Rating:
PG-13
House:
Schnoogle
Ships:
Other Canon Witch/Other Canon Wizard Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Characters:
Other Canon Witch Other Canon Wizard Neville Longbottom Nymphadora Tonks
Genres:
Drama Mystery
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Half-Blood Prince
Stats:
Published: 05/07/2006
Updated: 06/09/2006
Words: 15,095
Chapters: 4
Hits: 915

Growing

Meddow

Story Summary:
Neville's summer plans change when he gets a summer job that could make his dreams come true. However trouble arises when he finds out his employer is the sister of Bellatrix Lestrange. But after the war strikes home he finds himself getting to know the Tonks family much better and a mystery surround his own family is unearthed.

Chapter 02 - Dominion Road

Posted:
05/13/2006
Hits:
223


Chapter Two: Dominion Road

Author's Notes: Huge thanks to my beta Nathaniel.

~*~*~*~

Neville awoke the next morning to the sound of a Lion growling. It was an old alarm statue. A wooden lion passed down from his grandfather to his father and then to him.

He crept downstairs hoping not to wake anyone up, but was greeted by Dusty, who had a knack for anticipating Neville and had cooked scrambled eggs for his big day. After breakfast, Neville left a note for his Gran who was yet to wake up outlining when to expect him back by and crept into the spare room fireplace and flooed to his new workplace, not knowing what to expect.

He fell out of the Tonks' fireplace into a lounge painted sea green. There were a few chairs and a sofa, as well as a rather large bookcase. Though he did not have much time to take this in, as his arrival was met by the sudden triggering of security wards. Bright pink sparks went off like fireworks within the room startling him, and the whole house filled with rather loud noise which Neville recognised to be the sound a cat made when a person stepped on its tail, Neville having stepped on, tripped over or fallen on many a cat in his time.

His first reaction was to run as fast as he could away from the sound. His second was to jump back into the fireplace. This being two different directions he remained glued to the spot, but found he had drawn his wand and was standing in a partly defensive position.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Ted Tonks came running around the corner and yelled, "Sergeant Pepper!" and the noise and sparks died as suddenly as they had started.

"I'm so sorry about that." Neville realised he still had his wand drawn, and put it back in his pocket. "I should have been waiting for you here, but my bacon was burning. Our daughter - she means well - set the wards and she won't tell us how to take them off. Though at least she told us the password. But now she will come around and change the password and I'll have to remember a new one." He said this all rather quickly and breathlessly. "How are you today? I suppose we've frightened you half to death already. I'm really sorry about that."

Ted Tonks seemed to Neville like a very friendly man, however he did seem to talk quite a lot. "It's fine. I'm okay."

"Great. Well, Andromeda's just in the owl shed making some urgent deliveries. I'll take you out there to see her. Do you want the tour?"

"Yeah, um, that would be great."

Ted led him through from the lounge, down a short hallway and into the kitchen. "Well, this is the kitchen, domain of me, and my soon to be bacon sandwich." It was spotlessly clean and very Muggle. Neville saw a refrigerator in a corner. He had learned about them in Muggle Studies, they were used to keep food cold.

"It's nice."

Ted was flicking bacon through the air with his wand in one hand and catching it with a slice of bread in the other. "Well, I'll cook you some lunches while you're working here, but you can grab a snack anytime. Though Andromeda has this rule that you clean up everything after yourself. She really likes things clean."

"I will," Neville replied, he was very used to cleaning up after himself, his Gran liked thing clean as well and through experience he found that people did not mind as much if you spilt things all the time if you always cleaned it up quickly.

"Excellent." Ted started off again, now with his breakfast in his hand. "Lets go outside."

The house was a small cottage, and looking around the front lawn Neville saw that there were a few houses in sight. But most of the surrounding area was farmland. In the front were some small herb beds, Neville could identify basil, thyme, mint and chives growing in the one closes to the front door. Trees were scattered around, all relatively young and barely taller than Neville. The house itself was red brick, but you could hardly see it for the ivy growing along the walls, only leaving room for the windows.

"Do you sell the wood from the trees to make wands?" Neville asked, curious as to whether the normality of the front yard did not deceive.

"Most of them are still too young, however that yew over there - and that cherry closest to you have had some branches turned into Ollivander's wands. Not long before he went missing." Ted pointed to the two trees he was speaking about.

Despite the very healthy ivy and the wand trees everywhere the front garden looked relatively Muggle. Ted, seemingly knowing what Neville would ask began talking again. "All our neighbours are Muggles, and we have a number of Muggle friends so we have too keep up appearances out here, though that ivy has a mind of it's own. The back yard is where Andi keeps her interesting stuff."

They walked down a small stone path and though a gate and were met by a small wooden shed. "Andi, are you done yet?" Ted called out, as he opened the door.

Andromeda Tonks was tying a parcel to an owl's leg as Neville walked in. "Oh, hello Neville...I'll be done in a second." She looked quite distracted and a little tired.

"I've taken him around the front lawn, but I don't even know where to start with your stuff, so I'm leaving him here," Ted announced.

Ted wished Neville a good day and headed towards the house.

"St Mungo's has run out of Mandrake." She sighed. "Ted and I have been up half the night trying to cultivate some."

Neville's mind thought back to his second year at Hogwarts, with the Chamber of Secrets and so many students being petrified. "The Death Eaters, they haven't got a Basilisk, have they?"

Andromeda looked at him, her grey eyes seemed to by analysing his question. "I don't know. But I do know it's mostly for Muggle patients. I don't even want to think what they have been doing." She referred to the Death Eaters with a bitter note of distain in her voice. Andromeda finished tying a package to the foot of an owl and sent it on its way. "Well that's the last of them. I'll show you around the green house."

Neville's spirits lifted. They walked out of the shed onto a plain grass lawn. In the corner by the fence was a small greenhouse; it looked no bigger than a bathroom. However, when Andromeda opened the door, the greenhouse was as big as the dinning hall at Hogwarts.

It was much better organised than the greenhouse at school. The same types of plants were lined neatly in a row, giving it much less of a jungle-like feeling. They were also much smaller than the plants in the Hogwarts greenhouse, unsurprising since the Hogwarts greenhouse was for studying the plants, whereas Andromeda ran a business. Neville could see a recently dug-up Mandrake bed to his left. On his right were beds of nettles and belladonna.

"Wow." Neville smiled. He was going to spend his summer here.

"It's really something, isn't it?" Andromeda smiled. "I've been working with plants since Nymphadora went to school. It's only now that my works starting to pay off. You're the first person I've been able to afford to pay." She seemed really proud of it, Neville would be too if it were his. This is what he wanted at home.

"This is just the commercial plants. I'm working on some other project. They are all down the back." Neville followed her down the rows, noticing more and more plants, Bubotuber, Shivelfrigs, actonite and Flitterbloom all sitting in the ground or neatly in pots lined up in rows.

Andromeda stopped outside a glass door; there was a room about halfway down the greenhouse moving off to the side.

"This is where I keep the most dangerous of the species I grow," Andromeda announced.

Inside Neville could see the spiky dark red vines of Venomous Tentacula surrounding the door. "Only Tentacula's in there at the moment, it has strangled everything else I put it there. I personally hate the stuff, but I have a rather big contract for their use with a joke store. Of all the places to use that plant, it had to be a joke store - but they are currently keeping Ted in bacon."

Neville had read about Tentacula, you could never turn your back to it. If you did, before you knew it you would have a vine wrapped around your ankle, injecting you with its deadly poison. Once you were dead, usually within ten minutes, it would eat you while you decomposed, wrapped in it tentacles. He had a sudden mental image of himself tripping over and landing in a patch of it.

"Um, will I have to work with it, will I?"

Andromeda smiled knowingly and shook her head. "Don't worry. It would be illegal since you have to have a licence. I've got other plans for where you can work, follow me." They continued down a narrow path, passing Puffpods and honking daffodils, before arriving in front of a dozen pots of willow trees, all just slightly taller than Neville, behind a wooden fence right down the end of the greenhouse.

"These trees are going to make me and Ted a lot of money one of these days." Andromeda grabbed a nearby plank of wood that was sitting around out of place with the tidiness of the greenhouse and reached it over the fence. Instantaneously the three nearest trees leaned forward and swung branches at it. It seemed that Whomping Willows were just as vicious when they were small as to when they were grown.

"Now watch this," Andromeda said with near childlike glee in her face. She placed the plank of wood down on the floor and putting her arm in the cage instead. Neville was sure the trees would try an attack her, but instead they just ignored her. She managed to get close enough to touch the bark around the tree.

Neville could not believe it. "You've taught them to recognise you."

"Yes, Ted is a charms inventor, and we're very close to being able to sell these as protection devises for wizarding homes. Just perform the charm and the password and the tree will not attack you."

Neville thought it was ingenious, the wizarding world was scrambling to find new ways to protect themselves from Death Eater attack, and an angry tree may just be able to do the job. "How far away are you from finishing?"

"At the moment the charms to complex for the average wizard. Ted's got to make it easy enough for everyone to use, but complex enough so it can recognise Polyjuice. There's no getting around the problem of the Imperius Curse however."

"When you have finished it, can I get one for my Gran?" Neville asked eagerly.

She smiled at his compliment. "Of course, I'll even give you an employee discount...Now over here, is where I want to use your talents."

They turned the corner; there were two Mimbulus mimbletonia were stilling in small pots on the bench. "I cannot quite get them to grow properly. I was hoping you could help me out."

Two was quite an impressive collection, they were quite rare and most herbologists didn't even have one, then again most herbologists were not interested in the species. "Yes... but why are you growing mimbulus? Most people think they have no useful magical qualities," Neville asked.

"You don't. And the others think that because we don't know that yet. Nobodies managed to cultivate them properly, although according to Professor Sprout you are having some success. Once that's done, then I can enlist a potions specialist to help me determine their qualities." Neville did not much care for Potions; having his life made hell by the Snape had put him off the subject once and for all. He just liked plants, what they were used for when they were grown he did not give much thought too what they were used for.

Suddenly there was a long clanging noise. The greenhouse door had been slammed shut. Andromeda flinched at the noise. "Mum, where the heck are you?" shouted a woman's voice.

The smile of Andromeda's face melted into a frown. "Over here by the Mimbulus." She turned to Neville. "I'm sorry about this, my daughter is an Auror, and she's rather pedantic."

"It's okay," Neville muttered, he could understand. He constantly worried about the ward around his Gran's home. But Andromeda didn't seem to be listening to him. She was focusing her daughter.

A young woman walked down the path dressed in red Auror robes, with bright yellow hair. Neville recognised her instantly as the woman who had been there at the Department of Mysteries and at Hogwarts the night Dumbledore died. Despite the circumstances they had never actually spoken to each other, Neville didn't even know her name. "Mum, what...Ouch." She tripped over a pot containing a honking daffodil; but managed to stop herself before she it the ground and recovered quickly. "...What on earth possessed you to connect the fireplace to the floo network? I though you knew bloody well how dangerous that is?" she asked, not hiding her irritation at her mother's actions.

"Don't you dare lecture me, Nymphadora, considering the choice of company you keep," Andromeda replied, rising to her daughter's tone.

"Leave Remus out of this..." Suddenly she seemed to spot Neville. The look of annoyance on her face changed to one of horror. Neville wasn't all that surprised; he expected that every young Auror would be told about the sad tale of his parents. She did manage to compose herself quickly and smiled. "Oh. Wotcher Neville." She shifted the tone in her voice from angry to friendly in a split second.

"Hello," Neville said quietly, not willing to be drawn into what seemed to be a family issue and none of his business.

"You two have met?" Andromeda asked, looking between the two.

"Yeah, though we've never been formally introduced," Nymphadora replied smiling at Neville. Andromeda looked at Neville quizzically. "He's one of Harry's friends," Nymphadora added. Andromeda pursed he lips together.

"Well, Neville, this is my daughter, Nymphadora, though she likes to be called Tonks. Dora, this is Neville Longbottom," Ted announced, appearing behind his daughter.

"It's Tonks," she replied. "Just Tonks."

"Nice to meet you," Neville replied.

"So I'm guessing that you connected the fireplace for Neville." Tonks took the conversation back to her mother.

"Yes," Andromeda replied curtly. "He's helping me out over the summer, or are you going to accuse him of being in league with You-Know-Who."

Tonks seemed distinctly uncomfortable with this suggestion but Andromeda's words seemed to have turned the conversation back to what they had been fighting about. "Well, it doesn't stop the fact that it's dangerous. You cannot trust people to keep the information safe just because they work at the ministry," Tonks replied.

"I will not spend my life hiding, Nymphadora, and you do not get to lecture me what I can and cannot do," Andromeda answered.

"Why? You seem to think you're qualified to decide how I should live my life. Whereas I actually know something about this." Tonks crossed her arms, and started at Andromeda defiantly. Neville was unsure what to do; he had never really been stuck in the middle of a family feud before.

Andromeda opened her mouth about to retort, when Ted managed to place his body between the two women. "Come on, Dora. You're going to have to change the wards."

"Fine," Tonks answered as an annoyed sigh. She turned around a heading off, Ted following behind.

Andromeda stood there for a while, staring after them before turning to Neville. "Well, let's get onto what I will have you do everyday."

They spent the morning going through what Neville would get up to, mainly watering and fertilising, then filling out the orders for the day and if there was any time left, he would be able to assist Andromeda with her experimental plants.

Ted eventually returned, announcing that he had cooked some lunch. Andromeda headed for the door and Neville begun to follow, but was stopped by Ted who placed a hand on his shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry about what you witnessed earlier with Andi and Dora. They've been at it for a while now, but I promise you it doesn't happen everyday."

Neville had never seen a family argue like that, but he realised he had not spent much time around a typical family. His just tended to do whatever his Gran told them to do without question, including himself. So while he didn't really feel it was his place to ask, he found himself doing it anyway. "What are they fighting about?"

"Oh, werewolves, blood heritage and secret societies. You know, basically what all families fight about." He smiled and wandered off, Neville could not work out if that was a joke or not.

~*~*~*~

Lunch consisted of roast beef sandwiches and lemonade. Andromeda put Neville to work again after lunch, planting Mandrake seedlings to replace the ones dug up in the morning. Andromeda had hung safety signs up in the greenhouse window to prevent Ted from wandering in without earmuffs, though the plants were not big enough for their screams to kill yet. Neville was worried that something may go wrong, and he would accidentally be rendered unconscious by the noise made by the small seedlings like he had been once in class. His hands shook dreadfully during the planting of the first few as a result. However, as he realised that things were not going badly, he managed to calm his hands down, and even begin to enjoy himself.

He spent the rest of the day weeding and watering before finishing at five, flooing back to his Gran's place via the fireplace in the Tonks' lounge. He was very careful to clean his shoes properly before doings so, not wanting to ruin the cleanliness Andromeda's home by dragging in tick tracts of mud from the greenhouse.

Neville found himself trudging though Longbottom house, with most of his muscles aching, he did not think he had ever worked so hard for so long in his life. Gran had waited for him to arrive home before eating, and they ate their lamb chops and roast vegetables quietly for a while, before his Gran begun to press him for the details of his day.

"Did you have a good time?"

"Yes."

"Will you be returning tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Did you break anything?"

"No." Neville was particularly proud of the answer to the last question, but did not feel like telling his Gran too much. Part of him thought that he should tell her who he was really working for, but another part of him was scared of what she would do if she knew, so he continued to say little, it was not as if his Gran had ever shown much of an interest in herbology after all.

"Are you going to be working on Sunday?"

"No."

"Good. I think it's time we visited your parents."

Neville sunk into his chair. Every holiday they visited, Neville and his Gran would sit and discuss what had been happening in their lives while the mindless bodies of the two great Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom would stair blankly at the wall.

He excused himself from the dinning table, having eaten all his dinner, and headed for his room. Unusually, a barn owl was waiting at his desk a note attached to its leg. Neville wondered if it was from Andromeda, saying Sorry Neville, but we will not be needing you anymore.

He opened the letter to find it was in a strange handwriting, with pictures of owls drawn in the margin.

Hello Neville

My father has bought me this owl for my birthday and I've called him Duck so I can write to whoever I want to and not have to visit the post office how excellent. Not much has happened were I am at however you must read this months Quibbler since I have written my first article. It's all about Dumbledore who is really Merlin and has mastered living forever and so cannot die and so he's just hiding in the North Pole for a while. Hope you are having an excellent holiday.

Luna

Neville had never received a letter from a friend in school before. He had always though that Luna was a bit, well, odd, but he had come to realise that she was a nice person and her eccentricities made her very interesting to be around. Although sometimes a bit scary, he never knew what she was going to do next.

Neville soon noticed that Duck, the owl was staring at Neville. Neville stared back at it for a while then realised that the owl would probably want another letter to send back to Luna, so he grabbed his quill, still sitting in his school bag at the end of his bed and begun to write one back.

Dear Luna

Holidays are going well. I'm getting to work for...Neville wondered whether to tell Luna the same thing he had told his Gran or tell her the truth. He decided against the truth ...Demeter Willows and care for her plants. I've only done it for one day and it's great but I'm worried I will slip up and break something. Your theory on Dumbledore sounds nice.

All the theories that she came up with! But the latest one seemed to be more based on denial than anything else. Dumbledore was dead and was not coming back. But Neville could not help but wish that just for once, Luna would be right.

I hope you had a good birthday... Neville felt slightly guilty that he had not known about it so had not sent her a card ...and that you're having to good holiday too. Yours Faithfully. Neville.

He tied the letter to the barn owl's leg and sent it off into the night.