Luna was still smiling over having a new friend as she headed to Herbology. Trevor had walked her to her Potions class before he had left for the seventh year Defense Against the Dark Arts class. She hadn't paid any attention to the whispers of her fellow sixth years in Slughorn's class, nor had she given any mind to the death glares some of the other girls had given to her.

Even though her head was full of Trevor, she had managed to pay attention to Potions and when she had brewed the best draught of living death, not a too difficult feat thanks to the fact she had to brew it one year prior and had experience with the potion, she had won a small vial of Felix Felicis which was tucked away in her robes to hide later for safe keeping. She wasn't fool enough to hide it in her room. Nargles would steal it if she did.

But the gain of the new friend and the liquid luck had stuck a permanent dreamy smile on her face for the rest of the day. With a skip in her step, humming a merry tune and that permanent dotty look on her face, she entered the fifth greenhouse where Professor Spout had left notice to the sixth years to meet. Professor Sprout was already in there and she was going over notes with Neville. When Luna saw Neville, she lifted her hand and waved. He spotted her and grinned, waving back before giving Professor Sprout his undivided attention.

Luna set her books down at a workstation looking around the greenhouse. There were five workstations that sat six students a piece. At the end of each work station, five long, narrow ponds lined the ground. Looking around, Luna noticed a lack of pots anywhere else in the greenhouse. She could only surmise one thing from what she viewed and Professor Sprout confirmed it when she started the class.

"Welcome to N.E.W.T level Herbology," Professor Sprout said once all the students were seated at their workstations. "This year we will be studying and growing aquatic plants." As she talked, Professor Sprout reviewed the greenhouse rules, her expectations of each student's education and where they needed to be at the end of the year to continue on to seventh year. And finally she introduced, "As many of you know from last night, Neville Longbottom has returned to Hogwarts as an intern in Herbology. He will be sharing teaching duties with me so you may ask him anything that you might ask me. If I am not here, he will be fully in charge and running this class." Professor Sprout eyeballed two Slytherin boys who were sniggering at the workstation two over from Luna. The two boys immediately grew quiet under Professor Sprout's stare.

"So. Your first task will be to plant a Trollingwood." Professor Sprout said, "Neville will you bring in the seedlings?" The round faced intern nodded and hurried out to do ask the Professor asked. He stumbled over a lace that had come untied from his trainers, but Neville caught himself before he fell face first into the door. A few students sniggered at his clumsiness.

After righting himself Neville went outside and came back in. He was more careful now that he was handling plants Luna noticed, although his face was flushed red from having heard the laughter of the other students. The lack of grace the former Gryffindor student always seemed to have about him disappeared in the presence of the plants. He was walking slower and with more care to keep from dropping the tree seedlings he carried. He went around to each station giving a seedling to the students.

"Thanks Neville," Luna smiled at him when he placed a seedling in front of her. Then her brows drew together as a thought occurred to her. "Er..should I be calling you Professor Longbottom?" she leaned towards him to whisper this question softly. Professor Sprout hadn't said anything about that.

Neville turned red again and said, "Neville's just fine Luna," in the same whispered tones. He turned around and left her work station. A few more trips and then he was finished. Professor Sprout said, "Neville please tell the class a bit about the Trollingwood."

To Luna's surprise, as Neville talked, she noticed his posture straightened, his voice which usually held a note of reservation as if he were scared to speak, cleared and grew confident, warm in tone, as he spoke about the trees that each student was going to plant.

"Trollingwood is a tree that usually lives in a marshy envrionment," Neville explained, "That is why we're planting them in here for the heat instead of in the Black Lake. The winter will be too cold for them to survive outdoors here." Neville summoned all the students from their workstations to gather around one of the aquatic pools dug into the earth. "Trollingwood is identified by its roots which grow thick, twisted and long under the water. The actual tree trunk will grow out of the water with the roots slightly exposed at the bottom of the trunk." Neville showed them a drawing of a full grown Trollingwood tree standing straight and tall in a marsh swamp. "Small fish love to gather around the roots and make nests there which is great because the Trollingwood supplies the fish a natural defense system."

Neville spoke more about the identifying properties of the trees before saying, "The danger of a fully grown Trollingwood is that any large creature, who swims or ventures too close to their roots can be caught, strangled and drowned, sometimes decapitated or mangled, as the root system is also the tree's main defense mechanism." He reached out taking a student's seedling pot and used it as an example. "For example, when we remove these seedlings from their pots to plant them, take care not to touch the exposed roots or else they will try to get your fingers. The seedling roots are strong enough to cut through your fingers."

He touched the seedling's leaf saying, "The top of the plant is alright to handle and it is best handled at the base of what will be the trunk. The leaves of the Trollingwood are valued for their use in Divination readings and also in calming draughts. The flesh of the roots are used in strength potions, which is why these trees are valuable and continue to be cultivated." He looked at the class asking, "Any questions before we begin to plant them?"

While they were planting the trees into the aquatic ponds, Luna noticed that Neville seemed very confident as he walked around giving advice and tips to those who were planting. While most of the sixth year girls were using gardening gloves and trowels to dig holes at the bottom of the pond, Luna had no problem just sticking her bare hands into the water. The marshy mud at the bottom of the shallow pond felt slimy, squishy and wonderful between her palms. She couldn't help but lift her hands out of the water, squelching them together to make it squeeze out between her fingertips like a child making their first mud pie. After a few moments of playing like that, she began to form a small hole into the pond bottom for her Trollingwood seedling.

"You doing alright there Luna?" Neville asked leaning over her to check her progress. She was kneeling down at the rim of the pool, leaning over the pond to get her seedling planted at least one foot from the pond's edge to allow room for the roots to grow at Neville's instruction.

"Oh yes," Luna tilted her head back, her long dirty blond hair touching her ankles as she smiled up at Neville. She lifted her hands out of the water, completely covered in grayish-green mud as she reached for the seedling. Using caution as she had been told, she pulled the tiny tree out of its pot by the base, setting the pot to the side. Then she used her free hand to find the hole she had dug in the shallow, mucky water. All her digging in the mud had stirred up the water to a brackish gray color. "Are you doing alright Neville?" she questioned as her hand sought her tree's new home.

"Yeah it's been a fun first day. I really liked teaching the first years...they treat me like I'm a real professor." Neville's cheeks pinked a little bit as he admitted that but Luna could tell he was proud of being treated that way.

"You will be one day," Luna said confidently as she found her hole she had dug. She dipped the seedling into the water bringing it down into the mud. Fairly certain she had it right, the leaves were standing straight up out of the water, Luna began to pack the mud in around the previously dry dirt that had been clumped around her tree's roots. She took care to pack more mud than normal so that she didn't touch the roots by accident.

Neville wandered to the next student, stopping to adjust the Hufflepuff's tree straighter in the pond. The remainder of class was spent answering questions, finishing planting, labeling their trees with their names to keep track of their seedlings and cleaning up.

Luna went over to her workstation picked her wand up, pointed it at first one hand and then the other saying, "Scourgify." She examined each hand after saying the charm, marveling at how it instantly cleaned the mud off her, not even leaving a trace on her cuticles. Tucking her wand behind her ear, she picked her books up walking over to Neville who was setting up one of the workstations for the next class. She told him, "That was a fun class. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow Neville."

Neville paused in setting out clean trowels. The other students had mostly left, except for two Ravenclaws who were asking Professor Sprout some questions. Leaning forward he asked softly, "Did I really do alright?" He sounded nervous, no doubt going through first day jitters.

Luna nodded. Her voice was equally soft as she leaned forward saying, "Neville you did better than alright. You're going to be a fantastic teacher if you keep this up. You're very knowledgeable on this subject." Her silver eyes met his, total honesty sparkling in their depths.

"Thanks," Neville let out a sigh of relief. He reached up to run his fingers through his hair, noticably shorter and more respectable as an intern, than it had been four months prior when it was touching his collar. He looked at her and then said, "You've got a bit of mud here," he reached out his fingertips to rub at a point along her jaw. Suddenly his fingers froze and he jerked them back muttering, "Sorry about that."

"It's harder being back here than I thought in this position. I know most everyone except the first years so I did worry it was a bit weird with the older students. It's really weird since you're my friend Luna, and yet now you're my student..." his voice trailed off his brows drawing together, as he laid out what was on his mind to her. Then as if realizing he was treating her as a friend and confidant, more so than a student, Neville said, "I suppose I should just think of you as my student." He sounded really worried.

"Why?" Luna's unfailing knack for brutal honesty kicked in as she said, "You're not a real professor, just an intern and we have been friends for four years now." She looked Neville straight in the eye and said, "I would like it very much if you treated me as you always have, as a friend, and not as just a student."

Neville blushed again and in an effort to avoid conversing more asked, "Aren't you going to be late to your next class?"

Luna gave Neville a look that said she knew he was avoiding her statement and was disappointed in his non-answer as his friend. "You may treat me as a student Neville," she told him, "But you are still my friend and always will be." She turned and left, heading for her last class Defense Against the Dark Arts.

-HP-

Neville watched Luna's retreating back as she left the greenhouse. His mind was not only on their conversation and her declaration of friendship, but his thoughts also drifted back to four months prior in May during the battle.

Everything had been happening all at once and when they were fighting, Neville had no time to think, no time to be afraid and the only hope he was certain of was that as long as Harry Potter lived, they would find some way to defeat Voldemort.

But then the unthinkable had happened. The Dark Lord had brought Harry's lifeless body to Hogwart's front entrance and pronouned the Boy Who Lived as the boy who died. Neville in his anger and grief, he had defied the Dark Lord's invitation to all purebloods to join him. For that rejection, Voldemort was going to kill him, he had said as much. Neville knew in his gut at that moment that he was doomed to die with Harry.

In that one instant as the Sorting Hat crashed onto his head, that moment where his life played itself before him, there was but one regret. The regret that he had not told the girl he admired for so long, the one girl who brought laughter into his life, and joy to his day, that he was mad for her. As the hat lit on fire, he wished then and there he would have had the chance to tell Luna how he had felt before he was to die. He should have shouted it to someone, anyone during the battle, "I'm mad for Luna and I should tell her since we're likely to die by morning!" But he hadn't. He never said a word.

And yet here he was, four months later, stuck with the same regret. Neville had been given the opportunity he so desperately had wished for, but he had yet to seize the day. He would have liked to have blamed timing, lack of opportunity and other things, but the truth was, he had been scared of rejection and still was.

It was difficult to understand the brain of any girl, Ron had told them all two years prior, but Neville felt Luna's brain was even more difficult. Her uncanny knack of treating everyone exactly the same never gave him a clue as to whether he would be accepted or rejected if he told her his feelings. And now, he had to admit to himself, he was using the excuse of her being a student, and he an intern, as a reason to avoid telling her.

'I've got time,' he thought as he readied the workstations for the next class. Even though he didn't like that people thought Luna insane; he had seen the sixth year boys giggling and commenting about "Looney-bin's playing in the filthy mud. How disgusting!"; Neville was glad because there seemed to be no competition for her heart should he finally tell her what he truly felt towards her.

Authors Note: Okay so the Luna/Neville fangirl in me squealed in happiness at HP7.2 movie when Neville yelled what he did about Luna at the battle. The bookworm in me yelled, "That never happened in the books!" But hey..we never knew what Neville's POV was in the books eh? ;) Read, Enjoy, Review!