Author's Note: This is for Round 13 of the QLFC.

Position: Beater 2 on the Pride of Portree Team.

My prompts:

4. (word) repeat

6. (word) evasive

Lovebottom

A giant plume of fuscia smoke billowed out the tall open windows in the Potions classroom, the explosion so massive that it knocked open the door, spilling fumes out into the hallways. Moments later, a stocky blond figure in pink-stained robes flew out of the room and stumbled down the hall.

"LONGBOTTOM!"

The sound of Professor Snape's snarling voice was so loud that it echoed throughout the castle, unsettling a flock of sparrows that had decided to rest on the ramparts of the Astronomy Tower.

Neville didn't look back, running until his feet hit the landing to Gryffindor Tower. He realized that he had forgotten the password yet again, and when he looked down, his wand was nowhere to be seen.

"Noooooo!" Neville moaned, his eyes stinging with unshed tears.

It was just too much. Here he was in the first week of his seventh year at Hogwarts and already it was a disaster. It didn't help that somehow Professor Snape had arrived on the first day of school to teach Potions again after Slughorn had mysteriously disappeared when the Sorting was finished. Neville had chosen Potions because he knew he needed it to apply for a Mastery apprenticeship in Herbology, and though Slughorn could be pompous and prone to favoritism, he was fairly lenient and left Neville alone. He had not expected Snape to return from the dead and teach the class, but Headmaster McGonagall had told him that there was no other way for him to apply for his apprenticeship after graduation unless he passed.

The hook-nosed professor terrified him just as much as he had in his first year, newfound courage be damned.

The potion had been a simple drought of Amortentia. Neville had been distracted because Snape was coming down the aisle with a particularly stern look on his face. He'd blindly grabbed a flask and poured it in. At first, the only indication that he'd done anything wrong at all was a gasp from Hermione and a rather strange sounding "whoomp" noise from his cauldron.

And then, all hell had broken loose. The cauldron exploded, creating a massive, fuschia cloud that poured outward, filling the room.

Neville sneezed, twin jets of pink smoke blasting from his nose as he did so. It really hadn't helped that he'd inhaled just as the explosion had happened. With his rotten luck, whatever mess he'd made of the potion was probably embedded in his brain.

"Well hello there, big boy."

The voice made him turn, his eyes going wide with shock.

The Fat Lady was looking at him rather... flirtatiously.

"I don't suppose you'd mind letting me in without the password, would you?" he asked, going red in the face as she licked her painted lips.

"Well, normally, I'd say no," she said, smiling in a manner that made Neville feel rather uncomfortable, "but today I think I can make an exception... that is, if you'll just do me a teensy little favor."

"Uh... sure?" Neville replied, still confused.

"C'mere," the Fat Lady said, beckoning, "and plant a little kiss right here on my cheek."

Neville blushed under the pink dust that covered his face, but he decided that it was better than standing outside until the other potion-stained Gryffindors came back and gave him what-for.

"O... ok…" he muttered, standing up on his tiptoes to press his lips against the painting.

He opened his eyes at the last moment and noticed that she'd moved suddenly, which didn't feel any different as the painting was two dimensional, so that now he was kissing her on the lips. Immediately, he pulled away, and the Fat Lady winked, swinging open to admit him to the common room.

"Next time I want two!" she said coyly.

Neville shook his head as though trying to clear his thoughts.

"That did not just happen… did it?" he asked himself under his breath.

"Neville? Why are you pink?" The voice came from one of the couches near the fireplace, which was not lit as the early September chill wasn't nearly strong enough to warrant a fire.

"Oh, hi, Lavender, Parvati," Neville said sheepishly.

"Bad day in Potions class, huh, Nev?" Parvati said, her eyes a bit mirthful.

"Yeah… that about sums it up," Neville replied, looking away before covering his nose.

"What…?" Lavender started to say, but Neville's sneeze was so loud that his hands were blasted away from his nose and another jet of pink smoke flew from his nose and mouth.

Both girls squealed with surprise and fanned their hands, but the smoke seemed to fill the room for a moment. When everything cleared, Neville looked over where the two had been, and his eyes went wide with shock.

Lavender and Parvati were dusted a slight pink over their hair and robes, but they were far too busy snogging like there was no tomorrow to even notice when Neville turned and scurried up the stairs to the boy's dormitories.

"I must be going crazy! Maybe a shower will calm my nerves," Neville said, throwing his robes onto the floor and grabbing his towel.

When he emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, he realized that the curtains were drawn around Seamus's bed. There was an awful lot of giggling coming from inside.

"No, not there!" Dean's voice cried out.

"Oh, ticklish are we?" Seamus replied.

Neville blushed as he heard Seamus blowing raspberries on what sounded like Dean's stomach. He hurriedly dressed as quietly as he could and took the stairs down to the common room two at a time his mind going blank with confusion at the sight that he beheld when he reached the last step.

Gryffindor students were snogging and cuddling left and right. There were even some Slytherin and Ravenclaw students in the Gryffindor common room! A couple of students merely looked confused as they tried to do homework while couples snogged inches away from them, but the majority of the room was in a strange sort of chaos as couples (and some threesomes, Neville noted) obliviously went on as though they were the only ones in the room.

No one seemed to notice him at all as he walked through the room, trying not to hear the sound of people kissing and giggling and laughing coyly. Somehow, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was all his fault. The portrait door was open, and Neville snuck out, noticing with a slight pang of revulsion that Peeves appeared to be snogging the Fat Lady.

He did not notice that a light pink cloud was floating behind him like a rather large tail.

By the time he reached the classroom in the dungeons, Neville was certain he would have to repeat another year of Potions, if he was ever let back into the class again. The castle was overrun by amorous couples (and groups) who were rapidly running out of bases. Neville was certain that he'd seen a couple of piles of discarded clothing near a couple of the darkened alcoves that the castle was famous for, but he'd been unwilling to investigate.

The door was still blown open, a pink handprint still stuck to the door where Neville had steadied himself as he ran out. Luckily, it seemed like the smoke had dissipated, but it still covered the floor and Neville gulped when he thought of the detentions that he would surely have until the end of time if Snape had anything to say about it.

Still, he knew that he needed his wand back, and there was only one way to get it.

Neville peered around the corner of the door, expecting a glare that could boil lead to be staring back at him, but remarkably, the classroom was mostly empty. A couple of students remained, and when he caught a glimpse of a completely shirtless Harry sitting against the far wall with his eyes closed in pleasure as Draco licked his neck and moaned in a rather scandalous manner, Neville squeaked in surprise, turning his head and trying to ignore it out of respect for his friend.

"Hey there, Neville." A hand had grabbed Neville around the ankle and he shouted in surprise.

"Oh! Ron! Why are you down there?" Neville asked nervously, trying to keep his voice from breaking.

"Things… stuff…" Ron replied, his voice evasive.

"Where's Hermione?" Neville asked, "Surely she can help fix this mess."

"She left me here all alone!" Ron exclaimed suddenly, his face screwed up with grief and fury. "Ran off with Snape! In the room over there!"

He pointed to a closed door behind the teacher's desk at the front of the room that looked as though it had been warded rather securely.

"She'd rather make potions with him than stay here and snog with me!" Ron wailed, clutching his head sorrowfully.

"I'm sorry?" Neville asked, his heart leaping as he realized that somehow Hermione must be working on an antidote.

"I know!" Ron looked suddenly happier, his exclamation making Neville jump nervously. "You'll kiss me, won't you Neville? C'mon! It'll be so fun!"

Neville glanced nervously over at Harry, whose glasses were fogging up as he sucked rather lasciviously on Draco's neck and the Slytherin student ran his thin, pale fingers through Harry's dark hair.

"Oh, hello, Neville and Ron!" A soft voice made Neville turn and his heart caught in his throat.

"Luna!" he said, gulping loudly. He'd had a crush on her for over a year, but there'd never been any time to do anything about it. Part of him was almost hoping that she would stare at him the way that Ron was staring.

"I saw him first!" Ron protested, and before Neville could do anything, Ron had spun him in his arms and was kissing him right on the lips.

Neville's eyes practically bugged out of his head, but he did have to admit that Ron tasted rather nice considering his rather slovenly behavior in their dorm room and propensity to eat anything that wasn't nailed down in the Great Hall.

"I want to try too!" Luna said, and her hands were upon Neville's shoulder, and she was kissing his cheek. Then, she slid her hand under Ron's chin and held it, pulling him away from Neville's lips. Ron's eyes seemed to go hazy for a moment as he transferred his attention to her.

Neville felt her squeeze his hand.

"Go, Neville. They'll need you. After all, you do have an unwanted tail." Luna whispered, still looking into Ron's eyes in that dreamy way that was classic Luna.

"Unwanted… what? Oh nevermind, it doesn't matter. Will you be ok?" Neville asked, as Ron pressed his finger against Luna's bottom lip, parting it slightly as he began to draw his face down towards hers.

"Oh most definitely," Luna breathed, her eyes going half-lidded as she leaned forward on her toes.

Neville had to turn before their lips touched because it hurt him too much to see it happen. Instead, he focused on the task ahead. He stepped over Pansy Parkinson, who was on her side kissing Fran Dinwick from Hufflepuff as though she needed the other girl's lips to breathe. The fact that a Hufflepuff student had somehow appeared in the Potions classroom was almost more mystifying than the fact that Pansy was snogging her face off.

He found his wand under a chair halfway towards the front of the room, the tip covered in fuchsia dust. Thankfully, he didn't have to see anyone else in the throes of passion on the remainder of his journey towards the front of the classroom. He shuddered at the thought of the potion's effects on Madam Pince… or Filch…. He couldn't even finish the thought before he shook his head violently to clear the mental image.

Wiping off his wand on his robes, he tried to drop the wards around the door, only to receive a nasty shock for his troubles.

"Ugh, I should have known. I'm terrible at wards," Neville muttered, turning back to see Luna and Ron disappear under a desk. Pain ripped through his chest as he realized that the only reason any of this was happening was because of his stupid mistake.

"This is all my fault!" he hissed angrily at himself, slamming his hand against the door.

"Who's there?" A muffled voice called out from behind the door.

"It's me! Neville!" Neville croaked back.

"Don't let that dunderhead in here! He'll jeopardize all of our hard work!" Snape's voice was as harsh as ever, and Neville paled instantly on the other side of the door.

"I'm sorry, Neville, I really am," Hermione said sadly from the other side of the door, "but you'll just have to wait until we're done. We've had quite a time trying to reverse-engineer the potion you made, especially… when…"

Neville jumped back as a loud thump landed on the other side of the door. He began to have a rather uncomfortable feeling in his stomach as the minutes wore on and Hermione said nothing.

"...In any case… we're... fine..." Hermione finally spoke, but she was breathless in a manner that made Neville very certain in the pit of his stomach that neither she nor Snape were immune to the effects of his potion accident.

Neville dropped his head in shame. Not only had he created a potion that had caused a snogging disease, but Hermione was trapped in a room with the Greasy Git trying to make an antidote even though they were both under its effects. Neville was suddenly very glad that they hadn't let him in after all. The idea of having to kiss Snape made him feel green around the gills.

Turning around and shuffling towards the front of the classroom, he caught sight of himself in one of the metal shields that hung on the wall. There was an odd pink cloud attached to the back of him that curled up into the air like a skunk's tail.

"As though this wasn't humiliating enough!" Neville exclaimed, covering his face with his hands.

With that, he ran and ran, not paying attention to where he was going until he realized that without meaning to, he'd left the castle altogether. Though the forest was as scary as ever, he still ran towards it, feeling as though he deserved to be far, far away from the castle and all of the people he'd hurt. Finally, he found a small, wet cave and pushed his way inside through the half-collapsed entrance. It wasn't very comfortable, and it smelled as though it had once been used by some large beast, but the stench was old and it was obvious that it had been left unused for some time. Neville cleaned out the cobwebs and cast a Cushioning Charm on the floor, curling up on it and pulling his robes around himself as he lay there and wallowed in self-loathing.

It got very dark and Neville shivered with the cold, his stomach growling with hunger.

"Well, too bad! You deserve to suffer!" he shouted at himself, hearing his voice echo off of the ceiling of the cave as though it was agreeing with him.

"Indeed, you do," drawled a familiar voice from the mouth of the cave, and Neville couldn't help himself. He screamed.

"No, you dunderhead. I'm not here to kill you," Snape said, rolling his eyes in the light cast by his wand. "We finally fixed an antidote, and if I'm not mistaken, it should work on your... tail as well."

"You… know about that?" Neville's voice was shaking with embarrassment.

"Neville, how else do you think we found you in the dark?" Hermione said, poking her head in behind Snape. "We followed the pink cloudy tail trail!"

"Now come out of there and drink this before I lose my temper, Mr. Longbottom," Snape said, holding out a glass vial with a weary look on his face.

Neville didn't have to be told twice. After all, the Potions master seemed angry enough already and if that was the case, he absolutely did not want to see what the man was like when he lost his temper.

Neville drank down the potion immediately and sighed with relief when Hermione told him that his tail had disappeared altogether. The walk to the castle was not fun at all in the dark, and the rather accusatory looks from all of the cured students didn't help matters either, but Neville was glad that everything was finally over. He did, of course, end up getting a number of detentions and was placed in a "theory only" Potions class taught by Snape on Saturdays. It was still terrifying, and the dark professor assigned a mountain of homework that made his regular classes look like a walk in the park, but Neville was glad that he would no longer have to work with actual ingredients.

Also, it seemed that his potions accident had created its share of new relationships. Not long after that day, a number of surprising couples popped up, leading to the House tables being mixed up quite a lot. Not many people were surprised when Madam Pince and Filch announced their engagement, but a number of people looked as though they didn't want to think about the particular circumstances under which their romance had blossomed.

Neville was Best Man at Ron and Luna's wedding, and it was not much of a surprise to anyone when Harry and Draco moved in together, but it was only Neville who had an inkling as to why, three years later, Hermione Granger and Severus Snape announced their engagement. In the end, everyone was happy, and when Neville met Hannah Abbott, he realized that even though not everything had turned out the way he'd hoped, what truly mattered was that all was well.