Author's Note: A challenge in a community I mod on LJ. Pepperimps! We rock so much! We are Obsessive Fans! Anyway, the challenge was to write a fic using a pairing generated by the OTP Gen at StDymphna's RPG! So, here you are!
Disclaimer: Characters belong to JK Rowling. I made no money offa this. Hopefully a few laughs though? StDymphna's Rpg © itself.
Password?
Neville Longbottom had what one might delicately call a knack for forgetting things. Whether it be an ingredient in a simmering potion, a constellation during Astronomy or where exactly he put his quill, the poor Gryffindor was always forgetting something.
But, it had been a long, long time since he'd forgotten the password to Gryffindor Tower. It wouldn't seem that way, to all the others Gryffindors who would sometimes find the boy asleep outside the door, or with a book propped open on his knees, just waiting for someone to give the password to let him in.
But, since he wouldn't dare write them down anymore—not since Sirius Black broke in—he'd been going out of his way to remember the passwords. He'd repeat them under his breath in the halls, chant them to himself before going to bed each night. He hadn't really forgotten a password in years.
Instead, the Fat Lady changed them whenever she saw the boy coming. She would request the password and kindly deny him entrance every chance she got. She wasn't doing this out of vindictiveness, of course. She just liked to look at the boy. Ever since he'd passed through her portrait hole first year, with his toad in one hand, a look of pure amazement on his round face, she'd enjoyed watching him.
He was handsome, in his own right, but more often looked cute or adorable in his mild confusion. She knew nearly everything there was to know about him. Portraits did talk after all.
She knew of his parents, his upbringing. She knew how he cried silently some nights when tortuous dreams woke him and wouldn't let him return to sleep. She knew of the beauty of his heart and of the bravery that few knew he had. To the guardian of Gryffindor Tower's door, he was amazing in every single way. And that was enough to make her change the password to "gobbldygook!" when she saw him coming.
"Password?" she asked mildly, a muted adoration hiding in her painted eyes.