Life Down at the Quidditch Pitch

Chapter Five

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Alicia flew out of bed grabbing her Prefect badge and her wand. She heard Angelina behind her and the two of them flew down the steps, accidentally pushing first and second years out of the way. There were boys already downstairs, and Alicia was feeling panicked.

"Upstairs, fifth year dormitory," someone said. Alicia flew up the boys' staircase, taking the steps two at a time and out of breath flew into the room. The room was already a bit crowded; there were the fifth years that lived there, plus some of the Gryffindor Prefects and the Quidditch team. She caught a glimpse of Harry, tangled in a sheet on the floor, Ron and Dean kneeling beside him. Alicia pushed her way to them. Harry was clutching his eyes shut, tears forming, and muffling screams.

"Is he having a seizure?" Alicia asked, maybe her Muggle first aid training would come in handy if that was the case.

"No, it's his scar," Ron said. "You-Know-Who...we've got to get him to the Infirmary."

"Okay," Alicia said, getting into Prefect mode. "Cate, Edward, get everyone out of the Common Room. Dean, Hermione, Fred, and George take your wands and go fetch McGonagall. Ron, you'll help me carry Harry to the Infirmary."

Everyone nodded. She saw Lee raise his eyebrows and shared a look with him. "Lee, you'll help of course."

They all cleared out except for Ron, Lee, and herself. Ron and Lee grabbed Harry by the shoulders and she ran for the door. They left the Tower, Alicia was thankful everyone was out of the way. She was sure Harry wouldn't want them asking plenty of questions of him the next day.

"Why is Harry like this Ron?" Alicia asked, running to catch up with the boys, who were traveling at a speed that Alicia wouldn't have thought that was possible since they were carrying someone. It also reminded Alicia of the hospital dramas on the telly that she would spend time watching during the holidays. She expected someone to say STAT at any moment.

"Not sure," Ron said. "I only know that it hurts him when You-Know-Who is around, but more than that, I'm not incredibly sure. Harry would know, but he's unconscious."

"Really?" Lee asked, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. They rounded the next corner and they were in front of the steps to the Infirmary. They awkwardly made it up the steps, Alicia making sure that Harry wasn't dragging on the ground.

"Pet, get the door." Alicia opened the door, Lee and Ron whisking Harry into the Infirmary, onto a bed. Harry was moving around, shaking now. The three of them shared worried looks. Shouldn't Madame Pomfrey or Professor McGonagall be there by now?

Harry was now muttering, and Alicia was more worried. She knelled close to Harry, trying to catch snippets. Once she finally did, she wished she hadn't. The word that she caught was clear, and something she wished she hadn't. The word confirmed her and everyone's fear. Harry said Voldermort.

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Katie pulled her trunk onto her bed. Her room hadn't changed at all, still the same red quilt, the same Quidditch posters on her walls, and the same pile of clothing that she'd left on the floor. She opened her trunk, not sure why. On the top of her clothing was her favorite picture, it was of her, Emma, Andrew, and her mum. It had been the day that her team had won the Junior Quidditch League Championship, the summer before she went to Hogwarts. They all looked so happy; it had been a great day.

She sniffled and sat down on the bed. She missed her Mum bad enough when she was just at Hogwarts. What would she do now that she was gone? What would Emma and Andrew do without Mum? Would they live with Grandmum until they went to Hogwarts? Both of them had already shown signs of magic. They both played in the Junior Quidditch league, Andrew as a Keeper and Emma as a Chaser.

She felt tears forming in her eyes again. This was so unfair. Mum had been such an excellent person; she had given up almost everything for the three of them. She gave and gave, yet she never asked a thing of them in return. Katie slammed her fist down onto the bed and burst into tears, hating how weak it might make her look.

"Katie." She snapped her head up to find Oliver in her doorway, leaning on the door jam. "Are you okay?"

She quickly wiped away her tears, not wanting him to see how weak she was, or looked. "I'm fine."

"I would beg to differ, but you won't want to talk about it, so I won't ask," Oliver said, sitting down beside her. She gave him a curious look. "I've heard Angelina and Alicia trying to get information out of you more than once. One thing is for sure, if you've made up your mind not to talk about something, you won't. A very rare characteristic in a girl."

She nodded. "That's me. Hard headed and stubborn."

"I didn't say anything about you being hard headed."

"You didn't have to."

"Don't tell me you thought that I was implying that you're that way."

"No, no, nothing like that. Mum used to tell me how hard headed I was everyday." She looked away from him as tears formed in her eyes. She really didn't want him to see her like this, crying and sad. Katie felt a hand on her back and turned to see him, looking at her, eyes full of concern.

"If there was anything I could do for you, I would. If you need anything just say the word," he said softly. It was that moment she realized that she didn't hate Oliver. He looked too caring for her to hate him. In fact, it was that moment that made her realize that perhaps Oliver Wood wasn't the You-Know-Who incarnate she'd been preaching about since second year. That confused her.

She stood up quickly, almost knocking herself over. She needed to be away from him. She had to hate him, she was Katie Bell, it was part of her image. If she liked Oliver...what would everyone say? She wasn't really one to care about her image, but hating Oliver was an integral part of herself. Suddenly liking Oliver would be like if she woke up with black hair and in Slytherin house one morning. It was totally out of character.

At the same time, she was tired of hating Oliver. It took up so much energy; she often wondered how anyone was capable of sheer hatred. Sure she hated Oliver, but it wasn't quite the same way as a pure hatred, like You-Know-Who hating Muggles, Gryffindor hating Slytherins, Alicia hating peanut butter.

She locked eyes again with him. She knew that she didn't want to hate him anymore, he was being so nice. Why couldn't he just be a prat again? Why couldn't she overhear another conversation like she had that night in the Common Room? Why was he being so damn nice to her? And most of all why couldn't she just hate him like she used to?

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Angelina waited for Alicia to rejoin her in the Common Room. She was sitting up alone, everyone had either gone on once of Alicia's demands or was upstairs in bed in their dormitory. She had a feeling that there was a reason Alicia was taking so long, and she didn't like.

She sighed, thinking about it. Her friends always made fun of her when she got those 'feelings'. They never understood how sure she could be of anything. They just didn't get it. It's not like she thought that she was a Seer, far from it. It ran in the Johnson line to have a really strong intuition about things. And no one ever understood them.

She allowed herself to get lost in her thoughts, she thought about no one believing in her intuition, how much she missed Katie, and other random things when someone slammed the door to the Portrait, knocking her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see George stalking across the room; he apparently didn't see her because he was muttering under his breath.

"Stupid git, out of his rocker." That was the only thing that she caught before George ran up the steps into the boys dormitory. She wasn't sure what he was on about, but it had to be something. She figured that it was probably best to leave well enough alone, George looked to be in yet another foul mood.

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Two hours later Alicia was sitting in a late called Prefect meeting. Everyone was in their pajamas and no one looked happy. Especially not Draco Malfoy, whose hair was complete rumpled and who complained loudly about the lack of beauty sleep he was getting. Padma Patil had made a very loud and very snide comment about the lack of beauty sleep he must have gotten every night. Hermione Granger and Dean Thomas had dissolved into giggles after that.

However the reason that they were in this meeting was not a laughing matter. There had been an attack on one of the Muggle-born students' home, a second year Hufflepuff. The student had been sent home with Madame Pince, his parents were alright, but Dumbledore had insisted that the student visit his parents. Alicia had silently thought that Katie had it good with Oliver, and felt even sorrier for the boy to have Madame Pince be sent home with him.

Alicia herself was worried though. She was a Muggle-born, though unlike so many others she hadn't made it common knowledge for this very reason. She had been warned by those of wizarding blood that there were rumors of You-Know-Who being alive, and being the scared first year that she had been, hadn't said a word to hardly anyone about her true lineage. She wasn't ashamed of being a Muggle-born, quite the opposite; she just didn't want her family to be in danger because of her.

She finally snapped back into reality to finish listening to what Rose and William were saying. She knew it wasn't anything that she hadn't heard before, but she wanted to be able to report back to Angelina, Katie, and the boys about what was said. She always gave them the recap of what had happened, whether it was interesting or not, and more often than not, it wasn't interesting at all.

Rose and William droned on longer, talking about more precautionary measures. Alicia didn't really see why they were so uptight about; sure an attack was bad, but honestly one attack didn't warrant a full out panic for the school. There hadn't been this much of an uproar after the Chamber of Secrets had been opened.

But then again, Voldermort himself had been at this attack, though how the student's parents survived, she wasn't sure. Perhaps there was a good reason to be worried. Alicia shook her head, Angelina and Katie always said that she was the worrier, just like Angelina was the funny one and Katie was the hot headed one. She was probably just letting everyone's panic get to her. After all, it's not like Voldermort attacked Hogsmeade or Hogwarts. The attack had been somewhere in Wales, far enough away that they shouldn't be panicky about the safety of the students in the school.

She tugged at her hair and wished that her mind and Rose and William would stop going in circles. They were talking about nothing actually important, the lack of sleep, worrying about Katie, and her panicked mind were driving her insane. She couldn't think at all. They were finally sitting down and opened the floor for suggestions which meant that Roger Davies was gong to open up his overlarge mouth and talk about absolutely nothing that mattered to anyone.

But to Alicia complete surprise, and utter confusion, it wasn't Roger Davies that spoke first, in fact, it was Draco Malfoy.

"What is the bleeding point of us sitting around and just talking at 3 am?! There is nothing we can do about it!" Malfoy said, repeating her thoughts. It was strange, she surmised, agreeing with Malfoy on something, usually she just wanted to strangle him. "Let's just acknowledged that yes, something bad happened, and get our sorry arses into our dormitories and sleep. I have double Potions with the Gryffindors first thing in the morning. You try putting up with that lot on no sleep!"

There was an instant uproar from Dean and Hermione, Blaise and Malfoy as they began yelling back and forth. Alicia just rolled her eyes. Their bickering was almost as bad as hers and Rogers or even Katie and Oliver's, though she didn't dare to tread that far.

Finally, Rose and William broke up the fighting and Alicia drug herself back up to the tower with Edward, Cate, Hermione, and Dean. No one said much on the way up, however she heard Dean mumble about the lack of importance of that meeting.

She gave the Fat Lady the password 'Lightning Lady' and they entered. She was surprised to see Lee, Angelina, and Fred still waiting up for her, she suspected that they would have been in bed long ago. She sat down on the couch next to Lee who looked like he was about to fall over.

"So what was so important?" Angelina asked, Alicia resting her head on her boyfriend's shoulder.

"Nothing, at least I think nothing," she said, remembering her worries from earlier. She explained to all of them what had happened; they all nodded at the right points. "Do you think we should be worried?"

There was some debating, Lee and Fred agreeing that there was no reason to be panicky, but they should always be worried. Angelina thought that they were jumping the gun early, but Alicia decided that of course Angelina had nothing to worry about. The Johnson's were in no way endangered by the Dark Lord. They'd never taken a public stance against him, though Angelina herself had let her feelings be shown more than once.

Alicia was still confused, but she put that aside, and went to bed.

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Oliver was confused when he woke up, there was sunlight coming through the yellow curtains and the place smelled of juniper, not the normally musty smell of his Hogwarts room. Then it dawned on him that he was actually at Katie Bell's house, well flat to be precise and he was sitting on the Phooeytone or whatever Katie had called it. It was a couch that transfigured itself into a bed. Without magic! He had been so excited, and Katie had just rolled her eyes, but she had grinned.

He sat up thinking about Katie. She hadn't really shown him that she was upset, but then he realized that Katie wasn't one to show emotion, well except anger. He wondered how she was taking it, was she completely devastated, or was she just letting it role off her back? He frowned and looked at his feet. He wondered if he should ask her how she was doing, or would that be a bad idea?

He looked up at the clock. Seven AM, he had slept in. He wondered when Katie was going to get up. Would it be okay for him to find food? Did she need to be up early for the day? What was their schedule for the rest of the week?

He quietly got up and made his way to Katie's bedroom. He felt funny just going into her room. She was a girl and not to mention a student at Hogwarts. He lightly tapped on the door, there was no answer.

He bit his lip, still debating on whether or not he should go in. He bit the bullet and slowly entered her room. This room smelled even more like Katie than the rest of the house. He spotted her rolled up into a ball, her scarlet blankets tossed over the bed. For the first time ever he noticed how peaceful she looked when she was asleep. If Oliver would have let himself admit it, she was beautiful asleep, but he didn't.

He was about to wake her when he saw the pile of tissues on the floor next to her and the photo album in her bed. It was flipped open to a picture of Katie with her mum. She looked to be about nine in the picture and was grinning. She was wearing purple Quidditch robes, and Oliver wondered if she was more obsessed with Quidditch than he was. Katie had her arms thrown around her mum and both of them once again looked happy. They were grinning like crazy. He looked back at Katie and decided to let her sleep. Maybe Katie just wasn't showing how upset she was.

"I'm sorry Katie," he whispered softly. "I really wish this hadn't happened to you." She didn't move. He bit his lip, she was a sound sleeper, and he would have been awake by now. "If there was anything I could do for you, I would." He looked at her again, and then he left the bedroom. He didn't notice Katie open her eyes as he shut the door behind him, with an odd expression on her face.