I.
The Quidditch World Cup was probably the last place on earth I wanted to be that day.
Personally, I thought the whole sport was stupid.
Even at Hogwarts, I had never gotten the appeal of watching reasonably intelligent people turn into a bunch of goons who acted like their very honour hinged on some idiots on broomsticks.
The whole school took this stupid game far too seriously, with the house teams being treated like modern day heroes going into battle, while everyone else spent game days looking like clowns dipped in their respective house colours.
My tolerance for sports exhausted itself in being part of the duelling club - a sport that actually provided me with skills that could prove useful in the future - but I had zero patience for being trapped in the stands for hours on end while trying to keep track of three different sets of balls being chased up and down the field.
It was loud, it was messy, but most of all it was boring.
And now I was forced into being bored to death on a professional level.
Things would have been looking a lot less bleak if I could have spent this day with my best friend Cleo, but she had decided that watching "some hunk from Bulgaria annihilate the Irish national team" was not a good enough reason to cut her trip to Saint Martin short, so now her younger brother Blaise was the only Zabini present.
Honestly, I didn't blame her. I would have done the exact same thing had I been given the choice. Which, of course, I hadn't.
Just another one of the many pros and cons of being a Nott.
Pro, because naturally you were invited by the Minister of Magic himself to watch the World Cup final in the Top Box. Con, because naturally you had no other choice but to accept and watch the World Cup final in the Top Box.
Absolutely nothing about that day had been able to excite me - not the thrill of travelling by portkey, not the admittedly impressive Trillenium Stadium, which had been constructed in less than a year for this specific occasion - not even the lavish tent my father had ordered for our stay.
Not that the word tent even began to describe this monstrosity with its six bedrooms, a study, a luxurious fireplace lounge and a fully equipped kitchen where ten house elves worked tirelessly to head to our every wish. Somehow my father had even managed to have this place furnished with the same kind of dusty, old antiques as our family home in Somerset. Why exactly the three of us needed six bedrooms just to spend one night was anybody's guess, because everyone we knew had arrived with more or less the same amount of both space and extravaganzas. I was just glad that at least we hadn't gone full Malfoy on the place. I really liked Draco's mother, but those peacocks were a lot.
But it wasn't only my distaste for the sport that annoyed me that day and it also wasn't my father's wretched display of wealth that had me crawling in my own skin. It was something else. Something deeper.
Something about this whole trip felt… off. Wrong in a way that I couldn't put my finger on.
Maybe it had to do with how I was feeling increasingly detached from my younger brother, Theo, and our friends lately.
I was bored by Pansy's vapid mean girl chatter, I constantly wondered when Draco, the sweet boy who at age nine had declared he would never get married unless it was to me, had turned into a boisterous, revolting miniature version of his father and I was never quite sure if I could still trust Cleo, Blaise or any of the others to still have my back like they used to.
Living the kind of life that we did - the traditions, the privileges and yes, the incessant tirades about blood purity and our place in the world, too - we were connected in ways that went deeper than just growing up together and that most people couldn't even begin to understand.
When we were younger it used to be a constant balancing act - honouring the traditions and nodding along with the tirades just enough to reap the most of the privileges. And why shouldn't we? The wizarding world had pretty much written us off as self-serving snakes in the grass the moment that ratty old hat had sorted us into Slytherin, so why not make the most out of the Sacred Twenty-Eight lifestyle?
And we knew how to make the most of it - throwing the kind of parties we were definitely not old enough to have, sneaking around patriarchal manors at night, breaking into studies and stealing our fathers' most expensive liquors out of locked cupboards, all the while our parents were conspiring behind closed doors, all black cloaks and hushed whispers.
It used to be a game for us, but lately things had been changing.
I saw it in my little brother. I saw it in Draco. Some days I saw it in Cleo and Blaise, too. They weren't just nodding along anymore. Instead they parroted all the old-fashioned drivel about pureblood supremacy and it had long ago passed petty house rivalries. All summer they had been on about Hogwarts going to shit under Dumbledore's rule and gloating about getting rid of Professor Lupin. If anyone had asked me - and part of me was relieved they didn't - I would have told them that this man had been the first decent Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher the school had seen in years and that it was a shame he was gone.
I loved my family, I loved my friends and I loved the life we'd been given, but when I was with them I felt like a stranger - an imposter.
I didn't know if it was me or if it was them, but no matter how hard I tried - and I did try, because what else was I supposed to do when this was all I'd ever known and wanted? - I simply didn't see the world in the same way they did.
I tried to cover it up, pretending with them like we used to pretend with our parents and always worrying that one of these days someone would look right through me. And I would lose everything. It was exhausting.
No wonder I was in need of a break.
Sadly, neither the summer holidays as a whole nor this little trip to Dartmoor had given me much of that. Probably because all of my problems had followed me here.
All day people had been flocking in and out of our tent while I had hidden away in my bedroom, pretending to be reading.
With Cleo out of the country, Draco had been the only one who had popped in for twenty minutes of semi-polite smalltalk before he had ditched me to join my brother and the others in the lounge.
My father had been oddly restless all day, constantly rushing in and out of the place, either hiding away in his study or disappearing without a word. At one point I had seen him talk to the Carrow twins' mother and Charlie Avery's father, before disappearing into the Malfoys' tent with them. And somehow they had all managed to look even more secretive and sinister than usual.
Something was up, that much I was sure of. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it had to be huge. There was something like an electricity hanging in the air - much like the breathless tension before a thunderstorm - and I had a distinct feeling that I didn't want to be there when the storm broke.
Ultimately it had been that exact feeling - festering inside of me for hours until uneasiness had turned into a near panic - that had driven me out of there.
For the past half hour or so I had been aimlessly wandering the vast campsite to try and clear my head and regain some calm, but so far it was safe to say I wasn't doing a very good job of it.
And how could I when wherever I turned my head it was like a damn carnival? There was loud music blaring from pretty much any given direction, people were laughing and shouting. Some were fighting loudly over stupid nonsense and making up even louder just a second later. Some were placing ridiculous bets on the upcoming match and just like game day at Hogwarts, everyone and their very literal grandmother was covered in either angry, Bulgarian red or Irish clover green.
This was a nightmare. I was caught in a bizarre, Quidditch themed nightmare. In my current state of mind it had taken absolutely no time at all for me to get completely, utterly lost and the only things clueing me in on the fact that I was a long way from my accommodation was the amount of hand-me-down clothes and the pathetically tiny tents littering the place.
I wasn't exactly starting to feel better, but at least this little stroll was giving me a whole new appreciation for the lengths my people were willing to go to travel in style.
After a while the atmosphere appeared to change subtly and I was starting to make out some semblance of order in the colourful hustle and bustle around me. People were flitting in and out of their tents, somehow managing to carry even more ridiculous Quidditch paraphernalia than before. Groups were gathering by the wayside and before long the first of them were passing me on their way to the stadium.
I glanced at the delicate silver watch around my wrist - a present from my father that he had given me right before he put me on the Hogwarts Express for the very first time - and cursed under my breath.
The match started in less than two hours, not that I cared. But the Minister of Magic expected us in the Top Box in an hour for a photo call with someone from the Daily Prophet and I did care a bit about that. Mostly because my father cared about it a lot.
So much for calm. At least now I had a legitimate reason to be stressed out, because if I made us late to this thing I would never hear the end of it.
Still cursing profusely I spun on my heel, determined to follow the growing string of people heading for the stadium, because while my sense of direction was downright pitiful, I was fairly certain that this way I would probably pass our tent sooner or later.
I didn't get very far.
As I turned around, my foot caught in a nearby tent's suspension rope and I tripped. I flailed my arms with a pathetic little cry, struggling fruitlessly to regain my balance. I would have probably fallen flat on my face, but as luck would have it my fall was broken by a broad chest and a pair of hands gripping onto my shoulders.
"Whoa, careful!" exclaimed a voice that was somehow familiar.
Anyone else would have apologised for not paying attention, but I was not anyone, I was Olivia Nott. And I didn't apologise.
"Funny, I was just about to tell you the same," I replied with as much dignity as I was able to muster while pretending to pat imaginary dust off my clothes. I was surprised when all I got in response was a bemused chuckle. Which also sounded oddly familiar. Oh. Oh no.
"Fancy seeing you here, Nott."
I looked up, my eyes skimming over clothes that were at least a quarter of a size too small and in need of mending and over freckled arms before finally landing on an equally freckled face, framed by unruly ginger hair and split by a shiteating grin.
I fought to keep a neutral expression, but already my lips curled into a snarl. Could this day get any worse?
"Weasley..."