Disclaimer: The characters are the property of the amazingly talented J.K Rowling. I'm only borrowing the characters and world that she has so brilliantly created.
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Chapter Two: A Slytherin Captain and Oliver Wood's Biggest Fan
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Moving away from the scene of my argument with Potter, I wandered in the opposite direction in search of my best friend, Christine Elliot.
I found her boyfriend, Kieran Douglas, in a compartment near the front, and I realized that I had forgotten that as Head Girl, Christine had to sit with the Prefects for a while and then do a bit of patrolling before she could join us.
Pulling the door open and standing in the doorway, I smiled and asked, "Is there room for one more in here?"
I spent a lot of time being a third wheel with Christine and Kieran. I admit that at times I found it a tad awkward, but it was never because they purposefully made it so. It just felt like sometimes I was butting in on their private time, and as a result, I tended to ask if I could join them.
"You can hardly consider yourself a third wheel if she's not even around," Kieran joked, dark brown eyes crinkling as he smiled. "Get in here."
"I heard you were named captain for Gryffindor," a voice said loudly from down the corridor. Ugh. I knew that voice.
Looking to my left, I spotted sixth year Slytherin Lyra Rinaldi standing with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face. Merlin, I detested her.
"Heard you were named captain for Slytherin team. Congratulations," I returned, trying my best to be polite and avoid having to talk any more with her.
I was just about to step into the compartment with Kieran, when Lyra's cold and flat voice rang out loudly, "I thought they'd give it to Potter because of who his father is, but then I remembered who your father is, and the choice made some sense after all."
Anger swept swiftly through me, and I stopped shortly, gripping the doorframe hard in my hands.
"I worked to earn my position the same way you did…well, probably not quite the same."
A low blow, I'll admit, and not true at all (to my knowledge), but it was satisfying seeing her face color in anger. I didn't usually stoop so low in my insults; in fact I wasn't usually a terribly rude person. Unfortunately, Lyra Rinaldi knew exactly what buttons to push to bring out the worst in me.
Ha, Lyra and Potter would be a perfect match for each other. They could sit around discussing how much they dislike me and together plot my downfall as Quidditch captain.
"Potter must be angry that you stole captain from him after he worked so hard for it." Lyra told me, her face stuck in a perpetual smirk. "But I expect if you just give in and shag him, he'll manage to forgive you."
My mouth dropped open in shock at her words. Give in and shag Potter? What the hell was this girl talking about? It was hardly a secret that Potter and I didn't always get on well and that we were rivals on the pitch. I most certainly didn't want to shag him, and I would have been willing to bet all the gold in my Gringotts vault that he didn't want to shag me either.
"You're unbelievable," I told her. "I didn't steal anything, and get your facts straight."
And with that, I pulled the compartment door shut behind me. Merlin, what was wrong with everyone today? Neither Potter nor Lyra had ever been so rude to me before, and I was left reeling slightly.
"She's just insecure," Kieran told me as I plopped heavily down on the bench across from him, leaving the spot next to him open for Christine. "I don't think Slytherin has ever had a female captain before. That must be a tremendous amount of pressure."
"There hasn't," I supplied instantly. "Been a female Slytherin Captain, I mean. I can't say I envy the position she's in – I'm hardly in a great one myself - but that doesn't give her the right to walk around knocking other people for no good reason. She just winds me up…."
"What do you mean you're not in a great position yourself?" Kieran asked, confused.
I let my head fall back against the seat cushion behind me. "I ran into Potter when I first boarded the train. He was kind enough to remind me that almost everyone expected him to be named Gryffindor captain, not me."
"That's not true," Kieran protested. "I've heard members of the Ravenclaw team discussing it in our common room. They were sure you'd be named captain."
"Because my dad is Oliver Wood?" I asked, bitterness seeping unbidden into my tone.
Kieran shook his head patiently. "They know you're the one who practices the longest and the hardest. They know you practice extra without the rest of the team; that you go for runs in the morning. Don't let Potter and Lyra get into your head like that. Anyone who says you got in easy as captain is ignorant of how hard you work. Not to mention jealous."
"Is the Ravenclaw team spying on me?" I demanded, all thoughts of Lyra's jab gone from my mind for the moment in lieu of this new information. I mean, bloody hell, they knew my practice habits. I'd have to change things up this year to throw them off.
"Hardly," Kieran scoffed. "Ravenclaws don't need to resort to spying. They just know how to analyze and interpret what they observe."
I raised an eyebrow. I'm talented like that. "Tell Chang to keep out of my business," I told Kieran with fake sternness, as though he was chummy with the Ravenclaw captain.
"Yeah, I'll mention it the next time we're hanging out," Kieran rolled his eyes.
The door to the compartment rolled open and Zara Andrews, the female Beater on the Gryffindor team stepped over the threshold.
"Eva, love, I heard you're captain!" She glanced at my shirt where the captain's gleamed brightly. I might have polished it a few times since it arrived. Okay, so every day, if I was completely honest. And I couldn't even blame it on my dad.
"It's true," I told her with a wide grin splitting my face. "I can hardly believe it, but I'm incredibly excited. I have loads of ideas already."
Zara pushed her curly black hair behind her ears. "Spot on! I just knew it would be you. You'll be ace, love. I told that cow Rinaldi as much last term. Let me know when we're having first practice and tryouts for the newbies!"
And just as quickly as she had entered, she was gone. Zara was always a whirlwind of energy, which was why I think being a Beater suited her so well.
"Can you imagine what the sixth year girls' dormitory must be like with her living there? It would be exhausting," commented Christine, who had appeared in the doorway as Zara exited.
I shook my head, my long hair swinging back and forth. "I'd rather have Zara than what we do have - Gemma Finnegan accidentally lighting something on fire every other week and Sorcha Patterson with her poster of my dad by her bed."
In fifth year, for some reason, Sorcha decided to hang a poster of my dad beside her bed. It's an older poster taken from the middle of a magazine back from when he was new in the League and Puddlemere was advertising their new star Keeper. He was also very shirtless in the poster. Thankfully he wasn't doing anything embarrassing like flexing his muscles or winking or something.
It's a traumatizing experience to say the least, to hear Sorcha (and occasionally Gemma and Roxanne) raving on about the "Scottish sexiness" of my dad. I would agree that my father is an attractive man, but to me, he's not Oliver Wood, super hot Quidditch star. He's just Oliver Wood, my dad who also happens to be a famous Quidditch player.
Basically, I never look at Sorcha's area of the dormitory if I can help it. I take consolation in the fact that the picture was taken when he was around nineteen or twenty, so before he met my mum. It could be worse, I suppose. Sorcha could have a much more recent poster of him considering he played professionally until he was in his early forties. A more current picture would be more disturbing because even though he wouldn't be shirtless, he would be my dad as I think of him now.
It's one thing for women who are closer to his age to find him attractive, but it's another entirely when it's the seventeen-year-old girls I live with. Like I said, traumatizing.
"Two years later and I still find it disturbing as the day it began," Christine agreed with a rueful shake of the head and a grimace, her small mouth puckering in distaste. "Well, I'll be back in a bit after I'm done patrolling. Oh, and Eva?" she grinned. "One of the sixth year Hufflepuff Prefect heard what Lyra said to you, and we've taken ten points from Slytherin."
"Does that mean they have negative points before term even begins?" I wondered aloud while Kieran laughed.
"One of the perks of being Head Girl," Christine smiled innocently and pretended to flip her short brown hair as she exited.
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The Welcome Feast over, Christine and I trudged up the many flights of stairs to the Gryffindor Common Room.
"I always eat too much at the Welcome Feast," Christine moaned, holding her stomach.
"Me too. Good thing this is the last staircase."
At the end of the hallway was the portrait of the Fat Lady and standing beneath it arguing with her were Potter and his mates.
"But no one's told us the password!" said Fred Weasley, who, along with being mates with Potter was also his cousin. "You know who we are, you could let us in just this once."
The Fat Lady puffed up indignantly. "Young man, you're always asking to be let in, 'just this once.' Well, rules are rules, and they're for everybody. No password, no entry."
"It's 'will-of-a-wisp," Christine announced to the group of boys as we approached their group.
"Correct," said the Fat Lady rather curtly as her frame swung open to reveal the portrait hole.
"Thanks," Christopher Longbottom told Christine. He's Professor Longbottom's son, and a nice bloke, so goodness knows how he got mixed up with the likes of Potter.
"Cheers ladies," Fred smiled at me and Christine before wandering off in the direction of the boys' dormitory.
"Thanks," Potter said eyes on the carpet, avoiding looking us all together.
Christine and I entered the dormitory just in time to see Sorcha whip out her Oliver Wood poster with a dramatic flourish.
"Oh, Oliver, how I've missed you," she told the poster, her voice full of yearning, as she dramatically clutched at her heart.
She had once said that her mum didn't approve of the poster and wouldn't let her hang it up in her bedroom at home, so Sorcha reserved especially it for the girls' dormitory. Lucky me.
"Such a dish," she sighed as she tacked the poster to the wall behind her nightstand and next to her lamp. For good measure, she batted her blue-grey eyes at the poster and twirled her long black hair around her finger.
"Ugghh," I groaned, and fell face down on the duvet covering my four poster.
"What's wrong with Eva?" Sorcha whispered, though her attempt was more like a stage whisper.
Considering I was laying face down on my bed, all I could see was the scarlet color of the duvet, but I knew that Christine was rolling her hazel eyes.
"She ate too much," Gemma said sarcastically.
"She always does," Sorcha lamented.
Somewhere in the room, I could hear the sound of Roxanne Weasley laughing. She was another of Potter's many cousins at this school. Roxanne wasn't a bad sort. She and Gemma were friends. Sorcha spent time hanging about with them, though she also had a group of Hufflepuffs she frequently spent time with.
There was a loud popping sound like popcorn kernels bursting open in a metal pan and a shriek. Quickly pushing myself off the bed, I saw Gemma holding her wand by the very tip as purple sparks shot out the end.
"Why is it always me?" she cried, trying not to let the sparks land on her bedspread or the bed hangings. She had already been there done that when it came to setting her bed on fire. Twice.
"Lovely to see you all again," Roxanne intoned cheerfully, a wide smile gracing the light brown skin of her face. Her words summed up the last few minutes rather well, I thought.
After we had managed to end Gemma's crisis with her wand and finished unpacking, we settled into bed. Soon enough, Sorcha's outrageously loud snores could be heard echoing around the room.
"I'll get it," Christine yawned, grabbing her wand off of her bedside table and casting a silencing charm on Sorcha.
She fell asleep so quickly and slept so deeply, that Sorcha never suspected that we always cast a silencing charm on her. As long as the first person to wake up lifted the spell, she would never be the wiser. One time in fifth year, we forgot to take the silencing charm off of before she woke up, but somehow managed to feed her some malarkey lie that involved nargles and wrackspurts.
That night I dreamt of Quidditch as I often did. I was flying high above the Gryffindor pitch with Sean O'Mara and Bree Martin, the other Gryffindor chaser. We were tossing the quaffle back and forth between us as we normally did during practices except it was just the three of us. It was quiet, just the sound of the quaffle as it smacked against our gloves.
Then suddenly the stands were filled with people, and they were all booing and jeering. Sean and Bree continued like they didn't see anyone or hear anything, but all around the sound was crushing in one me. They were jeering at me. Mocking me and my Quidditch abilities, my ability to be a good captain.
"Get off the pitch!" someone shouted.
"We want Potter!" another yelled.
Then someone took up the chant and soon the entire crowd was steadily chanting, "We want Potter! We want Potter! We want Potter!"
Waking up, I sat straight up in bed, my heart still racing from the effects of the dream. Dream. It was only a dream. Thank Merlin.
Glancing outside, I saw the first rays of sunlight peeking over the tops of the trees. My alarm clock made a small beeping noise before I tapped the button to turn it off. Otherwise Christine would murder me; she loathes waking up earlier than she has to for breakfast.
I climbed out of bed and pulled my work out clothes from my wardrobe. Once I had slipped out of my pajamas and into my shorts and t-shirt, I laced up my new running trainers and quietly left the dorm.
The castle was silent as I made my way to the large wooden door that led me out onto the Hogwarts grounds. I love being in the castle corridors and the grounds when it's so quiet. During the day, there's the nearly constant din of student voices, but right now was peaceful and quiet and I could think.
As I pushed open the door, the chilly morning air hit me and I breathed it in gratefully. I started jogging immediately, needing to clear my head after that awful dream. It doesn't take Divination to figure out that I'm worried about doing a good job as captain. That I'm worried that everyone except Christine, Zara, Kieran, and a group of Ravenclaws thinks that Potter should be the one wearing the captain's badge.
Well, looking at it rationally, if Kieran was telling the truth (and I'm certain he was, the boy is not a liar liar pants on fire) the Ravenclaw Quidditch team thought I would be captain. That's definitely something positive. Those Ravenclaws are ace at strategy and observation. They would have given the matter a lot of thought, and they're a pretty objective source.
I felt better remembering this, and I ran faster with the knowledge that at least one of our Quidditch rivals would be taking me seriously. The other teams would after our practices got underway and they saw that the Gryffindor team was no lot of slackers. We were awesome, plain and simple.
Wait. My mind whirred, thinking back to thoughts from a few moments ago. Ravenclaws…hadn't Kieran said they knew I went running in the mornings? Brilliant. I wasn't willing to give up my morning jogs, but I didn't want the Ravenclaws knowing where I was at all times either.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted the pitch, and I suddenly knew where I should take my morning run. Of course, some mornings there would be practices going on, but today it would be empty seeing as this was the first day of lessons.
Ah, stepping onto the pitch, another one of my favorite things. It was best when the stands were full and the noise was practically deafening, but it had its charms when it was quiet too.
I had been running steadily for about five minutes when a voice rang out across the pitch from the entryway. The figure watched me as I drew closer to where it was standing.
"What are you doing here, Wood?"
Potter. Good grief, what was that boy doing here at this time of the morning? He looked like had just rolled out of bed. His running clothes were rumpled and his hair was standing on end. He actually looked rather comical.
"Flying, can't you tell?" I answered sarcastically as I came to a stop about ten metres away from him.
"You don't normally run here," He looked confused, and a little irritated. Oh, right. He runs here in the mornings. I forgot that.
"No," I agreed. "But the Ravenclaws are on to me, so I decided to change locations for the day."
His eyebrows rose towards his fringe. "The Ravenclaws are on to you?" he repeated slowly, clearly trying to hold in a laugh. "Right. Well, when they ship you off to St. Mungo's in the next few days, I'll just take over the captaining duties. Much easier than trying to undermine you."
"Yes, they're on to me," I didn't bother to elaborate. Potter wasn't worth it. "Look, there's room here for both of us to run, and I'd like to finish mine… if you don't mind."
This time I was the one to walk away from him. Only I was running. But whatever.
"Just keep to the outside so that when I lap you, you won't be in my way!" Potter called to my retreating back.
I ignored him as I so often did. That boy was something else. But it was good to see that he wasn't as angry as yesterday. Merlin, he'd been down right vicious yesterday, so much so that I was a little bit worried that he was going to try and off me in my sleep.
Still, I wondered if he had been telling me the truth when he talked about undermining my efforts as captain. Was that something he was planning on doing? It would be just like Potter to tell me of some plan to get rid of me just to psyche me out and help me along in being shipped off to St. Mungo's.
Brilliant. One more thing to worry about. Darn Potter and his meddlesome, snarky ways.
Thankfully, Potter left me alone for the remainder of my run (he only managed to lap me once), and I returned to my dormitory without further harassment.
"Morning, Oliver," was the first thing I heard when I entered the dormitory. I didn't need to look to see that Sorcha was fawning over my dad's Quidditch poster again.
Hmm….maybe instead of a shower, I'll just throw myself out of a window instead. That had potential, yeah?
I peered out of the window. I could slide down the roof, and then if I had a broom waiting at the edge for me, I would free fall for a moment or two before the broom would pull me up on the air current. It would actually be quite the adrenaline rush. Not that was going to do it here. Maybe at home, though. Less far to fall.
"Whatcha doing?" Gemma asked, seeing as it was the window by her bed that I was staring out of.
"Contemplating free falling from the roof," I answered honestly. My dorm mates are used to me by now.
"Sounds terrifying," she commented casually as she tied her hair back in a ponytail.
"Don't let that bint Rinaldi get into your head," Roxanne said from across the room as she knotted her scarlet and gold striped tie. "She's full of crap. And spiteful that there's another female captain this year so the spotlights not all on her."
"It isn't that. Or it's not just that," I amended. "It's Lyra and Potter. And…" I jerked my head at the Quidditch poster.
Roxanne glanced up, brown eyes full of surprise. "What did James say to you?"
Oh, nothing much. Just that everyone in Hogwarts thought I was destined for failure. You know, the usual.
Not wanting to admit how much his words had affected me, I simply replied, "Oh, you know…he should have been named captain instead of me."
"Don't mind him, he's just being a sore loser, I reckon," Roxanne told me. "He's like you, isn't he? He wanted more than anything to be captain. He'll get over it." She paused as she seemed to think on what she had just said, then added, "Eventually."
He's like you, isn't he? The words rang in my head. The idea of Potter being anything like me, or me being anything like Potter was sheer ludicrous. Ugh.
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