A/N: Yes, another Angelina/Montague-hinting ficlet. My minor character h0 self smirks. Well, this was actually written for my friend Ray, because she's a w00bie and I love her.
Disclaimer: I own the delusion of owning Quidditch Gods.
~*~
Head Girl and Quidditch Captain and four Advanced classes.
She carried her heavy books on a slenderly muscled back and a broomstick over
her shoulder. She wore the weighty badge on her robes, polished to shine but
not reflect the emptiness in her eyes... and a wide smile that showed all her
even, white teeth. But the brown eyes held a hint of frantic nervousness in
their depths. Even the most brash and most collected of souls were still human,
after all.
She was strong and graceful even under the most forbidding and scorching of
fire. She was a Gryffindor, after all, and it was HER and she knew what she
wanted and she was a role model for so many...
She was one boy's immortal, unsinkable angel-girl and a whole team's support
and leader. She was her house's figurehead, a representation (or supposed to
be) of all that was right with the world of red and gold. And she was the whole
school's ears and eyes and shoulders and hands, and it hurt to be stretched so
thin like on a rack or elevated so high that even though her flying was
pristine, she grew dizzy and afraid atop the lonely marble pedestal that she
didn't feel like anyone should have.
And after long practices and encouragements to the somewhat disappointing
performance of the new Keeper and the wild antics of the Beaters and just...
everything and nothing and so much that was there, she waited for the rest to
cheerfully troop back in, and sat down by the broomshed door and cried, choking
sobs so hoarse and uneven that no one would have believed it. Not the crystal
tears of a golden angel-girl...
And her nose was red, and...
It was just the sort of scene that he'd be able to make the most of. When the
nemesis is at her weakest is when one should strike, to break, to snap into
lifelessness, like a decapitated doll...
And the Slytherin captain, who knew all this full-well, stepped forward, silent
as the still forest, and carefully pushed a handkerchief into her hands. And
before her tear-blurred eyes could make out his expression, had backed away
without a word.
And no one ever knew, and the next game, they glared at each other in rivalry
and fiery competition, because those were the roles that they played, that she
had to play...
And he wouldn't stop her from doing that.
She thought of a crisp, white linen handkerchief that she'd hidden under her
pillow, and wondered idly just before the whistle blew, what the middle initial
monogrammed on the piece of cloth stood for.