)
Scoundrel.
)
I breathe in, I breathe out. The air catches in my dry throat and the wind slaps across my cheeks, but nothing distracts me from my opponent.
My fingers spread, my arms wide. I wait, still but quivering in anticipation.
Rapid movement. No, a fake—to the left—to the right—
I leap, my broom just another part of my body—I stretch—
"Could you not, for practice's sake, let me have this one goal?" Stephen complained, hovering in mid-air with one hand on his broomstick and the other still extended post-throw.
I smiled widely at him and tucked the Quaffle neatly under my arm. "Perhaps you should simply improve your scoring techniques."
"Why, you-,"
"Are you questioning your Captain's logic?" I inquired mockingly.
He rolled his eyes and flew off with a dramatic huff.
"Boys," I said to myself. A sudden, demanding rumble from my stomach prompted me to check my watch: it was five till noon. I blew my whistle to signal the end of practice and angled my broom downwards to meet the rest of the team on the ground.
"Good practice, everybody," I said once I'd landed. "I think we're in a good position right now to beat Hufflepuff next month."
"Because Maggie will score about a billion goals," said Stephen, slinging an arm around said Chaser, who blushed furiously. He pressed his lips to her temple.
Kayla looked murderous so I went on quickly. "But that doesn't mean we are allowed to slack off at all," I warned, giving Stephen a pointed look. "Practice Monday as usual. Let's get a break and head in for lunch!"
After a quick "Ravenclaw!" we all headed towards the changing rooms.
I went straight to my locker and started to remove my kit.
"Who is the Hufflepuff Keeper?" Maggie asked nervously.
Kayla tossed her gloves on the bench. They landed with a harsh slap. "Kirsten Milbury," she answered shortly.
"She's in your year, Maggie," I said. "Blonde braids, stocky build. A good feint will get past her easily."
Maggie nodded. "Hufflepuff has a really young team this year, don't they?"
"They do, but it doesn't mean anything," I told her, pulling on a loose T-shirt. "Mark van Hulle has really whipped them into shape." I shut my locker closed, grabbed my bag and turned to leave.
"Oh! My, um, broomstick arrives next week," Maggie said suddenly as she rushed to get her things together. "It'll be here in time for the match."
"Good," I said, pleased. "That Oakshaft is really in no condition for a Chaser like yourself. What model did you end up ordering?"
"A Nimbus 3000," she said. "It was expensive, but my parents decided to get it as an early birthday present."
I nodded, satisfied. "Nimbus' aren't as popular anymore, but it's a good brand. You used to have a Nimbus, didn't you, Kayla?"
"Yeah," Kayla said without turning. "A 2050. Then my brother decided it would be a good idea to crash it into the house."
"I have a Cleansweep Seventeen," I informed Maggie. "Speed is important for a Keeper, but durability is key. No Quaffle block is gonna break my baby."
"Maggie! Hurry up!" Stephen called from outside.
"Gotta go," Maggie said apologetically and rushed out. Silence filled the small tiled room, broken only by the soft rustlings of clothing and zipping of bags.
I eyed Kayla's back for a moment before making to leave, but something made me pause and look at Kayla over my shoulder. "That's not going to be a problem for you, is it, Kayla? Stephen and Maggie."
"What? No," she snapped.
I bit my lip. "Look, I know you and Stephen go way back-,"
"That's not the problem!" she hissed, whirling to finally face me. Her cheeks were flushed. "It's-,"
I waited for her to go on, but she seemed lost for words. "It's what, exactly?"
"I won't let it get in the way of the team," Kayla said finally, looking me dead in the eye.
"Alright then," I said. I picked at my fingernails for a moment, suddenly feeling awkward. "Well, I'll see you later."
The walk back to the castle saw me deep in thought. Ever since Stephen and Maggie had started… seeing each other, Kayla had been acting like a wounded animal, recoiling at every touch and snapping at every voiced concern. I knew that I sure as hell didn't approve of this particular relationship—I mean, come on; Stephen is a Class A jerk and Maggie is so sweet—but Kayla seemed to take the affair as a personal insult. This led me to believe that she liked Stephen as more than a friend, but she'd never shown a hint of romantic interest before. Trust me, when you share a dorm for seven years, you get to know a person, and Stephen, tall, muscled and blonde, was not Kayla's type. She went for dark, studious and sensitive.
"But people can change," I said aloud. This statement made my insides twist uncomfortably. I wondered if I was too self-absorbed to notice the subtle signs of metamorphosis in the people around me.
"Don't be stupid," Elli scolded me at lunch when I voiced this thought. "You're not self-absorbed, you're oblivious."
"Um, thanks?" I said. That didn't make me feel better. To reflect my mood, I started to segregate the peas and carrots on my plate, smushing each pea with my fork until its shell burst and its greeny guts spilled outside.
She sighed. "Look. Everyone has faults, and yours is minor. Don't worry about it, and stop massacring your peas."
"Death to all peas," I muttered darkly. "Carrots rule."
I woke the next morning to bodiless, high-pitched screams, floating pieces of white cloth and cackling pumpkins. "Hoollllyyy," I groaned, pressing my face further into my pillow. "Must you decorate every single Halloween?"
"But it's my favorite holiday!" she answered, perky in full blown Halloween attire, complete with dangly skeleton earrings and dancing pumpkin sweater.
"What," I said to my pillow, "is so fun about celebrating evil things that go bump in the night?"
"That is so not the point of Halloween," Holly informed me, leaning into the mirror between her and Kayla's beds to check the placement of her fluttering bat wing hair clip. "The point is, you get to pretend you're someone you're not. It's healthy."
"How is that healthy?" I said in disbelief, sitting up. "How is not being yourself—"
"It's getting away from everything," she cut me off, her tone now annoyed. "It's getting to new places."
"It still doesn't justify having to wake up early on a Sunday," I muttered.
Holly tossed her hair. "Well, if you're just going to sit there, I'm going down to breakfast." She turned on her heel and flounced out.
I was silent for a moment as I contemplated her words. "They serve breakfast on Sundays?"
After deciding that there was no going back to sleep, I slipped into my comfiest jeans and my oldest T-shirt and shuffled my way downstairs.
"Oh, look who it is," said a surprised Elli, having just entered the common room from outside. She smiled and held up several slices of toast wrapped in a napkin. "I figured you wouldn't be up to breakfast after that late night."
Last night, high from the exhilaration of the team's successful Quidditch practice, I'd gotten a sudden, spur of the moment urge to be productive and decided, on a whim, that I should finish those two essays for Herbology assigned the day before. Those two essays turned into a detailed flow chart depicting the life cycle of dementors for Defense Against the Dark Arts, which became an analysis of the Wolfsbane potion, which transformed into a two foot long extra credit report on the life style of centaurs for Care of Magical Creatures.
"I love you," I informed her, reaching for the toast. "I'm still knackered. You're amazing." I yawned happily for emphasis.
We walked over to one of the tall, arched windows lining the walls of the common room. Elli perched herself delicately on the edge of the cushioned window seat whereas I curled myself into a small ball and munched away in content.
"Oh, it looks awful outside," Elli said, wrinkling her nose.
I craned my neck to get a better look out the window. The trees in the Forbidden Forest rippled under a high wind, looking like dancing shadows set off by a completely gray sky. Even as I watched, fat drops of rain collided with the glass of the windowpane, like so many missiles. "Looks like a day to be inside," I replied. "Good thing that's exactly what I was planning."
"Oh?" said Elli, smiling. "You're not going to do more homework, are you?"
I shook my head. "I'm pretty much set for the week," I confessed. Then I tilted my head. "This means more time for Quidditch!"
Elli threw back her head and laughed. "I know it's in your blood, Alli, but sometimes your obsession with that sport… Well, anyway. You may not have anything to do today, but I've got a date."
I unfolded myself rapidly. "You have a date?" I said incredulously.
Elli stood up and flipped back her long blonde hair. "I will by the end of the day," she said confidently, smirking before walking across the common room and out the entrance. I counted seven sleepy heads turn and watch her go out.
"Well," I said aloud. "Well." That had come as a bit of a surprise. But then, I'd been so far out of the loop of my friends' various love affairs for so long I could be classified a moon to their orbit. It had never really bothered me. Much.
I trooped back up to the dormitory to grab a thick cardigan and a few unread books that had been sitting at the bottom of my trunk since September. I slipped into a pair of warm, fuzzy socks and threw my hair up in a messy bun—if you could call it that—before skipping right back down in the common room and throwing myself into an extremely comfortable armchair that lay secluded at one end of the Balcony. I tossed my books on a nearby coffee table, drew my cardigan closer around my shoulders, and Conjured up myself a good hot cup of tea.
I spent most of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon spent in this fashion, curled up like a cat and lost in a world of fiction and words. The common room was more crowded than usual, as many students had taken refuge indoors from the wet weather, but being a center for Ravenclaws, the noise level never reached levels of discomfort. The sole exception to this was a group of second years who were deeply invested in some sort of Exploding Snap tournament, but over my seventeen years of life I had developed a special ability to completely shut out everything and just read.
It was half past two when I reached for my third book—my brother often charged me of being an unholy quick read—and my stomach rumbled in protest. I checked my watch and sighed; I had long missed lunch. But now I have a different option, I thought, smiling to myself.
The journey down to the kitchens was very different when one took it alone. There was no laughter, no hushed conversations to muffle the clicking of my shoes on the stone floors, and the hallway seemed colder somehow, the portraits lining it darker. I breathed an audible sigh of relief at the sight of the brightly colored painting that marked the entrance to the kitchens. Seven years of my life in this place and I still get the heebie jeebies. Daftie, I scolded myself as I tickled the pear; then all such thoughts were wiped from my mind when the painting swung open of its own accord and James Potter stepped outside.
"Holy shit," I swore, already halfway across the hall, breathing heavily and hands out in a feeble attempt at warding off any ill intent. Like that would have done anything useful in the event of actual danger, but of the many things Potter was, dangerous he was not. "James Potter, you fanny, you absolute boaby, yeh—yeh howfin' ned, I bloody swear-,"
"Whoa, cool your jets, Scotty," James said, hands up as he approached me slowly. He was dressed casually in dark jeans and a hand-knit navy sweater. Tufts of unruly hair peeked out from underneath a slouched red beanie.
"I—what did you call me?" I said, eyes narrowed and incredulous. "You-,"
"You're so Scottish," he said, laughing.
"Bloody Brit," I cursed, throwing my bag at the prat. "You fucking scared me half to fucking death, you prick!"
"Like I can see through portraits." James rolled his eyes, easily catching the projectile I'd launched. "Don't tell me you're going to push this one on me."
"I'll push anything I bloody well want to on bloody well anyone!" I fired at him. "And I'm not that Scottish. Don't pitch your British stereotypes on me, yeh hear-ah!"
James raised one dark eyebrow.
"I'm not even ginger!" I fumed.
"That's a good thing," he told me. "I'm not one to follow tradition."
I stared at him, chest heaving from my rather out of character outburst. "What?"
He grinned suddenly. "Mhm. Never you mind."
I sneered in an un-ladylike fashion at his cheek. "Well, if you excuse me, Potter, I missed lunch and so am in need of sustenance. Bugger off and let me eat in peace." I made once more for the entrance into the kitchens.
"What, you don't want my company?" James asked mockingly.
I spun to face him. He stood nonchalantly in the middle of the hallway, hands in his pockets and that infuriating half-smirk firmly in place. I sighed. "Do what you want. I'm only going to grab and go."
"I don't think potatoes are really a grab and go kind of deal," he commented idly, already following me inside.
My cheeks flamed.
"Potatoes," I said, trying very hard not to let my voice shake, "can be served however one wishes them to be."
"Oh?" James shot me a teasing look.
"Yeah, they're tricky that way," I said, making a beeline to a counter piled high with delicious looking scones.
"That's what Fred said about you, by the way," he said, in an offhand kind of way as he pocketed one such scone.
"Fred?" I asked. "You mean, that overdramatic cousin of yours that you sent to spy on me the other day in the library?"
"Spy," James began, "is a rather strong and all together misleading term. I prefer 'observe'." His face was deceptively innocent.
"As if that particular diction makes the action anymore forgivable," I muttered, my eyes fixed determinately to a raspberry scone in my left hand. "If you want my Quidditch plays, don't send someone as inexperienced as Fred to do your dirty work and present yourself openly."
Suddenly a field of blue entered my vision. James had stuck his arm in between me and the scones, practically encircling me, so that he essentially blocked off all forms of escape. "Believe me," he said, the roughness of his voice dragging my eyes to his, "if I'd wanted your plays, I'd have them by now."
I made a strangled sort of noise in reply. His hand was very close to mine, so close I could feel the heat from his fingertips.
"But I don't want your plays," James told me softly. By now he was almost whispering.
My heart thudded painfully in the confines of my chest. "Then what do you want?" I breathed. My gaze slid from his eyes to his mouth.
His eyelashes, long like his cousin's and slightly curled at the tips, lowered ever so. When had his face gotten so close to mine? "I-,"
"Would the mistress like some biscuits?"
We sprang apart instantly. Under James' glare, the house-elf, small even for his kind, quivered slightly at my elbow. The smell of freshly made chocolate chip cookies wafted enticingly from the tray he offered.
"Um, n-no, thanks, uh, yeah," I stammered, backing away slowly towards the exit.
James started towards me, his hand lifting in my direction, before stopping suddenly. His hand rubbed the back of his head awkwardly instead. "I, er, I'll see you around, yeah?"
"S-sure," I answered. I'm sure my face rivaled that of a phoenix's rebirthing process, but I tried for a smile anyway. Not quite sure I pulled it off.
Retreat! My mind screamed. And retreat I did. After I grabbed a few more scones, of course.
"Where have you been? I've been looking for you all day," Scharkey exclaimed as soon as I walked into the dormitory. She was in the process of folding some laundry.
"Downstairs, in the common room," I answered shortly. I was trying very hard not to look her in the eye. I couldn't get James' easy grin out of my head.
"Mhm, whatever. You were probably holed up in some dusty corner," Scharkey said dismissively. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about your plans for the Winter Ball-,"
I snorted. "What do you mean, my plans? I'm buying a dress and then going. The same as I do every year."
Scharkey threw a sock at me. "But this is our last year. We're going all out."
"It's only October!"
"And tomorrow is November," she reminded me, tossing her dark shiny hair. "That is LESS THAN two months to find the perfect dress and the perfect date. And you are going with a date, so help me Merlin," she added in reply to my eye roll.
"Dates are over rated," I muttered, flopping onto my bed. The Winter Ball—what a joke. The headmistress' brainchild, a substitute for the Yule Ball that often accompanied the old Triwizard Tournament. "And what about you? You know you have to look for a date who's still in school."
Scharkey blushed scarlet. "Oh, shut up, you. I'm over that now, anyway."
As if. Scharkey had been head over heels for Eric Clarmonte, a well-built older boy who contained alarming prince-like qualities with his thick blonde hair and bright blue eyes, since fourth year. He'd adopted her as a kind of younger sibling and Scharkey—confident, beautiful, popular Scharkey, who had half the boys at school following her around like lost little puppies—had pined after him in secret all year. But despite all her efforts, Eric took Kristy Hagemeier to the Winter Ball instead of her, and broke her heart. Eric Clarmonte graduated later that year, but according to Scharkey, they still kept in contact via owl mail. How sweet! cooed all the other girls, but I knew nothing would come of it.
I sent her a not-so-subtle I-don't-believe-you-one-bit look. Her blush deepened and she looked away with a muttered, "Sukoshi kansha shi te i masu…"
"Don't you go talking Japanese at me," I told her. "Don't think for one second I won't write to your mum about it."
"Isn't the feast about to start? Let's go before all the pumpkin pie is gone," she snapped. She tossed the last of her laundry into her trunk before huffing off.
"Pumpkin pie, sure," I called to her disappearing back before getting up and following her out.
[A/N: Hey, guys, I'm back! I would have uploaded this a couple of days ago, but I just wasn't happy with it, so I spent some extra time fixing it up. Hope it was worth it! If you didn't notice, I did away with that whole character list thing. Took too much time, haha. Also, if you want, feel free to drop a review every now and then. They make me feel all warm and gooey inside :D And warm and gooey authors put forth more effort. True story.
Edit: 8/2/13, week to month, meek to feel
