Harry Potter : the next generation

chapter 15

Al wasn't sure how to approach Neville; at first, he thought about doing it after class, hanging around the greenhouses while everyone else filed out, but he was foiled by Penny Johnson, who was lingering after class to talk to the professor.

            "If I'm going to get to History of Magic on time, I've got to leave before I can talk to him," Al complained to Rose and Scorpius one Thursday evening before Dueling Club. "I don't know why. She's asking all these stupid questions she already knows the answers to, keeping him so busy I can't ask him anything."

            "Are you kidding?" Rose asked.

            "What?"

            "She's trying to show Neville how hard she's trying," Rose said. "She wants him to like her." She rolled her eyes. "And she wants to take up all his time so you don't have time to talk to him."

            "Well, it's working," said Al. "I can't be late to History of Magic. Professor Wilkes would kill me."

            "It's too bad you don't have our schedule," Rose said. "We've got Potions right after Herbology. Professor Slughorn wouldn't say anything if you missed half his class, as long as you apologized to him after. Maybe even if you didn't. After all, you're Albus Severus Potter."

            Al shifted uncomfortably; Scorpius rose to his defense. "I wouldn't like it either," he said.

            Rose shrugged them off. "What's it matter? If he wants to give you extra points for being Uncle Harry's son, take 'em. I'm sure he's given Ravenclaw points just because I'm Mum's daughter. I'm sure he does it for someone in every House; it balances out. And if he'd forgive you for being a little late to class one day because you just had to stay after and talk to another professor..." She sighed. "Oh, but your schedule is different from ours, isn't it? You don't have Professor Slughorn after Herbology, you've got Professor Wilkes, and I'm pretty sure she'd use an Entrail-Expelling Curse on you if you were late." Professor Wilkes was known for giving out Friday-night detentions to anyone who was even a few minutes tardy, no matter what the reason. The last time that Leonidas Gaskin had gotten detention, Al had heard Josh Leith crack a joke that if you were late to History of Magic, you werehistory - and he'd ended up joining Leonidas that Friday. He'd heard the same thing from other Houses, too; whatever House Professor Wilkes had been in during her own time at Hogwarts, she didn't play favorites.

            And, despite being professor of History of Magic - and therefore knowing everything about what Harry Potter and all Al's relatives had done to help in the war - she didn't play favorites. Al had no doubt that, even if he had Neville write him some sort of note, he'd be sitting in Friday night detention with half a dozen other students if he was even five minutes late.

           He looked helplessly to Rose. "So what do I do? At this rate, it'll take weeks before Penny stops hanging around."

            "Weeks? I bet you it lasts the rest of the semester, or at least until Neville starts paying more attention to her in class. To tell you the truth, I think she's got a crush on him. Nah, you're going to have to try to find him some other time. Try to find his office or something. Or maybe check the greenhouses tomorrow, before you go to Hagrid's. Or get him after dinner. I don't know. There ought to be plenty of times you can find him."

            So Al did his best. But, at first, he came up empty: Neville never seemed to frequent the office that had been assigned to him, and, on the first Friday that he tried lingering outside the greenhouses, one glance inside told Al that he'd better come back later: Neville had been otherwise occupied with extracting a seventh-year from the Flesh-Eating Floriferous that had apparently tried to devour him. He hadn't found Neville that weekend, either: he wasn't sure, but suspected that the professor might have chosen to leave Hogwarts on the weekends to visit his wife.