AN: Written for the Last Ship Sailing Contest on HPFC using the prompts ricochet, candlelight, cauldron, navy, yellow, nervous habit, and "There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same kind twice. Enjoy
Neville always seemed to gravitate back to the Room of Requirement. It was one of the only places where he felt safe, and, well, not useless. And to do this assignment for Professor Snape, he had to do his best, and the familiar DA headquarters comforted him somewhat. He consulted the instructions given to him by Snape again and sighed. According to them, his potion should be a light, buttercup colored yellow and instead it was..
Navy, Longbottom, he heard Snape say in his mind, and Neville waited for a scathing declaration of what he had done wrong. Only this time, Snape was only imaginary, and he had no idea why his potion was the wrong color, and was now hissing like a cat. Neville carefully added the cut up flower petals and watched as they dissolved in the potion, hoping against hope that it would somehow be fixed.
Instead, the potion started boiling over and Neville, a veteran of many Potions mistakes, dived behind a nearby set of drawers containing books on defensive spells. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the cauldron start swelling and almost look like it was about to melt, before it exploded. The potion coated the walls before it was wiped away by whatever magic made the Room of Requirement work. The stick he had used for stirring the potion ricocheted against the wall and Neville ducked to avoid it.
Not another one, Neville thought. The Room would provide him with a new cauldron, but the ingredients for the potion had been used up already and he dreaded having to ask Snape for new ones. Sighing, he got up to make the long shameful walk back to the Potions classroom to admit to Snape that he failed again. Hopefully Snape would let him try again, though he doubted it.
"I'll give you one last chance," Snape had told him after class a couple of days ago. "Create this potion or fail my class." Neville had taken the paper containing the instructions and left the classroom as quickly as he could. The thought of his grandmother's face if he actually managed to fail a class, he didn't want to think about it.
Well, now it looked like he had managed to fail at the one task he was assigned. Neville was about to get up and leave when Luna Lovegood walked in the door. "Oh hi, Luna," Neville said nervously. "I was just working on a Potions assignment."
"Hello Neville," Luna said serenely as she sat down in an intricate wooden chair. The room changed subtly. Instead of the sourceless light that usually lit the room during DA meetings, there was the softer, kinder lighting of candlelight. The last of the failed potion vanished into the walls, and flowers appeared on the spare bookshelves.
"Oh look, flowers," Luna said, turning to look at the room's new decorations. "I didn't know the room made those." She smiled at Nevile.
"Probably full of nargles though," Neville said, joking nervously. His hands were fidgeting too, a nervous habit of his.
"No, nargles usually only are found in non-flowering plants," Luna corrected him with a smile. "I like this place. It feels like home."
"Same way for me," Neville admitted. "It's the first place where I've actually felt like I'm worth something." Why did I say that, he wondered. It had just slipped out. "So, why did you decide to come here?," he asked, trying to move past his confession. "Not that I mind you being here or anything, you're great, I was just wondering." Neville cringed inwardly as he heard himself speak.
"Hoping you would be here," Luna said. "Daddy says that it makes life easier in the long run if you are honest about how you feel."
"What do you mean?" Neville asked.
"I love you," she said simply. "I hope you don't mind."
"I don't mind," he said. "I think I might love you back."
They turned to face each other, the candlelight reflecting in both their eyes, and identical smiles on their faces.
Neville picked a flower from one of the pots on the table and tucked it behind her ear. Luna laughed and intertwined her fingers with Neville's.
"I've liked you since the beginning of the year," Neville admitted. "I've just never figured that, you know, you'd like me back or anything. I'm not the romantic hero type." He laughed nervously.
"There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice," Luna replied.
"I guess that's true," he said.
The pair spent the rest of the evening and well into the night, talking and laughing, their faces glowing with candlelight and their hearts alight with love.
Reviews are always appreciated.