"Hi Neville, forgotten to jump that stair again?" The boy looked up–perhaps because he was involved so little in subsequent events, Harry remembered that moment a long time.

"Could’ve sworn it was the fifteenth-Oh, Hermione!"

Of course, Neville with his foot through a trick step was not unusual, but the way his round face lit up as he spoke, to be swiftly dimmed on Hermione just giving an awkward smile, was a bit odd. Harry and Ron hauled Neville out of the step, but he didn’t look at them.

"You alright mate?" Neville did look up, and gave a curiously un-Nevillelike smile, with all his normal earnestness, but more reserve. Also, an element of weariness that even his omnipresent predisposition towards making a pig’s breakfast of things had never given rise to.

"Suppose it could be worse."

Neville strode unhurriedly up the steps. Harry looked round, and saw Ron was watching what he was as well. Both turned round to look at Hermione.

"Well?"

"Thought he’d got over it..." Hermione gave Ron a withering look.

"He asked me out two years ago, and it was the last thing on his mind yesterday...but since when has Neville Longbottom strode?"

"Search me, maybe the thing...you know, in the ministry...affected him a bit."

"Yeah," Harry distractedly murmured, "Maybe they hit him with a spell we didn’t notice..." He received an equally withering look.

"Neville’s changed as much as us-he certainly hasn’t been asleep the last five years."

Doing homework that night in the common room, none of the three friends could resist shooting the odd glance in Neville’s direction. Whereas he would usually be hanging round the edge of an established conversation, hoping that some kindly soul would try and include him, tonight he was sat in an armchair–and he did have the posture Neville’s grandmother had drilled into him from age one–gazing into the fire. Harry thought Trevor seemed unusually jumpy-even by his normal standards-round Neville, but it must have been his imagination, because the toad was croaking away quite happily by the time Neville gathered him up and went to bed, with a last glance in Hermione’s direction. Ron noticed, and grinned.

"If Krum had never asked you out..."

"He’s sweet, but I really couldn’t imagine it. Don’t ask me who he will end up–" She stopped dead.

Neville Longbottom climbed through the portrait hole. With a carefree ‘hello’ to the last three students in the common room, he ambled across the room, with the customary puzzled expression that heralded an oncoming Trevor-hunt, then stopped, adopting his familiar ‘Er...it’s me isn’t it?’ face.

"Are you three alright? I just fell down the stairs and knocked myself out, it’s ok, but I’ve been in the hospital wing all this..." Neville tailed off under the triple gaze of his three most respected people ever.

"Time-turner." Hermione eventually stated.

"What? Has someone been using one, this isn’t anything to do with...is it...?" Neville’s face had always been open as a book, and he was palatably more confused than them. Harry and Ron took off towards the boy’s dorm, Neville strolling bemusedly after them. Hermione wondered afterwards if she should have thought to stop him, but if he’d ignored her, what could she have done?