"Banned…" Angelina heard herself say numbly.
She'd been repeating the word in her head over and over for a while, now, and when she spoke it aloud it did nothing to diminish the impact of what had happened. What on Earth had Harry been thinking? Hadn't she warned him? Hadn't she warned them all not to let themselves get suckered by Malfoy?
All right, the stupid git said some pretty rotten things about her two best mates' family, and Harry's poor dead mother, but Angelina thought stubbornly that no matter what he'd said it was no reason to double-team him! When she had seen Umbridge walking calmly across the pitch, her hideous green tweed coat making her look like an enormous cartoon frog, her stomach did a back flip and she knew it was over. Angelina watched as though from the end of a tunnel as Harry punched Malfoy in the face and stomach while Fred pulled the Slytherin boy's hair and twisted his arm back. She felt a million miles away as Umbridge hit Harry with and Impediment Jinx and barely blinked when the woman snatched her whistle from her.
It was only the shrill sound of the thing that brought her back to reality.
And Angelina had never felt truer dread than the moment when the awful teacher turned to her, smiling sweetly, and uttered: "I need to have a word with your captain, first."
Now she was sitting in the common room, repeating that word in her head. The other team members had been sitting with her earlier that day, right after the incident. She hadn't really known what to tell them. The only thing was to speak on what she knew, and that was the fact that they now had no Seeker and no Beaters, and the Slytherin match was a week away. No one bothered to ask how in bloody hell she was going to find replacements by Tuesday night's practice, and it was just as well. The first match of the season, which normally held so much excitement for Angie, would be a sour event indeed.
Angelina had spent most of that afternoon going through a myriad of emotions. She swung from furious at everyone; Umbridge, Malfoy, George, Harry, and the lot of them; to extremely depressed, to completely numb. She kept hoping that it was all just a dream; that she would wake up and discover that none of it had ever happened.
The news had spread like wildfire among the other students, and she walked through the halls with her head down and her eyes focused on the floor. The Slytherins sneered and the other houses speculated and whispered scandalously. The worst part was that Angelina went the whole day without seeing the one person she really wanted to talk to: Harry.
Fred told her at lunch that he and George hadn't seen the messy-haired kid either.
"We both went our own ways after that clobbering we got in McGonagall's office," George said, bitterly. The three of them were huddled together, picking at their food and ignoring everyone else. "He looked like he was still a bit fired up. Me as well."
"That must've been rough," Angelina offered, squashing the grapes on her plate with a fork. "McGonagall and Umbridge…talk about a pair."
"Actually, old Minerva went pretty easy on us at first, which ain't saying much, but I could've done a week's detention easy rather than having my ruddy broom stolen by that wench." They watched George squeeze the daylights out of his tuna sandwich with a disgusted scowl on his normally handsome face. He Scourgified the mess from his hand with his wand and tossed the plate aside.
"What, has he gone and locked himself in his room or something?" Angelina asked, rather annoyed. "Doesn't he know he's got to face us eventually?"
"Maybe he doesn't want to see Malfoy. Might have a bit of the fight still left in him," Fred offered darkly, shrugging his lean shoulders. "I know I do. If Katie and Alicia hadn't been holding me back I'd have done Harry one better and kicked that sod in the bollocks."
Angelina gave Fred a sharp look and crushed another grape.
"You should go and talk to him, Angie," George suggested as they were returning from lunch. "Tell him we're not gonna toss him off the Astronomy Tower or any'fin."
"Speak for yourself…" Katie said, passing them through the portrait hole.
Angelina sighed and cast a longing look at the stairs that led to the boys' dorms. She thought about it for a moment, but decided to give Harry more time. She tried to study, tried to make a list of candidates for the now depressingly unoccupied Seeker position, and even tried to think of a way to get back at Umbridge. She heartily entertained the idea of asking the twins to go ahead with their threat to put that Gassy Goose stuff in the teacher's tea, but decided that it was a really stupid thing to do. Umbridge would know instantly who was responsible, and then they could kiss Quidditch for the Gryffindors goodbye forever.
When she still hadn't seen Harry before dinner, Angelina's piss poor mood took its final plunge.
He's avoiding me, I know it, she thought miserably. He probably thinks I'm going to treat him like a child or blame him for what happened. Sure, Angelina admitted that her first instinct was to berate him but good. In fact, had this happened at any time in the years before, she knew she probably would have threatened to throw him off the tower. But now…all she wanted was to talk to him, try and understand his position in all of this, and most of all be close to him the way she'd been the night before when he listened to her explain about Malfoy seeing her playbook.
Hermione approached her as she was about to sit, an urgent look on her face. "Harry says you're to have that emergency practice tomorrow night, Angelina," the girl whispered, lifting her bushy eyebrows pointedly to emphasize the hidden meaning behind her words.
Angelina frowned at her. "Emergency…?"
"Yes, after dinner on the seventh floor."
With that the fifth year walked away to join Ginny and Ronald at their end of the table, looking back once to make sure Angie had taken it all in. Fred and George joined her soon after, also looking urgent but also excited.
"Did you hear?' Fred whispered, leaning forward and picking a buttered roll from one of the platters in the center of the table. "We're meeting tomorrow night. Gonna start learning ways to blast Voldy into oblivion I expect!"
"Shh!" George hissed. "You want the whole school to hear?"
Angelina caught on, her heart rate growing as she realized that finally they were going to start their secret society against Umbridge's asinine teachings. "About bloody time!" she whispered, finally letting go of some of her misery. She instinctively turned her enthused gaze down to the end of the table where Harry normally sat with Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, but found to her disappointment that he was not sitting among them. "I've got to talk to him…" she muttered to herself.
The twins went on chatting excitedly about the meeting, pausing only to glare at Malfoy, who made a dramatic entrance half-way through dinner sporting an exaggerated limp and purple bruises on his lip and eye. Angelina tried to join in the boys' conversation; they were listing off all sorts of complicated and advanced defensive spells that they wanted to learn, completely disregarding the fact that Harry was only a fifth year and didn't know half that stuff. Harry stayed in the back of her mind as she listened to them, and she made a decision. She excused herself early and left the Great Hall before dessert, determined to make Harry talk to her.
She made it up to his dorm and knocked purposefully on his door.
"Harry, open up, it's Angelina."
There was no answer. She knocked again, but she got nothing but silence. Opening the door a crack and peeking in, Angelina saw that the room was empty. The overhead light was on, and one of the windows was open, relieving some of the heavy warmth caused by the furnace in the center of the room. She eyed the room hesitantly before stepping inside, suppressing a smirk at how messy boys were. The five beds were all unmade, and there were trainers, crumbled parchment, discarded jumpers and trousers everywhere. Hedwig the snowy white owl flew in through the open window and perched herself on the headboard of what must've been Harry's bed.
Sighing, Angelina stepped forward and sat down on the soft mattress. The bed was warm. She imagined that he'd been laying on it for the better part of the day. She could faintly see the outline of his body imprinted on the sheets and twisted scarlet comforter. Angelina reached out and stroked Hedwig gently. The owl hooted softly. She always envied Harry this beautiful creature. Her own owl was dark gray with a few errant white feathers here and there, and was for the most part a pretty good bird, but Harry's was magnificent.
"Where is that stubborn owner of yours, Hedwig?" she asked the wise creature. Hedwig arched her neck and ruffled her feathers in answer. "Is he still angry? You think he'll tell me to sod off?" A bemused hoot.
Angelina waited in the quiet, hoping that his other roommates wouldn't come before he did. She'd have a tough job explaining why she hadn't just waited for him in the common room. It would seem kind of mad to anyone else-her secret desire to glimpse Harry when he wasn't around. But she admitted to herself as she looked around that it was exactly what she was doing. His trunk lay open; exposing a mess of thrown-together objects that Angelina recognized as clothes, books, rolls of parchment, and supplies. She caught a headline from an old Daily Prophet issue sticking out from underneath a stack of dirty jeans. His Quidditch boots lay abandoned next to the trunk where he'd tossed them earlier before going down to the showers. Next to those were his Quidditch robes. Harry's Firebolt was missing of course...Umbridge had it. She saw an open Potions textbook on the desk next to the bed, accompanied by a bit of parchment that had been attacked madly by the quill of an unfocused student doing an essay that was meant as punishment more than anything else. The familiar-looking round spectacles rested on top of the book; they seemed way too small for the face they normally sat on.
There was an old pocket knife sitting on the windowsill. Angelina reached out and touched her fingertips to it. She wondered what exactly Harry used it for. Boys had things like these; objects of utility that they either rarely used and just appreciated having, or that they used all the time. The knife looked worn on the outside. She flipped the blade out and saw that it was exceptionally shiny. A magic blade? Bewitched to remain sharp for years and years? She replaced the blade and put the knife carefully back where she found it.
She got up and walked around the bed, warming her hands by the furnace and sighing. She still didn't know what she was going to do about the team. Harry and the twins were a devastating loss both to the team's morale and to their winning edge. Her plan was that if she couldn't have the youngest and best Seeker at Hogwarts then she could at least get his take on who should replace him.
"Angelina?" she jumped, her eyes darting up to rest on Harry, who had appeared in the doorway with wet hair, clutching a drying towel around his waist. "What are you doing in here?"
She faltered a bit, somewhat thrown off by the sight of him in nothing but a towel. Her eyes lingered unabashedly on the scar he still had from the dragon task that made a sweeping, jagged pink pattern up his left bicep and around his shoulder where it disappeared down his back. He looked at her rather darkly at first, but then she saw his cheeks turn crimson and he averted his gaze, moving carefully around her to retrieve his glasses from the desk. As he leaned over to pick them up she saw the completed pattern from the scar arch severely and stop just beneath his shoulder blade.
Taking a breath and shaking her eyes away from the boy's flesh, she plunged ahead bravely.
"I haven't seen you all day. We should talk, don't you think?"
Harry's cheeks were still flushed, though traces of the ominous look he'd given her when he entered still lingered among the bashful gaze he cast on her now. He shifted awkwardly on his bare feet, his hair dripping noticeably. The light from the lamp overhead caught the drops of water still waiting to evaporate from his muscular shoulders rather dramatically. Angelina was having a hard time keeping her stern resolve, looking at him this way. Her attraction to him never felt so real.
"I-I just haven't felt like seeing anyone, that's all."
"Why not? Fred and George-"
"Yeah Hermione told me you guys talked. They're all right, though; they weren't the ones who started it. It was me—I blew it for the team." Harry let out an exasperated stream of breath and finally looked at her directly. "I just wanted Malfoy to belt up, you know? But he just kept on being…"
"Being Malfoy?" she offered grimly.
"Exactly. I knew that, and I went ahead and punched him."
"Bet that felt good," Angelina chanced a small grin. To her relief he returned it. She watched him tighten the towel around himself with one hand and move his wet hair out of his face with the other. "Look, yeah you screwed up." He scoffed, rolling his eyes at himself. "But I know Malfoy was asking for it. What he said about Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and your mother…"
She saw him clench his jaw at the mention of his mother. Angelina knew the story of his parents' death; everyone did. She had always felt very removed from it, however, even when she met this curious boy. But now she'd been slowly getting closer to him she admitted to herself that she wanted to know as much as possible about him—starting with his take on the legend that had come to define him in the minds of every witch and wizard in their world.
"Okay, I won't lie and say that if Malfoy did that again I wouldn't react the same," he admitted to her after a moment, sounding impressively mature about his own faults. "But I am really really sorry about all this." He let out a breath imploringly. "Really."
Angelina looked into his eyes and found his genuine desire to make it up to her evident there. This made her chest swell somewhat with girlish yearning that the tall Gryffindor rarely allowed in herself. The little twerp, she thought with amusement. He's got his tricks, doesn't he? Wonder if he meant to show himself off like that to make me not want to kick him in the arse? Snapping out of thoughts like these, Angelina perked up and smiled at him.
"So word on the street is someone's having a secret meeting tomorrow after dinner? Any chance I'm invited?"
He returned her smile. "We're meeting in the Room of Requirement at eight."
"The what?" Harry explained about the room, mentioning that it had been there last year for them when they had their little adventure during the Yule Ball. She watched the wall as he got himself dressed, pulling on an old tee-shirt and some jeans. He padded around in his bare feet to sit on the bed next to her, his hair still wet and hanging in his eyes. She listened as he told her that his plan was to start with the basics, like a simple Disarming Charm, and then move on to eventually getting everyone up to conjuring a Patronus. "Wow," she whispered when he'd finished, shaking her head in awe. "You've really put some thought into this, haven't you?"
He nodded modestly. "Been thinking about it all day, actually."
"I'm glad you're doing this Harry…" she smiled at him, looking into his crystal clear, startling green eyes. "So-" she continued after a beat. "-you've conjured a Patronus before? What's it look like?"
"It's very bright; it's this white light that sort of beams out everywhere. Mine is in the shape of a stag, like my Dad's animagus form..." Harry trailed off and closed his eyes briefly. He winced as he reached up to rub his scar.
"What's wrong?"
"Uh…my scar hurts a bit," he said vaguely, instinctively lowering his hand again at her question. He shrugged and tried to smile. "It's nothing."
"Doesn't seem like nothing…" Angelina lifted her own fingers. He stiffened, as he had the last time she'd touched him there, but remained quiet as she brushed his damp black hair aside and ran a cool finger along the jagged bolt of lightening. "Seems like it's really bothering you. How often does this happen?"
It was an innocent enough question, but she could tell he was hesitating. His eyes narrowed as if he were internally debating with himself on whether or not he should answer her. He looked as if the issue was whether or not to trust her with some information that she guessed not many people had. Angelina made the simple yet meaningful gesture of sliding closer to him on the bed. Their legs and shoulders touched; their body heat mixed and created the feelings of intimacy and safety between them. Her fingers were still on his skin, and she let them move up from his scar and lace themselves in his ebony hair. Harry closed his eyes again, swallowing as she brushed it completely out of his eyes before bringing her palm back down to his cheek and applying gentle pressure. Slowly…she brought his face closer to hers. She could see his heart beating through the thin material of his tee shirt and felt her own about to overwhelm her as well.
Their lips touched. Angelina felt a chill travel from her hair follicles to the tips of her toes. She closed her own eyes and allowed her tongue to slip warmly into his mouth, where it met with his. He reacted unsurely at first, almost pulling back, but soon caught on. Harry's shoulders relaxed and his mouth responded in time with hers; she could tell he was feeling his way through this. Her hand caressed his warm cheek, her chest swelling and deflating slowly with breathless hunger.
It wasn't long before Harry returned this hunger, actually reaching up to wrap his arms around her waste, pulling her closer to him with possessive force that excited her and made her body tingle warmly. She had only had a tiny bit more experience than he, but she had thought she was the leader in this. When the boy deepened the kiss however, she knew that he had taken the lead with his desire to explore his own sexual prowess. Even if his actions were mostly fueled by curiosity, it felt no less thrilling to have him press her into him like that. And, she thought as her breasts rose and fell against his chest with her heavy breathing, perhaps he did like her as much as she liked him.
Angelina felt his hands gripping her shirt gently as he tilted his head and plunged in, his movements becoming bolder with each passing second. She was dizzy from the heat in the room and the body heat between them. They were both so damned excited about this new way of being in the same space with each other. After the longest time of kissing, they finally let each other go to catch their breath quietly. Harry grinned at her with lips that were flushed pink like the scar on his shoulder and back. She returned the sentiment, biting her own somewhat tender lips sheepishly.
"Hey, Harry you still up here mate-?" They were startled half to death by Ron, who had come bursting in on them, actually looking agreeable for the first time that day. He stopped short, eyeing them curiously. "Whoops."
Harry cleared his throat and stood up, attempting to look nonchalant. "What's up, Ron?"
"Eh…" Ron's blue eyes went from Angelina to Harry and back to Angelina. He shifted on his feet, probably realizing that he had interrupted something, but at Harry's urging look he shrugged. "Dumbledore's back. Sawr'im at dinner. That's all I was gonna say. But, uh…y-you two look like you're talking about something important, so I'll just…"
Angelina watched, very embarrassed, as Ron backed out of the room, grinning stupidly at Harry as if he'd just opened a chocolate frog with a particularly rare wizard card in it. Harry sat down again and offered her an apologetic smile.
"Sorry…" his cheeks had grown scarlet again and he licked his lips, running a hand through his now semi-dry hair. He had no idea that he had just done two of the things Angelina loved seeing him do, and she leaned over quickly to peck him on the mouth one last time.
"If you don't want to tell me about your scar, you don't have to."
"It's not that I don't want to tell you. I-I dunno, I think maybe…" Harry was still recovering from their new-found intimacy with each other and his smile lingered. He looked off into space as he thought about what he was saying. "Well…can we talk more later? Tomorrow; and I'll tell you about it."
"Sure." Angelina ruffled his hair and stood up.
He grabbed her hand, standing up too. "Hey." He got very close to her, his eyes flickering to her lips and back into her eyes again. Swallowing a little, Harry gave her a soft, tender kiss on those lips before smiling and reaching up to flip a lock of her own hair into her face. "There. How d'you like it?"
She hit him playfully on the arm and left the room, feeling so very much better than she had all damned day.