Angelina watched as Harry turned around and walked away; taking special notice of the way the sunlight caught his disheveled hair in some places. The boy was hopeless when it came to the thick black mass that sat atop his head, but it was something that Angelina always rather liked about him. That and the fact that he had crimson lips at times. He was oft prone to licking them when nervous. Or upset. Or thoughtful. Or all three. Those lips echoed the scarlet of his cheeks, which were offset by the smooth ivory of his skin.
But it was Harry's hair that really did it for her. He never combed his hair. Or did he? She didn't know. He seemed never to, though, because it was always as if he had just woken from a rough night every time she saw him. It was jet black; a startling contrast to the ivory and scarlet; and wild on his head. Shiny, too, like raven feathers.
Why did she notice?
She made a face, her eyes falling to the empty parchment on her lap. She liked him. What a strange and wonderful idea.
As she began drawing diagrams of some of the plays she wanted to work on with the team, her mind wondered cheerily through the stages of her gradual acceptance of such a fancy. What else was there?
Green eyes. When had she noticed those? They were emerald green, though she couldn't remember when she had ever taken the time to look behind those ridiculous round frames at the brilliance of that color staring back at her. She noticed his hands, too. How strong they were. Not necessarily in appearance, but in the way he used them. Long, slender fingers didn't automatically denote strength, but Harry held his wand like it was an extension of himself.
It had always seemed to her, from the first time she ever met him, that Harry was no ordinary kid. Aside from being one of the most recognized faces in the Wizarding World, Harry was so extraordinary on so many levels it was hard to know where to begin. Angelina smiled to herself, thinking that maybe she could have a go at it.
For starters, he was an excellent Quidditch player.
This impressed her first. More than once, she'd watched him during practice drills and matches, always charmed by his ability to maneuver on his broom. He was such a gifted flyer that he even made her look more well-practiced than naturally talented. Angelina unconsciously stopped sketching maneuvers and began doodling little flying Harry's. She drew a Flying Harry swooping in to grab the Snitch just before he narrowly avoided colliding with one of the Gryffindor bleacher towers. Below that, there was a Flying Harry hanging from his broom upside down by the legs, his hand closing around the little golden ball and his black hair sticking out in all directions. This amused her and she drew a huge grin on his face. He grinned and waved, almost falling from the broom, but recovered himself and swung to and fro with the Snitch flittering in his hand.
Another doodle found Flying Harry rolling across the Quidditch pitch as two rogue Bludgers attempted to pummel him.
"You're a tough little bean, aren't you Harry?" Angelina had said to him while visiting him in the hospital wing after that incident. The poor thing had been victimized by not only two bewitched Bludgers, but also Gilderoy Lockhart's nuisance of a healing spell that made all the bones in his arm disappear.
Harry had frowned at her, his eyes narrowing the way they always did when Angelina used that tone with him. She knew of course that he didn't like her talking to him that way, and that was partially why she did it. She couldn't help jibing him a bit when he was so keen to be taken seriously. She did take him seriously.
"It doesn't hurt," he said simply. He always said that. He had his arm broken and then all the bones in it removed. Angelina suspected that it had hurt quite a bit, but didn't argue the point.
"I expect you'll be singing a different tune when they start to grow back, mate," she'd told him instead. "Pomfrey says its dreadful stuff, re-growing bones."
Angelina always regretted not being able to say more than the occasional few words to him. They were teammates, sure, but other than their connection through Quidditch, Fred, and George, she always felt very removed from him. Everyone knew that something was going on when those Bludgers went nuts, but of course all the speculation in the world never ever really pinpointed the truth about the situations Harry always found himself the center of.
Last year, when Harry had mysteriously been entered into the tournament she, like everyone else, had suspected him of cheating. But Fred and George quickly put an end to that theory by assuring her that if he had he would've needed help and they couldn't see him going to anyone else for that besides themselves. "Anyway," Fred had reasoned at lunch one day after Harry's fight with the dragon, "I can't see the kid wanting to get mutilated. He's always sort of sucked into the stuff that happens to him. Sad, really."
She had always been right on the cusp, getting most of her information from Fred and George, who though thoughtful and respectful for the most part, always found something amusing about Harry's troubles. Except last year they felt rather guilty, she knew, about taking bets on who would survive the tournament. That Cedric died wasn't their fault, she'd tried to assure them, but they still hadn't gotten over it. Neither had she, really. Even though they were on opposite teams and in competing houses, Angelina had always had a lot of respect for Cedric Diggory. She remembered talking to him about the tournament; about putting their names into the Goblet of Fire. Both of them had been rather nervous and excited, and Cedric had almost changed his mind.
"I'm sure I won't be chosen, any way," he had mused thoughtfully as they walked through the halls. "I'm just a Quidditch player; nothing special."
"You're a damned good Quidditch player." Angelina had quickly pointed out, recalling a few close calls at the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff matches, when Cedric had given Harry a good run for his money. "If I were captain and you weren't a Hufflepuff, I'd have you on my team."
He had laughed at her statement as if it were a ridiculous thing to say.
"But why would you want me as your Seeker when you've got the famous Harry Potter?"
She hadn't had an answer for that. "You'll put your name in. And so will I, deal? May the best man win."
Poor Cedric wasn't Seeker for Hufflepuff anymore. He was gone. Angelina sighed forlornly. Watching Harry cling to a lifeless Cedric in the middle of the entire student body had been quite the shock. She had been hit hard by Harry's sorrowful utterances "…he asked me to bring him back…I couldn't leave him!" and the stark realization that Cedric was dead. She had only once seen a dead person, and it was at a ceremony for her late grandfather. Though everyone had their share of grief and confusion over what happened, Angelina could only imagine what Harry had been going through. She remembered that between the time of all the activity surrounding the mysterious goings on at the maze task and the last day of school, she had seen Harry changed. He was detached and despondent…always cast off in his own thoughts. He stayed close to his two best mates, Ron and Hermione at all times, though he didn't say much to them either. She had always really wanted to speak to him, though she had never officially made up her mind about what she would say if given the chance. It was this notion coupled with an overwhelming need to understand him that had ultimately led to her strongest inklings of a desire for him beyond friendship.
Before that horrible time, though, was the rather good time she'd had with him at the Yule Ball.
Before that Angelina had experienced nothing but friendly fondness for Harry, coupled with the occasional appreciation for his cleverness at the least expected moments, and rightly so. She had seen other girls eyeing him bemoanedly at the ball; including Cho Chang. Fred spun her around at one point and dipped her, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Harry trying desperately to figure out what he was doing wrong as Pavarti Patil sucked in her breath for the fifth time at having him trample all over her foot. She had pointed this out to Fred just as George showed up with spiked pumpkin juice.
Angelina's mind was wandering and she had stopped paying attention. The Flying Harry's were zooming all over her parchment, seemingly carrying out the diagrams she'd started for the practice drill. Frowning, she turned to a clean sheet of parchment in her notebook and began another drawing. This one sort of developed itself, and she felt her sketch hand moving across the surface as she thought about Harry's face.
By the time he'd discovered them trying to find that broom cupboard on the seventh floor, she'd had a good few rounds of the fire whiskey/pumpkin juice cocktail that George had mixed up. Brilliantly daft idea, that was, she thought to herself The twins had such the uncanny ability to do the most devious things right under the noses of the authorities.
She had been silly-intoxicated, and she remembered Harry watching her approach him with a look of polite scrutiny. She supposed that seeing his teammate, especially one as consistently demanding and hard-working as she was, so madly oblivious and giddy was a bit of a shock for him. But, truth be told, it was the effects of the cocktail that made her forget to be self-conscious, and she found talking to Harry then quite easy when she had not before. Hanging on him loosely and allowing herself to be closer to him than she'd ever been was somehow okay, and she had enjoyed it.
Everything seemed so easy-going and light-hearted. She was surprised at how easy he gave in to the twins when they cajoled him into joining them in the ridiculous broom cupboard. Surprised and impressed. Angelina mused that if she had not been full of whiskey that she would not have spoken so freely or let her budding attraction to the then fourth year boy show quite so obviously.
Angelina sighed and filled in the ovals of one of Harry's irises on the parchment. He had looked at her quite intently when she said he was 'only a fourth year.' And as much as it served to intensify her rapidly increasing fascination with him, that look was one-upped by the tone of casual wickedness he used when he said that only teachers called him 'Potter.' Of course, by the end of four more rounds of whiskey, she felt so at ease and comfortable around him that the secret desire she'd had for ages to touch his scar manifested itself in the gentle contact of her fingers against his soft skin. "I don't mind if you touch my scar…" Well after that statement, coupled with his lazy yet all-consuming gaze on her, she had to kiss him.
Fred had given her a nice little taunting for that later on, and of course this served to make her more cautious about her actions towards Harry up until this point.
"I saw you, you know, Angie…" Fred had said to her casually the next evening when they were studying together.
"What d'you mean? Saw me what?"
"You kissed Harry."
"I…wha-?" She couldn't really think of how to protest this, and she knew she had a stupid smile on her lips, despite her efforts to look affronted. Fred simply smirked and turned a page in his textbook, not really reading she knew, but waiting for her to sputter out a response to his accusation of girly activity. "I didn't kiss him, really…" She got out finally. "It was just a peck. He's a cute kid."
"Just a peck? D'you kiss your mum like that, then?"
She swatted at him and he chuckled evilly, still keeping his eyes on his textbook.
He hadn't officially mentioned it again for a long time after that. There were always knowing looks he threw at her every now and again when the subject of Harry came up amongst their classmates or Harry was around and Fred would catch her staring at him.
For that matter, Harry didn't mention it again either. Angelina couldn't pretend that his silence on the matter didn't bother her a bit, but she assumed that after everything that had happened and everything the boy had gone through that year he had simply forgotten about it. She convinced herself that she should forget too; that what had happened wasn't significant. It was as she'd told Fred: just a peck. A very nice…warm…soft…peck.
Harry's stoic yet passionate manner of dealing with the general public's disbelieve of his claim that Voldemort was back and had murdered Cedric was what had brought all of these feelings forth again. Seeing him repeatedly confronted with the likes of Draco Malfoy and Delores Umbridge gave Angelina a truer sense of the boy's courage than imagining what it must've been like to come face to face with the Dark Lord. Angelina was willing to bet that she was more excited than anyone about Harry agreeing to teach the secret defense classes. She looked forward to these almost as much as beating Slytherin at the next Quidditch match.
Quidditch. Yes, she'd better stop daydreaming and get to work on some strategy or she could forget about winning matches.
Angelina looked down at her parchment. She had drawn a picture of she and Harry kissing next to the unfinished one of Harry's face. A shrill giggle escaped her before she could help it and she thanked Merlin that Fred and George weren't around to see her behaving like such a girl.
There was, however, one quite uninvited witness, who had been sneakily peering over her shoulder at what she'd been drawing for several minutes now. Angelina would later scold herself terribly for allowing her mind to wander and not paying attention to her surroundings. Her spy scoffed haughtily.
"Well, well, Johnson. Seems your team's got bigger problems this year than not being fit to set foot on a Quidditch pitch."
Angelina jumped up and spun around sharply to face Draco Malfoy, who merely smiled crassly and rested his foot on the bench where she'd been sitting seconds before. Before she could give him a good tongue lashing for butting into her privacy, he reached out and snatched the notebook from her quick as a flash.
"Hey-!" She grabbed for it, but he held it beyond her reach, sneering like a blond-haired rat.
"Have a bit of a thing for Potter, do you?" He taunted, flipping through the pages of the notebook casually as she fumed before him. "For someone who comes from one of the better wizarding families, you don't waste time mixing it up with filth like that ugly Mudblood Granger or the Weasels, but kissing Potter? That's a prime offense, Johnson."
Angelina tried to quell her rage, reaching out a steady hand and motioning for him to give her back her property. "Hand it over, Malfoy. Now. Or so help me, I'll-"
"You'll what?" He made as if he was going to give it back, but snatched it away again before she could grasp it. "Jinx me? Curse me?"
"Give it back!" Angelina reached into the folds of her robes and pulled out her wand, pointing it at his face, her temples burning.
Draco's sneer turned into an amused smile and he looked down at the notebook again thoughtfully. After a beat in which she thought he would stow it away for himself, he shrugged and tossed it lazily on the bench next to his foot. Angelina stared at him menacingly for several seconds before tucking her wand away again and picking the notebook up.
"Doesn't matter." He said as if he could care less about what he'd just found. "Even if I don't tell Umbridge the only reason Pottybreath is still on the team is because his so-called 'captain' fancies him, you Gryffindors are finished."
"Stuff it, Draco. Umbridge gave me permission to reform the team this morning," Angelina smiled triumphantly, even though she was still quite shaken by what he had seen her drawing, and tried not to let it come out in her voice. "We'll be seeing you on the pitch next Saturday."
Draco snorted and shook his head at her as if she didn't have a clue.
"A bit slow on the uptake, aren't you Johnson? Yeah, I suppose Umbridge had to let you think you were in the clear…but really she just did that to shut your Head of House up. McGonagall quacked like an injured duck about the decree."
"What are you on about, you little twerp?" Angelina snapped impatiently, the unsettling feeling of dread suddenly coming over her.
"Oh nothing…" Draco began to examine his fingernails, clearly enjoying having the upper hand. "You'll find out when Professor Umbridge gets hold of you. She's been looking for you, you know. I volunteered to help find you."
"Spit it out!" She was getting more and more anxious, and was two seconds from drawing her wand again.
"Oh, there you are, Miss Johnson!" she heard a syrupy sweet voice calling to her. Delores Umbridge was making her way across the courtyard, her clipboard clasped firmly at her bosom. "Malfoy I see you've found her for me. How kind of you."
"Not at all, Professor," Draco composed his features to resemble what Angelina could only guess was politeness. "We were just chatting a bit about Quidditch." He lied with such ease that it made Angelina clench her fists, but she said nothing.
"Oh?" Umbridge raised a sharp eyebrow. "Well that is exactly what I've come to discuss with you Angelina."
Angelina swallowed, ignoring the smirk playing on Draco's lips. "What about, Professor?" she asked rather meekly. "We can still play….? Can't we?"
"Well," Umbridge began unsympathetically, "I'm afraid there are conditions to your team's eligibility to reform…"
That feeling of dread swelled in Angelina's chest and she felt like punching something, but Umbridge dismissed Malfoy and began to explain that she hadn't had a chance to tell Angelina everything at breakfast. She explained that she had decided to take steps to ensure that the Quidditch season this year upheld 'Ministry Standards of Conduct and Good Sportsmanship.' Angelina couldn't believe her ears. She thought hard about what Umbridge had said to her only that morning and could've sworn that none of this was even hinted at. And there was the list that Filch had posted…where was this coming from? Umbridge didn't seem to give a damn about the young woman's confusion. The more the short, plump, wicked teacher spoke, the angrier and more depressed the Gryffindor captain became. By the end of the conversation Umbridge walked away quite pleased with herself, taking a giant chunk of Angelina's good mood with her.