Growing - Chapter Eleven
Oct. 18th, 2006 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meddowYou know what think I have never seen show up in Harry Potter fanfiction? Cricket. I have no idea of the attraction people have to watching professional cricket since any game people play for five days in a row only to more often than not end in a tie seems rather pointless to me. However, cricket played in the back yard or on the beach with family and friends is great fun. So, cricket is making an appearance.
Growing (11/18)
Chapter Eleven – Undone
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Very mild violence
Chapter Summary: Ted comes up with a brilliant plan to cheer everyone up. Though things become undone when Voldemort decides to send a message to Harry.
Author’s Notes: A great deal of thanks to my beta Nathaniel.
Previous Chapter
~*~*~*~
The next morning, things around the house were much more subdued. Tonks appeared at breakfast dressed in her Auror robes.
“Savages’ funeral is today,” she announced as she sat down with Neville and her parents for breakfast, “so Remus and I will be gone for the day.”
Neville got back to work in the greenhouse. With all the practise he had been doing with defensive spells over the weekend and with Tonks and Lupin being around, the greenhouse seemed to Neville to be very detached from the war.
Ted joined him and Andromeda that day. He was working on the Whomping Willows again, after having come up with a new idea. Though he was not having much success, Neville kept on hearing cursing coming from that section of the greenhouse. Ted knew some pretty impressive language, including curses that Neville had never heard before. Though, as it turned out, some of it was justified.
Ted showed off the impressive black eye he gained for his efforts to his daughter over the dining table.
“That’s impressive, Dad,” she responded weakly, not paying him much attention. Both she and Lupin had been quiet since they had returned. “I think I might head back to my flat tomorrow morning,” she said quietly.
“No…stay here a few more days,” Andromeda pleaded.
“I don’t know,”
“Please, for me and your father. Stay around another day,”
“Alright, one more day, but I do have stuff I need to do,” Tonks finally agreed. But the cheeriness that she had had all weekend did not show up again that evening.
~*~*~*~
Neville headed down the stairs the next morning to find Ted sitting eating breakfast.
“Brilliant day, isn’t it, Nev,” he said as Neville sat down.
Neville looked out the window. “Yeah,” he replied. It was quite brilliant. There was not a cloud in the sky and Neville did not think he had ever seen the sky so blue.
“The prefect day to blow off work and play some backyard cricket, isn’t it?” Ted said.
Neville didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. All he could think about was the insect. “What’s cricket?” he asked.
“I sometimes wonder if fun was a Muggle creation -- It’s a game.”
“Like Monopoly?” Neville asked.
Ted laughed. “No, nothing like Monopoly.”
Ted seemed to have the same conversation with every person in the house as they appeared for breakfast. Until Neville, Lupin and Andromeda all ended up on the lawn wearing t-shirts and shorts. Well, accept for Andromeda who wore a long skirt as always. “This behaviour from Ted would be why I hid the cricket set,” Andromeda announced
Ted was busy hitting three white poles in the ground, taking a long time and a lot of care to make sure they were all the same distance apart and height.
Tonks emerged from the house, wearing a yellow t-shirt, which Neville saw was a Weasley brother’s creation. It had ‘I survived U-No-Poo’ across the front in the same colour pink as Tonks’s hair.
“You own one of those?” Andromeda said curtly.
“Yeah, they're brilliant. The fabric’s got shield charms worked through it.”
Andromeda gave her a look of condemnation and Tonks rolled her eyes. “Lighten up a bit, would you. People need a laugh right now, and You-Know-Who deserves to be mocked more than anybody I can think of.”
Ted eventually wandered over. “Right, the rules of cricket…”
“You’re not going to make us play a proper match, are you? We’ve only got five people,” Tonks butted in.
“The rules of cricket are,” Ted continued, ignoring Tonks who rolled her eyes again, “you hit the ball with the bat,” he waved the rectangular bat he was carrying in one hand, “in order to prevent the ball from hitting the wickets.”
“Those three sticks,” Andromeda explained.
“And then you run,” Tonks continued, “to that pole and back,”
“And if you are caught before the ball hits the ground, or if somebody hits the wicket while you are running, you are out and another persons in. Dora, I give you first bat, show them how it’s done. I’ll bowl. Andi, wickets if you please.”
“Remus, Neville, if you could just stand one on each side and catch the ball if it comes in your direction and then throw it to me or Andi, that would be great,” Ted finished.
“Sounds easy enough,” Lupin whispered to Neville as they walked over.
“Ha…You’ve obviously never played my Dad,” Tonks said loudly having overheard him.
“You’re just as bad,” Andromeda remarked.
It looked easy enough, Ted would throw the ball and Tonks would whack it with the bat, sending it flying. Then she would run to where Ted was stranding, waiving the bat in the air showing off. Lupin would pass the ball to Ted, apologising profusely to Tonks the whole time. Ted would then inevitably throw the ball at the wickets just as Tonks was getting back, leading to a big argument about whether it was in or out. And Andromeda would finally announce that actually this behaviour was the reason why she hid the cricket set.
Neville even found out that he wasn’t too bad at it. But then Lupin was the one lobbing the ball at him, and he wasn’t particularly good at it like Ted was. Ted eventually caught him out. But Neville was really enjoying the antics between Ted and Tonks. They both got really passionate about it.
“They’re both beaters,” Andromeda explained. “Being able to hit the ball is a matter of great pride to them both.”
The wind started blowing stronger through the morning, but they continued playing. When it was Tonks’ turn to bat, she switched over from bowling and Ted took over bowling again. Neville was bracing himself to catch a big hit when the ball sailed straight past Tonks and hit the wickets.
Ted was waiving his hands in the air, shouting something about needing some real competition, but Tonks didn’t say anything. Tonks had not even seen the ball - she was staring at the roof of the house.
Andromeda had spotted what Tonks had and was staring too. Neville could not see anything except blue sky so he, along with Lupin from the other side wandered over to where the women were standing.
The wind whipped up around them much more fiercely all of a sudden, Neville’s hair blew everywhere and the clothesline made menacing groans. Neville finally reached where Tonks was standing and saw what she saw. Dark, fearsome black clouds were moving upon them quickly.
And then Neville saw something that chilled him to the bone. A flash of lightning hit the ground just over the house. But this was no ordinary lightning that Neville had ever seen before. It was green.
“Get in the house!” Tonks screamed.
The four of them began running for the door, struggling against the surging wind. Thunder crashed around them and raindrops began to fall heavily. Ted seemed to have notice something was wrong and was looking to the sky. Tonks and Lupin made a beeline for him and grabbed him by each arm and dragged him towards the back door.
Andromeda and Neville arrived first and it took both of them to slam the door shut after the last three struggled in, the door was caught in the wind.
“The windows,” Lupin said breathlessly, causing all five of them to run around the house shutting them and then double-checking they were closed. They met in the lounge and stared out the windows at the rain hitting the garden. The short trees were nearly doubled with the wind.
Then the lighting hit the back garden.
Andromeda let out a small scream when the green light emerged from the sky and hit the ground in the middle of their makeshift cricket pitch. Three more hit different patches in the ground. Neville flinched violently as each one did. Lupin wrapped his arms around Tonks and Ted wrapped one around Andromeda and placed one on Neville’s shoulder. Andromeda grabbed Neville’s hand and held onto it tightly. They all remained transfixed at what was happening in the garden. The thunder caused the house to shake around them. The rain hit the roof and window so hard it deafened them and Neville was scared they were going to break.
Another green bolt of lightning hit a tree. Andromeda flinched as it did so, Neville felt himself doing the same. The tree shrivelled before their eyes as it died. Neville did not know what happened when the killing curse hit a plant, but this is what he imagined it would be like.
A bolt hit the greenhouse, Andromeda let out another soft cry as shards of glass from broken panes went flying everywhere.
Three more bolts of lightning hit the garden in front of them as the rain and wind intensified, and just when Neville thought another thunderclap would cause the windows to fall out on their panes, it stopped. The rains stopped and the wind died down. Blue sky appeared overhead. They all watched as the clouds continued in a relentless march away from them. All Neville could now hear was the beating of his heart in his chest.
Tonks finally broke the silence. “I have to go to work. I’ve got to warn others.”
“Don’t go out in that,” Andromeda urged her.
“I’ll apparate from here,” she said. “Don’t go outside until I get back,” She hugged her mother and father quickly and then grabbed Neville. She was shaking a bit. Then she kissed Lupin, Neville heard her whisper something to him and appared away from the lounge.
“What was that?” Ted asked.
“I don’t know,” Lupin said, he was looking outside at the dead tree. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“It was him,” Andromeda said quietly.
Lupin pulled his wand out and muttered, “Expecto Patronum”. A big silvery white dog got up and ran through the wall.
Neville was shocked. He had never heard of anything so powerful as to turn lighting into a killing curse. And was it just the lightning that was evil or was it the whole storm?
“Was that really rain?” Neville asked, wondering what he, the rest of them and the countryside were covered in.
Lupin looked at him, a haunted look in his eyes.
“Right, everybody gets changed now. Neville, you’re first in the shower,” Lupin announced.
After they had all been showered, they all ended up sitting in the lounge, warm but still in shock. The day's weather seemed perfect again, but Neville couldn’t get over how quickly it had changed. How many people had been caught in the storm?
Ted went out an emerged with some roast beef sandwiches and crisps that they all ate in silence.
“Monopoly, anyone?” Ted finally asked.
~*~*~*~
Tonks returned after dark. She sat on the chair heavily. She looked exhausted. “It was You-Know-Who,” she announced quietly.
She struggled and pulled out a photograph from her pocket. “The Muggles have cameras in the sky. Kingsley got this to us,” she passed it to Lupin, who in turn handed it to Andromeda, Ted and then Neville.
Only one cloud hung above Cheshire. It had the vague outline of a skull.
“It only lasted an hour,” she continued, her voice a monotone, “but it moved fast. We don’t know how many are dead.”
“Why?” Andromeda asked, as if anyone in the room could explain how much hate it would take to conjure up something so evil.
“It was a warning,” Tonks said.
“To Harry.” Lupin added. It wasn’t a question, but Tonks nodded anyway.
~*~*~*~
Tonks left in the morning and Lupin with her. It was understandable, she was called back to work in Hogsmeade to help reassure the people that a similar storm wasn’t going to hit them.
The storm was all over the news. It was the first eight pages of the Prophet and all that was ever talked about on the Wizards Wireless. In an hour it had managed to work its way from Cheshire and North Wales to Surrey and out to sea before it disappeared. Over two hundred people were stuck by what people could only call lightning and perished and most of them were Muggles who didn’t have a chance to get away. Crops and animals that were in the storms path were destroyed. Buildings fell. There was one tragedy Neville heard over the wireless, the roof had blown off of one Muggle family’s home. They were all found dead inside.
People were afraid to leave their homes. The weather for Britain was still beautiful, but for everyone the summer was now over.
Once it was announced that it was safe to go outside, Neville helped Andromeda and Ted inspect the damage. Two trees outside the front of the house were now dead, including one of their wand grade trees, and a further one had been stuck behind the house. That was the one they had all watched. Where the lightning had struck the ground patches of the law, two meters in diameter were brown and dead.
Worst was the greenhouse. Three of the panes of glass had shattered, which had caused wind and rain to charge through and scatter soil, leaves, plants and pots throughout.
Mercifully, the glass encasing the Venomous Tentacula had remained intact. If it had broken, vines would have worked their way through the greenhouse overnight and it would not have been safe to work in there anymore.
Andromeda took the devastation in her stride. “Ted and I started out with nothing. Ted worked sixteen hours a day to keep us in food when he was seventeen. I cleaned people homes for ten years. Nymphadora went to Hogwarts on scholarship money. This - this will not stop us,” she told Neville when he asked what she was going to do. “We just have to clean everything up.”
And so they began. Ted couldn’t help out at first. He was busy fixing the shingles that had fallen from the roof. Unbreakable glass was in short supply, so Andromeda and Ted had to make do with the ordinary Muggle kind to replace the broken panes.
Neville went through the pots, cataloguing what everything was, what had survived, what needed urgent attention if it was going survive, and throwing out the plants that could not be saved. It was no easy to tell the difference, but Neville thought it was wonderful that Andromeda trusted him to make that decision. At one point Neville got into a tussle with a rather angry Whomping Willow what was lying on its side amongst pots of aconite. Neville and Andromeda had to do all this while wearing earmuffs for the first week - that was how long it took them both to track down the location of all the mandrake seedlings.
From there, with Ted’s help they rebuilt workbenches, planted seedlings, cleaned up the glass and broken bits of terracotta and soil and worked out what needed to be done to secure the greenhouse from another storm. It was exhausting work and Neville lived in constant fear of what could emerge from the sky, but seeing the greenhouse fixed again, though considerably emptier, was worth it.
The survival story of the plants was the Mimbulus. It took three days after the storm for him to do it but Neville found them all standing up sheltered by a rather large pot and a broken workbench, standing upright and looking none the worse for the wear. How they all managed to travel five metres across from their normal position and one metre down from the bench they were normally situated while not losing any soil and remaining upright, mystified Neville. But his faith in the magical properties of the plants was restored. If they could somehow survive that, then there must be something truly wonderful about them.
Andromeda thought this was brilliant to and immediately set about writing an article to a herbology journal about the phenomenon, signing it from her and Neville. Luna wrote that she was going to do an article about the amazing surviving Mimbulus for The Quibbler. Between that article and the interview with Harry, Neville wondered how much of The Quibbler also happened to be true.
Neville also told Tonks when she came for a visit. She looked at him shocked. “That’s rather freaky,” she announced. “Next thing you know we'll all be blind and they’ll be taking over the world. You just wait. Thing aren’t supposed to survive like that.”
Tonks came to stay for a few nights while Lupin underwent his monthly transformations. She confessed to her parents over the dinning table that part of Lupin and her being together was that she had promised to stay well away during the full moon. Meanwhile Lupin was locked in an empty dungeon classroom at Hogwarts, being guarded by Hagrid. So she figured her parents place was more than far enough away.
Neville himself had found he had difficulty sleeping during the full moon. Nightmares of the events of that night plagued him. Dementors were trying to engulf his head, the blackness threatening to suffocating and the salivating jaws of wolves snapped at his ankles.
On the night of the full moon, he gave up trying to sleep and decided to grab some books from Andromeda bookcase in the lounge, when he found Tonks sitting by the window staring out at the moon, a copy of the Daily Prophet in her hand. The daily news had not improved; in fact Neville thought it may be getting worse. Not only were there raids on peoples' houses, but today’s main story was of a child that had been used under Imperius to attack its parent. Neville thought it was just sick, using a child like that. Andromeda and Ted had both seemed very upset by the news. It was a child and nobody wanted to hear of a child suffer like that.
“Can’t sleep either?” she asked.
“No.”
“I normally go into the office on nights like this, but your incident the other month had me thinking. I think I’m actually glad they won’t let me work full moons,” she confessed.
“I mean,” she sighed. “It’s difficult…Everything’s difficult.”
They sat there not speaking for a moment, Neville unsure what to say to Tonks.
“It’s terrible what happened to that child,” Neville eventually said, trying to make some conversations.
However, Tonks seemed to flinch when Neville brought it up “Yes,” she said quickly. She looked really uncomfortable.
He realised that it was a silly thing to talk about, something nobody really wanted to discuss.
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” she announced getting up.
“Okay then. Goodnight,” Neville replied.
“Goodnight.” She headed upstairs, taking the paper with her.
~*~*~*~
Tonks left as quietly as she came. She slipped out of the house without much by the way of goodbye the next morning, but there was a great commotion that day. Neville and Andromeda appeared out of the greenhouse after a particularly arduous morning of planting only to find a stranger, a plump middle aged bearded man in the house speaking with Ted in hushed voices.
From his clothes he was obviously a wizard. Neville kept back while Andromeda went up to Ted. Neville could not hear what was going on but Ted looked alarmed and Andromeda irritated until Ted leaned over and whispered something into her ear. She joined Ted in his expression of mild alarm.
Then two more wizards appeared, walking out of the corridor with cardboard boxes in their hands. Neville heard them all say goodbye before the three stranger left the house.
Wondering whether it was his place to ask, he eventually did, there were not often visitors to the Tonks household. “Um…what were those people doing?”
Ted gave a small smile. “They were from the Ministry, I did some work many years ago that they are now interested in again.”
He clapped his hands together. “Now what should we have for lunch,” he added, his usual enthusiasm entering into his voice.
Neville deduced that Ted did not want to talk about it, and the matter was soon forgotten.
Next Chapter
Growing (11/18)
Chapter Eleven – Undone
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Very mild violence
Chapter Summary: Ted comes up with a brilliant plan to cheer everyone up. Though things become undone when Voldemort decides to send a message to Harry.
Author’s Notes: A great deal of thanks to my beta Nathaniel.
Previous Chapter
The next morning, things around the house were much more subdued. Tonks appeared at breakfast dressed in her Auror robes.
“Savages’ funeral is today,” she announced as she sat down with Neville and her parents for breakfast, “so Remus and I will be gone for the day.”
Neville got back to work in the greenhouse. With all the practise he had been doing with defensive spells over the weekend and with Tonks and Lupin being around, the greenhouse seemed to Neville to be very detached from the war.
Ted joined him and Andromeda that day. He was working on the Whomping Willows again, after having come up with a new idea. Though he was not having much success, Neville kept on hearing cursing coming from that section of the greenhouse. Ted knew some pretty impressive language, including curses that Neville had never heard before. Though, as it turned out, some of it was justified.
Ted showed off the impressive black eye he gained for his efforts to his daughter over the dining table.
“That’s impressive, Dad,” she responded weakly, not paying him much attention. Both she and Lupin had been quiet since they had returned. “I think I might head back to my flat tomorrow morning,” she said quietly.
“No…stay here a few more days,” Andromeda pleaded.
“I don’t know,”
“Please, for me and your father. Stay around another day,”
“Alright, one more day, but I do have stuff I need to do,” Tonks finally agreed. But the cheeriness that she had had all weekend did not show up again that evening.
Neville headed down the stairs the next morning to find Ted sitting eating breakfast.
“Brilliant day, isn’t it, Nev,” he said as Neville sat down.
Neville looked out the window. “Yeah,” he replied. It was quite brilliant. There was not a cloud in the sky and Neville did not think he had ever seen the sky so blue.
“The prefect day to blow off work and play some backyard cricket, isn’t it?” Ted said.
Neville didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. All he could think about was the insect. “What’s cricket?” he asked.
“I sometimes wonder if fun was a Muggle creation -- It’s a game.”
“Like Monopoly?” Neville asked.
Ted laughed. “No, nothing like Monopoly.”
Ted seemed to have the same conversation with every person in the house as they appeared for breakfast. Until Neville, Lupin and Andromeda all ended up on the lawn wearing t-shirts and shorts. Well, accept for Andromeda who wore a long skirt as always. “This behaviour from Ted would be why I hid the cricket set,” Andromeda announced
Ted was busy hitting three white poles in the ground, taking a long time and a lot of care to make sure they were all the same distance apart and height.
Tonks emerged from the house, wearing a yellow t-shirt, which Neville saw was a Weasley brother’s creation. It had ‘I survived U-No-Poo’ across the front in the same colour pink as Tonks’s hair.
“You own one of those?” Andromeda said curtly.
“Yeah, they're brilliant. The fabric’s got shield charms worked through it.”
Andromeda gave her a look of condemnation and Tonks rolled her eyes. “Lighten up a bit, would you. People need a laugh right now, and You-Know-Who deserves to be mocked more than anybody I can think of.”
Ted eventually wandered over. “Right, the rules of cricket…”
“You’re not going to make us play a proper match, are you? We’ve only got five people,” Tonks butted in.
“The rules of cricket are,” Ted continued, ignoring Tonks who rolled her eyes again, “you hit the ball with the bat,” he waved the rectangular bat he was carrying in one hand, “in order to prevent the ball from hitting the wickets.”
“Those three sticks,” Andromeda explained.
“And then you run,” Tonks continued, “to that pole and back,”
“And if you are caught before the ball hits the ground, or if somebody hits the wicket while you are running, you are out and another persons in. Dora, I give you first bat, show them how it’s done. I’ll bowl. Andi, wickets if you please.”
“Remus, Neville, if you could just stand one on each side and catch the ball if it comes in your direction and then throw it to me or Andi, that would be great,” Ted finished.
“Sounds easy enough,” Lupin whispered to Neville as they walked over.
“Ha…You’ve obviously never played my Dad,” Tonks said loudly having overheard him.
“You’re just as bad,” Andromeda remarked.
It looked easy enough, Ted would throw the ball and Tonks would whack it with the bat, sending it flying. Then she would run to where Ted was stranding, waiving the bat in the air showing off. Lupin would pass the ball to Ted, apologising profusely to Tonks the whole time. Ted would then inevitably throw the ball at the wickets just as Tonks was getting back, leading to a big argument about whether it was in or out. And Andromeda would finally announce that actually this behaviour was the reason why she hid the cricket set.
Neville even found out that he wasn’t too bad at it. But then Lupin was the one lobbing the ball at him, and he wasn’t particularly good at it like Ted was. Ted eventually caught him out. But Neville was really enjoying the antics between Ted and Tonks. They both got really passionate about it.
“They’re both beaters,” Andromeda explained. “Being able to hit the ball is a matter of great pride to them both.”
The wind started blowing stronger through the morning, but they continued playing. When it was Tonks’ turn to bat, she switched over from bowling and Ted took over bowling again. Neville was bracing himself to catch a big hit when the ball sailed straight past Tonks and hit the wickets.
Ted was waiving his hands in the air, shouting something about needing some real competition, but Tonks didn’t say anything. Tonks had not even seen the ball - she was staring at the roof of the house.
Andromeda had spotted what Tonks had and was staring too. Neville could not see anything except blue sky so he, along with Lupin from the other side wandered over to where the women were standing.
The wind whipped up around them much more fiercely all of a sudden, Neville’s hair blew everywhere and the clothesline made menacing groans. Neville finally reached where Tonks was standing and saw what she saw. Dark, fearsome black clouds were moving upon them quickly.
And then Neville saw something that chilled him to the bone. A flash of lightning hit the ground just over the house. But this was no ordinary lightning that Neville had ever seen before. It was green.
“Get in the house!” Tonks screamed.
The four of them began running for the door, struggling against the surging wind. Thunder crashed around them and raindrops began to fall heavily. Ted seemed to have notice something was wrong and was looking to the sky. Tonks and Lupin made a beeline for him and grabbed him by each arm and dragged him towards the back door.
Andromeda and Neville arrived first and it took both of them to slam the door shut after the last three struggled in, the door was caught in the wind.
“The windows,” Lupin said breathlessly, causing all five of them to run around the house shutting them and then double-checking they were closed. They met in the lounge and stared out the windows at the rain hitting the garden. The short trees were nearly doubled with the wind.
Then the lighting hit the back garden.
Andromeda let out a small scream when the green light emerged from the sky and hit the ground in the middle of their makeshift cricket pitch. Three more hit different patches in the ground. Neville flinched violently as each one did. Lupin wrapped his arms around Tonks and Ted wrapped one around Andromeda and placed one on Neville’s shoulder. Andromeda grabbed Neville’s hand and held onto it tightly. They all remained transfixed at what was happening in the garden. The thunder caused the house to shake around them. The rain hit the roof and window so hard it deafened them and Neville was scared they were going to break.
Another green bolt of lightning hit a tree. Andromeda flinched as it did so, Neville felt himself doing the same. The tree shrivelled before their eyes as it died. Neville did not know what happened when the killing curse hit a plant, but this is what he imagined it would be like.
A bolt hit the greenhouse, Andromeda let out another soft cry as shards of glass from broken panes went flying everywhere.
Three more bolts of lightning hit the garden in front of them as the rain and wind intensified, and just when Neville thought another thunderclap would cause the windows to fall out on their panes, it stopped. The rains stopped and the wind died down. Blue sky appeared overhead. They all watched as the clouds continued in a relentless march away from them. All Neville could now hear was the beating of his heart in his chest.
Tonks finally broke the silence. “I have to go to work. I’ve got to warn others.”
“Don’t go out in that,” Andromeda urged her.
“I’ll apparate from here,” she said. “Don’t go outside until I get back,” She hugged her mother and father quickly and then grabbed Neville. She was shaking a bit. Then she kissed Lupin, Neville heard her whisper something to him and appared away from the lounge.
“What was that?” Ted asked.
“I don’t know,” Lupin said, he was looking outside at the dead tree. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“It was him,” Andromeda said quietly.
Lupin pulled his wand out and muttered, “Expecto Patronum”. A big silvery white dog got up and ran through the wall.
Neville was shocked. He had never heard of anything so powerful as to turn lighting into a killing curse. And was it just the lightning that was evil or was it the whole storm?
“Was that really rain?” Neville asked, wondering what he, the rest of them and the countryside were covered in.
Lupin looked at him, a haunted look in his eyes.
“Right, everybody gets changed now. Neville, you’re first in the shower,” Lupin announced.
After they had all been showered, they all ended up sitting in the lounge, warm but still in shock. The day's weather seemed perfect again, but Neville couldn’t get over how quickly it had changed. How many people had been caught in the storm?
Ted went out an emerged with some roast beef sandwiches and crisps that they all ate in silence.
“Monopoly, anyone?” Ted finally asked.
Tonks returned after dark. She sat on the chair heavily. She looked exhausted. “It was You-Know-Who,” she announced quietly.
She struggled and pulled out a photograph from her pocket. “The Muggles have cameras in the sky. Kingsley got this to us,” she passed it to Lupin, who in turn handed it to Andromeda, Ted and then Neville.
Only one cloud hung above Cheshire. It had the vague outline of a skull.
“It only lasted an hour,” she continued, her voice a monotone, “but it moved fast. We don’t know how many are dead.”
“Why?” Andromeda asked, as if anyone in the room could explain how much hate it would take to conjure up something so evil.
“It was a warning,” Tonks said.
“To Harry.” Lupin added. It wasn’t a question, but Tonks nodded anyway.
Tonks left in the morning and Lupin with her. It was understandable, she was called back to work in Hogsmeade to help reassure the people that a similar storm wasn’t going to hit them.
The storm was all over the news. It was the first eight pages of the Prophet and all that was ever talked about on the Wizards Wireless. In an hour it had managed to work its way from Cheshire and North Wales to Surrey and out to sea before it disappeared. Over two hundred people were stuck by what people could only call lightning and perished and most of them were Muggles who didn’t have a chance to get away. Crops and animals that were in the storms path were destroyed. Buildings fell. There was one tragedy Neville heard over the wireless, the roof had blown off of one Muggle family’s home. They were all found dead inside.
People were afraid to leave their homes. The weather for Britain was still beautiful, but for everyone the summer was now over.
Once it was announced that it was safe to go outside, Neville helped Andromeda and Ted inspect the damage. Two trees outside the front of the house were now dead, including one of their wand grade trees, and a further one had been stuck behind the house. That was the one they had all watched. Where the lightning had struck the ground patches of the law, two meters in diameter were brown and dead.
Worst was the greenhouse. Three of the panes of glass had shattered, which had caused wind and rain to charge through and scatter soil, leaves, plants and pots throughout.
Mercifully, the glass encasing the Venomous Tentacula had remained intact. If it had broken, vines would have worked their way through the greenhouse overnight and it would not have been safe to work in there anymore.
Andromeda took the devastation in her stride. “Ted and I started out with nothing. Ted worked sixteen hours a day to keep us in food when he was seventeen. I cleaned people homes for ten years. Nymphadora went to Hogwarts on scholarship money. This - this will not stop us,” she told Neville when he asked what she was going to do. “We just have to clean everything up.”
And so they began. Ted couldn’t help out at first. He was busy fixing the shingles that had fallen from the roof. Unbreakable glass was in short supply, so Andromeda and Ted had to make do with the ordinary Muggle kind to replace the broken panes.
Neville went through the pots, cataloguing what everything was, what had survived, what needed urgent attention if it was going survive, and throwing out the plants that could not be saved. It was no easy to tell the difference, but Neville thought it was wonderful that Andromeda trusted him to make that decision. At one point Neville got into a tussle with a rather angry Whomping Willow what was lying on its side amongst pots of aconite. Neville and Andromeda had to do all this while wearing earmuffs for the first week - that was how long it took them both to track down the location of all the mandrake seedlings.
From there, with Ted’s help they rebuilt workbenches, planted seedlings, cleaned up the glass and broken bits of terracotta and soil and worked out what needed to be done to secure the greenhouse from another storm. It was exhausting work and Neville lived in constant fear of what could emerge from the sky, but seeing the greenhouse fixed again, though considerably emptier, was worth it.
The survival story of the plants was the Mimbulus. It took three days after the storm for him to do it but Neville found them all standing up sheltered by a rather large pot and a broken workbench, standing upright and looking none the worse for the wear. How they all managed to travel five metres across from their normal position and one metre down from the bench they were normally situated while not losing any soil and remaining upright, mystified Neville. But his faith in the magical properties of the plants was restored. If they could somehow survive that, then there must be something truly wonderful about them.
Andromeda thought this was brilliant to and immediately set about writing an article to a herbology journal about the phenomenon, signing it from her and Neville. Luna wrote that she was going to do an article about the amazing surviving Mimbulus for The Quibbler. Between that article and the interview with Harry, Neville wondered how much of The Quibbler also happened to be true.
Neville also told Tonks when she came for a visit. She looked at him shocked. “That’s rather freaky,” she announced. “Next thing you know we'll all be blind and they’ll be taking over the world. You just wait. Thing aren’t supposed to survive like that.”
Tonks came to stay for a few nights while Lupin underwent his monthly transformations. She confessed to her parents over the dinning table that part of Lupin and her being together was that she had promised to stay well away during the full moon. Meanwhile Lupin was locked in an empty dungeon classroom at Hogwarts, being guarded by Hagrid. So she figured her parents place was more than far enough away.
Neville himself had found he had difficulty sleeping during the full moon. Nightmares of the events of that night plagued him. Dementors were trying to engulf his head, the blackness threatening to suffocating and the salivating jaws of wolves snapped at his ankles.
On the night of the full moon, he gave up trying to sleep and decided to grab some books from Andromeda bookcase in the lounge, when he found Tonks sitting by the window staring out at the moon, a copy of the Daily Prophet in her hand. The daily news had not improved; in fact Neville thought it may be getting worse. Not only were there raids on peoples' houses, but today’s main story was of a child that had been used under Imperius to attack its parent. Neville thought it was just sick, using a child like that. Andromeda and Ted had both seemed very upset by the news. It was a child and nobody wanted to hear of a child suffer like that.
“Can’t sleep either?” she asked.
“No.”
“I normally go into the office on nights like this, but your incident the other month had me thinking. I think I’m actually glad they won’t let me work full moons,” she confessed.
“I mean,” she sighed. “It’s difficult…Everything’s difficult.”
They sat there not speaking for a moment, Neville unsure what to say to Tonks.
“It’s terrible what happened to that child,” Neville eventually said, trying to make some conversations.
However, Tonks seemed to flinch when Neville brought it up “Yes,” she said quickly. She looked really uncomfortable.
He realised that it was a silly thing to talk about, something nobody really wanted to discuss.
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” she announced getting up.
“Okay then. Goodnight,” Neville replied.
“Goodnight.” She headed upstairs, taking the paper with her.
Tonks left as quietly as she came. She slipped out of the house without much by the way of goodbye the next morning, but there was a great commotion that day. Neville and Andromeda appeared out of the greenhouse after a particularly arduous morning of planting only to find a stranger, a plump middle aged bearded man in the house speaking with Ted in hushed voices.
From his clothes he was obviously a wizard. Neville kept back while Andromeda went up to Ted. Neville could not hear what was going on but Ted looked alarmed and Andromeda irritated until Ted leaned over and whispered something into her ear. She joined Ted in his expression of mild alarm.
Then two more wizards appeared, walking out of the corridor with cardboard boxes in their hands. Neville heard them all say goodbye before the three stranger left the house.
Wondering whether it was his place to ask, he eventually did, there were not often visitors to the Tonks household. “Um…what were those people doing?”
Ted gave a small smile. “They were from the Ministry, I did some work many years ago that they are now interested in again.”
He clapped his hands together. “Now what should we have for lunch,” he added, his usual enthusiasm entering into his voice.
Neville deduced that Ted did not want to talk about it, and the matter was soon forgotten.
Next Chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 07:29 am (UTC)b) I do not like the last paragraph; it triggers some warnings.
c) Beautiful work, as always.
d) Will there be an epilogue after the 18 chapters?
Thank you for an amazing fic.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 08:06 pm (UTC)