The Courtship of Neville Longbottom

Neville led Luna past compartments full of Hogwarts students. The grinning face of a dark-haired boy suddenly appeared in front of him causing him to almost drop his trunk.

"Oi Neville!" Dean Thomas greeted him. "There's room for one more in here," he said, pointing into his compartment. Seamus Finnigan waved from inside. Neville opened his mouth to accept Dean's offer, but a flash of red hair swept by him, knocking him into the door of the compartment on the other side of the train. He waved apologetically to the occupants, two startled Creevy brothers. The younger one waved enthusiastically while the older one, Colin, whipped out his camera and snapped a photo. Neville rubbed his eyes in an attempt to rid himself of the spots that swam in front of them as he turned around. He didn't bother to ask why the elder Creevey had taken his picture. Colin was
known for photographing anything that moved.

"Sorry Neville," Ginny Weasley apologized, "I didn't see you there." Neville shrugged and nodded.

"Hi Luna," Ginny said to the girl standing beyond Neville's shoulder. "How was your summer?"

"Oh it was lovely," Luna replied. "Daddy and I went to Sweden to look for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks."

Neville and Dean caught each other's eyes. Neville managed to keep a straight face while Dean had to hide his rather girlish giggles. Ginny looked back at her boyfriend in annoyance before continuing to talk to Luna.

"Did you find any?" Ginny asked politely, as if Crumple-Horned Snorkacks were a part of everyday conversation. Luna dreamily shook her head.

"No," she said. "Daddy says that the weather was just a tad too warm for them." Ginny nodded in reply.

"Well," Dean said as he wrapped his arm around Ginny, signaling that her conversation was officially over, "we'll see you when we get to school then." Dean turned towards his compartment with Ginny in tow.

"Bye Luna! Bye Neville!" Ginny called as she was swiftly ushered into Dean's compartment. Neville assumed that Dean's hurry was to prevent any further talk of the dubious existence of certain Swedish creatures. His trunk began to slide and he heaved it up off of the floor.

"C'mon Luna," he mumbled, resigned to walk with her until she found her
own friends. Neville paused for a moment to think. He wasn't sure if Luna had any friends, but she must, right?

"I like Ginny," Luna said, interrupting his reverie. "She's always very interested to hear how I'm doing. A lot of people don't really care, you know."

Neville nodded. He didn't want to give Luna the wrong idea by being polite and saying that he cared so he kept his mouth shut.

"Oh," Luna started, "I wonder what's going on?" Neville looked up. A large group of girls whispering and murmuring to each other had gathered in the middle of the hallway. Some were craning their necks to get a better glimpse of something that was out of Neville's view.

"Hmmm, it looks like a floof has been here," Luna said matter-of-factly. Before Neville could ask what a floof was, he briefly glimpsed a familiar-looking unruly head of black hair.

"Hi, Harry!" Neville cried out in relief. Harry Potter turned and pushed his way through the crush of people looking almost as happy to see Neville as Neville was to see him.

"Neville!" Harry nearly yelled in reply.

"Hello, Harry," Luna calmly said.

"Luna, hi, how are you?"

"Very well, thank you." she replied. Neville admired Harry's ability to appear genuinely interested in Luna without immediately sniggering at her outward appearance like so many others. The turnip earrings were in place as well as her trademark butterbeer cork necklace.

Neville shook his head and brought himself back into the conversation. Harry had said something about finding seats and the three of them pushed through the crowd towards an empty compartment at the back of the car. The eyes of the crowd followed the trio accompanied by hushed whispers and murmurs. A few of the older girls were brave, or rude enough to point as Harry quickly shut the sliding door.

"They're even staring at us!" Neville said, unable to keep the incredulous note out of his voice as he heaved his trunk up onto the luggage rack with a grunt. "Because we're with you!"

Harry was lifting his own trunk onto the opposite rack, "They're staring at you because you were at the Ministry too," he said. "Our little adventure there was all over the Daily Prophet, you must've seen it."

It suddenly clicked in Neville's head why Colin Creevey had taken a picture of him moments earlier.

"Yes, I thought Gran would be really angry about all the publicity," he told Harry, "but she was really pleased. Says I'm starting to live up to my dad at long last. She bought me a new wand, look!" Neville quickly drew a long box from his pocket and pulled his pristine wand out of its paper.

"Cherry and unicorn hair," Neville said as he admired the elegant wand. "We think it was one of the last Ollivander ever sold, he vanished the next day - oi, Trevor!" The hint of pride in Neville's voice quickly dissipated as he dove under the seat after his escaped amphibian.

Harry peered under the seat after Neville, before turning around at the sound of ripping paper. Luna had begun to detach her free as advertised Spectrespecs from her father's latest publication.

"Are we still doing D.A. meetings this year, Harry?" Luna asked.

Harry looked down at the odd looking pair of glasses with a slight smile of amusement before replying.

"No point now we've got rid of Umbridge, is there?" he said.

Neville muffled a curse as he solidly banged his head against the seat while trying to stand up. He emerged a few seconds later, rubbing his head.

"I liked the D.A.!" Neville said. "I learned loads with you!" This expression of emotion came nowhere close to Neville's true feelings about the D.A., their secret Defense Against the Dark Arts group.

Nothing had so affected Neville like the D.A. Under Harry's supervision, Neville had been turned from a bumbling student, still afraid to face his Snape boggart, into a decent wizard who had scored an 'Exceeds Expectations' on his Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. Truthfully, Harry thought this had more to do with Neville's confidence
that he had discovered while in the group than any actual teaching Harry had done, although Harry still flushed a bit with pride as he grinned back at Neville.

"I enjoyed the meetings too," Luna's misty voice interrupted. "It was like having friends."

Harry choked on the thanks he had planned to say to Neville and simply coughed and nodded. Neville looked at Luna with a mixed bit of pity and awkwardness. Why did she have to say things like that? Neville thought to himself. Didn't she know it made everyone else around her feel awkward? Neville couldn't understand why he suddenly seemed angry at Luna. He studied her for a minute. She had placed the free Spectrespecs on her face and was now reading The Quibbler. It brought Neville back to the first time he had actually talked to Luna, when she had been reading a different issue of her father's magazine upside-down. Neville shook his head. There was no use getting angry at her for saying awkward things. If anything, Neville thought Luna was worse off socially than he was. Sighing, Neville crouched down to resume his search for Trevor.