Thorn | Neville Longbottom

Chapter 21: Safe

"Briar, are you okay?" Neville carefully questioned after the plants drooped at her touch heavily one day.

She grimaced and plopped back onto the stool positioned behind her.

Neville watched her movements carefully before he took a few cautious steps towards her. He murmured, "What's wrong?"

Briar looked up at him, and something made her want to tell the shy boy everything in that moment. Looking into his round, puppy dog eyes made her want to tell him about all the things going wrong in her life, but at the last second, she clamped her mouth shut and looked back down at her fingers in her lap.

Neville poked out his bottom lip in defeat. He would give her as much time as necessary to open up, but he wished that she would tell him what was wrong. He had never seen plants reflect that sadness so heavily before, and his worry for the raven-haired girl only rose exponentially each time it happened. Why was she always so sad?

She stood up and moved towards the plants that weren't empathic with a frustrated sigh. She cared for those plants with more success while a silence filled the empty space in the greenhouse.

Neville had returned to the plant he was caring for before, recognizing that Briar just wanted to be left alone. He began to murmur to himself softly, but Briar was able to make out his words in the near silence of their work. He whispered, "Briar means a rose bush. Beautiful but guarded by thorns. It's perfect."

Briar swallowed hard and kept looking down, her hair creating a curtain with which she could block out the redness forming on her cheeks.

He thought she was beautiful?

There was an odd fluttering in her stomach, and a small smile slowly stretched across her face. This made her feel giddy and innocent, feelings that she hardly knew anymore.

With a curious thought, she shifted towards one of the empathic plants and extended her hand towards it.

It didn't droop or wither this time, and she knew it was all because of Neville's whispered compliments.

Whether she knew and accepted it or remained oblivious and in denial, Briar was falling in love with the shy Gryffindor boy, the only one who could possibly cut away her thorns and brambles to find the girl hiding inside.

-

On her way back to the Slytherin dorms after her latest tutoring session with Neville, she noticed a couple of figures standing close in a side corridor. She halted in her steps and turned back when she realized what the scene had looked like.

Standing in the corridor was Malfoy cornering a smaller blonde-haired Hufflepuff, and she looked horrified by whatever he was saying. He was standing incredibly close to her, and it was clear to Briar that he must have been bullying the smaller girl.

Briar started to move towards them, plans forming in her mind of what she planned to do to Malfoy to make it clear that he needed to leave people alone, when the Hufflepuff pulled her hand back and slapped Malfoy across the face, the loud smack echoing through the corridor and over to the place where Briar was standing. Briar blinked in pleasant surprise and assumed a smug grin when Malfoy stumbled back a few steps in utter shock.

The girl looked to the side quickly and noticed Briar's proud grin with wide eyes and raised eyebrows on her own face. Briar winked at her before turning and resuming her journey to the dorms. She could tell that the little Hufflepuff could take care of herself. She had a fire in her eyes that Briar recognized in herself, and she knew that Malfoy wouldn't stand a chance harassing someone like her.