Chapter 10: Marcus and Oliver
Marcus Flint was not a guy who thought things through. His Quidditch plays were usually based on force and speed, rather than tactics and well thought out moves. When he wanted to punch someone, he did it without thinking about the consequences, and when ever he tried cheating on a test, it never occurred to him he might be caught. He was not the typical, calculating Slytherin, so, when he decided to tell Oliver Wood how he felt about Oliver's sister, he had not thought it through. After he did it, he thought to himself it would be a good time to start thinking ahead.
His original plan, actually, was to tell Oliver that Malfoy's arm was still hurt and Slytherin would not be able to play Gryffindor in two days. Of course, Malfoy's arm was actually fine and the slimy little git was completely faking the whole thing but Marcus couldn't do anything about it. He had tried telling Malfoy to stop acting, so they could play but Malfoy had, as always, started yapping about how powerful his father was and what he could do to Marcus and how his father didn't buy the team brand new broomsticks so his precious Draco could be treated this way.
Marcus had gone down to the Quidditch pitch after the Gryffindor teams practice and decided to tell Oliver there. The rest of the team had already left but Oliver had stayed to work on some new plays in the locker room. In a way, Marcus respected how hard Oliver worked for his team, for victory. They were the same, but completely different.
"Wood," Marcus said to get Oliver's attention. Oliver lifted his head, saw who it was and rolled his eyes.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Did you hear about Malfoy's arm?" Marcus said. Oliver nodded so he continued, "Yeah, well, apparently it's still hurting so in the first game you'll be playing Hufflepuff instead."
"What? Are you out of your mind? You know as well as I do that idiots arm is just fine!" Oliver yelled. Marcus didn't really want to comment on this, so he decided to change the subject and, unfortunately for him, the first thing that popped into his head was Poppy.
"So, is Poppy mad at me for something?" he asked. Oliver raised an eyebrow. "She seems mad."
"How would I know, she never tells me anything anymore," Oliver stated. "But if she is, you probably deserve it."
Marcus thought so, too, but unfortunately he didn't know what he had done to make Poppy mad. For the last few days Poppy had been yelling at him whenever they saw each other but it never seemed to be about anything in particular. This kind of behaviour was new to Marcus, since before, if someone was mad at him, they usually made it clear why. It was slowly starting to annoy him and the thought had crossed his mind, that maybe Poppy had decided she didn't want to be his friend after all. Marcus didn't know what was actually happening but this was the best explanation he'd come up with. He didn't know what had changed since Hogsmeade, but something was different. He had even thought maybe Poppy had taken his comment about beautiful women too seriously. It was another one of those things where he immediately regretted it as the words left his mouth, and tried to play it off as a joke.
He didn't put Poppy on the team because he thought she was pretty, though he did. His decision was mostly based on her skills and a little on the fact that she didn't let him say no. She was extremely stubborn and he never gave in on anything but made an exception for her. Marcus never thought he and Poppy would become friends and he didn't think spending a lot of time with her at practice would affect his feelings in anyway, but it did.
He liked Poppy from the minute she told him his team was horrible and spending time with her only made things worse. He tried remaining distant, not opening up to her, tried treating her just as he treated everyone else but it was hard. He wanted to tell her things about himself but didn't know how. He'd never felt this way towards a girl before. He'd never even had a real friend before and he wasn't supposed to have friends, he was the biggest, baddest Slytherin around. Other students feared him, his teammates only spoke to him because they had to and girls stayed far away from him. He had never needed friends. However, slowly he learned what she was like, and to him, she was amazing, funny and called him out on things he deserved to be called out on. She was his friend. His absolutely gorgeous, amazing friend.
"Did you want something else?" Oliver asked, snapping Marcus out of his thoughts.
"I like your sister," Marcus blurted out, once again before thinking about what he was saying.
It took Oliver two seconds to realize what Marcus had said and another two to knock him down to the floor. Oliver punched Marcus, who tried throwing Oliver off him but didn't succeed. Oliver went in for another punch, Marcus dodged and Oliver hit the floor instead. This was Marcus' chance to grab Oliver's arm with one hand and hit his face with another. Oliver fell off with a thud and Marcus stood up.
"Look, I'm not going to do anything about it," he said, wiping the blood from his nose with his sleeve. Oliver got up and looked as though he was ready to go again.
"Then why did you tell me?" Oliver yelled. "Do you want me to hate you even more? It doesn't even matter, really, I guarantee she's only your friend out of pity."
"I wasn't going to do anything!" Marcus tried to explain. This was not going too well.
"And you won't or I'll kill you. And you better make damn sure that so-called friendship of yours ends," Oliver demanded.
"You know, I don't respond well to threats and I especially hate the way you try to run Poppy's life for her," Marcus said. He was completely calm, even though in his head he wanted to smash Oliver's head in with a beater's bat.
Their conversation was interrupted by the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, that had booked the pitch for the night.
"Why are you all standing in the doorway?" Cedric Diggory asked, as he walked in behind his team and pushed some of them out of the way in order to enter the room. His team was looking at Marcus with blood dripping from his nose and then at Oliver, who was holding his other hand as it was clearly hurt and bruised.
"What is going on here?" Cedric asked, when he saw his fellow captains.
"Nothing," Oliver replied and glared at Marcus.
"Yep, nothing," Marcus said, clenching his fist. He headed for the door and the Hufflepuffs immediately moved from his path like scared, jumpy animals. When he was almost out of the room already, he turned to Cedric and said one more thing, "Oh, right, Diggory, you're playing Gryffindor in two days. Good luck with that."
Marcus didn't want to go to the hospital wing as he didn't think his nose was broken and he could handle a little pain. Instead he headed towards the Slytherin common room and his dormitory. As he was rushing through the common room, he saw Poppy writing something, possibly an essay. She looked up at him, shocked at his bloody appearance, but he didn't stop. He went down to his dormitory, sat on his bed and took out an old shirt to stop the bleeding with. Poppy barged in through the door.
"I don't think you're supposed to be here," Marcus said but Poppy ignored him.
"What happened to you?" she yelled.
"Nothing," he said and shrugged. "Really."
"You think I believe that?" Poppy asked and sat next to him on the bed. She took the shirt from Marcus and wiped some of the blood off his face and hands.
"No," Marcus muttered. "I went to tell your brother about the new situation with the matches."
"And he hit you over that?" Poppy yelled, bouncing up from the bed. Marcus took her hand and pulled her back down.
"No," he said. "He told me to stay away from you."
"He's been telling me that for a while now but I didn't think he'd resort to violence," Poppy said.
"Uh, no, I punched him first," Marcus lied. He thought it might be best to step back and avoid anymore trouble. For effect, he added "The little git deserved it."
"Oh," Poppy said quietly. Marcus was still holding her hand but now she quickly pulled hers away. She got up, handed Marcus the bloody shirt and said, "Here's your shirt. Like you said, I'm not supposed to be here."