I had gotten quite good at the art of avoiding Oliver as I had spent more time than what might be considered healthy doing so. Yet it was distinctly harder now that we were officially friends. What made it even harder than a normal amount of hard was that the more I avoided him, all the more difficult it became. Everyday was like entering a new level, with a faster pace and auxiliary obstacles. The Gryffindor captain wasn't known to back down easily, and so I suffered.
When he called for me in hallways I pretended not to hear. When he and Andrea came up to me after classes I would keep the conversation concise. When he had booked a practise right after mine I had to hurry to the locker rooms before his team got to the pitch. When he came up to the Hufflepuff table to tell me about whatever ridiculous escapade Flint had got up to this time, I had to lie and say I was in a hurry for Defence Against the Dark Arts.
The less I spoke when we saw each other, the more we instead saw of each other. It was like I was throwing a stone into the abyss and the abyss threw three more back me in return.
What bothered me more was that I couldn't help but worry about the day when he would finally back down. The fact was, every time I failed to avoid him, my day got a little bit better. I wanted to talk to him after class when he would sit on one of the desks with his bag hung loosely around his shoulder. I wanted to hear what Flint had done, not because I cared all that much, but because it was coming from his mouth, and I would get to hear his incessant rambles about conduct and rules in Quidditch, which Flint was intransigent to. They were things the public might consider below average qualities in a person, but I had come to adore, strangely enough.
My feeble attempts only degenerated further when I met Andrea and Oliver together in a hallway on my way outside for Care of Magical Creatures.
I was distinctly warm. The weather outside was raw and I had dressed accordingly. Taking care of Mackled Malaclaws in icy rain called for precautions if one didn't want to lose any fingers in the process. I was already at risk of losing fingers from the sharp bite of the little creatures. I didn't need another incentive that would accentuate the already existing hazard.
"The Rotfang Conspiracy!" Oliver greeted me with a solid high five.
"Here to conspire some conspiracies and advent some adventures!" Andrea added.
I smiled and greeted their lightly dressed selves in comparison to me. "For a group of mostly Quidditch players we sure had a hard time catching that shiny little Nogtail."
There was a moment of silence, which I normally would have filled with some commonplace chit-chat, something I had learned Oliver was no good at. Even disregarding that fact, he still seemed too busy fixing his hair to even realise the situation. I was not to engage in commonplace chit-chat now though. I had sworn off that sort of thing a long time ago (last week to be exact). But who needs to be exact? Life was full of hyperboles and understatements.
"Alright! Anyway," I began, looking awkwardly everywhere but at them, starting over my shoulder and concluding straight down the hallway where I was headed. "Class starts in a couple of minutes, I'll be late if I don't head off now." I said, leaving before we could say our goodbyes. My pulse soared thinking of the next time I would talk to him again, seeing as I wasn't exactly sure if I would. Our acquaintance wasn't exactly known to be constant and reliable. It felt oddly similar to balancing a very slippery object on another even more slippery and also small object.
"Will!" Called Oliver's voice from beside me. He actually managed to calm my heartbeat for once.
"...ow." He finished lamely, diverting his eyes. He stopped beside me and I continued walking. I did have a lesson to get to, no matter if I genuinely was late for it or not.
"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."
He seemed to think this through. "Okay. I see." He said in his most reasonable tone.
I took my hand off his shoulder and said my awaited goodbye.
"I hope your tutoring goes well!" Oliver called after me. He really liked shouting at me when I was several meters away and had already declared conversations to be over. It had come to my attention recently that he also liked laying on a tone of, what I knew to be, fake positivity and enthusiasm. Which was odd, but nice, I decided, even if it was fake.
"Amazing! What a great sport you are!" I shouted back sarcastically, imitating his enthusiasm. "I hope it goes well too!"
***
It didn't, it really didn't — go well that is.
The truth of it was, we hadn't been meeting all that often, Roger and I. It had been kind of brief, an hour here, 20 minutes there. But when we did meet, I found it valuable. We'd talk for a bit and he'd be really sweet, he'd actually get some work done, and most important, I would get work done. I found that I worked efficiently with him by my side. Maybe it was just the influence of being around a hard working person.
Initially, this time had been no different. He'd been sweet, he'd complimented me exorbitantly, and he'd listened to me intently. I felt great, I felt ambitious, like someone saw me fit to impart wisdom.
Roger took a bite of his carrot and a glance at me and I remembered that he might not be here for that purpose at all if I were to trust my friends' ideas.
He threw his hands up and around the backrest of the library chair. "Say Willow, would you ever want to go on a date with me?"
And there it was, the hard-hitting proof to the conjecture. Still, I found myself stumped, mostly at how casual he was about it. At the present moment he was even flipping through his copy of Goshawk's Guide to Herbology, like he wasn't even awaiting a reply. Had he forgotten he'd just asked me a question?
"To Hogsmeade?" I asked.
He kept flipping the pages for a short while until he'd found his designated page, then slowly lifted his gaze to me and bit his lip in thought. "Uhh, I was thinking the Quidditch pitch maybe?" he raised his eyebrows in question, letting me ponder this for a moment.
I took a moment to visualize what that would look like, but my stomach soon told me it was not a good idea. I let out a mental breath, preparing myself for the awkward conversation that was about to go down.
"That's very sweet Roger, but I'm not interested. But... thanks." Do I thank him?
Roger's eyebrows furrowed, he looked surprised and his arm retrieved to the same location it had held a moment ago, around the backrest. His whole demeanour secreted a confidence that one would think clashed with the reality of the situation he was currently in. "Are you sure?" He asked kindly.
I laughed even though I felt a little curious about his behaviour, "Yes I'm sure."
"But why?" He pushed, to my astonishment. His position in his chair had changed; suddenly he displayed eagerness and curiosity. It was one thing to have the courage to ask someone out, but to question their reasoning was another level of confidence, I might even go so far as to say it bordered on conceit.
Growing discontent with his behaviour I replied with a hint of annoyance, "Like I said, I'm not interested in you in that way." I returned to the paper ahead of me on the table, the pen was in my hand and I wanted to write something as a clear indication that the conversation was over.
But Roger didn't want to stop conversing. "Are you a lesbian?" he asked, nearly sucking my whole breath out of me.
I stared at him, thinking of a reply. The longer I stared at this curious expression the angrier I got. How could a person be so arrogant? My pen started shaking in my hand at the nervousness from the confrontational interaction, combined with seething anger.
He was chewing loudly on his carrot. Somehow the fact that he was chewing loudly seemed to only add insult to injury in that moment. If you ever want to know how entitled a person is, look at how they chew. Some people chew like they have nothing to be ashamed of. Often men. Men have this fundamental confidence the rest of us are not granted with. They chew like they have every right in the world. Like they should be listened to. Like the rest of us should kiss the ground they walk upon. Marcus Flint also chewed like this.
"Is it that hard to believe I'm not interested in you?" I finally spat. "That the only possible explanation is incapability of attraction to the male gender? Because if a girl isn't innately attracted to a man she must be a lesbian?"
Roger's eyes went wide and he seemed to finally realise that he wasn't universally loved. His took his arm off the backrest and placed it in his lap. "I was just curious." He defended meekly, looking down at his paper and putting an end to the conversation finally.
As one could imagine, Roger Davies left soon after that and left me sitting alone. I briefly went over what had just happened in my head before I stood up to go look for Oliver and ask if we could head to Hogsmeade early, now that I was tutoring no more. I went over the event again on my way, thinking of things I could have said when Roger had got up to leave, like a sarcastic "Are you sure you don't want any extra help on that War of the Roses essay?" making fun of the fact that he evidently had never gone to the sessions with an intent to learn anything from me, or maybe just a simple, "Sod off, you entitled prick."
But I didn't get very far, in fact I didn't get any further than the entrance to the library, before I found Oliver sitting on the floor outside.
"What are you doing?" I asked. My voice came out a lot gloomier than what I had thought reflected my mood. Apparently the Roger thing had got to me.
Oliver looked up, his looking up and finding me standing there made him jump to his feet quicker than light. "Are you already done?" He asked, but before I could reply he flew off into other musings, "If you are wondering why I am just sitting here it is because I didn't have anything to do before we had arranged our date— meet! I mean our meet." Oliver trembled off and his attention disappeared to the stone walls of the corridor awkwardly, before he regained his composure again, "Anyway and so I, with no thought whatsoever to the fact that you would obviously be in the library with Roger studying—"
"Tutoring." I corrected him.
"Right, tutoring." He corrected himself quickly and continued the story, "I went here to see if I could study myself, but upon arriving I was reminded that you would be here, and you had told me to not disturb you guys during your session, and so without any better idea I sat down here to wait, figuring it was no use bothering to do something else, considering you guys would be done before I would have time to get anywhere." Oliver took a deep breath.
"Anyway," his face took a more playful expression, "Did the tutoring go well?" he asked with that same mocking tendency everyone else carried at the mention of me tutoring Roger. I was beginning to find it condescending, yet I knew they had right to mock it. Roger had never wanted my help, they all knew it and the idea was humorous to them.
I went to slump down against the stone wall the way Oliver had been located before his incessant description of his morning. The corridor was poorly lit and had no windows, even during a sunny day this hallway appeared like the middle of the night.
Oliver hesitantly sat down next to me. "Did the tutoring go well?" He asked again, although this time his voice lacked the mock attitude and instead he sounded concerned.
"No. It did not go well." I pronounced every syllable, hoping it would translate how badly it had gone.
Pause.
"Alright." He said matter-of-factly. "Do you wish to explain what happened?"
"He asked me out." I said flatly. I felt myself getting emotional. "Do you think I'm incompetent?" I asked sulkily.
Oliver ignored my question, "Did you say yes?"
I looked down at my hands angrily, "No, and when I didn't he seemed to think I was incapable of attraction toward the male gender."
Oliver pondered that for a while then asked, "Why would I think you're incompetent?"
"I don't know if you have noticed this, but I don't exactly do well in school. I draw Quidditch diagrams instead of essays." I said sulkily.
"At least they're good Quidditch diagrams." He said encouragingly. When I didn't reply he hesitantly pulled himself so that he was facing me, he looked down on the ground as if debating something in his head before looking at me and opening his mouth, "Do you remember that day when you came over to the Gryffindor table and I was in a bit of a quarrel with Alicia?" He asked.
"Vividly." I replied.
"Well, what happened before you arrived... was Alicia had said that witnessing you kissing a Slytherin was the most impressive thing she'd ever seen you do." Oliver suddenly found that stone wall from before very interesting again. "And I, failing to realise she had been making a joke—"
"As per usual." I said in jest.
"Right..." He continued, "Anyway, I had got a bit flustered about it, and had made some remarks on other things I'd seen you do, that I deemed to be more impressive. This, of course, all happened before I had realised she'd been joking, but it nevertheless spiralled into a conversation between us on possible Quidditch related things Alicia could work on, and this had caused her outrage at me." Oliver took a quick glance at me between his wall staring before he decided it was okay to meet my gaze again. "What I'm saying is just that I don't find you incompetent at all, and I am frequently impressed by you. Although I agree that you don't seem great at academics, you do have talents in other things." He smiled.
I couldn't help but be intrigued, "What is something I have done that impressed you?"
Oliver took a moment to think this through, "There was that time when Flint was trying to provoke you, and you held your fort valiantly." A small laugh escaped him, "I loved seeing him failing to provoke someone, because even though Flint is a definite incompetent person, he does know how to provoke, and I don't think I've ever seen him fail so brilliantly at it." Oliver looked proudly at me and I felt assured in that moment that maybe I wasn't so bad after all. It was a nice feeling.
"Albeit you don't really keep your temper around me." Oliver added smugly.
I felt obliged to agree and said funnily, "Yeah, but you're special."
A more vulnerable expression anchored itself on Oliver's features then, "I'm special?" He asked gently.
We looked at each other for a second and when Oliver realised that I wasn't intending to answer him he moved on,
"As your friend," He began, not quite believing in the term himself, "I am going to assure you that school is not your strength, but you do have strengths, and I think that anyone who spends time with you can see them as clear as day." He hesitated, "And I will also offer you something in this time of grief."
And then Oliver moved slightly closer to me on the rock hard floor, stretched out his arms toward me and moved slowly toward me to make sure I could back out the second I wanted. He put his arms around me gently in a hug.
Never in my life had a hug made me feel that much, if anything. I tried to sniff Oliver's scent without him noticing before he retracted awkwardly.
It was an awkward hug, but from Oliver, I never expected or wanted anything else.
"Hogsmeade?" He asked before I would try and thank him or make it awkward.
I nodded my head and we departed the dimly lit corridor side by side, walking in silence.
Originally published: 28 October 2018