Chapter 2: The Truth is but a Vision
The next morning, I joined Percy at breakfast. He looked up at me and smiled.
"Good morning," I said, looking down at my plate.
"Morning," he said. "How are you?"
"Fine," I said, a little harshly.
"You don't sound fine."
"Yeah, well…."
He didn't respond immediately, but after a few seconds, hazarded, "Did you have fun at Hogsmeade?"
"For the most part."
"What'd you do?" he asked, biting into his toast.
"Talked to Joan, Rose, Cedar and Tara," I said.
He swallowed and frowned slightly. "Why?"
"Because they asked me to join them," I answered, frowning back.
"Why?" he asked again, looking confused.
"They were being nice."
"But why?"
"Oh, what do you care?" I asked, grabbing a piece of toast from the center of the table.
"What do you mean by that?"
I picked up a napkin, stood up, and turned my back on him. "Figure it out, Percy," I snapped, heading out of the Great Hall.
I passed Joan and Professor McGonagall, who were standing in the hall right outside of the Great Hall.
"…her. Please, Professor. I can't do…," Joan was saying.
Professor McGonagall looked uncharacteristically unsure.
I ate breakfast in the hall outside of the Transfiguration classroom. People, mainly from Ravenclaw, started coming, eventually. Wendy Lowe sat down next to me.
"Hi Laura. Can you do me a favor?" she asked.
"What?" I asked with no curiosity. Wendy and I got along, but weren't exactly friends.
"Give this to Adam Still for me?" she asked, handing over a piece of parchment.
I sighed. "I don't—"
"I can't give it to him myself, and you're a Gryffindor," she said, dropping the letter in my lap. "Thank you," she said, standing up and leaving before I could protest.
I rolled my eyes and stood up, as well. Professor McGonagall was coming to unlock the classroom. Joan was talking to her again, and Professor McGonagall was nodding slowly.
I sat in my normal place: in the front row, on the corner, next to the windows, next to Percy. Except now Percy was sitting in the desk that was front and center and in front of Penelope.
"Good morning. We're working on transfiguring medical equipment out of natural materials this week. You will have a partner to work with. You'll be going outside today to gather materials you believe will be useful. On Wednesday and Friday, you will be given a hypothetical medical emergency and must attempt to solve it with the materials you gathered. Your textbooks will help you.
"Partners… let's see. Treeman and Creevey. Spencer and…Still. Weasley and Lowe." She continued pairing people until she was left with only two partner-free students. "And Debman and…Wood," McGonagall said, and if I didn't know better, I'd swear she looked as though she was feeling at least a little guilty.
My jaw dropped and I prepared myself to object, but the rest of the class was doing that for me, just by muttering their shock. Wood and I were not paired up. Percy and Wood were not paired up. Ever. Not even by Snape, who tired of dealing with our drama sometime during our third year.
"No switching partners. Containers for collecting materials are next to the door. Now, go outside," McGongall said.
Wood and I had the same idea. We were at McGonagall's desk, arguing, before anyone else even had the chance to stand up. The class filed out, slowly, as Wood and I tried to talk over each other.
"No—"
"Absolutely not!"
"…crazy? We're—"
"…stupidest idea—"
"…Joan? Did she put you—?"
"Quiet!" McGonagall said, throwing up her hands. "It's about time you two put your childish issues behind you and grew up! Either get along for a few hours or fail. Now, go!"
I was shocked. Professor McGonagall, as strict as she was, rarely yelled and never insulted us. Wood and I walked away, muttering obscenities under our breath. We picked up some containers and left the castle in complete silence.
Outside of the big oak doors leading into the castle, we both stopped to think. I opened my book to the correct chapter and started skimming the text.
"Grass, moss, scum off the top of the lake…those are easy enough. Oak bark, pine needles…not too bad. After that it starts getting more interesting. Poison ivy, poison oak, lady's breath, Venus flytrap teeth, sap from…enchanted trees, roots from nightshade, pollen from blue bonnet, cats-eye, dream catcher, guard's feet…."
"Look, I'll go this way, and you go in the opposite direction, all right?" Wood said, pointing towards Hagrid's cabin.
I shrugged. "Fine with me. The Forbidden Forest is on your side of the grounds. Have fun finding some of this stuff…. 'Wolfsbane, bloodvine, dementor's hug.' I can only imagine some of the creatures that would eat this stuff."
Wood shivered very slightly. "Right, well, we can't go into the forest anyway. It's off limits."
"Where else would we get this? It's for a class. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely fond of the Forbidden Forest, or the caves, which are in my direction and where we'll need to find some of this fungi. In situations like this, I'm not very picky about whose company I'm in," I said, dog-earring the page with a chart of commonly transfigured plants.
Wood didn't answer at first. He just started off in the direction of the forest. I was a little surprised—and insulted, of course. After he was a few meters from the bottom of the stairs that led up to the oak doors, he turned towards me. "Well?"
"Well, what?" I asked, unwilling to just hand over a victory. He'd have to ask me to come.
"I'd rather face the forest than the caves," he said.
So, I'd gain a victory later. The truth was, I'd rather face the forest, too.
"Let's get the normal stuff first, OK?" I asked, hurrying down the stairs after him and then heading towards the lake. "Any idea how to identify an oak from every other tree around this place?"
"My business is with the sky, not the ground," Wood said.
I rolled my eyes. "How poetic. Anyway, tell that to the tree you flew into during our first year," I said, smirking.
"If I wasn't so busy watching you and Percy to make sure you didn't kill yourselves, I wouldn't have flown into it. As I recall, I was yelling at you because you were flying straight for the Owlery," he said.
"And I missed it."
"You didn't. You just flew in one window and out another."
"That's easier said than done."
"Apparently. Percy ran into one of the owl's cages. Poor owl. Didn't see what was coming."
I laughed a little, caught myself and scowled again. "It's not our fault you weren't watching where you were going."
"No? Well, tell that to the tree I hit because it seems to blame the two of you for the whole incident," Wood said.
I smiled but turned my head so he couldn't see.
"So…how are Percy and Penelope?" Wood asked tauntingly.
"Jealous?" I asked.
"Of Penel—"
"Because Percy has a girlfriend while you, Mr. Captain of Gryffindor's Quidditch Team, are single," I said.
"See, it's funny. I care more about my friends than some girl who comes along," he said.
"Whatever," I muttered.
"Right, see, I forgot. What does Laura know about friendship, anyway?" he said coldly. He didn't sound like he was just taunting me anymore. He sounded…well, angry.
"What?" I asked, narrowing my eyes as I bent down to pull up some grass by a large rock by the lake.
"You heard me."
"Oh, I heard you. I just can't believe you said it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded.
"You who stabbed your best friend in the back," I spat, standing up so he wasn't towering over me.
"Me?" he asked, his eyes wide, jaw dropped. "Me? Who betrayed whom first?"
"What?"
"And I still made the team, second year, using one of the school's crappy broomsticks."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, louder and angrier.
"He stole my broom!"
For several seconds—seconds I had to look into Wood's smug face, I might add—I stood silently, piecing together what he'd said. Finally, I figured it out, and responded, "He took your broom because he was having Charlie improve it. Your broom wasn't exactly great, Wood. You never noticed that it flew ten times better after you got it back?" Wood's disappearing smirk prompted me to continue accusing him. "Charlie Weasley filed down those knots on the handle and straightened out the tail. You weren't supposed to try out for the team until the next day. You went early, you git! Percy wanted to surprise you. It was supposed to be a gift!"
Satisfied and sure that it would take at least a full minute before Wood could process all of that, I leaned over to scoop out some pond scum in a little container Professor McGonagall had given each group. The next thing I knew, I was falling face first into the lake. Before I could catch myself, I was fully submerged in the knee-deep water. I stood up quickly, reaching for my wand, and turned to Wood, fuming.
"You're lying," he said, reaching for his own wand.
"I'm not. You had our whole house against him before he ever got a chance to explain. You must have told everyone what you thought happened, except with a new spin. Percy wasn't just sabotaging you, you said. No…he was against Gryffindor!" I laughed dryly. "I can't believe they fell for it, but you were part of the team, then," I said, starting to climb out of the cold water before having a significantly better idea. "Wingardium leviosa!"
Wood's feet flew from under him. I moved him effortlessly over the water and removed the charm.
He came out of the water, sputtering. "You little—"
"You asked for it, you—"
"I asked for it? This whole thing was your fault!"
"What?" I scoffed.
"That's right," he said, nodding and taking a step towards me (and the shore). "You betrayed me. You took Percy's side, no questions asked. If you would've stuck by us both, we'd all still be friends now. If you'd been a good friend—"
"If I'd been a good friend?" I interrupted. "You didn't ask questions before turning the whole house against him! You didn't even think that your best friend wasn't trying to hurt you, just to help you?" I asked, crawling onto the large rock by the lake.
"Expelliarmus!" I said, before he could magic me back into the water. I caught his wand in my left hand. Awkwardly, but I still caught it.
"You didn't ask questions before assuming I was just backstabbing him for no reason?" Wood asked, almost calmly, as he climbed out of the lake.
"It looked pretty bad. To Percy and me, it looked like you backstabbed him for no reason," I answered quietly, caught off guard by his sudden change in demeanor.
"And when the older Weasleys turned the tables on me? What about then?" he asked, the volume of his voice increasing again. "I was alone, Laura! Completely alone. No friends, no one to even talk to. No one! And you just watched from a distance."
"You had Quidditch."
"And Quidditch is still all I have," he snapped. "Or I did until we lost that damned match against Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff, of all teams…."
"You have friends," I said, rolling my eyes. "And from what I've heard, you can still win that damned Cup if you want to. With a little luck, and if you win the rest of your games, of course, but you can still win," I said, standing.
"Right. Slytherin would have to lose to someone besides us, and—"
"And Ravenclaw can supposedly beat them."
"And even if they did, we'd still probably have to beat Slytherin by over one hundred points," he finished.
I shrugged. "Then win by one hundred points. The only reason you haven't won the Cup yet is because Potter has some rotten luck."
"Rotten luck? If Potter had rotten luck, he'd be dead about three times over by now. At least."
I nodded, as this was true if rumors were correct. "You can still win if you put your team up to it," I said, climbing off the rock, trying my best not to trip over the wet robes tugging at my legs. "Now look what you've done," I muttered. "We're both angry and wet."
Fairly sure Wood was distracted enough by Quidditch that he wouldn't try to curse me again, I tossed him his wand. He caught it easily and pointed it at himself. "Repelio!" He was instantly dry.
I performed the same charm and tucked my wand into my pocket. "Are we going to work on this project?" I asked, not bothering to look even in his direction.
"I see no alternatives," he said.
"All right, then. There's still stuff we can get on the kinder parts of the grounds. You're sure you can't tell an oak from a spruce or a cedar?"
"No, I can't," he answered.
"OK. We'll just have to take a stab in the dark, then," I said, walking up to the nearest tree without needles and tearing off some bark.
"I'm sorry I pushed you into the lake. It was…impulsive and…immature," Wood said as if it pained him.
I nodded. "Yes, it was."
He waited as I reached into my book bag for my Transfiguration book. "That's it? 'Yes, it was'?"
I sighed, took a deep breath and said, "And I'm sorry for magicking you into the lake. It was a better way to do a very immature and impulsive thing."
Wood actually laughed. "I have a feeling that's the best I'm going to get, so I accept your apology."
"And I accept yours."
Oliver walked, slowly and aimlessly, around the edge of the lake near the big rock for a few minutes while I tried to skim the chapter I suppose we technically were supposed to have read before that assignment.
"Good idea, by the way," he said. "Disarming me, I mean. I was debating between a spell that would make you extremely heavy, causing you to sink to the bottom of the lake, or a curse that would suffocate you, which would have been a less stylish approach to Plan A."
I looked at him, angrily and, realizing he was only kidding, smiled. "Thanks."
We found a few more things on the list. It took about an hour because the two of us were horrible at identifying plants and were talking as little as possible. After running out of plants we thought we could find on the grounds, we were preparing ourselves to head into the Forbidden Forest.
"We'll only go in a little way, right?" I asked.
"How am I supposed to know?" Wood said.
"You've never been in there?" I looked away from the edge of the forest to give him a skeptical look.
"Have you?" he asked.
"Of course not! Percy's my best friend. The forest is off-limits. Need I say more? But you—"
"Why would I go into the forest? I spend too much time flying."
I returned my attention to the forest and laughed slightly. "Why did the Sorting Hat place us in Gryffindor, again?"
"No other house would take us?" Wood guessed.
"What does the Hat do if you don't fit in any house?" I said, more to myself than to him.
"I've heard you pick a number one through ten."
I laughed. "Let's just get this over with."
"Ladies first," Wood said, motioning towards the forest.
"Oh, you wimp," I said, not moving.
"Hey, I put myself in front of hurled Quaffles on an almost daily—"
"A wimp who doesn't know he's a wimp," I interrupted, grinning. "That's the worse kind of wimp there is."
"I don't see you walking in there," he said, starting forward.
"Just be the man of the situation, eh?" I said sarcastically.
"Yeah, yeah" he muttered, heading through the first row of trees. "We're in. So… this is it? Not much of a—"
"RAWRRRR!" I grabbed the back of his neck with my fingertips.
He yelled and spun around to find me doubling over with laughter.
"Oh, you will pay for that," he said, seemingly battling himself on whether he should be fuming mad or laughing hysterically with me.
"Oh will I? Maybe I should be the man of the situation."
"I still hate you, you know?" Wood asked, following me as I walked past him, farther into the forest.
"And I still hate you," I said, still laughing, but not as forcefully.
"I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page," he said.
"We are."
We kept walking and the deeper into the trees we got, the darker it became and the more afraid I got.
"I don't know what we're looking for," I said after we'd been walking for many minutes.
"You don't?"
"No."
"I was waiting for you to point something out!" he said.
"And I was waiting for you to point something out."
"Let's just get out of here."
"Scared?" I asked, smirking.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing.
"Where?" I asked, spinning around.
"Here," he hissed in my ear.
I screamed and spun back around, arms flailing.
He laughed, easily blocking my swings.
"Ass!" I said.
"You scared me first."
"We were on the edge of the forest then. I just want to get out of here. There must be a reason this place is forbidden, and I'm in no hurry to learn of it."
"Scared?" he mocked.
"Let's just say I'm a stage above hearing and seeing things and a stage below peeing my pants."
"Oh, thanks for that image." He paused. "Actually, it's kind of funny."
I laughed. "I'll tell you what. I'll run in that direction, you run in the opposite direction, and we'll see who gets out first," I said, pointing in front of us.
"Fine with me. You'll be running into the forest."
"What?" I asked.
"Hogwarts is that way," he said, pointing to some place approximately ninety degrees left of where I had pointed.
"No. It's that way." I pointed again.
"You're crazy."
"Me?"
"Oh, this is stupid." He got out his wand. "Point me!" He paused. "We're both wrong. It's that way." He pointed to a place in between where we had been pointing.
"I was closer," I said, smiling.
"You were not. I clearly was closer to where—" He stopped arguing when he saw my smirk. "McGonagall's right."
"How so?"
"We do have some childish issues," he said, walking quickly in the direction the spell had pointed.
"Yeah, well…." I hurried to catch up and get slightly in front of him. "We also have some not so childish issues."
Wood didn't respond.
After about fifteen minutes of arguing with myself, I said, "I'm sorry."
"What?"
"I'm sorry," I said, so he could hear me.
Again, Wood didn't say anything.
"I should have been a better friend and heard you out, no matter how bad it looked. And I'm sorry."
Still no answer.
"You want to know the truth? It wasn't Percy who was jealous. It was me."
"You stole my—" he started to ask.
"No one stole your damned broom, Wood."
"Then why were you jealous?" he asked.
"Because while Percy was my best friend, and I was one of his…the truth is you were a better best friend for him."
"Why?"
"Come on. I was forced to be a sort of tomboy, and I wasn't good at it."
"No, you weren't."
I smiled a little. "I tried."
"We didn't care that you were a girl."
"No, but I did. But it was more than that. You two used to be…you used to be like Fred and George. Joan and Tara. Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. I was jealous because you were his best friend, except for Dan, and I wasn't."
"If things hadn't turned out the way they did, it wouldn't be like that now," he said.
I looked back at him. "Who's to say how things would have turned out?"
"Things didn't turn out so badly, did they?" he asked.
I faced forward again, to watch where I was going. "I don't know. I don't know how badly things would have turned out," I said, showing too much emotion.
"Percy will get used to having a girlfriend and will—"
"No, I don't think so."
"But before this year? Before Penelope?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Bad stuff has happened. For a while, things were good… I think."
"You think?"
"Yeah, I think."
"But you don't know?"
"Bad stuff happened," I repeated.
We kept walking, fast, but careful to keep going in the same direction.
"I'm sorry," Wood said, eventually.
"You don't have anything to apologize to me for. Percy is—"
"No. I do owe you an apology for what I said earlier. To blame you for everything was unfair and incorrect."
"Not completely unfair."
"No, not completely. It was partially your fault," Oliver happily admitted.
"But not completely," I said.
"No."
"OK. Thank you."
He paused for a few minutes as we kept walking out of the forest. "When you said that bad things happened…did you mean…Dan?"
"Partially," I said.
He stopped walking and I reluctantly turned to see why.
"I'm sorry about Dan. I wanted to tell Percy and you that, but…."
"I understand," I said. "Thanks," I added after realizing it was the correct response.
"I got to know him in Quidditch. After the fight, well, he tried to talk me down. If I would have listened…."
"He wouldn't have died," I said quietly.
"What?" Wood asked.
"Nothing. Never mind," I said, starting to walk again.
"No, I heard you, I just didn't understand," Wood said, already on my heels. "What do you mean he wouldn't have died if I would have listened to him?"
"I didn't mean anything. Who's to say what would have happened had anything changed," I said, speeding up.
"No. What do you mean?" Wood walked in front of me, forcing me to stop walking towards the castle.
"Just drop it, Wood."
"I can't!"
"Fine! Then pester me until we die in here."
"Laura, what did you mean?"
"Please drop it. It doesn't matter. He died and there is nothing we can do about it." I said, almost managing to shove past him.
He grabbed my arm. "You cannot just tell me that it is my fault that one of my friends died and drop it. You can't!"
"It's not your fault! It's mine!" I said, angrily. Realizing what I said, I shook my head fiercely.
"What do you mean?" Wood asked.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I need you to talk about it!"
"And I need you to drop it!" I barked.
"Damn it, this is more important than our stupid grudges against each other!"
"Then why can't you let it go?" I asked.
"You haven't!"
"I can't, and you won't either if—"
"It is my fault, then! Oh, my G—"
"Shut up!" I said. "It is not your fault, and…just forget about it, Oliver. Please."
He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. He raised his pointer finger to his lips and turned his head slightly to the right.
I heard a little rustle from not far away. He must have heard it, too. We looked at each other for a second, turned towards the edge of the forest, and ran like hell.
"Can't you run any faster?" Wood asked, practically breathing down my neck.
"If I could, I would," I panted. "Just pass me."
"I can't just leave you out here."
I'd have laughed if I wasn't wheezing for air. "I'd leave you."
"No, you wouldn't," he said. "But if you can't run any faster—"
"The edge!" I interrupted, finding a tiny bit of extra speed.
The two of us broke out of the Forbidden Forest, but didn't stop running. After we were a few hundred feet from the edge, we slowed to stop and turned to face the forest.
"What do you think it was?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. It was big, though," he said, breathing deeply, but not gasping for air as I was.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Vampire?"
"We weren't that deep into the forest. Not to mention, a vampire would have attacked before we heard it. I heard a rumor about giant spiders."
"Giant spiders?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Give me a break," I said. "Maybe it was a centaur."
"Maybe. Wait…something's coming out of the woods."
We stood completely still, watching the shape become clearer, until….
"Hagrid?" I asked, smiling a little. "We ran from Hagrid? Embarrassing."
"What kind of Gryffindors are we?" Wood asked seriously.
I shrugged. "There are different types of bravery, I guess. Some people can face death. Some people can face life."
Wood nodded, giving the comment more thought than it really deserved. "And which one can we face, again?"
"I think it's fair to say that we can't face death," I said, laughing slightly.
"And at facing life?" he asked, maybe addressing himself more than me.
I looked up at him and, for the first time in five years or more, I didn't have to fight the urge to get angry. "Nobody's perfect," I said, finally.
He laughed. "After all of the shit we've put ourselves through, I think we've done a decent job at facing life."
"Maybe. Wood, listen. Dan tried to talk me down, too. A few weeks before he died, we got into a big argument over why the two of us hate each other. I didn't listen either."
"What did Dan say?" Wood asked. He seemed to care, which I found surprising, although I shouldn't have. Dan had been nice to Oliver when the rest of the Weasleys were turning everyone else against Oliver for a month or so right after the broom incident.
"He said that we hated each other because we thought we had to. He said that maybe we did have to for some reason."
"What did he mean by that?"
"I have no idea. Knowing Dan, probably something along the lines of everything happening for a reason."
"What reason could there be for the three of us making each other miserable? Or for Dan…you know?"
I looked down and decided to ignore the latter part. "Maybe, if we were all still friends, I would have tried to fly a broom again and actually hit the Owlery," I tried to joke.
He didn't laugh. "When you said that it was my fault—"
"I never meant it. I wasn't prepared for the subject, and I never would have said it had I been thinking…not even to you. A lot of things could have changed what happened that morning, but you weren't one of them."
"You were there, weren't you?" he asked.
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," I said, trying to smile so he wouldn't take it personally.
He looked away.
"Did things turn out all right for you? Overall?" I asked after a minute.
He thought for a second and nodded. "They turned out all right," he said, looking back in my direction.
I smiled. "I'm glad. I wish we would have talked years ago. It would have made it easier for us to just forgive each other, then."
"Probably."
"We'd have been friends within a week if we'd have made better decisions."
"Probably," Wood said again, more hesitantly.
"And what's the difference between a week and a few years?" I asked, half seriously.
"About five years minus one week," Wood answered.
I sighed. "You don't understand," I said, mainly to myself.
"Understand what?"
"I don't know," I said.
He shook his head and started walking towards the castle. "It's late. We've probably missed lunch."
"You don't understand that we've fought for years over nothing," I said quickly. I walked to catch up with him and he stopped begrudgingly. "You don't understand that I am sorry for what happened, but that I can't change it. You don’t understand that I need your forgiveness right now." I knew I should shut up, but I couldn't. "You don't understand that we could still have been friends if the fight hadn't happened, but, more than that, we could still be friends despite the fight. You said you were completely alone after the fight. That's me now, Wood. Except I don't even have Quidditch. If you wanted me to pay for what happened our second year, I have. I am."
He started walking again.
"That's it? No response?"
"None."
I hurried to catch up again. "I thought you could face life. Right now, I'm part of what life is throwing at you."
"And I plan on dodging it so it won't hit me," he said coldly.
"It's going to hit you, all right," I muttered, getting in his path.
He tried to get past me, but I countered all of his attempts.
"What?" Wood asked, eventually giving up.
"I'm not that easy to dodge, am I?"
"No, and it's quite annoying."
"That's life. Do you think if you just ignore me, that I'll go away?"
"I was hoping so, yes," Wood said.
The same cold, apathetic hatred that he usually directed at me was back. I still knew enough about him to know that any further conversation was pointless.
I looked up at him and nodded. "OK," I said quietly. I turned my back on him and walked back to the castle, using all of my self-control not to cry or get noticeably angry.
Do Be My Enemy for Friendship's Sake by ByMerlinsBeard
Chapter Notes: Forced by a meddlesome friend to finally confront each other, Oliver and Laura learn what really happened during their second year that resulted in a five-year-long feud. But is the truth enough to improve their relationship?