A/N: first off, i'm not sure why this is typing IN all capitals…caps lock isn't on, I promise. anyway, if any of you actually managed to make it through last chapter, congratulations. this one's quite a bit shorter, i promise. and a touch happier, which i know you've been wanting. i'm sorry for 'torturing your favorite characters' as someone phrased it, but it is kind of an angsty time for them. it will get better eventually, though, i do promise! (& by eventually, i mean when i start feeling better about it. oh gosh.) thanks again for reading & remember to review!!!

Dear Alicia,

Thanks for threatening me, but you should have realized a long time ago that I've never cared for anyone's happiness but my own. Before you contradict me, think back to our third year when I ate all of the brownies you made for Professor Sprout's extra credit requirement. I think that was the only time you've ever hexed me. But—against our wills—George and I have been coerced by our mothers into attending your little get together next weekend. All I can say is, you'd better be grateful that you're a trained Healer because you're going to have a lot of violence to deal with once we get there.

Can't wait to see you.

Love,

Katie

Katie tied the short note to the leg of a large tawny owl in the Daily Prophet's Owlery and walked back downstairs to her desk. She was in a fairly decent mood—as decent as decent got those days, anyway. She had swung by the apothecary in Diagon Alley before popping home to her flat last night to pick up another bottle of the dreamless sleep potion and had woken up that morning without images of Fred still lingering before her eyes. She had also taken the time to make herself a piece of toast and while this was not much of a celebration, it was definitely meters ahead of the stale granola bar she usually consumed and kilometers ahead of eating nothing, which she sometimes did on particularly difficult mornings.

What was even better was that she hadn't gone into work two hours early. Instead, she had spent that time at the Weasleys. She had gotten George up and out of bed at a decent hour and had even talked him into going for a walk around the gardens with her. It was the first time in a while that he had been out of doors and it seemed to do him a lot of good. While he remained mostly glum, he had managed to crack a smile when a gnome lifted up the hem of Katie's skirt and peered voyeuristically inside, and Katie was convinced that the previous night's break down had been a turning point in George's recovery. Though she still had yet to reach this point herself, it had been refreshing to see someone she cared about so much suffer a little less.

At least she was in a fairly decent mood until she got to her desk. Jacquelyn was already there, waiting at Katie's cubicle with a mug of coffee and a letter. The brunette looked at her curiously.

"What?" she asked, feeling her heart drop as she thought of Michael.

"It's not bad!" Jacquelyn said quickly to Katie's great relief as she handed her her coffee and the letter. "Oliver Wood dropped this off just a bit ago for you."

Katie frowned again as she took a sip of her coffee and lowered herself into her chair. "Thanks, Jacquelyn," she said listlessly, shoving the letter underneath of a pile of faxes that were due to send out before lunch that day.

"You're not going to read it?" the other girl asked, looking slightly crestfallen.

"No," Katie said shortly and she entered her work zone again, shutting out the rest of the world.

She knew what that letter was. It was a follow up on going out to lunch that day and Katie didn't want to. She didn't want to see Oliver—or anyone for that matter—until she absolutely had to. She couldn't lie, she was rather excited about seeing her friends again, but she was also afraid of the memories they were going to cause her to relive, whether they did it intentionally or not. She was scared of how they were going to behave toward George and herself. If they brought up Fred, it would hurt. But if they avoided talking about Fred, it would be just as bad. She sighed. There seemed to be no happy way out of the situation. Katie needed time to brace herself for that, and interacting with an overly concerned Oliver Wood would not help. More than anything else, however, Katie was unsure of how to interact with someone who was still brimming with life; Oliver had lost no family or close friends in the war and still remained the same person he had always been. She, on the other hand, felt like a mere shell of who she used to be. How do you bridge the gap between two people like that?

And so, Katie worked on in the comforting prospect of another solitary lunch hour, which she would whittle down to thirty minutes with any luck. Because she was so far ahead with her stories, she was forced into doing menial office tasks such as fetching Germaine Hudson's coffee or running interview requests to the Owlery. Excluding the fact that she spent most of the time trying to dodge prying reporters, Katie did not mind this situation too much. She understood that it was a part of being the youngest, most inexperienced journalist on the team as well as a product of being an overworking fanatic. It was approaching noon and she was just getting a shipment of faxes ready to go when, once again, the increasingly familiar Scottish brogue startled her from her thoughts.

"You've an incredibly bad habit of not opening letters; you know that, Katie Bell?"

Katie took a breath and turned around in her wheeled chair to look up at Oliver who was gazing down at her with a slight smirk on his face, brown hair windswept, head cocked to the side. He was observing her with an interesting expression that Katie could only define as amused impatience. Jacquelyn was staring at the pair of them with very wide eyes.

"If you were able to develop that happy habit," he continued, pushing aside some of Katie's many piles of papers and sitting on her desk, "You would have had the pleasure of meeting me at Armando's Diner fifteen minutes ago." He continued to look at her with that same bemused expression that confused Katie. She stood up and began to restore her workspace that Oliver so casually took apart, but could not avoid his probing glance.

"I—er—" Katie tried to find the words to tell him that she didn't want to spend time with someone who was happier than she was.

"You know, for a journalist, you seem to be strikingly ill adept with words. Let me help you out. Try, 'I'm sorry, Oliver, I was looking forward to meeting you today but in my excitement I forgot to open your letter specifying the details of our lunch time rendezvous.' Can you do that?"

Katie now scowled at him. "I never agreed to go to lunch with you," she said icily, but Wood seemed undaunted.

"Close, Bell, but you're still not quite there. No matter, though," he said cheerily. "I guess I'll just collect you now and we'll apparate there in a flash." He stood up and took hold of her wrist, much to her chagrin. He half walked, half dragged her across the floor and called out to her boss.

"Madame Hudson," he said loudly, "Katie Bell's going to be taking her lunch break now, though she might be gone past the usual hour."

Hudson simply stared up at Oliver, star struck. She smiled and said, "Sure thing," albeit slightly breathlessly. Katie rolled her eyes over the simple power that being a quidditch star exuded and in a second the pair was standing outside a comfortable looking restaurant on a corner of Diagon Alley. Katie let go of Oliver's hand and walked around in a little circle, looking up at the scene surrounding her.

"I've never been here before," she admitted. "It looks nice."

"It is," Oliver said enthusiastically. "Named for Armando Dippet, old headmaster of Hogwarts. Before our time. But then again, you'll know that." He grinned at her and Katie forced a guilty smile. It was common knowledge that Katie Bell had visited the Headmaster's office more than once during her time at Hogwarts and consequently knew a great deal about the layout within. Being rather more observant than either of the Weasley twins, she had often provided important information about such, albeit with her palm placed against her forehead in frustration at the oblivious nature of the pair of them.

"Let's go inside," Oliver said gently, forcing Katie out of her revelry. She simply nodded and followed him inside the simple, but bright diner.

The faces of the handfuls of people that had come to the diner for lunch raised in surprise at the two as they pushed open the door and went inside. At Oliver, they gawked unabashedly—females in particular, Katie noticed—and at Katie they stole glances from over the tops of their tea cups before darting away quickly as her eyes met theirs. Among this varied collection of people were Minerva McGonagall and old Professor Sprout. They lifted a hand in greeting toward Wood and then, suddenly noticing Katie, looked rather shocked but recovered themselves as they nodded toward her rather solemnly. Katie let out a small, sad sigh and repeated the gesture. She was used to people behaving awkwardly around her, but it still hurt when people she knew tolerably well avoided friendly behavior, as though being around her for too long would cause them to be infected with her grief and send them into a personal melt-down of their own.

Whether Oliver witnessed this or not, Katie couldn't tell, but he smiled encouragingly at her as he said "Come on," and directed her into a small booth by a window. The sun which had been out earlier had been mysteriously eclipsed by a rash of gray clouds, causing the sky to cast a rather subdued light over London. Small droplets of rain began to cling to the windows.

"Strange, isn't it?" Oliver commented, gesturing to the weather outside. "Rain in July. Oh well, I suppose it is London."

"Are you living here now, then?" Katie asked politely as she perused the menu.

"Yeah, I am," he returned, picking up his own. "I've got a small flat on Baker Street. It isn't much, but it works for what I need. Still visit Mum and Dad up in Edinburgh on weekends, though."

"That must be nice for you." She thought guiltily of her own neglect of visiting her mother. But I see her about every night for a few hours at the Weasleys, she reminded herself.

Oliver laughed good-naturedly. "Oh, it's alright. Most of the time Mum sends me back with enough food for an army while Dad interrogates me about wearing the family kilt under my robes."

Katie smiled, bemused. "Really?"

"Unfortunately, it's true." Oliver's dark eyes shone out at her as he said this and Katie felt the unfamiliar urge to burst out in laughter. Unaware if this would damage the Scotsman's ego, she buried her reddening face behind her menu.

"It's okay, Bell, you can laugh," Oliver grinned, pulling the menu down to look at her.

"Thank Godric, because the thought of you flying around in a kilt is unforgivably ridiculous," Katie laughed, a hand running distractedly through her hair. Oliver just continued to observe her with that same small smile on his face. Katie stopped laughing.

"What?" she asked, smile still lingering on her lips.

"Nothing," he said pleasantly, picking up his menu again. "It's just really good to hear you laugh again. Even though it was at me, it's still good."

Katie side-stepped the obvious invitation to share her current feelings and carried on the light-hearted conversation.

"Yes, well, when we were at school I'm sure the only times you ever heard me laugh were at your expense….Sorry, Ol," she added, seeing his face contort indignantly.

He shrugged now, laughing it off. "S'alright," he said. "It's probably true. Fred and George were always pulling some hare-brained prank or other on me and you were usually their greatest accomplice."

His eyes twinkled, but her face now fell as she stared into her coffee cup. She appreciated what Oliver was trying to do, but she wasn't ready to reminisce over good times with Fred. Not quite yet. She shifted awkwardly, raising the cup to her lips with both hands to try and avoid presenting Oliver with an opportunity to try and take her hand in comfort. She found that she was lashing out irrationally at people who wanted to give comfort—with the small exception of the Weasley family—and she didn't want to show Oliver that side of her again. Especially after what she had done to him in the lunch room yesterday.

Wood seemed intelligent enough to know that he had touched a nerve and quickly covered his tracks.

"Have an idea what you're ordering yet, then?" he asked lightly. Katie silently praised him for knowing not to touch her again.

"I'm not sure yet," she said, eyes flicking back to the menu. "Do you have any suggestions? Pick something with large portions; I know that you know I eat a lot… 'You'll want to make sure your broomstick can still hold you up, Bell'."

Wood laughed incredulously and stared at her, eyes widening. "I actually said that?" he questioned, looking aghast.

Katie laughed a little at his surprise over his own insensitivity. "You absolutely said that," she said vindictively. "A girl doesn't forget comments like that. Even from huge prats such as yourself."

"I always wondered why you didn't seem to like me," he said, running his fingers through his own short dark hair, causing it to stand up a little at the ends. "Now I know why."

"Oh, Ol, I liked you. You were just a little high maintenance sometimes."

He laughed. "There's the understatement of the year."

She nodded, accepting this admittance of Wood's.

"You were never even close to being fat."

"It's nice to hear you say that, Wood. Those comments shattered my self esteem and continued to plague it for several years afterward."

"My sincerest apologies, your highness."

"Thank you."

"Why don't you try the garden salad then? That won't give you any reason to doubt your new found self image."

Katie looked up, shocked. "You did not just say that!"

"I think I did."

In one swift motion, Katie leaned across the table and smacked Oliver upside the head. "Bloody tosser," she muttered, resituating herself as Oliver rubbed the back of his neck.

"Dammit, Bell. I taught you too well. Didn't see that coming."

"Yeah, well. That's why you were always such a dreadful keeper."

"Are you serious?! I'm playing professionally, Bell, and the captain thinks I've got real—"

But Katie held up her hand. "Oliver, please. I really don't want to hear about it."

"So you weren't serious."

She rolled her eyes. "Hardly."

"Well, good then."

The rest of their lunch passed by pleasantly, with the only major incident being Katie's spilling of her soup into her lap and the hunt to find her a new skirt afterward. For the first time in a long time, she was able to forget for a half-an-hour together that she was a miserable wreck and that her life was in shambles. She almost felt happy. Which was new and certainly welcome. When she dropped by the Weasleys' that night, she brought two pies instead of one.

But as soon as she returned to her own small flat, the old sadness began to creep up around her, reminding her that happiness seemed to be a small blanket which would never cover her feet no matter how she struggled to wrap it around herself. As she slowly combed out her hair, the dim light that reflected off of the silver ring eclipsed the small smile that had somehow found its way to her face earlier that day and she went to bed feeling as small as she ever had, bringing her knees up to her chest and staring out into the darkness, the antics of Oliver Wood completely forgotten.