Chapter 19
The shiny bottles reflected themselves in Oliver's eyes while he searched meticulously the shelves for the perfect perfume bottle.
We were in one of the shops in Hogsmeade I rarely entered, in fact I had only entered it once before and it was to buy a perfume, seeing as that is what they sold. I gazed out at the discontinuously sized bottles in various bright colours and spotted my own at the top left on the shelves.
Oliver and I were the only customers. It was quiet and musky in there and the shop owner, an older lady, was eyeing us from behind the counter, surrounded by the dark wood that made up the whole interior. The shop was on the rougher side of quaint, one could say.
Feeling watched I turned my head and saw that the lady was still eyeing us with what she seemed to deem as stealth. With some poorly veiled urgency I declared, "You know you're going to have to smell one at some point, they're not decorations."
Oliver rolled his eyes. Completely clueless to the lady behind the counter he carefully picked a bottle and endearingly lifted it to his nose to try to feel its scent from the sprayer.
I sighed loud and excessively. "You need to spray it on something and then smell it." I grinned despite myself.
However Oliver neglected to spray the perfume anywhere, instead he was eyeing me closely and I felt myself growing restless. I wanted out of this shop as soon as possible and I felt like Oliver was not ready to cooperate.
To my surprise he then stepped closer to me with a focused expression. Once the close proximity was reached he carefully lifted my arm and sprayed an equally carefully selected spot on my wrist with the perfume. I looked on dazedly while my wrist was moved until mere millimetres from Oliver's nose and he lingered over it for a moment before he took in the scent. I refused to blink as I watched him consider the scent.
"Well that's not it." He said. With his hands on his hips he retrieved to his meticulous study of the perfume bottles on the wall.
My throat was so thick I thought it better to let his comment linger in the musky room than give him a strained reply.
Once my voice has been regained I uttered, "You're not going to find a perfume for your girlfriend by staring at them. Why don't you just smell as many as you can until you find one you like?" I suggested innocently, not necessarily hoping he would touch any other of my body parts, but also not condemning such an occurrence.
Oliver tore his attention from the shelf and looked at me with newfound determination. He instinctively grabbed a random bottle and strode back to my henceforth blissful but disoriented self, as Oliver took hold of perfume after perfume and sprayed them on numerous places on my arms and smelled me time after time. It soon became a comical activity and we both found ourselves exhibiting giddy behaviour. Thoughts of ladies behind counters were far-gone by then.
"None of these are good," he said, "Maybe it's just you I'm smelling?" He quipped and I slapped his arm in annoyance.
After not long though, Oliver had begun to run out of places to spray me and he searched my arms for a spot he might have missed. With lack of other options his eyes travelled upward slowly until they landed on my neck. I stood frozen as I watched him make his decision. All I could hear was the sound of my heavy breath and Oliver clicking the perfume bottle, letting out a fresh scent and letting the tiny specks of liquid cover my neck. Oliver looked almost frightened as he leaned in and placed his nose near my highly sensitive skin, his hair brushed against my jaw and I closed my eyes briefly.
"Noo, that's not it…" He mumbled, still close to my skin. After, to my enjoyment, having lingered a second longer than what he would have had to, he retrieved back to eyeing the selection.
He proceeded to spray my collarbone, then my other collarbone and just as I was praying for him to never stop smelling me, I noticed a shift in Oliver's demeanour. He perked up suddenly and moved his nose up my neck. A tingly sensation erupted in my body. Oliver retreated and pointed to my upper neck, "Which one was this?" He asked.
"Umm…" I said and fingered the different bottles until I found a curvy green one, "This, I think."
Oliver sprayed it in the air, for once, and took in the scent. But he remained apathetic. It didn't seem to be the one he had felt when he perked up. "No, it smelled sort of like coconut or something."
My eyes went wide right then as I remembered the perfume in the far left corner. I was about to tell Oliver that it was just the perfume I had put on earlier that morning and not one of the ones we had tried today, but I was reminded that putting on perfume to see a friend could be interpreted in a non-friendly way, and I thought better of it.
Oliver's eyes fell upon my neck once more and he approached me curiously once again. He placed his hand on the back of my neck this time and softly pulled me toward him and his nose. Oliver stayed like that, reflecting for a moment. Just as I was beginning to think he might have fallen asleep Oliver cleared his throat and whispered, voice not quite strong enough to emit clear sounds, "See, I like this one…" I felt his breath on my skin, "Which one could it have been?"
Feeling too proud to admit to Oliver that I had put on perfume on this particular day, and worried Oliver might connect the dots himself did I not hand him the information he wanted, I pointed to the top left on the shelf and said, "Maybe this one?" Inwardly cringing at my awfully feigned casualty.
He smoothly took hold of the perfume bottle on the top left and felt it in his hands, beginning to consider me. Completely out of places to spray me he settled for my forehead, "Close your eyes." He said and I winced only slightly when the liquid hit my face. My eyes were still closed when Oliver closed in.
After all the perfume confusion I felt a strong need to make myself appear apathetic toward the whole situation, "Why couldn't you just spray yourself with perfume?" I asked, acting as though it'd been a huge inconvenience to me.
"Because it's women's perfume, obviously." He said absentmindedly.
Having thought I might get a similar response to this I immediately fired back, "And that's degrading to you?"
This took Oliver off guard and he stumbled for words, "Well, no…"
"That's right, asshole." I said and took the bottle from his hand and sprayed him with it in an act of inflicting punishment.
Oliver broke into a wide smile. He had a tendency to do this, to haphazardly go from being somewhat expressionless to a wide smile, coming seemingly out of nowhere.
With the same wide smile Oliver took the perfume back from me and left to go and pay, holding tightly onto it. I let myself smile as well, but delicately and to myself.
Later that day, after a well deserved shower to get all the perfume off me and a wildly anticlimactic evening in the Slytherin common room with my friends, ("But where are the dragons and the torture devices?") We were just passing by the Great Hall to grab some snacks we could bring upstairs for an early night when we ran into Andrea, who looked her usual gleeful self and came up and hugged me upon spotting us, my friends leaving me behind outside the entrance,
"Happy Christmas!" She exulted. To my immediate heartache the air around her whirled into my nose as she embraced me and the scent of coconut was unmistakable. He'd already given it to her?
"Actually, you can't officially say that until tomorrow." I joked once she'd released me.
Andrea put on some fake assertiveness and said; "Last time I checked Christmas Eve is also an appropriate time to greet someone using that phrase."
"You do make a very good point there and I will take it into consideration." I gave in with a light-hearted smile, but Andrea's expression had turned solemn at that point and she was gazing thoughtfully at the floor, not quite paying attention anymore.
"You smell nice." I said to try and draw her back to me.
Andrea tore her distant gaze and met my eyes again, "Thank you!" She said, aiming for that trademark enthusiasm of hers but not quite getting there. I was torn by her change of attitude and I found myself struggling to remain carefree.
"It was from Oliver." She smiled half-heartedly, "Yeah, he said he couldn't wait to give me my present, said he wanted to smell it on me." She nodded, a little too heavily.
"That is so lovely." I tried, but I felt my voice coming out as fake as hers at this point. The truth was, it hurt. It had hurt seeing Oliver trying so ambitiously to pick out the exact right gift for his loved one, who was not me. I finally had to face the fact that I wanted Oliver. I wanted him to care about me that much. But I was just his perfume tester and that was it.
The giant door opened from the Great Hall and my friends came out carrying snacks to last us the rest of the night. Andrea disappeared as fast as she had arisen after that.
I managed the walk to the dormitories without my friends noticing that anything was up. I wasn't saying much but I managed to seem like I simply didn't have anything to add. I even managed an encounter with Griffith in the common room where he wanted to talk Quidditch, but I managed to seem casual and like I just wasn't really up for it. I managed that whole 30 minutes or so of using every ounce of my being to try and not care.
It was when Wright closed the door to our dormitory that I just couldn't take it anymore. I laid down motionless with my stomach flat on my bed, staring at the miniscule specks of cotton that made up the sheet as tears started silently trickling down my cheek.
Everything was silent, a nice relief from what the Slytherin common room had been like during that hour or so we spent there. My ears rang from the strain that had been on them throughout the day and I laid there in silence. The whole room was silent.
"Are you okay Willow?" Said Wright softly. That was when I realised that the silence I had taken so much pleasure in, had been somewhat of a suspicious one. The room had been silent for a reason and I suddenly felt very watched as the tears trickled.
"No." I shakily said and wiped the tears off my face in a swift motion, causing my whole face to now feel soaked instead of the clear little lanes of moisture that had been.
PJ sat down on my bed behind where I was facing, I couldn't see her but I also didn't want to move. Wright, the daring one, decided to sit down next to me on the bed. Bianca remained at a distance, clutching the four-poster column in her arm.
Wright began to wipe my tears softly. I never understood how people decided to wipe someone else's tears, do they also wipe other people's saliva?
But my thoughts of body liquids didn't keep me distracted for long and my thoughts would soon return to Oliver and Andrea.
"I'm not very good at Herbology." I said.
"You're not… terrible at Herbology." Wright insisted uncertainly.
"Andrea is better." I said sulkily.
"Is that surprising?" Wright asked, and there was a murmur around the room, the rest of the company gave her looks that said 'we are trying to help this situation right now and you are having the opposite effect.'
Nevertheless my words seemed to have caused a general realisation in the room of what might be going on, what unearthly event had left Willow motionlessly crying on her bed.
"Do you? …" PJ began, "Have feelings for Oliver, Will?" She asked cautiously.
At my lack of answer Bianca decided this might be her cue to start speculating, "I mean something's obviously going on, one conversation with his girlfriend and you are the biggest mess I've ever seen you. And lets face it — it wasn't Davies that made her put on perfume this morning." She gave the others a meaningful look.
Despite my grief I couldn't help but roll my eyes at Bianca and the corners of my mouth almost twitched into the faintest smile.
"And then again after that shower." Wright added knowingly.
I decided it was time for me to step in and defend myself, "I wasn't even seeing Oliver after the shower! Can't we exist in a universe where I smell nice for myself and no one else?" I kept wiping my tears, with more force this time.
"Oh, so it was for Graham then is what you're saying?" Bianca teased.
I couldn't help but muster a faint laugh with the rest of the company at that. At this point I knew Bianca was kidding, she no longer mythicised about Graham and I being a pair.
I was able to hold the smile for a second or two before the corners of my mouth fell, along with my thoughts back to Oliver. "Yes. I do have the feelings for Oliver." I said simply. "They suck." It felt oddly good telling them, but it lasted only a moment until I started thinking of all the reasons Oliver would never be interested in me.
"I feel like I'm boring." I said.
PJ hugged me from behind. "Why would you ever feel like you're boring, Will?" Feeling like she might have a clue as to what I might be feeling she went on, "I mean yes you don't drink or party in the same way as we do, but you are probably the least boring one of us."
"I mean you're in love with Oliver Wood, you're obviously insane." Wright said, and added, "Being insane is not boring."
"Not only are you in love with Oliver, but Oliver is obviously in love with you too." PJ started.
"Hey! When I tried to tell you this the other day you shot me down!" Bianca burst at PJ and earned a hard sigh from her,
"Yeah I know I did, but let's face it Oliver seems kind of whipped for Will and it's almost too obvious." PJ admitted. "So not only are you special enough to be in love with that lunatic, but you are also interesting enough to tear Oliver's attention away from Quidditch!"
"He did disregard his Quidditch diagrams that night to play Wizard's Fez with me." I said in a voice plagued by my sobs. "And you guys as well obviously." I felt inclined to add.
Wright huffed, "Yeah, I'm sure Oliver gave up his Quidditch diagrams because he wanted to hang out with his close friends Bianca, PJ and I with whom he has had like three conversations with in his lifetime." She said sarcastically.
The room fell quiet, as I was unsure of how to respond.
"And it's true, you aren't great at academics, but you are brilliant at other things, Quidditch being the main one." Bianca said positively and hugged my ankle with her hand.
I sat up slowly, "So you don't think I'm boring and useless?" I asked tentatively one last time.
Wright smiled warmly, "You led us to a victory against Gryffindor, Will, you are far from useless."
Deciding not to interject with my usual counter comment I instead silently agreed with my friends and took an oath to believe their words and henceforth shut down my brain's words that told me things that contradicted that.
Bianca crossed her arms in a resolute manner, "And I am telling you this Willow, Oliver is not going to stay with Andrea for long. Or perhaps more likely — Andrea won't stay with him for long. When they inevitably leave each other, sooner or later, you will be Oliver's top priority."
The others nodded in agreement and my chest felt a little lighter when I, an hour later or so, after having enjoyed some good food with my close friends, went to bed.
10 November 2018
A/N: Did you like/dislike anything about this chapter? Please let me know!