Chapter 10

Rumination

A/N: Oliver's POV

"You don't get to stand there and judge me just because you were too scared to do anything. That's not on me, Wood."

I could see her vividly imprinted against the backs of my eyelids every time I began drifting off to sleep, so instead I lay awake in my four poster bed, mulling over the same fraught conversation from the previous afternoon for the thousandth time. My mind probed the tender memory.

I hadn't planned on kissing her. But she was standing so close as she berated me, her singular heat enveloping me, pulling me in like gravity. In the end, I couldn't help it.

I'd always imagined her lips would be soft, but I'd severely underestimated how good it would feel to have her pressed between me and the wall. And for a moment, she had kissed me back. Hungrily.

When her hand connected with my face, the moment had shattered. Along with the momentary pain, an unflinching shame had washed over me.

Of course she wouldn't want to kiss me, I thought bitterly. Considering I forced myself on her, what else could she have done?

She was dating someone else, it was a tosser move to make. In what world would that have gone well? Stupid.

I shouldn't have done it. Instead of taming the deep, unspoken need for her that had built steadily over the last year, I now wanted to kiss her again more than ever. Did that make me an ass? Probably.

Percy's snores rattled through the room, punctuating the insufferable silence. The sun would start to rise soon, its first rays peeking through the tempered glass windows and signifying the daily melting of the thin layer of frost on the ground outside.

My eyes traced the burgundy curtain overhead. Should I apologize? Would that be worse?

I was running out of time. We had practice at 4:00 this afternoon, and I was in no shape to lead it. I closed my eyes, willing sleep to take me for just an hour before I had to drag myself out of bed.

Sleep didn't take me.

Even so, I found myself at the Gryffindor table between Fred Weasley and Alicia Spinnet at half eight, reading the Daily Prophet and pretending not to monitor the entrance to the Great Hall for Katie.

"Wha do yuh keep lookin' o'er there?" Alicia asked through a mouthful of English muffin, spraying crumbs over the table.

I glowered at her.

She held her hands up innocently, undoubtedly weighing the risks of extra laps at practice against her insatiable nosiness.

When Katie failed to show up to breakfast before the first class of the day, I tried not to panic.

It was not a fruitful endeavor. In Transfiguration, I failed to turn a glass into a sword despite the fact that I'd mastered the spell weeks ago. In Charms, I had tuned out Professor Flitwick's lecture to the point that he pulled me aside after class and asked if I was alright.

I felt like an automaton, walking numbly through my lessons while my mind played through every scenario that could potentially occur at practice. I had come up with three possibilities:

1. Katie had locked herself in her room to ruminate over everything until she'd gone blind with rage, a limitless anger which she would unleash upon me during Quidditch practice at 4:00.

2. She was deeply hurt and feeling betrayed. I'd ruined any chance at something with her because I was a prat and I'd taken advantage of her. She would ignore me, and it would be obvious that I'd severely fucked up to everyone on the team.

3. Some dreadful combination of the two.

I don't know which option was the most concerning, but option three loomed over me every second of the day.

I rubbed my tired eyes as I trudged out of the Charms classroom. I had an hour until practice, during which time I usually set up drills on the field or read through my plan for the evening. It was something automatic that took over, forcing me down the moving staircases to the entrance hall, then over the soft earth of the grounds to the Quidditch pitch.

It was as though a hive of bees had nested in my head, their buzzing a symphony an echo of the endless question: to apologize or to pretend it didn't happen?

I had a horrible, sinking wish that I hadn't kissed her in the first place - not because I hadn't wanted to, but because it was irrevocably marred by the timing, the experience, the misery of yesterday. It had changed everything.

I stalked up to the locker rooms and shoved open the door. I'm the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, I reminded myself, it doesn't matter what happens off the pitch, the next two hours are for Quidditch only.

Like a sigh of relief, the resolve washed through me. I stretched my neck and opened the door to my locker.

By the time the rest of the team arrived, I was pacing around the pitch. I scanned my notebook to review my plan for the day, so engrossed that I hardly noticed that Katie was quietly speaking with Alicia and George by the foot of the goal posts. Hardly being the operative word.

"Oi!" I shouted, cutting over the idle pre-practice chatter, "Start with the triangle drill, I want accuracy to be the focus first, then speed."

There were light grumbles of protest over the rudimentary drill, but they kicked off into the sky.

Out of habit, my eyes did their usual unnecessarily long flicker to Katie as the chasers set off in their passing triangle, quaffle sailing between them casually. I suppressed the little flicker of conflicted discomfort and scanned the field for Fred and George, who drifted toward the chasers' passing triangle with zero sense of urgency.

"You're flying sloppy, beaters!" I called, "It's called a triangle drill, not a rectangle. Get on that angle!"

George altered course to approach the chasers from an acceptable diagonal, toward the area in which the bludger was more statistically likely to be drawn. (It was a bit of a science. My favorite Quidditch playbook had an entire chapter on the magnetic sort of hold a witches' or wizards' power had over magical objects like a bludger - while bludgers weren't designed to signal out an individual with the intent to maim, they had a tendency to orbit areas of the field in which there was a higher concentration of players).

As if on cue, a bludger curved into George's path and there was a resounding thwack of his club against the ball as he lobbed it ruthlessly toward Angelina.

Angelina shot into the air to get out of the way.

"FOLLOW!" I roared to Katie and Alicia, "Maintain your shape!"

The two chasers parted around the bludger, soaring up to meet Angelina and re-forming their passing triangle.

"Good," I said, nodding, "Go again."

If we could keep up the fundamentals we'd be in good shape for our game next month against Ravenclaw.

Half an hour later when the team touched down for a water break, Angelina announced her discontent.

"Since we're playing the nerds in a few short weeks, do you think we should try something more complicated than passing in a triangle?" Her voice was dry.

"Following that, have you considered that you're nitpicking our plays because you're stressed out?" Katie piped up, raising an eyebrow with an uncharacteristic lack of patience.

I bristled.

"Maybe, yeah," I snapped, unable to rein in my temper, "But maybe I don't want to lose against your boyfriend's team, Bell. Or are you too caught up in your romance to take practice seriously? Did you tell him you'd cut a deal for him? Throw the match for a special favor?"

This initiated a chorus of "ooooooh"s from the Weasleys. I'd gone too far.

"Ex-boyfriend," Katie said, her eyes narrowing at me, "And I take practice perfectly seriously. If I wanted to fuck Davies I wouldn't have to throw away a Quidditch match for it, Wood. I'm plenty appealing without whoring myself out at the expense of my team."

"Ooookay," Alicia cut in, eyes jumping between us, "How about we table this conversation and try again after a scrimmage?"

For a tense moment, no one moved.

Katie and I were standing on opposite sides of the circle of players, glaring at each other. I had no idea what was going on behind those eyes, and despite the fact that looking at her felt like dipping an amputated limb in a bucket of salt, I couldn't ignore the little flame of riotous joy - at least she was speaking to me, even if she was throwing around a thought that she knew would darken my mood. The mental image of her and Roger in a passionate embrace was something I had tried hard not to imagine over their brief courtship.

Ex-boyfriend. When did that happen? Was it before or after we'd kissed? Was that why she'd slapped me?

"Come on," Fred slapped me on the back, hard, "Scrimmage!"

Ex-boyfriend. Merlin.

"Kates," Alicia muttered, grabbing Katie's shoulders and physically turning her away from me.

"You're a prat, you know that?" Alicia called over her shoulder as she and Katie walked the other direction.

"Aye," I said to myself, climbing onto my broom and launching into the air.