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Chapter 2:
Getting to Know you
They spent the rest of the day together, and found out just how much they were both alike and different at the same time.
Neville had to keep reminding himself that this was Hermione. Because he saw her everyday yet ever since they'd worked together today in the herbology lab...there was just something different about her. He couldn't stop talking to her—or looking at her—and she seemed to be interested and nod at everything he said. A shy smile on her pink lips.
"Do you want to go...see the ruins?"
"Yes." She smiled. Again. How many times had she smiled at him today?
Had she always smiled at him this much, or had he never noticed until now? Neville shook his head, he really didn't know. Hermione was always nice, but was she being nicer today? He couldn't tell.
They walked up to the back of the castle and laughed their heads off at Filch trying to get Mrs. Norris off the cabbage patch.
Hermione didn't even go back to Harry and Ron for supper that evening. Even though she was usually glued to the pair and never seen apart from the trio, she spent most of the meal talking to Neville. They had so much to say, though they weren't the same at all.
For instance, they both loved reading books. But Neville liked reading books about botany, healing magic and magical adventures, whereas Hermione read more books about history, spells and transfiguration. Similarly, they both took good care of their books and were generally neat and tidy, unlike their friends.
Yet at the same time, they were outliers.
Neither really fit in anywhere exactly. Hermione was part of the Golden trio yet she was different from Harry and Ron. (Harry and Ron were closer to each other than they were to her. Harry grew up with muggles like her, yet she'd had a family like Ron. But she wasn't a pureblood like either Ron or Harry, and some people would always consider her an outsider. A muggleborn. A foreigner.) Similarly, Neville had his group of friends but he wasn't the same as them and he often stood apart in his interests and viewpoints. The other Gryffindor boys played and talked about Quidditch, Neville talked about plants and found he often had more to say to Ravenclaws who appreciated his interests. Yet he still had that Gryffindor courage. As did she.
Though at the end of the day they were all Gryffindors...Or maybe that was the pollen talking.
Neville was surprised by just how much he could talk in her presence, since he was not normally very talkative. At all. Or particularly funny. Though she laughed whenever he made one of his silly herbology jokes. Because she kept asking him to tell her one, and—since he knew too much herbology than was for his own good—he'd tell her one. One of his really bad puns, and even he was embarrassed at himself—turning red at the ears—yet she laughed.
"What is Mimbulus Mimbletonia's favourite hobby?"
"I don't know Neville what?"
"Stinksap and ransom!" Get it, like kidnap and ransom?
She began to chuckle giddily. "Don't stop!" She covered her mouth. And then he told her an even worse pun and he was reminded that while Ron told the joke about the hag, the healer and the Mimbulus mimbletonia to make Madame Rosmerta laugh, he told his joke to make her laugh. And secretly, he thought his jokes a bit better than Ron's.
As they walked under a fuschia tree in the courtyard, she laughed and Neville paused for a monent, struck by the way the bright red and pink petals of the flowers hung in her hair. For a moment, he didn't know which was more beautiful: the fuchsia flowers or Hermione.
He blinked twice. He must have been very confused.
Fuchsia flowers were his favourite. They had so many magical properties, it was nearly astronomical.
How could he prefer her over the flowers?
.
"How long do the effects of zazzalia pollen last?" Neville asked suddenly as they made their way back to the Gryffindor tower, near the curfew. His hands were in his pockets, his right hand feeling the Rememberall that was always there in his right pocket.
"It should be wearing off," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Why? Do you feel any differently?"
"Nah...I don't think so." He stared at her wide brown eyes in something close to wonder. He felt the same way he had when they'd been in herbology class together. Except now he knew clearly what he felt and wanted.
He was attracted to her. He wanted to kiss her.
Hermione Granger. He wanted Hermione Granger.
He wanted to run his hands through her hair and taste something of her.
But that was crazy talk, Hermione was a friend, he told himself. She'd always been there in the background. Since that day they first met and he'd foolishly been looking for his frog Trevor, he should've seen her instead. This enthusiastic muggle girl who wasn't frightened of anything. He thought he lacked courage sometimes, but really when the time came, he did whatever he could to set things right...just with not as much ferocity as she or Harry did. His bravery was quieter, until stirred.
He was partly in wonder of her. Perhaps he had been all these years and that's why he kept his distance from her.
Although, lowly Neville with his lost toad had long since passed to be replaced by the older, wiser, more confident Neville who towered at 6 feet and noticed that girls looked differently at him now.
Even other boys treated him with more respect and were more hesistant to pick fights or try to cross him. Malfoy hadn't tried to insult him since that time he cornered him round the back of the Potions corridor, after a particularly trying class...where he nearly lost him temper at Snape too.
Perhaps it was this new confidence that made him a bit reckless. For what he was about to do, or thought he would do.
"Hermione..."
.
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What do you think? Should I continue? And huge thanks to everyone who followed/faved, whoa!
And shout outs to my team BAMF in the word war challenge! :D
