VIII
Past, Present & Future

-x- Katie Bell & Oliver Wood –x-

'Maybe it's intuition
But some things you just don't question
Like in your eyes
I see my future in an instant..
..I know that it might sound more than
a little crazy but I believe…'

Oliver Wood was on a mission.

Having managed to secure an afternoon free of studies, he had spent most of those three precious hours listlessly day-dreaming about his best-friend and long-time secret crush, his chaser Katie Bell; but having been caught out by Fred and George, he'd decided at long last that something needed to be done before she either found out by herself or he drowned in his own saliva.

And so, he was on a mission to catch her as she came out of Charms and walk her to dinner, and therefore on the way to the Great Hall, confess his undying love for her. This was proving a lot harder than he'd first thought it would be, not because he had encountered any obstacles – on the contrary, his trip to the Charms corridor had been unusually quiet – but because he kept stopping every few metres and having some kind of private, silent panic attack.

However, much to his amazement, he had made it to the classroom with five minutes to spare, and so, he stood there, fidgeting restlessly, waiting for the bell to ring so he could just get it over and done with. Not exactly a romantic attitude, but it was the most you could expect of him, after all, he was a quidditch player not a bloody poet.

Not two minutes after he'd arrived at the classroom however, the door to his left opened and none other than Katie herself walked out, looking unusually pale and quite like she was going to be sick. Stepping out into the corridor, she doubled over for a minute, breathing in deeply, before straightening up, setting her jaw and walking straight into him.

'O-Oliver?'

Having practically died on the spot as soon as he'd realised it was her that had just exited the classroom, Oliver could do little more than squeak in the affirmative, a squeak that had less to do with the violent connection of her forehead with his chest and more to do with his complete and total lack of confidence, a much-needed character trait that had chosen completely the wrong moment to disappear without a trace.

'Oh, um, oh god, um… you actually, well, you see…'

Smiling slightly at his inability to make any kind of sense, Katie raised an eyebrow, though, Oliver noted, her face had not lost its pallor, in fact, the pallor seemed to have increased.

'Wh-what are you doing here?' she asked, stammering a bit herself and licking her lips nervously.

'Well, you see,' he started, exhaling loudly, 'I uh, I um, I actually needed to talk to you, uh, actually.'

'Oh?' she said, surprised, before scuffing her foot on the ground, another nervous habit of hers, 'That's interesting, because I was um, actually looking to erm, talk to you too.'

'Really?' he blurted out loudly, cringing at the volume.

'Uh, yes,' she replied, her voice unusually high, 'because you see –'

BANG!

She was kept from continuing this sentence at this point, by a rather loud explosion that occurred not two feet from them, sending them flying in opposite directions down the corridor.

They lay in painful silence for a moment, dazed, as the sound of two mysteriously simultaneous pairs of footsteps clattered in an echoing way down the corridor before disappearing altogether, their cackles of laughter fading away also in much the same fashion.

Groaning, Oliver sat up, frowning as he realised his face felt rather strange. Reaching up with one hand, he gasped when he realised his eyebrows had been singed off. A similar yelp from a few metres away assured him that he was not the only one missing something and he crawled over to where Katie was sitting, inspecting the frayed ends of her beautiful long locks.

'What the bloody hell happened?' asked Oliver, annoyed, but was stopped from hearing any kind of answer from Katie when Professor Trelawney of all people ambled down the corridor, smelling strongly of alcohol and wearing an even dreamier look than usual on her face.

She stopped when she spotted them, charred eyebrows and hair alike, their wands scattered away from them on the floor. Looking down at them curiously, she clucked her tongue.

'Been duelling have we, dears?'

'No!' they replied indignantly in unison.

'Well it certainly does look like it, you know,' she said, before twitching slightly, 'oh yes, it does indeed, and well, it is against the school rules, you know.'

Oliver sincerely wished she'd stop saying "you know", it was annoying the bloody hell out of him among other things, and he could hardly stand the batty woman on a normal day.

'I'm afraid, dears, that I have no other choice than to give you a detention,' she said, in what she clearly thought was a disapproving tone, 'Minerva says I've been too lax with my punishments, so I think this is the perfect opportunity to prove her wrong.'

'But we didn't do anything!' Katie cried angrily, getting awkwardly to her feet and then hiking a flabbergasted Oliver to his, 'We were just standing here talking and suddenly something exploded!'

'You truly expect me to believe that, do you?' Trelawney said with another annoying cluck of her tongue, 'There's no point lying to me, you know,' here Oliver's right eye twitched irritably, 'I do have the gift of Sight after all.'

'Obviously your "Inner Eye"'s not working then,' Katie mumbled miserably, earning herself a reproving glance from the batty woman.

'I'll show you whose Inner Eye's not working!' she said indignantly, taking Katie firmly by the elbow and dragging her down the corridor with her, leaving Oliver to jog along behind them, completely bewildered and more than a little annoyed.

By the time they'd reached the obscurely placed Divination classroom, Oliver was a little puffed out and Katie looked ready to murder something. They climbed the magically descending ladder and stood inside, waiting for Trelawney to exact their punishment upon them.

'Sit,' she said curtly, pointing at the two chairs closest to her desk, a crystal ball sitting mockingly on the wooden table.

Seeing no choice but to obey her, Katie and Oliver grudgingly sat down, sinking into the arm-chairs with a sullen silence. Trelawney pulled the trapdoor shut and walked over to them, sitting down in her own pouf with little grace herself.

'Well there you are, Miss Know-It-All,' she said scathingly, pushing the crystal ball towards Katie with a glare of her magnified eyes, 'tell me what you see.'

Katie gaped at her.
'But I'm rubbish at this subject; I'm not even taking it this year!'

'Well then you should have more respect for something you yourself are not even adept at,' Trelawney replied smugly, causing Oliver to have to disguise a laugh with a well-timed sneeze.

Grinding her teeth together noisily, Katie threw a pleading glance at the Scotsman beside her, who helpfully, snorted and decided to study his shoelaces very intently. Taking several breaths in and out in an attempt to control her temper, she opened her eyes again and carefully ignoring Trelawney's bug-eyed stare, looked deep into the crystal ball.

Watching her, Oliver raised one charred eyebrow when she let out a soft yelp, her blue eyes transfixed on something he couldn't see. Leaning forwards curiously when he realised that she wasn't faking it, he gave an awkward cough when he saw exactly what had made her yelp.

Leaning backwards in his chair faster than an Angelina mood-swing, he sucked in oxygen noisily, thinking that he could do with a nice, long, cold shower right about then. He waited semi-patiently as Katie continue to stare at the somewhat interesting images before her, taking an indecent amount of time to do so, in his own humble opinion.

'What do you see, dear?' asked Trelawney scathingly, leaning forwards to look at the crystal ball and frowning, 'Why, there's nothing there you silly girl! What on earth are you staring at?'

Choking, Oliver stared at the insane woman.
'But there is something there, I saw it!'

It was Katie's turn to stare at him, as Trelawney snatched the crystal ball huffily away from her, muttering something about obnoxious students.

'There was nothing there, you dolt,' she mouthed to him, frowning as he turned a delicate shade of green, 'wait, did you actually see something?'

The last part she'd spoken out loud, and Trelawney turned to eye him curiously.
'Tell me Mister Wood, did you actually see something or are you just play-acting like your friend here?'

'I um, it was um, no, I didn't,' he stammered, closing his eyes for a brief minute and breathing in deeply again.

'Oh good gracious child, you've seen!' Trelawney cried excitedly, hastily picking the crystal ball up again and plonking it down in front of him, 'Quickly, quickly, tell me what you see!'

Cringing, Oliver hesitantly looked into the crystal ball, groaning with mortification as the images revolved around the ball again.

'I um, I see nothing, nothing at all… nothing of any interest to anyone, especially you, Katie.' He rambled quickly, tearing his gaze away from the crystal ball.

'Wait, can you see me?' Katie asked, amazed, leaning over to look into the ball, 'I can't see it, you have to tell me now if you can see me, what am I doing?'

'I think the right phrasing is "who am I doing?"' Oliver muttered under his breath so that only she heard him.

'Oh!' she cried, embarrassed, her cheeks flushing scarlet.

'Well? What is it then, what do you see?' Trelawney said impatiently, 'I haven't got all day, you know.'

Oliver, embarrassed, annoyed and anxious to get away from her, lost his mind completely; after all, she'd said that blasted phrase again.

'If you really must know,' he said sweetly with a smile that could have melted the most stony-hearted of women, 'I can see Katie and myself, on a bed, and well, no wait, we've moved from the bed to the wall, no wait, anyway the point is, dear Professor, that I can see Katie and I on our honeymoon and we're not swimming in the hotel pool either.'

There was a shocked silence, in which both Katie and Trelawney gaped at him, and then Katie began to laugh. Hysterically.

Startled out of her embarrassed reverie by the racket Katie was making, Trelawney dithered for a minute, before losing her cool.

'Out! Out! Get out! How completely and totally inappropriate! Well, I never in all my days -'

Oliver got to his feet, bowed to her with an obnoxious grin, waded his way through the tables and kicked open the trapdoor, at which he waited for a still-giggling Katie, helped her onto the ladder and then began to scale it himself, winking at Trelawney as he left.

When they'd both descended the ladder and righted their uniforms up, Katie turned to him, a grin plastered over her face. 'Oliver Tobias Wood, you are a genius!'

'No actually,' he replied quickly, 'apparently I'm a Seer.'

She began to laugh and then stopped short; looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite place. 'Are you serious?'

'Never been more,' he said, winking at her and heading off down the corridor, his grin widening as the sound of her footsteps clattered on the stone floor behind him.

'Oliver Wood, you are a bloody genius,' he murmured to himself as she caught up to him, pestering him with questions about their apparent impending marriage.

'So, so we're going to get married are we?' she said after a few minutes of stream-of -consciousness question-asking.

'Yep.'

'Well, in that case, to make sure you're the right one and all, d'you want to go to Hogsmeade with me next visit?'

'Thought you'd never ask.'

A/N: lyrics used - "Truly, Madly, Deeply" by Savage Garden.