Magical Hogwarts

March 2005

Student Service at Manoir Vertneuf felt silly to Honoré. He found himself wondering if Dutour had set out the spiders at Beauxbatons to offer his place as a temporary school location so he could get the students to clean up the place. Honestly, how could the man live here? Inside it was dirty and outside there was seemingly untouched wilderness.

Dutour was a Herbologist. His greenhouses looked well enough - except for the fact that the windows were so dirty that you couldn’t even look through them anymore. The garden, however, was like a jungle. Did the elderly man like it that way or was he just too old and tired to take care of the place?

When they had first arrived at Manoir Vertneuf in the winter, they had set up the dormitories and later some students had worked on setting up an improvised Quidditch pitch. Honoré had understood that these were reasonable tasks. Clearing up the space behind the manor was probably also sensible, but he wasn’t too motivated to play Dutour’s houseelf.

“Giselle,” he called out to his housemate and fellow sufferer, “are you ready? I’d rather get this task done while it’s still sunny and warm outside.” Truth be told, Honoré didn’t much care whether he had to work in the sun or in the rain. However, he was eager to start the work sooner rather than later - the earlier they’d be done and get back to doing more pleasant things.

He held out protective gardening gloves to her. “You might need those,” he said, offering a small smile. They had been friends in their first years at Beauxbatons but things had been difficult since the summer between his fourth and fifth year. His parents’ untimely passing had totally thrown him off. He had pushed away most people, oblivious to the fact that he hurt some feelings that way. He was still mourning his parents, missing them every day. He still felt wounded. However, he was of age now and had inherited his late father’s company.Unlike his parents he was alive and he had to try and look ahead even if it was a great challenge.

@Giselle Gauthier

"Will I ever be ready to dig around in dirt, ruin my nails and clothes, and possibly even my hair?" Giselle retorted, not without a hint of amusement.

She didn't know what possessed her to agree to sign up for garden service. She never particularly liked gardening. She liked the idea of it, of course, and she did like flowers, and the thought of romantic walks through a lush garden in full bloom. But Giselle had always assumed that she'd have people for all that in the future. There was nothing romantic about kneeling under the hot sun, shovelling dirt and — she shuddered at the mere thought of it — manure.

Gracefully, she accepted the gloves from Honoré. They did not look very fashionable, but at least they were thick and unlikely to be ruined, which she couldn't say for the rest of her ensemble today. Her family owned a vineyard, but Giselle had never been much of a hands-on person with that beyond riding her beloved horse and inspecting the grapes with her father. She didn't really own any 'work clothes' per se, and her school summer blouse with a pair of thin cotton pants would just have to make do. She considered adding a sun hat, but decided against it the last minute, not wanting to be laughed at for the huge silk bow it sported.

Squinting a little in the sun, she pulled on the gloves and stood with her hands on her waist. "Well, where should we start do you think? I'm sure you're more well versed in dealing with these sort of things than I am." Giselle gestured to the overgrown weeds, and looked at Honoré with a small smirk, just to let him know that she was joking, mostly. He's been very withdrawn the past couple of years, and while he seemed to be getting out of what was bothering him, Giselle still wasn't sure where she stood with him, or if he even considered her a close friend. The truth was that it did sting when he seemed to not want to be her friend anymore, but she'd always been too proud to show that it bothered her. And now here they were.

“Probably not,” Honoré responded, offering her a slight grin.

Gardening seemed like a nice distraction. Honoré felt burdened with his role in the family, his role as a company owner. He struggled with his life and felt that there were not many people in the world who had the faintest idea how difficult it was to be him. Dealing with a simple task such as getting rid of some weeds in the jungle that was Dutour’s garden seemed like an almost pleasant activity even though he was reluctant to play the gardener for the old man. While they probably wouldn’t even get a thank you in return, Honoré felt that they might create a place outside that would be nicer than any of the other places the manor offered.

Giselle asked where they should begin as they stood outside in the sun and Honoré had to admit that he had no idea. Everything was overgrown behind the manor. There was not even a path they could walk on. They actually stood with their back to the house, facing a wall of green tendrils and leaves.

“Me? Versed in gardening?” Honoré raised his eyebrows. “Not really.”

He bit his lips and looked around. “Do you think those are paving stones?” he pointed at something grey underneath the tendrils. “Maybe we should cut this free so we can move further into the wilderness.” He was a little hesitant. Who knew what was waiting for them out there. For all he knew there could be some dangerous creatures. His memory of the doxy bite he had got inside the manor was still fresh enough to serve as a warning.

Giselle rolled her eyes at him good naturedly. She didn't really think that he was secretly a gardening whiz, but by this point she figured that anyone was surely better than she was. As much as she loved them, plants did not seem to agree with her, and she was sure that for all the flowers that died by her hand, she was a sinner if they had even an ounce of sentience to accuse her of it.

Pulling her thoughts back into the present, she wiggled her nose delicately at the word wilderness. Giselle was not a fan of anything wild, if it wasn't apparent just by taking a look at her. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in nicely pressed school uniform; no, wildness had no place in her life or her vocabulary.

"Don't you think we should stay closer to the manor, where it's safe? I think no one would begrudge us if we just did some pruning," she said, holding up her hand in front of her face to avoid being scratched by a branch that seemed to be threateningly low, "Or, judging by this place, a lot of pruning." Giselle pursed her lips disapprovingly; how unsightly for a professor to be this careless with his home, and yet invite the entire student body to relocate here.

"Let's just start doing something. Clearing out the weeds? Whatever it is, the sooner we're done with this, the sooner we can leave," she sighed, already feeling exhausted despite not having done a single thing yet. "I'm sure you'd want to get back to whatever it you're doing instead of being here anyway."

Honoré wasn’t surprised by the lack of gardening enthusiasm Giselle had to offer. Yet, he felt that anything outdoors was better than being stuck in the stuffy halls of Manoir Vertneuf. He looked at the girl, wondering if she would be able to maintain the perfect appearance when they actually started gardening.

“We can do that,” Honoré said with a shrug. He wasn’t eager to explore the wilderness behind Manoir Vertneuf and set foot where nobody had seemingly been in a decade. It would be nice to create a space they could use when the weather was nice but Honoré didn’t quite see himself and Giselle to be the people who had to do all the work by themselves.

“Yeah, let’s start pruning here and then we can see how much further we get.” It was a fair plan. Start with the simple and obvious and then see how long that would take. Honoré surely wasn’t going to spend his entire day here anyway.

Giselle indicated that he’d rather be somewhere else and Honoré shrugged in response. “Well,” he said with a one sided grin, “I can’t say that there are a lot of nice things to do inside either. However, I was hoping to catch Lijsbeth later.” It was no secret that Lijsbeth was his girlfriend and Honoré felt vaguely anxious already, knowing that she’d graduate the year before he would leave school himself. Would their relationship survive? He hoped so, but at the same time he feared that their paths would part. After all, he could not ask her to wait for him and later move to Dahliental with him.

“Are you currently seeing anyone?” He asked, feeling silly that he didn’t know that about his friend. However, they hadn’t spent a lot of time together lately which, he knew, was mostly his fault. “I’m really sorry that I…” he adjusted his gardening gloves and looked at some tendrils he decided to remove, “I’ve been… preoccupied. It’s really not personal and I just wanted you to know that.”