A oneshot thing. Typed up quickly in between hectic work and all. Thought I'd share it with the fanfic site I haven't looked at in years, for some bizarro reason.

Enjoi.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters. Or anything much, really. I just own this plot, such as it is.

Things can sometimes get a bit crazy in the changing rooms after you've won a Quidditch match. Everyone is still flying high from the victory, recounting numerous tales of near things, re-enacting the last goal, or the capture of the Snitch.

Oliver Wood ran his fingers through his hair and sighed heavily, beginning to pace again.

Things always got a bit out of hand. Hands were flying everywhere, people were hugging each other, supporters were trying to force their way in to continue congratulating their teams.

And two pairs of lips had met, unheeded by the rest of the team.

He paused, mid-step, and shook his head, a flash of inward anger in his eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She probably thought… she was probably going to resign from the team. Because of him, and his foolish emotions, breaking loose quite suddenly.

A new sound filtered into his field of hearing, the sound of another pair of feet hurrying along the tiled floor of the corridor, on their way to the Gryffindor team room that separated the two shower rooms, male on the left, female on the right.

Oliver froze for a moment, and then blew out an impatient breath. He had every right to be here. He was captain, after all. And it wasn't like he would ever sink to trying to spy on the pathetic Hufflepuff squad, which was currently using the field to get mud on their bright yellow Quidditch robes… and occasionally throw a ball ineffectually at one of the three hoops. He looked up as the door to the room creaked open, and paled. It was her.

Katie Bell stepped into the room, her attention on a piece of paper in her right hand, swinging her kitbag from her shoulder with her left. He managed to pull himself together in the time it took for her to register another person in the room, and look up.

"…Oliver… oh, sorry, I thought there was no one –" She made as if to leave, avoiding his eyes.

"I'm… I was just leaving," he told her, finding his voice and making a snap decision; he needed to talk to her, to apologise. To explain. Or… to give her an explanation, anyway.

She turned back to him, her eyes fluttering nervously at the doorway as she said, "No, don't worry; I have – um – Potions homework to do."

"Katie, look, I –"

She smiled weakly at him, lifting her hands and then letting them flop against her thighs in a sign of defeat. "Oh, all right, if you're sure it's no bother. Um."

Oliver watched her walk to the other end of the room, placing her kitbag in the corner and beginning to unbutton the front of her robes, revealing the school uniform underneath, and nearly kicked himself. Well, that worked, doofus. Try getting a whole sentence out of your mouth next time.

But – easier thought than done. It was so much easier to yell 'Bell, try for the left hoop!' during practises, when he was just being the captain; in between the frustrating moments when he was calling Potter back from attempting to swallow the damned snitch again, or berating the twins for bewitching their bats to bounce off of Slytherin captain Marcus Flint's head without letting any trace of his personal amusement show. He would never have realised how hard it would be to talk to her out of Quidditch context had this never come up.

"Um, Katie," he tried again, awkwardly, as she set her newly folded robe on a bench and walked over to the cupboard in which some of the school brooms were kept. Oliver kept his own broom in there, mostly because carrying it up and down was a bit of a bugger, and publicly to announce how safe the Gryffindor changing rooms were. He'd already caught several attempted-saboteurs with the anti-thief charms he'd placed on the cupboard, and the incidents had lessened considerably, especially since he'd put a Slytherin in the hospital wing for daring to touch Roxanne.

All right, he'd named his broom. What're you going to do about it?

"Yeah?" she asked, bending down to tie her shoelace.

He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. Well, here goes nothing. "You know, uh, after the match last week."

He could have sworn she'd stiffened, but all she said, her face still down-turned as she switched feet, was, "What about it?"

"In the changing room. After the game." Shite, in this very room! He definitely should have snagged her after lunch or something; anywhere was better than talking about it here. Oh well. There was nothing for it now but to continue and hope like hell for the best. "I – you know, when you win, how you get all excited?" he asked, unconsciously lapsing into a lighter version of his pep-talk voice. "Well, yeah, that was a big game, and I reckon we were all a bit more excited than usual."

"Damn it, Wood!" Katie interrupted, her head snapping up as she went from a crouch to vertical in one smooth, graceful movement. "I'm sorry, all right? It won't happen again."

She grabbed the broom she'd taken from the cupboard and stalked from the room, and Oliver was left staring blankly at the space she'd just vacated.

Okay. …what?

He pulled Roxanne from the open cupboard and followed her, half-jogging out onto the pitch. The Hufflepuffs were huddled on the other side of the pitch, near their changing rooms, and he ignored them, ignored the sudden excitement that shuddered its way through the group as one or two recognised him and pointed him out to their team-mates.

"Katie!" he called, spotting the girl now sitting on her broom, about to launch into the air. She glanced at him, and then kicked off powerfully from the ground. Oliver swore under his breath and leapt onto Roxanne, shooting up into the sky to follow her.

"Katie!" he called again, as he drew nearly level with her. She veered sharply to the left and darted away… even when she was behaving strangely, the girl had talent on a broom. He stopped and stared after her in confusion for a moment, just hovering in the air and watching her streak across the pitch, her long hair escaping its ponytail and streaming out behind her.

He began to move again, crossing the pitch easily. He was gaining on her, too; the old school broom was no match for Roxanne, that was for sure. "Katie!" he bellowed as soon as he was within hearing distance, trying to keep up with her wildly erratic flight pattern. This was certainly not a move he'd charted out for her on the chalk board in the changing room.

He caught a glimpse of her face as she turned to look at him, and was dumbfounded to notice tears streaming down her face, pulled sideways across her cheeks by the motion of her broom. Katie? Crying? He didn't think he'd ever seen her cry. Not even when her arm had been broken by a bludger in her second year.

Urging Roxanne to greater speeds, he began to catch up with her. She kept flying, ignoring the fact that in a few minutes they'd be flying side by side. "Come on, Katie!" he called, as they swooped over the heads of the watching Hufflepuff team. "Just – you know you can't outfly me on that old broom!"

She paused unexpectedly in midair at his words, and he'd whooshed past her before it occurred to him that she'd stopped. He turned around and, at a considerably slower speed, fly to meet her. He tried not to gape when he saw that, despite her attempts at wiping her eyes dry, she really had been crying.

"All right," she said, in a defeated voice. "You caught me, Wood. You can go gloat now."

"Gloat?" His brow creased in genuine confusion. "Katie… why would I –?"

"It was a moment of weakness, all right?" she burst out, cutting him off for the second time. "It was stupid, I know! I've said I was sorry, just let it go Wood!" She started to cry again, rubbing at her eyes in an effort to get herself to stop.

Oliver flew closer to her, highly perplexed by her reaction to him. His hand reached out of its own accord and gently brushed a few stray hairs out of her face, making her look up at him, eyes wide. "Katie… I don't understand," he told her gently. "I just wanted to apologise –"

"Ap-apologise?" she hiccoughed, looking startled. "For – for what?"

"For –" He looked uncomfortable, but gathered his courage. "Well, for kissing you. It was completely out of hand, I know, and I really shouldn't have let my –"

"Oliver… I… I… thought I'd imagined it." She blushed and lowered her eyes, wiping her cheek, leaving a slight smudge from where the dirt of the broom had rubbed off onto her sweaty hands.

"Ima –" She'd imagined him kissing her? Or was he just taking it out of context?

"You…" she sighed, her voice like a gentle whisper on the breeze. "…kissing back."

Well, there you go. Huzzah and hurrah and all cette jazz.

straykitty