So Neville is supposed to be a really shy character so he procrastinates yet again and blunders a bit, so sorry if he's painfully awkward in this chapter. The ending will be set in the future when he is older and much more confident, here he is still a blundering, awkward idiot XD...Also I think he may have a guilt complex with women because of his overpowering grandma Augusta Longbottom...he'd have issues expressing himself! There's some cheeky humour though towards the end ;P

thank you to fanfictionfan1990, MrsMorgan813, Natalie, moonlight10060, pianomouse, snarkyhufflepuff,nymphxdora, moonlight10060 and chemicalflashes for reviewing the last chapter ;-) and thanks to everyone that followed/faved too


Chapter 4

.

What if you want something you cannot have?

.

.

He dipped in towards her and wrapped his arm around her waist tighter, drawing him to her.

She made a sound like an "oh" and her beautiful mouth curved into an o-shape before he released her just as suddenly.

"Neville what are you doing?" She seemed particularly puzzled and the faintest rose blushed in her cheeks as her hands lifted to push back her hair from her face.

He wanted to kiss her, so much, but he decided that he couldn't risk their friendship by doing it now, or lose face by moving too quickly. He wasn't exactly an expert on these things either. But he had the faint notion that if he kissed Hermione now, without giving her a word of warning, she would either slap him or hate him forever.

So he brushed off his behaviour as if it didn't happen. As if he'd never looked at her like he wanted to eat her like a depraved animal.

He was still a pureblood, a gentleman with manners.

He thought suddenly of his Gran, of how she would scream at him for doing things improperly. For not doing things the pureblood way, the proper way. Courting. He shuddered as he tried to reconcile the feeling of his grandmother's wrath with the warm, wonderful feeling he got from the girl wrapped around him. How he could ever reconcile two things so disparate? This soft and effusive girl, whose lips curved in a gentle, smooth line, whose eyes were warm and inviting...With the strict and ugly rules of his world?

He didn't want to reconcile them. Not now.

He grabbed her by the hand, and though he was awkward and unused to these things, he tried to be firm, as if he had everything under his control.

Hermione seemed to waver in uncertainty, but he pressed his hand against hers and met her eyes.

"Neville what are you doing?" she asked much too quietly to be in true alarm. She seemed to subconsciously ease into his touch, or so he imagined. "Why did you ask me to meet you here?"

"Do you remember once you helped me find my toad, Trevor, when I lost him?" He stared in a daze at her, certain he probably sounded like a cretinous weirdo or dork.

"How could I forget? Of course, I remember. It was how we first met." Hermione bit her lip and nodded. Her eyes were wide too. "Did you lose him again?"

He couldn't lie to her, though he needed an excuse to spend more time alone with her.

"Not really. I've actually lost, and forgot, something," someone "else." He scratched at his neck. "It's been turning my Remembrall red for ages."

"Neville," she said gently and pushed back from him, disentangling herself, almost disappointed and her expression colder. "What did you lose?" Her voice was analytical again, as if he were presenting her with math or a puzzle she had to solve.

"I can't remember exactly..." he said evasively. Your lips, really.

"Neville," she repeated with more than a hint of impatience, because Hermione Granger liked to solve things. "Please try to remember."

"I am trying, it's just hard to say," he stammered and his face flushed because he felt guilty deceiving her, and yet he couldn't exactly say he forgot to kiss her two weeks ago? It was hard enough as it is, now, standing here and blundering like an idiot...

Hermione stomped her feet impatiently.

"Well, when did you last see it?"

Just now. "Two weeks ago"

"And how did you lose it?"

Cowardice, he wanted to say truthfully. Instead, he told the half-truth. "I waited too long and it took off."

"Wait, are we talking about a sentient being? Because I thought you said you didn't lose your toad."

"It's another creature entirely." It's you. Damn it, Merlin, she must think he was a blundering idiot with bad memory. Though it had always been the nerves that got him and held him back from getting what he wanted.

"Right." Hermione took out a muggle pen that had been tucked behind her ear, she moved it to her bag and slipped it beside a notebook, before looking back up at him quizzically. "But you can't remember what creature it is? Then how do you know it's missing?"

He smiled, because he could answer this honestly. "Because I feel it in here." He tapped at his chest where his heart was beating wildly.

"Ah," she said slowly exhaling a breathe. "I think I understand." She nodded.

For a moment, he frowned as he thought she understood what he really said. "Do you?"

His heartbeat skipped a beat. But then what she said next almost made him laugh, giddily.

"Yes, you've lost your geckobyte pin haven't you? I saw you wearing it once."

Neville let out a great big sigh of relief. Hermione's mind was truly brilliant. He had actually lost his pin, quite some time ago. But then that had been on purpose because the damn geckobyte lizard had been a pest and nuisance, that he'd been glad when he let it escape onto the Hogwarts grounds.

"Yes," he could now say honestly. "Can you help me find it?"

"Depends."

"On what?" He gulped, wondering if she was going to ditch him now to go off with Harry and Ron.

"Where you last left it."

Neville grinned in relief. "I think it might've ran off somewhere in the gardens."

.

They trailed solemnly up to the gardens, every so often stealing glances at each other. If Neville didn't know better, he would say Hermione was nervous too. Though what would she be nervous about? She seemed to keep wanting to make small talk about obscure topics and then ranting awkwardly when she ran out of things to say on-topic. He decided to steer the conversation back to something that was pressing on his mind.

"Hermione, do you think that I'm a joke, when in third year my boggart was revealed to be Professor Snape?"

She rounded on him, her bright brown eyes staring up at him. "No, why would you say that Neville?"

"I don't know. You must think it's pretty pathetic that I was frightened of Professor Snape."

"Are you?" She arched her brows at him.

He stared at her, she didn't seem to be judging. He thought for sure she'd laugh. "Still afraid of him? I don't know. I'm not sure how well I'd deal with Snape now. I never got the chance to fight him at my full size."

Hermione snorted and seemed to blink in disbelief. "And it's unlikely that you will get a chance to fight a professor without getting expelled!"

"I fought with Draco, Crabbe and Goyle singlehandedly."

Hermione began to chuckle hardily. "Yes, that was back in first year wasn't it? I always was surprised you actually had the nerve to take on the three of them."

Neville grinned at his own foolishness too. "I wasn't at my full size then either, so I got a pounding pretty bad." He still remembered the bruises and how Madam Pomfrey had to patch him up with Skele-Gro and Dittany Essence. "Still I've done better with them since, Malfoy I think is a bit afraid of me. Since I bust his lip in fourth year, he hasn't tried to say a peep to me."

"Neville, how many fights have you been getting into?"

"Not that many. Still it's part of being a boy at Hogwarts to get into some scrapes." He put his hands in his pockets as he pretended to leisurely stroll.

"Oh I'm sure!"

"Still, I didn't get in as much trouble as you, Harry and Ron did?"

"We didn't break that many rules."

"What was your boggart again?" he asked teasingly. He knew full well what her boggart had been, but he liked to see her blush.

Right on timing, Hermione blushed and looked very embarassed. She waved her bag of books around.

"It was McGonagall telling me I failed all my exams, that was my boggart."

"That's adorable."

"Shut up."

.

He was feeling unusually confident now. As if he'd swallowed a whole bottle of Felix Felicis or inhaled a bunch of zazzalian pollen. But he hadn't taken either, so he knew he was just off some natural high of being around her. Hermione made him laugh and she made him think, and while before he thought she would judge him, she was nowhere as judgmental as she had been in first year.

He grinned to himself, and he was nowhere near as rule-following as he had been in first year either. They had both had changed, evolved in different ways.

Yet they were much more complimentary now as fifth year students.

Then again, she had first met him when Neville was chasing after his lost toad, and right now, they were again chasing down another amphibian Neville had lost. Except this time he had lost it on purpose to spend time with her.

What an idiot he was. Neville grinned happily to himself.

"Do you see it yet?" Hermione called as she checked under each bush and tall reed in the gardens, while repeatedly shouting "Accio geckobyte".

"No." He honestly had no clue where the 4-legged pin had wandered off to now and he'd be glad if he didn't ever see it again. The thing was called a geckobyte pin because it did bite. Perhaps that's why his Uncle Algie had given it to him, as a laugh to torture his nephew as usual.

"It's got to be here somewhere," Hermione intoned furiously.

Neville stared at her rather than the bushes or any signs of amphibians. "Yes."

"I mean it can't have fallen off the face of the earth!"

"No, it might be very close."

He edged up closer to her and caught her eye, as they both said "accio geckobyte" at the same time.

Did she blush again?

.

The sun was lowering in the sky, bleeding the clouds and Hogwarts grounds, in a soft, burning red hues. The roses and creeping dragon vines in the gardens all appeared more red and vivid bathed in the light of the sundown. Especially her lips seemed redder and plumper in the fading sunlight.

They'd stayed out entirely too late, and, despite sincere efforts and some distraction, had still not located the sneaky geckobyte lizard pin.

"It's no use is it?" Hermione pouted. Her hair was frizzy from bending through the bushes and clearly frustrated to be outsmarted by a lizard with an IQ below 5 points.

"Actually, I think I'm going to thank my Uncle Angie for ever getting it."

"Why?"

Neville couldn't wait any longer. He was a shy, bumbling boy, once perhaps. But he wasn't that boy anymore, he was a man, or was fast becoming one. Or maybe that is what his hormone-crazy body was telling him so that he could have the guts to pass his genes on and all that Darwinistic rubbish. He didn't care anymore, what his Gran Augusta, or Uncle Algie, or Charles Darwin or Severus Snape would say, he knew what he wanted.

He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and before he had time to think what a great fool he was and how bad an idea this was—he planted his lips on hers.

She made a sound like "hhaeeeh", as if letting out a gust of air or just sheer surprise at the force of his passion for her.

Then she mumbled something incoherent and his hands slipped from her shoulders to her waist again, and her lips parted. Her skin was hot even through her robes and her lips were wet and tasted of some kind of strawberry lip balm that was intoxicating and he would never forget the taste of. He didn't really know what he was doing, except seeming to try to eat her mouth with his own, in a gentle nips, and yet she seemed to be responding if the way she nipped back at him was anything to go by. He wanted to sing praise to the heavens above inside, because Hermione Granger had playfully nipped him back, and without even realizing it, his hands had edged towards her shirt and impatiently pressed her closer to him.

"Neville?" Hermione gasped suddenly and her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks as she stared downwards. "I think you have something in your pocket."

Neville grinned and took out the Remembrall from his pocket. "Don't hex me yet. It's not what you think," he began to laugh while enjoying her embarrassed blush far too much.

He handed her the Remembrall and she stared at the little glass ball in shock. "I don't understand. It's no longer red and we still haven't found the geckobyte pin."

"I found you," he said and dipped in to claim her lips again, his whole body igniting in fire, as if this was what he was put on earth to do, to make love to Hermione Granger.

She let the ball slip out of her hands as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "You know, you could've done this sooner."

"Really? You mean that—you wanted me to?"

"Yes." She nuzzled up against his nose.

Now that was a surprise. Hermione Granger wanted him.

.

.

Next chapter: The Future and Professor Longbottom Thank you for reading and have a nice weekend ;)

[Prompts for potions lesson used: different, blush, hearbeat, flutter]