Delilah often spent her time in the Hufflepuff common room with Jesse by her side as she talked to him about her parents.
They had not sent any letters or replied to any of hers. She had had no contact with her brother and divination class messed with her mind.
Her only interaction with her family was through professor McGonagall and she was bring rather vague about it.
It was one such evening that Jesse and Delilah were talking, "I think I'm going to tell Clarissa"
The girl perked up, "Really!?", she said with a smile.
"I should tell her before she gets someone else. At least I will stand a chance."
"Yes! definitely go for it! better late than never"
"Late!?"
"You've liked her since first year, confessing half way through fourth year makes it late"
"Point"
"when are you going to tell her?" She asked him and he looked at his feet.
"I'm not sure, but definitely before fourth year ends"
Before Delilah could reply to his statement, Connor walked into the common room.
"Connor!! Jesse is going to tell Clarissa!" Delilah told her friend with excitement who spread an identical expression on his face.
"Finally!" the Hufflepuff boy exclaimed.
When Delilah was making her way to the Gryffindor common room, Oliver fell in step with her.
"Hello Ivy" Oliver was rather cheery. Why was he always so happy?
"wood", she grumbled.
"Ravenclaw versus Gryffindor coming up. Who are you going to support?" He wiggled his eyebrows.
"None. I'm not going to the match", She rolled her eyes.
It was after curfew and the two were roaming around the halls with no worry in the world. The two were about to climb the stairs to reach the portrait of the fat lady when the heard someone shout.
"Students out of bed! Students out of bed!", Argus Filch was approaching the common room with a quick pace and a stern face.
Delilah and Oliver panicked. The caretaker was just around the corner but there was no way they could climb the stairs and enter the common room in time.
With quick thinking or no thinking at all, Delilah pulled Oliver into the nearest broom closet.
"Lumos" Delilah lit her wand up to give the two some light. Their bodies were pressed opposite each other and against the two small walls of the closet.
That was when Oliver truly noticed Delilah's face. Her eyes and cheeks were red, under eyes puffy and face fatigued. She looked like the girl he saw in the newspaper once. She had definitely been crying.
"Are you okay?", the boy asked in a whisper.
"What would happen to me?"
"Your face, you were crying" Oliver didn't know how or why but his hand lifted and placed on her cheek.
The girl looked back at him as if completely about to burst into tears but she was holding back. "Nothing"
"You know I have a personality outside Quidditch too", His thumb grazed her cheek softly.
The girl scoffed through her tears, "you do!? I never knew!"
"Well yeah, I usually only talk about Quidditch to annoy you and it works pretty well" He chuckled.
Footsteps passed the broom closet as Filch disappeared from the area. Dropping his hand down, Oliver cautiously opened the door and the two Gryffindors made their way to the common room.
"I may give you unreasonable solutions or joke to you about Quidditch but you can talk to me, Dahila"
The girl smiled, "out of all the people in the world, I won't talk to you Wood, and the name is Delilah not Dahila"
"Dahila is a flower name Idiot! I found it in my flower encyclopedia" Oliver stayed proudly.
Delilah stuck her tongue out at the boy before walking up to her dorm room.
James was moody. He sat beside his girlfriend but didn't utter a single word. When Delilah asked him what was wrong he just answered with a clenched jaw, "Nothing".
"James, something is wrong. Tell me"
"Nothing's wrong Delilah!" The boy stood up and walked towards the exit of the great hall.
She called out for the boy who ran further away.
"James! Can we please talk it out? Calmly?"
"It's nothing, I just need my space" James told her before walking into the boy's lavatory.
A defeated Delilah walked back to the great hall and sat down with a huff.
"He seems mad"
"Why would he be mad?" Connor asked.
"I'm not sure!" Delilah was already stressed with her parents and now James was mad at her, things couldn't get better!
"Did I do something?" She asked her friends and they all just shrugged.
During care of magical creatures, Delilah deliberately sat next to James.
"Look, if I did something please tell me so I can fix it", she told the boy.
"There's nothing. It's not your fault"
"Then tell me anyway! I can help you out"
"You can't Delilah, so please just leave me alone"
"Ja-"
"Quiet down everybody, these creatures are extremely shy and I don't want you to provoke them" The professors warned.
After the class ended, James ran into the castle faster than he had ever done and Delilah had given up on him.
She had been nagging him constantly but he didn't exactly tell her anything. She didn't need him anyways. If he wanted to talk, he could just reach out to her but she was done following him around.
Oliver was walking to his dorm when he bumped into a sulking James, their books falling all over the place.
After recollecting themselves, Oliver turned to the boy with a frown.
"Why are you mad at Rose?" The Scottish boy asked.
"None of your business, Wood" James was not in the mood to see him at all.
"Let me guess, you're Jealous that she spends time with Jes-" Oliver was cut off by James who clenched his fist.
"I said it's none of your business" He said.
"For a Ravenclaw, you're really daft. She's only best friends with that boy. They are close and it's completely platonic and considering the fact that you were flirting with Bridget on the train and some other girls a few weeks ago, you have no right to be angry", Oliver added with a raised eyebrow.
"Just get away from me, Wood", James spat.
"Or what?" Oliver asked, he saw snape around the corridor and James wouldn't land himself in detention with snape for sure.
"You're going down in the match, Wood!" With that, James walked passed the boy who only rolled his eyes.
A/N
1) I hope you liked this story!!
2) I know it's going a bit slow but it's because I needed a build up for how our protagonists comet each other and got interested in each other
3) Fun Fact! The only reason Delilah's surname is Rose, it's because their ship name would be ROSEWOOD which is used in making broomsticks XD
But calling her different flower names just came up randomly.