Courage {Neville Longbottom} (ON HOLD)

Chapter Fifty Eight

While Neville thought he had been in the lead and finally tired Kefira out, it seemed he was sorely mistaken as she jumped out of nowhere as a surprise attack nearly knocking him to the ground. However, it also appeared that Kefira had forgotten that over the course of time, Neville had gotten stronger and had developed his balance quite well. He was no longer the boy who would fall over at the slightest of touches or trip over his own feet. When she crashed into him, it was almost like hitting a wall, leaving her a bit disoriented as she regained her own footing again.

"Have you been working out, Nevs?" She asked him with a smile as she rubbed her shoulder. 

"No," he said, "the only time I've been truly getting a workout is when I'm with you and-"

The two teens turned quite red in the face before they looked away to conceal their smiles. Neville shook his head, realizing that his words did not come out as he had planned but if it brought a smile to Kefira's face, his embarrassed state was worth it. She finally looked back over at him with a look that he hadn't seen before. It was a good one, of course, she was still smiling at him but he could describe the expression because it appeared to be a mixture of things. He didn't want to sound over-confident but he swore that she was looking at him with pride and admiration and a hint of something else that he couldn't put his finger on quite yet. 

"Is everything okay?" He asked. He didn't believe that anything was wrong, but he was curious as to why she was looking at him like that.

"I was just thinking about something," she said as she began walking along. Neville followed curiously, hurrying to keep pace with her before he got lost in the crowd of people walking around Diagon Alley that afternoon.

"And that would be?"

"Well, come, September, you and I will have been officially dating for a year. Since you asked me on the train and I confirmed."

Neville came to a full stop and tried to think back to the moment where he had asked her on the train, of course, he had his suspicions that they were, but they didn't officially refer to themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend until he had asked the day aboard the Hogwarts Express. His eyes widened as he realized just like Kefira did that on the first of September, it really would be a year. Six years since they first met aboard the train as Kefira had been the first to find Trevor and keep the toad safe. 

"It doesn't even feel like it's been that long, to be honest, "Neville said when he finally spoke again. He peered up at her and smiled. "As torturous as the year was with Professor Umbridge, it went by rather fast, didn't it?"

"Fast?" Kefira's eyes widened before she shook her head, her curls flying all over the place in disagreement. "It was terribly slow. Well, just the time spent around BOT, not around you or the people I like being around."

"But it feels like I've been dating you a lot longer at the same time."

"I can't tell if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, Nevs," Kefira said with a hopeful smile on her face. She knew that she could be a pain and sometimes even just a short time spent in her company could seem like a lifetime. She certainly hoped that she wasn't getting on Neville's nerves, she wasn't sure if he would be one to voice it, even if she did. 

Neville waved his hands to dismiss the idea of being with Kefira as a bad thing. He quickly walked over to where she stood and grabbed both of her hands in his, holding them with a small grip. 

"I didn't mean it in a bad way at all, I guess what I meant was, it's felt like I've been dating you a lot longer than a year because I guess I always figured it was going to be you. I liked you from the moment we met back in the first year, even if it wasn't in the romantic sense just yet. You were one of those people that I realized pretty earlier on that I wanted to keep in my life because you made me work to better myself. The silly thing about it all was, I never wanted to be brave for myself, I wanted to be brave for you."