"Oh, what a diligent child — of course you may, but..."
Professor Sprout pressed a box of hazelnut chocolates into Sheen's palm, then gave her wand a wave. The smears of soil and plant matter on his robes vanished instantly.
"Every year, a few seedlings decide they want to take root in the greenhouse. But very few of them manage to keep at it — the work is repetitive and it isn't easy."
She tilted her head, her kind eyes taking on a glimmer of amusement.
"I think I might tell you a little story."
"Professor — could that wait until next time?"
Bruce, beside them, had gone quite red. Sheen glanced at him with mild curiosity.
"Of course, Mr. Dickinson."
Professor Sprout's smile grew warmer.
From behind a nearby seedling bench, Leon and Piste dissolved into laughter.
"Oi! You two!"
Bruce appeared to have reached full ripeness.
"I laughed? Did I laugh? I'm sorry — I just can't help it when I picture someone scrambling out of a greenhouse on their hands and knees—"
Leon was laughing harder now.
"Piste. Do you remember what he said in his sleep?"
"Mandrake — geranium — someone help me — Devil's Snare!"
The stockier Hufflepuff performed this with cheerful faithfulness. A round of quiet laughter moved through the group, and the mood lifted considerably.
"All right, all right." Bruce raised his hands in surrender, though he was grinning. "I'll admit — the greenhouse is dangerous and fascinating and genuinely exhausting."
He said the last part looking directly at Sheen, entirely serious.
"And that's why very few people actually stick with it."
"Mm." Sheen's voice was quiet. "I'd like to try."
There was a stubbornness to it that wasn't difficult to hear.
The greenhouse had always been short-handed. Against the immediate satisfaction of a well-cast Charm, the spectacle of Transfiguration, or the rushing freedom of Quidditch, Herbology had ever only reliably attracted
the sort of person — the Hufflepuff sort — who didn't mind getting their hands dirty. And even the most hardworking Hufflepuff, in time, tended to drift away from the soil. Dangerous plants, in particular, had a way of thinning the volunteer list.
So Professor Sprout agreed.
She looked at Sheen the way she had looked at every enthusiastic Hufflepuff before him: with appreciation, with pleasure, and with the particular quiet warmth of someone who had learned not to expect it to last.
In the corridor outside the greenhouses, a long blue Self-Inking Quill drifted in the air before Sheen — one of those curious alchemical constructs that, when held vertically above parchment, would begin taking dictation without any further instruction. He had bought it specifically for moments like this: organising his thoughts, catching ideas before they slipped away.
It cost ten Sickles. The wizarding world's stationery prices were a steal. The kind where the shopkeeper actually just pulled out a gun and started stealing from you.
He had bought it anyway.
Knowledge is not where you cut corners, he told himself.
[ Step One: Learn the correct preparation method for every ingredient in the Cure for Boils. ]
The quill made a soft scratch against the parchment.
Professor Sprout had agreed to let him come back. Bruce had already shown him how to identify and process dried nettles. Next time, he could ask about the other ingredients — he suspected the Professor wouldn't refuse
. Once he had a complete grasp of preparation, the next obstacle would be the actual brewing: heat management and stirring were things no book could teach. He would have to feel those out himself.
But once he had a single successful attempt, the panel would do the rest.
The plan would hold.
He tucked the quill back into his bag. Behind him, Bruce's voice drifted over, cheerfully conversational.
"I remember our very first Herbology class — the question about mature Dictamnus stumped practically everyone." He watched Sheen's notes with genuine interest. "Looks like you'll have a head start at the next one.
Professor Sprout isn't stingy with house points when a student's put in the effort beforehand."
House points.
Sheen filed the thought away without much weight attached to it. Points alone wouldn't secure the scholarship.
Professor McGonagall had explained: the scholarship assessment was at the Headmaster's discretion — a combination of academic progress and faculty evaluations, considered together.
Dumbledore was fair. He was also wise, mostl. He had a good head on his shoulder, mostly. Sheen was confident that if he met the standard, Dumbledore would not hesitate over six hundred Galleons.
It was Dumbledore, after all, who had approved the scholarship application without a moment's pause.
If it had been someone like — Headmaster Black, say — Sheen would have been looking at a very different set of problems. Probably involving Azkaban.
His thoughts drifted. In the orphanage, everyone got good at drifting —
staring at nothing, mind somewhere else. He'd done it too, in the early days before the panel activated, when he'd barely had the energy to sit up. That was when he'd first understood that some silences weren't about having nothing to say. They were about having no one who would listen.
All of that had changed the day an owl flew headfirst through the draughty window.
He didn't intend to waste what that had given him. Even if his magical aptitude was the wizarding equivalent of scrap material, he would grind it into something legendary.
"You probably haven't felt the pull of the House Cup yet," Bruce was saying, a wistful look settling on his face, "but trust me — it matters. Not that any of us would mind the hall being draped in another house's colours at the end-of-year feast. But Hufflepuff yellow and black is clearly the best combination, isn't it?"
"Mm." Sheen nodded.
Bruce paused. Looked down. Remembered, apparently, which house the small first-year was actually in.
He laughed, a little sheepishly.
"Ha. I mean — blue and bronze are also very handsome."
"Yellow and black is a better combination," Sheen reaffirmed, with complete sincerity.
The first afternoon class was coming up. Sheen pressed the box of hazelnut chocolates into Bruce's hands, turned, and disappeared up the staircase toward the History of Magic classroom.
"Thank you, Bruce. Goodbye."
His voice echoed briefly in the corridor and was gone.
Leon watched the empty space where he had been and smiled quietly.
"Remarkable kid. Hard to believe he's not a Hufflepuff."
"Says the person who told Professor Sprout that—"
"Don't."
Leon's expression flattened entirely. Beside him, Piste smiled his unflappable smile, entirely unsurprised by any of it.
Away from the greenhouses, Sheen turned his attention to the next challenge: surviving Professor Binns.
______________________________
The Shrieking Shack, despite its considerable reputation, had never actually been haunted by anything. Hogwarts, however, was a different matter — unarguably the most ghost-populated building in Britain, possibly in the world. These damp islands had always had more ghosts per square mile than anywhere else on earth, and Hogwarts concentrated them considerably.
In Harry's world, Spirits — or Ghosts, properly speaking — were transparent, three-dimensional impressions of deceased witches and wizards, persisting indefinitely among the living. Muggles didn't produce them. And no wizard with any sense chose to become one.
Only those who could not let go remained — held back by fear, by guilt, by some unfinished attachment to the physical world, unable or unwilling to pass on.
And while it was quite a mystery why many of the restless spirits had actually turned into ghosts, Bins, Sheen was sure, had been held back by his love of talking loudly from a text book.
(End of Chapter)