Chapter 4

Last night had been a close call. If I had gotten detention again only a month after my last —or just the fact that I would've got it twice— would've been bad. I had to be the best I could be this year since it was my last. That meant no more detentions. I didn't know how much it took to get one's captainship taken away, and I didn't want to find out either. Quidditch practises had just begun to feel enjoyable, now that all the unfamiliarity to being in charge had settled and I had begun to realise how nice it was to be able to control how I run my team. I was allowed to make the practises as fun as I wanted without anyone telling me otherwise. One detention I would have to live with however. Oliver had one as well and he was a good captain, so it didn't bother me as much.

Oh my god, I thought. I sat up straight in my bed out of the mere realisation that I thought Oliver was a good captain. The scene I had witnessed yesterday with him being impossibly stubborn about his "talk" flashed before my eyes and I was filled with anger. Oliver is stupid. I saw his face the way he'd stood in front of me in the wind on the field yesterday and even more anger filled me. Oliver has a stupid face, I thought with all the force I could, only to compensate for thinking a positive thought about him. That guy annoyed me more and more every time I spoke or thought of him.

"Didn't really like this soup to be honest…" Wright piped up right in the middle of a frustrated conversation we were having about Flint. Those were typical during lunches. He was our main enemy on the Quidditch pitch after all. But there was something about the way she'd said it that pointed toward something else coming.

"…Do you think Flint would like to be covered in it?" There it was. She looked at something behind me with a raw tinge in her eyes. We all turned to see that Flint was the receiver of the look.

This sentence seemed to the untrained eye like any other rash threat without substance, and it was exactly that. To PJ however, this sentence peaked her interest. It opened a door to a number of exciting possibilities. "Let's bet on it then." She said, and that was really all she needed to say before all hell broke loose at the Hufflepuff table. PJ loved giving any situation higher stakes.

The whole gang and the girls from Gryffindor's team, who on this day had decided to lunch with us, began to discuss what odds she should take.

"1-100 I reckon, if not more. I mean… she could potentially be murdered." Alicia reasoned.

Wright and PJ sat quietly, looking at each other while the hell I mentioned before was doing it's breaking.

"Alright!" Wright quieted everyone in that magical way that only she could. She wasn't the most talkative, but she knew how to get the attention if she wanted it. "…You mean if I lose, I have to pour what's left of my soup over Flint over there?" She searched everyone's faces to see if we had all agreed.

"Exactly." PJ smiled contently. Gee did she love the thrill of a little risk.

"What Alicia said sounds fair, I did propose the challenge after all." Wright crossed her arms and leaned toward PJ on the opposite side.

"Pick a number." PJ required. We had all played the game before and knew how it worked. Someone proposes a challenge, the contestant accepts the challenge and the odds, which can be anything depending on how big of a risk the contestant is willing to take. But they would usually have to pick a number between one and a hundred. On three both the contestant and the challenger say the number they picked at once, if they say the same number, then the contestant has to perform the challenge. In this case the challenge is quite a challenge so naturally, the odds of them picking the same number are low.

Bianca began the count excitedly and Wright who had looked calm up until then, now looked pretty anxious.

"40"

"47"

"Ooh, that was close!" Said Bianca. It was always "close" whenever we played this game.

Everyone returned to eating their soup in a quiet anti-climax. This being the downside to the game — we rarely ever got to actually do anything as we typically picked low odds. But there is nothing more thrilling than when two people pick the same number, the thrill of hearing them say it at the same time.

Bianca smiled and locked eyes with me. "Hey Willow, why don't you go pour your soup over Wood?" She proposed while everyone 'oohed'. They thought this was very amusing obviously, given how much I'd complained about him this past week.

"I'd rather not be near Oliver at this moment, even if that means I don't get to witness his stupid face covered in soup." I retorted dully while gathering my stuff to leave.

"Where is Oliver by the way? I need to talk with him." Angelina asked no one really and without hesitation I pointed to his position further down in the hall at the Gryffindor table.

"There he is." I got the feeling that I'd replied way too quickly. I felt a small blush coming on to my cheeks and I looked down, it was small but it was there, supposedly visible. I began to pick up my bag to leave but Bianca just had to keep talking to me.

"If you and Wood aren't friends, then why do you keep calling him by his first name? Isn't that odd?" She looked around at everyone else to see if they agreed.

"Transfiguration is starting soon." I asserted and stood up to leave.

"It only takes about 20 minutes to get there." She nagged after me but I left the Great Hall without replying.

The fact that I called Oliver by his first name, a fact which everyone seemed bloody obsessed with at the moment, had a simple reason. It was because I previously believed we could be friends, but that was before I knew how impossible he was to be friends with, by which point I was used to it. Or actually, the primary truth was probably that I just liked the name, although I hated the person behind it. But in truth, Oliver was a nice name and I liked using it, so in reality it doesn't have anything to do with him.

The choice of words suddenly had me surprised. I didn't usually use the "hate" word, even for Flint.

What bothered me so much about Oliver, and I believe was the result of the word use, was that he had all the potential in the world to be a good guy, even a friend of mine, but he insisted on continuing to be so unbelievably annoying.

"Penderghast." Was the word that gave away all the hope I had of not seeing Oliver today. My pulse quickened, I felt like my body filling with fire.

"Yes." I said while gathering my books without acknowledging him in the slightest, apart from my answer. He didn't continue and I didn't look but it seemed he was waiting for me to finish.

Like I thought, as soon as I turned to face him he opened his mouth to say something. I continued walking out of the classroom before he had a chance to. "If you want to say something to me, you're going to have to walk while you talk." I said.

He hurried along. "I just wanted to tell you that you can't come to my practises anymore." He said sternly and I stopped for a moment to look at him, but then I thought better of it and continued walking, settling on giving him an angry look and then keeping my head straight. It was best to keep my mouth shut so that I didn't risk saying something mean in anger and regretting it later.

"You take everything too seriously." I finally replied, unable to stop myself.

"You distract us." Oliver said in return.

"Oh I couldn't distract you Oliver, you're far too focused to be distracted by anything besides Quidditch." I said with faked assurance.

"But my teammates might not be as hard to distract as I may very well be." He reasoned confidently while quickening his pace to keep up as I quickened mine. "I had a trip to the library to look up if there were any rules against watching another team's practises… sadly there aren't, if there were I would be taking this up with Professor McGonagall instead of you–"

"Pity." I interrupted sarcastically and shot him a loaded look.

"So, I'm just going to have to ask you nicely–"

This got me. This really got me. "Nicely?" I spat out, interrupting once again.

"…Yeah?" Oliver looked confused so I decided to enlighten him.

"Asking me nicely is not the same as saying I can't be there anymore." We rounded a corner and kept going down, steps after steps. Was he planning on following me all the way down to the basement?

"What would be the nice way of doing it then?" He asked curiously and again he seemed genuinely interested and I let out a small laugh. The utter amazement I felt had temporarily clouded my anger. He smiled with me although I don't believe he knew what was funny.

I went back to my emotionless façade and said educationally, "Nicely would've been allowing me to be there, I'm only there to see my friends after all. You do believe that right?" I wasn't sure he did. "Plus, I would've allowed you to come to my practises if you had a reason besides spying." I said with a lift of my shoulders and stopped outside the door to my common room.

"And what if I still can't let you be there?" He leaned against the wall while waiting for my reply.

I too, leaned against the wall, "Then you simply ask me to not be there, but you do it nicely." I noticed that my voice had turned soft somewhere, and a crooked smile adorned my features for some reason.

He hesitated for a bit, then asked, "And what would be the 'nice' way of asking you?" while cocking his head to the side and smiling very lightly. It was sort of cute how clueless he was because he seemed to really want to understand, while at the same time, his tone was teasing.

"I don't know, how about 'please can you not come to my practises in the future because I believe it's distracting'?" I took a step toward him with raised brows.

He still didn't let go of my eyes, like he hadn't during the entire conversation. "Please, Penderghast can you not come along to the practises in the future because I believe it's distracting?" He said in a soft voice with lips that twitched.

"Why are you smiling?" I asked then, which caused the smile in question to disappear.

Oliver looked as if he had regained his conscience after a long slumber. Without so much as a goodbye he hesitantly said, "I don't know." before doing a 180° and leaving the same way we'd come.

I stood and watched him leave in puzzlement before going inside the common room and closing the door behind me.

Merlin how he annoyed me! It annoyed me how he was 17 years old and still didn't seem to know how to ask someone nicely. It annoyed me how he kept using my last name. Especially since I have a long and convoluted last name and Willow was much easier to pronounce, yet he insisted on using Penderghast. It annoyed me how he smiled when I was trying to be angry with him. And I didn't even want to think about the tiny smile that had adorned my face.

With a frustrated utterance I threw myself on the couch next to my friends. Bianca began to stroke my hair affectionately and I immediately tensed. It made me uncomfortable when people touched me suddenly. I didn't want to make any sudden movements, didn't want to make it seem like I was hesitant to the touch. Even though I was.

But once my thoughts retreated back to Oliver I stopped minding Bianca, "He's so frustrating!" I shouted.

"Wood?" Bianca asked.

"Now I'm suddenly not allowed on his practises anymore." I said dully.

"Well, Will, you are aware of the fact that you're not a Gryffindor, aren't you?" PJ asked me. Trust PJ to be unnecessarily rational. Sitting up I gave her dark look, but she went on, "I mean, surely you can't expect to be welcomed by Wood on his practises?"

I didn't answer for a while, feeling kind of dumb suddenly. "There isn't a rule about it," was all I could say.

"There isn't a rule about it." PJ agreed, but there was something about the way she'd repeated my words back to me that told me she didn't see that as a good enough reason.

I kept making frustrated noises and Bianca kept stroking my hair until Wright said, "I like this." with a smile.

"What do you like?" Asked Bianca curiously.

Wright motioned to me, "You, Will! You're so rarely angry. It's nice to see you all riled up about something. It's like you… care."

Funnily enough, this had me even angrier than before, and it was probably visible, because she was now smiling even wider. Damn, Wright really did enjoy my pain. What was even worse was everyone else seemed to agree with her…

I didn't care! I thought despairingly.

"I bet that PJ should sing the sorting hat's song at the top of her lungs here in the common room tonight after dinner." I said, mostly to get them talking about something other than me. PJ was the most fun to challenge because she was the most daring one of us, and therefore most likely to perform.

The night went on, as nights often tend to. Around dinnertime the rain had started pouring down like crazy, but PJ did cheer us all up (including the entirety of Hufflepuff house) with her horrific singing voice, and around 9 p.m. I was already in bed. I needed to get a lot of sleep because I wanted all the energy I could muster for tomorrow's practise.

6 September 2018