This is for my role as First Mate of the KBOW ship!
Word count: something above 1,800, I promise XD
Note: I'm planning to start an original fiction story in the not-too-far future so I'm experimenting a bit with different story layouts. This one is in two halves – a longer first half and a shorter second half.
Clichés and Fairytales
It was kind of fitting that Katie would be sitting in The Three Broomsticks alone come Valentine's Day. She had never been one for the celebrations anyway, she kept telling herself, over and over and over again in her already rather flustered mind. It was just another day.
Albeit with a little more nauseating public displays of affection than normal.
And a lot more pink.
And the kind of atmosphere that made lonely singles like Katie feel like absolute shit.
No, no, she didn't care enough to feel like that. It was completely natural for her to sit here, trying not to look at the couple over the way eating each other's faces.
It looked bloody uncomfortable. Did she ever kiss her ex-boyfriends like that? Katie shuddered, and hoped that she, at least, had never done it as publically as the pair sitting at the table opposite.
"We starting that Lonely Hearts Club yet?"
Katie looked up in complete surprise, trying not to knock her Butterbeer over as a smile came to her face that was maybe a little too wide for this situation. "Nah." She grinned, shaking her head as well. "I don't think two people is enough to spread the singles cheer on this happy, happy day."
Oliver raised his eyebrow. "I hope I detect sarcasm in that statement." He joked, pulling off his coat to reveal – gulp – rather large Quidditch muscles beneath a white shirt. "As the Katie I know would never describe Valentine's Day as 'happy'."
"I haven't changed in two years." Katie sighed, moving her bag off the chair to her right, making room for Oliver to sit down.
Two years. Had it been two years?
The last time Katie had seen Oliver Wood was at the three-year monument to the Battle of Hogwarts. He'd told her of his plans to move overseas and train for an Australian Quidditch Team, and she'd had a rant about the state of affairs in the training room of St. Mungo's.
She had eventually given up on ever becoming a Healer, and struck out as a freelance reporter for The Daily Prophet (a publication that had significantly improved since Rita Skeeter's resignation of a few weeks after Voldemort's fall). Now Katie travelled the country, up and down, left and right. She was mostly employed for her pieces on politics and medical advancements, but occasionally she could work with Ginny Potter for a full-length Quidditch feature.
However, the last time that had happened was a year ago.
"How is everything?" Oliver asked her, swinging his left leg over his right. "The last I heard from you, you were in the Healer training programme."
Katie shrugged. "It didn't work out." She admitted. "I got a job with the Prophet – just freelance, dabbling here and there. I missed out on the Quidditch column, Ginny had already applied for that."
"A perk of being The Chosen One's wife." Oliver remarked, looking Katie dead in the eye and turning her a bright shade of pink.
Maybe she had been exaggerating when Katie had said that she had always hated Valentine's Day. It had been a good few years though, certainly, tracing all the way back to the middle of her fourth year at Hogwarts – Oliver's seventh.
Katie had always liked Oliver, as more than a friend, ever since he paid special attention to her when she tried out in her second year. He'd taken her out for early-morning training sessions at all times of the week, exempting only Tuesdays, which is when he did his homework. With his sexy Scottish accent, his muscles and his natural charm coupled with a beautiful kind of clumsy ignorance of his looks, he was the only boy Katie had looked at for far too long.
She had spent four years lusting after her Quidditch Captain, ending only in a sharp jolt back to Earth when-
"I'm visiting my parents." Oliver cut into her thoughts, effectively ending any pursuit into what had exactly made her more-than-friendly feelings swim away to the back of her mind. "Just for the month, then I'm back to the Australians."
"You'd be better off coming back in the spring." Katie quipped, regarding the thick coat hanging on the back of Oliver's chair. "Isn't it always sunny down under or something?"
"Something like that." Oliver smiled, stretching his arms out and forcing Katie to look down before Katie's face went red again from the pure brilliance of those muscles. "Australian girls get boring though. I missed English ones."
"An ulterior motive." Katie joked, laughing slightly nervously. "I hate to break it to you though, but Allie's engaged to Lee."
Oliver raised a slender eyebrow. "I'm not a complete arsehole." He said, with an eyeroll. "No matter what you think."
"Arsehole?" Katie stifled a grin behind the back of her hand. She could think of plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite. "Oliver Wood, an arsehole? Never."
"Nice to see you're still the same Katie that I left behind." Oliver smiled, shaking his head and raising his hand for a Butterbeer. "Now. What I want to know is if there're any guys you're seeing."
That bloody question.
Oliver may never have reciprocated Katie's amorous feelings, but he had seen her as a little sister, and that manifested itself in awkwardly personal questions about her love life – mostly the one that Oliver had just asked her.
It made it so clear that he was not romantically interested in her that Katie just wanted to throw her Butterbeer over his head in anger. It wasn't even like he knew so her anger was completely irrational, but it didn't tone her feelings down in the slightest.
"No." Katie replied curtly, thinking – with a shudder – about the disaster of her last relationship, with Roger Davies of all people. She had deliberately broken it off before Valentine's Day, because she remembered what he'd been like in school and decided that three months of such a clingy person was far too much already. She just didn't want to face the 'day of love' with Roger.
Come to think of it, it seemed to be him snogging that poor girl's face opposite their table.
"Still as innocent as ever." Oliver chuckled, graciously accepting the Butterbeer from the new barmaid that had emerged on his left with a wink. The barmaid wiggled her fingers, and turned around, making sure to give Katie's companion a good view of her cleavage and then swaying away.
There you had it.
Tonight he'd probably be up in the rooms above them, with that young, ever-so-innocent barmaid.
Poor girl.
"Are you okay Kates?"
Katie jolted, and smiled at Oliver transparently as a response. "Completely fine." She insisted. "Don't tell me you're actually going to persue anything with that girl though."
"What?" Oliver laughed almost derisively. "No way. She's far too young. I don't go for blondes anymore anyway."
"And one more girl is saved from the advances of the serial-dater Oliver Wood." Katie replied, in perhaps harder tones than she had intended.
Oliver flinched, sat up, and regarded Katie unwaveringly. "Katie, that was a mistake." He began – just like he had every other time he tried to explain, empty words spilling from his lips. "It was a total mistake, you know that, I've told you."
"Yes, I know." Katie spat, eyes narrowing. "It was a mistake even asking me out."
"What?"
"That's what you told me." Katie noted, looking away finally. "'I should never have let you see that, just forget any of this ever happened'."
Then Oliver began to laugh. Real peals of seemingly helpless laughter. Katie clenched her fists and quelled the urge to punch him. He wiped his eyes, shaking his head helplessly, and stifled another peal of laughter behind his hand as he wiped his eyes and tried not to guffaw at Katie's stony expression.
"Bloody hell Katie!" He finally surmised upon, with a little chuckle. "You really overreacted to that statement. I meant it as a short-term thing, the 'forgetting that this had ever happened'. I meant the whole debacle with Angela, not us."
Katie felt like Oliver had swung his broomstick around her head a few times. Her whole mind seemed to be screaming protests, but his words swum to surface, bringing with them the feelings that she had almost quasi-successfully surpressed many years before.
"You mean…?" She replied weakly, looking up again.
"I spent seven years waiting for you Kates." Oliver continued. "But then-"
"Nope." Katie shook her head, pinching her arms frantically. "This, this isn't real. It's too…"
"Much like a fairytale." Oliver echoed, leaning in to kiss her-
oOo
It was far too warm for spring. Katie had discarded her jacket a few hours ago, in the Great Hall, hanging it up next to an assortment of robes and coats and cardigans, before sparing a moment looking around.
Lot of families had been touched by the War. Katie was lucky enough not to be one of the ones with a casualty, but her parents had been forced to go into hiding once she had joined the Order, and many people she had known had died, and of course her Curse had been a major feature of it for many.
But now she was sitting outside, looking at the Giant Squid flapping a few tentacles about lazily and smiling as little Victoire Weasley and Teddy Lupin played some kind of game as Harry looked on.
"You okay Kates?" Oliver asked, sitting down beside her. Katie nodded, looking across at him, eye straying from Teddy's rainbow hair.
"Just thinking." She explained, with a shrug. She shrugged a lot, she sighed a lot. It was a lot easier to talk using body language, especially when words were seemingly useless. "About, you know… Stuff."
"Stuff is a very interesting subject." Oliver said, seriously, but the corners of his mouth were twitching. "What kind of stuff?"
Just.
Tell.
Him.
"Whether I'm completely insane." Katie replied brightly, with a smile. "I'm seriously considering quitting the Prophet. I have no interest whatsoever in politics."
"I'll take you over right after we go." Oliver responded wihout missing a beat. "But that's more saving your sanity, so what's the part about thinking that you're completely insane."
"Valentine's Day was ages ago, wasn't it?" Katie thought aloud.
"A good three months." Oliver nodded, taking Katie's hand and squeezing it. "Why? Wondering whether we can have our three-month anniversary yet?"
"I still maintain that you put me under a Confundus Charm." Katie laughed. "Seriously though, make me think that you had no interest in me for years? That's bullshit Ollie."
"How was I to know that you're scared of Valentine's Day and any cliché that occurs on the date?" Oliver teased, smirking.
"Cliché's shouldn't happen in real life!" Katie protested. "That's why they're clichéd!"
"You're forgetting the difference between clichés and fairytales." Oliver grinned, leaning in to kiss her.