A/N : Muchas gracias for the reviews, people! I know, I know, I don't deserve them; due to lack of updates and all. Mustn't make excuses. Was suffering from extremely mild case of writer's block (how on earth was Katie going to react?!) and extremely severe case of lack of time. But please don't let this stop you from reviewing this chapter! I promise I'll be good next time! =)

Chapter Six : Sleeping Beauty

I walked up the steps leading to my dormitory frowning over what Oliver had just said to me.

Alright.

I'll admit it.

I had absolutely no fricking clue what the heck Oliver had meant by that whole gay comment.

I mean, seriously. What was it? Me being gay and him not liking gays that were liked by me because he was gay and he did not like me being gay because I did not like gays unlike him and like me?

Huh?

My head was beginning to hurt from all the thinking I was doing - which really was rather odd, me being the smartest girl in my year and everything (only in the most modest of ways, of course). And I was pretty certain that whatever the heck it was he had just said could not be that complex as it was, after all, Oliver who had said it.

Let's dwell upon that sentence for a second or so : Oliver Fransisco Wood, Esquire outsmarting me, Katie Leigh Bell.

Stranger things have happened, though, I have to admit. Like Oliver confessing that he's had enough of Quidditch for a day. Do you know what I reckon? He's hitting puberty.

That has to be it, because there's no other explanation; right?

Hmmm.

It's about time, seeing that he's seventeen and all.

Oliver is what my mom would call a late bloomer. Of course, my mom also calls him 'a darn fine piece of manhood, Katie, dear, so make a move on him before anyone else gets their filthy little hands on him!' so I probably shouldn't take her judgement very seriously.

I pushed the dormitory door open slightly, trying not to make any noise and succeeded admirably in failing miserably.

"You!" Angelina shrieked, and pounced on me immediately upon my entering the room.

The word 'ow' pretty much sums up everything I was feeling at that moment.

"Yes, me..." I grumbled, pushing Angelina off of me and retrieving my textbooks that had fallen down next to me on the thick, red carpet.

She rolled over, apparently unfazed, and went, "Tell me what happened, you wicked, wicked girl!" I gave her a very strange look – you couldn't blame me, either – and proceeded to get up from the floor, dumping my books on my bedside table with an exhausted sigh.

"Hey! Are you listening to me, Katesies?" Angelina said very loudly and indignantly.

Alicia, who was sitting cross-legged on her bed and staring at the both of us, gave me a sorry-can't-help-you-Johnson's-gone-bonkers-again look, which I responded to with a don't-worry-I'll-leave-you-something-nice-in-my-will look. Looks make the world go round!

"Don't call me Katesies, Angie, you know I hate it," I said to Angelina. I sat down on my bed and looked around the room for a second.

"Where's Adelene?"

"Oh, stuff her, she's in the bathroom," Angelina said impatiently, waving my question aside. "Now tell me what happened between you and Oliver!"

I turned to give Alicia a she's-delusional-again look, but to my surprise and utter consternation, found Alicia looking at me expectantly as well.

I frowned. "What in the name of Merlin are you looking at? Am I breaking out into hives or something?" I looked down at my arms to check, just in case. Nope. No hives.

"Oh, don't play dumb, Katesies...it was so obvious today at practice that there is something going on between the two of you. And did you know that three quarters of today's teenagers all met their significant others in tutoring sessions?"

"They did not."

"Well, no, but they should."

"You're a big fat liar."

"Ah, but you're the one with the name 'Katesies'."

I narrowed my eyes at Angie. "Katesies is not my name! I hate that name, stop it..."

"You don't seem to mind when Fred and George call you Katesies," Alicia interjected with an innocent smile on her face.

Angelina yelled, "AHA!" as I stuck my tongue out at Alicia.

"Well, when they say it, it sounds cute. When she says it, it sounds –"

"Evil?"

"No, it –"

"Kinky?"

"NO, for heaven's sakes, but you're pretty darn close!" I exclaimed.

Merlin, Angelina is going to be the death of me.

"Sadistic?" Alicia ventured, to which I replied with a tired nod.

"Wahey, cha ching, cha ching!" Angelina crowed and began doing a one-person conga all around the room.

I glared accusingly at Alicia. "You let her get near the sugar again, didn't you?"

Alicia gave me an innocent look, placed her hand on her heart and smiled her Miss Universe smile, "I only do the best I can," looking at me with these wide, soulful eyes.

Angelina finally collapsed on my bed next to me when she'd had enough of conga-ing and continued, "So, come on, Katie. I'm absolutely serious. Both of you looked adorable at practice today. Don't think we didn't notice, because we noticed, alright. In a very noticing way." I shot her a look, but she just widened her eyes with this whole 'Who me?' expression on her face.

I swear, that witch is the devil in disguise.

"I hate to point out the obvious, Katie," Alicia chimed in with a look that said she loved pointing out the obvious, "but Orli wasn't even practicing with us today. Angie and I were left shooting the Quaffle into an empty hoop, which happens to be excruciatingly boring, by the way. Orli hasn't missed a single Quidditch practice since – well, since second year, when we joined the team. Don't you remember how he refused to sit out practice even when his wrist was broken? And how much he sulked when Pomfrey wouldn't let him fly?"

My mind immediately flashed back to a time about five years earlier, a young Oliver Wood sitting in the hospital wing, his face screwed up in pain. In fact, I had first spoken to him then – of course, I wasn't wishing him well or anything of that sort. His head just happened to be blocking my view of the pretty little flitterby on the wall behind him.

"Hello? Saturn to Katesies, Saturn calling Katesies, do you read me, Katesies?" Angelina seemed to be saying into my ear, waving her hand in front of my face to get my attention.

"Isn't it supposed to be Earth to Katesi -  Katie?" I asked her, blushing slightly as I realized I had spaced out on them.

"Wherever you were, it was way past the point where you could have received a signal from Earth," Angie scoffed.

"What's the matter, Katie? Thinking of Orli dearest?" Alicia teased.

I turned to stare at her in shock.

Where was the quiet, sensible, reserved Alicia Spinnet I used to know?

ANGELINA HAD CREATED A MONSTER!

The door leading to the bathroom opened and Lene walked out, her eyes rimmed with red and her forehead damp with sweat. She looked slightly startled to see us there, but quickly recovered enough to ask, "Hey, what's up?"

"Lene? Are you okay?" I asked her, frowning to see her in this state.

Angelina appeared to not have noticed anything different, though, because she just squealed, "Katie's having a love affair with Oliver Wood!"

Lene's lips immediately broke into a grin, and I noticed she had completely ignored my question.

"Brilliant, Katie. Why didn't you tell us earlier? Afraid we'd tell on you to Sweetheart Snape?" Lene laughed, and proceeded to flop down onto her own bed, which was next to mine.

Ugh.

They constantly insisted that Snape had a crush on me, which explains the name they had, shall we say, 'fondly' given him – Sweetheart Snape.

Gag me.

Please.

As they all began to shriek in laughter, I said loudly, "Look, I like Oliver as much as I like –"

"Sweetheart Snape?" Alicia coughed, which instantly started them all off laughing again.

It's a madhouse, I tell you, a madhouse!

I shook my head vigorously, sending my hair flying everywhere. "I don't have any other feelings for Oliver besides platonic ones. Come on, you guys, I'm not ready for this shit yet."

Alicia and Angelina (Lene was still laughing) gave me two very superior looks, as if they knew something that I didn't. "Well, even if you really don't feel anything for Oliver, he certainly feels something for you," Alicia shrugged.

Her saying this brought back the incident of that night's tutoring back into my mind with a sudden flash.

Katie, are you a guy? Then I'm not gay...

And then it finally hit me to what he had meant.

Could it be? Did he really...?

I needed to sleep on this.

Preferably for a thousand years, but I would take what I could get.

That night, I dreamt of rabid pink polka-dotted bunny rabbits – all gay – flying about in outer space singing the Irish national anthem. And then the conductor of the rabbit orchestra, who happened to go by the exclusive name of Cottonskovitski, mutated into Oliver Wood, who began singing Macho Man by the Village People, this scary Muggle singing group that my maternal grandmother used to make me listen to.

Don't get me wrong, my grandmother didn't like the Village People (thank Merlin for small favours) – she just wanted me to promise her never to end up like on of them.

Oliver was halfway through the second chorus of the song when I was awoken by a pair of hands shaking me very roughly.

"What the hell..." I groaned, and rubbed my eyes, waiting for my vision to clear up so I could see who it was that I would have to strangle.

A cold hand immediately clamped my mouth shut, and I could hear two very familiar voices say, "Shhh..."

Alicia and Angelina were standing over me, both of them still clad in their nightgowns and looking very worried about something. I could see that it was still dark outside, which meant that both of them would not only be strangled, but be made to suffer under various methods of medieval torture (which I happen to know a lot about, being the top student in History of Magic, and all).

Then I realized that Angelina was wide awake at what was presumably about five in the morning.

This realization was far more effective than any caffeine known to mankind, and in a split second I was out of bed.

"Katie, we think something's wrong with Lene," Angelina began in a hushed sort of voice. "Yeah. She woke me up about half an hour ago when she went into the bathroom, and she hasn't come out since," Alicia said softly.

They both looked at me with worry etched all over their faces, and I was pretty sure mine wasn't looking particularly dandy either.

"So...should we go in there and get her?" I finally ventured, breaking the silence. "I mean, worst case scenario is that she's probably just passed out or something. Best case scenario...she's learning a jig?"

"Exactly!" Angelina agreed a little too quickly.

"And she doesn't want to mindlessly caper around the dormitory because...she doesn't want us to laugh at her!" Alicia said brightly.

"Which is what we would do!" Angelina.

"Which is why this bunch of crap makes perfect sense!" Me.

We all exchanged glances, and had a moment of silence to reflect on how magnificently stupid we all were.

"That's it," Angelina suddenly decided. "I'm going in."

"Wait!" Alicia called, ignoring our unspoken rule of keeping silent as Angelina marched to the bathroom door. I didn't know what to do; to stand still, to go back to bed, to stop Angelina, or to walk into the bathroom and confront whatever lay there.

It was too late.

Angelina opened the door, and I heard Alicia and Angelina gasp loudly as one.

With excruciating slowness, I looked into the bathroom.

All of a sudden, my said worst case scenario looked a whole lot better.

A/N : Oooooh. Is this a cliff-hanger? If it is, I wasn't really intending it to be one; but as I only have five more minutes online, I figured this was a pretty good place to stop. Suspense! Now if you want to know what's screwing up Lene, review! The more reviews I get the faster I'll write! Hehe. I'm evil. Oh, and thanks to the book Wizard's Brew for Cottonskovitski the rabbit. It's very cute, these three bunnies called Flopkin, Mopkin and Cottonseed decide to become Freedom Fighters and change their names to Comrade Flopnik, Comrade Mopnik and Comrade Cottonskovitski. Go bunnies! And thank you to Gorgeous, because your satanic exercise of calling me kinky has turned into a blessing. Night, all!