A/N: For Herbology
Mandatory Prompt: Write about Neville Longbottom after the war.
Optional Prompts: Success, education, moment, attention, decision, shopping and student.
This is the moment that I have been waiting for, the brief second in time that will change everything. I am not talking about the moment I beheaded Nargini, or when I finally flirted with Luna Lovegood. I am talking about now, as I watch the love of my life walk towards me in a cascade of beautiful white.
When we were students we were naïve and bashful, relying (well on my part failing) on education to bring us to the brink of success. But when the war finished and we went our separate ways we realised it was not education that guided us, it was friendship. When she returned to London I was dating Luna, having wild and crazy adventures through the countryside and working my way to finally deciding my path, but something was missing.
Then I saw her, across the café on a small street in central London. She was reading, a book about plants and things that can kill you without you even realising they were there. A book I loved and had read until the pages had become raw with love. I moved toward her, no longer afraid of announcing myself like I use to be. I sat down grabbing her attention immediately; she smiled and a deep red stained her cheeks, making a smile appear on my face, she was still shy.
"Hello," I said making her look up at me.
"Good morning," she replied sweetly.
"It has been a long time," I said begging to hear her voice.
"It certainly has," she replied. And because it had been a long time we stayed where we were, talking and laughing, before spending the day together shopping and continuously talking.
I never meant to leave Luna for Hannah, and I have spent years telling myself that was not the case, especially when Hannah moved into the same apartment that I and Luna had shared. But the truth was I did, and as much as it made me feel guilty every now and then, at this moment, watching the love of my life walk down the aisle to become my wife, I realised it was quite possibly the best decision I had ever made.