Thanks, Seamus

[alt_neville]

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.

Comments

[alt_seamus]

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

I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good

[alt_neville]

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.