Passing Days

Neville had a frustrating session with Pansy. No, the problem was not with Pansy but with the fucked-up wizarding world. Because Pansy was a girl, she can never be the heir of her house and hence her parents never made any effort in teaching her affinity-based skills or occlumency skills or any skill for that matter.

She only knew the basic skills and her knowledge was limited to the teaching of the Hogwarts syllabus. Neville tested her affinity by letting her use the basic spells and found she was really in tune with the wind element. He provided the spells he had in his library and gave her the notes that were used to understand her affinity and how to use it as a wizard.

Thankfully, she was ready to work hard and dedicated herself to learning this new knowledge. Neville and Pansy spent the whole day together, from the library to the practice room and finally had dinner in the Potions room.

A week passed like this with the two young wizards focused on learning new knowledge and getting along. Neville tried to act as a guide for her and helped her wholeheartedly. He knew Pansy would secretly cry at night, but she will still smile like her silly self the next morning.

Today they received the letters from the school informing them about next year's syllabus and there was a surprise for Neville in the list of books.

· Magical Drafts and Potions

· The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2

· One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi

· A History of Magic

· A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration

· The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection

"So, it is confirmed there is no Gilderoy Lockhart this year! Well, I will miss the clown. That's for sure. This year will be a serious pain in the ass!" Mumbling Neville kept the booklist inside his pocket.

He only wanted to know who the new professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts (abbreviated as DADA) was hired for this year. This was a new character, a person he might not be familiar with, and this was surely interesting.

Pansy came running down the stairs "Neville, did you get your letter from Hogwarts?"

"Yup. I believe Headmaster knows you are living with my family now, so, he sent your letter here. We shall go to the bookstore on Wednesday to get these ones." Neville replied with a faint smile.

"Why Wednesday?" Pany pouted. She had spent almost all the holidays inside and wanted to spend a day outside. Maybe go on a picnic or shopping or simply check the new candies that are in Diagon Alley shops.

"Well, the famous author, Gilderoy Lockhart is doing a book signing event on that day in Flourish and Blotts. He will hold the event to sign copies of his latest book Magical Me. I believe other shops will take advantage of the extra crowd that day and have some new items to attract the crowd.

So, on Wednesday, we shall go on a small shopping trip. Got it?" Neville explained his idea to Pansy.

In reality, however, Neville was interested in getting the Horcrux diary from Ginny. He knew Harry Potter and Weasley will go on this day, meet the Malfoys, and have a fight. Then taking advantage of the chaos, Lucius Malfoy will dump the book on Ginny.

Neville was not sure if the original incident will still happen like that, but he could not choose to ignore it. So, he decided to visit the bookstore on Wednesday too.

"Cool. I want to go shopping. Wait. I need to make my list. I will go to the library later. Bye." Pansy grabbing a few sandwiches from the plate ran upstairs to her room. Library books can wait but not her shopping list.

However, the minute she started writing the list, her joy faded, and she felt really stupid. She knew she had been abandoned and she has no money to buy anything. She is completely poor. Poorer than a Weasley!

She tried so hard to control her tears but the quill in her hand broke because of the extra pressure. A few teardrops fell on the parchment making it slightly wet. Pansy wiped her tears and controlling herself put the parchment and other stuff carefully.

She grabbed some of her old diaries and checked to find a few galleons she had put as the bookmarks. After spending the entire morning, she only found 4 galleons and 2 sickles. This was the total wealth she had. Looking at the coins in her hand, she broke down completely and started sobbing again.

Neville was completely ignorant of Pansy's problem. He was checking the boiling potions in the potion room and was satisfied with the current progress. There were many indigents whose quantity had been deduced and checked.

The order of these ingredients was also finalised. All that remains is to check the power of the potion. Will, it really be effective against a Horcrux? Can it really purify the dark magic placed on the tiara?

Neville ordered Winny to make only 1 crucible of the potion and stop the experiment for now. He was waiting for the potion to show some physical reaction, like a change in colour or a new odour, to signify some magical reaction in the crucible.

A potion can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months before it finally shows some reaction and is ready for use.

Now all Neville had to do was to wait for this potion to be ready and do some practice tests.

Neville left the potion room after the inspection and came to the garden area to check his new spells. This was after taking some inspiration from Professor Snape's notes.

In his early years as Snape became aware of the conjuring spells like Aqua Eructo that throws jets of water from a wand or Avis that conjured a flock of birds, he wanted to create a spell that conjured strong winds. Strong enough to push his enemies away from him.

Later he modified his idea and instead of conjuring strong winds, he conjured wind blades that are razor sharp to hurt his enemies. Instead of pushing his enemies away, now he wanted to sever (Seco) or slash at his enemies continuously (Sempra) using his wand movement.

So, he created Sectumsempra.

For Neville, this was a great reference that gave him many ideas for his spell creation.

Conjuring vines strong enough to hold his immobilise his victims.

Conjuring leaves to create a whip to hurt his enemies.

And so on and so forth.

For the next few days, while Pansy tried to bring herself to discuss her money problems with Lady Augusta secretly avoiding Neville (because she didn't want Neville to pity her), Neville focused on his spell creation.

It resulted in some silly and funny accidents.

Locking his own hands in tight vines. Throwing leaves out of a wand that just flew randomly in the air after conjuring. Shooting beautiful flowers made no sense except it was visually appealing. (He noted it down to sell it to Lockhart.)

So, without any actual progress, the days passed before Wednesday came knocking on their doors.