a/n: thank god! it's raining in Australia now finally and that put out some of the fires. Though unfortunately they are getting flooded by too much water :( omg stay strong down under!
~o~
Hermione checked her watch. She seemed anxious to get the rest of the greenhouse work done before it got any later. She also seemed unduly nervous around him, for a reason Neville couldn't quite understand: was she just attracted to him and that made her nervous? Or did it make her nervous to realize she was attracted to him?
Neville hoped she could slow down just a bit...and smell the roses before this moment got completely lost and they went back to strictly being acquaintances, rather than good friends, tomorrow. When all the other volunteers came back to the campground, it would be easy to forget this moment of connection they had...just them alone in the greenhouse, two twenty-somethings finding their way in the world.
He told her to sit down and have another short coffee break before they took their last lap of the greenhouse.
"So what have you been doing after the war?" He stared at her over the rim of his coffee mug, taking a big gulp.
Her brown eyes flicked downwards. "You mean besides my postgrad and apprenticeship with the Ministry's Department of Magical Animals?"
Neville grinned. "That is a mouthtful, just saying it."
Hermione shrugged her shoulders, a small, almost sad, smile tugging at the corners of her pretty mouth. "It's hard work. The Department isn't any easier than it sounds."
"I'm sure you'll manage..." Neville paused. "...to overwork yourself trying to save everything and everyone, much like you've done here?"
Hermione nodded and sighed out loud. "I know, I know. I tend to overdo things, Neville, you don't have to tell me."
Neville took a sip of his coffee, savouring the sweetness at the bottom. "No, it's something I admire actually. I think you're brilliant."
"Thank you." The tiniest tease of a blush appeared on the apples of her cheeks. "You're sweet, Neville."
"Not so sweet," he warned her. "What about your personal life? Where does that get lost in the mix?" If his voice showed concern for her, it was because Neville did seriously worry Hermione might be working herself into an early grave and missing out on the fun of life.
"I do...things for that too."
"Really? When? When is the last time you ever did something for yourself?"
That seemed to touch a sore spot. Hermione put down her mug of coffee and stood up to face him, her chin held high up. Showing that Gryffindor bravery he'd always liked about her, even when it meant she stupified him as a terrified boy of eleven years old.
Neville met her eyes then, looming over her, a whole head taller, not afraid of her in the slightest. He understood her now, or the woman she had become. Even if Hermione refused to see it yet.
She glanced then down at her wrist watch, breaking their staring contest.
"I think it's getting late enough as it is, Neville," she said and brushed her bangs aside from her forehead. "If you want to talk about this, we can at another time."
Is that a date? Neville thought.
Yet he knew better than to say so. Hermione seemed to think they were just friends and nothing more. As if she couldn't comprehend he was a sexual being and an adult as much as her...underneath her pretensions of only being a scholar without a heart.
Neville hoped he could change her idea of him being only her childhood friend.
...if only she would give Neville some more time out of her busy schedule to let him woo her properly.
But she clearly did not want that day to be now. She was too busy, even late on this dark night, to give into romance.
"Fine," he said. "Lead the way. I'll be out of here before you know it."
He couldn't help narrowing his eyes at her, trying to understand how one woman could contradict herself so much. All her body language saying 'yes' she wanted him, she wanted that type of contact and attention. While her mind and words kept saying 'no I'm too busy. I have to save the planet, I don't have any time for my own personal life.'
"Thank you for understanding. Okay. Your friendship is important to me too, Neville. I'm just so overwhelmed right now...by everything. So..."
"You don't have to explain," Neville said but couldn't helping sounding slightly bitter.
Hermione nodded. "Okay, well, just come back here for the last bit of work," Hermione said. She led him down to the back of the greenhouse where most of the plants stood in rows of pots under artificial sunlight spells.
"It's crowded in here," Neville commented as he ducked his head underneath an overhanging vine.
"Yeah, we're always running out of room, even with the shrinking spells and extension charms we use," Hermione said. "If you just want to come to the rear row, I'll show you which species could use a herbologist's touch."
"That's what I'm here for," he said and clapped his hands together.
The sound of his hands clapping startled her. But he couldn't help chuckling as he rubbed his manly hands together and she blushed again looking at them.
"Okay." She nervously nodded before turning to show him where the row of plants were.
His eyes followed her backside as they both walked down the tree lined greenhouse to the rear. He certainly would be elated to tend to whatever bush or rose she might show him...strictly speaking of plants, of course. Get your mind out of the gutter, Longbottom!
"There's just these trees here, you might recognize them, since you helped relocate most of them," Hermione spoke primly as showed him the rows of pots holding shrunken plants and giant trees reduced to the size of tiny brocollis in the well tended pots. "There must be a nitrogen deficiency or something, several of them have begun to wilt. Do you think you could fix them?"
"I think I can," Neville said, his eyes fixated on her pretty lips whenever she spoke or didn't speak. That and her fox-like large brown eyes he couldn't stop staring at all times. Luckily, even distracted like this, his training in Herbology made dealing with wilting plants, or trees, a breeze.
It was a slow ten or twenty minutes that passed with Neville fixing the plants and Hermione watching over his shoulder.
The tension between them, was, by this point, palpable.
Whether Hermione continued to ignore her own attraction to him or not, Neville decided to flirt just one more time...in case.
When he fixed the trees, he stood up, a bit closer to Hermione, and smirked. "Anything else I can help you with?" He cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Uhm no, not really," Hermione said and lowered her eyes down his chest again for a split second.
She blushed when she realized she had checked him out again. Neville stood more proudly, staring down into her pretty doe eyes, reveling in the heat between them.
"You're sure there's nothing?" Neville insisted. "I am at your disposal." He decided to finally just stop beating around the bush and drop the hint. "For the whole night, if need be."
"There's only that bench there to sleep on," Hermione said abruptly. "And it's hard wood, I sleep there sometimes, but I doubt you'd be comfy."
"Not a problem. I can sleep on hard wood. Though I do know some spells for pillows and blankets."
Neville stood with his hands on his hips staring at her expectantly, a smirk tugging at the sides of his lips, before Hermione finally spoke a whole half a minute later.
Hermione fiddled with her ponytail. "Well, if you really want to help, you could use the hose to uhm...water some things...here"
"Hose?" Neville bit back a groan in his throat. He sat down on an empty wooden bench which hadn't been covered in plants yet. "You mean like water?"
"Yes, water," Hermione laughed in a strained manner, like she was at the end of her nerves.
"That's a long hose," Neville commented and followed her to a tap where a long green hose was affixed. "What do you want me to wet?"
Hermione bit at her lip. "I don't know really...Things might be watered already, I mean, not recently," she stammered and pulled her hair out of her ponytail.
Neville took in the enrapturing sight of her long, honey-brown hair tumbling around her pretty face and his eyes lowered to her lips.
"You don't know," he whispered, openly staring at her pink swollen lips which seemed to be made for kissing madly.
"Uhm no...Not sure, anymore." Hermione turned the tap absentmindedly as she leaned towards him and they both screamed the next moment when water came flooding through the hose. Like a fireman's hose, the hose wildly whipped through the air, sending jettisons of water through the whole greenhouse and especially wetting Hermione. She screeched, seeming to fully wake up as she was drenched.
Neville laughed as he saw Hermione soaked head to toe by the waving hose. "Are you alright?" He took out his wand and pointed it at the wildly-waving hose to turn it off and neatly coil it back in its place.
Hermione burst out laughing. "Merlin's beard. I'm soaked!"
Neville appreciatively glanced at her up and down. Her clothes now clung to her body, showing the fit little body underneath. "Yeah, you are."
Hermione shook her head. "Sorry, I hope that didn't wash off the potion from your back?"
"Nah, you got the brunt of the hose," Neville said though his pants were wet...so that his jeans clung like clingwrap to his body.
Hermione lowered her eyes to his wet pants, and how they clung to him. "Uhm," she gulped. "Why don't we go the supplies room, there's spare clothes in there and I can help you dry your clothes?"
"Sure." Neville grinned and he followed her with his eyes again as they marched to a small little room at the back of the greenhouse.
He certainly didn't think it was a high cost—getting wet with a hose—in exchange of seeing how cute and ravishingly sexy Hermione Granger looked in her wet clothes. Almost like she was a wild woman underneath the bushy hair and lab coat and nerdish passion...she was a real woman with desires and a body that could drive any man crazy for her and happy til the end of his days.
.
.
~O~