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It all started with a mistranslation. In English, ‘love’ was a flexible word: "I love treacle tart" and "I love Ron Weasley" used it in the same way. But the language of Ancient Runes was more precise — solaz meant liking and selaz meant romantic love, and if you mixed up the two, you’d end up saying you were infatuated with pumpkin juice.
So when Neville handed Hermione’s dictionary back, with the note hel selaz scrawled on top — I love you romantically — Hermione flushed and handed the dictionary back.
Read the definitions! she mouthed.
Neville seemed to shrink under Hermione’s glare. He took the dictionary back, but fumbled his grip, and the book went crashing to the floor.
Half the class looked up from their papers. Hermione winced.
“Oh!”
Professor Babbling was behind them, staring at the dictionary, her mouth in a round ‘o’. She bent to pick it up, her eyes tracing the scribbled note, the misused runes gleaming in silver ink. Her lips curved in a soft, sweet smile. “Young love!”
Hermione’s mouth dropped in horror.
“I remember the days when I…” Professor Babbling trailed off dreamily, then blinked and looked down at them. She touched them each on the shoulder. “You two are adorable together.”
The blackboard was crammed with runes for Transfiguration — form, morph, mass. But when the class had finished translating them, Professor Babbling wrote out a new set with a distinctly different theme: love, soul, destiny. As she walked between the desks, she seemed to be humming love songs under her breath…
Hermione refused to look at Neville for the rest of the class.
Terry Boot smirked. “Ancient Runes, the language of love, eh?”
The corridor was noisy with chattering students, but Hermione still heard the odd squeak behind her. It sounded like Neville.
“‘No written English’ is a big jump in difficulty,” said Hermione snippily. “And I seem to remember you mixing up bladder and stomach last week.”
“Well —”
“I wrote it,” said Neville.
Hermione glanced back.
“I wrote the words, not Hermione.” Neville’s voice wavered slightly. “You should be poking fun at me.”
Terry glanced between them uncertainly. “I didn’t mean to make fun of anyone…”
Indeed, it was hard to be in the mood for joking with OWLs looming closer every week. And, of course, Hermione was busier than anyone. They might be satisfied with knowing the star charts “more or less,” and the laws of Transfiguration “in broad strokes,” but she was going to know everything.
And so she forgot entirely about the Mistranslation Incident until the next Ancient Runes class. There, as they waited in front of the classroom door, she happened to glance at Neville, whose face was tinged with pink, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
Hermione remembered everything and felt her cheeks redden, too. All the students knew it had been an accident, but Professor Babbling…. What would she say if she saw them sitting apart?
… Maybe it’d be easier to just… sit next to Neville again.
And again.
And again.
“Wait a minute,” said Terry, after the sixth time. He was walking backwards down the hall, looking between the two of them. “You guys aren’t actually —?”
“No!” said Hermione.
“... No,” repeated Neville, trailing behind her.
Hermione realized how it must look, with her tutoring Neville in Potions and Charms and Astronomy as well. She’d been doing that for years without issue, but now that the idea of romance had been planted…
And what if — what if Ron got the wrong idea? No, no, no! Terry and Michael could think what they wanted, but Ron —!
For days, Hermione dithered. It was absolutely necessary to clear things up with Ron, definitely. But no, wait, what if he already knew it was fake, and bringing it up only made things unnecessarily awkward?
But when she finally gathered the courage to raise the subject, Ron just gave a warm laugh.
“Dean told me all about it! It’s brilliant.”
Ron’s smile was dazzling. His eyes were so blue, and his freckles were so fetching, and his socks were mismatched — one grey, one a vivid emerald green — goofy on anyone else, but on him, a picture of perfection. For the rest of the day, Hermione thought about that smile, and wondered how this boy alone, out of hundreds of Hogwarts boys, could pull off one green sock and look like a model.
After that, Hermione found she was no longer so embarrassed about the Mistranslation Incident. Everyone knew it had just been a mistake, so what was the big deal? The charade was only for Professor Babbling’s benefit, because Babbling was sweet and sappy and no one wanted to disappoint her.
As Hermione thought about it, she found herself eyeing Neville across the common room. Neville looked away quickly — had he been watching her too? Perhaps the mistranslation was on his mind. Perhaps it was bothering him.
That evening, Hermione cornered him by the fireplace.
“Neville,” she said firmly. The rest of the students had gone to bed, leaving behind only a few sleepy first-years pulling an all-nighter on the distant couch.
“I was thinking,” said Hermione, “that we could pretend to have broken up over the summer. We’ll tell her we’re taking a break to focus on our studies, but we’re still great friends — which will be true. Then everything will go back to normal.”
“Yeah.” Neville gave an odd smile — it looked almost sad. “Yeah, we could do that.”
He was looking at her strangely.
“So, it’s settled, then?” said Hermione.
Neville continued to stare. His eyes were a dull green, she noticed, and she didn’t think that his gaze had ever pierced her like that, with the sort of concentration usually reserved for textbooks.
He swallowed. “Yeah, it’s settled.”
“Okay.”
She wondered if the stress of OWL preparations was getting to him.
“We can go over the Charms list again if you want,” said Hermione, reaching for her bag. “But don’t worry, everyone says that Charms is one of the easiest OWLs, and —”
“Hermione.” Neville’s voice sounded strange.
“Yes?”
“The translation wasn’t an accident.”
… What? Hermione had no idea what he was talking about. It sounded like he was saying that he’d meant to write that he loved her romantically… But that couldn’t be right, because he wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t blushing — he was saying it as calmly as if he was explaining his word choice on a Potions essay.
“Pardon?” said Hermione.
“It wasn’t an accident…” Neville glanced away, as if he’d just become aware of what he was saying. “I know the two different runes for love, and I used the one that I meant to use. But you were never supposed to know —”
“What?” Hermione was confused. “Then why write it out —”
“You were supposed to figure it had been a mistake — and then I’d have said it, I’d have said my feelings, without bothering you. But then…”
Hermione was lost for words.
“I’m sorry.” Neville crumbled into himself. “Oh, Merlin, I’ve made such a mess —”
“Neville!”
“I shouldn’t have said anything —”
Hermione became aware of him — his thin frame, engulfed in a fuzzy green sweater, swallowed by the armchair; his knuckles, scraped and scratched from hours in the greenhouse; his fingers, pressed into his lap so hard that the tips had turned white.
And all she could think was that the sight of him did not make her heart pound. If it had been Ron in that chair — if it had been Ron —! But it was only Neville, and when she looked at him, she felt only a soft, tender pity.
“Neville,” she whispered, “I…”
Neville closed his eyes. “I know.”
Hermione grabbed his clammy hands, pulled him from his seat, and drew him into a hug. His green sweater scratched against her neck as she squeezed.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed.
“I — I never knew how easy it was to fall in love with you.” His voice cracked. “But it’s easy, Hermione, it’s so, so easy —” He swallowed. “But I’ve caused you so much trouble. I’ve —”
“It’s okay,” Hermione murmured. “It’s okay.”
They stood like that for a long time, her face buried in his sweater, him standing stiff in her arms. He seemed to be shivering, and Hermione wanted to hold him tight and calm his trembling. The first-years were still sitting on the couch, and the fire had burnt down to embers, and it was late and she had to get up early the next morning for Transfiguration. But her awareness of that was dim and distant. In her mind’s eye, she saw the runes on that little scrap of parchment: I love you, written in silvery ink that gleamed like unicorn hair.
Slowly, Hermione drew away. Neville’s cheeks were streaked with tears, and his face trembled and twitched, but there was a quiet calmness in his eyes.
His lips curved into a sad smile. “Well… now I’ve told you for real.”
“It was brave,” said Hermione quietly.
“Ron’s a lucky boy.”
“Ron?”
It took her a moment to connect the dots. She flushed.
“We’re only friends —”
Neville’s smile broadened. “No, you’re not —”
“We are!”
Neville put a dramatic hand to his chest and formed his lips into a round ‘o’ — and despite the tears that streaked his face, the resemblance was striking.
“Young love!”