#abbottom

“What a bummer,” he says.

“I know,” she sighs. “But, look, what I was thinking was,you should come in with me, and then the minute it looks like it’s gettingquiet or if Tom manages to contact someone else, we can go to our table, and—”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Neville says. “I don’t mind staying tokeep you company, Gran. I couldn’t help but see those greenhouses earlier—yourflutterby bushes are in a terrible state, and I could get a headstart on pruningthem back.”

“Come on, you can’t spend your birthday doing that,” Hannahsays, cajoling. “Look, I bet Tom’s just exaggerating. I’ll help him out fortwenty minutes, get things calmed down, and then we’ll head off. You just comewith me, and we’ll leave as soon as we can.”

“Honestly, I don’t mind,” Neville says. “There’ll be otherbirthdays, and besides, there’s Harry’s party tomorrow and we can’t miss that.You just go and do your job, and I’ll see you tonight. You don’t mind mestaying, do you Gran?”

Hannah shoots a look of panic at Augusta Longbottom behindhis back, but she underestimates her. “Neville Longbottom,” the older womansays severely. “I do mind very muchthat you are going to leave your young lady in the lurch like this! If thingsare as bad as Tom says they are—and, poor dear, he sounded absolutely frantic,and at his age, too, that can’t be good for his heart! Anyway, if things are asbad as he says they are, you should absolutely go and lend a hand. And if, asHannah suggests, it’s actually much better, the two of you can leave early, andhave a wonderful evening almost as planned. She’s a very sensible girl, yourHannah, and you’d do well to listen to her!”

“Well,” Neville says, shrugging, “I guess I can’t argue withthat. To the Leaky?”

“Thanks, love,” Hannah says, reaching up to kiss him on thecheek. “And I’m sorry things aren’t going to go as planned. You’re onlytwenty-one once, I know, so I’m sorry it’s turned out this way.”

“There’ll be other birthdays,” Neville shrugs. “It’s fine.”

She squeezes his hand. “I’ll floo through first, and see youthere when you’ve said goodbye to your gran properly. Goodbye, Mrs Longbottom!”She widens her eyes slightly, trying to add a thank you, and she thinks Augustagets it, because when Neville has his back to her, busy helping Hannah into thefireplace, she gives her two big thumbs up, and Hannah has to bite the insideof her cheek to stop herself laughing out loud. She steps into the floo, statesher destination, and scrambles out as fast as she can at the other end.

“Finally!”

“We were beginning to think you’d got lost!”

“Is he coming?”

“How long have we got?”

“Everyone, QUIET!” Hannah roars, with the practised ease ofa bartender. She breaks into a smile at the sight: all of Neville’s friends,crowded into the Leaky, standing in front of a huge banner with Happy BirthdayNeville (courtesy of Dean Thomas) and stacks and stacks of presents. The wholeold-DA crowd is there, along with loads of their other friends and relations,and Ginny and Harry are stationed behind the bar (open, courtesy of Harry) togive Hannah a night off. “Neville’s on his way,” she adds, slightlyunnecessarily. She grins. “Thanks, everyone. Now…lights?”

She addresses this last to Ron, who obligingly flicks hisDeluminator, and the pub is plunged into darkness, the curtains having beendrawn in advance by some thoughtful person. They wait for a beat—for two beats,three, and then—

“Hello? Ow! Bugger. Why’s it so dark?”

“SURPRISE!”

Ron flicks the lights back on, and everyone cheers—then laughs,seeing how genuinely surprised Neville looks. They all start singing thebirthday song as Lavender and Parvati bring out a cake, complete with 21candles, and Neville, still stunned, glances over at Hannah. She smiles,pushing him forwards towards the cake. He takes the surprise well, waving andnodding and winking at people, but as they finish singing, and give him threecheers, he reaches behind and loops a hand around Hannah’s wrist, holding ontight. He blows out the candles, starts thanking people, chatting and laughingwith them, but the whole time, he doesn’t let go of her hand.

Everyone converges on them en masse, and he blinks. “HEM HEM.” Everyone turns, and looks backover at Ginny, now kneeling on the bar. She rings the little bell there. “Thebar is now officially open!” There’s a slight pause, then at least half oftheir friends surge towards it. Ginny looks delighted, jumping down andpositioning herself behind the Butterbeer taps. “I’ve always wanted to dothat!”

Lavender and Parvati procure a knife from somewhere andstart slicing up and handing out birthday cake; Harry and Ginny are doingsterling service at the bar, and the rest of their friends are lining up towish Neville a happy birthday and to hand him gifts. He’s just thanked Hermioneand Ron for the hand-knitted scarf (complete with tiny mimbulus mimbletonia print) when there’s a slight gap in the sheernumber of people headed towards them, so he turns to Hannah, properly, for thefirst time since he got to the pub.

“What,” he asks, unable to keep the smile off his face, “isall this about?!”

“Well,” says Hannah. “D’you remember a few weeks ago, when Iasked you what you wanted to do for your birthday?”

“…honestly? Not really.”

“Let me fill you in…”

*

It had just been a passing comment really. School wasnearly, but not quite, out for the summer, so she’d come up to see him atHogwarts during the day on her break. He’d been frazzled, caught between aclass of second years and fourth years, neither of whom—officially, atleast—were supposed to be slacking off, as they were both returning as normalnext year. But, with only three days left of the school year, everyone was hyperactivewith excitement and badly behaved, and keeping them under control had been achallenge. When she’d asked him about his birthday, in a vague attempt todistract him from his woes, he hadn’t really been listening.

“Oh, you know,” he’d said, waving a hand. “Whatever. I’m notfussed. We’ll be going out the day after, anyway.”

“We will?” Hannah asked, slightly confused. They had noplans that she could remember.

“Yeah,” he’d said, talking more to the Mandrakes he wasgrowing than to her. “Harry always does something for his birthday; we’ll goalong to that the day after, and so will everyone else. There’s no pointarranging something else, and asking people to come—no one will want to be outtwo days in a row.”

He hadn’t said it maliciously, she was keen to point out toHarry, later. He didn’t secretly hate Harry for stealing his limelight; hedidn’t mean it maliciously, and he certainly wasn’t disappointed that that wasthe way things were. He was just stating the facts. Harry, always generous tohis friends, always threw a party for his birthday, and with Neville’s beingthe day before…well, it just didn’t make sense to invite the same people outthe day before. So Harry had had the big party, and Neville had done somethingquiet the day before. That’d just been how it had been, since they finished at school.

Harry had been genuinely horrified, though, that Nevillemight feel put out by this, and it had taken Hannah and Ginny quite a while totalk him down. When they finally had, Harry had immediately suggested that theythrow a party for Neville this year and let everyone know it was him, notHarry, they were celebrating.

“Great minds,” Hannah had said, tapping her headconspiratorially. She had happened to catch the two of them in the Leaky bychance later that evening, after seeing Neville, and she’d had plenty of chanceto plan something before stumbling across them.

“How about,” Ginny said slowly, sipping her Gillywater, “howabout we make it a surprise party?”

“Like I say,” Hannah said, “great minds. I was thinking wecould ask the usual crowd, only get them to come on the thirtieth, not thethirty-first.”

“But we could tell Neville we were going to have it on thethirty-first, for Harry,” Ginny said, nodding enthusiastically. “And you couldtell him that, I don’t know, the two of you were going out for dinner orsomething on his birthday—”

“Exactly, and if he heard anything from anyone else, if theylet it slip by mistake, he’d just assume they’d be talking about the next day,”Hannah replied. “The only thing is: where would we have it?”

Ginny blinked. “Yeah, it’s not like we know anyone who ownsa pub or anything,” she said, sticking her tongue out at Hannah.

“I don’t own the pub,” she replied. “But, okay, sure, you’reright. If I asked, Tom’d close it for the night for us lot. He books outfunctions all the time. We could have it here.”

Ginny clapped her hands. “It’s settled then!” she’d said,beaming at Hannah.

Harry had immediately offered to cover the cost of an openbar, and Hannah had arranged the food. When they’d told everyone the plan, allof their friends had been in immediately, promising to keep it all a secretfrom Neville.

And they all promised other things, too.

To make a banner, like Dean had. To bake a cake, likeLavender and Parvati. Lee Jordan had offered to bring his decks and DJ; GeorgeWeasley had offered balloons and party poppers and other such items from theWheezes’ party range. People who didn’t have something to offer asked what hewanted for his birthday, or just promised to turn up, looking delighted at thethought. And Hannah had been so touched by how much everyone cared forNeville—but not as touched, she knew, as he would be.

*

Now, the party’s been going on for a good couple of hours,and everyone is having an absolutely amazing time. Hannah knows this becauseeveryone keeps coming up to her and Neville, and telling them so. They alsokeep buying him drinks—or at least pressing Harry to give him another.

“Don’t worry,” Harry tells her, “I’m switching every otherone with water. I’m not having him be massively hungover for my birthday.” Hetips her an enormous wink as he says this, but she knows he’s kidding, becausefor his birthday, he and Ginny have a reservation for dinner at the fancyrestaurant, and, he says, are looking forward to a quite night for a change.She’d watched, earlier, as Neville had gone over to him, and Harry had slappedhim on the back and said something to him which made him laugh, and she’dsmiled, even though she couldn’t hear it.

Over their months together, Neville’s told her a thing ortwo about Harry, and this old prophecy, and the life he, Neville, could haveled. She knows how they’re tied together, those two boys—but she’s glad Nevilleis who he is. She’d stick by him no matter what, if it came to it, but shedoesn’t think she has it in her to be a Ginny Weasley.

Who is, she notes, doing a fantastic job at the bar. If shedidn’t have ten Galleons on the Harpies winning the League again this year,she’d try to poach her. Neville is currently dancing the Hippogriff withLuna—everyone is giving them an incredibly large berth—and she’s so enthralledwith watching them that she doesn’t notice the person come up to tap her on theshoulder and say hello—at least at first.

She works out pretty quickly that Harry and Ginny had toldHagrid about the party, who in turn appears to have informed a few of hiscolleagues—who are, of course, Neville’s colleagues too—about the party, andshe thinks its lovely that they’ve turned out for Neville. Still, it isn’tevery day that you have to try to hold a conversation with your oldTransfiguration teacher stroke boyfriend’s current boss after several glassesof elf-made wine. She likes to think she’s doing a good job, as Professor McGonagallis nodding along and answering her questions normally, and she’s just asked herif she’s seen Professor Sprout recently, when—

“SUPRESSOR MCGONAGALL!” Neville lurches over to them,beaming. “How LOVELY to see you. Many happy returns of the day.” He hiccups,still beaming, and Hannah hastily turns her laugh into a hacking cough.

“Many happy returns of the day to you, too,” theHeadmistress replies, masking a grin of her own. “But, please. I’ve told youbefore—do call me Minerva. And if that is too much, Professor will do nicely.”

Neville nods. “Of course. Yes. Good.” He hiccups again,closes his eyes, then seems to visibly sober up. “Oh, Merlin. Hello, Minerva.Have you come to fire me for being drunk and in charge?”

“My dear Professor Longbottom, need not worry. You areclearly not in charge of anything,”Professor McGonagall says, smiling. “I have come, however, to wish you a veryhappy birthday.”

Neville thanks her. “I’m so glad you’re not going to fire mefor brining the good name of Hogwarts into ill-repute,” he manages, a sentencewhich would impress Hannah at the best of times, let alone right now.

Professor McGonagall eyes him beadily. “I would onlyconsider that you were bringing the good name of Hogwarts into ill-repute if I heardthat it was your birthday and you were notsuitably celebrating,” she says. They take a moment to work this out. “As itis,” she gestures around, “you seem to be doing a fine job. Well done. I shallbe sure to mention this on your Annual Review. Now. Do you think it might bepossible to get a small Firewhiskey?”

“Coming right up,” Harry, who has been listening in, says, pullingout a glass and a very full bottle. “Just say when!”

Hannah meets Neville’s eye, and the two of them burst intolaughter yet again. “Come on,” Neville says, “let’s dance.” He pulls her on tothe dancefloor, and they sway together for a moment. “So,” he says, “you didall this?”

She shrugs. “I had help,” she says.

He kisses her, softly and quickly. “Thanks,” he says.

‘From the Earth’ by @professorlongbottomm is probably my favourite multichap Abbottom fic and I’m so excited for the next chapter. 

 But since you’re look for one shots I can recommend checking out @remusjohnlvpin ’s Abbottom tag because she writes really great Abbottom fics.

I don’t really save fics, but these three were just the ones I remember reading and liking as good when I did a quick scroll through the Neville/Hannah tag on ao3.

Flowers in May

Is quite cute and also pretty short.

Collapse

Is also pretty good as far as I remember.

Here comes the sun

“Don’t,” she warns. “You cannot leave me alone for nearly two weeks and do things like that when I can’t—when we can’t—oh, stop it,” she groans. “I can’t even think straight,” Neville, who has been kissing her neck, stops. She groans again. “This isn’t fair,” she whines, stomping her foot.

“I know,” he sighs. He pulls her in close, rests his chin on top of her head. “How long before we can legitimately leave them to it?”

Hannah laughs. “I’m torn between saying, let’s fake a horrible illness and get going now, and absolute terror regarding what your Gran would agree to on our behalf if we aren’t there to control things.”

“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” agrees Neville solemnly.

“It’s fine, we’ll just elope,” she says, running a finger along his jawline.

“Don’t joke about that right now,” he says, swallowing.

“Don’t joke about what?” She pouts and bats her eyelashes exaggeratedly. “The two of us...running away together...somewhere where we can have complete…and total...privacy...” She punctuates the last three words with kisses, and he groans. It sends a shiver through her, more so when he responds by suddenly pushing her up against the gate to the back garden and kissing her with such force she forgets everything.

She’s fumbling for his belt and his hands are already snaking up her thighs, under her dress, when: “Would sir like the sandwiches to be left here?”

Betsy, Augusta Longbottom’s house elf, smiles brightly up at them, and Hannah leans against the wall, closing her eyes in deep, deep frustration. Neville manages to draw on deep inner reserves of politeness and suggests she goes and asks Gran what she wants done with them, and Betsy dashes off at once, but the moment has been lost entirely.

“I’m beginning to think that this is a conspiracy,” Hannah says wryly, and Neville snorts.

“I agree,” he says, sliding down the wall and sitting on the grass. Hannah sits down next to him and rests her head on his shoulder. “So. Eloping?”

She holds out her left hand, and they both study the engagement ring that sits there. It’s a tiny diamond, cut into the shape of a rose; it’s been in her possession for fifteen days (and fourteen nights), and she loves it. What she hasn’t loved is being a fiancée.

Well—that’s not quite true. She’d loved being proposed to. She’d loved that night. What she hadn’t loved was then being separated from Neville for a fortnight. Normally he lived with her, in a set of rooms above the Leaky Cauldron, and floo’d to school every morning. This worked fine, most of the time, but the day they had gotten engaged, one of the Professors who lived at Hogwarts had had a magical mishap and had had to spend a fortnight recovering in St Mungo’s. Whilst Professor Flitwick was now very well and could return to work, when he had been away from school, Neville had had to live there because of some stupid rule about the number of teachers required on site because of staff to pupil ratios. Or something. Hannah had been so cross about it all, she’d elected not to properly listen, so she didn’t fully understand.

He’d suggested she come up and stay there with her too, but she hadn’t been able to face the knowing looks from Professor McGonagall and the other staff if she’d done so. Or worse, what if Hagrid had caught her sneaking out in the morning? It didn’t bear thinking about.

So she’d faced their separation with resignation, and imagination, entertaining herself with fantasies about what they would get up to as soon as he returned. (And, okay, maybe a fortnight wasn’t that long. Under normal circumstances, she was sure she’d be fine. But really. They had literally just gotten engaged.)

He'd written to her on Friday night that everything had gone swimmingly in Professor Flitwick’s recovery, and the Healers were satisfied that he was fit to go back to the school. He would be arriving there, his letter said, at ten o’clock on Saturday morning, just after breakfast.

At ten fifteen, after the most cursory of congratulations on his full recovery and hand-overs, Neville had arrived at the Leaky Cauldron, where Hannah had been waiting for him, wearing nothing but the new lingerie she had brought for the occasion.

At ten twenty, there had been a knock on the door to her private quarters. They had drawn apart. “I think,” Hannah had said, slowly and carefully, “that you should tell Tom that I have developed a headache which I intend to cultivate until at least Thursday, and will be out of commission until then. I cannot work. He will have to do without me. He should leave. And then grab one of the do-not-disturb signs from down the hall whilst you’re at it.”

“Roger that,” he’s grinned, snapping her a salute. Even seeing him leave was sort of nice, because it just heightened the anticipation. She’d shivered.

And then she’d heard him say, very loudly, “Oh, hello Gran! How nice to see you? You want to come in? Oh, let me get you a chair!”

“There is no need to shout so,” she’d heard Augusta Longbottom’s dulcet tones respond. “I may be old, but I’m not deaf!”

Hannah had known the volume was for her benefit, so she’d hastily thrown on a dress and walked out of the bedroom to greet her, wondering why she had come and how quickly they could reasonably as her to leave. It turned out to be worse than they could possibly imagine. Excited by their engagement, she had gotten in touch with the most in-demand wedding planner in the country (or so he claimed) whom she was now employing to plan their wedding, and, first, engagement party.

“That’s very kind of you Gran, but—” Neville had begun, kindly but firmly.

“Didn’t you get my letter? We’ve been waiting for you since ten!”

“Been waiting for...?” he’d asked.

“The two of you. Honestly! We have the initial planning meeting this morning, then lunch so we can show him the grounds—we thought it best for the engagement party to be held quickly, so we can move on with the planning for the main event, so at home seems the best place for it—then in the afternoon Hannah has a preliminary fitting with Twillfit and Tatting.”

“What for?” Hannah had asked dumbly.

Augusta had barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “A wedding dress, of course,” she’d said. “Honestly, did you not get my letter explaining all of this, Neville? I sent it up to the school three days ago; do they not distribute post daily anymore?”

Hannah could tell by his face that he knew of a letter, but that he had elected not to read it. Worse, Augusta could, too. Which meant that they had had no time to concoct an excuse, and no option but to follow her to the floo, Neville muttering profuse apologies under his breath to her all the way.

They’d sat through a two-hour presentation from the wedding planner—somehow, neither of them could remember his name, which might have had something to do with the instant dislike they’d both felt when he’d visibly deflated seeing the two of them—on themes and visions and schemes. And now they are on the ‘viewing the grounds’ part of the day.

“It isn’t really how I’d imagined today going,” Hannah sighs. Neville pats her knee sympathetically, then straightens up.

“How had you imagined today?” he asks with interest.

“Well,” she says. And then she leans in and whispers something quite lengthy into his left ear.

“...golly,” he manages, at the end of it.

“And then I’d...” she twists around, climbing over his lap (golly, indeed) and whispers something else in his right ear.

When she’s done, there’s a very long pause. “Do you not like the sound of that?” she asks, starting to feel a little worried. They’re not big into, well, that kind of talk. Neville’s more of a doer. As it were. And she doesn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable...

“What I don’t like,” he says carefully, “is the complete and utter lack of privacy we have right now. If I didn’t think it might give Gran a heart attack to walk in on us, I’d take you right here and now and do all of that and more.” He reaches out and pulls her firmly back onto his lap, and she gasps in delight. Then realises the truth of his words, and sighs.

Except...

From the angle she is sat now, she can see a shed. A very old, run-down shed, used for storage and not much else. “What?” he asks, and she nods at it. He has to twist around to see it properly, cricking his neck slightly, and when he turns back to her, his face is inscrutable.

He’ll say no, of course. He’ll say he wishes they could, but they can’t possibly. He’ll be regretful. She knows it.

“...race you?” he says.

He can barely get the door open—there’s some kind of complex latch situation going on, and his hands are busy elsewhere. Laughing, she tries to help him, but her hands are busy too, and in the end,  he manages to wriggle his wand out of a back pocket and, she’s pretty sure, blast it open. She grabs his shirt and pulls him inside, kissing him all the while, and he’s reciprocating, kissing her and pushing her against the wall, kicking the door shut firmly behind them.

The shed contains decades of garden detritus—broken tools, old bags of compost, empty seed trays and if she had it in her to notice such things any more, she’d spot the cobwebs all over the place, cobwebs that are now in her hair and on her clothes and just anywhere he’s pressed her against. The spiders, in a show of discretion, have averted their many eyes.

She is desperate for him, pressing herself so hard against him she’s half-amazed they don’t meld together as one. His hands are in her hair, on the small of her back, up her dress, and hers are just as adventurous. And then he lifts her up off the ground, and she wraps her legs and arms around his torso and he pushes everything off a nearby workbench, and all but throws her down on it.

Years of rubbish—most of it made of metal—fall to the ground, with a resounding, loud crash. The noise is enough to wrest her from the moment, and she pulls away, now nearly horizontal on the bench with his hands wrapped around the upper band of her underwear. “Everything okay?” he asks.

“Everyone—the noise—they’ll come looking—” She can hardly speak, breathless and barely able to form sentences, but he understands at once.

“I cast a silencing spell on the door,” he says. Then he grins. “We can make as much noise as we want.”

“Oh God,” she groans, and reaches for him.

They’re moving together already, clothes still a barrier—but not for long. It occurs to her, almost as though she’s a random stranger observing the scene, that her hands are shaking so badly she can barely undo his belt buckle, but it’s not because she’s afraid. She’s never felt more certain as she reaches to him again and again and again, and he meets her every time, murmuring her name over and over between kisses, and she starts to feel like she might die if she doesn’t have him right now.

And then, just at the last moment, he pulls away. “Everything okay?”

She smiles. “Everything is perfect,” she promises.

“Good,” he replies. “I just wanted to check.” He leans in towards her, slowly, then at the last second pulls back again. “Hey, Hannah?”

She reaches up, lacing her hands together behind his head. “Yeah?” They stare at each other for a moment, and then, oh-so-quickly, he kisses the inside of her left wrist. And it is this that nearly undoes her, this sudden, ridiculous moment of intimacy, of delicacy, the kind of gesture that makes her heart sing.

“I missed you,” he says, and it’s so earnest, so honest.

“Hey, Nev?” she asks.

“Yeah?” he repeats.

“I really missed you, too.” And he smiles.

“I guess it helps that we’ve got a whole lifetime together to make up for it, then,” he says.

“And no time like the present to start,” she agrees, and he considers this for a tantalisingly stretched out moment, nods once, and then crashes back into her.

She’s crying out for him already and he seems to realise this, because he’s on his knees, pushing her dress more fully out of the way, and she begs him to hurry. He’s trailing kisses up her legs, starting at her ankles, moving up, caressing the back of her knees, and he reaches her inner thighs, and she thinks this cannot, cannot go on much longer or she will surely die, and—

“...very suitable for storage, and costume changes. We can ask the fire eaters to prepare in here, then they can pop out at the right moment, and—oh!”

In the retelling of it all to Susan, Hannah will see the funny side. She will see how completely hilarious it is to be walked in on, in flagrante delicto (well, almost), in a garden shed filled with old bags of compost and broken spades, by the planner of her wedding and her grandmother-in-law (well, almost). Or at least, she likes to think she will.

Because right now, all she can feel is a burning shame. More than that. She is mortified. There is no possible explanation for this other than the obvious. There is no way they can get away with it. And whilst she is sure that, in theory, Augusta Longbottom knows that neither of them are as pure as the driven snow anymore, knowing that she knows in theory is very different to, well, spelling it out to her.

Augusta Longbottom runs in the same social circles as all of Hannah’s myriad Great-Aunts. As the sensible old ladies who come to the Leaky Cauldron to drink gillywater and lime and play a hand of whist on a Thursday afternoon. As Minerva frigging McGonagall. And she will tell all of those people what she caught that slattern Miss Abbott up to, and Hannah will never, ever live it down.

Just as she’s about to apparate to the Ministry and book herself a one-way Portkey to Australia, if not the moon, she hears a crack, and Neville gets to his feet. The heel of her favourite pair of shoes—well, one of them—is clutched tightly in his hand, and he holds it up for all to see.

“I did tell her that those shoes wouldn’t be a bright idea, but hey, my students don’t listen to me either.” He shrugs. “She came a cropper on the gravel down by the pond, and I was sure we had some spellotape in here somewhere. I’d hoped to do a bodge job until we could get to the cobbler in the week. But someone must have hidden it...”

Hannah closes her eyes. There is no possible way anyone will buy this, and her favourite shoes have now bitten the dust. And she’s still not been...Merlin.

There is an absolutely excruciating pause. And then: “In the flowerpot over on the left-hand self,” Augusta says calmly. “Horatio and I will give you some privacy whilst you see to it.”

“Of course,” Neville says faintly.

The wedding planner—Horatio? Who knew—bustles out, and Augusta heads for the door, too. Neville and Hannah exchange disbelieving glances. Surely, surely they cannot have just gotten away with it...

Just as she reaches the shed door, she turns back and looks at them. “Oh,” she adds. “If you find an earring whilst you’re hunting it out, do let me know.” They exchange glances again, this time of confusion.

“An...earring?” Neville asks.

“Yes,” Augusta says almost dreamily. “Emerald, I recall. Claw set in gold.” There’s a pause. “I lost it in here on the night of my own engagement party to your grandfather, oh, too many years ago to count. We were on the floor, you see, looking for it, but his mother did not think that was a suitable...position for a young lady, so I had to leave him to it and step outside to fix my dress. But, do you know, I never found it again. It was such a pretty set, too. I do like emeralds.”