[ for (quotev user) ;; @ StopstealingmyURLideas ]

Gray mist swirled and turned about, clinging to the few small windows like a thick paint, blocking any view of the outside world with only opaque, muddled colors, constantly moving into and out of one another. Rain relentlessly pounded against the lush grass. There hadn't been a break in in the precipitation for many days now, but today seemed to harbor the bulk of its pique. Dancing shadows cast their shade as blankets over everything within reach.

It felt rather appropriate.

The past few months had been the state of the weather personified. With every raindrop came another repressed image, a scarred face, blood, a body, flashes of green, screaming, shouting, crying - everything that had been so desperately quelled from that fateful evening only returned once more, not bothering to knock on the mind's door for entrance but rather kicking it down and holding all things happy hostage. The cracks of lightning were curses and the thunder was the raw, naked rumbling of the heart of terror, the same that all had worn on their sleeves like tokens taken for granted while the battle boomed on. It had rained that day, too.

But now there was no battle. The man behind the marble counter had to keep reminding himself of his surroundings. Where concrete and claret fluid had once blended together were now fluffy fibers of soft, silky carpeting. Where the spiraling towers had once risen were now stands and display cases rising floor-to-ceiling. Where people had once clustered together and ran for their lives now sat an assortment of plants.

Where there had once been a schedule now stood sheer oscillation.

The man knew he'd never been destined to be an auror or ministry member like a multitudinous measure of his acquaintances had become. Acquaintances. The word left and acerbic taste in his mouth, stinging like nettles. Once he would've said friends, wholly and fully, without second thought. But ever since the Battle of Hogwarts, his contact with them had, for whatever reason, drastically dwindled, seemingly now drawn to a halt. He'd promised them that he'd stay around, and they'd promised him, too, but...well, promises were only as strong as they were perceived.

As strange as it may have been, the first thing he had done was acquire a job. Something about the change of pace and atmosphere had been as necessary to him as breathing, as needed as nutrition. Anything to take his mind off of that event was welcomed. However, he'd never been a particularly talented person. And apparently this fact had been ascertained by his boss.

Thus, he was promptly sacked.

Okay, that had been fair. It was his first job, and he wasn't exactly wonderful at it - surely the second time around would be the charm.

Then once more.

Third, yes? That had to have been it...

Only it wasn't.

So there, behind the stone surface, he had settled for his fourth employer. He'd managed to keep a hold on his responsibilities - and likewise his mishaps - so far, but whenever this sudden streak of luck would be broken, he knew, without a doubt, what awaited him afterwards.

Nevertheless it was a job. One he enjoyed, too.

Yet as much as he hated to admit it, as many times as he'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't let his feelings eat away at his heart and soul, as many times as he'd vowed to never allow emotions to overwhelm his life again, he found himself lonely.

The clock hand was just a few minutes from closing time, and as such, he began to reorganize the few scattered papers of orders that had yet to be completed, successfully shoving them, crammed, into a cupboard in the back room along with the sparse others. The rain had stalled most of his customers' desired imports - not because the suppliers couldn't arrive, of course, but because some of the more exotic species simply couldn't stand the drastic overflow of precipitation. He'd have to figure out some way to secure them before too long. Angry customers were the last thing he wanted to deal with.

Just as the thought had popped into his mind, it was interrupted by a sudden jingling or the front door, followed by an increase in the volume of the storm beyond the windows. He emerged from the room quickly enough to see the incoming customer.

Sopping wet, shaking droplets off her hair and clothes, a young woman squeezed through, managing to pull her wide umbrella beyond the small opening and shut the door - and subsequently the noise - off from behind her. A small click and her patterned parasol was once more able to fit inside her pocket after a few moments of fumbling. They each were rather unaware of the other until she jerked her head up, eyes suddenly widening at the lack of...well, other people. The sheer emptiness of the shop alone was enough to send shivers up her already chilled spine. "Oh! Sorry, are you, you're closed?"

Typically he would've told the truth. After all, a 'yes' wasn't too difficult, and he knew that at least a warm bed awaited him back at home, no matter the fact that he'd long outgrown it. But something in her eyes caused him to suppress that all-too-reflexive response. "Ah - no, we're open."

A faint smile spread across her lips, bringing with it warmth and comfort that the shop hadn't felt in months, presumably years, even, from its desolate, deserted, datelessly-dusty despondency. She hung her umbrella upon a coat-hanger without second thought, humming something under her breath that caused the remaining water droplets to evaporate.

The man had been regarding all this with a reserved nature, but upon seeing how dutifully she'd endeavored to keep the place clean once more, he blurted, "Oh, don't worry about that. We've had worse."

The girl begins to stroll throughout the small store, supraliminal to the short roof and narrow walls. Not a note of discomfort emanated from her form, however; in fact, it was as though she enjoyed perusing around the soft, stagnant air. "Like?"

He found himself fumbling for an answer. Usually customers simply started the small talk - they never continued it once it'd reached its limited confines. "A hoard of bouncing bulbs broke through the wall over there," he relayed, swallowing his embarrassment as he cast a glance at the exact point of where they'd ruined the bricks. It'd been repainted, of course, but the paint job wasn't exactly stunning. Dark outlines traced where the shade-too-dark new coat collided with the other.

"Bet that wasn't fun to clean up."

"You're right there. Almost got fired..." and then, at the sudden recognition of what he'd just let slip sunk in, he trailed off into thin air, his face growing as pink as the pale orchids dotting the pots behind him.

Luckily, the girl never once looked up from the aisles. She appeared to have selected an assortment of flowers, although what they were, exactly, was left to the man's imagination, as she seemed to sway to some unheard song, flashing the collection in and out of view. She remained quiet for awhile, lost in her world. It was only when she slid onto the second-to-last-row that she spoke up once more. "Almost, but not quite...?"

He made a small noise of curiosity deep within his throat. The words had been almost under her breath, but they made sense in relation to what he'd previously stated...their meaning and who precisely they were directed to lingered as some sort of unsolvable puzzle in the back of his mind.

He chose to keep his thoughts to himself and rather returned to inspecting the plants behind him, tapping one of the mandrake's pots and muttering a slight charm beneath his breath. This one seemed to have fallen behind its generation. Whereas most of the other screeching creatures had nearly outgrown their containers, this one had hardly grown at all. Sure, he wasn't supposed to cast spells on the products, even if they looked like they needed it...but what was the harm, right? Especially when the sight of the small thing twisted his heart into such an untangleable knot.

The dandelions were well on their way, as were most of the orchids. The roses, although slightly out-of-season, still clung to their vibrant colors, as did the marigolds, providing dots of saturated color to an otherwise comparatively dull wall. Everything else was in order. All except for the runted mandrake...and the girl that now stood directly at the checkout counter.

An unwavering smile was still faintly imprinted upon her lips, although now there seemed to be something else interlaced with it, changing the carefree nature into something more concentrated and concerned. "Sorry to keep you," she apologized impetuously, placing her now-finished selection onto the miniscule section of the counter that wasn't crowded from corner to corner with seeds of scarce, exotic selections or young sprouts of equally rare specimens.

He shook his head nonchalantly, silently racking up the prices in his mind, not focused so much on what the girl was purchasing but rather the girl herself. Up close, he found the schism of his eyes from her features almost impossible. Her gentle but nevertheless intriguing presence never wavered. If anything it had only grown stronger as she'd closed the gap of space between the two of them. Her eyes kept flashing from her items to his face, just a beat off from when his eyes would do the same to her.

For a few moments they communicated in nothing more than blinks and blushes.

"Eleven galleons." The man was the first to break the peace. "I mean - for the price."

A silky 'hmm' of slight surprise escaped her lips, but she gathered herself quickly. "Right - here." The golden coins left her hand and entered his, clinking against one another, a rhythmic pattern that showed no sign of stopping until her skin brushed against his.

"S - sorry," she whispered, jerking back.

Her rose-red face tilted itself away from his view, and within a split second he found himself responding, "Don't worry, [y/n]."

And suddenly the rouge color on her cheeks flooded to a beet violet. Somewhere between the mix of shock to lack of breath, which was, quite frankly, accurate. She quickly snatched the plants off the shelf, using their varying lengths to her advantage and hiding her face behind them.

Neville wasn't looking at her anymore, either. The fact that the name, once spoken daily, hadn't left his lips in nearly six months, only to reappear now, of all places, of all times, with someone that didn't quite fit the picture of [y/n]; not the one he remembered, at least, no. But that reaction.... "You are [y/n], though...aren't you...?"

His only response was a shuffling of the flower bouquet in front of him.

And then, "Where have you been?"

For a moment Neville thought that he'd been the one to ask the question. It had, after all, been next up on his mental list of what to say; what to ask, when the girl that he'd once been so close with had fallen off the face of the earth only to reappear again, somehow.

"You just vanished," she continued. The knuckles clutching the stems of the plants were now growing with pallor by the second from the sheer force her grip exerted. "I thought that you'd moved. Or that you'd...." a pause. "Or that something bad had happened."

"I didn't - no, I'd never meant for that to happen," he responded, flustered, heartbeat quickening at the sudden cracking of her voice, pulled taut by a throat filled with emotion. "Things just changed."

The wall between them lowered ever so slightly, revealing a pair of eyes, oh, those deep pools, the same ones that had performed puppy magic plenty of times over and wormed their way closer to his heart throughout the years, the same ones that had first tilted up at his clumsiness, the ones that had only grown brighter with laughter at his reaction to being called 'cute' - the same ones that now held an unfamiliar glaze atop their pure surface, too reflective to be filled with anything other than liquid sadness. "I know." The words were disjointed, forced from a locked jaw that hadn't been wanting to budge a single millimeter. "People changed."

"Merlin, [y/n], I hardly even -"

"- I know," she repeated, gaze dropping. "I changed, too."

Neville swallowed his fear audibly. "It's - been too long."

"It's been forever." Once more the flowers inched downwards. "Do you know how long I've been looking? Everywhere is chaos out there. It's still like everything happened just yesterday. Like we're still back at Hogwarts, only everything's in ruins."

"I'm sorry that I left."

And then her whole face was visible. Some of its roundness had been chiseled into points, some places holding more sharpness than they had mere months before, but it was still by all means you, undeniably you, the same you that made Neville's confession pack all the more punch behind it.

She laughed.

Not something forced, either. A real, genuine laugh, gentle but loud enough to be heard clearly, small but big enough to illuminate the whole room in an ethereal glow of glimmering hope, optimism punctuating obscurity, radiating light like the sun only so much closer, so much more tangible, so much more beautiful.

"Neville - that was just as much me as you," she contributed lightly, despite the bit of guilt still lacing her brows. "I wanted to get as far away from here as possible. After the Battle, I couldn't - didn't feel right to stay."

He found himself nodding. "Me, too. And along the way I just...lost you."

"But here we are again," she smiled, a twang of regret hidden beneath her tone. "Found." Her voice stopped for a moment, and she leaned over the counter ever-so-slightly, then just breaths away from Neville's face. For once, he didn't attempt to move away. She couldn't help but blush at his newfound ways. Maybe this time apart had changed them both - but maybe not only in bad ways.

Because every time she'd leaned in before, he'd always withdrawn and made up some excuse, any excuse. Even if it made no sense or wasn't even coherent words. He'd have said anything to avoid such close encounters.

Not because he didn't want them.

Oh, he'd wanted them. As he felt her fervor emanating, swallowing him up in its hot grasp like an immobile bubble, he hadn't ever wanted them more. Hadn't ever regretted not taking them more. In fourth year, when you'd sat across from him at the desk in the library, and arched over just to check her herbology answers, he'd spurted something about having to use the restroom. Late fourth year, when he'd managed to find you, alone, and gathered up enough courage to attempt to ask you to the dance, maybe even just as friends, but still go, the moment he'd been within a two-meter radius of your form, he'd just bolted. Early fifth year, at breakfast, mumbling something in agreeance with Harry's dislike of Umbridge, and you'd been ready to whisper something along those lines into his ear, he suddenly needed whatever an 'umcake' was from farther down the table. Then again, at a later D.A. meeting, when you'd continually been partnered up for practice. You'd just managed to create your patronus, and hugged him, perhaps out of just sheer excitement. Apparently at that exact moment he somehow knew he'd received a howler from his grandmother about a lost sock. Once more at the end of the year, when he and the rest of the group that had travelled to the Ministry had returned, safe enough, and you'd hugged him again, though this time it was definitely something more than 'excitement,' he'd had to leave to pack his things for the train. Around the night of Slughorn's party? He was 'sick,' definitely, though you'd spotted him hanging around, alone, in the greenhouse just a day after he'd told you he was ill with some rare disease. An attempted kiss, probably, over Butterbeer - whoops, he'd drank too much. Avoidance. Then another hug, and something about mangoes being poisoned and how he'd eaten one.

"So, what is it this year?" she enquired faintly, a slight edge of humor to her voice. "Did you catch a cold? Or maybe you opened the wrong box, and instead of asphodel it was aconite, and so you've got contagious toxins? Perhaps, even, the 'no-i've-got-toGO' creature is still chasing you?" A chuckle followed the final one, which had only just been invented a few days before the Battle of Hogwarts. "I think that one's my favorite."

Neville suddenly found shivers tracing themselves down his spine, despite the warm, temperate atmosphere necessary to keep the plants happy. "I -"

"Have to go home? Have to close up shop? What's it now?"

" - want to kiss you."

"Oh." Her body grew rigidly stiff, and then melted once more when a welcome pair of lips found themselves pressed against her own, arms wrapping around her shoulders and her fingers intertwining across his back, falling into one another for the first time in nearly five years, for the first time ever, for the first so long-awaited eternity. And it was okay that they'd both vanished for awhile. It was okay that they'd both given up. It was okay that they'd both been lost.

Because they'd re-appeared together. They'd started over together. They'd been found together.

Found in the solace of one another.

And as long as he was there and she was here, right beside each other, there wasn't a chance of going missing again.

It was she who pulled away first, contrary to how she'd so long imagined the first kiss occurring. Her lungs needed air, just as her mind, heart, and soul needed him.

He too was breathless. "Who are the flowers for?" he murmured once he'd caught enough air back into his blood, cheeks flushed, hand fumbling with the back of his dishevelled hair.

The flowers? Oh. She'd nearly forgotten, in the moment, the whole purpose surrounding the items. "I heard that there was a nice botanical shop here. And I - well, I remembered that Mimbulus you'd had, and thought maybe...another one would be a fitting return gift. Plus daisies and dandelions and orchids were what you'd always bring me..." she stopped prematurely, bashful in her wording.

His face, transfixed in a stupor for an elongated period of time, slowly morphed into a smile of disbelief. "You - you remembered all that...?"

"Of course," you nodded, the same smile reflecting off of your face. "When I was sick you always brought daisies because I liked the white centers, like little suns. Dandelions were for when I was sad, because I'd blow away all the petals and watch them float in the wind. And orchids were for the colors. For the 'just-because'."

And it was in this moment, this moment of just-because, this moment of nothing but you and he and the bouquet, that he hugged you.

It was awkward. It was across a countertop, after all, and both you and he were bent at unnatural angles to reach one another, but it was an embrace, one that was oh-so-very-Neville that you couldn't help but giggle beneath your breath and return the wrapped arms, the same ones that you both had long yearned for and finally gotten.

"Thank you." You could feel his chest vibrate against your body, letting his words fully envelope you.

"You're welcome," you murmured back, slowly pulling away.

He was left smiling softly at you, that same smile that had always made your cheeks turn as red as the roses that now sat behind his form. "Not just for that," he continued with a small nudge of his head to the assorted plants you'd brought, "but for everything. For coming back."

"You, too...but promise me something," you countered.

His face was tinted a darker shade now, not only abash but guilty, too, remembering his last promise to you, and how well that had worked out. But he couldn't say no. Not here, not now. Not when you, the girl of his dreams for so very long, had once again returned. Thus, he nodded.

"From now on, wherever you go, I go, too, yeah?" Your eyes glimmered with hope as another bolt of lightning struck outside.

The illumination lasted long enough for you to clearly see the relieved, joyous expression that had settled upon his face. "I won't let this one get broken."

And as the storm raged on, a maelstrom of madness and muddle, you two once more found comfort in the compassionate arms of one another, warm in the cold and calm in the chaos.

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Ahh I know I haven't updated in such a long time ;-;

I just wanted to say that I'm super sorry about that, and also let you all know that I haven't forgotten about the other requests!  I'm really excited to keep writing them, and again, thank you so much for having the patience to wait this long.

With love, 

   - Petri ♥