She slid the door open and pulled her trunk inside. Harry and Neville followed.
‘Hi, Luna,’ said Ginny, ‘is it okay if we take these seats?’
The girl beside the window looked up. She had straggly, waist-length, dirty-blonde hair, very pale eyebrows and protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently surprised look. Harry knew at once why Neville had chosen to
pass this compartment by. The girl gave off an aura of distinct dottiness. Perhaps it was the fact that she had stuck her wand behind her left ear for safekeeping, or that she had chosen to wear a necklace of Butterbeer corks,
or that she was reading a magazine upside-down. Her eyes ranged over Neville and came to rest on Harry. She nodded.
‘Thanks,’ said Ginny, smiling at her.
Harry and Neville stowed the three trunks and Hedwig's cage in the luggage rack and sat down. Luna watched them over her upside-down magazine, which was called The Quibbler. She did not seem to need to blink as much
as normal humans. She stared and stared at Harry, who had taken the seat opposite her and now wished he hadn't.
‘Had a good summer, Luna?’ Ginny asked.
‘Yes,’ said Luna dreamily, without taking her eyes off Harry. ‘Yes, it was quite enjoyable, you know. You're Harry Potter,’ she added.
‘I know I am,’ said Harry.
Neville chuckled. Luna turned her pale eyes on him instead.
‘And I don't know who you are.’
‘I'm nobody,’ said Neville hurriedly.
‘No you're not,’ said Ginny sharply. ‘Neville Longbottom—Luna Lovegood. Luna's in my year, but in Ravenclaw.’
‘Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,’ said Luna in a singsong voice.
She raised her upside-down magazine high enough to hide her face and fell silent. Harry and Neville looked at each other with their eyebrows raised. Ginny suppressed a giggle.
The train rattled onwards, speeding them out into open country. It was an odd, unsettled sort of day; one moment the carriage was full of sunlight and the next they were passing beneath ominously grey clouds.
‘Guess what I got for my birthday?’ said Neville.
‘Another Remembrall?’ said Harry, remembering the marble-like device Neville's grandmother had sent him in an effort to improve his abysmal memory.
‘No,’ said Neville. ‘I could do with one, though, I lost the old one ages ago.... No, look at this....’
He dug the hand that was not keeping a firm grip on Trevor into his schoolbag and after a little bit of rummaging pulled out what appeared to be a small grey cactus in a pot, except that it was covered with what looked like
boils rather than spines.
‘Mimbulus mimbletonia,’ he said proudly.
Harry stared at the thing. It was pulsating slightly, giving it the rather sinister look of some diseased internal organ.
‘It's really, really rare,’ said Neville, beaming. ‘I don't know if there's one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts, even. I can't wait to show it to Professor Sprout. My Great Uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria. I'm going to see if I can
breed from it.’
Harry knew that Neville's favourite subject was Herbology, but for the life of him he could not see what he would want with this stunted little plant.
‘Does it—er—do anything?’ he asked.
‘Loads of stuff!’ said Neville proudly. ‘It's got an amazing defensive mechanism. Here, hold Trevor for me....’
He dumped the toad into Harry's lap and took a quill from his schoolbag. Luna Lovegood's popping eyes appeared over the top of her upside-down magazine again, watching what Neville was doing. Neville held the Mimbulus
mimbletonia up to his eyes, his tongue between his teeth, chose his spot, and gave the plant a sharp prod with the tip of his quill.
Liquid squirted from every boil on the plant; thick, stinking, dark green jets of it. They hit the ceiling, the windows, and spattered Luna Lovegood's magazine; Ginny, who had flung her arms up in front of her face just in time,
merely looked as though she was wearing a slimy green hat, but Harry, whose hands had been busy preventing Trevor's escape, received a faceful. It smelled like rancid manure.
Neville, whose face and torso were also drenched, shook his head to get the worst out of his eyes.
‘Sosorry,’ he gasped. ‘I haven't tried that before.... Didn't realise it would be quite so... Don't worry, though, Stinksap's not poisonous,’ he added nervously, as Harry spat a mouthful on to the floor.
At that precise moment the door of their compartment slid open.
‘Oh ... hello, Harry,’ said a nervous voice. ‘Um ... bad time?’
Harry wiped the lenses of his glasses with his Trevor-free hand. A very pretty girl with long, shiny black hair was standing in the doorway smiling at him: Cho Chang, the Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.
‘Oh ... hi,’ said Harry blankly.
‘Um...’ said Cho. ‘Well ... just thought I'd say hello ... ‘bye then.’
Rather pink in the face, she closed the door and departed. Harry slumped back in his seat and groaned. He would have liked Cho to discover him sitting with a group of very cool people laughing their heads off at a joke he
had just told; he would not have chosen to be sitting with Neville and Loony Lovegood, clutching a toad and dripping in Stinksap.
‘Never mind,’ said Ginny bracingly. ‘Look, we can easily get rid of all this.’ She pulled out her wand. ‘Scourgify!’
The Stinksap vanished.
‘Sorry.’ said Neville again, in a small voice.
Ron and Hermione did not turn up for nearly an hour, by which time the food trolley had already gone by. Harry, Ginny, and Neville had finished their pumpkin pasties and were busy swapping Chocolate Frog Cards when the
compartment door slid open and they walked in, accompanied by Crookshanks and a shrilly hooting Pigwidgeon in his cage.
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