It was difficult, really, to resist the urge to toss the book into the common room fire.
The battered used copy of Magical Draughts and Potions had surely already had too many owners. His grandmother had picked it up in a dingy corner of Flourish and Blotts two and a half years ago, its condition similar to the rest of the used textbooks he had received as he prepared to begin his first year at Hogwarts. Neville was convinced that if the book had been enchanted and given the ability to speak, it would beg and plead to be allowed to rot in peace, tucked away and forgotten in a cabinet somewhere in the bowels of the castle. He certainly had no use for it.
Several of the pages had fallen out, which would complicate any student's grasp of the fine art of potion making. In a few spots littered throughout the text, spilled drops of unknown liquids had stained the parchment, rendering some of the instructions illegible. Every few pages, a rip or tear marked the vast number of years that this particular edition had been in circulation.
With a sigh, Neville moved the book a bit further away from him, leaving enough distance between them so that he would not be able to reach it the next time he was overcome with frustration and wanted to feed it to the flames. He knew good and well that even an unblemished copy, one fresh from the printer, would not help his lack of skills in the potions classroom.
If the book could talk, maybe it would simply ask Professor Snape to find a new owner for it.
Neville considered himself a borderline Squib in most of his subjects, but Potions was by far the worst. He usually succeeded in not only ruining his own concoctions but also causing some amount of collateral damage to the work of the students unlucky enough to be seated around him. Professor Snape usually spent approximately half of the allotted class time pointing out Harry Potter's various character flaws, but if he ever found himself without a witty Potter-related remark at hand, he could always count on Neville to embarrass himself and set up the next joke. Snape had gone so far as to inform other teachers of Neville's inadequacy as a wizard; while most professors initially dismissed his comments, he occasionally caught them looking at him with pity whenever he managed to bungle a task in their classrooms as well. Perhaps the curse of potions was beginning to bleed over into the other areas of his life, unsatisfied with being contained in the Snape-led comedy club that the potions dungeon had become for him.
This would all be almost tolerable if he only had a few more years of school to worry about. But Neville, like many around him, dreamed of becoming an Auror. For him, it was about more than mere prestige. His parents had been Aurors, at least before they had been dispatched by Death Eaters, and he wanted nothing more than to pick up where they had been forced to leave off.
Without some talent in potions, this fantasy of his could never be a reality. End of story.
Sighing once more, Neville turned to another assignment, giving up on his failure of a potions essay for the moment. He tugged a piece of parchment out of his bag, glancing at the list of homework assignments he'd compiled throughout the day.
Herbology: Write twenty-two inches of parchment on the merits of gillyweed.
He remembered the lesson well. Professor Sprout had taken the class out to the shallow end of the Black Lake, making sure to keep them far from the squid's usual waters, and asked for a volunteer. A girl he didn't know from Ravenclaw had raised her hand, and she next found herself popping a bit of the plant into her mouth and dipping her head in the water. She had burst out of it a moment later, attempting to proclaim that she could breathe underwater but forgetting in her excitement that she still had gills. She had remained after class until the effects wore off, with Professor Sprout offering to write her a note of excuse for her next class with Professor Flitwick.
He dug his half-empty inkwell and a fresh quill out of his bag, beginning to work on the essay. Gillyweed is commonly used to achieve underwater respiration. There are a number of reasons why such a skill might be necessary, among them swimming competitions, beach safety, work at the Magical Menagerie's aquatic life branch… He began slowly, but he soon found himself writing furiously, and before he knew it, he had completed two feet of writing and signed that it belonged to him. He was done. More than done.
He reviewed his closing sentence. In short, gillyweed is a simple but important tool in the marine life of the common witch or wizard. It sounded almost as good as some of Hermione Granger's work.
With a smile, he adjusted his signature at the bottom of the page.
Neville Longbottom, Herbologist.
If the essay could talk, he wondered, would it say that perhaps he was not a Squib after all?
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