Author's Note: Just a little one shot from Neville's PoV set sometime during Half Blood Prince. H/Hr and N/G

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the related characters.

Neville knows people underestimate him. Neville is smarter than anyone gives him credit for, and it's been years since he really believed he was stupid. Sometimes though, he likes to play the stupid bumbling one, the one who always fails, because he learns more that way. Not about anything academic, but about people. No one ever tries to put on a front for him, no one bothers to try and impress him or watches what they say, he is "just Neville" after all, and he likes it that way.

It doesn't hurt that he has become good at reading people. Maybe it comes from his knowledge, his firm belief, that a gum wrapper is a sign of the love his mother can't express. Maybe it's because he has learned that when his grandmother is tough on him, it really means she just wants the best for him. Whatever the reason, Neville has come to pride himself on his ability to listen to what it isn't being said, to see in others what they can't see in themselves.

That is why, despite his long standing infatuation with Ginny Weasley, he just smiles to himself as he watches her desperately trying to attract Harry Potter. Neville knows Ginny has to grow up a little and has to work out her 6 year crush on Harry before she can really be with anyone else. He knows that once she does, she will see what has been there all along, who has been there all along and who has always seen her as beautiful. He also knows that her little fling with Harry will never last. This isn't just wishful thinking on his part; Neville saw something no one else did, something he's never shared with anyone, because they have to figure it out for themselves.

Last year, in the Department of Mysteries, the group had been split up, and Neville had been with Harry and Hermione. He had seen the way they worked together, the way the instinctively reached for one another. Then he saw he saw it-the affirmation of something he'd been wondering for years. Hermione had been struck by a curse, and fallen to the ground. Harry fell to his knees at her side instantly crying her name, when Neville looked over he saw sheer terror and panic on Harry's face. Harry's hand was on her shoulder, but his eyes where everywhere but her face, as though he couldn't bear to look. Neville had been stuck in the face by a death eater, his nose broken, but despite the pain he was in, he was sure that somehow, Harry was hurting more.

There was a crash and Harry took the opportunity to shoot a curse at the death eater responsible for Hermione's collapse, then he had started shaking her,

"Hermione, Hermione please wake up," Neville had never seen Harry so scared or helpless looking. Neville reached over and took Hermione's wrist,

"That's a pulse Harry, I'm sure it is" He said. Neville thought Harry would faint with relief.

"So she's alive?" Harry asked.

"Yeah I think so" Neville said.

That was how Neville knew that Harry was in love with Hermione. He knew what he others only suspected. Like Ron Weasley with his jealous glances when Harry and Hermione talked, heads almost touching, or the way he had looked positively ill the day Neville had overheard Hermione saying that Harry had, "never been more fanciable." Or Cho Chang, who Neville once heard complain bitterly about the amount of time Harry and Hermione spent together. Or even Ginny who seemed to like Hermione less and less the closer she got to "getting" Harry.

So Neville just holds his picture of him and Ginny at the Yule Ball, a picture he happens to know Ginny has in a frame on her nightstand, and waits.