Neville Longbottom (nevforthewin) wrote in plagued_logs, @ 2016-12-08 10:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | 1999 december, neville longbottom |
WHO: Neville & OPEN
WHAT: Trying to solve the food crisis
WHEN: Before the veil thingy appears, evening
WHERE: The new Diagon Alley 'garden'
We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
It still wasn't much of a garden, but it was really the best they could do. When he wasn't doing his Auror duties he now spent nearly all his time there, trying to coax seeds and cuttings to grow in earth that had been dug out from under centuries-old cobblestones to grow. Sleep? What was sleep? Now that the Leaky Cauldron was all but gone, and with it nearly all of their supplies, the task was more important than ever. Much more important, Neville would have liked to argue, than guarding two girls who were helpless to do anything even if they wanted to, outside of a full moon. After digging up the cobbles and turning the earth over about a dozen times to loosen it, he'd mixed in wahtever he could find for fertiliser. The potion shops were a good resource, but he'd also raided every pot plant, windowsill, any non-edible growing thing of its soil to make the earth fit to sustain life. He'd transferred Ollivander's herb garden, which was just about surviving, but that was more to attract worms and other earth-living creatures to the garden. You couldn't live off herbs. He'd taken vegetables from the Leaky Cauldron, cut-offs that would normally have been thrown away, and planted them by the roots in the hope of coaxing something out of them. So far the potatoes were doing well, but even with all the plant magic he knew it would be weeks before there would be anything edible. He also had onions and leeks now, knowing that they would grow well even in the sub-optimal soil. But that wouldn't be enough to live on either, and not soon enough. It was late in the evening for gardening, but there was no time to waste. People were counting on him. The thing was, he might have got an O in his Herbology NEWT (exceptions made for practical work) but Herbology was about growing and caring for magical plants. Not vegetables. And the more magic you put into vegetables, well, the more unpredictable the results. It was a huge gamble between time and success. People were going to starve soon i there was no harvest; but if they rushed the process they could end up with nothing. At least he was doing something. It took his mind of other things; like Bole, and Stephen, wherever he was. At least Seamus had been found and was going to be okay, but the Weasley family was still reeling at the apparent loss of their eldest brother. Neville knew there was nothing he could do to make Ginny or the others feel better, until a body was found. At least he could do whatever he could to keep the rest of them alive. The moon was high by the time he picked up a jug of water tinged slightly with blue. The potion was a delicate one with lots of restorative properties, and it couldn't be overused. He lit his wand so he could see as he crawled along the rows of sad-looking little seedlings, adding exactly three drops to each plant. He nearly sloshed the whole thing over when he glanced up on some instinct to see someone standing over him. Luckily he managed to catch it just in time. "Don't do that," he breathed. |