A tall, slightly pudgy, boy of about sixteen walked through a cold corridor in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This boy, Neville Longbottom, just finished a detention with none other than Professor Severus Snape. Although Snape was now teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, a subject Neville was good at thanks to the D.A., he still took away points from Neville or gave him a detention whenever he got an answer wrong (or right for the matter; Snape always said he was cheating).
So since Longbottom was done with cleaning the gum off of the tables (without magic) he was free to go back to his common room in Gryffindor, where he should be. But Neville decided to take a walk through the school, to think about anything and everything: school, his grandmother, his mom and dad, the war, Death Eaters, and so on.
Although this walk was supposed to be somewhat peaceful, one scream from down the hall prevented it from being so.
Neville rounded the corner and found himself in a hall that came off of the Entrance Hall. There he saw a Slytherin seventh year, John Ramie was his name, pinning a fellow sixth year girl to the wall. Hannah Abbott was having her mouth covered, preventing another scream from escaping her lips.
"Oi!" Neville yelled as he pulled his wand from his robe pocket, pointing it at the guy menacingly.
The Slytherin let the girl drop, letting her hit the floor with a thunk, before turning around.
"What do you want?" he said with an evil laugh Neville thought he could only hear in the Muggle movies his grandmother made him watch. "You gonna hex me, eh, Longbottom?"
Neville, had this happened a year or two before, would have known he could not have done anything to this bloke who was twice his size, but now he knew better.
He took a step forward and hit the surprised Ramie in the chest with the stunning spell. A proud smile ran across his face as he thought of what his parents or his grandmother would say if they had seem him.
After taking a millisecond to gloat inwardly, he looked down at the blonde girl crying on the floor.
Neville crouched down in front of her and said, "Are… are you okay?"
The girl jumped and looked up, her face red and tear-stricken.
"Ne-neville, right?" she stammered.
The boy nodded, as he looked confused, wondering how she knew his name.
"Oh! Hannah? From the D. A.?" Neville asked, comprehension showing on his round face.
Hannah Abbott nodded and sniffed.
"Yeah… I… thank you," the Hufflepuff looked up into Neville's eyes, the fear in her eyes flooding out with the tears.
Neville sat down fully up against the wall and smiled, "No problem…. Can I ask you er… what happened?"
"Well… I came up here because I forgot a book in the Great Hall and… then the next thing I knew… he was there and…." The girl cut off as the tears started falling again.
And before he knew it, Hannah threw herself at him, clutching onto his robes as she cried into his chest.
"I d-don't know w-what he was going to… to do," she sobbed after a minute. "Thank you!"
The two sat there for at least an hour before the meows of a cat stopped Neville from rocking the girl back and forth in the middle of the corridor.
Neville stood up and helped the Hufflepuff up too.
"Hannah, are you alright? Okay enough to go back to the kitchens?" Neville asked as they strode away from the footsteps of Filch.
Hannah nodded as she said, "Thank you, again, Neville…. I'll talk to you tomorrow… if that's alright…."
"Yeah, I'd love to… under better circumstances of course," Neville said with a small chuckle.
Hannah smiled, kissed Neville on the cheek, and ran back down the hall, down the stairs towards the bowl of fruit.