Thorn | Neville Longbottom

Chapter 31: In Your Dreams

The next morning, Briar was sitting snuggled into Neville's side, and she woke up feeling incredibly confused. She felt more rested than she normally did, but she didn't want to open her eyes and lose the tiredness that she was pleasantly feeling. She felt a warmth from beside her, and she gently snuggled into it further.

"I knew it, Fred."

"Yeah, just look at them."

"Not even a care in the world."

"I bet you a sickle that they snogged last night."

"You're on."

Briar's eyes snapped open and landed on the red-haired twins with a fire burning in her eyes. She was still attached to Neville's side and snuggled underneath a mountain of blankets, but her glare was no less intimidating to the Weasley twins. In a hushed voice, she snarled, "Get out of here, you twits."

With a lopsided smirk, Fred leaned forward and whispered, "But, we're wondering, did you snog 'im last night, Davies?"

Briar's eyes narrowed, and she was about to reach up to hit the boy who had been leaning dangerously close to her, but she spotted the pink that had formed on Neville's cheeks from the corner of her eye. She froze at this and turned red herself.

Oh god, Neville was awake.

Fred turned around and stuck his hand out to his twin and smugly smiled. George rolled his eyes before dropping the sickle into Fred's outstretched hand.

Briar narrowed her eyes and growled, "You don't know anything."

"I reckon it's pretty clear what happened last night from the pretty pink on both of your cheeks, love," George drawled with a hint of annoyance still tugging his lips down.

Fred pocketed the sickle before spinning to look at someone else in the room and winking at them. With a sick feeling in her stomach, Briar carefully twisted her body to look at exactly how many people were in the common room. Her jaw tightened when she saw how much of Gryffindor house was standing around, looking at her and Neville.

Neville's breath seemed more shallow from beside her, and she noticed the slightly pained expression on his face.

He was embarrassed.

A monster in the back of her mind wondered if he would be embarrassed with some other girl. Would he have felt this ashamed to have been caught with Ginny Weasley in the common room last year?

Briar's eyes fell on the smugly smiling redhead on the other side of the room, and a burning started in Briar's stomach, but the worst of all of it was the stinging behind her eyes that started.

She pushed the quilts off herself and stood. Once she left Neville's warm side, her face assumed a neutral expression, and she brushed past the twins coldly. She tightened her robes around herself and left the Gryffindor common room with her chin held high. She wasn't embarrassed to have been with Neville, but it hurt that he was.

Once she slipped back into her dorm at that early hour though, she sat down for a moment and remembered how blissful she felt falling asleep in Neville's arms.

She couldn't remember the last time she slept that well in her life.

-

Briar was sitting stiffly at the dining table at the Davies Manor that Easter, and each bite felt like she was forcing herself to swallow rocks. Her only consolation was the gentle squeezes on her ankles when Folsy would slip past and give her reassuring touches. It was the reminder that she had an ally in this house. She wasn't alone, and she could survive this. She had for almost 16 years now, and she wasn't going to stop now.