Studying

"Studying"

I'm sitting in the library, hard at work. That's pretty much all I do this time of year. Exams at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are quite grueling, and I'm sure this year will be no different than my first two.

Yet I'm not just studying Potions and Arithmancy and Defence Against the Dark Arts. I'm studying a pair of brown eyes, a pair of agile hands and a dark head that keeps twitching longingly to the window and his Quidditch pitch.

He's in seventh year, and he's a friend of my friend. Why would he notice a little third-year? Even if he is friends with Harry. Even if I am top of my year. Oliver Wood is, unfortunately, far beyond my reach.

I haven't told anyone about this, of course. I can just picture Ron and Harry's reactions. Well, actually, I can't - and I think that's why I won't tell them. They're only boys, after all. Who *knows* what they'd do?

And the most maddening thing about all of this is that I don't even know why Oliver (always Oliver, *never* Wood) caught my eye. Sure, he's handsome, but there are a lot of handsome boys at Hogwarts. I could have started liking Cedric Diggory or something. (Now I can see the boys' reaction to that!)

I think it's because he does have one thing in common with me. Even now as he pages through a battered copy of Advanced Transfiguration, he's doing it slowly and carefully, never missing a thing. He cares. Not just about Quidditch, though of course he's devoted to the game. I like Quidditch. Ron likes Quidditch. But Oliver likes it even more than Harry, who sees Quidditch as the only thing he's really, truly good at. For Oliver, it is truly a life and death thing. I admire that kind of resolve.

But it's the same way with other aspects of his personality. He could be Head Boy if he cared more about his books and less about Quidditch. Yet I wouldn't have him if he didn't care so much about Quidditch. Because then it wouldn't be him.

I'm starting not to make sense, and that annoys me. Yet it also amuses me, because in my thirteen years I haven't met many people that reduce me to this state of idiocy.

I shake my head to get rid of these thoughts and get back to Potions. What is the key ingredient in Jumping Juice?

I confess, I haven't the slightest idea and nor do I care. Oliver's gotten up now. Brushing a bit of invisible lint from the collar of his robes, he takes Advanced Transfiguration and puts it back on the shelves. Grabbing his satchel, he pushes in his chair and strides across the room with those long legs, suited perfectly to straddling a broomstick (keep your mind out of the gutter, Hermione!). He's coming towards me to pass to the door now, and I can't help but think that maybe, just once, he'll stop and talk to me.

But no. He walks straight past me, taking in neither my face nor my existence. He's stopped just outside the door, talking to someone, but only he is still visible.

I look after him, watching his easy grace and the slight hitch in his step that says he'd rather be on a broom. One day, I think firmly, I'm going to make him notice me. Whether it's by saving his life or picking up a book he's dropped. I'll make him notice me.

And with that, I don't have any more things to stop me. Sighing inwardly, I stop studying, and get back to studying.