The Beatles

The first afternoon Muggle Studies class was once again shared by Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. Putting Slytherin and Gryffindor together for a class about Muggles would practically be starting a war. Whoever made the timetable clearly understood this, so the two combative houses were each paired with one of the less combative ones. And because of the trouble Bellatrix Black had caused the previous year, every Hufflepuff Muggle Studies class from first year through seventh year was held together with Gryffindor.

Lily was a Muggle-born witch. Who understood Muggles better than she did? As for Pomona, she believed the teachers were probably more concerned with whether they would get paid next month, so she skipped class with Lily.

Snape, meanwhile, went off to Care of Magical Creatures with his big nose held high and his heart full of disgust. Without that annoying fellow around, Pomona and Lily got along immediately. Lily also seemed very interested in plants and volunteered to help.

"Look!" Lily plucked a little daisy and placed it in her palm, showing it to Pomona. Its petals opened and closed like barnacles.

"Oh my God, Lily, that's incredible!" Pomona exclaimed sincerely. It was the first time she had seen someone turn an ordinary plant into a magical one.

"Thank you." Lily drew back her hand shyly, lowered her head, and smiled. "You're the first person who's ever praised me like that."

"No, Lily, this isn't praise." Pomona looked at her seriously. "You have an extraordinary gift. At least, none of the wizards I know can do that."

Lily seemed a little frightened. After a long while, she asked, "Not even you?"

"I can't." Pomona nodded solemnly. "I can't turn ordinary plants into magical ones. Have you ever seen a willow that hits people in the Muggle world?"

Lily shook her head.

"Exactly. Your gift has touched a field I know nothing about. You should ask older wizards, like the Headmaster or Professor Slughorn."

Pomona sighed inwardly. Fortunately, Lily had not been frightened off by it and had bravely become a witch. Otherwise, such a precious talent would have gone to waste.

"Petunia says I'm a freak," Lily said listlessly. "She keeps telling me not to do things like this."

"You don't have to listen to her. She'll never understand." Pomona put on her deerskin gloves. "Are you going to stand there and keep playing, or are you going to help me?"

"Help." Lily tossed aside the daisy in her palm and ran to the storeroom for spare gloves. Pomona was nearly in tears. Daisies usually grew among weeds; finding one in a greenhouse meant for cultivating magical plants was anything but wonderful.

"Why don't you use your wand to clear them out?" Lily asked from inside the storeroom.

"Because I'm a first-year." Pomona took a sickle and cut down a large bundle of dried reeds and dodder in one stroke. "I don't know how to use a wand."

That Diffindo spell from the morning had been pure luck. Pomona did not even know whether she could cast it again next time.

"Then why did Professor Dumbledore ask you to take care of the greenhouse?"

"This is my gift." Pomona shooed away a Bundimun hiding among the weeds. "I can keep plants very healthy."

"Oh." Lily gave a perfunctory response. She had no idea what that meant.

Mandrake leaves could fetch different prices depending on their quality. When Pomona had bought necessities from the shopping list that day, she had seen them in a potion shop. An ordinary Mandrake leaf sold for six Galleons, while a top-quality one could sell for ten. Leaves could grow back after being picked, but gold was not so easy to find.

Mandrake was one of the ingredients in Amortentia. Mandrake leaves and roots had completely different effects: the roots could cure petrification, while the leaves had aphrodisiac properties. To improve them and obtain a stronger love-potion effect, witches had gone mad over them. Wild Mandrakes had become difficult to find due to overharvesting. Potions made from plants grown in greenhouses were generally far less effective than those made from wild ones, because greenhouse plants were carefully tended and had never undergone nature's selection. Many plants transplanted from greenhouses into the wild could not survive. Greenhouse flowers could not withstand the wind and rain.

"Hey, there's a radio here!" Lily said excitedly. So she had lingered in the storeroom for so long not because she was looking for gloves, but because of her Gryffindor nature—her overflowing curiosity.

"Does it still work?"

"I'll try. Strange, where's the plug?"

"What plug?"

"Electri—forget it. I'll find it myself." Lily seemed to think explaining electricity to a witch would be too much trouble, so she busied herself in the storeroom.

After a long while, static sounded from within the storeroom. It seemed the radio still worked.

"Pomona, have you ever listened to Muggle radio?"

"Occasionally." Whenever Madam Sprout grew tired of the Ministry of Magic's stale rhetoric, she switched to a Muggle station. But she had no interest whatsoever in "rock and roll"; whenever she came across it while changing stations, she switched away immediately like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

"Then have you heard of The Beatles?"

"What's wrong with beetles?"

"Not those beetles. The Beatles is the name of a band." As Lily finished speaking, rock music burst from the radio. Then Lily, still wearing gloves, came dancing out while shaking her head like a lunatic, laughing with pure delight. "Come on, dance with me!"

"You call that dancing?" Pomona stared at her in disbelief.

"Of course!" Lily shouted over the noisy music, waving both hands. "Come on, Pomona, loosen up! Let's dance together!"

Pomona wanted to dance, but did not dare. Legend had it that men who danced with Veela fell under their magic until they died of exhaustion. She did not know whether that magic affected women as well.

"Don't be afraid, dance!" Lily encouraged her. Her happiness was infectious, and Pomona finally could not resist the temptation. She began dancing with Lily in the greenhouse.

That morning, right where they had been standing, a House-elf had been tortured by the Unforgivable Curses. A suffocating sorrow plagued her, or rather, ever since the day she had bought her wand, an unpleasant feeling had kept her restless. Yet now, with Lily, she felt that long-lost happiness again.

She copied Lily's movements and "danced." All her troubles vanished. She wanted to keep dancing forever, never to feel even the slightest pain again.

"Loosen up more, Pomona! You're stiff as a potted plant. Loosen up!" Lily said with a laugh.

Pomona felt awkward, but she still did as Lily said.

She felt like a dandelion, drifting up on the wind, no longer bound to the soil like a tree.

Plants quickly died once they left their roots, but dandelion seeds drifted away on the wind. After a brief journey, they could take root again. She would grow in a new environment. To adapt, she might become subtly different from the dandelion she had once been, but she would still be herself. She would still be a dandelion—a white, fluffy plant.

"No!!"

That snowy-white dream had barely taken shape in her mind when a howl of despair dragged her soaring mood to the bottom. Dandelions needed sunlight, but she had been unlucky enough to be blown into an abyss. She would never be able to take root and sprout.

"Don't go! Don't leave me behind!"

She heard that desperate voice say. Then Lily stopped dancing too, and the radio fell silent again. It seemed to have broken.

"Do you know how to use a wizarding radio?" Pomona looked at Lily suspiciously. Perhaps she had ruined a perfectly good radio with her Muggle methods.

Lily shrugged.

"Did you hear anything just now?" Pomona felt as if she really was about to go mad. She had heard another hallucination.

"I didn't hear anything except the music." Lily spoke expressionlessly. "Are we still working?"

"Of course. Are we supposed to stop working just because there's no music?"

"You're so boring." Lily curled her lip, but she still gathered up the cleared weeds and carried them out of the greenhouse.

"You were the one who brought me back." Once she was alone in the greenhouse again, a voice came from the broken radio. "Either we live together, or we die together!!"

Diffindo!

Pomona was frightened by the hatred in that voice. She raised her wand and blasted it to pieces.

The wooden casing gave off a slightly bitter smell, like something burnt. Beneath it, she could also smell chocolate.

The dancing had been too vigorous, and her head felt dizzy. For no reason, she had the illusion that she was still dancing, except the accompanying music was no longer so "rock and roll." It was soft and gentle.

"How do you feel?" a woman asked.

"Much better," a man sighed softly. "Thank you."

"That really doesn't sound like something you would say, Professor," the woman said again.

The man was silent for a long time.

"You don't know who I am," he said hoarsely. "And I'm no longer a professor."

"Then what should I call you?" the woman asked.

"Severus!" Lily cried out from outside the greenhouse. "Why are you back?"

"I'm not interested in Unicorns." Snape said disgustedly in his unbroken voice. "That damned animal actually took a shit in front of everyone."

Pomona could not help rolling her eyes. Without even looking, she could imagine the expression of revulsion on his face, as if he had eaten a fly. Worse still, he had successfully ruined her fantasy of Unicorns.

Pomona curled her lip. Severus Snape was such a killjoy of a name. Who had named him that, anyway?