Acquaintance - Oliver Wood/OC

Chapter 18: A Date Declined, a Non-Date Accepted

"Hello again, Oliver." I said warily.

"Hi." He dragged a hand subconsciously through his hair, to my delight turning it into that charmingly ruffled style that was his specialty. "Christmas is coming up." He said, taking me off guard.

"Yes. Why?" I said, even warier than before.

"Not sure why." He said, copying my very wariest demeanour. "Muggle logic."

I rolled my eyes. "I meant why do you bring this up?"

"Well, there's some sort of gift giving element to Christmas." He said, like this had only recently come to his attention.

"That damned muggle logic, am I right?" I interjected sarcastically.

"Yes, and, I was wondering if you could help me with it." He once again flattened his hair, causing me a surge of annoyance. "It's the sort of thing a friend would do, right?" He smiled proudly, looking like he was hoping for me to validate our friendship once again. "And you are my friend." It was half of a statement and half of a question, making a whole confused me.

"Of course!" I immediately returned. He smiled back at me with a hand mindlessly in his hair. I wondered if taking his hand to stop his steadily increasing obsessive behaviour, would fall on the spectrum of the sort of thing a friend would do.

"Good." He replied. We settled in silence and he walked by my side. We kept walking quietly for what shortly turned into a long while. Which I have to say I loved. I don't think I loved walking in silence with anyone as much as I did with Oliver. Nevertheless I did wonder if he didn't have someplace to be right now other than walking with me in the complete opposite direction of anywhere I could imagine he should be heading.

His hand unintentionally brushed against mine as we walked, as hands often do. I thought about making a joke about him trying to hold my hand. The problem however with that joke is that it's only funny the first time, the rest of the time you're just two people scraping hands without any jokes left to be made.

"Then maybe we should go to Hogsmeade this weekend." Oliver quipped, breaking the adored quiet.

I kept looking at my shoes. I kept walking ahead, unsure of what to say. The clock ticked by, gaining me unwanted pressure to say something by the second. But I didn't know what to say. Should I lie or should I just do this one thing? I had technically already promised him I would.

"I have a meeting scheduled with Roger." I said, still only looking in the direction of my shoes moving up and down with each step.

"That's still going on?" Oliver said abruptly, it came out like a snarl. I could tell he hadn't meant for it to, as he regained a somewhat composed demeanour not long after the statement had been stated, but by then all the ships had already sailed. "You're still tutoring him?" Oliver rephrased calmly.

"Well yeah, he isn't going home for Christmas on Friday either so we scheduled our next session for Saturday–"

"Great! Then we'll go to Hogsmeade afterward!" Oliver rejoiced.

"Shouldn't you be somewhere, Oliver? Like, right now?" I asked tentatively, doing my best to change the subject. Yet he didn't seem to notice I had said anything, he seemed to be thinking.

"You know what would be even better?" He began, sounding, to my scepticism, highly assured. "If I joined, and then afterward, we could go to Hogsmeade." He motioned between us.

"Oliver." I put a hand on his shoulder; surprised he didn't falter or react physically in any way. "I am completely certain of this: You cannot join my study sessions with Roger."