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Alec checked in with Trixi before talking to Neville. He was surprised to find out that Trixi knew about him - his family is an old magical family, too, but she had only sensed a tiny amount of magical gift within him. "He could be a late bloomer," Trixi had said. "Sometimes that happens. You have just a little magic to work with and you think you'll go nowhere, but then all of a sudden when you're eighteen or twenty, it balloons into a full-fledged gift."

Alec got the distinct impression that Trixi held out a little hope for that eventuality herself. That explained why he hadn't been recruited. Trixi only picked people who shone already.

The mystery guy identified and confirmed as a possible coven member, Alec looks for him the next day at lunch.

"Hey, Neville. This seat taken?"

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"Oh, hey, Alec," Neville says around a mouthful of chicken salad sandwich, scooting some books out of the way. "What's up?"

He really doesn't expect an answer beyond 'nothing much' - he and Alec eat together a couple times a week, but usually in relatively companionable silence, or sometimes with a bit of small talk.

On second thought, he scoots a few of the books a bit further out of the way - they aren't technically ones he's supposed to take out of the house, and his Gran'll kill him if Alec gets anything on them.

"I am okay. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something."

He sits down and gets out his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Alec sticks with the classics when it comes to lunches.

"You might think I'm a little crazy. But that's cool, right?"

"Uh, yeah, sure."

He's really hoping Alec isn't about to tell him about the voices he hears, or that he wants Neville to help him sell drugs, or something like that. It would be a shame to lose the closest thing he has to a friend.

"Huh," he murmurs to himself after a moment. "I see why Trixi just blurts it out."

"Um, okay. So... do weird things ever happen to you? Things you can't explain away?"

"...no, not really."

First off, they really don't - not to him. And secondly, if they did, he would know perfectly well what was going on.

Ooookay.

Yeah. Blurting out works.

"Here's the thing. My sister, Alyce, and I - we're magic users. She's a witch, I'm the guy equivalent. I like the term sorcerer, but I don't get hung up on words. We have a new friend, and she had a vision of you doing magic with us. So. I thought I'd mention it. Ready to call for the guys with stretchers and straitjackets?"

Neville has several reactions, all in a row.

First, "Jeez, keep your voice down, do you want the whole school-"

Then, "You have a friend who has visions? That's really rare, how do they-"

Followed by, "You and Alyce, seriously? I wouldn't have-"

Then finally, "But your friend must've made a mistake."

Score, direct hit!

Yeah, he should have known Trixi does that for a reason.

He lowers his voice. "I don't think so, man. Do you know Trixi Black? She's one of us, too, and she can tell when other people have magic. She said you did when we told her about the vision, and she's never wrong. So you know about all this? That is awesome. I wish I'd known."

"It might be residual or something. Can some somebody else's magic rub off on you? Maybe it's just in my clothes or something. Because, seriously, you don't want me doing magic with you."

He files away for future investigation the fact that Trixi Black apparently is a witch. It's a common enough last name that he hadn't even really thought about it more than momentarily.

"Why not?" Alec laughs, but not at Neville. "You know about magic. That's obvious. So you're way ahead where any of us were when Trixi dropped the bomb on us."

"Because I'm really, really terrible at it. Seriously, Alec, my family's been witches and warlocks since I don't even know when, a really, really long time ago. And I can't levitate a pencil. My Gran gave up on me years and years ago. Sometimes the pencil implodes."

He still tries sometimes. Just to see.

"Have you only practiced by yourself? I can't do a whole lot on my own, but if Alyce and I work together, we can do amazing things. And then if we hook into the rest of the coven's energies? Wow."

Neville sighs. "Seriously, Alec, we've tried everything. I've got nothing. I've got anti-magic. You really can't possibly know how much I wish there were any chance you could be right. But I would just be in the way."

"What about your plants?"

Alec doesn't understand how this works. All he knows is that Trixi is never wrong. There has to be something Neville does that's magically important. Why else would Ginny have seen him in her vision?

"My plants?"

Now how on earth does Alec know anything at all about Neville's plants? He looks a little nervously at the books from Gran's library.

"Oh, yeah, sorry," he says, picking up on the nervousness. "Alyce saw your picture in the yearbook with you in the greenhouse. We guessed maybe you had an interest in plants used for magic?"

"That's just a little bit creepy. But, uh, yeah. Well, plants in general, really. You'd be surprised how useful some things could be in magic that nobody's ever really tried before. I mean, sage and burdock and stuff like that have their uses, but just because some witch or wizard who died in 1280 said that they're what you have to use doesn't mean other things couldn't work, too, you know? Maybe sometimes better, I think."

Not that his Gran's coven ever listens to him - he's just the kid with no magic, so what could he possibly know about it?

Alec is impressed. It shows.

"Listen to you. You really know your stuff."

"Oh, well, I read a lot. And it's all hypothetical, really. I don't have any way to test any of it. It's totally possible that things would explode or something."

"You know what my coven is really good at?"

Alec grins. "Containing explosions! Come meet with us."

...It's about right now that Alec realizes that no one's talked to Tom about Neville. Trixi will tell him for sure. Fuck. He got a little carried away. They should have included him.

Oh, it's not too late. Alec will fix it.

"Worth a try, I guess, especially if you'll test some stuff out for me. But if everything goes really, really wrong, don't say I didn't warn you." He's starting to get excited, though - maybe, just maybe, it'll finally work this time.

"So, you and Alyce and Trixi - who else?"

"Ginny Weasley is our new member. And, um, Tom Riddle leads us."

He hopes Tom hasn't been a jerk to Neville. Tom is pretty subtle about getting caught being a jerk, and he's never mentioned Neville. Hopefully he's just ignored him from afar.

"Don't really know either of them."

Though they're probably who he would've guessed, had he been asked to - it's not a huge school and Neville does a lot of people watching. Tom and Trixi are pretty much always together, and Ginny and Alyce (Neville especially notices Alyce) have spent most of drama class giggling together in the week since Ginny arrived.

"We have a really strong coven, especially now that Ginny's with us. I'll check and see when we're meeting next. It's destiny! You have to come."

Alec can be pretty friendly and persuasive when he wants to be.

"Well, who can argue with destiny, right?"

Especially when that destiny might lead him to his parents' torturer.

"Right! Man, it's bizarre to think we've both been in our own little magical worlds right here at Sunnydale High. So your family is an old one like Trixi's? That must be really cool. We don't know if anyone was a witch in our family or not."

"Well, I guess if it's going to happen anywhere, it would be Sunnydale, right? Yeah, my family's been magic pretty much forever. Like, my great-great-somethings were druids way back when."

"That's wild. I can't even imagine. And everyone in your family practices?"

"Well."

There isn't really a great answer to that question.

"My Gran, and Great-uncle Algie, and Great-aunt Enid, yeah. They're all in the same coven."

Oh... right. Neville lives with his grandmother. Alec doesn't know why, exactly, but it can't be for a happy reason.

"But I'm pretty sure they just do spells to try to achieve perfect tea-water temperature, these days," Neville presses on, perhaps a little too loudly. "I think they were pretty powerful at some point but they don't do much anymore."

"Hey, nothing wrong with good tea," he says, trying to get past the awkward.

"I'm trying to work out how much angelica I can get by with in a warding posset. It's so expensive that I don't think I'll have enough to do the trick."

"Try cumin," Neville suggests. "The grocery store ground variety should work fine. And throw in a little rosemary, and some garlic, just for Sunnydale purposes. And we've got some acacia trees, I can bring some of that. You definitely don't want to leave the angelica out but you really only need a little if you support it properly. Theoretically, anyway."

"How much theoretically are we talking? I want to keep the person I'm making it for safe. I've been too hesitant to deviate from the grimoire."

But if there's a possibility that such modifications will work, then sweet!

"Which grimoire are you using? Milligan says just a dash of angelica but he has you fill the rest of the posset with sawdust so I think he was just cheap. Euros says to only use angelica and as much as you can get, but he also says that peppermint is useless and that's clearly bullshit. I tend to like Dryn - she's a lot more flexible. What're you trying to protect against?"

"Uh..."

Neville really knows his stuff.

"Euros and I'm looking for protection against possession."

"Never ever use Euros for protection," Neville declares. "He's great for Divination - you should tell Ginny that, by the way - and decent for offensive magic but he doesn't know what he's talking about with protection. Or maybe the Ancient Greeks were just really badly protected all the time? Anyway..." He pulls one of the books he'd been trying to hide earlier out. "You really want Dryn. And if you're looking at possession, you definitely want rosemary and maybe some fennel?"

He trails off while paging through the book, finally stopping at a long list of herbs, each with a description of its properties, under the heading Protective Herbs.

Alec is much less worried about what Tom will think. He thinks Tom will be damned impressed.

"Okay, yeah... this alone?" He gestures to the book, but he's including Neville's brains. "This would make you invaluable for any coven."

Neville has honestly never been called invaluable before.

Or even particularly worthwhile.

"Oh, uh." He hopes he's not blushing obviously. "Thanks."

If he is, Alec won't let on.

He pats Neville on the shoulder. "Tom can be a little prickly, but I know he's going to appreciate your skills."

"Yeah, we'll see," Neville says.

He kind of suspects he'll get kicked out the first time a spell goes totally haywire while he's there.

"This is going to be very cool," Alec says, and he believes every word of it.

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