When Neville had agreed to participate in a "scientific experiment," he hadn't really thought it through. Smart, pretty, kind Hermione Granger had asked for his help, and who was he to deny her?

It really was hard to say no when she turned those big, bright eyes on you.

So he'd agreed, without really asking for further information. He'd thought maybe she would have some questions about plants, that she'd want to study and observe certain flora for Herbology or something.

That was not the case.

He met her behind greenhouse two. It was a Hogsmeade weekend and they pretty much had the grounds to themselves.

He'd been waiting no more than a minute when she came bustling up, arms full of notebooks and a small bag making a mysterious clink noise like glass jars being jostled.

"Hello, Neville! Thank you so much for helping me with this. I very much appreciate it. No one else could be bothered, you see, and I really wanted hands-on experience—books are wonderful but there's only so much you can learn from a page, after all, and with NEWTS coming up—"

She was speaking at a rapid-fire pace, and Neville was finding it rather hard to keep up with her as she neatly stacked the notebooks on the worktop before reaching into the bag with one hand and pulling out two small bottles, chattering all the while.

"—Anyway, these notebooks are for recording our findings. I've made columns with different categories: general observations, differences, similarities—"

On and on she went, explaining her plan. Finally, she was done, and she turned to him with an expectant look on her face.

"Any questions?"

"Well, er, what is it exactly that we're doing?"

Her brow furrowed just a bit. "Oh, didn't I tell you yesterday? I was sure I did."

She looked upset that she might have forgotten one step of whatever grand plan she had going on, so he rushed to reassure her that she probably had told him, but he was just forgetful.

She perked up at that, going into teacher mode and explaining their mission for the day.

"Polyjuice is rather limitless when it comes to intraspecies transformations. As you know, gender, age, and ethnicity can all be played with. Last week I wrote a quite in-depth essay about polyjuice for extra credit and during my research, I discovered there is very little information on what a person feels when changing from male to female, or young to old. I think it would be helpful to have that information available. In order to do that, someone needs to perform polyjuice switches in each of those categories. Professor McGonagall has agreed to help with the age difference portion. But I need someone to help me record findings for the gender switch. With so few eighth years returning, there wasn't anyone that wanted to help—though I don't know why. Being the first to record new data is a rather exciting prospect, don't you think?"

He nodded at her. He supposed he did understand what she was saying because he could admit that discovering new things about plants—both magical and mundane—gave him quite a rush.

"Yeah, okay. I'll help you."

"Great!" A beautiful smile lit up her features, and then she was turning back to the countertop to grab the notebooks, holding one out to him expectantly.

"Before we drink the potion, we need to record baseline data first. Here, write down as much as you can about what you currently see, feel, hear. Try to explain how your body feels, the height it stands at, the weight of your limbs. That will help us to clearly see the differences between the beginning and ending data.

"Right, okay." Taking the notebook from Hermione's outstretched hand, Neville set to writing how he currently felt in his body.

They stood side-by-side at the worktop with elbows occasionally bumping as they wrote, the scritch scritch of quills against parchment sounding loud in the silence.

When Hermione was done with her notes, she set the quill on the counter and waited patiently for him to finish.

Having done the best he could, Neville finished up and took the bottle from her hand, uncorking it. He plucked a strand of hair from his head and dropped it in, watching as Hermione did the same. His potion turned light green, a bit like the tentacles of a flitterbloom plant. He gave it a sniff. It didn't smell all that bad, something he was grateful for because it would be rather embarrassing if Hermione had to drink what was essentially the essence of himself and it turned out he stank like stinksap.

"Ready?" he asked, waiting for the go-ahead from Hermione.

She nodded, switching bottles with him before clinking her glass to his in a cheeky toast and tipping it to her lips.

She looked so pretty like that, elegant neck curving back, pink lips pursed around the glass.

Get ahold of yourself, mate. This is about science.