Chapter 19: Owed Apologies
The timer on the oven in my parents' house went off earlier than I'd been expecting. I cursed under my breath and threw my heavy, winter cloak on over my Muggle clothing. Imagining I smelled smoke, I sprinted down the stairs and into the kitchen. I needn't have worried; Mum already had the chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, sitting on their baking sheets on the counter.
"I'm running late," I stated the obvious.
"Yeah, a little," Mum said, taking the cooling racks out of the cupboard for me. "Why didn't you just make these at home? It has to be easier to make these by magic."
"It is," I said, going through drawers, looking for a spatula, "but they taste better when they're made by hand." I found the spatula and brought it over to the counter upon which the cookies sat. "They were a great success last time I went."
"If food tastes so much better when it's 'handmade,' then why don't you get an oven?"
I laughed. "Because then I would have to ask for your help. If I try to make food here, I know you'll help me."
Mum smiled appreciatively. "You said you were going to see Oliver Wood?" she asked nonchalantly.
"Yeah." I started moving the cookies onto the cooling racks too soon. They started falling apart. I thought about whether or not cooling the cookies with magic would make them lose their non-magical flavor, and I decided that it wasn't worth taking a chance after going through all of the effort of baking the cookies.
"The boy you dated at Hogwarts?" Mum asked, failing at sounding uninterested.
"Yes," I answered, even though I knew she knew the answer. I'd told her when Oliver and I had started dating, and, right after I'd come home after graduation, I'd told her we'd broken up.
"Is it a date?" she asked, taking another spatula out of a drawer in order to help me move the cookies off the baking sheets.
I laughed. "You sound like Ian."
"Is that a bad thing?" Mum asked, grinning. She had heard me talk a great deal about work, and she liked hearings stories about Ian more than any other person at the paper.
I raised my eyebrows. "Depends what you're—or he's—saying."
"And in this case?"
"In this case, you're both wrong. It's not a date. Oliver's little cousin invited me to go to the party, and the kid's impossible to say no to, so I agreed to go. That's it."
"OK," Mum said, sounding unconvinced but unwilling to start a conversation that could lead to an argument over the matter. "Are you Apparating there?"
I nodded. "Yeah, I know where it is and remember enough about the place. It'll be fine."
Out of all of the magic my mother knew about, Apparition was the spell she distrusted the most. It probably had something to do with the 'seeing is believing' concept. I could make something levitate, and my mum could accept it because she saw the whole process. When I Disapparated, Mum never saw me arrive somewhere else. When I Apparated, Mum never was sure where I came from.
"Be careful." That's always what she said when I told her I was going to Apparate somewhere. Once, not long after I'd turned seventeen, I'd Apparated upstairs just to make the process seem more graspable for her. She'd only gotten upset with me for using magic frivolously.
Mum finished moving the cookies off the baking sheets, and she started moving dishes over to the sink. I started to help her, but she shook her head and smiled. "You're late. Go finish getting ready."
I smiled my thanks and went back upstairs to brush my teeth and to grab my camera. Mum had the cookies on a cheap serving plate with some aluminum foil covering them by the time I got downstairs.
"How'd you cool them so fast?" I asked.
"I put them in the freezer," Mum said, grinning.
I laughed as I took the plate from her. "Genius."
"Practical," Mum responded, laughing along with me. "Have fun at your party."
"Thanks, Mum." I pecked her on the cheek and walked out of the room to Disapparate so that Mum wouldn't have to watch it.
The front door to the Woods' large house in Scotland was already open when I Apparated onto the front steps. I hadn't been thinking about the fact that many other people would be coming in through those doors. A middle-aged couple had just walked into the small entrance hall, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn't landed on them.
I moved off the steps and to the side of the door while I waited for the pair to exchange civilities with Mr. Wood and Oliver, whom I could hear speaking to the couple. I feared that my sudden nervousness at being back at the Woods' home might be interpreted as impatience. After I heard Mr. Wood move the couple along, politely of course, I stepped back into view, acting as if I'd just arrived.
Oliver was just about to shut the door to keep the winter air out of the house. He grinned when he noticed me walking up the few steps to the landing, my hands gripping two sides of the plate.
"Ah, Miss Debman," Mr. Wood said, seeing me. "Come in. It's cold outside."
He was correct about the cold, and I followed his directions, smiling at him as kindly as I could. I hadn't seen him for four years, but I still did not trust him. If anything, my distrust had increased since the wedding. I was relatively sure that he wouldn't say anything to me in front of Oliver, but I couldn't be quite sure. Really, I couldn't be sure that Mr. Wood would say anything unpleasant to me at all, even if Oliver wasn't there.
Oliver shut the door behind me. "I wasn't sure if you'd Apparate or use Floo Powder."
"I came from my parents' house, so I had to Apparate," I answered, shivering a little because of the temperature difference between the entrance hall and the front yard. I'd been out in the cold just long enough to feel it.
"And do I smell chocolate chip cookies?" Mr. Wood asked.
I smiled more sincerely and nodded.
"Homemade?"
"Of course," I said. "My mother did most of the work, honestly." I pulled back the aluminum foil and offered the plate to Oliver's dad.
"Thank you," Mr. Wood said, taking one of the smaller cookies off the top of the pile. "Oliver can take those into the kitchen for you. You know where the main room is?"
I nodded and let Oliver take the plate from my hands. To keep my hands from showing any of my anxiety, I clasped them together in front of me.
"You can come with me to the kitchen, if you'd like," Oliver said, starting to lead the way.
After nodding once to Mr. Wood, who returned the gesture with a small smile, I began following Oliver to the back of the house.
"Joan will be happy to see you. I told her you might be coming," Oliver said after we'd gotten down the hall from his father. "The others are here, too."
"Even Rose and Flint?" I asked.
Oliver nodded. "They're still in that honeymoon phase, though. It's rather unpleasant for the rest of us," he said seriously.
I laughed, and the two of us had to step aside for a group of young children, who were running down the hallway in the same direction we were going. A couple of young women, a few years older than us, followed in their wake, smiling at Oliver and me as they passed.
"A lot more younger ones now that our generation's getting older," Oliver noted.
I didn't know how to respond. I'd never really thought about the matter before. The people I were around most of the time were so submersed in their careers that they weren't thinking much about starting families.
"A little scary, isn't it?" Oliver asked, smiling slightly.
"Bloody terrifying," I said quickly.
Oliver laughed at my immediate response and started walking to the kitchen again. It only took a few more seconds to reach the small room with the door that led to the backyard. I was surprised at how well I remembered the house. Everything looked pretty much exactly how it had been when I'd visited five years previously.
"My mum's been talking about these cookies every New Year's since you brought these," Oliver said as he set my mum's plate on a table with the rest of the desserts the guests had brought.
"You're lying," I said, but I smiled anyway.
Oliver laughed. "OK, you caught me. I've been talking about these cookies every New Year's since you brought these."
My grin didn't falter, though I felt my cheeks get a little warm.
"I'll take you to the other seventh years," Oliver said, moving past me to open the door into the hallway again.
After we were about halfway to the hall where the party was held, I asked, "Do you all get together very often?"
Oliver shook his head. "No, just here, once a year. I hardly see any of them other than at these parties."
"Do they see each other often?"
I was walking slightly behind Oliver, so he had to glance over his shoulder to look at me.
"Er… Tara and Joan see each other fairly often because Joan baby-sits for them. And Mark and Adam see each other sometimes, I think." After a short pause, he added, "We all ought to make more of an effort, I suppose."
I agreed with him.
"But don't worry about it. Things go back to normal when we are together," Oliver said, briefly looking over his shoulder at me again. "Well… except Adam and Tara have to look after the kid sometimes. And, one year, Joan had to leave because there was an emergency at St. Mungo's. And during the war, Rose couldn't come one year because she was on duty at the Ministry."
"That's 'back to normal'?" I asked sarcastically.
Oliver laughed under his breath. "Now it is."
We walked into the large room and had to cross the empty space in the middle of room to get to the table where our friends were sitting. Joan stood to greet me with a hug, and the others around the table said hello from their seats. I returned their salutations with a wave and a hello of my own.
"I have to get back to the door, but I'll join you all as soon as I can," Oliver said to the group at large. "Save me a seat," he added, looking at me.
I smiled and nodded before taking the chair that was nearest to me. I glanced around the table quickly. I'd seen all of the seventh years at least once during the previous four years. Working in Diagon Alley made chance run-ins more likely. As a whole, the old seventh years looked slightly older, naturally, but the older appearances were not only from the physical differences between a person who is seventeen and that person when he or she enters his or her twenties. The seventh years presented themselves differently. They had a great air of independence. They seemed more responsible. More mature. They were adults.
"About time you decided to show up," Adam said good-naturedly, grinning from across the table. He had a two-year-old girl sitting on his knee. Her head was cocked to one side as she looked at me curiously. "This is Laura, Claire. Say hi to Laura."
The girl waved shyly and mouthed 'hi'. I said hello back, smiling broadly at the little girl with blonde hair, like both of her parents.
"She's a little shy," Tara said, reaching out and stoking her daughter's hair a couple of times to get out a few small snarls.
"She gets that from her father, of course," said Evan, leaning past Joan to smirk at his brother. I correctly decided that it was safe to presume that he was still dating Joan, based on his presence at the party and his spot at the table. Not to mention the fact that they were holding hands.
Of course, it could have been easy to miss Evan and Joan holding hands because their actions were being vastly overshadowed by Rose and Flint, who were somehow managing to make it appear as if they were sitting in one chair despite both having a chair of their own.
Rose practically beamed at me, which I found rather unnerving. That's not to say that Rose didn't smile much, but rarely was her smile so large and open. Flint's smile and gaze were only for his wife. While I had to admit that the couple was cute, I also immediately agreed with Oliver: it was rather annoying to see the two people with normally cold personalities so… smitten.
Still, I congratulated the couple, and they thanked me quickly before turning their attention back to each other. I was just as happy to focus on other occupants of the table, and I gave my best wishes to Cedar and Dave for their recent engagement. The two were happier to turn the congratulations into a conversation, which Joan, and gradually everyone else, happily joined.
I quickly forgot that I had been nervous to be with the whole group again. Little had changed in how the group got along, although the topics of discussion had shifted greatly. Because we saw each other so infrequently, it was easy to talk for an hour about what everyone had been up to at work and at home.
Rose, Mark and Flint were all doing fairly well in the Ministry, though none had received any spectacular promotions at the time. Mark enjoyed the competitive environment, and Rose and Flint liked having the same work hours, so all three were happy working for the government.
Joan was astonishingly busy working at St. Mungo's. She was the newest midwife to join the staff, and the others were happy to give her the least desirable hours and patients who lived in the places that were the hardest to reach. Evan joked with the group about how they didn't get to see each other enough, and while that was probably true, no one took him seriously, both because the couple seemed happy and because he was Adam's brother.
Adam's acting career was going well, and the tendency for his play practices and performances to be in the evening made it possible for him to stay at home while Tara worked at the Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, to which she'd recently been promoted. It was clear that their home life came before their work, so I couldn't relate to them as well as I had when we had been fellow students, but their dedication to their daughter made me respect them more. The two were meant to be parents. They weren't perfect at it. It was fairly clear to all of us that their firstborn was going to be a bit spoiled and maybe a bit naĂŻve, like her father. However, the child was happy and healthy, and at two, what else really matters?
Oliver joined the group after a little over an hour, and dinner was set out within minutes of that, but neither changed the conversation much. Mark and Adam liked hearing about life as a professional Quidditch player, so the discussion still was very centered on our present lives. As we girls grew tired of the sports topics, we started our own chat about more interesting matters: the rumors we'd heard about the people with whom we'd graduated from Hogwarts. I told them the basics of what Percy had been up to, but kept my worries out of it. In his career, Percy was doing very well, and that's what he'd want me to tell others about, so I strayed very little from the subject of Ministry of Magic while speaking about him.
I'm sure that Rose and Flint stayed with the conversation as long as they could, but once other guests at the party started finishing dinner and moving onto the dance floor, the newlyweds couldn't turn down actually having an excuse to be touching each other. They hastily excused themselves from the table and moved to the center of the room to flaunt their happiness. Cedar was quick to force Dave to dance with her, and Evan and Joan weren't far behind them. I thought that Tara and Adam were going to stay for a while, but Claire was rather restless and wanted to play with the other small children, so the couple took their daughter to the backyard, to which many parents and children had been disappearing.
"And then there were three," Mark said, glancing at all of the empty chairs.
Oliver and I laughed, both of us thinking that three was better than two because we knew who the two left at the table would be.
"Guess I could try to find someone to dance with so that the two of you can dance without feeling badly for leaving me," Mark said, turning to see if any eligible witches were sitting at the tables behind him.
"Oh, that's all right," I said quickly.
Mark gave me a short, intent look, but he quickly shrugged and smiled. "OK, then. I guess it's the three of us," he said a bit less sarcastically.
"Looks that way," Oliver said.
Mark's optimism concerning his company had come too soon. Silence was about the only thing that the three of us could produce correctly. All of us tried to start a pointless discussion or two by making an obvious remark about our surroundings, but the only response that an obvious remark can get is agreement or sarcasm, neither of which last very long.
Oliver was the first to crack. "I'm quite thirsty," he said, picking up his empty cup. "I'm going to get some punch. Would either of you like some?"
"Oh, sure," Mark said, passing his own glass across the table, which Oliver took while standing.
"Laura?" Oliver asked, gazing down.
"Are Fred and George here?" I asked.
"Yes," Oliver responded, furrowing his brow in confusion.
"Then I think I'll pass," I said, remembering how the punch had faired the last time I'd visited the Woods', "but thanks anyway."
Oliver nodded once before walking away to get refreshments.
"I think I might have to go find someone to dance with," Mark said quietly, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to hear him or not.
I was debating whether I should tell him that I wouldn't blame him or not. In one sense, I wouldn't blame him for wanting to leave the awkward 'conversation' at our table, but on the other hand, I would blame him for possibly making the situation even worse for me. I didn't have much time to weigh my options because my thoughts were broken off by a short tug on my sleeve.
"Wanna dance?"
I looked over to my right to see Bernard's small face looking up at me, smiling. I smiled back. "Do you know how?"
"No," Oliver's cousin said, undaunted by that tiny problem. His smile only got bigger, making his dark eyes get smaller.
I laughed cheerfully. He really was a cute little kid and almost impossible to say no to, but that hadn't spoiled him yet. "All right," I agreed.
Bernard grabbed my hand from where it was resting on the table, and I stood up quickly and grabbed my cloak.
"I'll be back soon," I told Mark.
He smirked. "Well, at least one of us found a dancing partner."
I smiled back briefly before Bernard tugged on my arm. I followed the boy through the crowd of dancers. He could dodge between people more easily than I could, which was leading to me apologizing more than Bernard found it necessary to do.
"Where are you going?" I asked after we'd gone through the entire room and into a hallway.
"Outside," Bernard said, watching where he was going and making his way to the kitchen quite quickly.
"It's cold outside," I said, more out of amusement that as an objection.
"No, it's not," he said simply, opening the door leading to the backyard.
I shut the door behind us. "Why are we going outside?" I asked.
"Grown ups dance inside."
I almost said 'I am an adult,' but that sounded rather childish. So, instead, I silently walked behind Bernard into the crowd of younger people. There were many more small children outside than there had been when I'd been at the party five years previously, and once again it struck me that these were likely the children of people I went to Hogwarts with. There were some people who were Hogwarts-aged, and they had grouped together with some couples dancing on the edge of the crowd. To me, that whole situation looked as if it would be quite uncomfortable, but that's where Bernard led us.
"What now?" Bernard asked, facing me but not letting go of my hand.
I had no idea. Clearly, we couldn't dance how Oliver had taught me. For one, Bernard wasn't tall enough to comfortably hold my hand or put his hand on my waist, and I wasn't going to dance on my knees. Secondly, I probably couldn't have taught Bernard, a four-year-old, how to dance even if I'd wanted to. Still, I had to figure out something.
"Give me your other hand," I said, holding out my hand that Bernard hadn't used to drag me into the backyard.
Bernard followed my directions. "Now what?"
"Er… sway."
"Sway?" Bernard asked, looking up at me doubtfully.
"Yeah," I said more confidently, "sway. Pick up one foot a little."
He did. I picked up my opposite foot.
"Now put that foot down and pick up your other foot, just a little."
We both did this at the same time.
"Now keep doing that."
So we did, picking up our feet, just a little, making ourselves sway.
The teenage girls dancing nearby thought it was cute and made sounds indicating this. I looked over long enough to see the boys smiling; they knew that it would be a mistake not to show a reaction to a scene their female dancing partners were gushing over.
Some of the younger children also noticed Bernard and I dancing, and they started mimicking us nearby, holding hands and swaying. They didn't bother breaking into pairs of one boy and one girl. It was only a new game, after all. I heard some laughing from behind me, right next to the house. A small group of adults was sitting in chairs, monitoring the yard, which primarily was full of children still too young to go to Hogwarts. I didn't blame the adults for choosing that location. Bernard hadn't lied; it wasn't cold outside—at least not where we were 'dancing'—but it wasn't room temperature, either.
Bernard and I kept swaying for about five more minutes, making common adult-child small talk. It was somewhat hard for me because I was unsure what young wizards did all day. They didn't have televisions, after all. Turns out that they mainly play inside or nearby the house, listen to the radio (while playing inside the house) and have short lessons on reading, writing and math with their parents. The difficulty of keeping the conversation with Bernard interesting kept my attention, and I didn't notice when Oliver entered the scene.
"May I cut in?" Oliver asked, coming up beside us on the side of the younger children. He was looking at Bernard, smiling kindly.
I doubted that Bernard had ever heard the expression 'cut in' before, but he seemed to get the general idea of what Oliver wanted. "No," Bernard said simply and almost politely.
Oliver laughed and said, "Uncle Frank is looking for you. Something about needing help with Wizards and Warlocks?"
Bernard definitely understood this statement. He dropped my hands and bolted towards the door that led into the kitchen, catching the attention of most of the adults outside. All of us watched as Bernard struggled a bit with the door before it was opened by a young woman coming to join the group of supervisors.
"Well..." I said, "I guess I don't compare with Wizards and Warlocks."
"Who does?" Oliver asked.
After a short pause, I asked, "Does Wizards and Warlocks take long to set up?"
"It takes a little time."
I checked my watch. "It's not even eleven."
"Not that much time," Oliver admitted. "Mark told me where you went, and… I just didn't want Bernard to bother you."
"Oh, he wasn't."
We made a little bit of small talk about Bernard, but we quickly ran out of material, so we looked around the yard, pretending that we had purposely stopped talking. The adults were gossiping with each other while looking frequently to the young children, who were still playing the new game I had inadvertently invented. The teenagers were joking with each other in small circles of friends, or they were dancing with each other on the outskirts of the group of students.
"What are they doing?" Oliver asked at last, looking down at the small children on his left.
"Dancing," I said simply.
He looked over at me, raising an eyebrow.
"You try to teach a four-year-old how to dance," I said in mock defensiveness.
"Oh, I'll teach him how to dance," Oliver said, "in another… six or seven years. It's a good skill to have."
I laughed. "You mean it will help him meet girls."
"It already has," he said, motioning towards me.
I nodded. "That's true."
Oliver nodded, too, but once again the conversation faltered. I looked away from him. The teenagers were still chatting and dancing. Some of the children were starting to realize that swaying back and forth really isn't much fun, especially if you can't keep time with the music. The adults laughed at something that must have been particularly funny.
"I haven't been out here on New Year's Eve in years," Oliver said, partially to himself. "You never got to see this side of the party, did you?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "We spent most of our time inside when I came."
"Right." Oliver looked around a bit more. "I wish you had gotten to see this side of everything."
I shrugged.
"It's much more fun when you're a part of it," Oliver said, incorrectly identifying my shrug as one of indifference.
"I'll take your word for it," I said, smiling.
Oliver nodded. "I guess you'll have to."
"Guess so."
Oliver's face lit up a bit. "Or we could dance now."
I froze, having not expected the offer.
Oliver hurriedly added, "I did tell Bernard that I would cut in."
"You also said that your dad was looking for him," I said after recovering from the momentary surprise.
Oliver smiled. "It wasn't a complete lie. The adults inside really were looking for him."
"Well… then… I'm glad you didn't lie to him for my sake." I smiled to show that I was joking, and the group of adults started laughing again. For a moment, I thought they were laughing at the two of us, but I realized that fear was groundless. The adults didn't care about Oliver and I having a conversation any more than the little kids starting a game of tag or the dancing teenagers in their own little worlds did.
"We don't have anyone else to dance with," Oliver said matter-of-factly, not insultingly.
"I'm sure you could find someone."
Oliver laughed a bit, self-consciously. "So that was a 'no'."
"It wasn't a 'no'," I said, starting to feel myself turning red. I took a moment to wonder what had taken so long for me to start blushing.
"Then what was it?"
"It was a… 'I just don't think it's a good idea'," I said.
"Why?"
I grasped for words, finally finding, "Everything between us is… going well how it is…. No need to risk messing that up."
"By dancing?" Oliver asked, grinning.
I didn't respond.
"I don't mean anything by it," he insisted.
"Really?" I asked skeptically, turning my body to face him directly.
Oliver smiled a bit more. "We were only friends last time we danced."
"Yes," I admitted.
"So let's dance," he said, sensing that he was about to win. "For our old friendship's sake."
I paused before realizing that I was being stubborn. There was no reason to say no. No practical reason.
"Oh, all right," I conceded.
Oliver smiled more genuinely and took a step in my direction, holding his hand out for me to take. Once I'd put my hand in his, he put his other hand lightly on my waist and moved close enough that I could comfortably rest my other hand on his shoulder.
"Remember how?" he asked teasingly.
I shrugged a bit. "I guess." The truth is that I thought that forgetting dance steps was the least of my potential problems.
Oliver led and I followed his steps well enough. I had to concentrate on what I was doing for a few minutes, but the steps took my mind away from whom I was dancing with, and I loosened up a bit.
"Don't look down," Oliver said.
I hadn't even realized I was watching our feet. I snapped my head up quickly and saw him holding back a laugh. I laughed instead, which Oliver took as permission to stop trying not to laugh.
"Aren't you glad you agreed to this?" he said, half jokingly.
"Yeah."
"See? What were you afraid of?" he laughed.
I didn't answer and caught myself before looking at the ground again. Instead, I settled for moving my gaze to over his shoulder.
"Laura?"
"Nothing. I wasn't afraid of anything." I smiled without showing any teeth while cursing myself for not saying this immediately after he'd asked his question.
"You're lying," he said.
There was no point in lying again if he was able to tell if I was doing it. "I was just… a little worried because things didn't turn out so well last time I said yes."
I think he winced slightly (It was hard to tell in the faint light.), and I felt badly for hurting his feelings. Oliver's steps got smaller, but he didn't stop dancing. "Things didn't turn out so badly."
"Not for our careers," I agreed, "but you and I ended up hardly talking for five years."
Oliver lowered his gaze.
"Don't look down," I said mockingly, trying to lift some of the heaviness that had entered our discussion.
Oliver looked back at me and smiled slightly at the joke. "I guess things didn't turn out so well between us," Oliver had to admit.
"I just don't want to go through all of that again."
"I don't either."
I resisted the impulse to tell him that it was his fault. That wasn't going to help anything.
"I owe you an apology," Oliver said.
Both of my eyebrows shot up in shock. I definitely dropped a step or two of the dance, and my jaw might have even dropped.
Oliver took my reaction rather well. He laughed. "I know…. I'm horrible at apologizing."
"…Yes."
"You're willing to listen anyway?"
If 'apology' meant that he was going to admit that he had been wrong and that I had been right, then I absolutely was willing to listen. "Yes," I said instead of what I wanted to say.
Oliver took a minute to gather his thoughts. We kept dancing, and I don't think he realized we were. He could probably dance in his sleep, but it still took a bit of concentration for me to match his steps in time to the music, so I took back my arm that was resting near his neck.
Coming out of his thoughts, he took his hand off my waist and looked around us. "Let's move away from the crowd," meaning the group of Hogwarts students who were dancing near us.
I followed him as he moved through the kids playing tag. They hardly recognized our intrusion in their game unless they were using us as shields to hide from the boy who was 'It'. Oliver stopped walking once we'd reached a point where there were no people, not even little children, within earshot. A large tree was growing nearby, blocking whatever light was coming from the moon. Some light coming from a window in the house made it so that I could make out Oliver's profile, but little else, and I had a feeling that Oliver had chosen the place because the darkness would hide his facial expressions.
"It's even colder over here," I complained, drawing my cloak closer around my body.
"Maybe by half a degree."
"That's colder," I persisted.
Oliver wasn't about to move closer to the other people in the yard. "We'll go back inside soon. This won't take long."
I had my doubts about this. Oliver and I had never had a short, important conversation, and our apologizes tended to be the longest discussions. I decided not to point this out on the chance that doing so would prevent Oliver from apologizing at all.
"OK… apology…" Oliver said after several moments of silence (and shivering on my part).
After a minute of waiting for the 'apology', I had to say something. "That wasn't it, was it?"
Oliver smiled slightly (I think). "No."
"Thank Merlin," I said, smiling back. "I might not have spoken to you for another five years if it had been."
Oliver laughed at the joke as only one of the two of us could—fully appreciatively of the humor, but also a little sadly. "That's what I need to apologize for."
I wasn't sure what he meant, so I didn't respond. I shifted my weight a little to make myself more comfortable for what I was now sure would take a while. I tried to block out the noises coming from the crowd behind me. The sounds made me want to turn around and see what was going on, but I didn't want Oliver to think I wasn't paying attention.
"For not writing, I mean. For five years," he said as if this explained everything.
"You wrote a little."
"Only in response to your Christmas cards. You do know Christmas is in December, not February, right?"
I laughed shortly. "I have to put them off for two months before I can face writing them."
"Yeah, that's why I don't bother. I just write back to the people who send cards to me."
"Which you did. Every year," I said, still a bit unsure why he felt the need to say that he was sorry for this instead of other things that I thought necessitated an apology.
"But my letters didn't say anything."
"No."
"Neither did yours."
I shrugged a little. "What was there to say? Joan tells us both everything there is to write about."
"Yes, but… you're missing my point," Oliver said, frustrated. He backed up a few steps to put his back up against the tree we were standing under, making it even harder for me to see his face.
I stayed in place. "I think I am."
"I'm apologizing for being such a horrible friend for the past five years."
I didn't know what to say. He hadn't been a great friend, but neither had I.
"I broke up with you and cut off all communication for a year, and… well, you promised we'd always be friends," Oliver explained.
I clearly remembered the promise he was speaking of immediately. We'd been standing in front of the window in the small hallway near Gryffindor Tower—the same hallway in which he'd broken up with me—the night before Oliver's last Quidditch match at Hogwarts. I'd finally admitted to myself that I hadn't wanted to be only his friend moments after making that promise.
The memory scared me more than it should have.
"I didn't write, either," I said, uncharacteristically trying to share some of the blame.
"No, but I broke up with you, so it was my responsibility to write."
"That's what I said," I muttered to myself.
Oliver chuckled. "See?"
"Yes," I said plainly, after a short pause so that my agreement wasn't rude.
Oliver and I didn't say anything for a few minutes. At first we looked at one another, waiting for the other to keep the conversation moving, but our gazes started wandering once it became clear that neither of us wanted to speak next. There wasn't much for me to look at since my back was to the action. I gazed absently into the dark, wooded backyard. Nothing distracted me from my thoughts; there was no wind, so not even the trees moved.
"It's worse than not just writing," Oliver said suddenly. He didn't give me a chance to respond to that statement. "I wanted to warn you about protecting your house for months, and I only had the nerve to do it at the wedding."
"I—"
"What if something had happened?" Oliver interrupted.
"Nothing did happen," I said, unnerved by his unease.
"It very well could have. I know you heard about Madame Rosmerta being under the Imperius Curse."
"Yeah," I said. Everyone had heard about it.
"Joan told me about how something tried to break into your house that same year."
"…You aren't suggesting—"
"I am. Oh, I doubt Malfoy would have thought of you, thank Merlin, but it may have been—"
"Someone wanting to steal something valuable," I said quickly.
Oliver paused, but only briefly. "So what if it was only a robbery? That could have happened before the wedding, too."
"Yes, but…. Don't apologize for trying to help me."
"I should have written is all I'm saying."
"I know. And… maybe you should have, but at least you told me when you did. And… it prevented a robbery." I looked down quickly. "So thank you."
I'd wanted to thank him since the attempted robbery. Nothing had happened; I'd heard someone trying to get in through the door and a window in the living room in the middle of the night. It still had frightened me badly. The only reason I'd told Joan about it had been so she'd tell Oliver. It had been my way of thanking him until I had a real opportunity to do so.
"You're welcome."
I looked back up at him, smiling, feeling better. "Is there anything else you'd like to apologize for?"
Oliver seemed to debate this shortly. I thought he was just playing along until he said, "Yes."
"Yes?"
"I'm very, very sorry for not having told my dad I was dating you while we were actually dating," he said almost too quickly for me to understand him.
"I think you already apologized for that," I said after deciphering what he'd said.
"I didn't, but I should have, so I am now."
"It's OK," I said. "I wasn't mad anymore when I brought it up."
"I know," Oliver said. There was another short lull in conversation before he abruptly added, "Which is why I'm sorry for some of the things I said about you late that night, after the wedding."
"What?" I asked, raising my voice slightly.
"I was rather drunk and angry that… well, that things between us had gotten so bad."
"They weren't so bad. I was expecting a lot worse," I said.
"I was expecting things to go back to normal."
"It wasn't all my fault that they didn't," I said sharply, imagining some of the worst things he could have said about me while drunk. Or sober, for that matter.
"Which is why I'm apologizing for what I said."
"What'd you say?" I demanded.
Oliver gave a short, forced laugh. "I'm not that stupid, Laura."
"You're stupid enough to admit that you said anything at all."
"I'm trying to be honest," Oliver said.
"All right. Who'd you talk about me with?"
Oliver's long hesitation let me know that I wasn't going to like the answer. His answer didn't go against my dread.
"Dad," he muttered.
"Oh… lovely."
"I said I was sorry."
"You went home drunk in the middle of the night to talk to your father?" I asked.
Oliver shrugged. "I said I was drunk, which implied that I wasn't thinking."
"Anything else?" I asked more seriously this time.
"Yes," he said immediately.
"Oh my God," I reverted to my Muggle curses.
"This is going to sound bad at first, so don't get too angry until you hear me out."
"OK," I said suspiciously… and not completely honestly.
"OK… I'm sorry that I didn't tell you the whole reason I was breaking up with you," Oliver said, not moving his gaze from my face.
"What?" I asked dangerously after what he'd said sunk in.
"I didn't know, myself, at the time!"
"So, you didn't break up with me because you didn't think we'd be able to concentrate enough on work?"
"Oh, no, that was part of it. At the time, I thought that was all of it."
"…OK…."
"But it wasn't all of it," Oliver said discreetly.
"What was the rest of it?" I asked, crossing my arms, not to keep warm.
"I panicked, Laura," Oliver said almost miserably. He leaned a bit more into the tree behind him.
"How do you mean?" I asked, hardly aware of the adults who were watching the children laughing uproariously at something.
"Everything was changing so quickly. There were N.E.W.T.s, graduation, moving away from friends, and suddenly I'm holding this letter about Quidditch—the thing I used to run to in order to escape from change—and instead, that letter made me want to run to something else," Oliver explained, using his hands to gesture, but otherwise not moving from his slouched position against the tree trunk.
"To what?" I asked, already guessing his answer.
"You," he admitted. "But that didn't seem stable, either, suddenly. With work would come less time together. We'd be making new friends. Possibly growing apart. So, the more I thought about our relationship not lasting, the more I turned back to Quidditch, only to realize that it had become less important because… I didn't need to run back to it anymore. But I wanted it to be important. I wanted it to be everything because it always had been. Does this make any sense?"
"No."
Oliver sighed, frustrated. "In my mind, losing Quidditch was like losing myself. Quidditch was me. So I had to get it back. Then I heard Percy telling Adam or Mark—I don't remember which—how he and Penelope had broken up for the sake of their careers, and it made sense. If I only had Quidditch to focus on… it'd be everything again."
I stared at him intently for a minute, thinking about what he'd said. I still didn't really understand his logic, but I was more thinking about the fact that there had been something… emotional behind Oliver's decision to break up with me. I had thought that he had only had success on his mind when he had resolved to end the relationship. I had thought that his emotions were completely on my side.
"I wish you would have told me all of that at the time so that I could have told you how stupid you were being."
"I wasn't being stupid," Oliver said a bit defensively.
"I wasn't trying to take Quidditch's place."
"I never said you tried."
"Why does it matter if I was taking its place?" I asked, showing him that I still didn't understand.
"I thought I was losing Quidditch. I thought that not needing to hide in the sport meant that it was becoming less important."
"It was," I stated.
"Exactly! And what else did I have? Quidditch was who I was. Is who I am."
I gaped at him for several seconds, thoroughly surprised by what he'd just said. "How is it that I never convinced you that that wasn't—and still isn't—true?" I practically yelled out of disappointment… in both of us. "My God, Oliver… I thought you'd moved past that idea years ago."
Oliver didn't say anything.
"There's a difference between what you do and who you are," I said more composedly.
"You've always said that, but it's not true."
"It is true," I started raising my voice again.
"It's not," he snapped. "If you can't see yourself by what you do, how else can you see yourself?" he slowly added.
"By seeing yourself through the eyes of someone else!"
Oliver didn't answer yet again. He merely crossed his own arms.
"Do you think I saw you as Gryffindor's captain? Do you think your father sees you as Puddlemere's Keeper?" I asked.
"No."
"Because it's not who you are."
"Then who am I, if you know me so well?" Oliver asked, starting to raise his own voice for the first time.
"You're… you," I answered pathetically. How do you tell someone who they are in mere words when you've clearly failed so dismally in showing them who they are through actions and feelings?
"I haven't known who that is in five years," Oliver said quietly.
"You obviously didn't know then," I said bitterly.
"And you knew who you were?" Oliver asked skeptically.
"No, but I was making progress."
"And I wasn't?"
"I hope you were," I said. "I thought you were."
"I had less progress to make," Oliver said, obviously without thinking first.
I took it as a blow, and a rather low one at that.
"I'm sorry," Oliver said right away, either seeing my expression or sensing from the silence that what he'd said had hurt.
"What do you mean, you 'had less progress to make'?" I managed to keep control in my voice.
Oliver uncrossed his arms and used one hand to push himself off the tree. He took a few steps toward me, but I took one step back to stop his progress.
"I didn't mean anything by it," he insisted.
"You're lying," I said, and I wasn't guessing. He wasn't the only one who could detect an obvious lie when he heard one.
"I only meant that you were dealing with more than I was at the time. With Percy and Dan," Oliver said.
"So, I didn't know who I was because Percy was being an ass and because Dan was dead?" I asked coldly.
"No, Laura, that's not what I said, and you know it."
"Then I have no idea what you said because that's what it sounded like to me."
Oliver couldn't come up with a response.
"Do you mean that you were better at helping me with my problems than I was at helping you with yours?" I asked plainly.
"Of course not," Oliver said, taking another step forward.
"Because you were better at it," I said, uncrossing my arms.
Oliver looked down.
"And I'm sorry that I wasn't better," I said, looking down, too. I started to feel tears prickle my eyes, but a little blinking stopped it. I wouldn't cry over what I'd said. I felt better after admitting it; I'd been thinking it was true through most of the conversation. For much longer than that, really.
"Hey," Oliver said, getting me to raise my head. He was looking at me again. "You helped me more than you know."
I smiled slightly. It had been his way of admitting that what I had said was true, but that it was OK.
"I just wasn't as good at helping myself. I wasn't sure how," he said.
"You just have to pay more attention to how other people see you."
"I will," Oliver promised.
"Because I promise you that they see more than a Quidditch player."
Oliver looked at me as carefully as he could in the poor lighting before nodding. "I'm sorry for hurting you."
"It's OK. I'm already not angry anymore." I thought about this and decided that it was close enough to being true to make correcting myself unnecessary.
"I don't mean for just now," he said. "Well… for that, too, but that's not what I meant. I'm sorry for hurting you when I broke up with you. If I could take back the decision—"
"It's OK," I interrupted. "I stopped being angry over that years ago."
"I know, but I still wanted to explain."
"I'm glad you did."
"Were you still angry at the wedding?" Oliver asked, drawing his own cloak around him a bit more tightly. It was getting colder outside, as it usually does at night.
"Yes," I admitted.
"I thought so."
"Had you figured out all of the reasons for breaking up with me by the wedding?"
"Mostly," he said, shrugging slightly.
"You should have said something."
"I didn't think you'd listen," Oliver responded, laughing slightly.
"I probably wouldn't have."
"Oliver?" someone called from near the house.
Oliver looked over my shoulder, and I turned my head to see a woman standing near the open kitchen door. Almost everyone had left the backyard and wondered how I could have missed the commotion. A few adults were left, gathering a few younger children to go inside for the minute of silence and spectacular fireworks that would bring in the new year.
"Are you two coming in for the fireworks?" the woman asked loudly.
"We'll be inside in a moment, Aunt Celeste," Oliver called back. "Why should I have said something?" he asked me, getting right back to the discussion.
"On the off chance that I would have been not as stubborn as normal." I turned back to him and smiled.
"Would anything have turned out differently?"
"Probably not."
Oliver started laughing, at first slightly, and then a bit more, and I quickly joined him.
"Maybe someday we'll stop sucking at life," he said.
"Speak for yourself," I joked.
"Oh, you think you've gotten better at life than I have?" he played along.
"No idea, but I've gotten better."
"How so?" Oliver asked seriously, but still grinning.
I had to think for several seconds before coming up with, "Well, I never once threw you in a lake during this whole conversation, and I wouldn't have even if there was a lake at hand. Not even when you deserved it."
Oliver laughed.
"And I'm not holding a grudge. Except maybe for you talking to your dad about me. As if he didn't hate me enough."
Oliver started, "I said—"
"You're sorry. I know."
"Hey!" Oliver said as if something had just occurred to him. "I apologized for… four things tonight. Admitted that I was wrong." He grinned. "See how much you've helped me?" he said, half-kidding.
"There's hope for us yet."
"Really?" Oliver asked.
"Sure."
He paused slightly. "For us?"
I quickly started turning red and looked down. It hadn't been what I'd meant, but at the same time, 'no' had not leapt immediately into my mind when he'd asked the question. It should have," I thought.
Oliver laughed awkwardly, and I joined in the laughter yet again because there was nothing else I could do.
"Hope for you. And hope for me," he clarified.
"Definitely," I agreed quickly. "We'll be OK."
"Especially with a friend to help out."
"Of course," I agreed, nodding. I grinned. "I promised."
Promised that once we were friends, we always would be. And this time I was pretty sure that we could actually carry out the vow.
Oliver took another step towards me.
"Are you two coming, or not? You'll miss it!"
"We're coming, Adam!" I called, recognizing his voice and spinning around before hurrying towards him.
Oliver followed me to the door, where Adam met us, smiling innocently, as usual.
Author's Note:
The next chapter will be up soon.
Preview: It starts with that great Wood New Year's tradition, Wizards and Warlocks, but Laura's mind isn't on the game.