alt_neville | Thanks, Seamus

Thanks, Seamus

Thanks for having me floo over yesterday, Seamus. And please thank Mr Rosier for me, too. He seemed really nice, and it was wizard to see you. I'm glad I managed to help you get you at least one day off from study with your tutor. You'll be ace in all our classes when we get back to school in September.

Thought a lot about our talk last night, and I've talked with Gran about it some. You're right (and she agreed) that people with backgrounds like you and me have to ~~always be~~ make it clear to everyone that there's never the slightest doubt about where we stand. I was glad to sign the loyalty oath last year, and I know you were, too.

Thanks for the comics. I was missing the March issue of Archimedes Undercover, so I was really glad to see it.

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It was good to see you too, mate. I hope you can visit again this summer.

My visit with Seamus was odd. It was strange, because I could tell he was trying ever so hard to be a good friend and all, but the whole thing left me feeling sort of...I dunno.

You know his foster home is posh. Mr Rosier made sure to stop by to say hello while we were visiting, and he was as friendly as I could have wanted. I can tell Seamus likes him. But...I dunno. It was just little things Seamus said. Or that he just assumed. Made me feel not quite right. Not at all safe with him.

I ended up lying a lot more than I even thought I would need to do.

It's just, well, when you start out together your first year, you're in the same house, and you're the same age, and so of course you're friends. It's natural. You talk about Quidditch, and you play Exploding Snap, and you look over each other's Charms essays, and what more do you expect or need in a friend when you're only eleven? But it doesn't seen natural anymore, because I'm starting to see little ways that he's changing.

He showed me the books he's studying this summer. He didn't pick them. Mr Rosier did. Mr Rosier wants him to study all about history. Mostly about politics. Seamus said his tutor is talking with him about theories of power and how to acquire it. He's reading biographies of people like Lucrezia Borgia and Oliver Cromwell.

And Dark Arts. Elementary Curse Theory was one of them.

I flipped through some of them quick when he was off fetching some of the comics he was lending me from his room. He saw what I was looking at when he got back, and he was happy to talk about it. He showed me the chapter he was in the middle of right now, 'Managing Your Emotional State.' He said that the earlier chapters talk about setting your emotions aside, so that you can't get distracted if someone you're dueling, for example, is trying to distract you by making you angry. Ron might find that chapter useful, he said.

But the later chapters get into explaining how to use that fury, so you can perform Crucio and Avada Kedavra.

He offered to lend me Slytherin Thinking for Non-Slytherins.

And the way that he talked about the news I got this week, it sort of put me on edge. He was trying to explain how we were in the same cauldron, in a way, because just like I had parents who were blood traitors, he had a dad he was ashamed of, too, because he's a muggle. I remember our first year Seamus said he missed his mum. Now all he says about her is that he can't understand why she would have, um, muddied herself like that. Marrying his dad.

There was one other thing. He asked me if I'd thought about what the Ministry might do to me or Evelyn, to try to get at my parents. I said I didn't see what they would do, because they abandoned me and my sister before either of us were even two years old. What point would there be in sending us to the camps?

He started to say that the Ministry might--and then he broke off. I asked him what he meant, and he turned red, and I could tell that he was sorry he had started to say it, but then he blurted it out anyway.

He said that they might kill us.

I just stared at him. I didn't know what to say. He looked out the window and suddenly I could tell that he was close to--well, he looked awful upset.

It was ever so odd, both to be grateful and even sort of touched that he was so worried about me, and alarmed that he was coming up with such gruesome ideas.

Then we shoved the books aside and he shook off his mood, and we played Exploding Snap for awhile.

Weird.

That's bloody disturbing, Neville. He thinks they would kill you? Not just send you to the camps but actually kill you. Do they ever do that?

It's probably what comes of spending all day reading about medieval muggle politics and how to cast avada kedavra.

That 'Slytherin Thinking for Non-Slytherins' book sounds good, though. Maybe you should take him up on his offer.

I wonder if Mr Rosier gave him the idea, from something he said. It sounds unbelievable (well, I hope it's unbelievable).

But it doesn't actually make me feel any better to think that Mr Rosier put the idea in his head. Since I guess Mr Rosier might have a better idea of the way the Ministry works than Seamus. I have no idea if it's the sort of thing the Ministry really does. After all, I actually don't know of any other blood traitors on the run, who have children. If there are any, maybe it's the sort of thing that's kept mostly quiet, like it was with my family.

I wonder whether any of the Professors knew about my parents? Blimey. I mean, I guess it's sort of semi-public knowledge, or it was eight or so years ago. Because there are wanted posters for them and everything, although of course its been so long that kids at Hogwarts didn't know, except for you lot. Until the Prophet article, that is.

Now that I think about it, I bet that Professor Amycus Carrow knew. So that's why he always sort of despised me. Besides the fact that I'm pants at Transfiguration, that is.

Yeah, I did take the book home with me. I figured it couldn't hurt, and maybe it might help.

Master likes Mr Rosier. Well, it's not like they're good friends or anything because Mr Rosier is posh, like you say, and high up in the Lord Protector's inner circle. And he probably wouldn't look at Master twice.

But whenever Master talks about him, he usually sounds approving. He says that Mr Rosier is 'the right sort.' 'Knows his stuff' (which usually means, he knows his Dark Arts). 'Has the best sort of ideas.'

That's pretty damning all on its own, I guess.

What does he think of the other people from the inner circle? I know that Lucius Malfoy thinks Carrow is lower than trash, but I don't know what Carrow thinks of Mr Malfoy.

He's awfully disrespectful to the Headmistress, though.

I think he mostly approves of Mr Malfoy, but on the other hand, he envies his power and influence. So he'll say little sly things to him, like that he admires his wife, while hinting that he admires her a little too much. Just to irritate him. It's all rubbish, though. He only says that stuff about Mrs Malfoy to jostle Mr Malfoy's broom.

I've heard him praise Mr Nott, the father of that Teddy Nott in Slytherin. He was saying something once about Teddy, and that Mr Nott 'didn't quibble a jot about doing it in front of the brat.' Something about Teddy's mum. Real approving-like, almost gloating. But I don't have any idea what that was all about.

He's friends with Mr Rookwood, and they send letters back and forth about Master's research.

When Regulus Black died, Master sneered at him, said he was weak. Not ruthless enough.

Yeah, he's awful toward the Headmistress. He'll mutter all sorts of vicious things under his breath about her, whenever her name comes up. I think he just hates anyone who has any power over him, and he especially resents her for taking custody of me away from him. He chunters on and on about her, calling her 'the bat' and grousing about how the bat squeaks and flails, but it's blind and blundering, and so on.

I've heard him sneer at a few of the others. Mr Crabbe and Mr Goyle he calls 'idiots, only occasionally useful.' He ranted about it for weeks when that Fenrir Greyback was angling to get permission to take the Dark Mark. That was, oh, maybe five or six years ago or so. He said that Greyback should be put down like a flea-bitten mongrel cur for daring to reach for the Mark, since it's only meant for pure, true citizens.

He doesn't talk too often about other people though. I think it's because he's mostly just interested in himself.

I can't imagine Finnigan just deciding on his own they might kill you because of your parents. Surely he got the idea from SOMEONE, Mr Rosier or perhaps his tutor?

The professors must have known that they were considered traitors. The Headmistress was teaching back when they went to school, wasn't she? And Professor Slughorn as well, and some of the others. It's a little surprising it never got around before this.

Professor Carrow hates you for loads of reasons, it's not just your parents. He hates you for being a Gryffindor, and for not treating half-bloods and muggleborns like dirt.

Is the Slytherin book interesting so far? I'm really curious about it now.

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Thanks, Seamus

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