Special delivery for its_art Title:The One That Got Away Author: Recipient's LJ name:its_art Pairing(s): Neville/Lavender Rating: NC-17 Summary How a mild-mannered Herbology Professor landed himself a truly wicked witch Word Count: 5437 Warnings/Content: Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be. Author's/Artist's notes: Grateful thanks to my beta, who has saved you from an overabundance of dashes, commas and run-on sentences. My recipient asked for (among other things) dirty talk, teasing, semi-public sex, some mention of Valentine's Day, take charge Neville, brunette Lavender, sex in the greenhouse, Lavender being a bit of a fashionista, Professor Neville, Lavender being scarred from Greyback is okay, but not necessary. If she is, have it on her back or breasts. I hope this works for you, dear recipient. I sure had fun writing it!
Rain fell in cold, dreary sheets against the windowpane of The Wicked Witch, but inside, everything was light and colour and steamy heat and noise. Had anyone been foolish enough to stand at the window peering in, they would probably have thanked their lucky stars and any god they believed in that they had, because Lavender Brown was dancing, and dancing in a way she only would have done if she'd known no one was watching.
Now granted, there were those that might have said that Lavender Brown rather liked attention, and even Lavender Brown would have admitted she did, and thus, always seemed to walk through life as if she knew everyone in the room was watching her. Because they so totally were. But this was Lavender Brown not caring whether everyone was watching her, and therein lay the difference. She was completely unselfconscious, and had lost herself in the rhythm of the music, and she was singing along with it, completely off-key. Her hips were shaking, her stockinged feet were moving across the floor, and her normally and carefully styled hair was flying all over the place. It was bloody beautiful.
Or at least that was what Neville Longbottom, the only person on earth foolish enough to be standing in a torrential rain, peering through the window of a women's clothing shop, thought.
He hadn't meant to look in. Oh, he'd meant to stop by six months ago at her gala opening, but always seemed to find an reason not to. He could easily have used the excuse that he was locked away in his greenhouses, half a country away, but he managed to make it down to the Leaky for a pint with Dean and Seamus often enough. It wasn't that he didn't like Lavender; in fact, he suspected he rather liked her more than most girls. And it wasn't as though he had trouble talking to girls either. He managed to summon up enough charm (or perhaps it was simply him taking advantage of leftover hero worship) on a regular basis to have a perfectly respectable sex life, even if he was no Seamus Finnegan, self-proclaimed man-whore.
It was just that Lavender was…well, there was so much of her. Not that she was physically large, (in fact, she was somewhat small in stature) but the force of her personality seemed to fill every room she was in. And then there was that smile of hers, the one that always made its lucky recipients feel as if they'd been hit by beams of bloody sunshine and rainbows. Under its influence, he was turned back into that nervous firstie who was always tripping over his own feet.
Of course, standing in the rain, he wasn't even that. He was worse; he was a peeping Tom, a stalker, a creep. And just as this thought occurred to him, he caught her eye through the steam-blurred glass, and she was smiling and waving, and he was utterly mortified but at that point, there was just no help for it. He had to go in.
She launched herself at him as he came through the door, a warm, brightly coloured, witch-sized cannonball, drenching herself as she threw her arms around his neck.
"Neville!" she cried, and Neville pictured that firstie again, and that poor kid would never have imagined that anyone would say his name with such enthusiasm in their voice, let again the prettiest girl in his year. "I was wondering when you were going to drop by."
"I just…I was shopping for a present for Gran," Neville said, just in case she thought that he made a habit of spying at people through windows, though as he looked around, he sort of wished he hadn't. The shop was brilliant, really, but highly unlikely to provide anything his Grandmother would wear in public. In fact, now that he looked around, it seemed that Lavender was just as concerned about what girls wore under their clothes as the clothes themselves.
And anyway, Lavender's smile faltered for a brief moment as the words left his mouth, though it brightened back up soon enough. "Your Gran, huh? Valentines present?"
"Oh, no!" he said, having completely forgot the holiday. "Her birthday."
"Well, we've got some brooches in; sort of Victorian, and some of them have rather nice stones on them. And I've got shawls and gloves…no vulture hats, though," she added with a wink.
"No, I shouldn't think you would." Neville laughed, but Lavender was moving toward the back already, picking up vivid bits of silky fabric and glittery objects along the way. "I meant to stop by, but-"
"Oh, I've heard," Lavender said, pulling a velvet shawl off a high shelf. "Professor Longbottom, is it now? Makes me feel a bit pervy, actually."
"Perv-?" Neville broke off, coughing softly, his cheeks on fire. "Oh. Oh."
"I always loved making you blush." Lavender grinned, approaching him once more. "So, a shawl is always good. We haven't got all that many, but this one has got some lovely greens and blues in it."
"Gran likes green, I think. Her cloak-"
"I remember," Lavender said. "Or there's this brooch, I thought you might like it because of the rose engraved in it. Of course, it might not be her favorite flower-"
"Dahlias," he said automatically.
"Ooh, those are nice, she said. "Very dramatic. Personally, I like Amaryllis."
"I'd have thought-"
"Lavender? Hate the stuff. Smells up the whole flat. And I've never had a date that didn't bring it."
Now there was something to file away for future reference., Neville thought. Not that he ever planned to do something about it. But it was interesting to think about. It was natural enough to associate her with her namesake flower, and there was something sort of fitting about something that looked so delicate and insubstantial but had such powerful qualities, too. Of course, now she'd got him thinking about a parade of men showing up at her door with purple bouquets, each better looking and more interesting than the last. "Somehow I can't imagine Ron ever brought you lavender."
"Oh, heavens, no. The most I ever got from him was influenza."
Neville let out a bark of laughter which he promptly choked on after her next words.
"Of course, if it was you, I probably wouldn't mind so much," she said, looking at him from under her lashes. "Especially if you grew it yourself. Every time I looked at it, I'd just be imagining you in the hothouse, tending to a patch of lavender, shirt off, dripping with sweat-"
"Lavender!" he said, certain he was beet red. Obviously, she'd never have said anything of the sort if she'd actually seen him without his shirt off...but then again she had, hadn't she?
She grinned. "I really do love making you blush. So how about it?"
"How about what?"
"Showing up at my door with an armful of flowers. Or no flowers, if you like. The showing up is what's important. I've missed you."
"Oh. Right. Me too," he said. "Yeah, that'd be...brilliant."
"I close at six, and I live in the flat upstairs. Plenty of time for you to finish your shopping. Unless you wanted me to start bringing out the corsets and garter belts?
"Huh?"
"Oh, I know they're not particularly grandmotherly, but far be it from me to suggest that a seventy-something woman doesn't like to feel sexy under her clothes. Though probably not the best gift from a grandson."
"Oh, right," he said. "I was sort of thinking of a book."
"Perfume," she said. "Go over to Enchanting Elixirs. Georgiana's amazing, I'm convinced she's got some sort of a spell for knowing what will suit people. I just wish she'd pass it along."
"Right. That's not a bad idea, I'll-"
"See me at seven thirty? That'll be plenty of time for me to get gorgeous for you."
"You already are," he found himself saying, and had the pleasure of noticing that he'd made her blush for a change.
As he walked out the door, confronted by a cold, wet blast, he blinked, still a bit bewildered at that turn of events. Somehow, the universe had turned inside out, and he, Neville Longbottom, had the very same chance he had wasted years before dropped on his lap again. He didn't mean to blow it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Well, thank goodness for water-repelling charms," Lavender said, slipping out of her raindrop-dusted coat. She turned and smiled at Neville over her shoulder, her cheeks pink from the cold, wet dash down the alley. As she hung the coat on the hook, Neville took the opportunity he hadn't had at the restaurant to look his fill at her in that dress, the one that had nearly made his eyes bulge out of their sockets when he'd come to pick her up. It looked even better from behind, and as his eyes traveled up to her shoulder, he noticed that the open back and shoulders, rather than hiding the scars he'd heard tell of, seemed to be highlighting them, if anything.
And he smiled.
'Silly, shallow' Lavender, whose self-esteem was bound to be ruined by her horrifying injuries, instead seemed to be wearing them as proudly as some people wore their body art. And knowing what he knew about her, he ought not to have been surprised.
"I'm sorry about Mandy and Ernie," he said, unsure whether to take off his own cloak. "I didn't think they'd take me up on it."
"Oh, no, that was fun," she said. She reached up and began taking his cloak off. Neville remembered her repeating the gesture dozens of times, only it wasn't a cloak, it was robes, and she did it to nearly everyone, nagging them about hanging up their robes on the hooks she'd put up on the walls, making sure that they all took care of their clothes during their weeks of enforced togetherness. Everybody had their roles--the Ravenclaws were responsible for making sure they kept up their studies, and the Hufflepuffs were responsible for keeping the place neat and organized, (Ernie, specifically had been the one to tend to their wounds and sniffles to the best of his ability; no wonder he became a Healer). Lavender and Parvati had taken on the laundry while Seamus and Neville had been the ones who made sure that somehow, some way, they were all fed, sometimes even attempting to prepare the food. (Seamus' first attempt at turning potatoes into chips was a story for the ages). The sole Slytherin spent most of his time (when not scowling) fiddling with the wireless the room provided and generally annoying them all. They forgave him, however, when he finally found Potterwatch. "It's funny, isn't it, how they all still feel like family? And it wasn't long, just a few weeks, really, but I can still smell his nasty socks and hear the way he sang in his sleep laugh and the way she used to tell us ghost stories before we went to sleep."
"I know," Neville said. "It was-"
"You want to say it was great, only it wasn't, mostly; it was scary and terrible things happened. Even so-"
"You sort of miss it, right?"
"Yes! I miss how it sort of felt like we were playing at being grown-up, though when you think about it, we'd been doing it for a while already."
"I suppose we had," he said, looking around her flat, absorbing the details. There was an abstract painting on the wall that looked very much like Parvati's work, and a small bookshelf filled with a combination of fashion design references, books on small business management and romance novels. Nearby was a table covered by a shawl very much like the one she'd showed him earlier that day, an incense holder, a tarot deck and the bouquet he'd brought, arranged in a crystal vase. He'd managed to find amaryllis, but he was never going to admit to her how much trouble it had been, nor how soaked he had become, dashing through every florist on Diagon Alley and then finally having to look further afield in the Muggle part of London. The look on her face when he'd arrived had been worth it, though.
"I miss hanging out with you, too," she said. He turned back to look at her and found she was sitting on the sofa. She smiled warmly at him and patted the cushion next to her. "Waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and looking over and seeing that your eyes were open too. You worried about us, I could see it, and you probably wondered if maybe you weren't leading us to death by starvation, or worse."
Neville dropped on the sofa rather more heavily than he'd planned. "Well, I was, sort of. We couldn't have gone on much longer than we did, and not all of us are still here today, are we?" They both frowned, thinking of Colin and Justin.
"Well, Colin took down Avery before he went, and Justin helped to hold them off long enough to get the wounded out of the Hospital wing, so I imagine they knew what they were up against well enough without having been pushed into it by you."
"I suppose you're right."
"And I can't speak for everyone, but we all wanted to do something about what was happening, it was just that none of us had the nerve to just stand up and say 'let's do something' before you did.
"Perhaps," he said. "Sometimes I suppose I just wish it had been someone else. Things haven't really been the same since, have they?"
"Well, no, we all changed; we had to. And personally, I'd much rather be known as the girl who took on the Big Bad Wolf and lived to tell about it than the stupid cow who was always mooning after Ron Weasley."
"You were more than that," Neville said, reaching out to cover her hand with his own.
"Well, I knew that, but nobody other than Parvati did."
"How is she, anyway?"
"Oh, she's fine. Still not walking completely right, and she gets these headaches, but all in all, not bad."
"Good," Neville said, and squeezed her hand.
Lavender put her head on his shoulder. She'd done it often enough during that horrible year, and it seemed natural to let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulder. The top of her head still smelled just the same, though he'd noticed that her perfume was different.
"Why didn't you come see me?" she asked quietly.
"I did." he said. "Quite a few times, those first few days--I was spending nearly as much time at the Llewellyn Ward as the Spell Damage Ward. But then Gran got discharged, and she really needed my help at home. By the time I had any free time, you were at home."
"I liked the daffodils," she said.
"Not your favorites, but-"
"Are we ever going to talk about it?"
"What?" he said, though he knew perfectly well what she was talking about. "Do you want to?"
"I've wanted to for ages," she said. "I thought-"
I was embarrassed," he interrupted hastily. "I'd tried to pretend I knew what I was doing , but when it finally came down to it...well, I made a bloody fool of myself, didn't I?"
"I knew you didn't know what you were doing," she said, shaking her head. "And I sort of liked it."
"I thought you were just trying to be nice."
"Well, I wanted to be nice to Colin, in spite of the fact that he always wanted to take my bloody picture, but I didn't offer to give him a blow job, did I?"
Neville coughed, unable to think of an appropriate response. "All right, then, maybe I thought it was gratitude, or something, or maybe you were just trying to help me sleep."
"Or maybe I just liked looking over at the next bed and seeing you there. You'd seen firsthand what they could do to us in your parents and it didn't stop you. You were the bravest of any of us, and I wanted to show how much I admired you, how much what you were doing meant to us--to me. Or maybe I liked looking over at the next bed and thinking you had lovely hands and imagining how they would feel on me. Or how much I missed your smile, now that you always had that determined look on your face and I wanted to see it again. Or maybe I liked how it made me feel when you couldn't help looking at my chest and how adorable it was when you blushed. Or how frustrated it made me when you always deflected praise back toward us, or toward Harry, or even bloody Dumbledore, even when you'd earned it, but how I sort of liked it, too. Or maybe I'm turned on by hammocks, I don't know."
"Or maybe I thought it was too good to be true and that you were probably laughing about it with Parvati the next day."
"Did you really?"
"What was I supposed to think, Lavender? You'd been laughing at me along with everyone else for years, and then suddenly a few weeks of enforced togetherness and some really brilliant talks, and suddenly I wake up to find your tongue in my mouth and your hand on my dick--I was a bit bewildered, you know? Thrilled, but bewildered."
"I didn't laugh at you," she protested, but at his raised eyebrow, she added, "Not after first year, anyway, and definitely not after you nicked one of Sprout's prize daisies for me when Binky died."
Had he actually done that? Heavens, he wondered where he had got up the nerve at that age.
"It was just so weird the next day," he said. "I probably should have talked to you. I meant to, every day. For weeks."
"Yes, you should have. I thought--well, I thought perhaps you thought I did that sort of thing all the time."
"I didn't!"
"Well, then, you should have come to see me. Once I was awake, I mean."
"I wanted to. So badly," he said. "I thought...It was weird then, too. All those people., wanting me to pretend to be this big damn hero, wanting interviews, and girls, suddenly just-"
"Throwing themselves at you?"
"Well, yeah, maybe a bit. And it all just hit me then, how badly it could have gone, the people we lost and how much worse it could have been, and Gran was really, really sick. I just wanted to be at home for a while, not talking to anyone."
"I know that feeling," she said, and she'd turned toward him, and she was watching him in a way that had his stomach doing strange things. "So you were terrified that people were all of a sudden going to expect heroism from you, and I was terrified that people were going to pity me because a werewolf apparently thought I tasted good. We really are a pair, aren't we?"
"Well you do," Neville said, reaching up to stroke her hair tentatively. "Taste good, I mean. From what I remember. Hard to blame him, I suppose."
"And I always have expected heroism from you. Or at least chivalry. Heavens, I do like making you blush."
"Well, it wasn't very chivalrous of me not to return the favour, was it?" he said, somewhat startled by his own boldness. But she would go on looking at him like that, all bright-eyed and flushed and licking her lips in a way that had him remembering how bloody brilliant her tongue had felt on him. He bent his head down, wondering what he had been so afraid of. He reached out to touch the side of her face.
"Lavender," he said, finding that the words tumbled out once he'd finally decided to just say what he'd been keeping inside. "When I was eleven, I thought you were very pretty, and very silly, and stuck-up, and an all around pain in the arse. When I was thirteen, I thought you were completely mental. But when I was fifteen, you were the reason I had to leave Potions class with my cauldron in front of me most days. You did it on purpose, didn't you? All the bending over?"
Lavender giggled, and the familiar sound sent shivers down his spine. He stroked her cheek with his thumb. "When I was sixteen, I thought you were completely mental all over again, but I also couldn't understand why I suddenly wanted to punch one of my favorite dorm mates on the nose. And when I was seventeen, I learned that you were made of more than I ever imagined you were, that you were kind, and brave and funny and that you were easy to talk to, and far cleverer than people realised. And when I'd heard that fucking monster hurt you--that I...we'd nearly lost you--well, let's just say he'll be stuck eating soup for the rest of his sorry life."
"See," she said, and her eyes were really glittering now. "Chivalrous. I should have known. I'd heard, but I didn't realise it was you."
"Well, Ron, too. I just...I just reckon I didn't want to hope that you-"
"Oh, shut up and kiss me already," she said, throwing her arms around his neck.
And he did, with considerably less reserve than had held him back the last time. Lavender's mouth opened beneath his, and she tasted just as brilliant as he remembered, but. given that it was now the twelfth girl he'd kissed, rather than his second, he had the satisfaction of knowing that she would probably like it if he nipped her lip a bit at the end and that she probably wouldn't mind all that much if he let his palm brush her breast as he moved to wrap his arms around the middle of her back. She was warm and soft, and her body was yielding beneath his, and she was kissing him back with enough enthusiasm to send his heart racing.
"Bedroom," she said, and rose to her feet.
"Yeah," he said, taking her offered hand and following her, still a little dazed. When they got through the door, she slipped away to light a candle. Her room was all bright colours and rich fabrics and it suited her perfectly, as did the flickering light that made her skin appear golden.
"You're bloody gorgeous," he said, and watched a smile spread over her face as she stood up a little straighter next to the table by the window, throwing her hair back over her shoulder in the process.
"Do you really think so?"
"As if you didn't know it."
The smile widened, and Lavender reached up to the halter around her neck, unhooking it and letting it fall to her waist. Neville whistled under his breath. Clearly, she wore her own designs, and the (what had she called it?) corset-whatsit was doing marvelous things to her breasts. Not that they'd needed much help, if memory served, and it had been serving him fairly well for some time now.
She reached behind her waist and soon she was slowly shaking her hips, letting the skirt slide down her hips and turning it into a sensual dance. Neville bit his lip, finding his body stirring already, especially once he caught sight of the lace-topped stockings covering her thighs. She stepped out of the dress, taking the time to pick it up and drape it over the back of a chair and giving him a view of her lace-covered arse as she bent over that had his throat going dry. It took him a moment to recover his senses, and he moved toward her, reaching out to grasp her by the back of his neck and crush his mouth to hers.
His hands moved desperately over silken fabric and hair and skin. "I thought it was a dream," he said. "One of dozens of others I'd had, and I hardly even got the chance to touch you. Gonna make up for it now." He bent lower to kiss his way down her neck, sliding his hand up and over the stiff seams of her corset and beyond to the soft skin that swelled over the top. Lavender moaned into his ear, her lips closing around his earlobe. He moved lower still, nipping his way over her collarbone and finally brushing his lips over the swell of her breast
"Bed," she said, but he pulled away, shaking his head. "Lean back against the window," he said, letting his thumb brush back and forth over the spot where her nipple barely peeked over the top of her corset.
"But anyone could look up and-"
"And you'd love it." He sank to his knees and Lavender, just as he'd hoped, leaned back against the rain-soaked glass. The heat of her body steamed up the glass around her, sort of like a halo, he thought and she looked down at him, biting down on her lower lip. Oh, she knew she looked good, and that anybody who looked up would think they were having a wet dream, and it completely got her off.
He moved his hands from her silk-covered knees to the lace at the top of her thighs, enjoying the way her skin twitched beneath his hands. She leaned her head against the windowpane and closed her eyes. He let his hand linger there for a moment, his thumbs wrapped around almost to the back and making faint circles, enough to have her aching for more.
Lavender opened her legs, just a bit, but instead of taking advantage of the subtle invitation, he let his hands wander up to her knickers, which he looped around his thumbs and began tugging down. She was biting her lip again, he could see, and her eyes were closed and her hand was now buried in his hair.
Neville leaned forward, kissing the top of her thigh, his hands on her hips. "Open your legs," he said, using the same tone he sometimes used on unruly students. Her eyes flew open, darker than they'd been a few moments before and she obeyed. Keeping his eyes on hers as long as possible, he leaned in again, licking his way from the soft skin at the innermost part of her thigh over the sparse hair between her legs and onto desire-moistened flesh. "Put your leg over my shoulder, that's a girl," he added, and went in again, enjoying the sensation of her ridiculously high heel scraping over his cardigan and snagging the yarn.
Back and forth, he moved his tongue along the rapidly dampening flesh between her legs, loving the way her body seemed to open up beneath his lips and tongue, the most beautiful fucking flower he'd ever seen in his life.
Her hand was gripping his hair in earnest now, and her other hand was moving over her stomach and breasts. Neville began using his fingers along with his tongue, letting them circle and then penetrate her cunt as he took her now swollen clit between his lips, suckling her and pulling a soft cry of pleasure from her. If there was anything he wanted to show her he'd learned, though, it was that he'd learned patience and stamina, and he continued to alternate between her clit and her cunt, darting his tongue inside her, using his fingers to move deeper and deeper inside her and occasionally tease her arse.
When she finally came, she clenched around his fingers, the leg over his shoulder tightening and digging her heel into his back.
He looked up to find her shuddering against the window, her hair sticking against the steam, sticking to her flushed face. If he'd thought she looked sexy through the window that morning, it had nothing on what the view was on this side of the window. She opened her eyes and looked down on him, and her face split in a lazy, satisfied smile that had him feeling more than a little smug.
Or might have done, had he been able to properly focus on anything more than the overpowering need to be inside her immediately, if not sooner. He rose to his feet, covering her mouth with his own again, pressing an almost painfully hard cock against the soft skin of her thigh, She reached down to grab him through his trousers, making him swear under his breath as he grabbed her around her waist and began backing toward the bed.
His eyes were closed, so he didn't see the edge of the mattress as it approached, and only just managed to stop himself from falling gracelessly onto the bed, pulling her with him. Instead, he turned at the last minute, depositing her as gently as he could manage on her back, then struggling to drag his cardigan and shirt up and over his head.
"Just as I suspected," she said, half-giggling. "Gardening does a body good."
"Completely mental," he said, finally losing the annoying garments by throwing them into the corner.
"Did I teach you nothing?" she protested. "Hang-"
"Lavender," he said, his voice a low growl. "Fuck the cardie."
"Much rather fuck you," she said, giggling in earnest now.
"That was the general idea," he said, and after a brief struggle with his belt buckle, his trousers were pushed down past his knees along with his pants. He was still trying to kick his way out of them when he climbed over her, kissing her as his body covered hers. He lifted her leg up a bit and when his cock made contact with her slick flesh, he very nearly came then and there. He knew he wasn't going to last very long, so he delayed the inevitable by sliding back and forth against the wet heat, letting his cock make as much contact with her clit as possible. She was clinging to him, whispering the wickedest things in his ear, practically begging him to fuck her and fuck her hard. When he finally did, she screamed out, digging her nails into his back. Her legs were wrapped around him, and her thick, dark hair was spread over the pillow, and she was lifting her body up to meet him on every thrust.
"So close," he grunted. "So fucking hot," and he wasn't entirely sure whether he meant the hot flesh squeezing around his cock or the girl it was attached to. Determined to hold off as long as possible, he pulled out and flipped her onto her stomach, pulling her arse up in the air and grabbing her hips. Her tits were dangling over the top of her corset now, and he couldn't resist reaching around and squeezing her nipple as he slammed once again inside her. She cried out again, and thrust back to meet him, and he felt the blood rushing in his ears and his body was just one big throbbing nerve, and as she screamed and squeezed around him, he completely lost control, pumping erratically into her as his cock pulsed.
Lavender dropped back down to her stomach, moaning as his softening cock slid from her body. "Well, I'd say you returned the favor well enough," she said.
With a low groan, he propped himself up on his elbow, letting his finger run idly over the jagged scars below her shoulder. "Yeah, it was a real hardship, obviously." Gods, he'd missed that occasionally annoying giggle of hers. "You know I'm absolutely mad for you, don't you?"
"Well of course you are," she said, winking at him over her shoulder. "I'm fabulous."
And thinking of the poor sod who'd peered through the glass that very morning, dreaming of the impossible, he had to agree.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rain fell in cold, dreary sheets against the windowpanes of the sixth year greenhouse, but inside, everything was light and colour and steamy heat and noise. Had anyone been foolish enough to stand outside peering in, they would probably would have been horrified, because Herbology Professors (albeit sort of sexy ones) were definitely not supposed to be doing that on school grounds, and especially not with the very witch who sold most of the girls their school robes and underwear. But Neville supposed that if the plants didn't mind, there really wasn't much harm in it. And besides, everybody knew that Lavender Brown was a bit of an exhibitionist.