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Chapter 8 – Under Stress

Oliver say upon the bed in his hospital room holding a mirror in one hand and a book in the other. He stared from the book with its picture of him hovering on a broom in front of the three goal posts to the mirror. He was comparing his face with the one in the book, and suddenly he remembered flying.

The adrenaline behind racing from goal post to goal post, blocking the red balls entrance. What was that red ball called?

"Mr. Wood?"

Hermione. No, that wasn't the name of the ball. It was a Quaffle. Yes, that's it. Quaffle.

"Mr. Wood!"

Hermione?

"Huh?" Oliver snapped awake.

He dropped the mirror into his lap as he noticed Hermione at the doorway of his room.

"Yes?" he asked.

"I've just come to give you your potion and to check up on you... fluff your pillows... get you anything you need," Hermione bumbled as she played with something behind her back. "Give you this," she added in a mutter.

Oliver looked at her now outstretched hand and saw the book she had been reading to Kirsten, which was the one Kirsten had been reading to him.

"My daughter said to give it to you," Hermione said.

"Would you read me some now?" Oliver inquired.

"I-I supposed I could," she replied.

Hermione pulled up a chair next to his bed and opened the book while clearing her throat.

"That night I had dreamed of us living in a Paris apartment looking out at the Eiffel Tower and holding hands as a perfumed breeze swept over us," Hermione began. "A silly dream I know, but the next night brought on fears that maybe I had a premonition or a knack for seeing what was to come. It wasn't quite the exact same, but along those lines."

Oliver shifted on the bed and turned himself toward her, his legs dangling off the bed so near her own.

"We met at the same café around six the next evening. He didn't stop long enough for us to have not one cup of tea. He came around the corner, pulled me from my chair, and hailed a Muggle cab. I was slightly worried when he told the driver to head to the Eiffel Tower, but then again, I couldn't be completely sure that he wasn't just going to go to the plaza there."

"What's the Eiffel Tower look like?" Oliver interrupted.

"Um...," Hermione paused as she looked around the room and then spotted a box of Q-tips. "Like this," she said as she dumped out the box of cotton swabs on the bed table and pulled out her wand, waving it at the pile of white ear cleaners.

All the Q-tips jumped to life and began stacking themselves, end on end, on top of one another. Soon, there was a foot and a half high tower of Q-tips that resembled the Eiffel Tower.

"There," Hermione smiled.

"I think I've seen that before," Oliver said curiously.

"You probably have," Hermione admitted. "You being a famous Quidditch player and all, you travel all over the place all the time."

"Oh," Oliver nodded. "Well, continue please," he added while nodding and pointing to the book in her hand.

She smiled and opened the book once more to the page before taking a deep breath and resuming her reading.

"Much to my fear's confirmation, when we arrived there, he paid the Muggle driver, and he drug me out of the cab and over to the tower and tried to get me into the elevator."

Hermione shifted her in seat as Oliver leaned forward on the bed, listening closely to what she was saying. She crossed her legs so that it was slightly impossible for him to get any closer unless he planned on sitting in her lap.

"After a few moments of struggle with me, he cornered me and backed me into the elevator where I stood in the back against the wall with the feeling of fear creeping all over my body. Heart racing, the elevator stopped, and with a ding, the doors opened and he rushed out, pulling me with him."

Oliver tilted his head to the side, watching Hermione's mouth move as she talked. He got a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he wanted nothing more than to reach out and run his fingers along her bottom lip. They looked so soft; like a pink rose petal on the face of beauty.

"Oliver?" Hermione said. "Are you paying attention?"

"Yeah," Wood said while shaking his head.

"Okay," Hermione said as she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Go on," he urged.

"I stood in the center of the room, afraid of what might happen if I got too close to the edge and looked over. As it was, I could just feel the tower sway, though I tried to convince myself it was my imagination; imagination can be very overbearing when it wants to be. I felt sick and my stomach kept rising to my mouth, making it water, and then plummeting back into its rightful place with a sickening feeling."

"Why was she so afraid of heights?" Oliver asked. "I look being high up... flying on a broom."

"Well, when she was little-," Hermione paused. At first, her brain hadn't registered what he said, but now it did. "You remembered!"

"Yeah, strangest thing," Oliver replied. "I was looking at that book and I just remembered being on a broom blocking goals... though I still don't think I'm that guy from the picture and I still can't figure out what that place Hogwarts is."

"It'll come to you," Hermione assured. "Shall I continue?"

"Yeah," Oliver nodded.

"So, it was only Merlin's cruel sense of humor that he would suggest that we get closer to the edge. I felt as though I could take a child's tantrum right there and sit down and cry as though I were lost," Hermione read. "He was trying to make me face my very fear right then and there when I was feeling my weakest. I had be completely weakened by him from the second we started talking on that first night, and now, here I was, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower with him trying to drag me over to the railing."

"Sounds like a good deal of trouble facing two weaknesses at once," Oliver interrupted.

She just nodded before reading on.

"He succeeded seeing as he was stronger than I, and not to mention, I had a hard time telling him no over and over because of that adorable face of his. But I closed my eyes and turned my back on the drop, staring at the other side of the room. I was in no hurry to look over the edge, faint, and fall to my very death. He, once more under Merlin's power to amuse, asked me to look and when I said very nervously that I wasn't too keen on looking, he got frustrated and spun me around to look."

"Forceful fellow, eh?" Oliver questioned.

"Not really... just eager to open m- her... her eyes," Hermione corrected herself. She had about slipped and said 'my'.

"Oh," Oliver sighed. "Anyways. Go on."

"He was extremely lucky that I fought off the urge to show him my lunch from earlier that day in half digested form. I too felt lucky though, because in my moment of dizzying fear, I threw myself on him for the feeling of safety and ended up having him hold me to him at an even closer distance than that of the night when we had been dancing. I was reluctant to move away from that spot, but the right side of my body felt completely bare as I stood there in his arm with my face buried in his neck. I asked him to move and he did, ever so gently, taking me to the middle of the room."

"I see what you mean now," Oliver butted in. She just nodded and kept on.

"I had to let go of him then, no matter how much I would have preferred to continue to cling to him. It would have been stupid for me to stand there with him in the middle of the room, clutching to him like I was a cat about to get a bath. He had the nerve to joke after that about having dinner up there, and had I not been so shaken, I probably would have scowled at him and kicked him in the shin."

"Maybe she's the forceful one," Oliver laughed.

"No, I'm not!" Hermione threw back. "I-I mean... she's not. She's not."

Oliver just nodded and shifted a bit on the bed, his leg brushing her crossed one. She uncrossed them and pushed her chair back and inch or so as she shivered from the touch. She swallowed hard and forced a weak, twitching smile before reading on.

"W-We left the tower, me thanking Merlin the whole way, and walked to a luxurious restaurant that was only a block away. I didn't want to go there because I knew from my parents talking that this place was entirely too expensive for the portions that they served. My mother had told me how they had ordered a plate of lamb in a rather delicious sauce and it cost them about thirty dollars in Muggle money, but the lamb chop had been no bigger than a credit card."

"Credit card?" Oliver broke in.

"It's a little card that Muggles use to replace money," Hermione explained.

"Oh," he uttered.

She sighed heavily and continued.

"I told him that I couldn't possibly afford that place and he laughed while telling me he could. Guilt simply gushed throughout me and I tried to object, but we were already being seated and the waiter, who looked the typical stereotype of a snobby French waiter, handed us our menus. We ate our dinner, and he seemed to not care as he ordered sparkling champagne and some expensive, but oh so good little chocolates to take with us."

"I think I've ate at that place before," Oliver said as though in distant thought.

"You might have," Hermione agreed.

"Yeah, I think I did," Oliver shrugged.

After a moment's pause, she continued.

"We went back to my hotel room to find my parents had left me a note saying that they were going to a spa after going to an art lecture at the Lourve. So, we went out onto the balcony, drank the champagne and ate the chocolate, laughing as he dropped the empty box and hit some poor passerby as he happened to be walking under the balcony of my room. We went in and I rented a movie off the television, which he was completely amazed with. I didn't quite remember falling asleep, but when I woke up at three in the morning to the sound of my father tripping over my forgotten shoes, I realized he was gone."

"Why did he leave?"

"He had to," Hermione answered.

"I would have stayed," Oliver spoke.

'Would you?' Hermione thought sadly.

"Go on," he pressed.

"My mother made me get under the covers, and as I lay my head back on my pillows on my bed, I felt something rather stiff under it. A note from him. He told me to meet him in the park not far from the little café where we had been meeting lately. He asked that I be there at eight that evening, and I smiled as I looked at his name at the bottom of the note. I not only had the autograph of a famous Quidditch player, but a fourth date with him as well. I giggled to myself as I thought about all the girls that would simply kill to be in my place. How lucky could I get?"

"She's certainly happy, huh?"

"For now she is," Hermione responded.

"Why do you say that?" Oliver asked.

Hermione just shook her head and shushed him before resuming.

"Apparently I was very lucky I found out as the next night rolled around and at exactly eight, I walked into the park and spotted him sitting on a bench near a little dock on a small lake. We walked around the lake once, and I tried to feed a swan some duck food from a little feed machine, but I nearly fell into the lake. He then got the bright idea to go out onto the lake."

"She isn't going to fall in out there, is she?" Oliver asked.

Hermione just laughed and shushed him again.

"I showed objections at first; I wasn't too keen on the idea of paddling out onto some lake in a paddle boat with hundreds of ducks, geese, and swans in our way who would no doubt peck you to death as soon as do their business on your boat."

"Their business?" Oliver repeated.

"It's bad business," Hermione giggled.

Oliver said nothing to that though as he stared at her smile. It was gorgeous to him and he felt that feeling in his stomach once more.

"But he finally got me over to the dock, and we got into the boat after paying the shabby looking man who ran the place," Hermione read on, waking Oliver up from his daydream. "We rowed out to the middle of the lake by pedaling the bike-like gears of the little boat before he handed me some more of the duck feed and suggested that I try again."

Oliver leaned forward on the bed, only a foot of space between them now as Hermione ignored it and continued her reading.

"I did, and a gosling ate from my hand with a tickling fashion. I turned to him to say how cute the baby swan was, and saw him smiling at me in a transfixed way. It was there in his eyes that I saw a glimpse of what forever might look like if you were madly in love with someone," Hermione sighed, a bit out of breath.

She glanced up from her reading and saw Oliver gazing at her as though in deep thought. He slowly reached out his hand and let his fingertips brush her cheek. She flinched only a little and soon found her face cupped in his hands as he sat on the very edge of the bed.

Oliver leaned forward slightly, and Hermione pulled back a little. He narrowed his eyes in calculation upon her face and brushed back a stray strand of her hair. He leaned forward again, and this time, she did too, although it was in a much more jerky fashion.

She could feel his breath from his mouth hot on her own, and then she realized how close they were. He had stood up be now and was leaning down, his eyes transfixed on hers. She swallowed hard and turned her head, her curls brushing softly on his lips.

He backed up and she closed the book while pushing her chair back and standing up. She said nothing as she put the chair back and opened his potion bottles. She fixed his bed and looked over the room once more before leaving.

"Take your potions and get into bed," Hermione said before shutting the door.

Oliver dropped down onto the bed and groaned. What had he just done? And why did he feel this frustration at not being able to actually do what he had been about to?

He shook his head, grabbed the potion bottles and drank both before getting under the covers and turning off the lamp next to his bed.


Hermione sat at her kitchen table. It was three in the morning and Kirsten was upstairs, fast asleep in bed. Hermione sighed and drank down the last of her tea. She had been trying to make herself tired, but it wouldn't work. She had cleaned the kitchen, the Muggle way even, and drank four cups of tea, not to mention read the Daily Prophet at least six times.

"Maybe some music," Hermione sighed as she got up and turned on the radio on the kitchen counter.

"I know they say if you love somebody. You should set them free, but it sure is hard to do. It sure is hard to do. I know they say if it don't come back again then it's meant to be," sang the radio.

"Nope," Hermione muttered as she turned the dial and went to the next station.

"So turn up the corners of your lips. Part them and feel my finger tips trace the moment, fall forever. Defense is paper thin. Just one touch and I'll be in too deep now to ever swim against the current. So let me slip away," the new station rang out.

"Again no," Hermione huffed as she gave the dial another turn.

"Listen to your heart when he's calling for you. Listen to your heart. There's nothing else you can do. I don't know where you're going, and I don't know why, but listen to your heart before you tell him goodbye," yet another station melodically said.

"I didn't tell him goodbye," Hermione grumbled. "He told me goodbye."

She turned the dial again and sighed as a guitar sounded over the speakers.

"At least it won't accuse me or say something stupid," she muttered while leaning on the counter.

"And I'd give up forever to touch you 'cause I know that you feel me somehow. You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be, and I-," the radio chorused as Hermione turned the dial again while grumbling.

"And I've heard enough of that."

She settled on another station, her finger still on the dial if anything should go bad.

"Scars are souvenirs you never lose. The past is never far. Did you lose yourself some-"

"No, I didn't," she hissed while turning the dial.

"Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go. So make the best of this test, and don't ask why. It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time. It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life. So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time," the radio chirped with enthusiasm.

"Are you trying to guilt trip me?" Hermione grumbled as she picked up the radio and shook it.

She sighed and sat it back down, turning the radio off as she prepared for the long week that would help her to relieve the stress that she was under.