The "Friend Zone" Relationship—when the person you love only sees you as a close friend and nothing more.

Neville Longbottom was never 'popular.' He never excelled at academics and always appeared to be a rather mediocre wizard as a result. Aside from his admittedly vast knowledge of magical plants, there really wasn't anything special about Neville. He was as normal as they come.

He never saw that as a good thing until he met Luna Lovegood at the beginning of his fifth year, on the train to Hogwarts. The fourth year Ravenclaw was so outlandishly bizarre to the extent that Neville found his own utter ordinariness quite refreshing.

But then he slowly got to actually know Luna and her otherworldliness suddenly became so much more interesting than being 'normal.'

Neville got to know Luna through D.A. meetings, which quickly became quite possibly the most important thing in Neville's life.

At a young age, Neville had lost both of this parents, something he had never quite been able to get over. Sometimes he envied Harry, whose parents were dead. Because, in Neville's opinion at least, his parents were much worse off. Alice and Frank Longbottom had been tortured into insanity; they had both survived, but as mere shadows of their former selves. They were never going to recover; they were never going to recognize that the boy who visited them so frequently was actually their only son.

It had been followers of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who had tortured his parents. And now that You-Know-Who had been resurrected and his parents' torturers had escaped from prison, Neville felt that it was up to him to avenge his parents. D. A. would help him to accomplish this goal.

He had been surprised to see Luna Lovegood at that first meeting, back before they had truly become Dumbledore's Army. They had all gathered because of the idea that they needed to better know how to protect themselves from the Dark Lord and his followers. Honestly, Luna didn't strike Neville as the kind of person to care about something like that.

He really shouldn't have questioned the motives of someone who was a member of Ravenclaw House.

Because Luna cared about the D.A.'s cause, just as much as Neville. She wanted to be able to defend herself and others from the Dark Arts. And, though he may not have initially admitted it to anyone other than himself, she was rather brilliant at it.

It was quite simple to become friends with Luna after this awakening. Yes, she was still rather loony most of the time, but there was more to her than that. And Neville saw all of it.

But that isn't to say that Neville wasn't completely taken aback one day to discover that he had most definitely fallen in love with Luna Lovegood somewhere along the way. She was an enigma that he had come to cherish.

He didn't immediately make his feelings known, however. They were in the middle of a war, after all. And it was a war that he fully intended on winning for his parents and to spite the Death Eaters. He didn't have time for a romantic relationship, anyway. Not that he would know how to broach the subject, anyway. Neville Longbottom was quite positive that he didn't possess a single romantic bone in his body. That could have just been the battle fatigue talking, though.

And by halfway through his seventh year, he was fatigued. Never in his life had he imagined that the war against Voldemort would be fought every second of every day…at Hogwarts. Yes, he wanted to do his part to defeat Voldemort, but Hogwarts was supposed to be safe. But if Hogwarts wasn't safe, maybe that meant that home was, at least a little bit.

So even though he would have much preferred not to be separated from her, Neville was okay with Luna going home for the Christmas holidays. There weren't Death Eaters lurking around every corner of Luna's home. She would be safer there.

She never made it that far.

Neville could only watch in horror as Death Eaters dragged Luna off the train when they were meant to be going home to celebrate—a rare thing in the midst of a war. The worst part of it was that she wasn't even being taken because of things she had done herself. They were taking her in an attempt to control her father.

But as heartbreaking as it was, Luna's imprisonment only strengthened Neville's resolve. He would do his part to end this war and get her back.

He couldn't quite believe that she was safe again until he saw her with his own eyes in the Room of Requirement in the hours preceding the Final Battle. Seeing her gave him strength, strength that carried over into battle and ultimately led to him destroying Voldemort's snake.

After the Battle finally ended, high off their victory, Neville revealed his true feelings to Luna at long last.

That high was easily brought down when Luna responded to his declaration of "I love you," with "I love you, too. You're a great friend, Neville. One of my best friends, in fact."

Obviously Luna didn't feel the same way he did, and Neville was crushed. Had he waited too long to tell her? Should he have acted on his feelings sooner? Had he assumed far too much in his (obviously mistaken) belief that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her?

Only one answer was clear: There would be no romance between Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. They were always going to be just friends.

Neville knew he shouldn't feel so crushed. He had survived the war, after all. He was actually still quite young and had the rest of his life ahead of him. But this was his first love, and it just hurt so much that his love was unrequited. But he would not wallow in his own misery. Not when there were still Death Eaters on the loose. It was an easy decision to accept interim Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt's offer of a place in the Auror Department after the Final Battle, even though he hadn't gone through Auror training let alone finished his seventh year at Hogwarts or sat for his N.E.W.T's.

Rounding up rogue Death Eaters was a fulfilling assignment so soon after Voldemort's final demise. So fulfilling, in fact, that when he finally got a moment to just breathe and appreciate a wizarding world no longer at war, it didn't hurt one bit when he saw Luna again. She still loved him as a friend and that was perfectly alright with Neville.

Especially when he ran into Hannah Abbot again, not long after that, and hit it off with his former classmate. And then a few years later when Luna met a man named Rolf Scamander and eventually married him.

In the end, it was for the best that Neville and Luna had remained just friends. Because they both found someone else who really was perfect for them, and neither of them could have possibly been happier.