"true love"
~neville/hannah~
There is blood. Quite a lot of blood, and a strange ringing in his ears, and a feeling as though his head is floating away from his body, which is strange because although he has injuries all over him, he is fairly sure that nobody severed his neck. He isn't sure he's going to make it back to the Gryffindor Common Room though, and that's not a good thing, because if he collapses here, the chances are that the person who finds him will not be friendly.
"Neville!" a voice says. A horrified, anxious voice, and he looks round and focuses on a blonde, blue-eyed girl. A girl he knows perfectly well, although he cannot currently place her name. He knows he is forgetful, but he is not usually this forgetful; he knows her name, but he thinks that his inability to remember it might have something to do with the way the world is spinning all around him. He fixes his eyes on hers because they are big and really very blue. His stomach is doing something strange, which might also be to do with the whole world-spinning thing, although he also thinks that it is something that happens quite often when he sees those particular blue eyes.
"Your eyes are beautiful, y'know…" he mutters in a slurred voice, before sliding to the ground at her feet.
Later, he wakes up in the hospital wing. A tight-lipped, stormy-eyed Madam Pomfrey is bustling around his bed, and the blue eyed girl is sitting beside him, and smiles when she sees that he is conscious.
"Hello," she says softly, "How are you feeling?"
He thinks about this. He feels as if he has been put through a mangle, but he thinks he will be okay.
"I'll be fine," he says, and his stomach is doing that weird thing again.
"Good," she says, then bites her lip and hesitates before going on, "Neville… when you said… I mean… do you really think my eyes are beautiful?"
He opens his mouth but does not speak for a moment, mortification flooding him as he remembers the unguarded words he spoke.
"Yes," he says at last, his voice small, because there does not seem to be any other answer, although he fully expects some form of rejection (although kind, because she is always kind). She smiles, looking almost as nervous as he feels. Then she leans forward and briefly, just for a moment, her lips brush his, and then she pulls back, pink staining her cheeks.
"Um… well, thanks," she says confusedly, and Neville stares at her. He no longer feels weak, bruised or exhausted; he feels great. And he considers for the first time that he may have fallen in love with Hannah Abbott.