Chapter 3

Nothing ever felt as good as skipping. I honestly wasn't sure if I knew anything that did. It just made me feel like a child again, which was a great feeling, really. It was a mix of jumping and running, a perfect combination. When I was a kid, I'd never understand how grown ups could walk everywhere, they just kept walking and walking and it felt so slow. How were they ever going to get anywhere in time?

But today was Saturday and I was in no hurry to get down to the pitch, in fact, I was probably early, even. Gryffindor would probably not be finished when I got there anyway but I was just too bored in my dorm. Everyone had set off to Hogsmeade except for me because of homework I needed to do. As we moved further into September the homework had started to pile up and I had only recently realised that Quidditch can't be my only focus this year.

Much to my assumptions, there the Gryffindors were, up in the air still. I spotted Angelina with the quaffle as I walked toward the stands, the wind getting stronger the further I went. Autumn was indeed almost upon us. I sat down to watch them on the lower seats, waiting for the girls to get off so that we could go and study. I needed help with charms homework and I knew they were up for the task of helping me. Angelina kept flying toward Oliver at a high speed, with Katie or Alicia below, dropping the ball to them in the last second, only for one of them to try and score. This was a very repetitive thing to watch, and I quickly got bored, which made me even happier when, after having looked away for only a couple seconds, they were suddenly all on the ground again. I quickly got up to go and meet them. I hurried down the stands and slowed down as I began approaching the team, only to notice that Oliver was approaching me, he was walking far ahead of the others, with his eyes set on me.

"Hi Oliver." I uttered cheerfully just a split second before I, once again, had to remind myself that I had declared a war between us.

Oliver however, seemed to have no problem remembering this, and he ignored my 'hi' as if it was non-existent, and instead told me in an accusatory tone. "You can't be here, Penderghast."

I was taken aback by the coolness in his voice but I replied nonetheless. "It's not your pitch Oliver." I said tiredly.

"But it is my practise session. You can't come prying." He reasoned while leaning lightly on his broom.

"Like I'd want to be here? Your practises are repetitive and boring, 'could barely keep my eyes open." His eyes widened in anger.

"Then why are you here?" He demanded.

"Because unfortunately for you, I have friends on your team." I said heatedly before walking right by him and facing his teammates who had been watching us. I raised both arms in greeting. Yelling "Heeey!" loudly, to be heard over the wind. They all greeted me back the same way, but our greetings were interrupted when Oliver called me back.

"Penderghast, a word, please?" He said in his Scottish way before I'd made it very far.

"You already had a word." I snapped at him as I turned toward him, a little harder than I in hindsight had wanted it to come out.

"Can I have another word with you then?" He spat and I walked back to him with a roll of my eyes.

"What?" I once again snapped way too harshly.

Oliver paused, and when he spoke next, his demeanour had turned insecure. "Um, well…" he began. It was as if having allowed himself a pause had disrupted the resentment he'd previously felt. "I'm sorry about what Flint said." He looked away as he spoke, the wind making it hard to catch his words. "And I want you to know…" He looked me in the eyes. "…That I don't agree with what he says." He spoke with assurance. "I'm not on his side, or anything."

I wasn't sure how to reply and it took me a while. As discreetly as I could, I glanced behind me to decipher if his teammates where in a hearing distance, but they were quite far away and the wind probably caught our words. "Yeah, well, we all know why he's targeting me." I finally said.

"How come?" He asked.

"It may have slipped your notice, but I am a girl." I said angrily, and I suddenly felt really bad. He'd been trying to be nice to me. Normally I'm calm. Normally, I'm collected. But right now, with Oliver… something about him turned me into fire and rage.

"I know you're a girl!" He said defensively.

Ignoring the statement, as I didn't know how to reply, I continued on. "Our dear friend Marcus Flint is a sexist. Now that I've become captain, he's singling me out, trying to turn all of the boys against me. He sees me as the weaker target." I couldn't help the anger boiling in me when I spoke; at least now I knew the anger wasn't directed at him, really. "Why are you bringing this up anyway?" I asked in a softer tone.

"I saw that you got upset." He said, simply.

But I thought I'd played it so well? I thought anxiously. If Oliver had noticed, maybe Flint had also noticed that I wasn't nearly as composed as I'd seemed.

I felt exposed. I didn't like it. "I wasn't upset, where do you get that from?" I retorted harshly. Oliver was now smiling faintly, a bold move. My mind latched on to the moment when Flint had left and I'd caught Oliver's faint smile that day. I frowned. "And if you supposedly saw that I was upset, then why were you smiling!" I demanded.

He took a step closer to me. "Because I saw that you were upset, but so you think Flint saw it? I don't think so." He shook his head with a smile. "He was completely taken off guard by your nonchalance, don't worry about it!" He spoke as if the sun had erupted from the clouds on a gloomy day. But looking up, there was still no sign of a sun.

The wind had control of my hair and I tried to forcefully flick it out of my face, but it was everywhere, forcing its way out of my skull. I met his eyes. There he stood, all composed with his short hair that wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't smiling at me anymore, now his prominent jaw was clenched shut. Yet his eyes still looked sort of… sweet. He didn't look bad, especially not while wearing his Quidditch attire. Around school he would have his clothes in a specific way, for example his tie would hang loose around his neck and his shirt wouldn't be tucked in, or it would be tucked in, but only half of it. He had this sort of careless demeanour, although not on the pitch, never on the pitch.

I was sucked back to the present when he had finally said something. But now his back was turned, he was retreating back to his team.

He'd said that it was brilliant.

Slowly, I began moving toward them again, the wind didn't make it easy. When I finally made it up to my friends they looked pretty bored. I tried to sound cheery, "Alright, don't take to long in the showers now! We need to get a move on if we're going to get any homework at all done today." I shot them a smile as we all walked toward the locker rooms.

Only, moments later I noticed that we weren't all walking toward the locker rooms, it was actually just me. I swerved around to see what was going on, and saw that not one of Alicia, Angelina or Katie had moved so much as one step in my direction. Instead they stood steadfast in the same team circle as before.

"We need to have talk first." Oliver announced to me loudly over the wind, his serious "Quidditch mode" on.

"Can't you just skip it?" I asked and stepped back to the circle. "I've been waiting for ages."

He looked back at me blankly. "We can't skip it, we never skip talk." He reasoned.

"You can skip it once." I said curtly. "It's just a talk."

"We can't skip talk. Don't underestimate talk." Oliver replied.

"Alright, alright." Fred spoke up before the tension escalated any further. He went and placed each of his hands on Oliver's shoulder and mine. "Let's not let you two carry on with your discussion for too long, or we might never see the inside of that castle again." He nodded toward the castle that was towering above us. "Let's just have talk quickly and then you two can carry on in separate directions." It was funny to me how they didn't say 'the talk', or 'a talk'; just 'talk', as if it existed somewhere between a noun and a verb, but belonging to neither word class.

"Fine." I agreed. But when they all began to move inside the locker rooms and I tried to follow, Oliver wouldn't have it. He stopped me right outside the entrance into warm salvation. But before he'd closed the door, without even looking me in the eye, he said under his breath: "And I do notice you're a girl!" Which had me befuddled enough not to put up resistance when he finally closed the door behind him.

First of all: of all the things we'd said, that one was still on his mind? Second of all: It's simply an odd thing to say, especially for Oliver. Oliver doesn't notice anything about anyone. I kicked the ground in frustration. "Stupid boys with stupid faces." I muttered.

There was a strong whine of the wind from outside. At least now we were inside the somewhat-warmer-yet-not-at-optimal-degree library. Which was nice, I guess. The library was in fact one of my favourite places at Hogwarts, and Hogwarts was big. It always had that sort of aura that a place naturally gets when it contains that much history and that many stories. Thinking about how many books and pages and words were in those bookcases made me thrilled, even though I knew I wasn't going to read even a third of it.

It didn't even have that funny smell old places made mostly of wood often had. Instead it had a sort of rustic scent.

"You know, it doesn't feel like you're listening to me when you are staring off in a completely different direction." Angelina stated sourly, putting her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand. Angelina could always pull off that cold facial expression; yet still contain that fierce gleam in her eyes. She knew how to put someone on the spot.

"I am listening, though!" I defended. "I concentrate better when I keep my eyes focused on a fixed point somewhere." I nodded frantically as if to further show that I was indeed telling the truth, which I wasn't. Angelina could probably tell that, as well, given how she was still giving me the exact same look as before.

"Anyway." She said, and then continued on with what she had been trying to explain to me about the lunar phases for the past couple of minutes, it had gotten to the point where I was embarrassingly slow at comprehending. I put both my elbows on the table and bored my eyes into hers to see if that could help my concentration span. There was barely any room for my elbows on the table however as we were four people occupying it and our books were spread out everywhere.

I turned to see Oliver entering the library carrying a book in his hand. He walked up to a table while paying no attention to anyone else in the room and sat down at the only table left. Everyone had come back from Hogsmeade by now and were all spending their Saturday afternoon studying.

Oliver was out of his Quidditch gear and instead wore his usual Hogwarts uniform, but for the moment lacking his robe. He was indeed back into his careless demeanour. Sitting down now, he leaned across the table, almost laying down on it while reading and spreading out in that way that boys often do. I also noticed that his hair was wet. He'd come from the showers apparently. "Why does he always look so careless like that? He doesn't ever care about anything besides Quidditch, does he? And he always dresses like a slob." I mumbled irritably while studying Oliver.

"Stop obsessing over Oliver." Angelina said tiredly. "Honestly, how can I get you to pay attention?" She snapped a finger in front of me, causing me to look her in the eye.

"I'm not obsessing." I sulked, dropping my head to the table. "It's just annoying is all."

Alicia tore her eyes from her book, "How is that annoying?" she asked.

I pondered this for a moment, but without coming to any conclusion replied, "It just is."

Later that day I was in the library again seeing as I hadn't made any progress earlier. It had been impossible to concentrate then. I honestly should have known better since I don't concentrate well when I'm among friends.

Now however, the library was completely empty and had turned dark, Madam Pince had left long ago, but I needed to catch up on essays that were yet to be written.

The tiredness still had to be fought nonetheless, although as it got darker and the words of the pages blended together, I knew it was a battle I would eventually lose. I was twirling my now empty and cold teacup around in an almost trans-like state. Soon my mind was lost to the world of dreams and the only thing left to reality was my motionless, resting body.

When I woke up I felt like death. I wasn't sure where or who I was. It took me a while, but once I had resolved those two points, I moved on to the third wavering question, what the time was. As I began collecting my books and etcetera, I had a nagging feeling that it was much later than I what had originally thought. Sleeping in the library wasn't an option for me, I knew that much. But if it was as late as my gut feeling told me, walking back to the common rooms wasn't going to be a fun activity.

Resolutely, I made my way toward the Hogwarts basement. The quick route would take me about 15 minutes if I walked quickly, the downside to taking that path however was that Mr. Filch was more likely to be lurking there.

When I took the careful first steps out of the library, entering the chilly and dark hallway, I could sense how late it was. The wind was still howling outside of the thick brick walls of the castle, but apart from that, there was no sound. There was no sign of Mr. Filch or his cat.

Only the eternal flame torches hanging on the walls lighted my way, and I couldn't see the part furthest away in the long corridor I had embarked. Standing still I dreaded the fact that I would have to move closer to that darkness. I finally managed force myself to move through as silently as I could. The silence should have been welcoming, given how it meant that no one was there except for me, but even with that notion, it wasn't. It spooked me how everything was so still except for the wind. Such a contrast from how I usually felt walking these corridors. I, like every other student here, loved everything about the castle. But everything at Hogwarts was different at night when you were, most likely, the only one roaming around except for Mr. Filch and his cat.

Trying not to think about the fact that I pretty much was an ant in a huge dark castle that could be compared to a maze, with a crazy man walking loose, looking for any reason to punish me, I continued on, walking as fast as I could without causing too much noise.

I had gotten about half way when I heard it.

Tick tock, tick tock,

Goes the clock, goes the clock.

My pulse quickened radically and I stopped dead in my tracks, frozen in place. He would always be singing those nursery rhymes while walking about at the castle. During the day I didn't really think much of it, but when it was night and there was no other human sound, it was creepy to say the least. It wasn't very smart either, was it? Had I not heard him singing, I would've walked passed this linking corridor and most definitely been caught, I now had a head start instead.

Praying that Mr. Filch didn't hear my heart pumping ever so loudly or my few steps toward the edge of the corner, I peeked around it, but Mr. Filch had his back turned. I took my chance and took my shoes off so that I would make as little sound as possible and continued straight ahead on light feet, passing Mr. Filch by as quickly and as soundlessly as I could. Without looking back I kept going in a quick pace and didn't stop until after a few minutes. Only once I'd stopped did I put my shoes on again and let out a breath. It didn't seem like he'd seen me because he wasn't behind me. The sense of solitude washed over me once again and the journey back to my common room went seamlessly.

6 September 2018