Nora was practically walking on clouds for the rest of the day. Nothing could go wrong. She was on the Quidditch team. She was on the Quidditch team. From this day onward, Nora Rosier was an official chaser. Things could only go up from here.

The first she did after Enzo made the announcement was run up to the Great Hall where she knew she would find her best friend. Well, that's a lie. The first thing she actually did was put on her t-shirt with as much dignity as one could muster after stripping in front of a crowd and then she went to find her friend.

Aditi Mondal could almost always be found in the Great Hall for two reasons. The first was Aditi was always snacking. "I'm a muncher!" Aditi would call herself before slipping a handful of grapes into her mouth. "Gah, is being hungry illegal?"

The second was that, in addition to eating, Aditi was almost always flirting with someone new, the stark opposite of Nora, who had never dated anyone and almost always just stuck to casual sex. The Great Hall was usually the best place to scour for her next potential lover, who, according to Aditi, was always "the love of her life" until she got bored and the next one came alone. Aditi loved love. Nora loathed it.

By this time in the morning, almost all of the students were gathered around the tables, except for the Slytherin Quidditch Team. They had the unlucky draw at the crack of dawn for their tryouts by Nora didn't mind. Actually, she was glad. If she ate before the tryouts, she was sure she would have thrown it all up from nervousness.

Nora smiled when she saw dark wavy hair pulled into a voluminous half-bun half-ponytail. Aditi could never get her waves to cooperate and she never really tried. To be honest, she somehow managed to rock the messy look.

"There's my queen!" she yelled from across the room. Nora would have cringed from the eyes suddenly on her if it weren't for the fact that Aditi always brought attention to them. Normally, she didn't care about attention. She didn't need it and she hardly noticed whether she had it or not. But she also wasn't normally covered in sweat and grime with her ponytail out of sorts. Still, Nora forced her chin to rise and continued to walk.

She sat down across from Aditi and winced at the already-blooming soreness in her legs. It took every ounce of muscle in her thighs to hold on to that damn broom. I need more endurance, Nora thought. Linc can help with that.

"How'd it go?" Aditi's garbled words broke her out of her trance.

"Great," Nora smiled, not at all thinking about what would be happening later. Keep telling yourself that, Nora. "I made the team."

Aditi's jaw dropped. "Shut the fuck up... You did not just tell me that so casually. You bitch! No, you are the bitch!" She jumped up and leaned over the table, wrapping Nora in a tight hug that had her wincing. Physical contact wasn't her thing but she forced herself to make an exception for her friend. Being friends with someone who loved touching at any given moment wasn't always the best for someone who could hardly stand it.

"Yeah, it went really well." Nora couldn't find it in herself to go into any more details. She wasn't always good at this, conversing with other people. She was awkward at times—though she tried to pretend otherwise. Sometimes, words just didn't flow no matter how much she wanted them to, like there was a stopper in her mouth that just prevented them from going any further. She wasn't good at expressing her emotions, coming across as a soulless bitch half of the time because it felt like they, too, were just inside of her. Like there was this little Nora inside, screaming, I'm here! I can speak! I can feel! I'm just like you! But she just couldn't come out.

Oddly, that was why she enjoyed talking with Mattheo. Well, as much as she could enjoy talking with Mattheo. He pissed her off and she wanted to murder him most of the time but at least she could speak freely. With him, the words just seemed to flow naturally. Granted, the words were usually angry but that didn't always seem to matter to her. What mattered was that she could speak and be heard, even if it was by him. Sometimes, when she was so awkward that she felt horrible about herself, she would go up to him and spout off insult after insult to make herself feel better. See, she would tell herself, You are normal. You can talk. You just haven't found the right person or the right words. It probably wasn't the nicest thing to do but Nora didn't care about being nice, not when it came to Mattheo.

"That's what I'm talking about," Aditi said smugly. "Get fucked, Mattheo Riddle, because Nora Rosier is on the team. How are we celebrating?"

This was their eighth year of friendship and their eighth year of being roommates. By now, Aditi was more than used to her friend's awkwardness. Aditi was the furthest thing from awkward. A ray of sunshine that somehow found her way into Slytherin House, making friends with everyone there. Nora... well, Nora was Nora. That was the easiest way to explain it.

"Celebrating?" Nora wrinkled her nose. Aditi was a big partier. She often went to as many as she could, sometimes hooking up with someone (or someones), sometimes getting drunk off her ass with Daphne Greengrass, a good friend of hers. But it was well known that Nora didn't do that stuff. Her father had too much of an alcohol issue and it had gotten him killed. That and just being an idiot—like most men in her experience.

"Hell yeah, celebrating! You're on the Quidditch team now, baby. They party like crazy. You should get a head start."

"That sounds awful. No thanks."

"Don't be so boring! Get out, be young, live a little! You're only 18 once."

Nora rolled her eyes. "You could say that about literally every age. Why would I want to spend my Saturday night going to a party where I would be completely surrounded by pathetic, drunk losers—"

"Hey!"

"Present company excluded, of course. They're sweaty, usually demeaning to women, and immature. Where does that sound fun?"

Now it was Aditi's turn to roll her eyes as she swiped a veggie into the hummus in front of her. "You're missing the part where you're also drunk off your ass grinding onto someone hot as hell."

Nora shook her head, freeing her ponytail from its confines and smoothing it out before pulling it half up. Her hair was almost always half-up, whether that was in a braid, bun, ponytail, or some combination. She couldn't remember the last time she let it down outside of the shower. Even when she was with Linc, it stayed exactly how it was, not that they would ever get wild enough to do anything that would mess it up.

"I don't want to grind onto someone. I have Linc," Nora pointed out. "And that is where I'll be tonight."

Aditi groaned. "Ughhhh, not Linc! He's even more boring than you."

"He's not boring," Nora lied. "And I like him." Well, at least that last part wasn't a lie."

"You two are the only people that could make sex seem like doing your taxes."

"What?" Nora asked with confusion.

"Sorry," Aditi palmed her face. "Muggle thing." Aditi was a half-blood. A muggle father—who, according to her, was an accountant, whatever that meant—and a pureblood mother. Normally, being a half-blood in Slytherin would mean she would get a ton of nasty looks but Aditi was so well-liked that everyone ignored it.

"My point is," she continued. "You should find someone who lights a fire in you. Who makes you feel like a sexy goddess!"

"Who says Linc doesn't make me feel like that?" A pointed look from Aditi was all that she needed to grumble out an agreeance. "Okay, fine. But not everyone needs fire, Dee. Fire burns remember. And I'd rather be bored than burnt."

"One day, girl, you are going to find a boy who sees the spark in you and turns it into a flame." She plopped a cherry into her mouth. Where the hell is she getting all of this food? It's such an odd combination of things and she keeps pulling them out. "And I think this is the year I find the real love of my life."

"Really?" Nora asked with a tone of complete disbelief. She said that every year.

"Really. I've sworn off men entirely so I shall only be focusing on finding ladies of love this year." Aditi was bisexual and usually did this a few times a semester. She would have a bad experience with one gender, swear off them entirely, and then find someone new before repeating the cycle.

"Well, I can't blame you for that." In Nora's experience, men sucked. Her father was a lying piece of trash who got himself killed and her brother was both cruel and dim-witted. She couldn't even get started about Mattheo Riddle. "But maybe you should just focus on being Aditi. Then the right person will come."

"No offense, Nor, but you are the worst person to give love advice." Ouch. But she wasn't wrong. Nora had never had a boyfriend and while she had Linc, what they had wasn't a relationship, not even close. But did she need to word it like that? "Aww, I'm sorry, babes. I didn't mean it like that."

"No, it's okay. It's the truth."

Still, Aditi placed her hand on hers and gave her a gentle smile. "Don't worry, girl. You'll find your fire one day."

But what Aditi failed to realize was that Nora didn't want to find her "fire". She didn't want to find a spark or flame or whatever. She didn't need love to survive and it certainly wasn't worth the risk of the heartbreak she had witnessed Aditi go through year after year. Nora Rosier didn't want love because love burned and she didn't want the scars.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" Linc shouted as he pounded into Nora. Well, pounded was a little generous. Thrust while she kind of lay motionless beneath him, begging to feel just a little more pleasure so she didn't have to pretend to have an orgasm for once? Yeah, that sounded more like it. "Fuck, Nora, you always feel so good."

"Yeah," Nora breathed, reminding herself to sound pleasured. "Maybe we could try a different position. Maybe I could—"

"Why would we do that when this is fucking perfect?" So Nora sighed and let Linc continue to thrust into her, stealthily moving her hand downward so she could play with her clit and get at least a little something out of it.

Something was missing from their sexscapades. She didn't know what but... something. Maybe she would figure it out one day. Maybe she was just being delusional.

Her relationship with Linc was complicated. Nora had only ever been interested in casual hookups, usually with Ravenclaws since they seemed to be the only men that didn't make want to gouge her eyes out all of the time. The hookups were fine but never anything special, usually not lasting more than one or two times. Nora had never orgasmed in any of them but she just convinced herself that maybe women weren't meant to come and that was fine. The men were fine, the sex was fine, everything was fine.

Until Linc.

He was a year younger than her and they met at a casual Ravenclaw gathering. Cho Chang usually invited her to them, both of them silently agreeing to be each other's wingwoman whenever they could, though Cho usually seemed more interested in Gryffindors lately so Nora couldn't return the favor. When she saw his bright green eyes and lanky smile, Nora was hooked. He was thin and not much taller than her, with short blonde hair and a great sense of humor. He lured her into his dorm with boyish charm where they had the best sex of her life.

After that, they just kept meeting, each time resulting in sex. Nora wouldn't stay and cuddle and Linc understood, always making her laugh as she redressed. Sometimes, he would speak to her in the hallways a little, both of them knowing she would come to his door later. Things with Linc just felt natural. Calm. No fire. Just how she liked it.

The only problem? What was the best sex of Nora's life continued. Just like that. Same positions, same rhythms, everything. It was a little mundane but maybe sex with one person was supposed to be like that. Plus, with Linc, everything was easy. She didn't have to tell him the answers to those stupid questions like "What's your favorite color?" or "Where did you grow up?" She could just show up to his room and fuck him, no questions asked. To her, a little bit of boredom was okay for some consistency. No one else was always in her life like that. No one else stayed. Why should she want anything else then?

Linc finished on her chest and she sighed. This time, it really did seem kind of boring. One position, no movement, no pleasure on her end. Wow, was Aditi right?

No, this is Linc we're talking about. Our Linc. Who cares if he's boring?

"Stay with me," Linc pleaded with a grip on her hand. Nora smiled softly and began to get dressed. They always did this.

She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. "See you later, yeah?"

As Nora walked out of the room, Linc called, "When are you going to be my girl?"

She knew that Linc liked her. He had made that part very obvious from the beginning. But Nora didn't have room in her life for anything more than friends with benefits. Nora liked him back but she wasn't sure if it was enough to take any further steps. It was why she didn't stay with him, why she didn't cuddle or kiss or do anything like that with him. This was strictly sex and maybe a little friendship.

"Linc, you know I can't..."

He smiled. "One day, you will. And I'll be here."

If her heart was made of anything other than ice, perhaps it would have melted then. But nope. It was icy. Cold. Not burning.

This book is going to be good, I can feel it in my bones. What do you guys think of Nora? Aditi? Linc? Any predictions? Let me know in the comments!