A/N: Inspired by Paper Pearl's femmeslash free verse challenge, using the Katie/Cho pairing and all twenty prompts. Like the challenge states, there will be femmeslash aka a girl x girl pairing. If two girls being paired up bothers you, please leave now. The reason why I say 'inspired by' is because my freeverse poem ended up being not so great. Beta'd by Mignun and Coachella.
Whenever Katie sat on a broomstick to take flight, she felt safe, as if her problems would disappear for the time being if she was in the air. It was an almost strange comfort, being in the air with the wind in her face. Most of all, she likes soaring away from her problems. She liked being in control of how she felt when she wasn't following the same rules She's protected from the world and its harshness, just for a while, anyway.
All she can see are cold, gray clouds threatening to rain this afternoon, not ideal weather for flying. Katie wanted to beat the iciness out of the sky to make worrying about being rained on less of a deal. Not that it matters, because Katie's played Quidditch in all weathers. Even so, she works harder to see the sky warm up to her.
She felt like she just performed a dance when she's on her broom. Comparing dance to Quidditch was a bit of an odd analogy, Katie mused, but there's not much of a stretch of the imagination to consider while comparing them. With dance, one must take hundreds of classes just to learn the basics. Quidditch, like dance, took lots of practice to learn the basics as well. But once the basics were mastered, they were both skills to be reckoned with. With all the coordination Katie had and all the focus Katie must use while flying, she feels like she can do anything.
She forgot the world and its scariness for a blissful hour until the whisper (or rather, the screeching-yell, because the wind's yowling rattles in Katie's ears, distracting her and not letting her listen to anything else but the wind) of a familiar voice and the swoosh that only can be a broom of a second person tells Katie she's suddenly not alone.
"Bell, what are you doing out here?" It's Cho Chang's voice that takes Katie out of her thoughts. Cho smirked with what seemed like an extreme amount of confidence Katie never knew the Ravenclaw ever had
"What're you doing out here?" Cho asked yet again, almost impatient.
"I could ask you the same question, Chang," Katie retorts, somewhat defensive.
"I'm assuming you just wanted private time. Maybe I should leave…?" Cho stuffs her hands into her pockets, throwing Cho off balance in the air for a moment.
Katie was surprised at how quickly Cho guessed Katie's reasons for being out alone on a cold winter's night. The other girl was a Ravenclaw for good reason. Katie suddenly felt insecure about having her motives guessed so quickly and she quickly thought of a reason to not alienate Cho with needless emotions.
"Just getting finished with another self guided practice," Katie says, a huge smile spread across her face, the fire that fueled her stubbornness apparent in her voice.
"I see…" says Cho in a quieter tone. (Katie irrationally thinks the sagely side of Cho is falser than false but she doesn't say that out loud)
Cho floats down to the ground, shivering from the bone-chilling cold. Katie follows reluctantly. As soon as Katie's feet touch the ground in a near delicate landing, she suddenly felt jaded; exhausted; as if her entire body was aching with unknown but strangely persistent pains. Katie never would have guessed that aimless flying would cause so much pain.
"Want me to walk you to your common room?" asked Cho.
"If you really want to, I won't stop you," Katie shrugged, walking towards the exit.
Katie made sure to keep her pace even because she had the tendency to walk fast when she was with people she didn't know very well. Cho, all ready intimidating enough with the walls of mystery surrounding her (Katie sincerely knew nothing about Cho except a shared class and Quidditch and her house), was even more intimidating to talk to because she became so quiet.
"Are you excited for the second match of the semester?" Cho asked, nervously trying to break the silence.
"Of course! Gryffindor's playing you Ravenclaws and I hope-I know-we're going to win," Katie said, too much excitement filling her voice.
Cho raised an eyebrow, 'disbelief' tattooed all over her face.
"Remember the last match we played against you? Ravenclaw won." Katie chuckled at Cho's remark.
"You barely beat Gryffindor. It was a pretty close game." Katie said.
"Barely? If I do recall, our win was by more than you remember," said Cho, her eyes
"Regardless of any previous games played, Gryffindor will win!"
With the portrait of the Fat Lady in sight, Katie disappeared into the common room.
Katie couldn't stop thinking about Cho. It was, to be frank something Katie wasn't used to. She didn't consider herself obsessive in the slightest. (Quidditch was a possible exception to the rule.) Katie was always wary of first impressions, and talking to her at the Pitch was most likely the first time speaking with her face-to-face. She felt nervous when people said things that didn't sound completely, totally, utterly genuine at face value. She wasn't what you'd call paranoid or shy. In fact, she was the most likely described by her friends (mainly Alicia and Angelina, since Fred, George, Leanne and Oliver had other words to say about her) as friendly and outgoing, almost to an aggressive degree. Cho and Katie's interactions were small, mainly congratulating each other for winning a Quidditch match. The times Cho would help in the library when Katie needed it were always very helpful. Overall, Cho left a good first impression.
But good first impressions don't always say everything about a person, and sometimes they lie. Even though Katie doubts that Cho was a bad person, it is a safer bet to
So she snuck down to the pitch in hopes to find Cho and maybe learn more about the Ravenclaw. It was definitely a good idea to
Down at the Pitch, Katie waits to see if Cho would come back to talk. As boredom strikes ten minutes later, she realizes that she should fly to kill some time. That part of her that adores flying more than life itself sparks, so she decides not to betray that part of her that prefers flying. Like yesterday, she forgets the world. It's so easy to just fly, to see the world from a different point of view, to forget the world under her feet and, unlike yesterday, Cho sneaks up behind Katie (she won't ever know how Cho was ever this stealthy).
"Looks like you aren't paying attention again, Katie," Cho says, laughing and flying circles around Katie.
"I was, just not to you," Katie retorts defensively.
"What're you doing out here alone yet again?" Cho questions, still circling around Katie, who (for some ungodly reason) turned red.
"I wanted to see if you'd come down. I wanna talk," says Katie, suddenly stricken with a bout of shyness, an uncharacteristic act coming from social Katie.
"About what?" Cho asked
"Dunno, whatever you want, I guess," Katie said
And suddenly, they were chattering animatedly, as if they knew each other forever, as if there wasn't any awkwardness between them just a few minutes ago.
Katie decides it's a good see Cho more and more often, partly because she wanted to shake that horrible feeling of paranoia that Cho had some frightening hidden depth that would reveal itself. They met each other at the Pitch (neutral territory) and stayed for a minimum of forty five minutes, just to talk about nothing of importance and of everything that went through their minds.
Katie's heart would sometimes unexpectedly betray her by fluttering dangerously whenever she saw Cho.
"So what do you think of my flying?" Katie asked to break the silence. The comfortable silence between her and Cho wasn't anything that bothered Katie, since they felt like they knew each other well enough that they could sit in silence.
"Pretty," Cho said without thinking, starting to circle around Katie like Katie trusted her to do
"Just pretty?" Katie asked, confused at the vague answer.
"Yep," Cho said, "just like you."
With that, Cho looked as if she was caught committing some horrible act that broke the law, her eyes huge like saucers.
Katie cough-splutters, close to either laughing hysterically or feel flattered at the unhesitant compliment.
Awkwardness locks them into place, floating in the air as if Cho and Katie were unable to do anything else.
"You like me," Katie states without hesitation.
"Just a little," Cho admitted, going for the landing as if her life depended on it.
"Why not a lot?" Katie asked.
"Because I don't know you very well," said Cho.
"Let's make that not very well into something more," Katie said with a smirk. They exited the pitch with grins on their faces and their hands intertwined.
For the next few weeks, Cho and Katie were inseparable, always seen laughing and talking and they always kept their hands within each other's hands at all times.
Suddenly they were so close that they were almost never seen together silent or sad or without each other's hands intertwined
"You and Cho…what do you consider yourselves?" Alicia asked through chewing bits of toast during breakfast. The chatter of the
"Best friends," Katie said with a dreamy smile.
"I don't believe that you two can only be best friends, you guys would probably never stop crying if you were so cruelly separated," Angelina said, a bit too sarcastic.
"What supportive friends I have," Katie mumbled.
"We love you, too Kates," said Alicia, grinning sheepishly.
"So are you saying you'd approve if I dated Cho?" Katie asked hopefully.
"Katie, you're an idiot if you didn't believe we would always support you in whatever you do," Alicia said.
Katie nearly tripped over her own feet trying to get to Cho as quickly as possible.
"Cho, Cho, oh my-" Katie said, nearly bumping into Cho's backside in the corridor.
"Katie, what in the name of Merlin's beard are you babbling about?" Cho asked.
"I wanna go out with you it'd be so awesome cause you're amazing and- "Katie explained, gesturing wildly and with too much enthusiasm.
"Katie breathe!" Cho said, while simultaneously trying to calm down the manic Katie.
"I wanna be your girlfriend if you want me to," Katie said more calmly.
Cho kissed her on the lips as a yes.