The Toad Conspiracy

Chapter 1: That Other Trio ...and the Toad

'Accio Trevor!'

The little amphibian froze in mid-hop, rotated in the air, and came zinging back in the direction from which he had come, landing in Neville Longbottom's open hand with an angry plop.

'He really doesn't like it when I do that,' Neville explained to Luna Lovegood. For a time a during his fifth year , Neville had become quite adept at the Summoning Charm by practising it on Trevor nearly every afternoon, but that had come to an abrupt end one memorable Wednesday when Trevor had run off for a full week. Neville had been so grateful when the toad returned that he vowed never to practice his charmwork on Trevor again.

'It probably hurts his dignity. Poor Trevor.' Luna leaned in and gazed apologetically at Trevor's bulging eyes with her own misty grey ones.

Neville slid the squirming toad into the pocket of his robes. 'I don't know what's got into him lately. He hasn't run off this much since my first year.'

'He must be trying to tell you something,' said Luna serenely.

'Adhaero.' Neville uttered the Securing Charm with some remorse. Even more than being zapped in mid-hop, Trevor really hated being sealed inside Neville's pocket. But Neville just couldn't afford to chase after Trevor until he had stowed his massively awkward trunk in a train compartment.

'He's a very clever toad, you know,' Luna observed, dragging her own trunk along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express.

'I'm not so sure of that,' Neville sighed. 'In all the time I've had him, he's never shown any special abilities, except the ability to get lost.'

Trevor gulped noisily, as if offended.

'And he's never once tried to tell me anything,' Neville added.

'Maybe you just weren't listening,' said Luna dreamily. 'Anyway, things are different now. Dumbledore's not here to look after you, so Trevor has to.'

'Dumbledore never looked after me,' Neville corrected her. 'Besides, I'm not in any special danger.'

Trevor croaked loudly again.

'See?' Luna nodded toward Neville's pocket. 'Trevor does know something. Oh look, this one's almost empty!'

She flung open the door to a train compartment that was empty except for a single trunk and a solitary girl sitting in the shadowy corner. 'Hello. Mind if we sit here? Everywhere else is full.'

Gloomy light filtering through the window fell upon long ginger hair as the girl turned to face them.

'Oh, hello Ginny,' Neville said, with no small amount of pleasure at seeing another familiar face.

'Hi Neville. Hi Luna. Of course you can sit here. I didn't know if I'd be seeing you. So many people decided to stay home, after last year,' said Ginny Weasley, a broad smile brightening her face.

'My father says no one is really safe anywhere, so I might as well be at Hogwarts.' Luna said almost blissfully.

'What about you, Neville?' Ginny asked as he stowed his trunk.

'Well, I'm not underage anymore,' he explained. 'If it were up to my gran, I would've stayed home under an Invisibility Cloak all year. But I told her it was my decision and that I wasn't going to hide when I could be learning something useful to defeat You-Know-Who.'

'Was your grandmother very upset?' Luna asked, her protuberant eyes especially round.

'She did cry a little, but I don't think she was sad really,' Neville said' remembering the way his grandmother smiled through her tears while she declared him to be just like his father after all.

He settled on the seat opposite Luna and Ginny. 'Is Harry here, and Ron and Hermione? I haven't seen them yet.'

'No, they've gone after Voldemort.'

'What?' Neville nearly dropped his wand. He thought he'd been pretty courageous to decide not to go into hiding this year, but he couldn't imagine the kind of bravery it took to confront the most powerful and dangerous wizard alive.

'Yeah, I wanted to go with them, but with Mum so on edge about what might happen to Ron, there was no way she was going to let me go too. Besides, I figured I could be their eyes and ears at Hogwarts.'

'Good idea,' Luna agreed. 'Something important always happens at Hogwarts.'

'You mean, something always happened at Hogwarts when Harry was here,' Ginny said gloomily.

'Something will happen this year too,' Luna said vaguely as she took out a copy of her father's magazine, The Quibbler, and began to read it from back to front.

The next several hours were filled with countless games of Exploding Snap and long conversations about the events of the summer. They all particularly enjoyed laughing at the wedding photos of Ginny's eldest brother Bill and the ever-beautiful Fleur Delacour. Next to her battle-scarred husband, Fleur beamed proudly out of every photo, radiant in matrimonial robes of brilliant white while Ginny, clad neck to heel in dress robes of hot pink that clashed dreadfully with her hair, skulked behind her much taller and much less garishly-dressed brothers.

'Oh, is that Harry? He looks happy,' Luna observed, pointing to a familiar green-eyed young man with glasses and a shock of messy black hair. He stood half-out of the photo, laughing at something his best friend Ron Weasley had just said.

'Yes. I think he was,' Ginny said thoughtfully.

Finally, after a particularly frantic hour of searching for Trevor, who had somehow managed to escape from Neville's pocket despite the Securing Charm, they arrived at Hogsmeade Station.

'I wonder what the Sorting is going to be like this year.' Neville said as he looked around the station platform. There seemed to be far fewer students emerging from the Hogwarts Express than in previous years. Also conspicuously absent was Hagrid, the half-giant gamekeeper, who was usually there to lead the first-years to the castle separately.

'Are there any first-years at all?' Ginny asked, peering down the platform.

'I think I just stepped on one,' Luna said cheerfully as she bent down to help up a very small and skinny boy in a set of overlarge, dingy Hogwarts robes.

'Sorry,' the boy said, bunching up the tattered edges of the worn garment until a pair of scuffed trainers came into view. 'Tripped on my robes.'

'Hello,' Luna said, smiling slightly. 'Are you new?'

The young boy wadded up his robes even more, stood on tiptoe as if to look eye to eye with Luna, and then proffered a grubby hand. 'Anthony Lewis. Hufflepuff house, I hope.'

Just then, a woman's frazzled voice called out above the din of students' chatter, 'Attention first-years. First-years over here. Are there any first-years here?'

'Over here, Professor Sprout!' Neville waved down the kind-faced but harried-looking Herbology professor, who as always, smelled slightly of dragon dung.

'Why, thank you, Longbottom.' She gave him a tired smile. 'And who do we have here?'

'Anthony Lewis,' answered the small boy.

'Oh my, I knew your parents, dear.' Professor Sprout's eyes went a little watery as she looked Anthony up and down. 'Yes, well let's see if there are any others, shall we?'

'See you inside the castle,' Anthony said, waving to Neville, Luna and Ginny as he tripped off with Professor Sprout.

'It's not going to be a very interesting Sorting this year if that's all of them,' Neville said, disappointment ringing in his voice.

He had always found it rather exciting to watch new students being sorted into the houses at the beginning of every year. And now, in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts when everything had become so uncertain, he had been looking particularly forward to this annual tradition as reassurance that life hadn't changed too much.

'Hogwarts is going to feel really empty this year,' said Luna serenely.

Ginny looked positively miserable for a moment but then steeled herself. 'Well come on, you lot. The sooner we get inside, the sooner we eat, and I'm so hungry I could eat a Thestral.'

'Has she even seen a Thestral?' Luna whispered to Neville as they hurried after Ginny. 'I don't think there's enough meat on one to make a sandwich.'