The Room of Requirement

[kittydesade]

She actually hadn’t figured out yet what she was going to do, other than steal a new plant, once she got to the Greenhouse. She hadn’t even figured out how she was going to get down there, and it was eleven o’clock already. Nervously, biting her nails, she crept out of bed and through the Ravenclaw common room. If she was going to do any sneaking she might as well get an early start, so as not to waste too much time pausing and looking around.

There were still a couple Ravenclaws studying at the table, but they were so bent over their books she’d be surprised if they could walk straight the next day. Certainly they weren’t about to look up and see her. The portrait had gone off somewhere, the first time she found herself grateful for the unnerving tendency of pictures to walk and talk back to her. Likewise there wasn’t anyone on the stairs, and the portraits didn’t take too much interest in a student sneaking about after hours. Which, when she thought of it as she passed the bust of Parcelus, was odd. Or maybe they were just used to students sneaking around after hours. It wasn’t that late in the evening, after all.

It was nervewracking business, sneaking out of the castle. She didn’t trust the doors not to blast an alert, like the one she’d heard when someone had tried to sneak into the Restricted section of the library. Rowan had to find a cracked-open window and risk a high drop down into some bushes. Blinding pain made her black out for a couple of seconds, and she thought at first she must have broken her ankle. But then when she put weight on it she was able to stand, and wound up hobbling down to the greenhouses. She was almost walking normally by the time she got there.

“Something wrong?”

A slight yelp burst out before she could clap her hands over her mouth. She whirled around, only to nearly trip over her own ankles. One hand on the greenhouse wall to steady herself, the other out in front of her waving her wand frantically, though she couldn’t think of a single spell.

“Put that away, Miss Mayfair, before you poke someone’s eye out.” She could barely make out the Slytherin boy’s scrawny form against the darkness.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered, putting the wand away. “Not a problem. Glad to be of service. And why don’t you scare the other ten years off my life while you’re about it?”

She thought she saw the flicker of a smile, but it was probably more of a sneer. “Let’s get on with it. Show me what you’ve got …” He pulled out his own wand and tapped the lock. “Alohamora.”

That, she noted, was a handy trick to remember. She slipped in ahead of him and made her way along the rows till she found the jewelweed plants, most of them already growing quite tall and sparkling even in the dim moonlight.
“It doesn’t look as though there are any left over from class,” Severus drawled behind her in a bored tone of voice. It sounded to her as though he was entirely indifferent to his Herbology grade, and she whirled on him.

“Look, do you want to pass Herbology or not?” she snapped, tired and irritated and hoping her ankle wasn’t starting to swell in her boot.

He blinked at her, but didn’t say anything for several minutes, which she took as acquiescence. She turned away again and began to limp down the rows, trying to find a pot that hadn’t been claimed or labeled. “What are you going to do, then?” he asked, in a more subdued if not respectful tone.

“Well. Your plant is pretty much dead, nothing we can do about it. But I think… if I can find some promising cuttings and graft them together… and then encourage it to grow a little… “

“And how are you planning to do that?”

“Have a little faith.” There was a row of plants towards the back that looked like they were growing very nicely. She clambered up onto the table, perching precariously on her knees at the edge, and reached forward to grab two of them. “If I fall backwards…”

“I am not …” he started to say, and then she did tip nearly backwards as she pulled the pots up and over the miniature garden. His palms pressed reflexively against her shoulders just long enough to steady her, and then she jumped down.

“There…” She set the plants on the floor and rubbed her abused knees. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Hmmph.”

She pulled out a pocket knife that her parents had gotten her as a present at the beginning of term, fascinated as they all had been with the wizard’s market. Very carefully, and reminding herself that magic or no magic it was just another plant, she trimmed off a sizable cutting.

“Severus.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re breathing in my ear.”

He stood up quickly to avoid getting poked in the eye by a spear of jewelweed. “Sorry.”

She pushed aside the two donating plants. “Put those back up there, would you?” There were spare pots aplenty, and the right kind of soil, but she needed something else to graft the larger section onto the smaller. There were several shelves towards the back of the greenhouse. One of them had to have what she was looking for. Rowan started to rummage around on the shelves and had just reached around to the back of one particularly dusty cubicle when she heard the rusty sounding laughter behind her.

“What in the…”

She turned. Severus was kneeling next to the table where she’d left him, one hand against the table leg to steady himself. He actually was laughing with what sounded like real amusement, yet there was a malicious light to his eyes. “And you didn’t even know…” he chortled.

“What are you blithering on about?” she hissed, grabbing the first container she could find to bean him with. Which turned out to be exactly what she was looking for, so she didn’t. “Keep your voice down, would you?”

For an answer he turned the pots around so that their labels were out. “James Potter…” she read aloud in a whisper, trying to remember where she’d heard the name before. “Sirius… Black. Oh. Oh!” Those mean boys who had been picking on him. Who, according to what she could catch glimpses of in the hallways, made bullying Severus their daily amusement.

“They’ll be so surprised…” he snickered. “They thought I’d…”

She gave him an arch look. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t guess what they’d done, after all. The roots had been squashed by something, and if he hadn’t done it out of haste and carelessness. “Well, never mind. I’ve got it from here…”

He watched her closely as she planted the largest cutting, making as careful a job as she could of grafting the smaller cutting onto it. The magic sap-like glue worked wonders, and after a few minutes she couldn’t even see the line where one plant melded into the other. “All right.” She took a deep breath, pulled out her wand. “Ceresa…”

Their eyes widened. The plant thickened, grew, and although she hadn’t been certain what grafting the two cuttings together would do it apparently hadn’t been detrimental to the outcome. It grew and grew until…

“Rowan…”

“Finite incantatum!” She practically yelped the countercharm, not even stopping to wonder whether or not it would actually work as rehearsed. When it did she was almost as startled as he was. “Well. There’s your plant.” It was a significant understatement. He now had the healthiest growth of jewelweed in his entire class. They stared at it for another several minutes. Severus recovered before she did, quickly changing the blank label on the pot for one bearing his name and replacing it amidst the fleet. Stepping over the mess she’d made on the floor, he swooped out without a backward glance.

“You’re welcome,” she called after him, too late to actually catch him of course. Rowan tidied up after herself, making sure to eliminate any signs of clandestine tampering after hours. “Ungrateful git.”