"Let me get this straight- you think you 'lured him against his will?'" Alicia asked. She placed an emphasis on each word as if she were dropping them one by one into my ear for my consideration.

She was leaning back into her velvet-clad seat on the Hogwarts Express, eyebrows raised in challenge. Despite the slight lean, her posture remained straight and dignified with her legs tucked at her side and her shoes on the floor. Angelina was sitting next to her browsing through a magazine and nodding along to the conversation. It was a relief to talk to them about the Mrs. Wood incident, even if they were both smirking in an annoying fashion.

Angelina was shaking her head. "I still can't imagine this Mrs. Wood woman. I can only picture Oliver with a wig. On a broom. Am I close?"

"Can we please focus here?" I asked with an edge to my voice.

Angelina looked at Alicia.

Alicia looked at me.

They both laughed.

I folded my arms and pulled my face into a frown. "I fail to get the joke."

"You, Katie Bell, lovelorn chaser of Gryffindor who has never had a boyfriend, 'lure' Oliver Wood, thick-headed man of the quaffle? No offense, but you couldn't lure a niffler with a shiny gold coin." Alicia said with a sassy bob of her head.

"Well, I'm not as expert as you, but..."

"I think what Alicia meant to say," Angelina cut in with a glare at Alicia, "was that this is hardly one-sided. Oliver Wood is not a man to fall for any 'luring' you might be able to pull off."

I ran my hands down my face and groaned.

"So. What do I do?" I asked.

Alicia rolled her eyes in impatience and made a rasping noise in the back of her throat.

"Just snog him already! Men like confident women, and you can quote me on that. You just have to march up to him, look him in the eye and snog him silly before he can do anything or say a single word about quidditch conditions. What else is really to be done at this point?" Her inflection rose as she threw up her hands in exasperation. "You need to move on with your life, Oliver needs a snog and the rest of us would like to talk about our own eventful Christmas holidays."

"Easy for you to say! You've never had a problem getting a date. It's like you've slipped half the boys in Hogwarts a love potion without even trying. It's hardly fair." I said.

"Don't spit at me because I'm better at 'luring' than you. I'm just offering my help! Help that you asked for, by the way." Alicia said, the tip of her nose growing pink with displeasure.

Angelina stepped in.

"She's right, Katie. Just do it already! Maybe we'll get a lighter practice schedule." Angelina's eyes sparkled at the thought.

Alicia then turned to Angelina with determination and steered the conversation in a different direction by asking what Fred had gotten her for Christmas. Angelina squared her shoulders to Alicia with a flutter of her eyelashes and launched into an explanation of Fred's gift of some kind of enchanted jewelry to an eagerly nodding Alicia.

Tuned out of the conversation and left to my own ruminations, my fingers ran over the surface of the quidditch gloves from inside my pocket and I contemplated the person who had given them to me. I could see his blue eyes alight with life, and I could smell his comforting musk of sweat and freshly cut grass. Holding onto his image, my body lit up in all of the places it had felt his concerned touch from my hip to the top of my shoulder.

They were right. Why don't we just snog each other and get it over with? We both wanted this.

..right?

An image of Mrs. Wood holding the beater's bat edged its way into my mind. A shudder ran up my spine as I watched the landscape outside whip by, onward to Hogwarts.


The morning of our last free day before the start of term, I went to breakfast with my mind dizzy. A new term meant a new class load, the end of quidditch, another round of essays and the mad dash to final exams.

It also meant that half my time was up for trying to get Oliver's attention. At the end of the year he would leave Hogwarts for long queues of mooning quidditch fans that would have his poster hanging on their wall and would ask him, eyelashes aflutter, if he could sign their scarves.

Just do it already! Angelina had said on the train.

All of the books about quidditch strategy that I had read so far touted the advantages of visualization. I imagined that an all-out snog offensive maneuver strategy should be no different. I just had to do it. Walk up to him and do it.

Sod Mrs. Wood.

If I had to be a distraction, I would be the best bloody distraction: the kind that liked quidditch.

Under the pretense of getting ahead in a few of my classes, I installed myself in the Gryffindor common room with a pile of books. Oliver was bound to pass by. What should I say? Will he ask about what happened when I left his family's home? Should I lie? Should I just sort of.. go for it?

I closed my eyes to picture my target with his typical oblivious grin in place. I imagined his lips parting like a quidditch hoop, abs clenched under his sweater, eyes falling shut. From here I would just have to lean in, rise up on my tip toes... My hands would... would... where would my hands go?

My eyes snapped open at the squeak of the portrait hole opening. It was Oliver. He was tugging at the ends of his sandy hair and styling it into a startled look fashionable only among obsessive quidditch captains.

As quickly as if Mrs. Wood had just blown her venomous red whistle, I jumped out of my seat to greet him, all determination and no finesse.

"Oliver, I know that you must think..." the words tumbled from my mouth in a rush, all of my mental preparation and confident strategizing thrown out the window upon seeing him in the flesh. Before I could even get my jumbled sentence out, Oliver stopped me with one solid word:

"FIREBOLT."

I blinked. Oliver's eyes were protruding a little. Was this... code?

Oliver pushed forward with his explanation, "Firebolt. Potter has a Firebolt and McGonagall said she has to... has to..." He swallowed hard as if whatever she had to do was simply too horrific to say out loud.

Oliver stuck his palms out in a gesture of reassurance that made it look like he was patting the heads of two invisible dogs. "Don't worry. I talked to her about it. He'll have it soon, she said. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it."

I nodded, rearranging my expression into one of great concern as if it had been my sole desire since talking to him to know the fate of the Firebolt that I had never known existed. His eyes were looking past my face and roving around the common room.

"A Firebolt! We'll have it in time to beat Ravenclaw. No question. Don't even worry about it. It is all going to be perfectly okay. Just dandy. Tip top. Jolly good. Fine, fine, just bloody fine." he said as he wandered off in the direction of the dormitories still muttering to himself.

I let my expression drop as I watched his retreating back with frustration. I should have known better than to think it could have happened with the next match less than a week away. It was who Oliver Wood was- the man who he had been training his whole life to be, the idiot that I was possibly in love with and definitely going to snog.

How could my figure compete with the curves of the world's foremost professional broom? I wanted to stomp my foot on the floor, but I knew it was the news he needed to help push us to victory. If Harry really had access to a Firebolt, it would give us a sure advantage in the next match.

My heart beat faster.

If we won against Ravenclaw, we would secure our place in the quidditch final. Oliver would be overcome with joy. We would all be swept up in post-match euphoria, drugged with the fruits of our hard work and the swirl of hyped up confusion all around us. Anything could happen in such a moment. It would be so easy to yank Oliver Wood by the lapels of his match robes and pull him into the kiss of his life.

I hugged my books to my chest and smiled at the thought. A Firebolt, indeed.