Rating:
PG
House:
Astronomy Tower
Characters:
Percy Weasley Oliver Wood
Genres:
Romance Drama
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban
Stats:
Published: 05/04/2005
Updated: 01/22/2007
Words: 134,735
Chapters: 21
Hits: 7,911

Do Be My Enemy for Friendship's Sake

ByMerlinsBeard

Story Summary:
Laura sided with Percy in a fight between Oliver and Percy during the students' second year. This led to five years of mutual dislike between the two sides. During the students' seventh year, other people finally interfere in the situation, causing Percy, Laura and Oliver to hear both sides of the fight. The three Seventh Years are forced to face aspects of their pasts and their personalities, including their feelings on the death of Daniel Weasley, Gryffindor's former Quidditch captain. Oliver Wood/Original Character!

Chapter 02

Chapter Summary:
Laura and Oliver are forced to hear both sides of the fight that occurred five years ago. But will the knowledge that everything was only a misunderstanding change anything?
Posted:
05/09/2005
Hits:
490
Author's Note:
Thank you for continuing. In this chapter: more on the nature of Oliver and Laura's relationship. Please review!


Chapter 2: The Truth is but a Vision

The next morning, I joined Percy at breakfast. He looked up at me and smiled.

"Good morning," I said, looking down at my plate.

"Morning," he said. "How are you?"

"Fine," I said, a little harshly.

"You don't sound fine."

"Yeah, well...." I said.

He didn't respond at first. "Did you have fun at Hogsmeade?"

"For the most part."

"What'd you do?" he asked, biting into his toast.

"Talked to Joan, Rose, Cedar and Tara," I said.

He swallowed and frowned slightly. "Why?"

"Because they asked me to join them," I said, frowning back.

"Why?" he asked again, looking confused.

"They were being nice."

"But why?"

"Oh, what do you care?" I asked, grabbing a piece of toast from the center of the table.

"What do you mean by that?"

I grabbed a napkin, stood up, and turned my back on him. "Figure it out, Percy," I snapped, heading out of the Great Hall.

I passed Joan and Professor McGonagall, who were standing in the hall right outside of the Great Hall.

"...her. Please, Professor. I can't do...." Joan was saying.

Professor McGonagall looked a little unsure.

I ate breakfast in the hall outside of the Transfiguration classroom. People, mainly from Ravenclaw, started coming, eventually. Wendy Lowe sat down next to me.

"Hey, can you do me a favor?" she asked.

"What?" I asked with no curiosity. Wendy and I got along, but weren't exactly friends.

"Give this to Adam Still for me?" she asked, handing over a piece of parchment.

I sighed. "I don't--"

"I can't give it to him myself, and you're a Gryffindor," she said, dropping the letter in my lap. "Thank you," she said, standing up and leaving.

I rolled my eyes and stood up, as well. Professor McGonagall was coming to unlock the classroom. Joan was talking to her again, and Professor McGonagall was nodding slowly.

I sat in my normal place: in the front row, on the corner, next to the windows, next to Percy. Except now Percy was sitting in the desk that was front and center and in front of Penelope.

"Good morning. We're working on transfiguring medical equipment out of natural materials this week. You will have a partner to work with. You'll be going outside today to gather materials you believe will be useful. On Wednesday and Friday, you will be given a hypothetical medical emergency and must attempt to solve it with the materials you gathered. Your textbooks will help you.

"Partners... let's see. Treeman and Creevey. Spencer and... Still. Weasley and Lowe." She kept pairing people up. I was one of the last two people to be paired up. "And Debman and... Wood," McGonagall said, looking just a little guilty.

My jaw dropped and I prepared myself to object, but the rest of the class was doing that for me, just by muttering their shock. Wood and I were not paired up. Percy and Wood were not paired up. Ever. Not even by Snape.

"No switching partners. Containers for collecting materials are next to the door. Now, go outside," McGongall said.

Wood and I had the same idea. We were at McGonagall's desk, arguing, before anyone else even had the chance to stand up. The class filed out, slowly, as Wood and I tried to talk over each other.

"No--"

"Absolutely not!"

"...crazy? We're--"

"...stupidest idea--"

"...Joan? Did she put you--?"

"Shut up!" McGonagall said, throwing up her hands. "It's about time you two put your childish issues behind you and grew up! Either get along for a few hours or fail. Now, go!"

I was shocked. Professor McGonagall, as strict as she was, never told anyone to shut up and never insulted us. Wood and I walked away, muttering obscenities under our breath. We picked up some containers and left the castle in complete silence.

Outside of the big oak doors leading into the castle, we both stopped to think. I opened my book to the correct chapter and started skimming the text.

"Grass, moss, scum off the top of the lake... those are easy enough. Oak bark, pine needles... not too bad. After that it starts getting more interesting. Poison ivy, poison oak, lady's breath, Venus flytrap teeth, sap from... enchanted trees, roots from nightshade, pollen from blue bonnet, cats-eye, dream catcher, guard's feet...."

"Look, I'll go this way, and you go in the opposite direction, all right?" Wood said, pointing towards Hagrid's cabin.

I shrugged. "Fine with me. The Forbidden Forest is on your side of the grounds. Have fun finding some of this stuff... 'wolfsbane, bloodvine, dementor's hug.' I can only imagine some of the creatures that would eat this stuff."

Wood shivered very slightly. "Right, well, we can't go into the forest anyway. It's off limits."

"Where else would we get this? It's for a class. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely fond of the Forbidden Forest, or the Caves, which are in my direction and where we'll need to find some of this fungi. In situations like this, I'm not very picky about whose company I'm in," I said, dog-earring the page with a chart of commonly transfigured plants.

Wood didn't answer at first. He just started off in the direction of the forest. I was a little surprised (and insulted, of course). After he was a few meters from the bottom of the stairs that led up to the oak doors, he turned towards me. "Well?"

"Well, what?" I asked, unwilling to just hand over a victory. He'd have to ask me to come.

"I'd rather face the forest than the caves," he said.

So, I'd gain a victory later. The truth was, I'd rather face the forest, too.

"Let's get the normal things first, OK?" I asked, hurrying down the stairs after him and then heading towards the lake. "Any idea how to identify an oak from every other tree around this place?"

"My business is with the sky, not the ground," Wood said.

I rolled my eyes. "How poetic. Anyway, tell that to the tree you flew into during our first year," I said, smirking.

"If I wasn't so busy watching you and Percy to make sure you didn't kill yourselves, I wouldn't have flown into it. As I recall, I was yelling at you because you were flying straight for the Owlery," he said.

"And I missed it."

"You didn't. You just flew in one window and out another."

"That's easier said than done."

"Apparently. Percy ran into one of the owl's cages. Poor owl. Didn't see what was coming."

I laughed a little, caught myself and scowled again. "It's not our fault you weren't watching where you were going."

"No? Well, tell that to the tree I hit because it seems to blame the two of you for the whole incident," Wood said.

I smiled but turned my head so he couldn't see.

"So... how are Percy and Penelope?" Wood asked tauntingly.

"Jealous?" I asked.

"Of Penel--"

"Because Percy has a girlfriend while you, Mr. Captain of Gryffindor's Quidditch Team, are single," I said.

"See, it's funny. I care more about my friends than some girl who comes along," he said.

"Whatever," I muttered.

"Right, see, I forgot. What does Laura know about friendship, anyway?" he said coldly. He didn't sound like he was just taunting me anymore. He sounded... angry and hurt.

"What?" I asked, narrowing my eyes as I bent down to pull up some grass by a large rock by the lake.

"You heard me."

"Oh, I heard you. I just can't believe you said it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You who stabbed your best friend in the back," I spat, standing up so he wasn't towering over me.

"Me?" he asked, his eyes wide, jaw dropped. "*Me*? Who betrayed whom first?"

"What?"

"And I still made the team, second year, using one of the school's crappy broomsticks."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, louder and angrier.

"He stole my broom!"

"He took your broom because he was having Charlie improve it. Your broom wasn't exactly great, Wood. You never noticed that it flew ten times better after you got it back? Charlie Weasley filed down those knots on the handle and straightened out the tail. You weren't supposed to try out for the team until the next day. You went early, you git! Percy wanted to surprise you. It was supposed to be a gift!" I said.

I leaned over to scoop out some pond scum in a little container Professor McGonagall had given each group. The next thing I knew, I was being pushed into the lake. I fell face down into the knee-deep water and stood up quickly. I turned to Wood, fuming.

"You're lying," he said.

"I'm not. You had our whole house against him before he ever got a chance to explain. You must have told everyone what you thought happened, except with a new spin. Percy wasn't just sabotaging you, you said. No... he was against Gryffindor! I can't believe they fell for it, but you were part of the team, then," I said, climbing out of the freezing water. Then a better idea came into my head, and I took out my wand. "Wingardium leviosa!" I said.

Wood's feet flew from under him. I moved him effortlessly over the water and removed the charm.

He came out of the water, sputtering. "You little--"

"You asked for it, you--"

"I asked for it? This whole thing was your fault!"

"What?"

"That's right. You betrayed me. You took Percy's side, no questions asked. If you would've stuck by us both, we'd all still be friends now. If you'd been a good friend--"

"If *I'd* been a good friend? You didn't ask questions before turning the whole house against him. You didn't even think that your best friend wasn't trying to hurt you, just to help you?" I asked, crawling onto the large rock by the lake.

"Expelliarmus!" I said, before he could magic me back into the water. I caught his wand awkwardly, but I still caught it.

"You didn't ask questions before assuming I was just backstabbing him for no reason?" Wood asked, almost calmly, as he climbed out of the lake.

"It looked pretty bad. To Percy and me, it looked like you backstabbed him for no reason."

"And when the older Weasleys turned the tables on me? What about then? I was alone, Laura! Completely alone. No friends, no one to even talk to. No one! And you just watched from a distance."

"You had Quidditch."

"And Quidditch is still all I have," he said. "And now? Now what do I have? We lost that match against Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff!"

"You have friends. And you can still win that damned cup if you want to. With a little luck, and if you win the rest of your games, of course, but you can still win," I said, standing.

"Right. Slytherin would have to lose to someone besides us, and--"

"And Ravenclaw can beat them."

"And even if they did, we'd still probably have to beat Slytherin by over one hundred points," he finished, bitterly.

"Which you can with the team you have. The only reason you haven't won the cup yet is because Potter has some rotten luck."

"Rotten luck? If Potter had rotten luck, he'd be dead about three times over by now. At least."

I nodded, as this was true if rumors were correct. "You can still win if you put your team up to it," I said, climbing off of the rock. "Now look what you've done. We're both angry and wet."

I tossed him his wand. He caught it easily and pointed it at himself. "Repelio!" He was instantly dry.

I performed the same charm and tucked my wand into my pocket. "Are we going to work on this project?"

"I see no alternatives," he said.

"All right, then. There's still stuff we can get on the kinder parts of the grounds. You're sure you can't tell an oak from a spruce or a cedar?"

"No, I can't," he said.

"OK. We'll just have to take a stab in the dark, then," I said, walking up to the nearest tree without needles and tearing off some bark.

"I'm sorry I pushed you into the lake. It was an immature, impulsive thing to do," Wood said as if it pained him.

I nodded. "Yes, it was."

He waited. "That's it? 'Yes, it was'?"

I sighed, took a deep breath and said, "And I'm sorry for magicking you into the lake. It was a better way to do a very immature and impulsive thing."

Wood actually laughed. "I have a feeling that's the best I'm going to get, so I accept your apology."

"And I accept yours."

We walked on for a few more minutes.

"Good idea, by the way. Disarming me, I mean. I was debating between a spell that would make you extremely heavy, causing you to sink to the bottom of the lake, or a curse that would suffocate you, which would have been a less stylish approach to Plan A."

I looked at him, angrily and, realizing he was only kidding, smiled. "Thanks."

We got a few more things on the list. It took about an hour because the two of us were horrible at identifying plants. After running out of plants we thought we could find on the grounds, we were preparing ourselves for heading into the Forbidden Forest.

"We'll only go in a little way, right?" I asked.

"How am I supposed to know?" Wood said.

"You've never been in there?"

"Have you?" he asked.

"Of course not! Percy's my best friend. The forest is off-limits. Need I say more? But you--"

"Why would I go into the forest? I spend too much time flying."

I looked into the forest and laughed slightly. "Why did the Sorting Hat place us in Gryffindor, again?"

"No other house would take us?" Wood guessed.

"What does the Hat do if you don't fit in any house?" I asked, looking at him.

"I've heard you pick a number one through ten."

I laughed. "Let's just get this over with."

"Ladies first," Wood said, motioning towards the forest.

"Oh, you wimp," I said, not moving.

"Hey, I put myself in front of hurled Quaffles on an almost daily basis."

"A wimp that doesn't know he's a wimp. That's the worse kind of wimp there is."

"I don't see you walking in there," he said, starting forward.

"Just be the man of the situation, eh?" I said sarcastically.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he muttered, heading through the first row of trees. "We're in. So... this is it? Not much of a--"

"RAWRRRR!" I yelled, grabbing the back of his neck with my fingertips.

He yelled and spun around to find me doubling over with laughter.

"Oh, you will pay for that," he said, seemingly battling himself on whether he should be fuming mad or laughing hysterically with me.

"Oh will I? Maybe I should be the man of the situation."

"I still hate you, you know?" Wood asked.

"And I still hate you," I said, still laughing but not as forcefully.

"I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page," he said, walking farther into the forest.

"We are."

We kept walking and the deeper into the trees we got, the darker it got and the more afraid I got.

"I don't know what we're looking for," I said, finally. We'd been walking for many minutes.

"You don't?"

"No."

"I was waiting for you to point something out!" he said.

"And I was waiting for *you* to point something out."

"Let's just get out of here."

"Scared?" I asked, smirking.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing.

"Where?" I asked, spinning around.

"Here," he hissed in my ear.

I screamed and spun back around, arms flailing.

He laughed, easily blocking my swings.

"Ass!" I said.

"You scared me first."

"We were on the edge of the forest then. I just want to get out of here. There must be a reason this place is forbidden, and I'm in no hurry to learn of it."

"Scared?" he mocked.

"Let's just say I'm a stage above hearing and seeing things and a stage below peeing my pants."

"Oh, thanks for that image." He paused. "Actually, it's kind of funny."

I laughed. "I'll tell you what. I'll run in that way, you run in the opposite way, and we'll see who gets out first," I said, pointing in front of us.

"Fine with me. You'll be running into the forest."

"What?" I asked.

"Hogwarts is that way," he said, pointing to someplace about ninety degrees left of where I had pointed.

"No. It's that way." I pointed again.

"You're crazy."

"Me?"

"Oh, this is stupid." He got out his wand. "Point me!" He paused. "We're both wrong. It's that way." He pointed to a place in between where we had been pointing.

"I was closer," I said, smiling.

"You were not. I clearly was closer to where--" He stopped when he saw my smirk. "McGonagall's right."

"How so?"

"We do have some childish issues."

"Yeah, well...." I started walking in the correct direction. "We also have some not so childish issues."

Wood didn't respond.

After about fifteen minutes of arguing with myself, I said, "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry," I said, so he could hear me.

Wood didn't say anything.

"I should have been a better friend and heard you out, no matter how bad it looked. And I'm sorry."

He still didn't answer.

"You want to know the truth? It wasn't Percy who was jealous. It was me."

"You stole my--"

"No one stole your damned broom, Wood."

"Then why were you jealous?" he asked.

"Because while Percy was my best friend, and I was one of his... the truth is you were a better best friend for him."

"Why?"

"Come on. I was forced to be a sort of tomboy, and I wasn't good at it."

"No, you weren't."

I smiled a little. "I tried.

"We didn't care that you were a girl."

"No, but I did. But it was more than that. You two used to be... you used to be like Fred and George. Joan and Tara. Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. I was jealous because you were his best friend, except for Dan, and I wasn't."

"If things hadn't turned out the way the did, it wouldn't be like that now," he said.

I looked back at him. "Who's to say how things would have turned out?"

"Things didn't turn out so badly, did they?" he asked.

I faced forward again, to watch where I was going. "I don't know. I don't know how badly things would have turned out," I said, showing too much emotion.

"Percy will get used to having a girlfriend and will--"

"No, I don't think so."

"But before this year? Before Penelope?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Bad stuff has happened. I was happy, for a while... I think."

"You think?"

"Yeah, I think I was."

"But you don't know?"

"Bad stuff happened," I repeated.

We kept walking , carefully, so we'd keep going in the same direction.

"I'm sorry," Wood said, eventually.

"You don't have anything to apologize to me for. Percy is--"

"No. I do owe you an apology for what I said earlier. To blame you for everything was unfair and incorrect."

"Not completely unfair."

"No, not completely. It was partially your fault."

"But not completely," I said.

"No."

"OK. Thank you."

He paused for a few minutes as we kept walking out of the forest. "When you said that bad things happened... did you mean... Dan?"

"Partially," I said.

He stopped walking and I turned to see why.

"I'm sorry about Dan. I wanted to tell Percy and you that, but...."

"I understand. Thanks."

"I got to know him in Quidditch. After the fight, well, he tried to talk me down. If I would have listened...."

"He wouldn't have died," I said quietly.

"What?" Wood asked.

"Nothing. Never mind," I said, starting to walk again.

"No, I heard you, I just didn't understand," Wood said, starting to follow. "What do you mean he wouldn't have died if I would have listened to him?"

"I didn't mean anything. Who's to say what would have happened had anything changed," I said, speeding up.

"No. What do you mean?" Wood caught up and walked in front of me.

"Just drop it, Wood."

"I can't!"

"Fine! Pester me until we die in here. I don't care."

"Laura, what did you mean?"

"Please drop it. It doesn't matter. He died and there is nothing we can do about it. Why worry over things that may have changed the past?" I said, walking past him.

He grabbed my arm. "You cannot just tell me that it is my fault that one of my friends died and drop it. You can't!"

"It's not your fault! It's mine!" I said, angrily. Realizing what I said, I shook my head fiercely. "I can't blame myself. It was no one's fault--"

"What do you mean?" Wood asked.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I need you to talk about it!"

"And I need you to drop it!"

"Damn it, this is more important than our stupid grudges against each other!"

"Then why can't you let it go?" I asked.

"You haven't!"

"And I never will, and you won't either if--"

"It is my fault, then! Oh, my G--"

"Shut up!" I said. "It is not your fault, and... just forget about it, Oliver. Please."

He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. He raised his pointer finger to his mouth and turned his head a little.

I heard a little rustle from not far away. He must have heard it, too. We looked at each other for a second, turned towards the edge of the forest, and ran like hell.

"Can't you run any faster?" Wood asked, right on my heels.

"If I could, don't you think I would?" I panted. "If you want to go faster, then pass me."

"I can't just leave you out here."

"Why not?" I asked. "I would leave you."

"No, you wouldn't," he said. "But if you can't run any faster--"

"There's the edge!" I interrupted, gaining a tiny bit of speed.

The two of us broke out of the Forbidden Forest, but didn't stop running. After we were a few hundred feet from the edge, we slowed down to stop.

We turned to face the forest. "What do you think it was?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. It was big, though," he said, breathing deeply, but not gasping for air like I was.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Vampire?"

"We weren't that deep into the forest. Not to mention, a vampire would have attacked before we heard it. I heard a rumor about giant spiders."

"Giant spiders?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Give me a break," I said. "Maybe it was a centaur."

"Maybe. Wait... something's coming out of the woods."

We stood completely still, watching the shape become clearer, until....

"Hagrid?" I asked, smiling a little. "We ran from Hagrid? How embarrassing."

"What kind of Gryffindors are we?" Wood asked seriously.

I shrugged. "There are different types of bravery, I guess. Some people can face death. Some people can face life."

Wood nodded. "And which one can we face, again?"

"I think it's fair to say that we can't face death," I said, laughing slightly.

"But how are we at facing life?" he asked, maybe speaking to himself more than to me.

I looked up at him and, for the first time in five years or more, I tried to see him. "Nobody's perfect," I said, finally.

He laughed. "After all of the shit we've put ourselves through, I think we've done a decent job at facing life."

"Maybe. Wood, listen. Dan tried to talk me down, too. A few weeks before he died, we got into a big argument over why the two of us hate each other. I didn't listen either."

"What did Dan say?" Wood asked. He seemed to really care, which I found surprising, though I shouldn't have. Dan had been nice to Oliver when the rest of the Weasleys were turning everyone else against Oliver for a month or so.

"He said that we hated each other because we thought we had to. He said that maybe we did have to for some reason."

"What did he mean by that?"

"I'm not quite sure, but Dan did think that everything happened for a reason."

"What reason could there be for the three of us making each other miserable? Or for Dan dying so young, for that matter?"

I looked down and decided to ignore the latter part. "Maybe, if we were all still friends, I would have tried to fly a broom again and actually hit the owlery," I tried to joke. He didn't laugh. "I don't know if I even believe that everything happens for a reason."

"When you said that it was my fault--"

"I never meant it. I wasn't prepared for the subject, and I never would have said it had I been thinking... not even to you. A lot of things could have changed what happened that morning, but you weren't one of them."

"You were there, weren't you?"

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," I said, trying to smile so he wouldn't take it personally.

He looked away.

"Did things turn out all right for you? Overall?" I asked after a minute.

He thought for a second and nodded. "They turned out all right," he said, looking back in my direction.

I smiled. "I'm glad. I wish we would have talked years ago. It would have made it easier for us to just forgive each other, then."

"Probably."

"We'd have been friends within a week if we'd have made better decisions."

"Probably," Wood said again, more slowly.

"And what's the difference between a week and a few years?" I asked, half seriously.

"About five years minus one week," Wood answered.

I sighed. "You don't understand," I said, mainly to myself.

"Understand what?"

"I don't know," I said.

He shook his head and started walking towards the castle. "It's late. We probably missed lunch."

"You don't understand that we've fought for years over nothing," I said quickly. I walked to catch up with him and he stopped begrudgingly. "You don't understand that I am sorry for what happened, but that I can't change it. You don't understand that I need your forgiveness right now." I knew I should shut up, but I couldn't. "You don't understand that we could still have been friends if the fight hadn't happened, but, more than that, we could still be friends despite the fight. You said you were completely alone after the fight. That's me now, Oliver. Except I don't even have Quidditch. If you wanted me to pay, I have. I am."

He started walking again.

"That's it? No response?"

"None."

I hurried to catch up again. "I thought you could face life. Right now, I'm part of what life is throwing at you."

"And I plan on dodging it so it won't hit me," he said coldly.

"It's going to hit you, all right," I muttered, getting in his path.

He tried to get past me, but I countered all of his attempts.

"What?" Wood asked, eventually giving up.

"I'm not that easy to dodge, am I?"

"No, and it's quite annoying."

"That's life. Do you think if you just ignore me, that I'll go away?"

"I was hoping so, yes," Wood said.

The same cold, apathetic hatred that he usually directed at me was back. I still knew enough about him to know that any further conversation was pointless.

I looked up at him and nodded. "OK," I said quietly. I turned my back on him and walked back to the castle, using all of my self-control not to cry or get noticeably angry.


Author notes: So, that was Chapter Two. Upset because the fight was over something so stupid? So are the characters. Think the fight is the only reason that everyone is holding a grudge? Not entirely. Again, there was no real cliffhanger, so we'll put it down here. Coming up in Chapter Three: What will happen when Percy finally hears what the fight was all about? And who will take the initiative in starting to repair the damage?