None of the Harry Potter characters belong to me
As his quill followed through to the final sentence of the last parchment, Neville gave a small neat check at the end of it and set the feather of a pen down with a wary but contented sigh. Running his fingers through his auburn hair and kneading the back of his neck, he reached for the glass of lime scented water on his desk and walked towards the window that is now a water-colour piece; with hues of red and brown. The fierceness of the afternoon sun was losing its glow as it now lowered into the depths of the mountains, which has faithfully served as a formidable barrier of Hogwarts all these years, seeing it through its many trials.
As he sipped on his drink thoughtfully, Neville squinted at the sight of a flapping shadow that was drawing nearer in his direction from the horizon, moving swiftly through the vast skies. Moments passed before he recognized it as a thestral, and he felt a familiar warmth spread from his heart to his limbs, his tired eyes relit with a tender joy. The sight of thestrals has always made him feel a sense of belonging—not for what they are, but for whom they represent. Understandably, their short ebony hair holds no close resemblance to her long and pale, corn colored hair; and their bony, structured faces are a far cry from the way her nose turned up ever so delicately at the tip, or the careful arch of her never-ending brows. It is however, the mystique surrounding thestrals that inspired him to draw the connection between them and Luna. And overtime, himself to her.
He'll always remember how he felt their similarity, so stark, between them, when he had first set eyes on her in the cabin on the Hogwarts Express. Chuckling silently now, he thought of how he had so romantically thought of her as a gentle breeze that blew into his life that day and has since swept him off his feet. He had stared, wide-eyed, in amazement at her unusual, for a better word, accessories, and was fascinated by the way her gentle voice rolled words from her tongue in waves, specifically the soft waves coming in from the sea in spring, still chilly but with the slightest hint of warmth only the most sensitive can feel. Neville liked to think he was the lucky one. People thought she was weird, just like they did him, he knows. But he had turned out all right, even fighting alongside Harry and the rest. And he had known, back then, that Luna was no spoilt nut like that Moaning Myrtle, who had been trying to drown herself in her very own tears of misery, as always, when she got herself killed, though through more heinous means.
Looking back now, Neville shook his head at the fool he had been, secretly fanaticizing himself as her savior, silently eager to pull her out of her loneliness, when the fact was that she has been, and is still, very self sufficient. Unlike him, she was not self-conscious and did not care what others thought of her. True, she was almost invisible in school, so much so that it took them so many years to realize her existence. But when prodded and given attention, there was a radiance that shone from her core, and she came across as a resilient boulder who upheld her wills and believes, allowing neither discouragement nor mockery to sway her.
By his sixth year at Hogwarts though, it dawned on Neville that he wasn't going anywhere with Luna, so he stripped off his self-proclaimed title as her "wizard in cloak of gold", and soon found, to his delight, an enjoyable and reliable companion in her.
Breathing in the scents of various plants and flowers carried in by the warm summer breeze through the window now, Neville leaned out and closed his eyes, succumbing to the caress of Mother Nature. For a while, he stood like that, his body still, spare for his short, wavy hair blowing carelessly in the wind. Unknown to any onlooker, in the space beneath his closed lids, a thousand memories from several summers ago were playing continuously across his mind, like photos on a roll of one of those muggle filmstrips.
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"Hey Luna!" Neville called out as he approached the tiny shape sitting cross-legged on the patch of grass by the lake, a book is propped open on her lap, and a short twig loosely secures her tousled, long hair.
"Neville, hi!" she replied, peeling her eyes off her book. The slight smile on her face now curled into a knowing one as she eyed the potted plant in his hand. "What've you got today?"
Neville set his bag down to her right and sat opposite her, cradling the plant under his left arm as he lowered himself.
"It's a Venus fly trap. See how it's got a lid above this tubular thing here? It's what keeps the insect in the bowl." He paused, and continued, "But what's most fascinating is the sap in it, look." placing his finger at the ledge of the hollow, he pointed in. "the poisonous sap causes the insect to die slowly in it…But!…" Neville hurried on as Luna's brows furrowed with revulsion " But, the sap in there has numbing qualities" he paused again for effect, "so technically, the bug feels no pain in death!"
Luna nodded slowly now, her glance approving as she looked up from the plant towards Neville, her right hand thoughtfully fingering the eagle's feather on her earring.
"So…" she started, "you're thinking of extracting that property…the numbing property from the sap, perhaps for…medical purposes?"
"Yeah…right on!" A beam spread across Neville's face as Luna grinned. "You're getting better at it, huh!"
This was a game known, played, and perfected, just recently it seems, only by the two of them. Whenever any one of them approaches the other with an unknown object, a new discovery of their fascination, he, or she, would state its properties, as Neville had done, and the other would guess of what use the person thought the object could be. Neville's interest in all things with cellulose, along with Luna's in artifacts and such rendered this game never-ending, never dull.
"Of course I'm improving" Luna spoke with her usual calm, but now with a hint of shy slyness, "won't want you running off sharing your herbaceous treasures with someone else, would I?" she replied, almost whispering the last two words as she turned her head away suddenly.
Back then, Neville had smiled stupidly, not wanting to acknowledge the underlying meaning of her words for fear of disappointment, and had changed the topic. But to this day, he still remembered, vividly, how his mind had swirled with agitation and impatience that night in bed, when all was said and done, at his lack of tact. He had tossed and turned on his sheets ever so often that the bed creaked too, as if clucking at his restlessness. It had taken Ron's shout of annoyance for him to "Quit moving, Neville! Your bed's creaking like the Weeping Willow, for Merlin's sake!" to put out the raging fire, having sprouted from failure, in him, and finally get him some sleep.
Pulling himself through the vacuum of time back into the present, Neville leaned out again to pull the windows back in, shutting them tight. He then poured the remaining water in his glass onto the pot of hydrangea sitting at the foot of his desk and washed the empty glass in the sink at the corner of the room. Taking a last look at the room he'll be missing for the rest of the summer, he closed the door behind him and headed for the teachers' dorm. Hopefully, it'll be empty, so he can start a letter in reply to Ron's latest one, inviting him to the Burrow for the summer, where "someone you'd love to meet will also be there this year". Ah, what the hell, he thought, its time he allowed himself to meet someone new.