Every once in a blue moon, things went right for Neville Longbottom. Which is exactly why, on 1st September of 1995, Evelyn Bishop came marching into his compartment on the train, professing her absolute lack of skills in Herbology and her vivid des...
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⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
three shy little violets
⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
From what Neville could gather, no one was pleased with Professor Umbridge's arrival at Hogwarts. Her speech had been lengthy and unnecessary and none of the students looked rather intrigued when she mentioned her hopes to get along well with everyone. Most of the older students had silently scoffed and the lot of younger kids had just looked rather confused with the entire scenario. Her hem hem of interruption had caused Fred Weasley to pretend to gag and, although it was a normal expression for him, Harry looked rather concerned and annoyed.
But what threw Neville off the most was the look of sheer panic that crossed Evelyn's face when Umbridge took the podium and it was announced that she was the new DADA professor. It was a far cry from the look of general disdain she had given last year's DADA professor during the first feast last year and that was mostly because Evelyn had adored Lupin as a professor and had made that pretty clear to anyone who had barely brought the subject up. The curly haired girl had gone into a mass uproar when it was made public that he was a werewolf, honestly two seconds away from rioting that he was being discriminated against for something he couldn't control. But when someone else had taken the job last year, she had just been pissed off.
But today, at this particular feast, she looked petrified.
Not that it was easy to see, though. But Neville . . . Neville could just feel it the second he looked at her. All throughout Umbridge's speech, Evelyn had been rigid, and her eyes had been set on the table in front of her. She had one hand resting out of view, but the other was clenched on top of the Gryffindor table, skin turned alabaster from how tightly she clenched her fist. Her mouth was set into a firm line and in a passing glance, most would assume she was just frustrated, royally pissed off even. But Neville knew better. For Evelyn, if one looked hard enough, was shaking.
It was subtle, something you'd only notice if you were really focusing on her. Granted, Neville focusing on her hard enough would probably be noticed by anyone glancing his way, most likely misconstrued as his crush on her. But the Longbottom boy could care less in that moment if people thought he was dreamily gazing at her — he wasn't, he just happened to look long enough to notice something was wrong. Instead, all of his focus was on whether or not the girl in question was okay. The tremor that wracked her body was slight, barely noticeable, but it was there. Her arm would twitch every so often and Neville swore he could see her trying to slow her breathing and that she was mumbling something to herself under her breath.
There was something terribly, terribly wrong.
For the rest of the time, Neville would spare her glances, although a few of them were rather long to be considered just glances. She seemed to calm down a bit once Umbridge excused herself back to her seat, but she wasn't as engaged as she had been before the Sorting. She paid Dumbledore no mind as he got back on track with his yearly announcements, didn't laugh at the random quips that the Weasley twins would interject to the group surrounding them, and she barely registered when Dumbledore excused them all.
