DISCLAIMER: It's STILL JK ROWLING's
This is Oliver's POV. I think I kind of forgot to mention it will switch. I'll let you know at the beginning of each chapter...
Enjoy!
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Potions
She groans as she leans against the stone walls, then shivers and stands up straight again.
"Katie... I was just wondering-" I start, but am silenced by the giant black cloud which swoops above the eight people in the line for class. Snape swoops past and Katie hurries in behind Roger Davies, takes her usual seat at the front of the class and pulls her glasses from her pocket and places them delicately on her face. I like those glasses. They're completely distracting – they change colour according to her mood, and at this precise moment, they're bright purple. Snape's had this argument with her before, but she simply refuses to buy another set of frames.
"Miss Bell, I refuse to allow such... distracting accessories," which he spits with the utmost venom, "In my classroom."
"Well, professor, I can't exactly stay at one mood, can I?" She says, then crouches over her bag and mutters something else, "Or right now, they'd be black, just like your heart, oh Caped One."
"Five points from Gryffindor, for being an irritation to the lesson, Bell." She bristles, but sits and holds her potions textbook on her lap politely.
I sit down beside her, for a second, she looks up at me, staring, confused, then smiled and nodded.
"Alright Oliver? What di-"
"Silence!" Snape half-shouts, but we're only talking in whispers. "Today you will be working on..." But I lose concentration as Katie takes to staring into the cauldron and sighing sadly. To be honest, I don't even know what I agreed to this morning. She was talking and talking, but I lost myself in her voice, in her eyes. I just nodded blindly and agreed to her every wish.
I couldn't afford to lose my best... my best chaser, I suppose. I mean, that's the only reason she was shouting at me, Quidditch. that's all she ever talks to me about. Well, no, she asks me about homework sometimes too, and I'd like to think that to her, I could be more than the captain, more... maybe I want to be more than a friend. I don't honestly know.
"Oliver!" She hisses, "Stop daydreaming about Quidditch plays." Her Irish accent is audible across the room and there's a small pause as Snape takes another point from Gryffindor. A couple of minutes of me staring blankly at the cauldron before me, and thankfully Snape leaves the room and the silence is broken by a classwide sigh of relief. "Page Two-hundred and Seven." She rolls her eyes at me and half-laughs, before attending to the fire which had extinguished itself beneath her cauldron.
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Twenty minutes later, I sit, simply staring at my potion. Why is it always mine that goes wrong? Katie's next to me, hers is shimmering and steaming gently, like it's supposed to, mine is on the verge of going kaboom!, or some such onomatopoeic noise.
Snape sweeps around and nods appreciatively at Katie's potion, for once, a murmur of "five points to Gryffindor" can be heard if you strain your ears hard enough. He may hate her with a passion, but he appreciates good potions skills when he sees them. Then he looks at mine and blanches paler than usual. He almost waves it away with his wand, but he sneers at me and flares his nostrils.
"Fix that, Oliver Wood," He spits my name with such sarcasm, such hatred, that I suddenly fear for my life. It doesn't help that he's holding his wand out at me. "And I'll donate twenty points to Gryffindor. Turn in that mess at the end of the lesson and I'll drop you fifty." Then he sweeps out of the classroom to get something for Roger Davies, muttering something about 'having brains and yet not enough common sense to refill his potions kit'.
"Oliver," Katie says from the corner of her pretty mouth, watching the door in case the 'caped one' returns, "Put these into the centre of your potion and stir it three times counter clockwise." She puts three little pebbles I recognise as hedgehog nails onto the bench between us and bends to her bag.
I do it. Because she's the only one who can help me now, and she's the best at potions I know. There's a horrific moment where I think it's not worked and the goo turns a shocking shade of pink. I elbow her, but she makes a gesture for me to wait and see.
I start as the pink suddenly shrinks and turns the shimmering silver it should. No steam, though. Katie looks at me and touches her mouth in a shushing gesture, then, tight-lipped, she leans forward and opens her mouth ever so slightly. She breathes cold air onto the surface of my potion and it steams like it's supposed to.
I don't know why I didn't think of that.
"Thank you." I whisper as I brush past her at the end of the lesson and hand in my stoppered phial of potion. She shrugs and gathers her things, leaving the classroom as Snape dismisses us.
Snape picks up my potion as I go to leave the classroom, looks at it and a look of horror crosses his face for a fantastic half-second.
"Twenty points to Gryffindor, I suppose." he says silkily, and I nod and run.
For that, Katie Bell, I'll limit my team talk to ten minutes next practise... bloody hell, if this carries on much longer, there'll be no practise left.
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A/N Hey! Hope you Enjoyed!
Oh! I think I've created an AU by mistake! Oh Noes!! This will need to be updated ASAP, or confusion may ensue!
Please R&R, and now we go to... you'll see (Or maybe you already know?)
