A/N: As always, the Potterverse is owned by JK Rowling.
la douleur exquise - (phr.) the heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable; the emotional experience of the one whose love is not being reciprocated; the exquisite pain one experiences when loving someone they can never have [french]
For months…nay, years, he waited. Something about her just called to him, to his magic, to his very being. She reacted to him only once, when he was able to get past his shy nature long enough to invite her to a ball. For him, the night was bliss. He noticed her sneaking glances at another throughout the night, but she stayed with him anyway. At the close of the evening, he walked her back to her dorm, and she favored him with a polite kiss on the cheek. That was the last time she showed him any affection for three years.
He had known for a long time that her eyes were drawn to another. It would have been very hard to miss it, actually. The way she stared at him when he wasn't looking, the squeaks and red-faced embarrassment when she was caught, it was all very obvious if one was looking. And he was always looking at her. Somehow, she never caught him. He chose not to pay it any mind for his own sanity. He also never tipped off the object of her wanton desire, as he seemed to have enough going on in his life most of the time.
Circumstances forced by the Ministry and the war brought them somewhat closer together, but even then, she pined for the other. He, trying to gain any insight, any foothold into her life that he could, found companionship in her childhood friend. A bit eccentric, she was, but once you got past that, she was a genius, and most importantly to him, she didn't mind that he saw her as nothing more than a friend and likely always would. She became his closest confidant, and he her grounding force.
Finally, in his last year of schooling, he got closer to her than he had been since the ball. They took the lead as freedom fighters, defying the evil presence trying to influence the school at large. The object of her affections was away doing grander things, so it fell to him to keep her protected, and he relished the role. He even got the sense that their forced closeness might be causing her to fall ever so slightly for him (him!) over the other, and he did his utmost to carefully nurture that feeling. All that was left now was for him to find the courage to lay his heart bare for her.
Before he could find the time to do such, the other returned, a man on a mission, fire in his eyes, and power radiating. Her eyes drifted, and he knew then and there that she was lost to him. The conquering hero had always been her dream, and he had returned here, not specifically for her, but to win an entire war and claim her as his spoils. Even when the other appeared on the edge of losing it all, he pulled a miracle unknown to survive against all odds, and it was to her he looked after his victory.
Lost in thought on the edge of the celebrating masses, Neville Longbottom slipped out of the Great Hall alone; alive in body but dead in spirit, and broken in heart.