A/N: Shout outs to peeps for reviewing! Thanks to chemical flashes, tresemellon, lrmorena, msmalloryreads, pottermum, sereniterose, pianomouse, CUtopia, snarkyandproudhufflepuff and guest for reviewing :-)

I also would like to apologize for not updating sooner. I've been writing a lot of crackfic both here and elsewhere and I think I have a crackfic addiction. It's pretty bad because some of the stuff I write is pretty weird, offensive and downright stupid...though I just consider it comedy...I'm going to have to stop writing crackfic and comedy from now on!

Cheers XD


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Chapter 3

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A Remembrall turns red when you forget something...

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All of a sudden it felt like the world and corridor was closing down on him; squeezing down to this second. The corridor was so dark too; no one would see them if he took her by the hand into an alcove and lay her on top of his lap, her tiny waist around his.

"Hermione...I..."

Her eyes widened.

"What is it Neville?" her voice was so quiet in the empty corridor.

Her eyes were so wide and inviting, he just wanted to rake his hands down her vanilla-scented hair and back her up against the wall. The tiny thing she was, he could probably lift her with one arm off the ground.

But he just couldn't say it, for some reason. Not just now.

'Nevermind," he muttered shyly and pretended to forget. "I forget what I was going to say." Of course, he knew his remembrall, if he took it out of his pocket right now, would be clear coloured, not red.

"That's alright. You know you should try a memory charm, to help you in potions and such..." Hermione trailed off and rambled on about all the memory spells she knew and which ones were legal to use in school or under examination. He was a bit embarrassed that she thought he was genuinely forgetful...but then a lot of people thought he was and his reputation preceded him by now. Though, it was more nerves, more than anything, that made him forget things and blunder.

Neville gulped. He'd probably blunder and make a mistake right now, if he didn't stop himself.

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They trailed up to the Astronomy tower and he listened pensively and in more wonder as she spoke about all the things she wanted to change in the wizarding world. Starting with house elf rights.

"Be the change you want to see in the world. It's my favourite quote," she sighed and stared up at the stars that were twinkling across the night sky.

"Gandhi," he supplied, barely able to concentrate on what he was saying.

He couldn't stop looking at her lips everytime she spoke and wondering what they might feel like wrapped around him. Or licking him. They were naughty dark thoughts that would've shamed him in his Gran's presence. Yet they were exactly the type of dark thoughts that haunted him in his bed at night when he had no choice but to fist his hands around his sheets and try to relieve the tension. Yet he'd never thought of her, of Hermione, during those moments.

It was always some other girl. Pansy Parkinson with her short skirts. Dominix Valentina with her red lips and dark Italian looks. Fleur Delacoure with her blonde veela hair. The unreachable types that looked at him with scorn. The high-maintenance types, the types of girls who were never seen without their glamour makeup on. The types of girls that used to laugh at him when he'd been a young and pudgy boy, he dreamt of making them submit to him with his new strength and power. Though he wasn't a violent boy, in his dreams he became someone rougher and more demanding...the shadow of the man he would become. The next stage.

Yet he'd somehow missed Hermione's faintly flushed cheeks and warm eyes in his dreams. Her understated beauty.

Perhaps because she'd never laughed at him.

Why had he wanted a girl who laughed at him before?

Was it because his Gran mocked him?

The thought disturbed him.

He'd never had violent dreams of twisting Hermione's hair around his hand and demanding things of her.

This was purer.

He hadn't dreamt of her at all.

Hermione was so close now. Reachable. Touchable. And he felt positively light and weightless in her presence. Those dreams were far away and replaced by something realer. Gentler. The man he was in his dreams would've just grabbed her and had his way with her. The boy who stood in front of her, instead, could stare into her eyes forever.

Hermione continued talking and hours slipped by as they went past curfew. Until Hermione finally said they should be going back (and was there the slightest note of sadness when she said that?) He didn't want this night to end either. Neville dared to grab her hand as they made their way, laughing quietly, to the Gryffindor tower. Her hand was small and soft and he remembered her cutting the zazzalia pollen with those same hands.

They stood outside the portrait to the Gryffindor tower for a moment.

In the dark corridor, her brown eyes seemed even rounder and huger, as they stared up at him and he was so much taller than her. Like she could fit right into him, tucked below his chin. He could protect her now. He realized how much had changed since that day on the train, when he had just been a boy with a frog.

He should've kissed her.

He should've kissed her then.

They both shuffled uncomfortably on their feet and Hermione's pink tongue reached out to lick her lips.

She must've been waiting but he let the moment pass.

He hesistated just a moment too long.

"Goodnight Neville."

And then all too quickly it was over.

His opportunity, chance, squandered.

She went ahead of him into the portrait and he followed after numbly. Inside the dormitory, they were no longer alone anymore. And he didn't know what to say to her, he brooded and stared at her across the common room, while she had both Ron and Harry draped over her. Her two male bestfriends begging her to help them with their homework or problems, and suddenly she didn't belong to him anymore. Not like in that moment when her brown eyes were only on his.

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The Remembrall glowed a bright red for two whole weeks.

For two whole weeks he stared into the brewing, burning red before he finally came to his senses.

He got tired of people asking why his Remembrall was red. Whenever he took out the swirling crystal and thought of her, of her lips, the Rememberall would churn red.

"Hey Neville what did you forget to do?"

"I know what I forgot."

"Then why don't you take care of it?" they'd reply.

"Because it's not so simple," he'd snap and then mutter something or other about 'pollen'. And they'd frown at him like he'd finally gone crazy and finally studied too much herbology.

"Neville's gone round the bend," they'd mutter.

Until finally he could take it no more.

He met Hermione after the next herbology class and asked her to meet him.

He rushed to grab her, almost scaring her, with some of that playful roughness that only came out in dreams...but was starting to slip out in reality, as he got more and more used to being a confident young man, not a boy. He'd be turning the age of majority soon, he wasn't some stupid boy on the train anymore looking for his frog. He should go after her...Hermione, this bright girl with freckles and imperfections who liked the same things he did. He knew Ron and Harry could offer her more, but he didn't seem them paying her attention and he had a bright future too, he could be someone too.

She squealed as he covered her eyes with his hands for a moment before she swung around. He was being aggressive but playful.

"What do you want from me?" she squealed as his hand hooked around her waist.

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a/n- Neville should go for it! Or not? Will Hermione punch him out? Or does she like him too?

Also I think I read somewhere that the Longbottoms were part of the sacred 28 rich pureblood families, so Neville should be more confident too if he's going to be a heir one day XD