InsaneJournal

Wear Old Robes (ALTL 2) (Neville/James, R)
Title: Wear Old Robes
Pairing: Neville/James
Rating: R
Word Count: 2218
Warnings: DH spoilers, chan.
Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's.
Summary: James serves detention with Professor Longbottom. Neville finds himself easily distracted.
Notes: This is a sequel to A Lot to Learn. More soon.

Neville sometimes liked to take his dinner in the greenhouses. It was nice to be alone, with only the plants for company, after a day spent surrounded by the noise and franticness that came through his door in waves with his students. He sat on a large, flat rock in his own private herb garden, surrounded by sage and thyme and lovage. He inhaled deeply as he ate, the scents of the herbs, mundane though they might have been, calming his senses and restoring his sense of place.

His light dinner finished, Neville vanished his plate and closed his eyes. It was quiet. He imagined he could hear shouts and running footsteps in the hallways inside the castle, students making their way from the library and the Great Hall to their common rooms, congregating as they always did at the end of the day.

He wondered where James was.

As hard as Neville had tried, he hadn't been able to dismiss thoughts of James from his mind. It wasn't as though he had a thing for his students, but during each class of the day there had been a moment—a snatch of laughter that sounded like James's, a dark head bent over a plant, a flash of green eyes—and it was James everywhere, all day long. Neville knew logically that it was his own residual guilt exacerbating these instances, but that really didn't make him feel any better. Each time, he'd had to turn away from the student in question, the one from each class who inadvertently reminded him of his own perversity.

And then of course there had been James himself, right after lunch as he'd promised, arriving at the centre of his usual tight knot of friends. Neville had smiled, and relief washed across James's face.

What they'd done—it was over, and Neville wasn't going to treat James any differently than he treated any other student.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

But he found himself lingering too long near James and his partner as they worked, bending close to watch the boy, fascinated by the pale hand that not twenty-four hours before had been wrapped around Neville's cock now wrapped around an ordinary pair of shears.

And as the last rays of the day's light filtered through the roof of the greenhouse, Neville sighed and leaned forward, pressing his palm flat to the earth. And though the Dirigible Plum bush where he had defiled James for the second time was a full greenhouse away, Neville was certain the ground felt warmer, more alive.

He shook his head. Letting his imagination take over was a dangerous notion. It was the same dirt that had always been there, no more alive than it had ever been before.

Neville pushed a finger deep into the earth and thought of James.

Dammit.

He really had only meant to help the boy, to answer his questions, to ease his confusion. He hadn't hurt James—yet—but the fallout from this couldn't possibly be good. Neville had been so upset with himself after that day in the woods when James had kissed him out of nowhere, clinging and clutching in a little copse of trees.

He could tell himself he shouldn't have (Shouldn't shouldn't shouldn't have) a million times over but that wouldn't fix anything. And molesting the boy in the greenhouse—he was a student; they were at school for god's sake!—wasn't exactly a step on the path to redemption.

Neville shook himself. No use dwelling on what had been done. From now on he could simply never do it again. A corner of Neville's mouth twisted into a parody of a smile.

"So easy not to do something," he muttered to himself, standing and stretching and brushing dust from his robes, "You simply don't do it."

Temptation won't let you off that easily, said the voice in the back of his head, the one that always sounded like a perverse combination of his gran and Hermione Granger and Professor McGonagall.

"You simply don't do it," he repeated, out loud, and he made his way into his quarters and lit a small fire in the grate. The night was cool for September, and Neville tended to need extra warmth these days anyway.

Surely by now all the students had congregated in their common rooms. Perhaps a few were already drifting up to bed, the excitement of the first week of school wearing off, replaced by exhaustion.

Neville wondered where exactly James was.

The boy simply wouldn't leave him alone.

Neville sighed and sat on his bed, pulling off his boots. James was probably in the common room, surrounded by that same knot of friends he always kept so close, laughing and telling stories, as cocksure as he always was in public.

But Neville knew better. James flirted as shamelessly as only the fifteen-year-old-son of Harry Potter could do, replacing his uncertainty with bravado, his true nature with one deemed more acceptable by the wizarding world.

"Oh, James," Neville muttered, pausing in his undressing to rub his hands over his face, "Don't take after your father, James. It's hard enough when you're honest with yourself."

He sat with his eyes closed for a moment before shaking thoughts of James from his head and finishing dressing for bed.

He'd talk to the boy in the morning.

***

Neville didn't have to go looking for James—James found him. He strolled into the greenhouse where Neville was perched on a stool, going over the next class's lesson plan. James flapped a slip of paper at Neville and grinned like a fool.

"I've got detention," he said, "With you. Tonight."

Neville furrowed his brow and pushed his reading glasses up on his nose. "What did you do?"

James shrugged. "Wasn't paying attention in Potions. Might've sort of blown up my cauldron. Um, and my table."

Neville nodded slowly.

"And my book. And set Lucy Creevey's robes on fire."

Neville stopped nodding and raised his eyebrows. "And why, after all that, do you have detention with me?"

James grinned. "Because Professor Slughorn likes me. He likes my brother more, which is rubbish, just because he's a Slytherin, but he likes me anyway and he said I had to have detention but I could choose where. And so—"

"And so you chose to have it with me."

"Right."

Neville nodded again and didn't say anything for a long moment. James's grin faltered only a little.

"Right. I want to make one thing clear, James. If you're going to have detention with me, you're going to be working. Not mucking about. You can turn over the compost heap, and you can weed the beds, and you can help me put together a list of ingredients that Professor Slughorn's ordered. There's plenty to do."

"I—" James paused and bit his lower lip, dragging his teeth across it.

"What is it?" Damn, his voice had been too gentle. Neville really needed to learn how to channel some of his old professors—McGonagall, or even Snape if things got too out of hand.

"I just thought if I was in here with you tonight that we could talk a little."

Neville glanced at the door. "The James Potter version of talking?"

"Aw, Professor, come on, that's not fair."

"It's an absolutely fair question."

James kicked at the ground and scowled. "I only wanted to talk, honestly."

Neville sighed and appraised the boy.

"Eight o'clock tonight," he said, "Wear old robes."

***

The first thirty minutes of detention went well. James helped Neville turn the compost heap, then enthusiastically weeded several plant beds while Neville sat hunched over the nearby work table, marking essays.

"That mine?" came a voice just over Neville's shoulder, and Neville jumped and covered the paper as if he were the student, not the professor, and he'd been caught cheating on a test.

"That my essay, Professor?"

Neville turned on his stool, pushing his reading glasses up on his nose. James rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and grinned.

"Wasn't very nice of you to set an essay the first day of class."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I mean! Essays in Herbology! It's just that, you know, it's usually more…physical stuff. Digging, and…well, it just wasn't very nice to make up spend half the class time writing an essay. You didn't even warn us. Could've."

Neville shook his head and grinned a little in spite of himself. Cheeky bugger. Neville blew out a breath and shook his head again. What he didn't tell James was that he'd decided on the essay approximately five seconds after he had realised he couldn't take another moment of James's voice ringing out, James's fingers stroking a leaf, James's hands covered in clinging earth, James's robes stretched tightly across his shoulders when James reached across for a trowel.

It just wouldn't do.

"Yes, this is your essay," Neville replied, "And…you've done well."

James smiled and took a step towards Neville. "How well?"

Oh god, step away, boy.

"Very…er, very well indeed." Somewhere in the back of his head Neville was aware he probably sounded like an idiot, but he let that thought go for the moment—he was too focussed on James, who had stepped closer still, wringing his hands just slightly.

"I try really hard in your class, you know," James said then, his voice peculiarly husky, his hands still fidgeting.

Neville swallowed.

"I know you do."

Their conversation was inane at best, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that they were very close now, Neville perched on his stool, tensing, James blinking rapidly behind his glasses and wiping his hands on his robes.

Neville took his own glasses off, though he was hardly aware of the gesture, and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms over his knees.

What was this boy—this child—doing to him?

"Professor?" James's voice was little more than a whisper. Neville could hardly answer—his throat had gone dry. Instead, he raised his eyebrows.

"Will, um, will you—kiss me? Please?"

James surged forward on the last word so that he stood between Neville's knees and he placed a hand on either of Neville's thighs.

Neville leaned back—though not as far back as he should probably have done—and gripped the seat of his stool.

"James, no. I can't."

But Neville was lying, and he knew it, for even as he said the words, one of his hands unclenched itself from the stool and moved to cover James's on Neville's thigh.

Neville wasn't sure if James moved his hand or if Neville moved it for him, but the hand moved, regardless, smoothing a path across Neville's thigh to the juncture where all the blood in Neville's body was currently rushing.

James turned his hand and cupped Neville in a way that such a young boy should not have known how to do. Neville pressed forward, moaning, and slipped a hand behind James's neck, pulling the boy forward into (oh, god…) a clumsy kiss.

"Professor, please let me—want to see—" panted James, his mouth hot against Neville's, and he opened Neville's robes, fumbled with the zip of Neville's trousers, then pressed tentative fingers forward to graze over Neville's cotton-clad (and dammit, there was no denying it now…) erection.

It was brilliant, and it was hot, and it was nostalgic, and it was—no, no, no!

"James, no!" Neville wrenched his body away from James's exploring fingertips, zipping his trousers and arranging his robes in his lap.

"Professor—Neville—please, please don't say no!" James clung to the front of Neville's robes, pathetic and demanding and young. Neville stared, eyes wide, biting his lip.

"I—I need to know more. Need you to show me. You're the only one I can trust, Professor, and I already know you and you've been around forever and I—I need to know what to do." James's voice had regained its normal pitch, and his grip on Neville's robes front had slackened.

"Seriously, Professor. You said you had someone who—who showed you. Taught you. Whichever. Both. And he helped you, didn't he? Can't you be him for me?"

Neville melted.

It was an awful idea. There had never been a worse one. And yet—somehow—Neville found himself agreeing to the arrangement as he pried James's fingers from his robes and set himself to rights.

"Tomorrow night, then?" James asked from a respectable distance as Neville refastened his robes for the third time, trying to do them up properly despite his shaking fingers.

"Yes," agreed Neville, "tomorrow night. Eight o'clock. Let's meet in my off…no, here. In the greenhouse is fine."

James nodded and stood still as if he were waiting for something.

"Oh," Neville said, realising, "Your detention is finished. You may go."

James smiled. "Thanks, Professor. Seriously, thank you. Um. Tomorrow, then."

Neville waited until James was at the greenhouse door before he spoke again.

"James?"

"Yes, Professor?"

Neville swallowed.

"Wear old robes."