AU: Oliver Wood has fallen for his new neighbor, who happens to be an American witch. Romantic fluffy fic taking place during CoS, but from the p.o.v. of Oliver's love interest, Laura.

Oh, and J.K. Rowling owns everything in the wizarding world, I've just set my character, Laura, into it. So please let her stay for a little while, she (and the author) mean no harm.

A/N: Another chapter with magical instant communication. And this time, Oliver's joining in, just cause I like making things even more confusing. :)

Chelsea's words are underlined

Jenn's words are bolded

Laura's words are italicized

Oliver's words are everything- bolded, italicized, and underlined

I hope this isn't too confusing! Normal font is regular old narration.

Chapter 11

The Things You Do For Love

After charms class we headed down the hall to Defense Against the Dark Arts. On the way we met a frazzled looking Fred and George. One sarcastically said, "Have fun in Defense Against the Dark Arts," while the other rolled his eyes.

When we entered the classroom the professor was no where to be seen, so we quietly took our seats at the long tables and waited patiently. After a few minutes the door to the upstairs office swung open and Gilderoy Lockhart swept in, wearing robes of what I thought were a hideous, Easter egg blue. He was smiling widely, and the glare off his teeth was enough to blind someone. He picked up a book from one of the students in the front row and showed it to the class, it was like seeing double between the real person and the cover portrait. "Me," he said pointing at it. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award—but I don't talk about that, I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"

No one laughed at his sad joke, though Oliver looked over at me with raised eyebrows and a look that said, 'what did I get myself into.' Lockhart apparently had not noticed that his joke had failed miserably, and instead had pulled out a large stack of papers.

"Yes, so for the first class I thought a small quiz was in order to see how well you all had read my books over the break…"

Oliver looked stunned, and mouthed, "quiz?" to me. I shrugged; I certainly hadn't read any of the books, there had been nothing telling us to do that. The quiz, however, was in no way small. It covered three feet of parchment and had over fifty questions, all short answer.

It was ridiculous. If I hadn't had other lessons already I would have formed a very bad opinion of Hogwarts teachers based on Lockhart. His test had nothing to do with killing werewolves, or banshees, or yetis, but instead was all about him. There were insane questions like "What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color? What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition? And When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?"

It seemed that I wasn't the only one who was clueless; most of the class seemed to think the quiz was asinine. One girl even raised her hand and asked with all honesty, "Is this a joke?"

When the bell for lunch finally rang, there was a clamor for the door and plenty of pushing and shoving to escape the classroom. After the abysmal quiz, Lockhart had retold how he had banished the Bandon Banshee, using us, the audience, as props and other characters. However, he had told us before his reenactment, an earlier class had saved us the terror of facing a whole cage full of Cornish pixies.

After a short lunch Oliver and I headed to our last class of the day, Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Kettleburn was an elderly man, who I realized with horror, was missing his three middle fingers on his left hand and one on his right. He also walked with a slight limp and there were plenty of scars on his arms that resembled claw marks.

"Great, we have class with the Slytherins," Oliver said loathingly as a group of students stalked in.

Class, however, was uneventful and spent copying notes from the board.

Right after class, as I had promised myself the night before, I went back and retrieved my blue ink and enchanted parchment, then went down to the common room. I had about an hour before dinner and I was hoping that Jenn and Chelsea would be around.

Chelsea, are you there?

Jenn, are you there?

For a few seconds it was only my ink that marked the paper, but after about a minute I finally received a reply.

Oh my God Laura, it is soooo good to finally hear from you. How's school, what house did you get in, how are your classes, are the people nice to you?

Never mind that, how's Oliver?

I have some news for you guys, Oliver and I are officially dating!

I knew you had it in you, girl.

Congratulations Laura!

Not only that, but we spent at least half an hour yesterday making out in an empty classroom after curfew.

I have taught you well. The student surpasses the master.

She has to go way farther than just making out to surpass you, Jenn.

For Laura this is a huge step. And I'm still waiting for that picture, by the way.

Yeah, well, I haven't exactly gotten around to taking it yet. Plus I don't think my owl could handle a transatlantic journey anyway, so you'll have to wait anyway, till I can get an owl that is up for that journey.

Ok, but I want one eventually.

So how is everything else aside from Oliver going?

Pretty good, I obviously ended up in Oliver's house. It's called Gryffindor, and it's traditionally known for its members' bravery. My classes don't seem too bad, well except for the one that is taught by Gilderoy Lockhart.

Gilderoy Lockhart is one of your professors?

Yeah, and in reality he is a stuck up moron.

Haha, Chelsea, your hero isn't so heroic after all.

As I was sitting there completely absorbed by my conversation with my friends Oliver snuck up behind me and grabbed my shoulders. I don't think I have ever jumped so high, and I glared at Oliver once I regained some composure.

"Doing homework already?" he asked.

"No, talking with my friends from home. We each have an enchanted parchment for instant communication." It was then that an idea struck me. "Oliver, do you have any colored ink?"

"No, I only have black and brown, why?"

"Cause I want you to meet my two best friends from home. Brown is good enough I guess, go get it and a quill."

He laughed as he disappeared up the boy's staircase and reappeared a few minutes later with a bottle of ink and a feathery quill.

Guys, I have a surprise for you, I wrote as Oliver sat down next to me.

"Write Hi," I instructed, "and introduce yourself."

Hi, this is Oliver.

Hey, I heard about your and Laura's little excursion after curfew last night. Way to go, Laura needs some action in her life.

Jenn!

Oh, it's the truth and you know it Laura.

Hi Oliver, I'm Chelsea. The rude one in the orange ink is Jenn.

I am not rude! I just tell it like it is.

Oliver gave me a look that seemed to say, 'your friends are crazy.'

So I also hear that you really like Quidditch. I don't play but I'm a big fan: Fitchburg Finches. Good luck in converting Laura, I've been trying to for awhile now.

I think I can warm her up to the sport. The whole school gets Quidditch fever during the season, so she will probably catch it from them.

So how has school been going for you guys?

It's been so weird to not have you here. I think the teachers are glad our trio has been split up, but don't worry, we wouldn't dream of replacing you.

So you three pretty much terrorized the place?

Whenever we were together chaos seemed to follow.

Yeah, like that time I got you guys to help me break into the boy's locker room so I could see if the rumors about Joey Cadmore were really true.

Oliver was laughing out loud as he looked at me. "You don't strike me as that type."

"Jenn was a bad influence on me and Chelsea," I replied.

So did the rumors turn out to be true?

You did not just ask that!

Oh man, Laura, you got yourself a winner. Let's just say that the rumors had been blown way out of proportion, if you get what I mean.

"Don't encourage her," I said to him.

He checked his watch and asked, "Do you want to go to dinner soon? They house elves stop cooking in like half an hour."

"Oh, yeah, I didn't realize how long I had been talking to them before you joined in."

Guys, we have to go to dinner if we want to eat tonight. But I'll be sure to talk to you again soon.

Yeah, nice talking to you both.

Bye, write back soon.

Way to go girl, I'll talk to you later.

Finite Incantatum.

The parchment was instantly clean again. I rolled it up carefully and took my quill and ink back up to my dormitory and then we headed to dinner.

The rest of the week was the same as the beginning, and I was thankful when it was finally Friday. As we relaxed in front of the fire in the common room that night, Oliver asked me if I wanted to go watch his Quidditch practice the next day.

"Sure," I answered. "What time?"

"I'm waking the team at six in the morning, but we should…"

"Six in the morning? Are you kidding?"

"Nope, this year it's gonna be earlier and more intense than last year, we have to get out of the gate before the other teams if we want a chance of winning the cup this year." There, again, was the slightly insane glint in his eyes as he said this. "But I have all those diagrams to go over, so I expect we will be out on the field by seven-thirty or eight."

Seven-thirty or eight were still early for me, and practically sacrilege to get up at that hour on a Saturday. But I agreed to come watch some of it anyway, knowing that if this relationship was going to work I was going to have to make some sacrifices. Plus I was kind of curious to see how good of a player he was.

So on Saturday I woke to sunshine at seven-thirty in the morning. I dressed quietly, trying not to make noise and wake up the other girls. Right as I was ready to leave, Chloe stuck a groggy head out from behind her curtains.

"You do know you are insane," she said quietly, "up this early on a Saturday just for a boy."

"Yeah, but I really like this boy," I replied before leaving.

The great hall was nearly empty, though there was food sitting out on the tables just waiting to be eaten. I made myself a scrambled egg sandwich on toast, and wrapped it in a napkin. The grounds were very still, and the only sounds that could be heard were the plethora of birds singing in the trees. The grass was wet with left over dew and a slight mist still hung in the air, slowly burning away in the sun's rays.

The Quidditch field was still empty of players when I got there and I assumed Oliver and his team were still in the locker room, going over tactics. There were a few other crazy people out in the stands as well. The tiny first year who had taken my picture while we were waiting to be sorted was sitting at the very top the bleachers. Another pair of people were also sitting lower down, nearer to the field. One I recognized as Hermione, the girl who had come into our compartment in the train, asking if we had seen Ron and Harry. The bright red hair on the other one marked him as a Weasley, and I presumed it to be Ron.

Finally Oliver and his team tromped out on the field. Oliver was carrying one end of a large wooden case that contained the Quidditch balls while hoisting his broomstick over his other shoulder. The rest of the team followed, still looking exhausted. I was quite astonished over how good Oliver looked in full Quidditch gear, with his scarlet robes and padding, I knew that if I took a picture of him like that there was no way I was sending it to Jenn.

"Aren't you finished yet?" I heard Ron yell to the smallest member of the team. With a slight shock I realized that this must be the famous Harry Potter.

"Haven't even started," was the shouted reply. "Wood's been teaching us new moves."

The team mounted their broomsticks and kicked off, soaring into the air. Oliver was a good flyer, and I watched him as he did a few warm up laps around the stadium, speeding up and slowing down, diving and rising quickly, testing the air. However, the entire team was outshined by Harry Potter, who was racing Fred and George with no competition at all. They appeared to be having a conversation in mid air about something, when suddenly Oliver dived quickly toward the ground. I was wondering what had happened when I noticed another troop of people walking onto the field, wearing robes of green and silver and also toting broom sticks.

"Flint," I heard Oliver yell. He sounded madder than I had ever heard him. "This is our practice time! We got up specially! You can clear off now!"

Flint, apparently the captain of the other team, was huge, with a very trollish appearance. He calmly said something back to Oliver, but I couldn't make it out.

The rest of the team had joined Oliver now, and the two teams were facing each other, scowling nastily.

"Oh uh, what are the Slytherin's doing here?" Hermione said to Ron.

He shrugged and they started down to the field to see what was going on. After a few seconds I decided to follow when I saw the camera happy first year also making his way onto the pitch.

By the time I got into earshot, a heated debate was already going on.

"At least no one of the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in," I heard Hermione shoot back at a greasy haired, blond Slytherin. "They got in on pure talent."

"No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood," he spat back.

He didn't just call her that, I thought. No one with half a mind and any amount of decency would call someone else that name. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so, as Fred and George made to tackle the blond kid, but were blocked by Flint. One of the girls on Oliver's team shrieked, "How dare you!" and Ron Weasley pulled his wand out and looked as though he were ready to curse the kid into oblivion. However, instead of hitting the bad mouther, as was intended, the curse backfired on Ron with a bright green flash.

He landed backward in the grass, and seemed to be fine until he opened his mouth and retched up several slugs. I looked away quickly, disgusted. Hermione and Harry rushed over to help their friend, and they carried him off the field, practically knocking over the camera kid in the process.

"Well, since you're short a player now, I guess the field is ours," drawled the blond kid.

Fred and George still looked like they were ready to kill him, and Oliver was wearing an expression I had never seen on him before. As much as they hated to admit it, they were now missing a player and really had no choice except to relinquish the field.

I hurried after the Gryffindor team as they slumped off the field, carrying their equipment as the Slytherin team took to the air, laughing.