A/N: Written for A Demigod Wizard's Duel, Round 3 Team Target Drabble, prompt 2 – write a romance around your representative (or a character like them). My representative was Rue, so Neville to me is the closest HP match. Optional prompts used: "bowtie".
Crushes of Crushes
He'd been a fool to ask her.
Of course Hermione already had someone to go with to the ball. She was smart. She was nice. She was pretty. And her actions from first year had proven she was the perfect Gryffindor. Why would she want to go with a reject like him?
But he'd asked anyway. Because he'd wanted to go with her. Because that was important enough to risk mortification, risk rejection.
She was nice even as she rejected him. Ron, he wondered. Hermione shook her head, then told him the truth.
When Ron asked, Neville didn't say who it was. She was in the same boat as him, in a way. But why Ron didn't see the nose of his face, he didn't know.
Even when he fixed his bowtie to pick up Ginny Weasley for the ball (just as friends), he thought about their sticky little situation. Because he could see quite plainly who Hermione wanted to go with – and it was neither her date nor him who had been too late to ask.
And it was a slight relief that they weren't going together after all. Because it would have pained him to dance the night away with a crush who was, most definitely, in love with someone else.