~*Chapter Seven*~
Cedric and Angelina
Angelina stood outside the hospital wing, listening to the murmured voices inside. She sighed. Wood was still in the showers, and he had been in there for at least an hour now.
This was the first time that Harry Potter ever lost a match, Angelina realized. She thought about the point margins while she drummed her fingers against the wall. Their chances for the Quidditch Cup were slim but they were there, and the team had overcome slim chances before. A squelching noise sounded from far down the hall and Angelina turned her head. Oliver was coming down the hallway, his hair dripping wet and flattened down on his forehead, half his shirt buttons undone. His head was bent towards the ground. Angelina walked towards him.
"Why aren't you in there with the team?" Oliver asked.
"I could ask you the same question." Oliver was silent. "The broomstick. It's lost. It hit the Whomping Willow."
"How's Harry?" Oliver asked.
"He's awake," Angelina said, walking back down the hallway. Oliver absentmindedly fixed his shirt buttons and then put on his robes.
"It's the first time Harry's ever lost a match," Oliver said.
"It had to happen some time," Angelina remarked. "It was too good to be true."
"We can't have Harry flying on a Cleansweep." Oliver said. "Now that the Nimbus is gone…" His voice trailed off and he turned away from Angelina. She walked up to him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, looking into his face.
"Are you alright?" she asked. Oliver sighed.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm going to the common room."
"Don't you want to say hello to Harry?" Angelina asked. Oliver shrugged and continued down the hallway.
***
The weekend passed, with Harry never leaving the hospital wing. The next Saturday morning the team visited Harry again. Angelina stood next to Oliver, who was telling Harry that he didn't blame him. Angelina took Oliver's hand and squeezed it, giving him a reassuring kind of smile.
***
The end of November rolled around and the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team sat in the stadium, holding hands. Oliver kept bouncing up and down on his chair, humming recklessly and tapping his foot on the ground. He was squeezing Angelina's hand so tightly that her bones were pressed together.
"Wood!" Angelina scolded. "Are you trying to break my hand?"
"YES!" Oliver yelled, jumping up. But it wasn't because he wanted to break Angelina's hand- it was because Ravenclaw had just beaten Hufflepuff.
***
November passed, and December passed slowly. The Gryffindor Tower emptied itself, and Angelina went home on the train. She spent her vacation drumming her fingers on tables and waiting to return to Hogwarts. She took her broom home with her and spent all of her time practicing maneuvers around the trees in the woods near her home. On rainy days she would sit at the desk in her room with her quill poised above the parchment, but the words never came. She sighed and put the quill down. Maybe she just didn't have anything to say to Oliver.
The journey to Platform Nine and ¾ was never a happier journey. Angelina met Alicia and Katie at the station near Hogsmeade and they met the rest of the team in the common room. They were grouped near the fireplace, huddling together. Angelina could see Harry's head under the rest of them.
"Don't get excited, Oliver," Harry was saying. "I haven't got it anymore- McGonagall is convinced that it's jinxed."
"What's jinxed?" Katie asked, pulling Wood aside.
"Harry got a Firebolt for Christmas!" Oliver exclaimed.
"No way," said Alicia.
"That's so…a Firebolt!" said Angelina, awed.
"I have to go talk to Professor McGonagall. She confiscated it, she was sure it was jinxed with all this Sirius Black nonsense going about…a Firebolt!" Oliver shook his head and darted out of the portrait hole.
***
Slytherin narrowly beat Ravenclaw in the beginning of the term. February came about and the next match was drawing nearer- Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. Harry still hadn't gotten the Firebolt yet and the team took it upon themselves to bug McGonagall about it. Then, one day, Oliver came back from Transfiguration looking very happy.
"She's letting him have it back!" he exclaimed. Sure enough, a few minutes later Harry walked in holding the broom.
"Yes!" Fred exclaimed. "Now you can practice on it, to get ready for Saturday!"
"Excellent," Wood said, his eyes glinting. "Ravenclaw's on Cleansweeps, they won't have a chance! Practice Friday night!" The team didn't even complain about this.
The team played their best at practice. All thoughts of a Ravenclaw win were driven out of their minds by the speed and excellence of the Firebolt. Oliver announced that Cho Chang would be the Ravenclaw Seeker- but she was on a Comet Two Sixty and wouldn't have a chance.
The next day dawned sunny, with a slight breeze. The team walked out onto the field to tremendous applause. They kicked off fairly quickly and Harry zoomed about, looking for the Snitch. Katie soon scored the first goal of the match. Gryffindor was fifty points ahead of Ravenclaw when someone screamed. Angelina looked down, the Quaffle almost slipping from her hands. Three tall dementors stood at the end of the field. She gasped. Harry pulled out his wand and shot some silvery mist at them. The dementors toppled over just as Harry's hand closed around the Snitch.
Oliver yelled louder then the whole stadium put together. Angelina clapped her hands over her ears and flew over, hugging and kissing all the boys on the team. "Oliver, we won, we won!" she yelled.
"I know!" Oliver yelled back. She kissed him quickly on the cheek and then spun around. The stadium was emptying out onto the field as Angelina followed Oliver over to the dementors. Three Slytherins were disentangling themselves from the black robes. Oliver laughed.
"Party!" One of the Weasley twins yelled. The party, indeed, went on all day. Bags and bags of sweets appeared. Angelina wondered briefly why Hermione Granger wasn't joining in. She was immersed in a book for Muggle Studies.
Oliver was busy talking about the match. Angelina sat behind him and listened, absentmindedly resting her hand on his shoulder while she drank butterbeer and gossiped with Katie and Angelina.
"I heard Fred and George's older brother Percy is going out with that Penelope Clearwater," Katie said, wrinkling her nose. "Even he could do better."
Alicia agreed and Angelina nodded her head, sitting back against her chair and setting the empty bottle down on the table. She sat there for a while, listening to Alicia and Katie talk.
"Oy, Angelina!" Fred yelled. "A Hufflepuff's here to see you."
"Don't go!" George cried dramatically. "It will lead you to your death!"
Angelina ignored them and pushed open the portrait hall. To her surprise, Cedric Diggory stood outside, holding a single rose. She raised her eyebrows as she shut the portrait of Sir Cadogan behind her.
"Hi, Angelina," Cedric said a bit awkwardly. "You did a great job at the match today. I just brought this for you," he said, holding out the rose. It was blood red, with streaks of pink near the tops of the petals.
"It's beautiful," Angelina murmured. "Thank you."
"I just…" Cedric shoved his hands into his pockets and tapped his foot on the floor. Sir Cadogan muttered to himself in the portrait. "I just wanted to know if you wanted to…go somewhere, sometime, I mean, you don't have to but"-
"I'd love to go out with you," Angelina blurted out, twirling the rose in her hands. Cedric smiled a big, wonderful smile.
"That's great!" he said, still grinning broadly. "But, I have to go now, it's getting late." He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "I'll see you," he said.
"Bye," Angelina whispered as Cedric walked away, blending into the shadows. Then he turned a corner. Angelina twirled the flower around her fingers like a baton, admiring the unusual coloring of the petals. She walked inside, swinging the portrait open and sitting back down in the chair.
"Hey, Angelina," Alicia said curiously. "Where'd you get the rose?"
"Cedric Diggory gave it to me," Angelina said matter-of-factly.
Katie squealed. "Really? You're going out with Cedric Diggory?"
"The Cedric Diggory?"
"There's only one Cedric Diggory that I know!" Angelina said, laughing.
The portrait hole swung open. "Alright," Professor McGonagall said, her hands on her hips. "Bedtime. Now!" The Weasley twin's groan was silenced with a glare, and the Gryffindor students filed up the stairs, muttering and laughing at the same time. Angelina slipped the rose into a water-filled vase and went to sleep, dreaming of Cedric.