The potion ingredient farm occupied the south-facing section of the Wulfhall's grounds that had been cleared over June — a long strip of prepared earth running parallel to the property's south wall, divided into beds with the specific functional organisation of someone who had thought carefully about drainage, sunlight hours, and the specific growing conditions that potions-grade ingredients required as distinct from the conditions that ordinary kitchen herbs required.
Moss had planned it. He had presented the layout to Ron in the second week of July on a piece of parchment that had the quality of something thought through carefully by someone who had been managing estate grounds for a long time and had strong opinions about soil preparation.
Neville had improved it.
He had arrived at the farm on the second morning he was at the Wulfhall and had stood looking at Moss's layout with the specific focused attention he brought to Herbology problems, and had then gone to find Ron with three specific suggestions about bed orientation that took into account the shadow thrown by the east wall at the key growing hours. Ron had implemented all three. Moss had received the revisions with the quality of someone who recognised good thinking and had no investment in being the only person whose thinking was good.
By the first week of August the farm had twelve beds in varying stages of establishment — the fastest-growing ingredients already producing their first usable harvests, the slower ones well-established and on track for autumn. Neville came every morning before breakfast and moved through the beds with the focused efficiency of someone doing something they were built for, checking the growth, adjusting the soil conditions, communicating with Moss in the specific easy collaboration of two people who had found a common language.
Ron had not asked Neville to do this. He had simply arranged the farm and made the space available, and Neville had done what Neville did when given a space that was his — he inhabited it completely.
One morning in the first week of August, Ron came out before breakfast and found Neville in the beds with a notebook, writing in the focused way he wrote when he was documenting rather than simply observing. Moss was nearby, doing something to the soil in the adjacent bed with a specific tool Ron did not recognise.
'The Boomslang skin is ahead of schedule,' Neville said, without looking up. 'The soil temperature in this bed runs about two degrees warmer than the others because of the wall reflection. It's accelerating the growth cycle.'
'Is that a problem?' Ron said.
'No,' Neville said. 'It means we'll have usable material six weeks earlier than I projected. I'm documenting it because the temperature variance might be reproducible in other growing contexts.' He did look up then, with the quality he had when he had found something that was genuinely interesting rather than simply useful. 'This is a good farm, Ron.'
'You made it a good farm,' Ron said.
Neville looked at the beds. 'I helped make it a good farm,' he said, with the specific accuracy of someone who had learned to credit himself correctly rather than either deflecting or overclaiming. 'Moss did the hard work.'
Moss, from the adjacent bed, said nothing, which was Moss's version of agreement.