TITLE: Oh Messy Life
AUTHOR: Aviatrix
PAIRING: Neville/Ginny
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Neville's got a cru-ush on someone...and it's resolved!etc.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Duh. Don't sue, for I am broke.
A/N: Written for a challenge by Liebling. Titled after a song by Cap'n Jazz. Yes, most of my fics are named after emo songs.
x
Second year, and she was there, younger sister orange-hair girl peeking out from behind Ron. She had the Weasley grin, an upturning that would almost be devious if it weren't so damn sweet, and on her lips it was something else entirely from the boy-gone-crazy smile of the twins and the rest of them. She was a girl and, though that fact came on the heels of her family baggage, Neville noticed right away.
He believed Ron when he said that she was just a little kid. She was all patent-leather shoes and small hands and weekend crushes.
He wanted to be protective, but standing up for himself was hard enough. So he watched, and ignored the firecracker sparks in her eyes and in her voice. If he didn't pay attention, he could almost believe that she was just like him.
Almost.
x
Third year, and he grew up just enough to not cry when she brushed him off. Just enough to time his periodic breakdowns to happen during Potions.
He told himself that what he felt was concern, not jealousy, when he found out why she had been avoiding him all that year.
Tom Riddle's name was written all over her notebooks, and sometimes he took a quill and scratched it out.
He never quite had the nerve to write his own name next to it.
x
(A day, his fourth year and her third,
Fall:
They're walking together and his hand is not-quite-touching hers (though he'd never admit it), and when she skips he feels something inside him turning around, making him a little woozy. But he's enjoying it, and he's happy that this girl is with him. He's doing his best not to blush, and his awkward smile is being stretched by her bounding around him like she's weightless.
Still moving, she turns around and asks him, in that not-a-little-girl-anymore voice she has now: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Yours
, he thinks. Yours. I want to be Yours.But he swallows and even manages to grin when he says, "Oh, probably a Herbologist. Professor Sprout says I'm a natural."
She scrunches up her nose. "That's boring, Neville. I want to be an Auror or something exciting like that."
"I don't like excitement," Neville mutters.
"What's that now?" She's stopped moving, and she's got her hands on her hips, filled with indignant curiousity and when Neville just shrugs, she sighs and rolls her eyes and starts skipping again.)
x
His fifth year, and her fourth, and it's not going the way he wanted it to.
He felt abandoned when she started growing up and making out, although she still talks to him, and they had never really defined the boundaries of the relationship. Neville thought it was understood - then again, he thought a lot of things were understood, like the fact that Dumbledore would always be at Hogwarts and that Snape was irredeemable.
Things change, sometimes, and perceptions change along with them. Neville's not sure sure that anything is understood anymore, particularly not Ginny.
Sugar and spice and everything nice, and 'everything nice' had turned into something Neville knew nothing about.
So the flowers he picks for her lay alone in a box beneath his bed, and the love letters he writes for her never get beyond his head. He bumbles and he stutters and he knocks things over, and when he talks to her he thinks about the way she would feel against his mouth.
x
"He's just so *dreamy*, don't you think?"
She was sprawled out on the grass, her skinned knees braced on the dirt and her chin in her hands. Her books lay discarded behind her.
"Hmm?" Neville asked (his train of thought having been derailed by its own obsession).
"Dean. He's just so...y'know."
Neville frowned. "No, I don't know. He's Dean. What do I care about Dean?"
It was a windy day, and the clouds above them were running around like mad. If Neville didn't know better, he would've sworn that one of them looked just like a hammer, crashing into a smaller cloud just beneath it.
x
He liked to think that he was above jealousy. He liked to think that he didn't mind when she confided him about her plans (that never, ever involved him).
He liked to think that he was happy for her.
The way he looks at her can be interpreted in several different ways, and if you ask him to translate, he'll swear that they're just friends.
Just friends.
Just.
x
He bought a book on self-defense, "How to Vanquish Nasty Things and Not Look Half Bad Doing It", by Edwin Wenceforth. He studied the diagrams, the carefully outlined men and women in their picture-boxes, moving and waving wands and holding up hands in blocks/parries.
He copies them, and follows the instructions, and though he can't quite get it right, he gets it almost right, and that's heartening.
He does all right when he's alone, when the enemy is intangible and his acting skills/fighting moves/courage&bravery are faced by no audience except his own. And even when he's in public, in crowds, he's not as bad as he used to be. He's still no hero, but he never really wanted to be one, anyway.
He's learned how not to automatically cringe when Snape comes near him, and he's almost, almost learned how to kiss the girl with the red hair and the curving lips who is always dancing a few feet out of his reach. His reach is getting longer and his hands are getting stronger, and sometimes when they're alone together, there's this look in her eyes that makes him think that he has a chance, sorta.
A chance is a chance, no matter how far-fetched, and he's willing to wait for it to come along.
He's good at waiting. It's the one thing that hardly ever goes too fast for him to catch up with.
So he waits for her, on the grass and in the hallways and the library and Great Hall and everywhere else. There's nowhere he won't be for her, just so he doesn't miss the one place where she (if and/or finally) comes along to him.
x
She's crying, tears smearing down her face, her hands fisting in her hair and her body hunched over slightly, against a tree in the school grounds.
"So, w-who broke your heart this time?" He doesn't mean to be so insensitive, but actually he does (kinda) and though his hands are shaking, she can't see them.
She sniffs and glares up at him, watery-eyed. "S-shut up, Neville. Just..shut up and go away, okay? Just go."
He gathers up all of the courage he has been saving up over the past few weeks, and he closes his eyes
(this is it this is it this is it this is it)
and her fist collides with his stomach just as he leans over to kiss her, though it doesn't stop him. Their teeth click together, and her tongue tastes like cinammon and dust.
Maybe that's what Dean tastes like. Neville doesn't really want to think about that. He pulls away from her, slightly, then buries his face in her hair.
He feels her hand gradually unfurl against him till it's curved only slightly, her nails digging into him. She's holding her breath, and he knows he's right in between being pushed away and pulled towards her.
"What the hell was that?" she whispers.
"It was supposed to be a kiss," he mutters, and spits out the strands of hair that got caught in his mouth.
"Did you...did you just spit on me?" Ginny asks.
"Maybe."
x
It was messy and it's still messy, them, the two of them, and even though she ran away whenever she saw him for, oh, maybe a week or so, it's gotten better.
She's a much better kisser than him, and she knows how to angle her mouth so everything goes where it should. He kinda likes it when she takes control, although there's still that nagging voice in the back of his head that (sounding a bit like Ron) says that he should be in her position.
And they're still on the grass and in the hallways and the library and the Great Hall and everywhere else, but now they're waiting together, for the end of school or the end of the world, whichever comes first.
She confides in him about her plans for the future (most of them involving him), and he gives her every single flower he picks.