[Author's Note: It's been a while since the last chapter. Thank you very much for your patience.]
Chapter 12: Potions and Epiphanies
The next morning, I got up even earlier than usual so I could finish the homework I had neglected the night before. I was a morning person, but even morning people don't enjoy getting up before the time they normally do. Nevertheless, I immediately dismissed the thought every time I told myself that had I not gone on a walk with Oliver, I wouldn't have had to get up so early. There would be plenty of opportunities in my life to get a full night's sleep.
After half an hour of Transfiguration and forty minutes of Potions homework, the common room finally began to liven up as much as it can liven up at eight on a Tuesday morning. I closed my Potions book and looked towards the door leading to the boys' dormitories just in time to see Oliver walk into the common room.
I left my books on the sofa and walked over to meet him. He greeted me with a half-awake smile and a short kiss.
"I was happy not to find you sleeping in the common room this morning," I said, grinning.
Oliver laughed. "Not as happy as I am that you didn't." He looked at me carefully. "You don't look like you got much sleep."
"I got up early to finish some homework."
"Oh. I'm sorry. I wouldn't have asked you to go on a walk—"
"Don't worry about it. I don't regret walking with you instead of reading about Transfiguration…."
I lost track of my train of thoughts as I saw Percy walk out of the stairway. He looked over at Oliver and me and kept walking, now more resolutely. I focused my attention back on Oliver, trying to appear as if I didn't realize Percy was in the room. After Percy passed us, I frowned a little.
"Time for breakfast, I think," Oliver said, gently taking my hand.
"Absolutely," I said, looking him in the eyes and making an effort to forget about my problems with Percy, only to find that doing so wasn't so difficult. I gave Oliver a genuine smile, and we walked, for the second time, hand-in-hand down to breakfast.
I spent most of my free time over the next week with Oliver. Unlike much of our relationship up to that point, that week cannot be defined by one or two conversations… partially because we didn't spend a lot of that time talking.
Ironically, the same thing could be said about Percy and me. Percy was continuing the silent treatment, and I did my best not to make that difficult for him. I mainly tried to ignore Percy, which wasn't difficult since he was spending most of his time with Penelope or in the library. When I couldn't avoid Percy, I ignored him.
I found it hard to really care about Percy's or my own anger towards Percy when I wasn't near him. My mind was on other things. And, for the first time in such a long time… I was happy with how things were, even if things weren't perfect.
About ten days after I told Percy how I felt about Oliver, Percy's silent treatment started to break down. As most people who have suffered such a treatment before know, once the silence is broken, you rather wish it hadn't been.
I had spent my evening in the library, going over Transfiguration notes from the previous year. I reached the point where if I had read one more word of my notes, I might have beaten my head against the table to distract myself from the pain of dying of boredom. On my way back into the common room, I almost literally ran into Percy.
The two of us stood still, looking at each other for a few seconds before Percy stepped past me. Just when I was sure he was going to keep walking, he turned. "Five points off of Gryffindor for breaking curfew last week," he said calmly.
I was too surprised that he had spoken to me to respond. Percy took advantage of the silence and left quickly. Had I been a bit less angry, it might have occurred to me to chase after him and perform whatever curse I thought of first. Instead, I stood still, murmuring words that my mum still won't allow me to use in her presence and trying to figure out how Percy knew I had broken curfew. It took me longer to figure it out than it should have. Percy and Oliver did share a room, and the three of us were in the same house, after all.
My shock wore off quickly, and my anger became less blatant. I walked over and joined the rest of the Seventh Years, who were sitting in our usual spot near the center of the common room.
"What happened?" Adam asked, not about to pretend that the group hadn't noticed the small scene that had just occurred.
"He just took five points away from Gryffindor because I broke curfew last week," I said, obviously still more surprised than I had thought.
"He took five points away from his own house?" Rose asked.
"I've done it before," Joan said.
I looked at her, surprised yet again, not because she'd taken points away from Gryffindor before, but because she was a Prefect, and I had completely forgotten that.
"It's not that he took away points from Gryffindor. It's that he took them away from me," I said, focusing on the real issue again.
"Well…." Mark said. "Look at the bright side. At least he's talking to you again. That's progress, right?"
The rest of the Seventh Years laughed, and even I smiled after several seconds. I sat by Oliver and joined in on the conversations, my anger fading quickly.
That's pretty much how the next two weeks went. Gradually, Percy stopped ignoring Oliver and me. Instead of silence, we got to enjoy occasional snide comments. At first the comments were directed mainly at Oliver, who would say something back and move on. Then Percy started directing his comments at me. At first, my surprise at being targeted by Percy prevented me from standing up for myself. Once the comments stopped catching me by surprise, I started coming up with comebacks. Some of them were pretty good, much to the enjoyment of Adam and Mark, who critiqued each exchange between Percy and me and declared a winner. The two of them kept score on a piece of parchment titled "The War in the Corridors: Laura vs. Percy". I was usually narrowly ahead of Percy. To be fair, I did have two good coaches, who were also the judges and my friends.
Each time Percy would say something to me, I would get upset, but my anger quickly faded once Percy left. Oliver tried to talk me out of my anger at first, only to learn that I got over it faster if neither of us mentioned it.
I don't mean to make it sound as if these incidents occurred very frequently. Percy wasn't going out of his way just so he could throw an insult at me. In fact, the two of us still generally tried to avoid each other. Class and meals made avoidance slightly difficult, and at those times, we sometimes exchanged a few words. At the most, this happened twice per day. In all honesty, at all other times, it was not an issue. I wasn't brooding over fighting with Percy at all hours. If Percy was out of sight (or at least out of earshot), he was out of mind.
I still spent most of my time with Oliver, and the two of us avoided the subject of Percy, which we found surprisingly easy to do. Only weeks before, the two of us had been worried that our relationship would always be defined by our fight. The fight didn't even come up often anymore. We talked about the past, but we focused on individual events that had occurred instead of on how our relationship had been at the time.
--~--~--
"Hey, gorgeous," Oliver said, as I joined the Seventh Years one night after completing an assignment.
"Hello, beautiful," I said back, smiling.
"Oh, my God…" Adam said, looking up. "Deliver us from this evil."
Most of us laughed.
"We were kidding," Oliver said.
I sat down next to him on a sofa, and he put his arm around my waist.
"I thought that was obvious when I called you 'beautiful'," I said, smirking up at him.
Oliver grinned back.
"Ughck," Adam articulated.
Tara hit him playfully. "I wish we were still more like them," she said, smiling to show she wasn't entirely serious.
"We've been in love way too long for that," Adam said, grinning up at her.
"Merlin… get a room," Rose said, smirking at Adam.
"Anyway, Oliver and I are hardly ever like that around you anymore."
"No, which is a shame," Tara said.
Joan nodded in agreement. "I thought it was cute."
I sighed, but just barely. A part of me missed it, too. Most of me, however, was glad to have the normal Oliver back. He didn't say the "cute" things as often as he had when we started dating, and he almost never said those things around other people. Yet, he also treated me differently than he had right after we'd started dating. Most of the awkwardness was gone. I didn't turn bright red whenever he so much as touched my hand, and he didn't say sappy things whenever he didn't know what else to say. We were figuring out the 'differences' in our relationship that had given us trouble at first.
"Something wrong?" Oliver said quietly, as the rest of the Seventh Years kept talking.
"Not at all," I said, leaning my head against his shoulder.
--~--~--
The next week was dominated by school. Almost everyone seemed to realize that there was only one month until the Seventh Years had to take N.E.W.T.s, which were one week before school ended. The teachers responded to this realization by increasing the amount of material we were covering and decreasing the amount of time we spent on each lesson. The Seventh Years were scared into actually taking the assignments seriously and into furiously going over old material. The rest of the school knew enough to leave the Seventh Years alone.
Halfway through that week, I had the most memorable Potions class I had during my seven years at Hogwarts. Stress from the end of the year had put most people in the school in worse-than-normal moods. This, of course, meant that Snape had to be twice as mean as normal, in order to keep up appearances.
At the beginning of the class, Professor Snape told us about the properties of the Epiphany Potion, which basically clears one's thinking, oftentimes resulting in quite bright ideas. The Sorting Hat was supposedly the result of such a potion. Snape went on to say (almost cheerfully, which was always a horrible sign), that the potion is extremely difficult to make. It requires at least two people to make it because many of its ingredients need to be prepared while the potion itself is being carefully made. The potion requires a great deal of teamwork. As all students know, as the amount of teamwork needed to do a class project increases, so does the likelihood that the teacher will choose the teams. (Interestingly, this is Fred and George's Second Law of School Sucks.)
All of us always knew when Snape was about to assign partners. He would get a certain look on his face that only appeared when he was about to try to make someone's Potions experience more miserable than it already was. Unfortunately, he was looking directly at me when this look appeared. I wasn't surprised. Snape's least favorite type of person was someone who had been unhappy in the past and, by some miracle, was actually enjoying life.
"Debman and Weasley may work together today, I believe," he said, grinning. "I generally avoid grouping friends together, but today… I'll make an exception."
I smiled sarcastically at him and grabbed my notes and book bag before making my way over to Percy's table. Snape continued pairing people together, making as many Gryffindors unhappy as possible, even if this meant making Slytherins unhappy as well. No one argued with him. If Snape had taught us nothing else in seven years, he did teach us that, in his classes, our pleas for fairness would only be met with points taken away from Gryffindor or detention.
I sat down next to Percy and looked over the notes we had just taken on the potion and the directions in the book. "You should prepare it. You're better at making potions than I am," I said, seeing that the potion was indeed quite difficult.
Percy started setting up his cauldron. "No need for niceties. Perhaps being paired up with someone in a class has worked out well for you before. It's unlikely it will again."
"Just shut up, and let's do the damned assignment," I said quietly. "If for no other reason, just so we don't make Snape's day better."
Percy and I gathered all of the ingredients we would need, and the two of us prepared all of the ingredients that could be prepared before the potion was actually started. Then Percy got started, and I kept chopping and grinding various things into tiny pieces and powders. The two of us ignored each other as much as we could. Every now and then Percy would ask if an ingredient was done. I would point. He would take whatever he'd been asking for, and we'd go back to pretending we were sitting at lab tables in separate countries.
Other people in the room were having more problems getting along than Percy and I were. Almost all of the ingredients had one thing in common: they required longer amounts of time to prepare than the people with this job actually had. About every three minutes, someone could be heard snapping at his or her partner. Snape quickly disarmed the only Slytherin actually to draw his wand on his partner. Not that Cedar needed Snape's protection. She had already brought her Potions book down over the boy's head. Snape didn't punish either of them. He just handed the Slytherin his wand and cast a warning look at the partners.
"Is the liverwort shredded?" Percy asked blandly.
"Um…." I finished as quickly as I could and handed it to him.
Near the end of the lab, all of the people preparing the ingredients were behind the point where they needed to be. Minor spats could be heard in every part of the room, but no one was listening to anyone else's problems. Percy and I were the only two not arguing verbally. We satisfied ourselves with all of the unforgiving looks we could muster. Until….
"Oh, shit!" Percy said, loudly.
I looked up from the plant I was grinding into a paste. Our potion was bubbling intensely and started to spill over onto the table. I moved the other ingredients off the table and stepped away from the potion.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I did exactly what the directions told me to do," Percy snapped. "You were the one not preparing the ingredients well enough."
"Well, they seemed to have passed your inspection, so I can't take all of the credit."
Percy turned to look at me angrily. "I did notice. The dragonstail root wasn't chopped into small enough pieces, and the elf's fingernails weren't ground finely enough, and—"
"If you knew, then why in the hell didn't you say anything?" I asked, my voice starting to get louder. I turned my body to face him directly.
"I didn't want to hurt your feelings," he said, his eyes flashing, and his voice getting quiet.
"Hurt my feelings? Since when do you care about my feelings?"
"I have always cared," Percy said, immediately sensing that the topic had changed. Years later, it occurred to me how few people in my life ever understood me well enough to have sensed such a subtle change.
Percy was furious, but I could hear a little sadness in what he'd said. At any other time, I would have felt bad for even mentioning Dan, let alone for accusing Percy of not caring about how I felt about Dan's death. On that day, I was too upset to care about Percy's feelings anymore, and I laughed dryly. "Yes. You always have cared enough not to tell me the truth."
"Because you, Laura, are the epitome of honestly itself," Percy said sarcastically.
"I would have told you the truth if I knew you already knew it!" I yelled.
"You always want honestly, unless it involves you being honest," Percy said, more loudly than before.
"Quit changing the subject!" I said, knowing it wasn't one of my best comebacks.
"You're the one who changed the subject away from the potion in the first place!"
"Fine! You want to get back to the potion? If you would have told me the TRUTH, then the potion wouldn't have BLOWN UP!"
Professor Snape walked between the two of us, pushing us aside. "Clearly the potion hasn't blown up yet, but it will if you two stand there stupidly, yelling at each other," he snapped, waving his wand and making the potion disappear. He turned to glare at me. "You both know better than to leave a potion unattended—especially a potion that is obviously incompetently made. You could have killed half of the people in the room."
"Then you shouldn't have assigned an impossibly difficult potion," I snapped without thinking, still glaring at Percy.
This got the class's attention. I was sure that the class had been listening to the exchange between Percy and me, hoping for a major blowout. However, when I turned my anger on Snape, everyone turned to see how he'd respond.
I slowly faced Professor Snape, afraid of what I would see. At first, Snape didn't say anything. He just looked at me for several seconds. I thought that this should count as sufficient punishment, but I knew that the real punishment was to come. I had just enough time to wonder what horrors Oliver had been referring to on our walk back from Hogsmeade when he told me it was best not to think about what the professors could put you through during detention.
"Apparently Miss Debman believes that I should not ask you to do lessons that I believe will truly test you. Perhaps Miss Debman feels that I should only ask things of you that I know you are capable of. I believe you have all proven that you can write papers. Maybe Miss Debman would object less to a foot-long essay on another potion which requires teamwork."
The class groaned.
"Well, Miss Debman? Is this a more suitable assignment than preparing the Epiphany Potion?" Snape asked.
"No, sir," I said, trying to answer how I thought he wanted me to.
"Very well. Make it a foot and a half."
I winced. "I meant—"
"It doesn't matter what you meant," he snapped, turning quickly. "The rest of you have potions to monitor," he said.
Percy and I sat at the desk in complete silence while the rest of the class tried their best to make an Epiphany Potion. No one's potion looked quite how the book said it should look, but no one else made their potion almost blow up either. I decided that a person who wanted to have a bright idea would be well advised to spend their time thinking instead of attempting to make that potion.
When the class period finally ended, Percy and I gathered our things and went our separate ways. He walked out of the room quickly, and I walked over to Oliver.
Oliver smiled kindly. "Rotten luck with the potion."
I shook my head. "More like rotten preparation."
"It was an impossible assignment," he said quietly, so Snape couldn't hear.
I laughed a little, mainly just to recognize his attempt at making me feel better about failing the project. "Well… what's done is done."
"Yes," Oliver said. I noticed that he had paused before agreeing, but decided I'd rather not know why.
Oliver and I waited for Joan, Tara, Adam and Cedar. Rose had apparently already left the room, and Mark had opted out of taking Potions at the N.E.W.T. level, which at the time I considered a very good idea on his part.
The six of us walked out of the classroom, trying to talk our ways out of the bad moods that the potion had put us in. Had we known what would greet us in the hallway, we wouldn't have bothered. Oliver and I, who were in the back of the group, had just walked into the hallway. The six of us stopped dead in our tracks.
Rose, who must have been talking to Marcus Flint while we were still in the Potions lab, was leaning up on her toes. She kissed Flint, firmly but quickly. That would have been enough for us completely to forget about our Potions woes. What happened next was even more shocking. Flint took her in his arms and kissed her back.
I don't think my mouth had ever dropped open as far as it did then. I wish I had thought of looking at the other Seventh Years for their reactions. I am sure their faces probably looked similar to my own.
"I. Will. Be. Damned," Adam said confidently.
Rose and Flint realized they had an audience and turned toward us. Neither one of them looked even slightly embarrassed.
"I never knew Rose could perform the Imperius Curse," Adam whispered to Tara, but all of us could hear him.
"Very funny, Still," Rose said. "I decided to take a page out of Oliver's book and act on my feelings."
"That was a month ago," Oliver said.
"I didn't say I decided it right away," Rose said.
"You've been acting on your feelings for months," Cedar said.
Rose smiled. "And it paid off. Come on, Marcus. Let's find someplace with more privacy."
Rose and Flint headed further into the dungeons, and the rest of us started making our way to Gryffindor Tower.
"I don't like that relationship," Oliver said suddenly. We'd all been relatively quiet as we tried to shake off our surprise.
I looked up at him. "What happened to 'Let's not give up hope if Rose hasn't?'?"
"That was when she didn't stand a chance, and it was funny."
"If she likes him, we should support it," I said. "She's our friend."
"It's Marcus Flint," Adam said, making a face I normally would have found amusing.
"Who are we to tell our friend whom she can and cannot date?" I asked, getting defensive.
"I didn't say we should tell her she can't date him," Oliver said.
"What did you mean, then?"
"Laura—"
"Because if you outwardly don't support the relationship, then you might as well tell her she shouldn't date him."
"What relationship?" Oliver asked, sounding more confused than anything. "They hardly know each other."
"And we hardly know him."
"It's not a huge deal…." Adam said, trying his best to smooth things over.
Oliver reached out and touched my arm. "This isn't about Rose and Flint, is it?"
I didn't answer or even acknowledge he'd said anything.
"No one's going to say anything to Rose, Laura," Joan said softly. "We don't have to like Flint in order to be glad Rose is happy."
I nodded.
Oliver took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I squeezed his hand back and barely smiled up at him.
We reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and, after Adam gave the password, walked in. There was about an hour, which students usually spent wasting time, between when class ended and when dinner was served. Most assignments took longer than one hour to complete, and the consensus was that if you didn't have enough time to finish an assignment, then there was no point in beginning it at that time. The fact that most of the Fifth and Seventh Years could now be found studying during this hour before dinner was a testament to the rest of the school as to how near the end of the year was.
"I'm going to go upstairs and get a book," Oliver said, taking his hand back.
"I think I'm going to take a nap," I said nonchalantly.
Oliver looked at me disbelievingly.
"What?" I asked.
"You've been studying more than any of us, especially more than we have during this time. Not to mention that you never take naps," Oliver said.
"Then I think I can afford missing one hour of studying, considering how much more than the rest of you I've been studying," I said, a bit snappishly.
Oliver didn't push the issue. "I'm sure you can. I'll see you at dinner?"
I nodded before walking upstairs and falling onto my bed without even taking off my shoes. I didn't bother closing the curtains around my bed. Oliver was right—I normally didn't take naps. I always woke up with a headache and feeling more tired than before. But on that day, all I knew was that I was exhausted and in a bad mood, and I hoped an hour of sleep would help cure both of these problems.
Joan woke me up for dinner. I groaned. The nap, unsurprisingly, had made me feel physically worse. I thought that this was probably a bad sign for my mood. I rolled over and told Joan that I had a headache and wasn't hungry.
"Some food will probably help your headache," Joan said.
She started tugging on my arm, making it obvious that naptime was over. I dragged myself out of bed, brushed my hair quickly, and followed Joan downstairs to meet the others. I barely even heard the conversation on the way to dinner. It wasn't until we all sat down in the Great Hall that I realized that Rose was with us and that this actually meant something that day.
"You look like hell," she said, probably in response to me looking at her as if we'd never met before.
I smiled at her frankness. "I'm just tired. You, on the other hand, look like you're having a pretty good day," I said teasingly.
"I thought we were done with that," Rose said, sounding irritated but smiling.
I cocked my head.
"We talked about Flint and me the whole way down here," she said, showing her own confusion.
"And I missed it?" I asked.
"You were there," Mark said.
"But we can have the conversation again, if you'd like," Adam offered.
"I'd rather not," Rose said.
"Please," Cedar said, sarcastically. "You like the attention."
Rose simply smiled, neither confirming nor denying this.
"How could you miss that entire conversation?" Mark asked.
"Well, I didn't realize it was important."
The group laughed at me.
"Do I get a summary, or not?" I asked, grinning.
Summaries of conversations were Mark and Adam's specialty. They'd gotten practice while judging the spats between Percy and me.
"So… that was quite a show you put on an hour ago," Adam said, and it was obvious he'd originally said this.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mark said, mimicking Rose fairly well.
The rest of us laughed, forgetting dinner. Even Rose was obviously amused. She did have a good sense of humor regarding herself.
"Right… you've completely forgotten hooking up with Flint after Potions," Adam said, remarkably like Cedar.
"The two of us did not 'hook up.' We simply decided to swap some saliva," Mark said.
"I did NOT say that!" Rose said as the rest of us cracked up.
"What are you expecting? Direct quotes?" Mark asked innocently.
"Artistic license. Keep going," Cedar encouraged.
"And are the two of you a couple now?" Adam asked, as either Tara or Joan—I wasn't sure which.
"A couple? I'll have the sucker proposing within a week—"
Mark was cut off by Rose's dinner roll hitting him in the face, which made us all laugh even harder, but ended the performance. The teasing, on the other hand, kept going. I was glad that I hadn't missed anything on the walk to the Great Hall. No one had said anything substantial about Marcus Flint. As Joan had said, we didn't have to like Flint in order to be happy for Rose. I felt horrible for doubting that my friends really meant this.
My headache went away once I had eaten something, proving Joan correct yet again. My mood improved a little as we finished giving Rose a hard time and moved on to other subjects. Lately, we had been avoiding discussing school because it inevitably led to conversations about N.E.W.T.s. We mainly talked about things that we'd done in the past. Many times the group relived events that had happened before I started hanging around with them. Sometimes I felt left out. Most of the time I had been there or had at least been aware of the events and was able to offer a different perspective for the event. During that dinner, I made sure that I was paying attention to and participating in the conversation, in case something important was discussed.
After we all got enough to eat, we started making our way out of the Great Hall. We temporarily split into two groups, based on what side of the table we'd been sitting on. My side of the table reached the doors before the other group. We stopped by the marble staircase to wait for them. As the rest caught up with us, I noticed that Percy was walking down the stairs quickly, trying to reach the Great Hall in time to have enough time to eat a decent meal. I watched him come down most of the way before turning my attention to my friends. Percy didn't do anything to suggest he'd noticed me.
I was horrible at playing it cool, but in my defense, I didn't have very good models to imitate. Oliver was looking at me worriedly, Joan and Tara were looking at me sadly, and the rest were looking anywhere but at me.
I laughed a little. "It's amazing in a castle of this size how impossible it is to avoid seeing someone."
The others laughed, relieved that I wasn't pretending as if nothing had happened… even though nothing really had happened.
"So…." Mark said. "You're back on the silent treatment. Congratulations."
I shrugged. "It's not so bad."
"No, but it's not as entertaining as when the two of you are speaking, either," he said, grinning.
I laughed. "Sorry to disappoint you. Am I ahead of Percy in your contest between the two of us? For winning our… disagreements?"
"With the point you got today in Potions, you're ahead by two points."
"I won the fight in Potions?" I asked, doubtfully.
Adam shook his head slightly. "We decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't really follow the argument."
I started walking up the staircase, and the others followed right away. "I'll take the points however I can get them," I said, forcing myself to laugh.
By the time I reached to top of the stairs, Oliver had caught up with me. He took my hand again. I looked up at him and smiled. It struck me that Oliver had barely said a word since we'd left for dinner.
"Something wrong?" I asked quietly.
"With me?" Oliver asked.
I nodded.
He gave me an odd look. "Yes," he said. "I'm worried about you."
"Me?" I asked. "Why would you be worried about me?"
"You've been acting strangely today. Taking a nap. Missing an entire conversation."
"I was tired." I laughed dismissively. "It's no wonder with all of the extra work we've had this week."
"What about fighting with almost everyone you've talked to today?"
"I haven't—are you talking about—"
I stopped talking because I realized the rest of the Seventh Years were listening. I couldn't really blame them. Oliver and I weren't lowering our voices, and it's not as if the Seventh Years could take a different route to get to Gryffindor. I pulled Oliver to the side of the hallway, and our friends paused, uncertain whether they should keep going.
"We'll come up in a minute," I said, making myself smile.
The group exchanged perplexed looks before continuing the walk to Gryffindor Tower.
"I think the aliens got to her," I heard Adam saying.
I shook my head and turned back to Oliver. "I don't have the heart to tell him that wizards told Muggles about aliens a long time ago to try to open their minds to different types of people. It didn't go over very well. Of course, the wizards probably shouldn't have tried to prove the lie with those flying lights."
"You're changing the subject," Oliver said seriously, but smiling. "You still haven't explained why you've gotten upset with almost everyone today."
"Are you talking about that whole thing about Rose and Flint on the way back from Potions?"
"Partially."
"I shouldn't have gotten that upset," I admitted. "I should have known all of you, and especially you, wouldn't have said anything to Rose, and I'm sorry I doubted you all."
"It's OK," Oliver said in a tone that suggested that he'd never really been offended. "We all know why you would think that. I mean…."
"You mean Percy said something to me about you," I said.
"Yes," Oliver admitted.
"That was what I was really upset about." I smiled. "So there's nothing to worry about."
Oliver shook his head. "That's not what's wrong."
"What?" I asked, my smile faltering.
"I know that you being angry over that wouldn't have made you miss a conversation an hour later. It never has before."
I didn't answer.
"But I think you are pissed at Percy."
"I'm always pissed at Percy."
"Yes," Oliver admitted, sounding frustrated. "I wish you would just tell me what happened during Potions."
"What?"
"Anyone listening knew that the fight wasn't about the potion. The two of you were talking about honesty more than the potion's ingredients," Oliver said, sounding slightly guilty at admitting that he'd been eavesdropping along with the rest of the classroom.
"If you wanted to know what Percy and I were talking about, why didn't you just ask that in the first place?" I asked with irritation.
"I wasn't going to ask at all," Oliver said defensively, "but I also didn't think you were as upset about it as you clearly are."
I didn't respond. I was starting to get angry again and was focusing on not directing my anger at Oliver.
"I just want to help," he said, taking my other hand in his other.
"Sometimes I miss the days when you didn't give a damn," I muttered.
He smiled. "You don't mean that."
"No," I admitted, more begrudgingly than I really felt. "It's going to sound stupid if I explain it out loud."
"I promise not to think that it's stupid," Oliver said, still smiling. "And, if it's bothering you, it isn't stupid. And whatever is wrong is going to bother me until you tell me."
"And you'll bother me until I tell you," I said, getting more to the point.
"Probably," Oliver admitted. "Now… why are you mad at Percy?"
I took a deep breath. "Because he should have told me the truth," I said quickly, as if I'd wanted to say that for a while, and it had been pushing to get out.
"About what?" Oliver asked patiently.
"Dan."
It was obvious that Oliver hadn't been expecting this. He let go of my hands and put his hands in his pockets. Many wizards did this automatically whenever something made them nervous or caught them off guard. After all, their wands were usually in their pockets.
"What about Dan?" Oliver asked carefully, evidently not completely certain that he wanted to know the answer.
"That I had been dating him," I said, with some annoyance.
"But… you already knew that," Oliver said slowly, trying to put everything together.
"Exactly!" I said, his last statement releasing more of my resentment. "Of course I already knew! Did Percy think it would have been a surprise to me if he would have told me?"
"I doubt it," Oliver said, answering my rhetorical question.
"So, if Percy knew what I knew, why in the hell, in four years, would he never once mention it? Why, in four years, was it not important enough to even suggest to me that he knew the truth and that I wasn't protecting him from anything… that all of the times that I wanted him to understand… to know that I loved his brother, too… that I was hurting, too… all of that time that I told myself that if he knew it would…. I don't know. I guess I thought that if Percy knew I loved Dan, too, that he wouldn't be able to feel like his grief had the priority. For four years, I never told him about Dan and me so Percy's pain could always come first because Dan was his brother and best friend. And in all of that time, Percy never acknowledged my grief at all."
Even I was surprised by the amount of anger I felt over this. For a month, I had barely thought about this side of the fight I was having with Percy. I had thought that I was only angry because Percy was pissed at me for dating Oliver; all of our verbal disagreements until Potions had been centered around that. For the past month, whenever I'd thought about the fact that Percy had known about Dan and me, I'd quickly thought of something else. Potions had made it hard to keep ignoring my feelings, hence my bad mood that afternoon. Oliver pressing me on these feelings made ignoring them impossible.
While I thought about my own anger, Oliver tried to sort out everything I'd been telling him. He seemed to know that it was his turn to say something, but he still was confused over what I was talking about.
"How did Percy know you dated Dan?" he asked, eventually.
"Dan told him," I said bluntly.
"Oh," Oliver said, taken off guard again.
"Of course, Dan never told me he'd told Percy," I muttered.
"And Percy told you all of this during Potions?" Oliver asked, incredulously.
"No, of course not," I said. "I don't think he meant to tell me at all."
"When did he tell you he knew?"
"The night I told him I was dating you," I answered. "For four years, silence, and then when it looks as if I'm finally moving on…," I started muttering again.
"Are you saying that Percy used Dan to try to guilt you out of dating me?" Oliver asked, starting to sound angry himself.
I put my anger on hold long enough to think about what he'd asked. "No," I decided, unwilling to portray Percy as being that cold no matter how upset with him I was. "He wasn't trying to guilt me."
"Then why would Percy bring him up?" Oliver asked.
"I don't know. I think he was afraid I'd forgotten Dan."
"You haven't," Oliver said, not jealously—just stating a fact.
"I couldn't. But Percy wouldn't know that. He's never cared to ask," I said bitterly.
"Laura… I don't like Percy," Oliver said frankly, "but I do know some things about him. I know that Percy wouldn't have kept a secret like that from you in order to hurt you."
"I know that, but it did hurt me," I said, knowing that this form of argument was childish. "Anyway, he wasn't trying not to hurt me; he was trying to avoid hurting himself."
"But isn't that why you never told him? To avoid hurting him, I mean," Oliver said, carefully, trying to make sure that I didn't turn my anger against him.
"Yes," I said.
"Maybe he thought you never told him in order to prevent hurting yourself, too."
"It's different," I said, frustrated. "I wasn't telling him something that I thought he didn't know. He wasn't telling me something he knew I already knew." My feelings prevented me from acknowledging the weakness of the argument, not to mention that I wasn't really addressing his comment.
"I know," Oliver said, sympathetically. "I'm just saying that maybe Percy was afraid to bring it up because he thought there was a reason you never did."
"There was a reason!" I said, impatiently. I didn't think about how complicated my own feelings were, let alone my reasoning supporting these feelings. "I didn't tell him because I didn't want to add my pain to his."
"Maybe he knew that," Oliver said gently.
"So, I could take on his pain, but mine was mine alone," I said, selfishly.
Oliver didn't respond. What could he say without pissing me off?
"Oliver, do you realize how hard that first year after Dan died was?" I asked.
Oliver shook his head and looked away from me for the first time since I'd started telling him what was troubling me.
"The Weasleys were supposed to take me home the morning that Dan died, but that clearly was out of the question. By the time I shook off the initial shock of everything that had happened, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had other people to deal with and barely noticed I was still there. There were people from the Ministry and St. Mungo's…. I just wanted to leave. I sent my owl to my parents with a letter telling them that they would have to come get me, and I just had to wait for them to get my letter and drive to the Burrow.
"I didn't know what else to do, so after I sent the letter, I searched for Percy and found him in his bedroom, alone. So, I sat by him, took his hand and let him cry. I tried to get him to talk about Dan, but he wouldn't. So, we sat in silence until Bill finally came to the room to tell me my parents were downstairs.
"It was the same thing at the funeral and dinner afterwards. I sat by Percy and held his hand."
"I know," Oliver said quietly, taking his hands out of his pocket to wrap his hands around one of mine. "I was there, at the funeral."
"I didn't see Percy again until school started a month later. Everything was normal unless anyone came up to tell him they were sorry about Dan. Percy would nod until the person went away, and then he would pretend as if nothing had happened. Sometimes I would find him alone in the common room late at night or in the corner of the library, not crying, but… I don't know, something close to crying. And I sat by him and held his hand until he went on pretending like everything was normal again."
I looked down at the ground, and Oliver squeezed my hand reassuringly. I looked up into his face and decided to say what I was thinking, no matter how it made me sound. "Where was he when I needed him?"
"I don't know," Oliver said.
"I don't know, either."
Oliver reached out and brushed a piece of my hair behind my ear, touching my cheek on the way. I wasn't sure why he did it. At first, I thought maybe he was brushing away a tear, but I wasn't crying. I didn't even feel like crying. I was talking to another person about Dan, but I didn't want to cry. It still hurt to talk about it, but it didn't hurt as much as it had when I'd talked about Dan earlier in the year. I took this as further evidence that, if I would have had someone to talk to, Dan's death wouldn't have hurt as much as it had for as long as it had.
After a minute of silence, Oliver said, cautiously, "Maybe Percy did think he was protecting you by letting you think he didn't know."
"Right," I said sarcastically.
Oliver ignored my comment. "Maybe Percy thought that if you could focus on helping him, it would help you with your own pain."
"Help my pain by ignoring it?" I asked critically.
"Help your pain by directing it to something else. Help it by making something else more important than it. Help it by allowing you to move past it."
I narrowed my eyes, partially because of my suspicion of the ideas and partially because of my confusion. And maybe partially to try to block ideas that sounded a bit too close to truth for comfort.
"Maybe Percy thought he was protecting you by letting you believe that you were protecting him."
Could that be true? Had it helped me to put my pain on the backburner while focusing on how Percy was feeling? I immediately dismissed the idea. It had hurt me to act as if my pain had meant nothing. I had hated ignoring my feelings.
Yet… hadn't it been easier to think about not getting any sympathy than to think about why I needed the sympathy? Hadn't I replaced feelings of my own loss with sympathy for Percy's?
"Then, all along, when I thought I was the good friend because I was protecting Percy… it was really him protecting me," I said slowly.
"No," Oliver said quickly, squeezing my hand gently. "You were protecting him—"
"I wasn't. He already knew about Dan and me."
"Laura… what do you think you were doing every time you sat beside him and held his hand?"
I looked away from him as the thought hit me. I had never felt as if I was doing anything to help Percy during those times. I had felt as if no one could do anything for Percy, except perhaps Dan. I always felt the worst for Percy when I thought about how Dan would have been the most suited person to help Percy through losing a brother.
"You both protected each other as well as you knew how. Isn't that what best friends do?" Oliver said softly.
I looked back up at Oliver, who was smiling encouragingly. I glanced down at his hands enveloping my own hand, as if they were shielding my hand from something.
No… as if he was protecting me from something.
I took my hand back, stepped closer to Oliver, and placed my arms loosely around his neck. He quickly returned my hug, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me a little closer. I rested my head on his chest.
"Thank you," I said.
"What for?" Oliver asked.
"Protecting me," I answered. I laughed a little at myself, feeling too sentimental… and feeling a little weak for needing some protection.
Oliver laughed once or twice, too. "I'm glad I can."
I thought a bit more about what Oliver had suggested about how I had dealt with my grief after Dan died, still hugging him for some support.
"I don't know if Percy really was thinking those things you said he was," I said, finally. "I think what you said is what you think I did to deal with my grief."
Oliver didn't respond, which meant that I had guessed correctly. He'd told me what he thought I'd been feeling by using Percy as a cover, in case his ideas didn't go over well.
"Don't worry," I said, smirking, although he couldn't see that. "I'm not going to get mad at you for being right."
"I wouldn't blame you for being mad at me for saying those things, true or not," Oliver said, sounding relieved anyway.
I laughed a little. "Well, I'm not angry. Not at you, anyway."
"You're still angry at Percy?" Oliver asked.
"Yes, but not as angry. I'm not as angry with him for not telling me about Dan, at least. The two of us should have talked about that years ago… and I can't cast all of the blame on that, can I?"
"I'm going to choose not to answer that question," Oliver said.
I laughed. "Good choice." I sighed. "At least I have someone to talk to now."
"Always, Laura."
I wondered why I hadn't told Oliver sooner about Percy knowing about Dan. I'd told him about so many things that had troubled me for years. Oliver was the only one to whom I'd admitted that part of me had felt responsible for Dan's death. I'd gone to Oliver when I thought I had figured out what I needed in life to be happy. Even when the two of us were barely friends, I'd been able to tell him about my worst fear of being alone for the rest of my life.
Hadn't Oliver helped me progress past all of those things? He'd helped me see that, even though Dan might not have been in the Quidditch pitch the morning he died if I hadn't asked him to join me, it didn't mean that it was my fault he'd died. Dan had decided to meet me that morning. Dan had fallen off his broom. I had done everything I could to try to help. Dan had died. But it wasn't my fault.
And after I told Oliver that I needed Percy and him to be happy in order to be happy myself, hadn't Oliver quickly assured me that neither of them would want me to be unhappy? I had needed him to point out the obvious: no fight could be responsible for all of our problems five years later. Even if Oliver, Percy and I had gone through Hogwarts as three friends, we still would have been forced to face life. If I blamed myself for everything that went wrong in my two friends' lives, I would never have any chance to be happy myself.
I was still working on getting over my worst fear. I referred to the fear as "the fear of being alone." When I'd told Oliver about it, he had tried to tell me that there was one person for everyone. It was one of the only times Oliver's words made me feel worse, not better. After all, I was afraid of there being one person for everyone. I was afraid that "my" person had died the summer before my fourth year. Dating Oliver had made my fear subside, partially. Ultimately, I decided that Oliver had been wrong, at least as far as I was concerned. I decided that there was more than one person for me… or I was there for more than one person. One of those people had died. It was no reason for me to be lonely.
And, with time, the conversation we had just had would fall under the category of talks with Oliver that changed how I viewed my own life. Eventually, I would be able to admit that taking care of Percy, and maybe even resenting Percy a little, had helped me deal with Dan's death. It might not have been the best approach to dealing with my feelings, but it had worked, at least a little. More importantly, I saw that I had been there for my best friend when he needed me the most. That was enough to stop being angry with Percy over that situation. And hadn't Oliver helped me realize that?
Hadn't Oliver helped me see all of that?
I took a step away from Oliver, sliding my arms away from his neck, but keeping my hands on his upper arms, near his elbows.
"I love you, Oliver," I said.
It suddenly occurred to me that we had been having this conversation in a hallway that did get a heavy flow of traffic. How many people had walked by since we had started the conversation? How many people had heard bits and pieces? I looked around quickly to see if anyone was in earshot at the moment. Then it struck me that I couldn't do anything about what people had or hadn't heard. Shouldn't I be more concerned that I'd just told Oliver that I loved him?
I'd just told Oliver that I loved him? I scanned his face quickly. There was a look of surprise there. So, yes… I must have said it aloud. I continued monitoring his face as the surprise was slowly erased by a small smile.
I took this to be a good sign and smiled back. "I love you," I repeated, paying attention so I could hear myself say it. "And I have for a long time," I added.
He smiled at me a little more broadly. "I love you, too," he said.
"You do?" I asked, tears coming into my eyes. I wondered why it was that I wanted to cry more now than I had at other points in the conversation.
He laughed. "Yes, I do." He pulled me a little closer to himself. "And I have for a long time," he said quietly.
I laughed too, glad to have a reaction more suited to happiness than shedding tears. I put my arms back around his neck and kissed him.
The kiss lasted for a minute, until I heard people walking down the hallway and broke away from Oliver.
A large group of Second and Third Year Gryffindors walked past us, talking loudly amongst themselves. I wondered if they even noticed that we were standing there. Oliver and I watched them disappear around a corner, and then laughed—I wasn't sure why.
"We should probably get out of this hallway," I said, taking one of Oliver's hands in my own.
He nodded and the two of us walked back towards Gryffindor. We didn't say anything until we were almost to the Fat Lady's portrait.
"The rest of the Seventh Years are probably wondering whether we'll come back as a couple or just as friends," Oliver said, laughing a little.
"Why? Were you worried?" I asked, grinning.
He laughed, self-consciously. "I wasn't sure what you were upset about. For all I knew, you were ready to break up with me. So… yes, I was a little worried."
We reached the portrait, but neither of us gave the password.
I looked at the portrait for a few seconds, and then looked at Oliver. "You really think they're worried about us?"
Oliver shrugged. "A little."
I paused, thinking about the studying that I was going to be facing as soon as I walked into the common room. "Think they'll survive?" I asked.
Oliver laughed. "I think they'll make it."
"Would you like to take a walk?" I asked, grinning.
"That sounds like a good idea," he said, taking my hand, as the two of us walked away from the common room.
I decided to ignore what the Fat Lady was muttering to herself about people bothering her for no reason. Maybe it was just my good mood, but I didn't think she sounded as angry as she usually did when someone bothered her for no reason.
[Author's Note: When I told you all that the last chapter was difficult to write, I forgot to knock on wood. This chapter showed me some of what "difficult to write" really means.
The conversations in this chapter gave me fits! Especially difficult was the final conversation between Laura and Oliver. Suffice it to say that I have five different drafts of the conversation. Considering how much had to be revealed in just a few pages, I'm satisfied (enough) with how it turned out.
The internal conflicts that Laura had over Dan are about as resolved as they are going to get. She forgave herself for the circumstances of his death. This chapter starts the process of her accepting that Dan's death hurt her. I do think that these are two different conflicts: dealing with the death and dealing with her feelings over it. And I do think the latter would be harder for her to come to accept.
But the story is not finished! There are still conflicts to attend to and things for the characters to learn about themselves and each other.
I have to admit that Fred and George's Second Law of School Sucks was inspired by The Laws of Applied Terror. They can be found at http://www.basicquotations.com/index.php?aid=999999
If that link doesn't work, google "First Law of Applied Terror."
Thank you to all of the people who have reviewed this story! I've responded to every one (or will soon) and will continue to do so. I figure if people take the time to write a review, I should take the time to let them know I read it.
Thanks again to electronicquillster/Marie Dantes for the extra advice and entertaining e-mails. And to Rose for gently reminding me that it had been forever since I put the last chapter online.
Coming up in the next chapter: Relationships around Oliver and Laura influence their own relationship.