The Calling

Chapter 2: The Quaffle and Memories

" I saw you."

Angelina's blood froze when she heard Levi's voice. " We were just talking," she whispered.

He stepped in front of her. " He makes you laugh?" His voice was almost crushed, devastated. " Don't I make you laugh?"

" He's only a friend, Levi," she told him, hoping he didn't know she was lying. Hoping that she was lying.

" I used to make you laugh," Levi whispered. He took a strand of her hair between his fingers. " Why don't you laugh when you're with me anymore? I love to see you smile."

Angelina drew in a deep breath, put on her sparkling smile for her boyfriend. For her supposed boyfriend.

" He's.....only a friend?" he asked as his hand took hers. He was hoping, hoping, she was telling the truth. Who knew what he'd do should he find out she'd been lying.

Angelina nodded solemnly. " Only a friend. And he's my Quidditch captain. I'm going to be seeing him as the season goes on, okay?"

Levi's eyes, so grey and now suddenly deep, made her truthfully smile. She knew that her knees would be weak if she truly loved him, but it seemed only Oliver's eyes did that to her.....

" I've got practice tonight," she said. " If you wanted to drop by....." She let the sentence hang, she didn't want to finish it. She didn't think she could finish it.

" I'd like that," he murmered. He inhaled deeply. " What're you wearing?"

" Vanilla," Angelina answered.

Levi inhaled deeply again. " You smell like an angel."

" An angel dipped in frosting," Fred Weasley whispered as he passed.

Levi turned, the gentle face now dark and menacing. " Weasley!"

Fred jumped two feet in the air and took off.

" Forget him, Levi," she said, hoping to draw Levi's attention from Fred. " He's only have a bit of fun."

" You stick your neck out for everybody," he commented, turning back to Angelina. His face had relaxed. His eyes had not.

She shrugged. " I guess..."

" Do you stick your neck out for me?"

She knew the answer she was going to give. She also knew the answer he wanted to hear. " Yes, Levi."

Oliver sat in the locker room, head in his arms. Practice was well over, he knew it, but somehow he couldn't find the need to lift himself from the floor. Either the need or the strength, he didn't know which he lacked. He didn't know why he couldn't rise in the first place, until he couldn't think of a reason to.

" Working on strategies, are we, Wood?"

Oliver sighed, looked up. " Evening, Potter."

Harry sat on the bench in front of the Quidditch captain. " What's with you?"

A sigh shook Oliver. " Anxiety?"

" Don't think so." Harry shook his head, and Oliver suddenly hated the fact that Harry seemed to look deeper into people. He always looked below the surface.

" I'm just tired," he said, looking away, hoping Harry wouldn't read his face like he always did.

Harry nodded. " Yeah, but the bed's in the castle. Or have you forgotten?" He sighed heavily. " Something's up, Oliver."

Oliver cringed. It was never good when Harry used his first name. He had come to be accustomed to hearing his last name. " Call me Wood."

" What's wrong with your-"

" Just call me Wood!" Oliver barked.

A shocked expression passed over Harry's features. " Wood......"

Oliver rolled his eyes. " Fine, it's Diggoroy."

" The new Hufflepuff captain?" Harry raised an eyebrow at his captain.

" Yes, exactly!" Oliver exclaimed. " New captain, an-and a captain as smart as Diggoroy, means that Hufflepuff will come up with strategies....Diggoroy and I have talked outside Quidditch....h-he knows our manuveurs!" He was speaking fast, almost too fast for Harry to understand him.

Harry put a long, uncomfortable silence between them. " Don't lie to me, Wood."

" I'm not-"

" I said, don't lie to me. Now something's up, because for one thing, you never talk that fast."

Oliver almost threw Harry an exasperated look. " So I did something new....? Really, does that mean there's something wrong with me? There's nothing wrong with me! And that's the God given truce....er...truth!"

Harry nodded. " Anything you say, Cap'n. I just thought you might like to know that dinner was an hour ago."

Oliver waved Harry away. " Thanks for the info, I'll be up when it's time to eat."

Harry shook his head, then removed his robes and draped them over Oliver. " If you're going to sleep here, at least you're sleeping at all."

" Yo' mama's so fat, she puts her lipstick on with a paint roller!"

" Yeah? Well, yo' mama's so fat, the shadow of her butt weighs one hundred pounds!"

" Ooh, fast one. Yo' mama's so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper!"

" Stabbed in the back! Yo mama's so old, when I told her to act her own age, she died"

Angelina smiled as she let herself all onto one of the many couches in the Gryffindor Common Room. Fred and George Weasley's voices rang in the almost empty room. Each was trying to top the other in jokes, and had somehow gotten stuck on "Yo' mama" jokes.

" Yo' mama's so poor, she waves around Frozen Frog Delights and calls it air conditioning!" George snapped.

Fred's fist banged the table next to him. " Yeah? Yo' mama's nose is so big, you can go bowling with her boogers!"

" Fred!" Angelina cried.

Fred shrugged.

" Watch this, Angel. Yo' mama's so old, they didn't have a history class when she was in school!"

Angelina stood abruptly. " You guys are talking about the same mama!"

The room went quiet in an instant, leaving the only sound to be made by a dying fire.

The silence was short-lived.

" Lee's mama's so ugly, his father takes her to work with him so he doesn't have to kiss her good bye!"

" Lee's mama's so ugly she makes onions cry!"

" Lee's mama's so old, when she was in school, they had no history class!"

" George, we already used that one."

" Oh. So we did. How about this one? Lee's mama's so old, her birth certificate says "expired" on it!"

Angelina sighed and fell back onto the couch. The jokes flew back and forth over her, her eyes remained on the fire.

" Yo yo! Harry!" Fred leaped over the couch Angelina was settled on, rushed up to the second year. " Where's Wood? I need to ask him a question."

" Make that two questions," George put in.

Fred pointed back and forth between him and his brother. " We each have one for him."

" And that makes two," George said.

" I don't think you should see him now," Harry replied, a sort of gloomy tinge to his voice.

George's mouth dropped open. " But...but.....it has to do with Quidditch!"

" I don't think you should see him now," Harry repeated through gritted teeth. " I'm sorry, but he's not in the mood."

" So, where is he?" Fred asked.

Harry looked towards one of the few windows in the Common Room. " Sleeping. You won't see him tonight."

Angelina felt her heart drop. She shifted her weight, and looked quickly at the fire when Harry looked over at her. The fire seemed to lurch at her, as if, in some way, consuming her soul.

Oliver raised his head slowly. The wind had begun to blow outside the locker room, whistling as it came through the locker room doors. Harry's cloak had fallen off the Quidditch captain, the cold was biting his skin through his Quidditch sweater. His eyes were red with tears he had held back, though he didn't know why. Didn't know why he held them back, didn't know why he was on the verge of crying them in the first place.

Shakily, he rose, unsteady on legs that had fallen asleep. He put a hand on the lockers to support himself, made his way to his locker, opened slowly. He was shaking with the growing cold. October usually at a little nip to it, but the winter chill never came that early. Hesitantly, he pulled off his Quidditch sweater, shoved it into his locker, next to an old, beat up Quaffle. His eye caught the Quaffle as he reached for a new sweater. Almost totally ignoring the cold, he removed the red ball from his locker, tossed it between himself, bounced it on the ground a few times, careful to keep it from bouncing on one of the indented sides. The leather it was made of was tearing, covered in dirt, results of years of love. He laughed lightly as he held it in his hands. It had been a present from her, Angelina, years ago, when they first met at a Quidditch Youth League meet in Scotland. They had been partners for every Quidditch camp they attended, kept in touch up until they were both at Hogwarts. In his third year, he had kissed her when she came crying to him, crying that Fred had broken her heart. What compelled him to kiss her he never knew, but after that, he had not been able to stop caring about her.

Then came Levi, one of Gryffindor's Beaters. He had gotten kicked off the team, replaced by George Weasley. Angelina had felt sorry for him, as Oliver understood it, and when he asked her on a date, she gave him the answer he wanted: yes. Every day after that, all she said to him was yes. She was his slave, it was plain to Oliver. She didn't love him in the slightest, but still, in many ways, felt sorry for him. It had always been that way.

" Why couldn't she feel sorry for me?" He glared at the Quaffle, then hurled it across the room, grunting as it left his hand. It hit the far wall, bounced towards him, then hit a concave side and rolled the other direction, out onto the pitch, into the wind. Ragged breaths shook Oliver as he watched it roll out of sight. Grunting, he reached into his locker and removed a blue sleeveless sweater, the Hogwarts uniform. He looked at it long and hard, then chucked it back into his locker and withdrew a white turtleneck sweater. From the floor he grabbed Harry's robes, wrapped them around himself. They were small, Harry was much shorter than he, but it was better than nothing. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the cold.

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Chapter One :: Contents :: Chapter Three ::