Understanding (Neville Longbottom)

12

Two weeks had passed from that night Neville and I found the kids on the bench and nothing important had happened.
Everything was still dreadful and dark, we still got tortured in class, Pansy was still following me around like a shadow and Sasha and Jade were still cold and distant.
Mark had stopped coming to the D.A. meetings which were more frequent and very difficult to organize without being found out; Ben confirmed my suspects that Jade had pulled an ultimatum and Mark had decided he'd rather be with her than staying in the army.

I only hoped they wouldn't try something like that on me or, at least, I didn't think Sasha would have ever done it; but she was mad and she could be vendictive.

What would I have done if I had to choose?
I really didn't know. I loved my friends but I had more now, and they understood my anger and what I was going through; and the D.A. had helped me cope with the situation a lot ...I didn't know if I would be ok without it.

For the moment I spent my time with Luna Ginny and Neville mainly, and other friends with whom I didn't really talk about 'important stuff', like some players from the Quidditch team that I met through David the past years or people I had elective classes with.

We were getting to the first Hogsmead visit of the year and I was really looking forward to get out of the castle and see other adults who didn't want to kill me

"Oh! Morning mail" Luna's voice distracted me.

I was eating my eggs and toast and didn't really look around at what was going on.
An owl dropped a copy of the Quibbler in front of her and she immediately opened it to read it; I spied the cover to see the picture of three Death Eaters with evil smiles on their faces looking back at me.
Mr Lovegood wasn't going for subtlety; he was brave even if very odd, like his daughter.

A silvery grey owl carrying a heavy package landed next to me
"Hello Plato!" I was pleasantly surprised

"Your owl's name is Plato?"

"No, it's my uncle's"

"You are a very pretty bird Mr. Plato" Luna caressed the very proud silver owl who then promptly began pecking my toast.

I was distracted, reading the note my uncle had written on the package with his flowery handwriting
"Mh... this is odd"

"What is?"

"My uncle is sending me books about trolls"

"That is weird"

"No" I laughed a little thinking that even Luna Lovegood found my interests odd "I mean I read all the books about trolls we had at home"

"Maybe he found new ones?"

"That must be it"

"I must go to class" she said, getting up and taking her bag.
The first lessons were about to start, I had free time but preferred getting up early to have breakfast with my friend and then study

"Will we see you at dinner tonight?"

"No, it's Friday: I have Herbology"

"Oh, right. Well tomorrow it's the first Hogsmead trip, will you come with me and Ginny?"

"Sure!"

After that she floated towards the big doors and disappeared in the corridors. I grabbed the package and patted Plato on his head before going back to Ravenclaw common room, where I proceded to occupy the low table in front of the fire place with my various herbology books and began researching the best way to favor bark regrowth in a Robin tree.

My day was pretty full but also, again, uneventful. But I couldn't complain, only thank my lucky star I had had a relatively normal week.

In herbology everything was going great: the Robin tree was still in bad shape, but quickly recovering.
Its roots had been infested with a stubborn parasitic bulb that sapped all the nutrients it was getting from the enriched soil formula we created, thanks to Neville's idea of putting some beetle blood in.