville alone to himself. He spent the rest of the day tending to his Mimbulus mimbletonia, which sat on the desk on his second floor bedroom, and the growing vegetable plot in the land outside his bedroom window.

He headed down to the kitchen and helped Dusty pack a lunch for the next day, despite her protests against Master Neville doing any work, and then set about trying to find everything he would need for the next day - dragon-hide gloves, protective clothing, boots, clippers - and placed them on the desk in his room so he would not forget anything. Eventually he headed to his room and fell asleep in nervous anticipation, dreaming of dancing cabbage plants.