The Greenhouse-Birdbath-Kitchen-Sink Drama Network
Neville heard it first from his posies, who apparently had heard it from the busybody bluebird who came by every afternoon at half-three to have a dip in the six-tiered birdbath in Greenhouse B.
The bluebird had overheard it while sitting outside an open window in Gryffindor tower, while the fat lady was spilling the goods to the milkmaid who was visiting from the portrait by the staircase to the Slytherin dungeon. How the milkmaid had come by this information in such a dodgy part of the castle wasn't made clear to Neville, but obviously this wasn't the most reliable information network he had ever heard of, which is possibly why he felt somewhat hurt when his flowers told him that Ron Weasley fancied him too. After all, Neville had told them his about his crush in secrecy and this was no way to pay him back for all the time and attention he'd given them
He didn't want to be known as the bloke who raised gossipy flowers.
The following week, Neville heard the same line from the Loquacious Water Lilies, who'd been gossiping with the mother rat who lived in the wall behind their room in Gryffindor tower.
Neville hadn't even known that they had rats, but apparently this mother rat came to the greenhouse for whatever seeds the Shedding Sunflowers were willing spare, and she said that'd she'd overheard Ron and that 'delightful Harry Potter' her words exactly discussing Ron's horrifically large crush on that 'darling Neville Longbottom' again the mother rat's words.
No one ever had a horrifically large crush on Neville, which is how he knew that the Water Lillies were trying to wind him up.
Besides, rats didn't talk.
Neville thought nothing more of the entire experience until he found himself on the wrong end of a lecture by the portrait of the three blind mice, which hung down the corridor from the hump-backed witch.
The mice were blind, and Neville he had no idea how they'd even know he was passing, but as Curly, the second mouse, told him when he got around to asking, apparently the ugly duckling from by the Ravenclaw dormitory had just been leaving when Neville had been passing, and by the way, didn't Neville know that Ron Weasley fancied him something rotten?
This led to an impossibly long lecture about the entire Weasley family and how the mice missed Fred and George Weasley and all the goods they smuggled back from Honeydukes.
By the time the mice were done, Neville was twenty minutes late to Arithmancy. Naturally he wound up with detention, but at least detention kept Neville away from the Hogwarts Gossip Network, and he wouldn't have thought anything of it, except that strangely enough Ron ended up in detention too and no one could understand why.
Clearly it was a Gossip Conspiracy generated by Professor Vector.
When Trevor made a completely uncharacteristic appearance on the common room table after dinner while Neville was attempting to sort out his Charms assignment, he nearly lost his rag. He had not raised a gossiping toad, and rather than find out otherwise, he gathered his books and went to the library.
Surely the books weren't in the network as well.
Neville was sorely put out when he found out that the library was just as scandalous as the greenhouses, but he was extremely intrigued to hear that Seamus had been spotted doing things in the Runes section with Terry Boot, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Hannah Abbot - all at the same time.
Neville felt rather certain that if Ron fancied him, he would tell him. Actually, Neville just hoped Ron would tell him if he was keen on him, because Neville needed to hear it from the horse's mouth, and not from rumourmongering flowers and delusional portraits.
Neville's nan had always told him that truth was stranger than anything you could find in the pages of the Daily Prophet, so when he walked into Greenhouse B and found Ron gossiping with his posies, he really had no frame of reference whatsoever.
Neville had never thought it was humanly possibly for Ron to turn redder than his hair, but apparently he could, and for several seconds neither one of them spoke. Instead they just sort of stared and looked away and then stared some more. Neville's mouth went dry, and when he licked his lips, Ron stared. Hard.
There were all sorts of things that Neville could say, but it was impossible to get a word in edgewise over the babbling and squealing from his flowers about how cute they were. He decided to try anyway.
"A little flower told me you fancy me," Neville began over the din.
Ron's shrug didn't do a lot to inspire confidence, but one particular gregarious posy shrieking 'He thinks you're fit!' did a lot to ease the tension.
"You've got really pushy flowers," Ron said, looking at the posies, which appeared to be dancing, or at least swaying a lot, and then back at Neville.
"You should hear the portraits," Neville said, taking a step into the greenhouse and letting the door close behind him.
Ron ran his left hand through his hair. "The butcher and the cook by the fourth floor stairwell?"
"No, the three blind mice."
"Oh, I heard from them as well."
"Everybody knows!" a lily interrupted from the back of the greenhouse, starting a new symphony of trilling.
"They're not going to be quiet unless we do something," Ron said, taking several steps to close the space between them.
Neville's stomach began to emulate the posies attempts at dancing, and for a brief second Neville felt certain he was going to be ill. It would have to wait though.
"Kiss him!" another flower shouted.
"I've heard worse ideas," Neville said as Ron came to stop a foot away. Ron blinked at the same time that Neville leaned forward and they bumped noses once before Ron tilted his head the right way and his tongue brushed along Neville's lower lip.
Neville's eyes crossed at the greenness of Ron's irises, and he shut his eyes instead of potentially swooning like a girl.
Ron's lips were slightly dry and chapped against Neville' s mouth, but his tongue slipped between Neville's lips with no hesitation, and Neville made a rather undignified noise and gripped Ron's forearms when his tongue tickled the roof of Neville's mouth.
Neville's knees wobbled slightly as Ron's hands slipped inside his robes, and they stumbled blindly into a workstation as Neville tried to grope as much of Ron as he could.
An over-excited flower completely ruined the mood, however, by shouting, "Go on my son! Lay one on him!"
Neville pulled away with some reluctance, and rubbed Ron's mouth with his thumb. "Maybe we should go someplace else," he suggested. "Some place with a smaller audience."
"Where, like the Great Hall?" Ron said, licking at Neville's fingers.
Neville made a completely unintelligible noise. "Works for me."