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It’s only a Tuesday afternoon in April and Dudley already is in the throes of a feeling somewhere between agony, despair, and desperate confusion.
Didi has ordered him out to the nursery to get something, anything that will fill the holes that the rosebushes that you killed have left behind in our yard and our lives, but all the flowers look equally similar and difficult to care for, and if the inevitable death of every green thing in his marital home over the past year is anything to go by, he’s a serial plant killer.
It shouldn’t be this hard, right? His mother is named Petunia. His aunt was named Lily. His niece is named Lily. Flower names are in his blood.
So why can’t he come to a decision on whether to get the pansies or the primroses or the black-eyed susans? What happened to the other blue-eyed susans? Or the brown-eyed susans?
His mounting internal panic is interrupted by a very tactful cough at his elbow.
Dudley whirls around to see a lanky, kindly-looking man kitted out in an argyle sweater vest layered over a plaid button-down. His grey cargo pants are dusty with dirt and bag at the knees.
His mother would probably have a heart attack, but Dudley zeroes in on the soil under his fingernails and the leaves in his hair and heaves a massive internal sigh of relief.
Although, that could an indication of him being a serial killer of actual people?
Right?
Before Dudley is forced to make a decision as to whether he should stick out his hand or run for the hills, the man points towards a cluster of potted daisies. “You look like a daisy sort of gentleman,” he suggests. “They’re very easy to look after, too.”
Dudley throws him the most grateful expression that he has on tap. “Thanks, mate. My wife has her heart set on a yard that looks like the pages of Home & Garden, but neither of us is particularly good at gardening. It’s been a struggle.”
The man scratches at his nose before producing a business card out of thin air. Now there’s a party trick. “I could help you with it, if you’d like. I run a gardening and landscaping business – just started it, actually.”
A light bulb pings on in Dudley’s head as he takes the card.
Neville Longbottom
Greenhouse Three
Fantastic Flora, Terrific Trees, and Splendiferous Shrubs
(It’s like magic!)
“How much do you charge?”
Neville turns up at his house at nine in the morning on a Sunday and the two men spend the next three hours companionably hauling dirt and planting things that are green, leafy, and occasionally poky. Didi comes out at lunch and hollers at them to come in; she’s got mutton curry and lemonade laid out and Dudley feels an actual sense of pride and achievement and warmth when he sees Neville wolfing down his food while Didi looks on, flattered and pleased.
He ducks his head shyly and says that his wife is a pretty ace cook but doesn’t make things like this, and Didi says oh we should have her over!
Dudley reckons that that's pretty much how it starts.
Stuff-Yourself-Sundays involve the men working in the garden while Didi and Hannah gossip in the kitchen before they all get together and feed themselves and pack enough takeovers to last them for days. Dudley’s garden flourishes; Neville coaxes begonias and daisies and pansies to life in neat little boxes up and down the driveway, he transplants a couple of staid old evergreens near the back fence to drown out the noise of the road behind them, and he and Dudley spend a month excavating a pond for fat-bellied fish and lazy water lilies.
But they don’t just garden.
Neville talks to Dudley like one man talks to another; he doesn’t speak slower, he doesn’t try to dumb concepts down, and he patiently teaches Dudley all the Latin names of the plants in his yard without once sounding condescending. And Dudley – who has been the punchline of fat jokes and dumb jokes and joke jokes all his life – appreciates being spoken to like he’s an equal.
And when Neville sheepishly admits to having been bullied as a child, something in Dudley’s throat closes up and he offers to teach Neville how to hit. “I’m good with a sword, actually,” Neville retorts, but Dudley eyes the gentle roundness of Neville’s face and finagles him a free six-month trial at the gym that he works at. They spend more afternoons lifting weights instead of bags of compost and Dudley instructs Neville on the use of his knees and elbows in fending off attackers whilst moaning about the miserable state of the gym’s punching bags.
Neville eyes him critically as Dudley heaves a half-hearted punch at the swinging mess, half-worried that one solid one would kill it for good.
“What if you could punch a tree?” he suggests.
Dudley’s heart stutters to a halt.
He glances over at Neville from the corner of his eye – he’s still polite, patient, shockingly sweet Neville, but Dudley now notices the scars on his hands and the curl of his fingers. Even when his right fist is empty, it shapes itself around the absent presence of something thin, his thumb resting on the second joint of his index finger.
Neville holds a wand, Dudley realises, and he thinks of Harry and War and Magic.
But this is Neville, who sings lullabies to Didi’s pregnant belly and always insists on helping with washing up. This is Neville, who kisses his wife on the forehead when he thinks that no one is looking and always holds her hand before crossing the road.
This is Neville, who subtly stopped charging him for landscaping services after the first two visits and quietly became his friend.
Dudley hefts another punch at the bag before jerking his head at Neville to beckon him over for another set. “As long as the tree can take it,” he says, and Neville breaks into a grin.
“This is a whomping willow,” Neville tells him seriously as they both survey a rather excitable new tree hidden deep in his backyard. “It also doubles as a serious deterrent to burglars.”
Dudley is feeling increasingly protective of his home as Didi’s third trimester approaches, and looks around their yard, frowning. “Do you have any other plants like this?”
Neville nods thoughtfully and plants two tangled messes of vines by his front gate the next week. “Don’t ask, but also don’t touch,” he warns, and Dudley smirks.
Dudley finds it amusing that Neville chokes when he comes to him several years later saying YO NEV my daughter is literally making her stuffed animals talk, so I guess she’s on the list for Hogwarts, right?
They both find it hilarious when Harry comes for a Christmas visit and blanches at the sight of venomous tentaculas standing guard.