Rival // Oliver Wood

The Day of Love

A/N: I'm posting this one too. 

Ivy:

I only had a few more weeks to raise my grades. I was getting close, but every ounce of studying was necessary. 

The past few weeks had been literal hell. I'd stayed up past 12 studying, snapped at my friends, snapped at Oliver, and almost snapped at my teachers on multiple occasions. I felt horrible. I'd apologized to all of them, but it didn't help. 

I did decide to take Valentine's Day off for Oliver's sake. I felt horrible at how little time I'd been spending with him. I hated hurting him.

Valentine's Day was on a Sunday this year, and Lockhart made sure that we didn't forget it. The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that our room reeked of flowers. All five of us shot out of our beds to see if someone had made a potion or tampered with the room in any way. We later learned that Lockhart had crafted some sort of mass air freshener. 

When we walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, the state of the hall was abysmal. The stench of flowers was sickly sweet and heavily intoxicating, there were little baby cupids who were flying around, shooting arrows at people (They didn't seem to break the skin, but they were extremely annoying), and there were singing valentines walking around everywhere, belting at the top of their lungs. 

McGonagall eventually put a stop to Lockhart's decorations and toned down the scent as well. Partway through breakfast, I walked over to the Gryffindors to sit down next to Oliver.

"Hey."

"Hey," he replied. "Not studying?" 

"Nope, I took the day off to spend it with you," I responded. 

"Happy Valentines day," he smiled. 

"You too," I gave a weak smile. 

I felt horrible. I was sugar-coating the day to distract us from the fact that I had been ditching him for the past couple of weeks. Yet he still had a smile on his face as if everything was fine.

It was snowing outside, so the two of us decided to stay in the castle rather than going to Hogsmeade. Oliver and I ended up spending the day in Gryffindor tower. We spent some time with his friends as a group. I didn't let go of his hand, wanting him to know I cared about him even though I'd been doing an awful job of showing it. 

To make my guilt skyrocket even higher, Oliver was enthusiastic the entire day. I did my best to match his energy, but my fatigue held me back. He was trying so hard to make the most of our time together, yet all I could think about was how badly I needed a nap. And I hated it. I needed a stronger word than hate. I despised it. I despised how he was putting in so much effort and I wasn't. I despised how he acted like everything was ok and forgave me so easily. I despised that I wasn't paying enough attention to him.

Throughout the whole day, my guilt ate away at me slowly and painfully. I was hurting him. It was so fucking obvious. Yet he acted like everything was okay because he didn't want me to worry about him. He loved me so much that he was willing to sacrifice his happiness so I could study. I loved him for it. But I also hated it. 

Towards the afternoon, he even sensed how tired I was. And we took a nap. A fucking nap. It was Valentine's Day. I should've been wearing lingerie and feeding him chocolate covered strawberries. But I wasn't. 

And he was so understanding about it which made it even fucking worse. 

Oliver:

Valentine's Day wouldn't have felt any different from any other day if it wasn't for Lockhart's transformation of the Great Hall.

Truthfully, I wished Ivy and I went out for the holiday. But she was so tired and I couldn't do that to her. She'd already spent the past month studying nonstop, but these last couple of weeks were pushing her over the edge. 

So I was ok with letting her sleep, as long as I could be with her. 

I savored the day. Not that we did anything special, but because it was the first day in the past few weeks that we'd spent the whole time together. Lately I'd only see her twice a day: once in Dark Arts, and once in the library after school when I'd visit her. That was it. 

Really only one of those counted too because she was rarely in the mood to talk when she was studying. I felt bad distracting her, so I never stayed for long. I told her I didn't mind not seeing her often, but we both knew that wasn't true.

I began to hate the internship that was slowly ripping my girlfriend away from me. What was worse was that there would still be weeks until she'd get a letter from the Ministry. Yet still, I acted like it didn't bother me because I didn't want her to worry. She had enough going on as is.