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unconventional-lawnchair · 2 days ago

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We're Always Shifting {Chapter Three}

Barty Crouch Jr. x Reader

WC: 7.5k

Masterlist

Summary: After a small fight and a make up session, Harry and the reader stumble upon a room that finally harbors some answers.

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The week following the disastrous attempt to steal from Snape had been a whirlwind of sleepless nights and desperate attempts to make sense of the hollow ache inside you. Hermione, Draco, and Luna had thrown themselves into the task of helping you, their worry manifesting in different ways. Hermione had suggested Legilimency, but Draco had shut that down immediately, his voice sharp with protective indignation. You had almost forgotten what he had gone through; his main argument being it wouldn’t help with memories you claimed not to have- but you know what it was. He didn't want you to feel that pain. Luna had brought you a collection of oddities- an old mirror, a battered music box, a tattered vinyl sleeve- swearing they would spark something, but they only left you feeling more adrift.

Even Draco, normally so quick with a biting remark, had grown strangely subdued. His silences spoke louder than his words, his usual bravado giving way to an unspoken concern that settled heavily between you all. It was like they could sense the cracks forming in you, but none of them knew how to mend them.

You’d tried to distract yourself. Hours spent in the library with Hermione, feigning interest as she scribbled notes with the intensity of someone trying to outrun her own thoughts. You let Luna’s voice wash over you as she rambled about magical creatures, her whimsical theories like threads of light in the dark. And when Draco had dragged you to the Astronomy Tower, pointing out constellations with a confidence that made your heart twist, you let yourself get lost in the stars, searching for answers you couldn’t name.

But nothing worked. The ache remained, gnawing at you like a shadow you couldn’t outrun. And then there was Harry.

He’d been watching you all week, his gaze a quiet weight you felt even when you tried to ignore it. He didn’t push, not at first. But his presence was constant, lingering at the edges of your world like an unanswered question. Every time his eyes met yours, there was something there- something raw and yearning, something you couldn’t face.

By the time Monday morning arrived, you weren’t surprised to find him waiting for you outside the courtyard steps. His tie hung loose, his hair as perpetually messy as ever, but his expression was different. He looked... tired. And the sight of him hit you like a punch to the gut.

“Hey,” He forced a smile, his voice softer than you’d expected. “Do you want to skip class? Go down to the Black Lake like we used to?”

The question was so simple, so Harry, that it almost broke you. Memories of stolen afternoons by the water flashed through your mind; his laughter, the sun on your skin, the feeling that nothing else mattered when you were with him. The sounds of Draco's snark remarks about you actually getting into the water- with Hermione’s fussing about getting caught- You wanted to say yes. You wanted to let him pull you back into that world, even for a moment. But the thought of being alone with him, of facing everything you couldn’t explain, was unbearable.

“I’d… rather be alone right now,” You muttered, your voice quieter than you’d intended.

Harry stepped in front of you, his brows furrowing in frustration. “Don’t do that,” He huffed, his voice sharper now. “Don’t shut me out. It’s not fair.”

You blinked, startled by the edge in his tone. “I’m not shutting you out, Harry. I just-”

“Yes, you are,” He cut you off, his hands clenching at his sides. “You’ve been doing it all week. Hell, longer than that. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t notice.”

His words hit like a slap, and you looked away, guilt twisting in your chest. “I’m not trying to shut you out,” You muttered softly. “I just… I need space.”

Harry let out a bitter laugh, running a hand through his hair. “Space,” He rasped, his voice laced with disbelief. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve had plenty of space, haven’t you? Space from me, but no one else.”

“That’s not fair-”

“No,” He interrupted, his voice rising. “What’s not fair is you disappearing into your own head and leaving me here, wondering what the hell I did wrong.”

The rawness in his voice made your breath catch, and for a moment, all you could do was stare at him. His green eyes burned with something you couldn’t name- hurt, frustration, desperation- and it cut deeper than you expected.

“Do you have any idea how much I miss you?” He strained, his voice breaking. “I miss us. I miss how things used to be. And I don’t understand why you don’t. It’s like… the second this year started, you wanted nothing to do with me. I need my best friend back.”

Tears stung at the corners of your eyes, but you blinked them away, shaking your head. “It’s not that simple, Harry.”

“Why not?” He demanded, stepping closer. “Is it because of Ginny? Because of Malfoy? Because I swear, if it’s about them, I’ll-”

“It’s not about them!” You snapped, your voice rising in frustration. The words hung heavy in the air, and Harry flinched, his hurt etched into every line of his face.

“Then what is it about?” He asked, his voice quieter now, trembling with something fragile. “Because I feel like I’m losing you, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

The weight of his words settled over you like a storm, and you felt your walls crumbling. You wanted to tell him everything- the flashes of memories, the way your chest ached when you looked at him, the fear that you were unraveling piece by piece. But how could you, when you didn’t even understand it yourself?

“I’m sorry.” You whispered, your voice barely audible. “I just… I don’t know how to fix it either.”

Harry’s shoulders sagged, but the determination in his eyes didn’t waver. “Then let me help you,” He huffed. “Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out together.”

His words should have been comforting, but they only made the ache worse. You didn’t deserve his loyalty- not when you couldn’t give him the answers he deserved.

Harry reached out, his hand brushing against yours for the briefest moment before he pulled away. “Take your space.” He sighed softly, his voice tinged with resignation. “But don’t forget… I’m still here. I’m always here. I'm not going to just leave you behind.”

You nodded, unable to speak, and watched as he walked away. His shoulders were hunched, his steps heavy, and you felt the tears spill over, hot and unrelenting.

As the courtyard fell silent around you, you realized how deep the chasm between you and Harry had grown. And yet, his words lingered, a promise you weren’t sure you deserved but couldn’t let go of.

"I’m not going to just leave you behind."

If only you could believe him. If only you could believe in yourself.

~~~

The days that followed your conversation with Harry dragged like wading through deep, endless water. You’d catch sight of him in the halls or across the Great Hall, and each time, the quiet anguish in his green eyes clawed at you. It made your chest ache, and no amount of distraction could dull the weight of it.

His words hung in the air, a constant echo in your mind. And yet, how could you tell him the truth? The flashes of fragmented memories, the visions that felt like whispers of another life. The image of Harry with a jagged lightning scar carved into his forehead- it haunted you. But how could you explain something that felt more like a dream than reality? How could you put that burden on him when you didn’t understand it yourself?

You tried to busy yourself, anything to drown the noise in your head. Hermione’s endless study sessions became your sanctuary, though her focused quill scratches only reminded you of your own restless inaction. Draco’s sharp comments- usually a source of irritation- started feeling oddly grounding, like he was trying to anchor you in his own backhanded way. And Luna, sweet Luna, would sit beside you, offering her peculiar trinkets and theories, her voice laced with a gentleness that made you want to cry.

But no matter how hard they tried, and no matter how much you wished you could let them in, the ache in your chest remained, pulling you under.

And Harry.

He didn’t push, not at first. He lingered at the edges of your world, his presence always there, quietly waiting. But his patience wasn’t infinite, and you’d felt it begin to fray. The tension between you grew heavier with every passing day until finally, it all came to a head.

~~~

It was late one evening when you found yourself in the library again, the quiet hum of the room interrupted only by the occasional rustle of parchment. Hermione was beside you, her focus unwavering as she tackled Advanced Transfiguration. Across the table, Draco flicked lazily through a Potions text, his sharp features cast in the warm glow of a lamp. And then there was Luna, perched on the table’s edge, humming softly as she dangled a peculiar dried herb in front of her like it might hold all the answers you sought.

“You’ve been quieter than usual,” Hermione said finally, her tone cautious but kind. Her eyes flicked toward you, her quill pausing mid-scratch. “Still thinking about what Harry said?”

The question hit you and your thoughts came to a halt, though you tried to hide it. You hesitated, fingers tracing the edge of your book. “Yeah,” You admitted, barely above a whisper. “It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated is putting it mildly,” Draco hummed, his voice cutting but not cruel. “Potter’s as subtle as a Hippogriff, but at least he’s honest. You? You’re like some impossible bloody riddle, and I, for one, am tired of trying to solve it.”

You shot him a glare, but Luna chimed in before you could retort. “Maybe it’s not about solving.” She said dreamily, tilting her head. “Maybe the answer is already there, and you’re just scared of it.”

Hermione sighed, closing her book with a soft thud. “Look, no one’s asking you to figure it all out right this second. But pushing Harry away isn’t fair. You know how he is. He’ll wait forever if he has to, but that doesn’t make it okay.”

The words sank in, the guilt clawing at your insides. “I know.” You murmured, your voice barely audible. “I just don’t want to hurt him.”

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” Draco said bluntly, though his tone lacked its usual bite. When Hermione shot him a glare, he raised his hands in mock surrender. “What? I’m just being honest. Someone has to.”

Luna’s voice was soft but steady, her gaze piercing in its own ethereal way. “Maybe it’s not about whether or not you want to hurt him. Maybe it’s about whether or not you trust him enough to let him help.”

The words struck a chord deep in your chest. Trust. That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Trusting Harry to stay, to weather the storm of your fractured mind when you couldn’t promise him any clarity. Trusting him not to crumble under the weight of what little you could offer.

Without a word, you closed your book and rose from your chair, the scrape of wood against stone drawing all eyes to you. “I need some air,” You mumbled. “I’ll be back.”

Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Luna placed a gentle hand on her arm, stopping her. Draco simply raised an eyebrow, though for once, he said nothing. You left before their collective concern could smother you.

~~~

The corridors were quiet, the late hour cloaking the castle in stillness. You wandered aimlessly, your thoughts a tangled mess of guilt and confusion, until your feet carried you to the Astronomy Tower. The crisp night air hit you as you stepped outside, the stars above sprawling endlessly, like an invitation to lose yourself in their vastness.

Leaning against the cold stone railing, you stared out at the dark silhouette of the Forbidden Forest. Your mind raced, memories you couldn’t place flitting just out of reach. The ache in your chest felt heavier here, the weight of it almost unbearable.

“You’re not the only one who hides up here, you know.”

The voice startled you, though it shouldn’t have. You turned to see Harry stepping out of the halls, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked as exhausted as you felt, the moonlight casting sharp angles across his face.

For a moment, you said nothing, the silence between you thick. Then Harry stepped closer, leaning on the railing beside you. “I didn’t mean to push the other day,” He said quietly, his voice raw. “I just… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help.”

The vulnerability in his tone twisted something deep inside you, but this time, you didn’t look away. “I don’t know how to do this either.” You admitted, your voice breaking. “And I’m terrified that if I tell you what little I do know, it’ll make everything worse.”

Harry frowned, his green eyes searching yours like he could will you to let him in. “Worse than this?” he asked softly. “Worse than watching you slip further away every day?”

You swallowed hard, tears threatening to spill. “Harry, I saw something the other night. It wasn’t real, but it felt real. It was you. But… not you.”

“What do you mean?” His voice was steady, but his brow furrowed with confusion.

You hesitated, the memory of his scar flashing in your mind. “You had a scar. A lightning bolt, right here.” You gestured to your own forehead. “And your eyes, Harry… they looked so tired. Like you’d been fighting something- something I couldn’t see.”

Harry stared at you, his confusion deepening. “A scar? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know.” You confessed, aspirated, your frustration bubbling over. “I feel like my mind is playing tricks on me, showing me things that just don’t make sense. And I don’t know how to make it stop.”

As the silence settled between you, Harry’s hand remained steady on your arm, his warmth grounding you in a way you hadn’t realized you needed. His eyes searched yours, and for a fleeting moment, you let yourself believe he could take on some of the weight that had been suffocating you.

“Alright,” He said softly, his voice tinged with that steadfast determination you’d always admired. “Let’s talk about it.”

You hesitated, then nodded, letting out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. The two of you turned and began walking, your footsteps echoing softly in the quiet corridor. For a while, neither of you spoke, the stillness giving you time to gather your thoughts.

“It’s hard to explain,” You began, uncertain. “It’s not just the visions. It’s this… this feeling that something’s missing. Someone’s missing.”

Harry glanced at you, his brow furrowing. “Missing? Like you’ve forgotten someone?”

“Maybe,” you admitted. “Or maybe it’s like they were never here to begin with, but they should’ve been. I don’t know, Harry. It’s like… there’s a gap, and I don’t know how to fill it.”

He stayed quiet, letting you talk without interruption, his attention fully on you in a way that made your chest tighten.

“And it’s not just that.” You continued. “Sometimes I look at people- Pandora, Draco, even Luna- and it’s like I’m seeing two versions of them at once. One that feels… right, and one that doesn’t. Like they’re slightly out of focus. I can’t explain it better than that.”

Harry tilted his head, his expression thoughtful. “And me? Do I… feel out of focus?”

You hesitated, biting your lip. “No,” You said quietly. “You feel… solid. Real. But it’s like there’s another version of you, one I can’t quite remember but still… know. It’s the you with the scar.” You glanced at him, searching his face for any hint of recognition, but he only looked more confused.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harry murmured, shaking his head. “But if you’re seeing this, if you’re feeling this… it’s got to mean something, right?”

You nodded slowly, your steps faltering as the ache in your chest deepened. “It has to,” You whispered. “Because if it doesn’t, then I’m just losing my mind.”

Harry stopped walking, turning to face you fully. His hands came to rest on your shoulders, his grip firm but gentle. “You’re not losing your mind,” He validated you firmly. “You’re going through something, something none of us understand yet. But we’ll figure it out. Together.”

His words settled over you like a balm, and you felt a spark of hope flicker to life amidst the chaos. You gave him a small, shaky smile, one that he returned with a quiet confidence that made you want to believe in him.

“Come on,” He said, his tone lighter now. “Let’s keep walking. Who knows, maybe you’ll start seeing something that makes sense.”

You snorted softly, the sound startling both of you into a brief laugh. “Unlikely,” You muttered, though a tiny part of you dared to hope.

The two of you continued down the corridor, your steps falling into an easy rhythm. You talked in fits and starts, describing the strange flashes of memory that haunted you, the sensations that tugged at the edges of your consciousness. Harry listened intently, his occasional questions thoughtful but never pressing.

As you turned a corner, you felt it. A tug, faint but insistent, pulling you toward the stretch of stone wall ahead. You slowed, your steps faltering, and Harry noticed immediately.

“What is it?” He asked, his voice low.

“I don’t know,” You murmured, your gaze fixed on the blank expanse of wall. The ache in your chest intensified, sharpening into something almost physical, and before you could say anything else, the stones began to shift.

Harry stepped back, his hand brushing yours as the wall transformed before your eyes. The bricks rippled and rearranged themselves, forming a tall, intricately carved door that hadn’t been there moments ago. You exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Harry, his expression mirroring your own mixture of awe and unease.

“What… is that?” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I… don't know.” You whispered in a shaken voice. Then, your jaw tightened and you turned sharply to smile at Harry. He seemed confused.

“But I know someone who might.”

~~~

The quiet corridors of Hogwarts grew heavier with the weight of secrecy, and you found yourself pacing just outside the newly formed door in the stone wall. Your heart raced, caught between the tension of discovery and the uncertainty of what lay within.

The sound of approaching footsteps drew your attention, and you turned just as Harry came into view. He wasn’t alone. Hermione trailed close behind, her expression sharp and curious, while Draco and Luna followed at a more casual pace. Ron brought up the rear, his hair an unmistakable mess, and his face reddened as if he’d just been caught in a compromising position.

“Bit late for a study group, isn’t it?” Draco drawled, though his curiosity was evident as he eyed the strange door.

“Late-night adventure,” Luna corrected him dreamily, her gaze flicking between the door and the stars peeking through the high windows.

Ron, rubbing at his neck, muttered, “What’s this about, anyway? Harry practically dragged me here. Interrupted my… er, reading session.” His ears turned even redder, and Hermione huffed, though a faint blush tinged her cheeks.

“Reading session,” Harry repeated, his lips twitching with amusement. “Right. That what we’re calling it these days?”

Ron shot him a warning glare. “Not the time, mate.”

Hermione, either unwilling to entertain the teasing or simply too intrigued by the door, stepped forward. “What is this place?” She asked, her eyes narrowing as she inspected the intricate carvings on the door. “It wasn’t here earlier.”

You hesitated, glancing at Harry before turning back to the group. “I was hoping you'd know,” You explained softly. “It just showed up when I was telling Harry.. Everything.”

Hermione’s brows knit together in confusion, her logical mind clearly racing to process this revelation. “The Room of Requirement? I’ve read about it, but I’ve never actually seen it. Why now? Why would it appear for you?”

“I don’t know,” You admitted, your voice tinged with frustration. “But whatever’s inside… I think it’s important. I think it might help.”

Draco crossed his arms, his gaze flicking from you to the door with guarded skepticism. “And we’re just supposed to waltz in there, are we? What if it’s a trap? What if it’s not what you think?”

“Draco,” Luna said gently, her voice soft but firm. “The room appears when someone truly needs it. It wouldn’t trick her. It’s here to help.”

Hermione nodded, her curiosity winning out over caution. “Luna’s right. If the room has appeared, it’s because it has something to show us. Something you need.”

Ron, less convinced, muttered under his breath, “Great. Another magical mystery to solve right before curfew. What else is new?”

Harry ignored the grumbling, his gaze locked on you. “If you think this will help, then we’re with you. All of us.” His eyes softened, the vulnerability from your earlier conversation still lingering. “You don’t have to go in alone.”

You felt a surge of gratitude, your chest tightening at the unspoken solidarity between them. Even Draco, for all his snark, looked ready to follow you inside. With a deep breath, you turned to the door and reached for the handle.

The moment your fingers touched the cool metal, it gave way. As the door creaked open, a cool draft escaped, carrying with it the faint scent of old parchment and something metallic, like the tang of magic that had been left undisturbed for years. The room beyond was vast, its high, vaulted ceilings disappearing into shadow. It resembled a library, but not one you’d ever seen before- this one had a strange, disjointed quality, as though the room itself couldn’t decide what era it belonged to.

Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with volumes that ranged from pristine to crumbling. Scrolls were stacked haphazardly in some corners, their edges yellowed with age. A large wooden table dominated the center of the room, its surface littered with papers, letters, and strange objects. Some were covered in thick layers of dust, while others gleamed as if they had just been placed there.

Luna was the first to step inside, her wide eyes taking in the scene with quiet awe. “It’s beautiful,” She murmured, her fingers trailing along the edge of the nearest shelf. “But... sad.”

“Sad?” Ron asked, clearly uneasy as he peered into the room. “It looks like someone’s attic exploded.”

Hermione ignored him, her gaze locking onto the table. “This isn’t just clutter.” She said, her voice hushed with the kind of reverence she usually reserved for particularly rare books. “It’s... research. Someone’s been experimenting here.”

“Experimenting with what?” Draco asked, his tone sharp as he moved cautiously into the room. His eyes swept over the objects, his posture stiff with suspicion.

Harry stayed close to you, his presence a steady anchor as you stepped further inside. Your heart raced as your gaze flicked over the table, the scattered papers and artifacts drawing you in like a magnet. There were pieces of broken clocks, small vials filled with swirling silver liquid, and diagrams that seemed to map out the flow of time itself.

“Time magic,” Hermione whispered, her fingers hovering over a series of intricate sketches. “Whoever worked here was studying time manipulation.”

Draco snorted, though his eyes remained fixed on a glowing hourglass perched precariously on the edge of the table. “Brilliant. Messing with time never ends well. Just ask anyone who’s ever gone near a Time-Turner.”

“You think someone was using a Time-Turner here?” Harry asked, frowning.

“Not just using,” Hermione said, shaking her head as she picked up one of the papers. Her brow furrowed as she scanned the text, written in a spidery hand. “This is advanced. Far beyond what a Time-Turner can do. They were trying to... change something. Or maybe... restore it?”

“Restore what?” You asked, your voice trembling as you moved closer to the table. The ache in your chest had grown sharper, almost unbearable, as though the room itself was reaching out to you.

“I don’t know,” Hermione admitted, her frustration evident as she rifled through the papers. “But it’s clear they were trying to fix something they believed was broken.”

Luna had wandered to a shelf near the back of the room, where a dusty mirror hung on the wall. Her reflection shimmered strangely, as though the glass were rippling like water. “This room remembers,” she said softly, her voice almost a whisper. “Whoever was here... they left pieces of themselves behind.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Ron muttered, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Draco reached for a stack of letters, his movements careful as though he were afraid they might crumble to dust. “These are addressed to... someone named P.R.” He said, holding up an envelope. His eyes flicked to you. “Does that mean anything to you?”

P. R. The letters echoed in your mind, familiar yet elusive. Your breath hitched as your fingers brushed against one of the objects on the table- a locket, tarnished with age but still bearing the faint engraving of a crest you couldn’t place. The moment you touched it, a wave of dizziness washed over you, and the room seemed to blur.

“Are you alright?” Harry’s voice cut through the haze, his hands steadying you as you swayed.

“I... I think someone I knew was here.” You whispered, your voice barely audible. “Someone important. But I can’t... I can’t remember.”

Hermione placed a hand on your shoulder, her expression softening. “Take your time,” She said gently. “We’ll figure this out.”

As you steadied yourself, your gaze fell on a journal lying at the edge of the table. Its leather cover was worn, the edges frayed, but something about it called to you. You reached for it, your hands trembling as you opened it to the first page.

The handwriting was familiar, looping and elegant, though the words themselves made little sense at first. But as you flipped through the pages, fragments began to emerge- notes about fractures in time, the consequences of changing the past, and a name that sent a chill down your spine.

Bartemius Crouch Junior.

Your breath caught, and the room seemed to spin around you. The locket in your hand grew heavier, the pieces falling into place with a clarity that was almost painful.

“He was here,” You furrowed your brow, your voice breaking. “Someone- Bartemius. He... he was trying to fix something.”

The others exchanged glances, their confusion evident, but Harryreached for your arm. “What do you mean? Fix what?”

You shook your head, tears spilling over as the ache in your chest became too much to bear. “I don’t know,” you choked out. “But I think... I think P.R. was supposed to help him.”

~~~

The hours passed in a haze as the six of you combed through the room, its strange, timeless air wrapping around you like a cloak. Scrolls and letters were examined, diagrams poured over, and objects handled with the utmost care. The weight of unspoken questions hung heavily in the air. Luna, ever practical in her whimsical way, had vanished at some point, returning with an assortment of snacks and a steaming cup of tea, which she set in front of you with a soft smile.

“You’ll think better with a clear head,” She cooed simply, her serene confidence somehow soothing.

You wrapped your hands around the tea, the warmth grounding you as you turned your attention back to the journal on your lap. Harry sat beside you, his presence steady and reassuring as he sifted through a pile of letters. Hermione and Ron were deep in discussion across the table, their voices low but urgent, while Draco stood by the shelves, his sharp eyes scanning the spines of books as though they might hold the answers you sought.

It was Draco who broke the silence, holding up a stack of letters with a triumphant smirk. “These are addressed to someone named ‘Vixen,’” He announced, his tone tinged with curiosity. “Bartemius seems to have been quite... devoted to her.”

The name sent a shiver down your spine, and you exchanged a glance with Harry. “Vixen?” You parroted, your voice barely above a whisper. “That sounds... familiar. But it feels important.”

Draco flipped through the letters, his expression shifting as he skimmed their contents. “He wasn’t just devoted,” he muttered, his voice quieter now. “He was... obsessed. Listen to this.”

He cleared his throat and read aloud from one of the letters:

My dearest Vixen,

How am I meant to live in this fractured, hollow world without you? Every breath I take is a cruel reminder of your absence, every sunrise an insult, every hour stretching into eternity without the warmth of your presence. You were my heart, my hope, my soul- and without you, I am unmade. Even now, I feel the edges of myself fraying, the darkness creeping in where your light once shone so brightly.

Do you know how often I find myself reaching for you in the quiet moments? When the silence becomes unbearable, I think of our laughter- the way it echoed in the halls as Regulus teased us or as Dorcas argued over some absurd plan we all knew we’d follow anyway. I think of Pandora’s curiosity, her unyielding faith in the impossible, or Evan’s snark, always ready to rally us when the world seemed set against us. We were unbreakable, weren't we? Together, we had something the rest of the world couldn’t touch. And now... now that unity feels shattered, like glass crushed underfoot. They won't look at me. Call me mad.

But it wasn’t the world that took you from me, was it? It was him.

Dumbledore.

I see his shadow in every crack of this broken life. He played his games, weaving his manipulations like an old spider, and we were caught in his web. You, most of all. He didn’t see you as a person- not the fierce, vibrant force of nature that you were- but as a pawn, something to be sacrificed for his grand design. And now you are gone. He stole you from us. From me.

I hate him for it. I hate him with a fire that burns hotter than any magic I’ve ever known. He will pay for what he’s done- I swear it, my love. He will answer for the hole he has torn in this world, for the family he has destroyed. But my rage, my grief, my hatred- they are nothing compared to the love I still hold for you. A love that will not, cannot die.

And so, I refuse to let this be the end. I refuse to let Dumbledore’s schemes, his lies, and his arrogance win. I will defy him. I will defy the laws of magic, the constraints of time, the will of the universe itself if that is what it takes to bring you back. Whatever the cost, I will pay it. Whatever the consequences, I will bear them. Nothing matters but you, my Vixen.

I will find a way. Regulus, Dorcas, Pandora, Evan- they deserve to see you again. To feel whole again. And I deserve to hold you in my arms, to hear your voice, to live in the world as it was meant to be- where you and I were unstoppable.

I will not fail you.

Wait for me, my love. No matter where you are, no matter how far you’ve been taken from me, I will find you. I will tear down every barrier, bend time itself, and defy the heavens to bring you home.

Forever and always,

Bartemius

The room fell silent, the weight of Bartemius’s words settling over you like a heavy fog. Your chest ached, the same gnawing emptiness that had plagued you all week surging to the surface.

“Bloody hell,” Ron muttered, breaking the silence. “That’s not devotion. That’s... that’s desperation.”

Hermione nodded, her brow furrowed in thought. “Whoever this Vixen was, she must have meant everything to him. And it sounds like something happened to her. Something he blamed Dumbledore for.”

Draco set the letters down, his sharp gaze shifting to you. “And you think this is connected to you? To what you’ve been feeling?”

“I don’t know,” You admitted, your voice trembling. “But it feels... tied to everything. To the visions, the ache in my chest, even the gaps in my memory.”

Luna, who had been quietly examining a small box filled with trinkets, spoke up then, her tone calm but pointed. “What about the initials? P.R. Whoever Bartemius was writing to, they must have been important too.”

Harry hesitated, his expression thoughtful. “P.R.,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It could be a name. Or a title.”

“Pandora Rosier,” Draco said suddenly, the words tumbling out before he could stop them.

The room stilled, all eyes turning to Luna. She didn’t flinch under the weight of their gazes, her expression serene as always, but there was a flicker of something in her eyes- something deep and unknowable.

“Pandora Rosier,” Draco repeated, his voice firmer now. “Your mother. What if P.R. stands for her?”

Luna tilted her head, considering this. “It’s possible,” she said softly. “But my mother never mentioned Bartemius Crouch Jr. Or anyone named Vixen.”

“But he mentioned her,” Hermione interjected, her voice filled with quiet urgency. “If there’s a connection, it might not have been something she wanted to share. Especially if it involved time magic.”

“Wait a second,” Harry said, frowning. “If Bartemius was writing to Vixen and working with P.R., then where does this locket fit in?”

You looked down at the locket still clutched in your hand, its weight suddenly overwhelming. The crest etched into its surface seemed to shimmer in the dim light, and for a moment, you swore you saw something shift within its tarnished depths.

“I think...” You began, your voice barely audible. “I think this locket was hers. Vixen’s. And somehow, it’s tied to everything.”

Draco leaned closer, his sharp features etched with determination. “Then we need to figure out who Vixen was. And what Mrs. Lovegood’s role was in all of this.”

“And how it connects to you,” Harry added quietly, his green eyes filled with unwavering resolve.

You kept staring at the locket. It seemed old, older then most things in the room. You ran your thumb along the engravings, more stars.

Mindlessly, you lifted the tea to your lips and took a sip, immediately hit with a bitter- almost sour taste. Your expression shifted and you frowned into the cup like the liquid would apologize for it’s flavour, earning a laugh from Harry.

You huffed at him and leaned forward to take a sniff of the steaming mix and your face fell, the smell reminding you of the humid musty smell of the potions classroom. Then the memory hit you, it all hit you at once.

“I have been nothing if not fair tonight, Vix!”

“You guys.” You whispered and set the tea down. “Vix. It's what Professor Snape called me. That night we got caught in his storage closet- he called me Vix. What if.. it's Vixen? Short for Vixen?”

The room went quiet as your words hung in the air, the revelation settling heavily over the group. Hermione’s quill paused mid-scratch, and Harry’s gaze sharpened, a mix of concern and curiosity etched into his features. Draco, ever the skeptic, leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms as he studied your expression.

“Vix,” Hermione repeated, her voice soft, but insistent. “That’s what he called you?”

You nodded slowly, the weight of the memory making your chest tighten. “That night in the potions storeroom... it didn’t make sense at the time. I thought it was just Snape being... Snape. But now...”

“It’s a nickname,” Draco interrupted, his tone edged with skepticism. “One he used like he’s done it before. Like it’s... familiar.”

Harry’s brow furrowed, his hands clenching into fists on the table. “And you’re saying it’s short for Vixen. That Snape knows something about this... about you.”

“It would explain why he’s been so cagey,” Hermione murmured, her eyes darting to the journal in front of her. “If he’s connected to all of this, then he’s been keeping it from us on purpose.”

“Typical Snape,” Harry muttered bitterly, running a hand through his messy hair. “He’s always holding onto secrets. This one just happens to be about you.”

Luna, who had been quietly observing, tilted her head thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s protecting something,” she said, her voice lilting and serene. “Or someone.”

The words sent a chill through you, a nagging suspicion worming its way into your mind. “What if he’s protecting me?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

The silence that followed was deafening. Hermione was the first to break it, her tone hesitant but thoughtful. “It’s possible,” she said, glancing around the room. “If you’re tied to this Vixen, and she was important enough for Bartemius Crouch Jr. to risk everything for her... then Snape might be trying to keep you out of harm’s way.”

Draco scoffed, though there was an edge of unease to his voice. “Or he’s just doing what he always does: sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and making things worse for everyone.”

“Draco,” Luna said gently, her eyes meeting his with quiet certainty. “Not everything is as it seems. Especially when it comes to memories.”

Your grip on the locket tightened, the cold metal grounding you as your thoughts swirled. Snape’s words from that night echoed in your mind over and over.

“I need to talk to him,” You said suddenly, your voice steady despite the anxiety bubbling under the surface. “If Snape knows something- if he’s been keeping this from me- I have to confront him.”

Ron furrowed his brow, shifting uneasily as he crossed his arms. “Yeah, alright,” he muttered, voice edged with skepticism. “But if Snape’s trying to protect you, you really think he’s just gonna spill everything the second you ask? He’s not exactly known for being... forthcoming.”

Harry gave a curt nod, his jaw tightening. “Ron’s right. Snape’s a master at keeping secrets. If he doesn’t want you to know something, he’ll find a way to shut you down.”

Draco’s sharp laugh broke the tension. “Oh, please,” he drawled, leaning against the edge of the table. “Snape’s not some untouchable genius. If he’s hiding something, we’ll find a way to pry it out of him. Subtlety isn’t Potter’s strong suit, but-”

“I’m sitting right here, Draco,” Harry cut in, his tone clipped.

“Enough!” Hermione snapped, pinching the bridge of her nose. “This isn’t about who’s better at manipulating Snape. The question is, how do we even get him to listen? Confronting him outright might not be the best idea if-”

The sound of your head hitting the back of the sofa interrupted her. Everyone turned to you, their conversations faltering as they noticed your sudden shift. You had sunk deeper into the plush cushions, eyes fluttering closed, the tension in your face softening as if the fight had drained out of you entirely.

“Hey,” Harry said, his voice low with concern as he stepped closer. “Are you... okay?”

“Just tired,” You mumbled, your words slurring slightly. Your head lolled to the side, and you let out a long, heavy breath. “Really, really tired...”

“That's strange,” Hermione murmured, exchanging a look with Harry. “You were fine just a minute ago.”

Luna, perched on the arm of a nearby chair, tilted her head with an almost serene expression. “Oh, that’s the sleeping draught,” She said simply, as if announcing the weather.

“What?” Draco straightened, his sharp gaze snapping to her. “Sleeping draught? What are you talking about?”

“The tea,” Luna explained, her tone light and airy. “I added a touch of sleeping draught. She’s been so restless, and I thought it might help her relax.”

“You drugged her?” Ron yelped, his voice jumping an octave. “Without telling her?”

Luna shrugged, her dreamy demeanor unbothered by the growing alarm in the room. “She needed it. And it’s not as if it’ll harm her. It’s just a gentle nudge toward sleep.”

“Luna!” Hermione’s voice was half-scolding, half-exasperated. “You can’t just-”

“She needed it,” Luna interrupted, her voice gentle but resolute as she looked at you, now fully dozing against the sofa cushions. “You’ve all seen how exhausted she’s been. This will give her a chance to rest. The Galanthus Nivalis I put in will help her memories.”

“The what now?” Draco hissed and snapped his entire body toward Luna. But she just smiled.

“Snowdrop. We planted it in Herbology weeks ago. It finally dried.” She hummed blissfully. “She needs it. It will help her memories, with her thoughts. And the Sleep draught.” She muttered before turning to smile at your sleeping form as Harry took off his cloak and laid it over you. “Encouragement.”

The group was silent for a moment, everyone staring at Luna in bewilderment.

“Bloody hell, remind me to never cross you, Lovegood.” Ron muttered with wide eyes.

Luna tilted her head, her serene smile unshaken by Ron’s comment. “Oh, I would never do anything harmful, Ronald,” She said sweetly. “Unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“That’s somehow not reassuring,” Draco muttered, narrowing his eyes as he took a seat beside you, watching your steady breathing. His tone was sharp, but the tension in his posture betrayed his concern. “What exactly is this supposed to do, Luna? Beyond putting her to sleep?”

“The snowdrop is for clarity,” Luna explained patiently, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face. “It’s said to bring light to the shadowed corners of the mind. Combined with the sleeping draught, it should help her relax enough to let her thoughts surface. Sometimes, the mind holds on too tightly to things it isn’t ready to let go of. This will give her space to remember.”

“Or,” Draco countered, leaning forward with a glare, “it’ll just mess her up more, and we’ll be left cleaning up the pieces. Did that thought cross your mind, Luna?”

Hermione interjected, her tone exasperated. “Oh, stop it, Draco. You’ve seen how much she’s been struggling. Luna might actually be onto something. Snowdrop has restorative properties- Professor Sprout mentioned it in class. If this gives her a moment of peace, we should be grateful.”

“Thank you, Hermione,” Luna said dreamily, her gaze flickering to you again. “I thought you might understand.”

Harry, who had been silently watching over you, let out a soft sigh. “Luna’s right. She’s been pushing herself too hard- too much guilt, too much pressure to figure this all out. If this helps, even a little, then it’s worth it.”

Draco let out a frustrated huff but didn’t argue further, his eyes lingering on you as if searching for any sign of discomfort. “Fine,” He muttered, leaning back in his chair. “But if she wakes up confused, crying, or worse, I’m blaming Lovegood.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Because that’s new.”

“Enough,” Hermione snapped again, rubbing her temple. “The important thing is that she’s resting. Let’s use this time to figure out our next move.”

The group exchanged uneasy glances before nodding. Harry shifted closer to you, adjusting the cloak he had draped over you to ensure you were warm. His gaze softened, and he muttered under his breath, “She’ll be alright.”

Luna, who had been humming softly to herself, smiled warmly at him. “She will,” She said. “You’ll see.”

For a while, the room was quiet, save for the faint rustle of parchment as Hermione returned to her research and the occasional muttered comment from Draco as he sifted through the letters. Ron, looking thoroughly unsettled by the turn of events, busied himself by examining one of the dusty bookshelves, while Harry remained by your side, his unwavering presence a silent promise.

As you lay there, your breathing even and your features peaceful, something in the air seemed to shift. The magic of the room, subtle but ever-present, seemed to hum in response, as if waiting for the moment you would wake. Waiting to come alive once more when you returned.

Taglist: @bmyva1entine @edb954 @juniorlore @milunalupin @ailoda @ellipsisspelled @nessielovesfood @yannew @schrodinger-ka-billa @rory-cakes @rubyboobie17 @jennapancake @vilentia @derbygracie

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heartthrobin · 4 months ago

Text

the hate game (1)

oliver wood x female!reader

wc: 13.3k

warnings: enemies to lovers, so damn much pining, set in poa, timeline is a bit wonky, limited use of y/n, super grumpy!oliver, oliver's scottish accent (it's a warning in itself), alcohol consumption, super! duper! cheesy! (sorry not sorry)

an: just survived the worst two weeks of my life, but the fic is finally here! this fic was originally a full 50 chapter fic i had planned for wattpad like three years ago but i found my draft for it recently and decided it needed a revival. so enjoy it, and don't forget to comment and repost to support your favourite writers :)

summary: the only thing more grating than Oliver's foul moods and his permanent scowl, has to be the fact that he's so damn pretty. you fucking hate him for it.

part two/final part

Movies, as is their premise, glamourise plenty of things - high school, politics, tiny Greek islands - but none more than the classic sucker-punch.

The teeth-crunching, blood-spitting moment where skin meets skin in a satisfying thump that sends an unsuspecting victim to the floor. Music plays and the hero grins, grabbing the girl round the waist: dipping low to kiss her.

What’s consistently (conveniently) left out is how bloody painful it is to be on the sending end of that fist.

The first, and only, time you’d ever punched someone was in second year.

It had seemed like a great idea in the moment, quickly succeeded by the mind-numbing pain that shot up your arm where knuckle met face.

You’d aimed for his jaw, but as it turns out: in addition to painful, punching someone wasn’t a particularly accurate sport for a beginner and your slippery skin found a round-tipped nose instead.

A collective gasp and a month’s worth of detention waited for you on the other side of your act of rage.

And sure, while afternoons in Snape’s classroom every Friday sucked: it was all worth it.

Every purple knuckle that throbbed with the slightest brush, the points lost to Hufflepuff, the pages and pages of Hogwarts Does Not Condon Physical Violence you’d been forced to write was worth seeing the trickle of blood running down from Oliver Wood’s nose.

To see that smug fucking look wiped clean from his face. To watch how he doubled over in pain, grappling onto his friend for balance.

“Tyler fancying you? Any bloke would rather snog a goblin.”

His little comment had earned him a broken nose.

It had been the start of a five year long feud.

It’s the reason - now - why the ground is racing up to meet you, the nose of your broomstick pressed down towards it and wind whipping so hard against your face it draws tears. You knock into the ground, catching yourself on wobbly legs. A few feet away, Oliver Wood has done the same.

He’s marching towards you with the same ferocity that’s curdling in your chest:

“Tha’s blatching and you know it!” His accent is ringing, thick and blistering with heat like it always is when he talks to you. At you, rather.

The accusation is crystal clear, and loud despite the echoing din of the quidditch stands above. From the field where you're parked, you can hear the chatter and the cheers and the boos all conglomerating into a fuzzy uproar.

There’s still twelve brooms floating in the air, spewing irritated shouts from players in both yellow and red:

Just let it go, Wood!

Come on, Cap, can we just finish the match please!

You promptly ignore them. Oliver follows suit.

“What?” You scoff, face hot as a kettle on a lit stove. “As if Laurel and Hardy haven’t been elbowing my girls all game!”

It goes without saying that you’re referring to Gryffindor’s red-head twin-set of beaters.

“Bullshit.” He seethes, it’s purposefully quiet enough that McGonagall’s approaching figure doesn’t pick it up.

She, unlike yourself, is less patient and knobby vein-webbed hands come out to knock you both against your chests: widening the gap to a safe enough distance between the opposing captains.

“You two are exhausting.” And she sounds it too. Her glasses tremble at the edge of her nose, sun shining down on her aged face. "If one more match this season is interrupted because you two can't control your tempers, you will both be stripped of captainship and you will not fly until you graduate. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

But Oliver isn't looking at her. His eyes are focused on yours over her cloaked shoulder.

He's taking the predictable route of not replying first.

"Crystal clear, Professor." You resign to speaking first, skewing a grin at his anger-sewn face.

It’s another long boring moment before he cuts his gaze from yours, kicks up a patch of grass and grits through his teeth.

“Yes, professor.”

As can be imagined, things between you and Oliver Wood have been tense since the day he’d hobbled up to the hospital wing with a palm over his face and blood dripping down over his already red tie.

But with age, came ferocity, and what started as passing glares in the corridor melted into anger-drowned faces and sharp words flung with intent to scar.

Things got infinitely worse when you were elected captain of the Hufflepuff quidditch team in the same year Oliver was made captain for Gryffindor. It stoked the already sizzling embers that made moments around him warm and stuffy and hard to breathe.

The murky history swirled with what should be friendly competition, instead frothing into a bubbling pot of annoyed teammates and exasperated teachers and more sessions of detention than you would have ever had if you'd never met the son of a bitch that is Oliver Wood.

It's what puts you in situations like the ones you find yourself in the middle of before you even know how you got yourself there.

"You two," Professor Burbage had never held you in particularly high favour. It was just your luck that Oliver received the same courtesy. "One more word out of either of you and I will be seeing both of you this afternoon for detention in my classroom."

It was even unluckier that she'd sat you two barely three wizards away from one another and one fly-away comment had blown out into another heat-filled exchange. It always does.

"But professor--" you try.

"Right then. I'll see you both at five o' clock."

Oliver sighs, hands running up over his head between chestnut locks: "Fucking perfect. Thanks, big-mouth."

"Would you like to make it two days, Mr Wood?"

He huffs like an angry dog, tightening the grip on his writing-feather but says nothing else.

The end of the lesson doesn't come soon enough and when it does, Oliver is first out of his seat. You're grateful for it.

Cherry bumps you in the shoulder where she throws her bag over it. "You just can't help yourself, can you?"

You grin, despite the sunken feeling hollowing your chest with the acknowledgment that you're gonna be spending yet another afternoon at the mercy of an under-paid staff member alongside the hothead that was the Gryffindor captain.

"Come on, that wasn't my fault and you know it."

Her tight red curls dance when she shakes her head. They match her blood red tie. "Somehow it never is."

To your dismay, but not surprise, Enzo shares Cherry's views when he waltzes into step beside you in the corridor between Muggle Studies and Divination. His arm drapes over your shoulders and his tall frame shakes when he laughs.

"You know," his voice is thick and gravelly. "You two are gonna have to fuck it out eventually."

You roll your eyes, shoving him off you with a chuckle. The sentiment isn't anything new. "Oh, shut up."

The day folds blurrily between classes and lunch and greenhouse visits that by the time you look up it's just about five o clock.

Burbage's office door stares down at you.

The corridor is ghostly all the way behind you and it's emptiness means it's easy to make out Oliver's heavy footsteps down the stone floor. They're not slow, in an arrogant strut, neither quick like he has somewhere to be.

He trudges. Like the weight of the world is strapping him to invisible pins in the floor. It's easy to figure that your existence doesn't lighten his load any.

You don't turn. He simply falls into place beside you, keeping a good foot distance between your tightened shoulders.

The door opens.

Charity Burbage is insufferable in the way that she forces you and Oliver to sit almost on top of each other behind a scratched up desk where she can watch you under the curtain of her ratty blond hair.

You inch the chair dramatically away from Oliver's.

She's set a stack of pages by him and a wet stamp. "Stamp these and sign the date."

Additionally, she's dropped a stack of envelopes under your nose. "Tuck and seal. When you're done, you can leave."

You eye the papers. There must be hundreds.

To Whom It May Concern,

Hogwarts would like to remind all parents and guardians that the third-years will require prior permission before being allowed to visit the nearby village of Hogsmeade--

You jump when Oliver's elbow knocks yours (more violently than what was really necessary). He holds the first page out to you silently, face dripping with impatience.

When you take the page, his thumb brushes yours.

The paper is delicate in your fingers where you fold it. You tuck and seal, and by the time you've set it aside Oliver is offering the next page to you again.

His thumb brushes yours for a second time.

You find that it does for every letter that's passed on.

It's hard not to watch him out the corner of your eye. Oliver has this dark brown, nearly black, hair that's thick and almost too long and untamed all over. It's matched by bushy eyebrows and speckled freckles over the bridge of his nose.

If you didn't hate him as much as you did, you might think he was pretty. You might think that anyway.

Time stretches until the sun is setting the classroom afire with golden light and it's boredom that causes it, or possibly a desire to hear his voice at such tight quarters, but you speak.

"You know," it's soft enough that Burbage doesn't look up from her Witch Weekly magazine. "Even if - in some act of God - Scotland qualifies for the semi-finals, Luxembourg is gonna flatten them. I mean, think about it unemotionally, Wood: they have Luca Schmit as seeker. It's really a no brainer--"

"Are y’really just stupid or are you purposefully trynna start another argument?" His gaze flickers up to eye Burbage's desk warily, she still doesn't react.

Maybe it's both. After all, the subject of the Quidditch World Cup had been what put you both there in the first place.

You shrug, unfazed by his scathing remark.

"I'm just trying to make conversation."

"Well don't."

His hand brushes yours again.

Every second Friday, generally at the tail-end of lunch, Hooch's grey barn owl swoops low over your head and drops a smaller-than-average white envelope right into your mashed potatoes. Cherry yelps in surprise every time.

Then you watch the bird drop the same over the Gryffindor, Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables.

Good afternoon,

Reminder of Captain's meeting this afternoon in my office. Six o' clock, don't be late.

Regards,

Madam Hooch.

The letter says the same thing it has since you became captain and it's a wonder you still take the effort to break the seal on the envelope.

But come six o' clock, you're traipsing towards the west end of the castle. Lavender streaks caress the sky under the last impression of sunlight through the ornate stone arch of the corridor windows and an autumn chill creeps up your arms where your sweater isn't thick enough.

Hooch's office is in a quiet alcove, nearly impossible to find if you didn't know where to look, and the lamps are lit. Beyond the door, you can hear voices: you grin.

The door creaks noisily where you push it open. Inside it's cramped and cluttered with shelves of quidditch equipment - broken brooms, punctured quaffles and loose kits draping every open surface - but it's warm and smells like leather and is maybe your favourite little room in the whole castle.

The quidditch legend herself, Rolanda Hooch, has her legs kicked up on her desk and the boys are standing ahead of it locked in animated chatter.

She's laughing at something they said, and smiles when you enter.

"Sorry I'm late, coach."

It's nothing new and she waves you in with a smile. "Come in, poppet."

"Merlin," Marcus' shoulder finds yours and the force of the bump nearly sends you off your feet. "You'd be late to your own funeral hey, Puffers?"

You laugh, shoving him back with as much force as you can muster against the giant brute that is Slytherin captain Marcus Flint. It barely nudges him but he barks out a laugh, rough like tractor tires over crumbly concrete.

"I'm worth the wait." You quip back, leaning around Marcus to wink at Roger Davies. "Isn't that right, Rodger?"

He flirts back, "Always, sweetheart."

Roger is the antithesis of Marcus: all pale skin, blue eyes and short blonde hair. Easy on the eyes.

Oliver lingers just behind him, the tallest of the captains. You catch his eye, face slipping into something more serious, and nod. "Hey, Wood."

He nods in return, curt like how a ministry wizard's might be.

"Right," Hooch sits up straight in her high-back chair. "There are just a couple things we need to get through tonight, we won't be long."

The dynamic between the captains would be easy, if not for Oliver.

You're the only girl and that made for tough beginnings. Marcus is naturally brash and brutish, but - as you found - easy to impress with a couple showy tricks on the broom. A single promise to show him how to pull off a Woollongong Shimmy had him eating out your hand: the favour of a couple Slytherins was generally hard to buy and invaluable to a plushy Hufflepuff such as yourself.

Roger popped out the womb with a wink at the nurse. Impeccably charming and impossibly negotiable. Beyond being slightly dim, it was hard to say a bad thing about the Ravenclaw captain

On the other hand, Oliver was … well, Oliver.

Hooch tapped the sharp end of a writing feather rhythmically at a spot on her desk, eyes roving her clipboard.

"Next week we're doing a clean up of the supply room down by the pitch. I've set you each up on days, the whole team needs to be down to help unless they're excused by a teacher: I want a written letter."

She offers a piece of parchment without looking up.

"As you all know, it's the Slytherin versus Ravenclaw game next week."

You bump your elbow to Marcus'. He looks down and grins a mouthful of crooked teeth before turning to Roger. "Ready, pretty boy?"

Roger rolls crystal blue eyes, but he's smiling too. "Bring it on, tough-shit."

"Oy," Hooch interrupts them with a cool sigh, "The last thing, you all submitted your autumn practice requests for the pitch: Roger, Marcus, you have the days you want--"

They nod. Your shoulders stiffen.

"--Oliver, Y/n. You both want Wednesday afternoons. Monday afternoon is open, I'll let you two decide between each other who is gonna move their practice. I want a decision before tomorrow night."

Marcus is sniggering under his breath. The edges of your mouth sink into a frown, of course he wants the same day as me.

You can feel the heat of Oliver's eyes on the side of your face. You don't indulge him, keeping your gaze settled on Hooch's face.

"We'll figure it out, coach."

"Unlikely." Roger's quip is barely a whisper but you catch it.

"Alright." Hooch doesn't. "You're dismissed, go get some dinner kids."

The office door bounces back off the stone wall where Marcus tosses it carelessly open, echoing all the way down the empty corridor.

Frosty air chases over your face and the boys start down towards the Great Hall. Roger is complaining about a potions essay he hasn't started and Marcus is shrugging him off with a suggestion that includes something along the vein of blackmailing a sixth year into doing it for him but you can't focus long enough to follow.

"Oliver." Irritation is prickling at the surface of your skin. It flares into an almost rash when he stops walking, glancing over his shoulder with an unconcerned expression. "Who's giving Wednesday up?"

His arms fold against his chest. You're working extremely hard not to look down where his biceps stretch the seams on his Hogwarts jumper. "Well, you obviously."

Marcus barks another laugh, he calls down the corridor: "We'll see you kids at dinner."

"Yeah, don't kill each other! It's only practice!"

You huff in disbelief, unconcerned with the running commentary.

"Uh," you mirror Oliver by folding your own arms. "no it's not. Come on, we can negotiate like civil people can't we?"

Thick caterpillar eyebrows disappear beyond the overgrowth hiding his forehead. "Negotiate? I'm the one who wasted three hours of my life in detention last week thanks to your big fat mouth. Wednesday is mine."

"That was a joint effort, twat." You can feel where your throat is flush with rising anger. It wires your jaw tight. "Are you really so bloody difficult that we can't even come to a simple agreement?"

"Difficult?" His arms have shifted from his chest to perch against his hips. "Just because I'm not giving you what you want? Cry me a fucking river, darling. Sorry Puffers, but I'm not your precious Marcus or Roger. I'm not gonna fold just cause you bat yer pretty little eyelashes at me."

Pretty?

You blink in surprise. It's brushed quickly aside for more pressing matters. Your hands scrunch into fists at your side:

"Well. I'm not giving it up. I want Wednesday."

"Neither am I."

"Fuck you."

"In your dreams."

Oliver collapses loudly into the open spot at the Gryffindor dining table. His callousness knocks Archie's goblet of pumpkin juice across the shiny wooden surface between dishes of sausages and peas and roast potatoes.

"Bloody hell, what's got you in a mood?" He's patting down the table with a serviette, transforming it into a orange lump under his palm.

Shaking his head, as if it would joggle the thought of you loose, Oliver stabs a chicken drumstick from the top of a nearby pile with his fork. He doesn't respond.

"Wait, let me guess." Archie presses the elbows of his red jumper into the still wet surface beside his plate. "Something to do with your little Hufflepuff sweetheart?"

Oliver grunted around a mouthful, looking annoyed. "Not mine and not a sweetheart. A fucking brat."

Archie seems to find something funny, leaning back on the bench with a haughty laugh. "Right. What she do this time?"

"Wants the pitch the same day as me for practice." He's mumbling around a mouthful of chicken, tipping forward to shove a spoon teetering with peas alongside it. "Refuses to give in, despite the fact that she put me in detention last week with Burbage."

Shifting to the edge of his seat, Archie leans around Oliver's frame to find your figure across the Hall at the yellow-lined table. He nods, seemingly finding you. "Yeah, she don't look too happy either."

"I don't care."

Oliver is trying very hard not to give into the itch to look back.

"Whatever," Archie's gaze finds his again. "in better news ... I spoke to the twins just before dinner. They're still on for tomorrow."

He's twitching in his seat, eyebrows dancing and grinning around his words like a kid who's found a matchbox.

Right. The twins.

Specifically, Daisy and Delilah Dawson: two Ravenclaw sisters a year below Oliver.

They're peng, Archie had reasoned, you need a little fling to get your mind off quidditch. You're too strung up, mate.

And sure, they were, but Oliver had more important things to do than gallivant across Hogsmeade attached to the hip of some sixth year who just wants to earn her I Kissed The Quidditch Captain! badge.

He'd groaned and whined and glowered at the prospect. Was it petulant? Naturally, but spending five sickles on subpar hot chocolate and making false conversation with some Ravenclaw was a waste of precious time in Oliver's humble opinion.

His priorities are, as they've always been, crystal clear in his mind.

1. Win Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup 2. Refer to point (1)

There was little wiggle room for the introduction of girls into any spot on that list.

You're the only one who came almost close to the tight list. Only because if there had to be a third priority, "shove winning the cup in Hufflepuff's face" might just crack it. He thought about you significantly more than any other girl in the castle and maybe that might mean something if he thought about too long about it, but fortunately, he refused to.

Regardless, Archie was adamant and more than a little pathetic when he mentioned that Daisy only agreed to see him if he had a date for Delilah. It was all settled very quickly.

And it's in this show of loyalty to his dearest friend that Oliver finds himself walking the cobblestone path down into Hogsmeade on a crisp Saturday morning.

The little village is bustling with students - it normally is - and the crowd has him knocking shoulders with Delilah who's walking in step beside him.

He's uncomfortable to find that she's staring dreamily up at the underside of his jaw.

On Oliver's other side: Archie is talking Daisy's ear off, making another pitiful attempt at holding her hand. He doesn't quite manage it and Oliver can't tell whether it's because she genuinely doesn't notice or she just can't be arsed.

"So," Delilah's voice is light and sweet. Delicate. "You mentioned that you take Arithmancy? I've heard it's tough."

Oliver nods airily. "Yeah ... yeah, it's difficult."

He tightens his jacket closer over his frame. The wind is whipping between their bodies and he thinks that maybe she didn't hear him over it's howling if her confused expression is anything to go by. He finds he's not bothered enough to repeat it.

The entrance of Madam Puddifoot's comes into view at the end of the walkway.

Oliver’s relieved. It's freezing out here and maybe he'll be more in the mood for flirtatious conversation once he's gotten some food in his stomach (Archie had insisted they skip breakfast: we have to order something to eat, so we can sit longer).

There's a jingle of a bell overhead when Archie pushes the door open, standing awkwardly aside to let the ladies in first.

Inside the shop, it's more than busy: powdery blue walls barely visible beyond the sea of Hogwarts couples crammed around tiny circle tables and waiters in red uniform knocking the back of their chairs with wobbling trays.

There's music coming from ... somewhere, it sounds like The Weird Sisters and at the sound, Oliver can't imagine how this morning could possibly go any worse.

Oh wait, yes he can.

You could be sitting at a table right by the door across a too-small-table knocking knees with some Slytherin prick. Like you are right there right now.

Delilah tugs on his wrist, it's gentle and he almost doesn't feel where he's being lead between tables towards an open booth across the room. He falls unceremoniously down against the torn leather, eyes never leaving your table.

You haven't noticed his presence, he knows because your lips are stretching around a giggle he can't hear but can already imagine. You don't smile around him, that's for sure.

Oliver's stomach is frothing and bubbling and he's trying really hard to tune back in where Archie's knocking a menu into his hand.

Of course you're there. To ruin his mood and his day, because you're just bloody perfect at it.

"So, am I seeing you girls at the Quidditch match on Saturday?" Archie's voice carries somewhere over his head.

Delilah laughs. Or maybe it's Daisy, Oliver doesn't look.

"Maybe," she says, "Depends if Oliver's gonna be there. You're gonna be there, right?"

He feels a hand nudge at his forearm. Definitely Delilah.

His gaze floats back over the table to offer a fraction of eye contact, he nods. "Oh, uh ... yeah. Sure, definitely."

Archie saves him by speaking again and your table finds Oliver's attention just in time for him to watch the boy sitting across from you swipe away a smudge of hot chocolate over your cheek. You smile, looking bashful and a little bit flushed.

A suffocating, searing heat rushes from the soles of Oliver's feet up between his every organ and over every tendril of hair on his head. His jaw tightens.

Of course he recognises the pratt across you.

Ryo Yoshida.

Every girl in the castle's wet dream, if the rumours he's heard are anything to go by. With his fucking sleek black hair and his Japanese accent that had witches flocking to him in the dozens.

He doesn't wonder why you're here with him.

Oliver is a proud man, but even he could admit that you're beautiful. Albeit reluctantly.

With your wide wet eyes that make him a little sick in a way that turns his stomach warm and the way you do your hair and those fucking dangly earrings that clink when you loose your cool on him.

That's without even mentioning the sound of your laugh - the one he only ever overhears - and your legs in the school uniform skirt and the way you look when you're diving on your broom under the light of a sunny day.

Alright, maybe he couldn't admit to all of it ... but you were okay.

Okay enough to crack a date with Ryo Yoshida or any other schmuck in the castle if you wanted.

"Anything good to eat here, Oliver?"

He pretends he doesn't hear her at first, but the kick at his shin under the table is harder to ignore.

Archie is glaring at him across the table. Dude, don't fuck this up for me.

Oliver's eyes find Delilah. She's scooted up close under his elbow and, to be fair to the poor girl, she was pretty too. Red lipstick smeared across her smiling lips, painted nails edging closer to his arm and perfectly styled hair sitting over her shoulder.

He nods, reaching for the menu: "Yeah. Actually, last time I had the Merlin Meal and it was pretty good."

She perks up, cherry red smile widening at his reply. "Oh, I thought that looked good!"

Training his eyes on the menu, Oliver wills himself not to look back at you. You're already souring his mood and you haven't even said a bloody word.

It's just what you do. What you do to him: infuriating him with the threat of an argument around any and every corner.

The waiter comes by and Oliver finds himself generous enough to gift Delilah with an arm draped over the back of her seat. She giggles and he pretends he doesn't notice when she mouths something that looked suspiciously like 'he's so hot' to her sister across the table.

Archie seems pleased too. Daisy has granted him, finally, her hand and his arm bends at an awkward angle to maintain the grip in hers under the table. He's positively beaming.

But despite Oliver’s best efforts to stay engaged, he still catches himself - only when it's too late - and his eyes are already glued to watching the way your jeans are hugging your thighs where you shift in your seat.

Your table is sat by the door. The chime of the bell calls for his gaze every time it tolls and every time he finds you let off a violent shiver in your seat as the autumn crisp rolls over your shoulders.

The door shuts again and you still.

Oliver can feel where the tips of his ears are burning red and his bones are itching: Ryo’s black suede coat is hanging over the back of his chair.

You’re still talking - hands rubbing together, fighting for warmth - he’s leaned over with his chin in palm to listen and his jacket sits unused behind his shoulders while you fucking shiver in the breeze.

It’s pathetic, really. He’s not sure whether he’s referring to himself or you: but Oliver is still looking and you’re still shaking like a leaf and he’s halfway to flipping tables to get to you and just give you his own fucking coat so you’ll stop shaking and stop annoying him—

“Oliver was just telling me about wanting to join the Hogwarts Choir.” He turns again to find Archie waiting with an expectant face, it's laced in a little bit of smugness: caught you. "Weren't you, mate?"

When he looks back you’re gone.

There's a short pile of sickles abandoned on the table and he hopes that Ryo at least had the good sense to pay for your drink after forcing you to sit in the freezing cold.

He shakes the thought off. Who cares.

In fact, he hopes you catch a cold.

The day passes like swimming through molasses: slow and sticky and exhausting.

It's nearly seven when Oliver presses a sympathy kiss into Delilah's cheek - Daisy allows for no such thing from Archie - and the two sisters skip off down the west wing corridor with a wiggle of their fingers over their shoulders at the boys.

"I think that went well." Archie's grinning, hands on his hip and glasses edging down his brown nose.

It's the first thing that genuinely brings a jolt of life out of Oliver all day. He teeters back on his heels, hands gripping his stomach where he laughs. Laughs like a madman.

"I think you need to get yer fucking head checked, mate."

The tail end of his outburst is simmering down, now barely a breathy chuckle, when a voice washes over him from down the other end of the corridor. "Wood!"

He'd recognise that voice anywhere. From the dead of sleep or the depth of the ocean.

He's slow when he turns on his heel, the remnants of his smile dripping all the way off the edge of his jaw until he's nearly frowning.

You're jogging, scarf bouncing at your shoulder with the movement, and coming to a stop right under his chin.

"What?"

There's a sharp edge to his tone - there always is - but he really hopes you haven't noticed how the syllable wobbled at the end. Now that you're right beneath his frame and not across the room, it's harder to ignore the lashes kissing at the corner of your eyes. You're wearing lip gloss and he knows it's for Ryo.

His stomach is churning and your face is twisting into something he is struggling to recognise.

"I--" your hands wring, eyes flickering behind to where Archie's watching curiously (you wave awkwardly). "You ... you can have Wednesday."

It's not what Oliver is anticipating. He almost takes a full step back in surprise.

"Why?"

Your eyes roll in a comfortably familiar way, "Because Hooch wants an answer tonight and one of us had to be the bigger person."

His brow tightens, eyes roving down the stitching of your sweater. It's cute. He's quiet.

"You not gonna argue?" You throw your words quickly, snatching them back before he can answer: "Perfect. I'll send her an owl before bed."

You're marching back down the corridor before he has chance to say anything else and he's watching your retreating figure with the hope - that he’s not gonna address - you’re not going to cozy up somewhere in the Slytherin dorm room.

“Well.” Archie’s running a hand over his thick black curls. “That was unexpected.”

Oliver huffs. “It’s been a weird day.”

An uneasy air has settled over Hogwarts.

It came in like a storm front, drifting in on the wind that dropped the article at the door of the castle.

The same copy of The Daily Prophet has been doing the rounds between dormitories and class rooms all week: Sirius Black, Azkaban’s most infamous prisoner and recent escapee, has been sighted in Dufftown by an astute Muggle, The Daily Prophet reports.

Dufftown. A barely twenty minute ride by carriage from Hogwarts bridge.

It’s got the castle on edge, it’s got you on edge. Creeping around the castle like Sirius Black is gonna jump out from around any corner.

Dumbledore stationing dementors at the edges of the castle was the tipping point for the cold drip of trickling fear in your chest that's become easy to ignore in daylight - when Cherry and Enzo are flittering around you between classes - but in moments like these, like now, when you’re on the tail end of a quidditch practice, grow like a poisonous black vine up around every nerve in your body. A Monday night, the team’s kit weighing heavy in your arms - broomstick tucked precariously in the bend of one elbow - and following the siren call of the dormitory showers.

You’d promised the team you’d get them to the house elves before the upcoming match on Saturday. The match against Gryffindor.

But for tonight, they’re gonna live in a pile at the end of your bed.

You’re exhausted: calves burning, sweat sticking loose hairs to your forehead and probably smelling like wet socks and broomstick polish.

The touch of night is suffocating the flicker of the corridor lamps. It’s long past the recently set curfew and you know that if McGonagall finds you out you’re likely in deep enough trouble to get you off Saturday’s match roster.

Despite the prospect, you don’t dwell on it. You find you’re more worried about escaped Azkaban convicts: the echo of your own footsteps setting you further on edge.

You’ve craned your neck over your shoulder enough times to form a knot there. Each time you’re relieved to find that Sirius Black hasn’t crept up behind you.

Suddenly, the squeak of your boots against the stone floor are un-alone.

Someone is marching and right in your direction. Your heart bangs wildly on the inside of your ribcage - blood turning to an icy slurry in your veins, but you don’t move.

The corner is sharp when the figure turns into the corridor you stand and the scream is halfway out your throat when your eyes find his face.

Absent is the matted black hair and sunken eyes you’re anticipating. Instead, warm brown rings reflect the fire of the lit torches.

Your broomstick clutters to the floor, warm relief flooding down to your fingertips. “Fucking hell, Wood.”

He looks just as surprised as you. Only for a moment, though, before his gaze is tightening in annoyance again.

“I thought you were Sirius Black.“

“Well that’s stupid isn’t it.”

You huff, shifting the weight of the team’s robes precariously between your arms: squatting to try scoop up your broomstick off the floor again. You’re halfway successful when it clatters loudly back against the stone floor.

“What are you even doin’ out here so late? You know curfew is passed, don’t you?” His voice curls with something that might be mistaken for concern if you didn’t know who you were talking to.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

You’re reaching down again. A robe on the top of the pile slips off, landing beside the broomstick.

“Aye right. Whatever, goodnight.”

He’s brushing past you.

In a movement neither of you anticipated, driven by the fear shooting up your spine again, your hand finds his wrist. “Wait—“

Oliver freezes: eyes dropping to where you’re connected. You rip your hand back, as if scalded.

“I …” the words mash and wrestle at the back of your throat. “Could …”

You glance down the darkened corridor awaiting you in the journey back to your dorm before meeting his face again. It’s unreadable.

His brow scrunches. “Yes?"

"Could you want me to walk my common room?”

Embarrassment sears at your cheeks. On a normal day, you’d sooner go dancing naked under the Whomping Willow before asking Oliver Wood a favour but that was before the image of Sirius Black swum behind your eyes everywhere you looked.

Oliver would be fairly useless if faced with the criminal, naturally, but at least you wouldn’t die alone.

“Please?” Your voice is quiet and you think it’s the gentlest word you’ve ever said to him.

There’s a long stretch of quiet. His eyes flicker between your face and the broomstick on the floor. It’s quickly stretching past the blurring boundaries of an appropriate time for consideration.

You’re practically melting in embarrassment now, electing to make the decision for him.

“Never mind.” You squat again, successful this time in sticking the broomstick back under your arm. The dropped robe is more difficult but you manage to replace it. “Forget I asked.”

Oliver’s moving before you’re stood straight up again. He’s reaching for your broomstick, you instinctively yank it back but he sticks you with a firm look and his thumb is unexpectedly soft where it caresses over your knuckle wrapped around the handle.

Your grip loosens and he perches the broomstick over his shoulder with ease. He surprises you again by taking half the load of laundry in your arms into his own.

“C’mon, before someone catches us out here. I’m not doing any more detention because of you.”

He’s already three feet ahead when blood rushes down to your legs, prompting them to chase after his figure. The movement is easier, lightened by Oliver’s surprise act of kindness.

You fall into step beside him, half-tempted to comment on his willingness to share your burden, but knowing him, one wrong word and he’d dump it all back into your arms.

It’s quiet.

You don’t make a move to talk and Oliver doesn’t look your way. It dawns on you that Gryffindor dormitory is in the other direction and you’re still deciding whether to feel guilty or flattered over the fact when Oliver speaks.

“Why’re you out here alone?”

You look, met with the side of his face: it’s still like he hadn’t said anything at all. There’s a tugging instinct to snap at him.

Why do you care?

But his tone is perceptibly gentle enough that you think maybe, just this once, it won’t end in an argument. You test the tepid waters.

“Uh …” your head knocks sideways, tilted as you speak. “I let the team come up early while I sorted the quaffles in the sports closet by the pitch. Didn’t want them walking up in the dark.”

You’re tempted to mention that it was his team last week that left it in such a mess. You don’t.

"And now you’re walking in the dark yourself? Smart move, princess."

Your breath hitches.

It’s not the first time he’s called you that. Princess. A couple times over the years, usually in the heat of a spiraling argument, but never so benign. While still ungentle, the tone is soft enough that it rings in your ears.

You choose not to succumb to the antagonization of his reply. Humming, you shrug. "Rather me than them."

His eyes flicker, almost barely, to the high apple of your cheek. You notice in the corner of your eye how his jaw twitches, like he wants to say something.

He seemingly decides otherwise because he focuses his eyes ahead of him and stays silent.

The overhanging ceiling art is sloping down, air going sticky with the scents of the kitchen the further you go: it’s the trademark of the approaching Hufflepuff common room.

Another two turns and it will be the end of your little journey with Oliver Wood.

"‘M surprised Ryo didn’t walk you up."

You're more surprised than you've been since finding him, eyes widening in confusion. He grants you another look out the side of his eye.

"How do you know about that?"

Oliver shrugs, shifting your broomstick to the other shoulder.

"The whole world saw your little date down at Madam Puddifoot's the other day."

Of course. Word travels faster through seventh year than a new Firebolt.

"Yeah. Well." You hum. "That's not gonna be happening again anytime soon.”

It had all been good and well. The rush of having Ryo Yoshida, Hogwart's most eligible bachelor, ask you out and - to be fair - the date had been fine. Ryo was funny and made good conversation but nothing near thrilling enough to daydream over and you'd allowed yourself to brush over a couple red flags because of it, until Cherry came bursting into your dormitory less than a day after your date relaying how he'd caught her between classes to ask her out to the same spot.

"Why's that?"

You're confused now, why Oliver cares or how he'd become curious enough to actually ask. You're even more confused as to why you decide to answer him. You shrug, "He asked Cherry out the very next day. She said no, obviously, but that was enough to let the whole thing go."

You expect him to say something malicious, quip something spiteful about What you did you think would happen? You're nowhere near in his league.

He doesn't.

"He's an idiot."

Not for the first time in the last five minutes, you're not sure what to say. You think this is the longest a conversation has gone without an argument. You sigh, "Yeah."

The stack-up of barrels comes into view. You dig into you the deep pocket on the inside of your robe, emerging with your wand.

Oliver stops, eyes flickering between the barrels and his shining black boots.

You step ahead, tapping the barrels in the rhythm that's become second-nature and the entryway opens.

Turning to him, you offer out an arm and he sets the robes back into your hands. The awkwardness is stifling. He leans forward, tucking the broomstick under your arm, hand wavering to make sure it doesn't fall again. The gesture makes the hold in your knees wobbly.

He nods. "Right. Goodnight."

You nod back, so quickly that you hear your earrings jingle. "Yeah, g'night."

Oliver turns, marching back the way you came and you watch him: biting your bottom lip so hard you're half expecting to draw blood.

"Thank you!" It leaps from your mouth before you have you moment to let it marinate on your tongue. You wince immediately.

He pauses, turning halfway on his heel. He smiles, it's not wide enough for teeth, but definitely wide enough to have your heart falling through your stomach. He nods again and then he's gone.

Saturday arrives gloomy and dripping.

It makes for good quidditch conditions, but the chill in the air is still hard to ignore when you step out into mushy grass under stadium lights. The roar of the crowd nearly deafens you, but it'll only take a couple minutes in the air for it to burn down to a soft hum.

In the middle of the stadium floor: Hooch is standing with a whistle to her lips, her figure blurred by the drizzle. Oliver stands beside her, and behind you, your team is clambering onto their brooms and rising into the air with the freshly washed kit over their backs.

You go to walk, but the icy glance Oliver is sending your way convinces you into a jog. He's always impatient before a game, itchy, antsy.

"On time as usual." Hooch hums when you land beside her.

"Got the whole bloody school waiting on her." Oliver mutters but Hooch shrugs him off, pulling the game coin out from inside her robes.

"Perfect." She positions it so we can see, "Gryffindor?"

Oliver straightens out, chest swelling: "Heads."

Hooch nods and before you can suck in another breath, the coin is in the air. She catches it with a skilled hand, flipping and revealing it to the set of captains.

"Hufflepuff, first ball!" She shouts loud enough that the floating players can hear. They nod, some groaning.

The coach turns back on the captains, "I want a fair game kids, no fighting."

"Me and Ollie? Fight?" You smile, "Never, coach."

Oliver rolls his eyes. "Yes, coach."

Suddenly you're above the pitch, sucking in breaths of wet air and struck with that familiar feeling like you could conquer the world on just your broomstick.

The quaffle flies and you stoop to catch it, twisting around Alicia Spinnet to snatch the ball before she's even noticed you're there.

Rain pelts on heads and the game goes on.

Oliver is shouting like a madman from his place in front of the goals behind you - you’ve long learnt to drown it out. He does it half to annoy his own team and half to distract yours.

You're spinning, flying, swooping and - as you predicted - the crowd has become a distant call, a blurring sight of yellow and red.

An hour passes and the game is already halfway into the next when there's a rise in the crowd. It's not the normal yells and whoops and hollers, but you still don't look up: you're calling over to Jane and Wyatt, your beaters.

“Get between the twins, and stay there!”

Below, Harry Potter and your own seeker, Cedric Diggory, are flying in circles around each other. The call of Cedric's name is on the tip of your tongue when there’s another ripple of sound off the crowd and this one draws your eyes. It’s there for a second before you find the army of figures descending on the pitch.

Your breath catches in your throat, freezing solid so you can’t swallow.

The dementors are even more ghostly this close. You'd never seen so many.

A darkness is permeating the air, the sight of the supporters in the stand dissipating into black. They’re floating in from every corner, drifting at a pace that’s too fast for you to make a move in any direction.

There’s a scream and your gaze finds the body falling through the sky: it’s Harry.

The ground is racing up to meet him and adrenaline drives your hand to tip your broom, to chase after his quickly disappearing shape when a blurry figure blocks your way.

Someone yells your name but you don’t hear it.

You’d never imagined examining a dementor, much less this up close, but even if you had: nothing your imagination could conjure up would ever come close to the harrowing darkness of its empty eye-sockets.

Its silhouette spreads over every corner of your vision, black like night and blocking the view of the sky. Your nose is so close you could tip forward and meet it's silken cloak.

A cold washes over your body like you've never felt, like you're freezing over: ice creeping up your fingertips, shoulders and face.

Your brain looses all grip on thought, replaced with a seeping dread. It barely acknowledges where a scabbed, decomposing hand is reaching out to you.

Charcoal fingertips brush your cheek when you're tugged back, all the way off your broomstick.

There's not even a last coherent thought to panic when you're engulfed in a warm chest, a hand stabilising around your waist onto a new broomstick. It dips and the green grass is reaching up to you.

The new heat engulfs you through to your bones. You grasp blindly for the expanse of a thick veined neck, wrapping yourself around him.

Digging your face into his shoulder, it takes one glance at the scarlet robes to know who it is. Oliver's panting, one hand holding you against him while the other steers the broomstick down to the floor.

You're trembling, no thought occupying any space beyond Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver--

"What the bloody hell were you thinking?"

The voice is distant, said against your temple but echoing as if from the end of a long corridor. You don't register where hot tears are wetting your cheeks, erupting over your face without being called.

His words prompt you closer: a tight arm furling over his shoulders and wrapping around him like a vine around an old tree.

"O-Oliver ..."

The hand over your waist tightens. "Sh ... it's fine. You're fine."

The broomstick lands shakily, Oliver's boots squelching into muddy grass. You barely realise you're back on ground when another hand is tugging you off, but you cling tighter to the sweaty red neck: shaking your wet face against his well-pressed robes.

"C'mon, princess ..." His calloused hands pry you from him, gently like you're a piece of china sitting on the very edge of a high shelf. "It's Pomfrey, she's gonna look after you."

You think you feel a kiss press into your hairline before you're being scooped up into a new set of arms. Madam Pomfrey is warm too, smelling like antiseptic and maple syrup.

There's another swell of noise erupting from the supporters above and you're being lead away.

Oliver watches your figure, slumped against the school nurse until you've disappeared into the medical tent.

His heart is going wild, slamming against the walls of his ribcage. Beside him his hands are shaking and he's sucking in thick gulps of air, he finds it still isn't enough oxygen.

There's another splatter where Angelina has landed a few feet behind him. She's panting too, tugging on the edge of his robes and pointing up into the sky.

"Wood!" She's frantic, "They won, Cedric caught the snitch!"

His mouth is dry when he swallows. Rain catches in his eye when he looks up, half the Hufflepuff team is no longer in the sky and the Gryffindors are all on their way down.

"I ..." feeling is returning to his fingertips, "is ... where's Harry?"

Angelina points in the direction of the medical tent. Above, the pitch is engulfed in a bright white light and Oliver catches the wispy end of a shining phoenix chasing between disappearing Dementors. It's a patronus. Dumbledore's, Oliver figures somewhere in his muddy brain.

"Is everyone else okay?"

Angelina nods. Her eyes flicker to the medical tent then back at him. "Is she?"

The image returns to him: the mass of darkness engulfing your figure in the sky. The terror that ripped through him like he was being torn apart from the inside, the whistle of the wind that stung over his ears and how it blocked out his mutterings of please, please, please--

He shakes his head. "She's too tough for her own good. She'll ... she'll be fine."

But it comes out like he's trying to convince himself more than Angelina.

Oliver doesn't see you for a few days.

Two, to be exact, and his skin itches the entire time. A deep itch, like it's coming from his bones.

It's only on Monday evening at dinner, with the Hufflepuff table whooping, that you come strolling back into the light of his eyes.

Your head is down, flushed with all the attention, and when you sit, kids are rising from their seats to tackle you into side hugs. He can tell you're embarrassed but he can't gather himself enough to care: the warm rush of relief flooding his stomach so much so that if he dared open his mouth it would all come rushing out.

You look fine. All limbs attached and smiling, it settles him.

He doesn't snap at Archie when he knocks his shoulder with a "you're staring" and his dinner suddenly looks more appetising when he peels his eyes off your figure down to his plate. He finds that he doesn't care as much as he usually does where Enzo's lanky arm is strung over your shoulder.

The week passes in a flurry.

While you share several classes, Oliver doesn't share a single word with you. It's hard not to notice that you're working very hard not to interact with him.

In Muggle Studies, you arrive late and keep your nose tucked deep into the pages of a textbook he knows you couldn't care less about. You're up and out of the classroom before he's even zipped up his bag. It's the same in Potions and Arithmacy.

While going days without talking to each other is not unusual, this time he can tell it’s on purpose. He pretends that he doesn't care.

The rain has cleared and when Friday arrives the sunset is red and orange and purple, granting Oliver with a rare enchanting view out his bedroom window where it's setting behind the East tower.

It's in this quiet, peaceful moment that Archie comes bouncing in with some news of a party happening in the Ravenclaw dormitory.

He's indifferent but Archie is nothing if not convincing.

"Come on, dude. You're literally a hermit crab." He sighs, falling back against his own poster bed across Oliver's. "There will be girls."

"There's girls everywhere, Arch."

His eyebrows wiggle, "And alcohol."

It takes a bit more pestering and the Weasley twins rushing in after him with the same news (and a far less patient approach) to get him up off his bed.

He digs in his cupboard for the last pair of clean jeans and a somewhat suitable purple jumper, tugging them on with a grumble, before he's being dragged by both arms - a twin on each side - across the castle to the West tower wherein resides the Ravenclaw population.

The common room is bustling with seventh years, he recognises them from all houses, and a table set up to the side with some trays of food. He's barely made himself comfortable when Katie Bell is shoving a red solo cup into his hand:

"It's Angelina's brew." She informs him.

He can believe that. The liquid is strong, burning down his throat followed by the barely there after-taste of pumpkin juice. Oliver downs the whole thing in one go.

The music swells louder and he's three cups of Angelina's concoction deep when you come tumbling through the entrance portal.

You're drunk yourself, he can tell by the way you're giggling and half leaning on Cherry Stretton. Bumping through people, not passing without leaning back to apologise to them tipsily, you head straight into the arms of Angelina and Alicia Spinnet. They smile in surprise, engulfing you in their arms.

Despite his and your long-held rivalry, it had done nothing to stop the rest of his team from sweetening up to you. The twins called you their favourite yellow tie at regular intervals and the girls found you nothing less than endearing. Oliver could lie and say he hated it.

Instead, he wrestles his way to where Katie is situated with more to drink, filling his cup and downing it.

The room is twisting in a flurry of colours and faces and it's the lightest you've felt in almost a week. You giggle against Enzo, his dreads tucked safely back in a bun while Cedric sets a Dragon-Barrel Brandy shot on fire and hands it carefully over.

Enzo's head knocks back, slipping the burning liquid down his throat with a wince. There's a cheer at his accomplishment, and suddenly Cedric's knocking your elbow: "you're next, Cap!"

After the match-gone-wrong, Madam Pomfrey had held you down in the infirmary until Monday morning. You were fed copious amounts of chocolate - in the form of bars and drinks and cakes and ice creams. By Saturday night you were - surely a couple kilograms heavier - and feeling fine, but Pomfrey was nothing if not paranoid:

"That was no light ordeal you went through, dear. I'm not letting you out of my sight until I'm happy with you."

In all honesty, you'd prefer if the whole school forgot it ever happened.

If Pomfrey didn't fret and your friends didn't come by every meal time and your team stopped sending you get better! letters and nobody mentioned it ever again.

More than anyone, you wished Oliver would forget. The ordeal, or maybe just you as a person.

You'd made a stupid decision under the heat of stadium lights and the influence of racing adrenaline, trying to chase for Harry, and he'd made a stupider decision coming to save you from yourself.

When it got quiet in the infirmary past dusk and Harry's shadowy figure was long since snoring in the bed across yours, you could feel Oliver's touch. Could feel it's strong hold wrapped around your waist and the voice against you the back of your neck and the lips at your temple.

You never reminisced long: for with his touch came the writhing, scalding fear burrowing a hole in your chest.

He could tease you, he will tease you.

Oliver had saved you from the clutches of a dementor moments from your soul being sucked out your body and you'd cried in his chest the whole time, refused to let him go in front of the whole school. It was a mortification you would never live down. And if Oliver decided he was going to use it against you, even once, you were sure you'd melt into the floor in shame.

It's what's made the Firewhiskey and Lemon squash concoction Cherry had handed you back in her room so easy to toss back. It stung and steam rose out your mouth where you'd panted for air. There was another ... and another, they went down the same.

The walk across the castle to reach the Ravenclaw Tower had been wobbly and you'd laughed with your friends loud enough to wake up the whole castle you're sure, but it dissolved the fear that clung to your bones. The fear that he was here, lingering between the people in the crowded blue common room.

Now the liquor is fading. Numbing to a dull buzz and you decline Cedric's offer at a burning shot, thinking about how proud you'll be of yourself when you wake up tomorrow morning in bed rather than wrapped around a toilet seat and hauling up guts into the bowl.

The party, not unlike yourself, is dimming.

Students are crawling away into all corners, each with their own excuse. I have a potions essay to do or No, dude, I'm too drunk for this or Flint wants us down at the pitch for drills at eight tomorrow morning, I gotta head to bed.

The crowd, though thinning, is beginning to clump into respective circles across the room. You glance annoyed at the fireplace where the flames crack merrily. Even with your short skirt and thin satin top, the heat of the common room is stifling.

Enzo is on his fourth burning shot, it's lost it's appeal to the crowd but he seems undeterred, knocking Cedric in the shoulder with the empty shot glass motioning: another! You yawn, playing mindlessly with the ruffled sleeve of your shirt.

"Oh no," A harsh tug at your hand draws you from the lure of sleep that's fogging your mind. "The night is young, no yawning!"

Cherry has your wrist in her grip, Enzo's in the other. He blinks blearily down at his friends.

"Huh?"

"Come on," Cherry's brown eyes roll far back in her head. "Fred says they're starting Seven Minutes In Heaven. Let's go join--"

"Seven minutes--?" you laugh between words, "Cher, are you mad?"

She whines, pouting like a kicked dog. "It'll be fun. Besides, when last did you have a good fucking snog? Too long, I say!"

Somehow, you're not only convinced across the room into a spot onto the floor in a circle of a couple others, but a drink has ended up in your hand and its contents quickly down your gullet.

For the nerves, you assure yourself.

Before you know it, Angelina - who's conveniently settled beside you - is topping up your plastic cup with a nearly empty bottle of Daisyroot Draught. "This is the good stuff. Katie stashed it in, her sister works at a brewery."

You smile nervously, nod, and take a tentative sip. The pre-existing buzz in your head convinces you it's not so bad.

In the circle is a couple Gryffindors you recognise, some giggling Slytherin girls, a Ravenclaw you can't name and three members of your quidditch team. There's an open spot on the side you don't take note of.

That is until Archie Kumar is steering a grumpy, visibly drunk Oliver Wood into the open place and collapsing beside him.

Your breath catches in your throat, heart sinking into your stomach like a stone. You're halfway off the floor, suddenly desperate for the loo, when Cherry - on your left side - drags you back down to the floor.

Maybe it's Katie's sister's brew, but you tumble too easily back onto your bum.

"Relax. Just don't look at him, okay?"

You suck in another breath, eyes trained on the white moon outline sewn into the rug. "Yeah ... okay."

It doesn't hold long and when you find the Gryffindor captain again, his gaze is trained on your face. It's stone cold. You gasp quietly and look away.

"Right!" George Weasley is on his feet, setting an empty Firewhisky bottle into the centre. "Who's first?"

Alicia shuffles forward on her knees, the first of the group to move, and the bottle goes spinning. It lands on the Ravenclaw boy. He grins and she does too: Fred wolf-whistles when they stand.

The "heaven" in question is a tall oak cabinet leaning against the back wall of the common room. The pair disappear into its depths and conversation rises again as the circle waits.

You sip your drink in large gulps, trying to hold conversation with Angelina against Oliver's hot gaze that's burning a hole through the side of your face. It's difficult: the Gryffindor girl is so drunk that she's talking with her eyes closed.

Seven minutes later, there's a chorus of "time's up!", Alicia and the boy emerge another ten seconds later. They're rearranging their clothes and Alicia is as scarlet as her quidditch robes. The boy is grinning like the cat who caught the canary. You're suddenly struck with the violent urge to throw up.

The game goes on like that, round after round. Lee Jordan and Jane Emmet (your beater), Katie and Wyatt (your other beater), Cherry and a pretty Slytherin girl you don't know - she's especially chuffed when she returns, red lipstick smeared over her chin.

You're working very hard not to look at Oliver, much less think about him, but it's proving difficult. Every time the bottle takes its spin, your stomach churns.

It had occurred to you during the time that Alicia and that boy were in the closet that there was a very real chance that Oliver could be called up when one of those pretty Slytherins take their turn at the bottle. The thought had made you down the last of your drink and immediately want to vomit it all back up into your cup.

The image of their slender arms curling around his criminally wide-set shoulders, Oliver pushing them back against the inside wall of the grand closet. Would he make noise? Would he sigh or groan against their lips or whisper something about how beautiful they looked tonight in their ears--

"Ollie, you're up mate."

You can't remember who said it, but the words stripped your gaze off Angelina and straight into the pooling brown eyes you'd been avoiding all week long.

He sighed, grumbling under his breath and only with a less-than-gentle nudge from Archie, did he lean up on thighs that flexed unfairly -- bloody hell, stop it! -- and wrap his hand over the neck of the bottle: it went spinning.

The only sound you could hear was the twist of the glass against the woven rug and the hum of your own blood rushing past your ears. It stopped.

"No fucking ways." Enzo cracked from two people down.

A hand landed on your shoulder, shaking you half off your arse: Angelina. "You're up, babe! Go!"

The bottle was pointing irrefutably at your little spot in the circle.

Oliver's face was as white as you'd ever seen it when you dared look up.

"I-I'm not going in with him--" It was the first thing that came to your mind and went spluttering out your mouth.

George was laughing so hard that he'd fallen all the way onto his back. The roar of the group was ear-splitting.

"There's no ways I'm going in with her!"

"Let's end this feud once and for all," Katie bellowed over their heads. "Captain versus captain!"

You're being knocked from all sides, hands crawling under your arms and lifting you off the floor. Across the circle, Oliver is experiencing the same and before you know it: the wooden doors of the cabinet are creaking open.

"Go on!" Lee's finger is piercing your side.

Oliver is beside you but you won't look. You take one last look over your shoulder at Cherry back on the floor, she does nothing but offer a sympathetic shrug and mouths "sorry, dear".

Your hand reaches before Oliver's, flinging the door open with maybe a little too much force. It bangs against the wall behind it.

"Let's get this over with." You mumble, only half concerned that he heard you.

You slouch climbing in, the top is low and the space is even more cramped than what you assumed. To your surprise, Oliver is stepping in after you. He takes his turn at slamming the door, shutting it this time.

It's dark inside, but not enough that you can't see. Light is peaking in through the cracks and he's leaned back against the opposite wall to you.

In the narrow space, your legs are twisting around each other to stand: his one knee situated between yours. In the dimness, he folds his arms and you notice for the first time the jumper he's wearing. The purple one, you recognise it as the one he's had for years. Time has taken its toll where the jumper is clinging to life around his frame, Oliver having grown at least three times wider while the jumper has remained the same size.

"Go on, Wood, give her a kiss!"

The voice is unrecognisable but it knocks your tongue back into your mouth where you'd been ogling at his torso.

His arms are folded, proffering you with a glare that could cut through steel. He makes no visible sign that he'd heard the shout at all. You mirror him, folding your own arms.

"I'm not kissing you."

His head cocks. "Oh, so you're talking to me now?"

You suck in a sharp breath. It's not the response you're anticipating. "What?"

"So we're playing dumb?" He leans just a fraction closer. You can smell the linger of alcohol on his breath, but it doesn't work hard enough to drown out the smell of peppermint that follows him around. "Doesn't suit you, princess."

"I'm not playing anything. I don't know what you're talking about." You double down. It's probably not sustainable but the heat of his body almost against yours and the thrum of liquor in your blood makes the decision for you.

"Y've been avoiding me all week."

"I haven't"

"You're a bad liar."

You swallow hard. Embarrassment is rising again, making your head spin. Oliver's chest is puffed up in anger, you can tell because you've had five years to learn the look like the back of your hand. Except, now - as it has been for a longer time than you care to admit - it's harder to focus on the waves of fury reflecting off of him when his face is just so ... beautiful. Nose scrunched and lips pulled tight into a grimace.

It's what makes you change tactics, you think.

"So what if I was? Why does it matter?"

His arms unfold, eyes rolling so far that his head knocks back against the wood of the cupboard.

"Why?" you press, "Did you miss me, Wood?"

"Maybe I did."

He's looking at you again. For what feels like the hundredth time just tonight, your breath escapes you in a rush and your lungs struggle to grasp back at it. Your face softens without meaning to.

You blink at him.

"You did?" It's a whisper.

His arms are still folded but something clement passes like a shadow over his features.

"No."

His face betrays his words, eyes soft and lip daring to curl up at the edge.

The air in the tight space goes cold. Or maybe it's your blood. It's more likely the look on Oliver's face: like he hasn't just turned your organs to slush. You're all the way sober now.

"I'm not kissing you." You repeat dumbly, but it's gentle.

Merlin, you want to kiss him so fucking badly.

"You mentioned." He's almost, almost, smiling. It's gentle too.

The space between you falls quiet. You're suddenly overly focused on the brush of his knee between yours. His swirling brown eyes catch on the split of light creeping in past the hinge on the door.

It stays like that until your voice creeps nervously out. "I was embarrassed. Am, I am embarrassed."

A thick brow tightens in confusion. "Why?"

You huff, almost annoyed. Your eyes train on a dark spot by your intertwined feet. "Come on, Wood."

"What, about the match?" The alcohol thickens his accent.

Your silence seems to answer his question. The apples of your cheeks are warming again.

"What was I supposed to do, leave you to have you bloody soul sucked out yer body?" His voice is rising, "No, princess, I'm not apologising for that."

It's an outpour that you're not expecting. Oliver's clearly in the mood to shock and surprise tonight.

Your lips tighten around the words that are all fighting for the spot at the tip of your tongue. Silence reigns while they argue, he's still watching you with exasperation set into the lines of his face.

"Princess." You settle.

His expression twists again. "What?"

"You always call me that. Why?" It's a question that you buried long ago. But his proximity, in conjunction with the night you've had, unearths it.

It's his turn to look surprised. He grumbles some indiscernable Scottish blabber before-- "It's because y'are a princess. Spoilt and bratty. Always gets her way."

There's no malice to his response, you find. It draws a chuckle from the depths of your chest.

"Aye, right." You mimic his accent and his quip, one he's used many times at you.

He laughs. It's not a sound you hear often and it's setting your whole nervous system alight like a tangled bunch of christmas lights. His whole body's shaking with it, head resting back against the wood again, and you really do think you might grab him and kiss him -- when the door flies open again: seeping his whole body in yellow light.

Alicia's standing at the opening, grin wide as night is wide and clearly expectant on catching you with your tongues down each other's throats.

If she'd given you another three seconds she just might have.

"Oh." She slumps in disappointment, looking back over her shoulder and shaking her head to the expectant crowd. They groan collectively. "Well, love birds, your time is up."

You'd almost forgotten where you were. Oliver clears his throat, the ghost of his laugh impossible to find on his face, and clambers over your legs out into the common room again. He doesn't pass without brushing his hand over yours.

It's nearly three in the morning when Enzo finally lets up.

His long legs are sprawled across the midnight blue couch in the middle of the common room. Fiona, a lovely Ravenclaw girl you'd met just tonight, shrugs at you: "Don't stress it. He can crash here tonight."

The party is long since dead. Seven Minutes In Heaven had looped another three rounds before everyone had gotten their chance in the dusty cupboard and began to grumble in boredom.

You'd avoided Oliver's eyes the whole time again, sure that if you looked he'd be able to read the fondness on your face.

It wasn't long after that the last of the students dissolved in the direction of their respective bedrooms. With your dear friend in good hands with the Ravenclaws, you loop your arm with Cherry - knocking against her side towards the portal.

You've barely pushed it ajar when she breaks off you, "Hold on, I need to get my Transfig notes from Jacob!"

"Cher, it's three in the morning?"

Alcohol is directing her legs in the opposite direction clumsily, "I'll wake him. If I fail another quiz, Mcgee's gonna have my arse."

She's gone before she catches your call: "I'll find you outside!"

The portal creaks where you shove it open again. The corridor is dimly lit and colder than the common room and a shiver chases up your exposed legs.

"Bloody hell." You run a hand over your forearms.

It's quiet too, and empty besides the Gryffindor captain leaning against the stone wall closest to the entrance you've just emerged from.

"Merlin," your eyes find his. "Not you again."

The flush over your cheeks is warding off the chill.

Oliver shrugs. "Me again."

An awkward silence permeates. Against better judgement, you shuffle forward, leaning against the wall beside him. He doesn't react, arms folded and staring into the inky abyss of the corridor leading out to the rest of the castle.

"Why're you out here?" You ask, tucking your hands between your back and the wall.

"Archie." He huffs out, voice wrapped in annoyance. "He's in there with Penelope. I gave him ten minutes."

Ah, Penelope Clearwater. She'd joined the game in the last round. A good thing too because Oliver's friend was looking more crestfallen as the bottle spun again and again, surpassing him each time. Penelope had taken the last turn, ending up with her hair in every direction and Archie's spectacles leaning half off his face when they emerged from the cupboard.

"You?"

The eddy of average conversation is strange, but you find you like it.

"Cherry." You hum. "Something about quiz notes."

He drops his head back against the wall.

"That what they calling it now?"

It startles you, head tilting to stare up at the side of his face with a grin: "oh, Wood’s got jokes now? I didn’t know it was possible for you to make a joke."

His eyes flutter shut, a twinkle of laughter bubbling out of his frame. Tucking his head down to his chest, he shrugs against his own light chuckle. "I have them. I just don’t share them with you."

You giggle back at him. "Right. Well then you better stop smiling there, someone might walk past and think we’re friends."

He shakes his head, the sound of his snicker fading but leaving behind the imprint of a smile. "Nobody’s gonna think that."

You lean back again, eyes drifting over the low ceiling. Quiet falls again - not uncomfortable - and you let it linger for a moment. A thought tugs on a loose string in your mind, not a new one, but one you’ve carefully buried over time.

It comes falling out your mouth. "You ever think about how it might be ... if things were different?"

The question grants you a look out the side of his eye. "Different?"

"Y’know," you shrug, the very last remains of alcohol are ebbing and unsureness is replacing where it stood. "If we … we had—"

"If you hadn’t suckered me in the bloody nose?" His words are unexpectedly fond.

You laugh at him, "If you hadn’t deserved to be suckered in the bloody nose."

He draws in a long breath, not answering. It prompts you.

"We could have been friends." You whisper, more to your chest than to him really.

But he hears it. "We would never be friends."

It stings sharper than it should. Your shoulders go stiff and the corners of your eyes sting inexplicably, turning the corridor blurry. A dying fire revives in your chest, blistering the cave, reminding you why Oliver Wood has been nothing but a stake in your side since you were thirteen years old.

"Of course. How stupid of me, for a minute I forgot what an absolute arsehole you are." You push off the wall, intent in going to dig out Cherry from the depths of the Ravenclaw dormitory. "Goodnight, Wood."

An arm wraps around your waist, not unlike it'd done a week ago in the air of the quidditch pitch, lurching you into him until you're pressed back against the cool stone of the corridor wall.

Oliver looms over you, crouched so that your nose bumps against his. "Don't sulk, princess."

It all happens at once: his hands grab onto the fat of your hips, digging in there like he really does hate you, and lips crash against yours like maybe he doesn't at all.

He stays there, unmoving for a second that feels a year long.

Where the inside of your brain had been buzzing with runaway threads of thought, ribbons streaking out in all directions: they disappear in a sizzling light. Oliver Wood is kissing me.

You melt against him, tipping up onto your toes and latch onto muscled shoulders. He seemingly takes that as his cue, pressing you closer against his body with his arm - lifting you half off the wall.

He tastes like the remnants of Firewhisky and pumpkin juice, the flavour setting every nerve ending in your body on fire. Lips soft but persistent while his hands grip onto you like you'd dissolve into dust if he didn't.

It's aggressive, but familiar in that way. Oliver is nothing if not hot-blooded and his touch, darting between your hips and your face is turning you tipsy again.

"If you want a friend," It's muffled when he speaks, punctuating his words with hot wet kisses, "go be friends with Ryo."

It's only in this moment, with his desperation mirroring in the glimpses of sugar brown irises you catch where he's fluttering his eyes over your face, that it dawns on you.

"Jealous much?"

He growls lowly and it makes you giggle against him, your hands slithering up into the hairs at the base of his neck. Oliver shakes his head against you, still huffing in disbelief.

"Shut up." It's accent-heavy and bleeds a hole through the bottom of your stomach. "You're such a fucking brat."

"And you're a fucking prick."

He huffs lowly, you press harder to him: solidifying the sentiment. Somehow the bickering makes it all sweeter, like you're dissolving cotton candy against your tongue where his swoops over it.

You'd just about forgotten where you were when a creak echoes down the corridor. Halfway to ignoring it in favour of Oliver's touch, your situation dawns on you in the same moment it does him.

Like you'd both licked the end of a live wire, you and Oliver jolt back a foot, hands diving to your respective sides.

Cherry is standing against the light of the common room behind her, a lanky Archie parked beside her. Their eyes are wide and Cherry's hand is against her jaw in shock.

"Oh my god." She mumbles against it.

Blood is rushing to your face and out the corner of your eye, Oliver is running a hand over the hair that's sticking in all directions from the influence of your fingers.

Cherry is laughing breathily, eyes still wide and white in surprise. "Oh my god."

Archie's eyes are flickering between you and Oliver.

"Sorry to interrupt." He says, a smirk curling onto his features.

It jumpstarts your entire system. You step forward, grabbing Cherry by the arm.

"Well," you nod at Archie and at Oliver, not daring to meet his eyes, "goodnight then."

You march with fervour, half-dragging her in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room until your figure disappears behind the next corridor.

Oliver stands with his hands hanging at his side dumbly. He swipes a finger of his bottom lip, still tasting the strawberry lip gloss you'd left there.

"Can't say I didn't see this coming, mate." A hand claps over his shoulder.

He groans, running both hands over his face, and Archie shakes him lightly.

"So ... how was it?"

With another groan, Oliver shoves Archie's hand off of him. "Bloody hell, Arch."

Archie throws his head of curly black hair back, laughing so loud it bounces off the wall. "That good, huh?"

(part two/final part)

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