Harry Potter One Shots [x Reader]

Neville Longbottom

Title: Lost and Found

Pairing: Neville Longbottom x Gryffindor!reader

Summary: On your 16th birthday, everyone receives an identical object that you share with your soulmate. As everyone you know finds their soulmates, you are nowhere close to finding yours. How could you know that your soulmate happens to be the clumsy boy who had a habit for losing everything?

Word Count: 1.8k

You were tired. It had been a long day that you had feared at one point would never end. First it was Advanced Potions that was difficult to keep up with - Professor Slughorn was a vast contrast to your previous potions master, but the Draught of Living Death was frustrating and impossible for you to make. You couldn't believe you had gotten an Outstanding on your OWLs last year when you couldn't keep up on your very first day.

After Lunch you had Advanced Transfiguration and Advanced Herbology back to back. The exhaustion you had stumbling into the Great Hall for dinner after your classes was mind-numbing. Transfiguration with McGonagall wasn't easy and the Advanced class was no easier than potions. Your Head of House was strict and as her class's difficulty grew, so it seemed did her strictness. Still, no matter how demanding her class was this year, you enjoyed every moment of it. Herbology after, however, wasn't something that came as easily to you.

When it came to Herbology, you were never naturally inclined to the study but you were required to take it for your NEWTs next year to qualify for Auror training. Despite your lack of prowess in Herbology, you found yourself looking forward to spending several hours in a humid greenhouse with specks of dirt that would inevitably end up smeared across your cheeks. The very idea was your worst nightmare - this was melodramatic, perhaps, but it was the least ideal way to spend your time. So why, then was it that you found yourself not minding Herbology one bit as long as a certain someone was there? The answer, or rather the person, you may ask?

Neville Longbottom. The mugginess of the greenhouse that made your hair frizz, no matter what you did to it that morning to prevent it, and the sweat it made drip down your forehead that would always drip all the way down your neck, not to mention the dirt that would end up smeared around your cheeks in your pointless attempts to rid the sweat from your face - all of it didn't matter once you saw him. With your frizzy hair and sweaty face smudged with dirt, you were sure you looked anything but a vision but Neville? With his eagerness and natural inclination at the study you were hopeless at and the way his eyes shined with excitement and passion? You thought him a vision. Even with the sweat and dirt that found its way onto his face, you thought that unlike you he never looked better than when he was working on his plants. You wouldn't admit it to anyone that you thought him this, though. Not when the circumstances weren't in your favor.

You liked Neville - really, you did. If the circumstances were different you'd risk it all and tell him how you feel. But the circumstances weren't different, though because this was a world where witches and wizards had soulmates. Soulmates were a very fickle thing, you had found out this school year. When you received the package from the Ministry this summer before your sixth year, you were thrilled. The excitement didn't last for long, though, when you got to Hogwarts that September and found that people were finding their soulmates with ease. You, on the other hand, had no such luck. No one else had what you received in the mail and this made you feel glum everytime you were reminded of the fact.

Every time you saw him - whether it's in Herbology where he was in all his glory, the Great Hall where he laughed with Dean, or in the Common Room where he sat quietly and was always reading a new Herbology book - you were plagued by the small bracelet on your wrist. The thin, tan, braided leather bracelet that hung on your left wrist was a constant reminder that even if Neville didn't have someone, he could never be yours. The reminder had a nasty habit of bringing a frown on your face. It shouldn't bother you, really. Soulmates were foolproof and whoever was out there with the bracelet that was identical to yours was meant to be yours. Still, you thought nearly every day, no one could be better than Neville. Maybe he was too good, you thought.