Love...Of Sorts

Karen sat by the stony window of the astronomy tower, perfectly still. The Slytherin fifth year was dressed in a luxurious-looking nightgown and matching robe of forest green taffeta, and her black hair was loose on her back, out of its customary ponytail. Despite the chill of the night air at the high altitude and the thin material she was clad in, the girl did not seem to be cold at all. But then, Karen Verena Bletchley had spent the past six years of her life in the Slytherin dungeons, and the past year as the Keeper on the Slytherin house team, practicing out there in all sorts of weather. Quidditch had strengthened her, and toughened her. It was one of the things she was best at, but right now, it was precisely that which made the rage radiate off Karen in waves, as she thought things not fit to be said, even by Slytherin standards, of Adrian Pucey, the smarmy chauvinistic bastard.

Today they'd finished Quidditch practice, and as usual, she'd gone into the locker room to take a quick shower afterward. She had just finished drying her hair and was walking out when she heard his smug voice sounding by her ear. "Well, well, I'm surprised that you didn't wait in there 'til Flint got back from putting away the equipment. Not in the mood for a quickie today?"

"Sod off, Pucey," Karen had retorted. "Since you obviously have nothing better to do, why don't you go and shove your wand up your arse?"

"Sorry BITCHLEY, but no can do. Everyone knows you only got on the team because you're shagging the captain." Pucey looked her up and down, wrinkling his nose. "There's no accounting for taste, to be sure. But I suppose the robes cover things that he can appreciate when he removes them..." His eyes skimmed slowly and rudely over her chest.

Karen fixed on him a chilling glare. "Pucey, if you ever want to father children, I would suggest you shut up and sod off...but then again, perhaps my performing of a severing charm would prevent the world from being cursed with more of your demon spawn, so I'd be doing everyone a favor. Besides, I don't see YOU being all that when Angelina Johnson snatches the Quaffle from under your over-large nose game after game, you sexist pig!"

"Well, perhaps if you would prevent Johnson from scoring again and again we might win once in a while, BITCH," Pucey snarled. "Ever since you got on the team, we've been beaten by those Gryffindorks, and those cocky idiots inspire 'morale' in the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws too."

"Pucey, if you had any sort of brain in that butt-ugly head of yours, you would realize that I got on the team the same year as Potter. It's the first time in a good many years that those Gryffindorks have a seeker who doesn't TOTALLY suck. Besides, obviously you don't know shit about Quidditch, since it's the SEEKERS who end the game in a win or loss. Sod off and whine at Higgs or something, NOT MY PROBLEM!" Karen had screeched back.

This argument had gone on for a good while yet, becoming increasingly vociferous and profane, with Pucey deprecating her skills, her gender, her appearance, and whatever else he took into his head to insult her about, until Professor McGonagall had strode down the hall, bespectacled eyes flashing and furious, and had taken away 10 points each from both of them.

Her wrathful thoughts were interrupted when a sanctimonious voice sounded at the door. "Whatever are you doing up here at this time of night? It's against the rules, you know! Five points from Slytherin!" Karen looked up to see the face of that tiresome Gryffindork Prefect, Percy Weasley.

Schooling her face into the haughty, blandly superior face characteristic of many a Slytherin dealing with a Gryffindor, she replied, "Well, you have successfully removed points from my house and performed your prefect duties. Congratulations. Now go and pester someone else."

This, however, did not seem to be enough to deter the self-righteous Prefect. "I must insist that you explain what you are doing up here at such an indecent hour, and then return to your dormitory immediately," he said in a sniffy voice.

Karen's eyes took on a crafty look at the word 'indecent' and smiled cattily. "Isn't it obvious? I'm waiting for my secret lover, who will come up here in a bit, and then we'll shag like wild animals for the next three hours."

Percy the Prefect turned a color to match his hair, and Karen's smirk widened, "You're welcome to join us, of course."

Percy somehow regained his composure and stammered out, "Who else is coming up here? They can't be here at such an hour, what an outrage!" Karen grinned, her teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

"Why, your twin brothers, of course, the ones who play Beater on your house team. I shag them, and we exchange Quidditch team secrets depending on who wears out first, me or them. They're really quite good for younger men." Seeing the scandalized expression on the Gryffindork Prefect's face and feeling decidedly better, Karen gave him an insolent wink and sauntered out.

~    ~    ~

Silently, Karen made her way down to the dungeons. This time, she was entirely uninterrupted except when Peeves floated out from behind a suit of armor and threw a roll of toilet paper at her head. Fast reflexes honed by Quidditch, Karen caught the roll and threw it back at Peeves as hard as she could, and nearly pelted the poltergeist out of the air. At the very moment, the Bloody Baron appeared out of the opposite wall, and seeing that she was a Slytherin student, told Peeves off and ordered him not to bother her. Karen gave a curt nod in gratitude to the ghost, and went on her way.

When she had finally reached the Slytherin Common Room entrance, she stepped up to the picture of the snake charmer with the flute and whispered the words "Pulvis et umbra sumus". The snake hissed at her in an odd sort of greeting, and the snake charmer salaamed, before the portrait opened up and let her into the Slytherin common room.

The Slytherin common room, contrary to popular belief, did not have manacles and torture devices and skeletons on the walls. To be sure, it was rather cold, the stone walls bare except for wrought iron lamps covered with green glass. The fireplace had a Slytherin banner hanging over it, and soft, comfortable lounges, sofas and armchairs of green and silver striped damask lay around the room. To her great surprise, there was one sofa in front of the fire still occupied. A tall, brawny male body lay asleep over it, a book over his face. One glance at the book's cover and another at the green robes covering the young man's body was all Karen needed to discern his identity. Only two people in the entire school might possibly be found asleep reading "Quidditch Through The Ages", and this certainly wasn't Oliver Wood the Gryffindork fanatic. Karen rolled her eyes to herself, and shook the young man by the shoulders, "Marcus, go to bed!"

Gradually, the green lump gave a grunt and opened up his eyes. Those black eyes gleamed like coals when Marcus saw who was bending over him, and he waggled his eyebrows at Karen. "Nice view I've got here."

Karen smacked him on the arm and hissed, "Enough of that, Marcus! Already I've got people thinking that I slept my way onto the team! Do you realize what type of horrid whisperings are going on behind your back?!"

Marcus goggled at her. "There are girls on the other teams; do they say that stuff about them as well?"

Karen rolled her eyes, then took on the drawling, slow enunciation used to explain things to a dunderheaded child. "Look, first of all, you forget that YOU are the captain, and I am dating you. Oliver Wood is not dating Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet OR Katie Bell. Similarly, Paul Brocklehurst is not dating Cho Chang or Portia Fawcett. Second of all, we're the Big Bad Slytherins, remember? We're evil, conniving bitches and bastards who do anything to achieve their ends. All that stuff."

Marcus gave her a long look, "Karen, you have to admit that they've got a point..."

Karen almost spontaneously combusted. "WHAT?!? ARE YOU SAYING THAT YOU AGREE WITH THOSE MISCREANTS AND THAT I ONLY GOT ONTO THE TEAM BECAUSE I'M FUCKING YOU?!?"

Marcus cringed. He could take several Bludgers in rapid succession and not get knocked off his broom. He could take three successive hours of Quidditch drills. But Karen on a rampage was an entirely different matter. "Well....n-not exactly..."

"THEN WHAT?!" Karen screamed, not giving a shit about who might hear her.

"W-well......don't get me wrong, Karen, you're a good Keeper and all that, but..."

"BUT WHAT?! I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH?! FINE!!" Karen stormed, then all of the sudden the fiery rage was replaced by a chilly calm. "Fine. If you feel that way, MARCUS, I quit. This way, you don't have to figure out a way to kick me off, and I end it on MY terms. Now you can go and gloat with Adrian fucking Pucey about how 'BITCHLEY' is no longer on the team. I hope you're happy." With the air of a queen, she swept past Marcus and towards the girls' dormitories. "By the way, we're over," she called over her shoulder and shut the door behind her without a backward glance.

~    ~    ~

By lunchtime the next day, everyone in Slytherin House had noticed that something was not right between Flint and Bletchley. For one thing, Flint looked distracted and harried, and there were no Quidditch matches coming up for another month, while Bletchley was pointedly ignoring him. To be sure, she ignored Adrian Pucey as well, but everyone had known of their mutual emnity since the day the two met on the train many years back.

When Quidditch practice rolled around two days later, Marcus Flint gruffly announced that they were going to use Reserve Keeper Hector Nott from then on. Adrian Pucey looked smug, but Jesse Avery immediately started to protest.

"Flint! Nothing against Nott, but he's just not fast enough! What happened to Bletchley? It's my last year on the team, and we'll never beat Ravenclaw with enough points to get even second place for the cup!" Jesse had shouted. "You can't just kick Bletchley off now, no matter what Pucey says!"

PUCEY....all of Marcus' frustration and anger, at himself, at Karen, at the world at large, focused on Pucey, and his face contorted into an ugly mask of rage. Jerking Pucey to his feet by the scruff of his neck, Flint's voice was between a snarl and a roar, "Do you really want to know why Karen isn't here, Avery? It's because of this little bastard! No, I did not kick her off, she QUIT!! Because of YOU!!"

Avery's eyes widened, Derrick, Bole and Higgs looked shocked, but Pucey merely struggled in Flint's grip, "I never did anything to her, it's all in that crazy head of hers."

Flint gnashed his teeth, and dropped Pucey brutally onto the ground. "Oh, and we will also be using a reserve Chaser," he growled, putting on a show of righteous indignation to cover the churning feeling inside.

"Warrington!" he barked, "You will be replacing Pucey. Get over here!" Carl Warrington, a fifth year reserve who showed promising signs of becoming a good Chaser, walked onto the pitch, broom in hand. Flint snarled out, "Pucey, get out of my sight! I never want to see you on this team again!" and then turned back to the wholly bewildered Warrington, "Warrington, you'll be playing on the team from now on instead of him. I'm expecting lots of hard work and NO MISTAKES!" Carl nodded mutely.

Pucey, his face an ugly shade of, well, PUCE, muttered, "So you're not man enough to admit that Bletchley got on the team only because she was shagging you, but you'd kick ME off just because she quit and filled your head with a bunch of bullshit."

"Damn straight! Get out of here, Pucey! NOW! And if I ever see you bothering Karen, I'll rip out your eyeballs and give them to her for earrings!" Pucey stalked off. Flint quickly ran through several drills with Warrington, and ended the practice early. Derrick, Bole, Higgs and Avery, who all knew very well of their captain's temper, quickly put away their equipment and left the pitch.

Warrington, with a brave stupidity generally characteristic of the Gryffindors alone, approached Flint cautiously. "Er, do you want me to put that broom away?" he pointed towards the Cleansweep Seven in Marcus' hand. Marcus, still seething, threw the broomstick hard as he could at the hapless Warrington's head. Warrington dove out of its way as if dodging a bludger, and then walked over towards where the broom landed, slowly picked it up, and headed towards the broomshed, making a mental note not to come within ten feet of Marcus Flint for the next three days.

Marcus Flint stood alone on the Quidditch pitch, right next to one of the towering hoops. The darkening sky was overcast, and it started to drizzle, matching his mood. The words exchanged during the last practice rang through his head over and over. 'You liar! You fucking hypocrite!!! PUCEY was not the one who made Karen quit, YOU were!! YOU!! YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITICAL SON OF A BITCH!!" In a fit of rage that he would later regret, he slammed his fist savagely into the metal post of the hoop. Pain shot through his hand, and blood flowed down the split knuckles. But Marcus barely noticed. He sank down into a sitting position on the ground, the drizzling rain mixing with the blood on his hand, watery red rivulets dripping down his bent fingers.

~    ~    ~

When at 9:30 Flint had still not returned, Carl Warrington's face took on the look of a heroic warrior about to face a dreadful foe, and he silently approached Karen Bletchley, who sat by herself seeming to be in deep concentration on her transfiguration essay. "Er, Karen?"

"What?" Karen's voice was a little irate. This was not a good sign. Carl carefully scanned her surroundings. Figuring that the biggest thing she could physically throw at him was an inkwell, and with one hand on his wand in case she decided to hex him instead, he quietly said, "Ah...I thought you might want to know.....Flint kicked Pucey off the team today."

"Good riddance," Karen said stonily. "I don't give a shit. Now leave me in peace, Warrington."

Carl steeled himself, then spoke again, "Avery, Higgs, Derrick and Bole all disagree with Pucey about you. Oh, and Flint's still out there. He's not come back."

Karen narrowed her eyes spitefully at him. "Warrington, what part of 'I DON'T GIVE A SHIT' do you not understand? Leave me the fuck alone!!" Carl sighed, but he'd gotten the message. He was not going to get himself permanently maimed before he even played in a Quidditch game, Flint, Bletchley and their tangled lives nonewithstanding. Shrugging as if to say 'Well, I tried', he walked off to watch Nigel Parkinson and Lilith Macnair's chess game.

Karen turned back to her transfiguration essay. Marcus Flint could throw himself into the lake for aught she cared. She would push him back out of her mind. Yes! She would!!

~    ~    ~

An hour later, when Marcus still had not returned, Karen gave an exasperated sigh. Damn Carl Warrington and his solicitous meddling! It was because of him that she'd been alternately looking at her wristwatch and the Common Room entrance, back and forth, for the past forty-five minutes! Setting her teeth, she glanced around the room. Good, they were gone. Fastening on her cloak and putting on her Slytherin scarf, she walked out of the common room and headed towards the entrance door.

The rain was falling harder now. Cursing, she transfigured a branch on the ground into a black umbrella. Holding it in one hand, she headed towards the Quidditch pitch, scanning the skies for signs of Marcus flying around on his broomstick. None. Karen's eyes searched the pitch, and she almost missed the huddled figure against one of the goal posts. Cautiously, she approached him. He was asleep. And drenched. And...horrors...his hand was smashed. Almost without thinking, Karen unfastened her green and silver cashmere scarf from around her neck, and wrapped it tightly around his hand. He was getting soaked. Should she wake him?

Gradually, pride won over, and instead, she unfastened her cloak as well, waving her wand over it and muttering a warming charm and a waterproofing charm under her breath. Carefully, so as to not wake him, she covered his body with the cloak like a blanket, and then levitated her umbrella over his head, muttering a securing spell to hold it in place there for the next few hours. Then, she turned and dashed through the rain and the cold back to the castle.

Before heading back to the common room, Karen made a detour to Professor Snape's office. Quickly scribbling a note on a scrap of parchment, she left it on his desk, then hurried away before anyone could see her.

~    ~    ~

The next morning at the crack of dawn, Marcus Flint awoke to someone shaking his shoulders roughly. Groggily opening up his eyes, he noticed several things quite unusual. Firstly, he was at the Quidditch pitch. Secondly, he was covered with a warm cloak of black velvet. Thirdly, his hand, which was hurting like hell, was bound with a Slytherin scarf. And lastly, Professor Snape, his head of house, was peering down at him with a curious expression on his face.

"W-wha--?" was all Marcus could manage to say.

Professor Snape clicked his tongue. "Tsk, tsk. Flint."

"Sir, what's going on?" Marcus mumbled.

"This morning, I went to my office. Imagine my surprise when I see a note written by a Slytherin student on my desk, asking for a most extraordinary favor. This student, who shall remain nameless, told me that you'd been out all night, and that your hand was injured, and to please go to the Quidditch pitch and find you, so that you won't be stumbled upon by Hagrid or some other teacher and get points taken off from Slytherin house, and if it were not too much to ask, to please give you some healing potion for your hand. For the sake of this very resourceful and intelligent student, I have come out to do what was asked of me. But Flint, I hope you are grateful." Snape reached into his robe and extracted a crystal vial full of a thick caramel-colored potion. He handed it to Marcus.

"Oh, yes, of course, thank you, sir!" Flint hurriedly answered after downing the potion. Snape's face took on a scowl usually reserved solely for Gryffindors.

"You can really be a fool sometimes, Flint. I didn't mean to thank ME." He cast a pointed look at the scarf still wrapped around Flint's healing hand. Flint followed his gaze, and slowly unrolled his makeshift bandage. His eyes widened when he saw the initials embroidered in black script at one end. "KVB".

"Sir? Was it Karen Bletchley?" Flint asked, but Snape had already gone.

~    ~    ~

Karen avoided him that day. And the next. And the one after that. After a week of trying to talk to her, or in the very least, returning her scarf and cloak to her, Flint was threatened with the same severing charm that she'd threatened to use on Pucey, and gave up.

Quidditch was coming along, not nicely, but it was coming along. Warrington was learning fairly quickly, but Nott's Keeper skills did leave a little to be desired. It was somewhat consoling, though, that Gryffindor did not win the Quidditch cup after all, their Seeker seemed to have gotten into some wild and dangerous confrontation with the Dark Lord himself, or so the rumors went. Pity he did not lose any limbs in the encounter.

Slytherin would have won the House Cup, but their crazy, barmy old Headmaster put on a show of favoritism more blatant than Snape ever showed, and the smirking Gryffindors won it after all. Flint turned his back on that table, but he could feel their triumphant, mocking glances. Oliver Wood. The Weasley Twits, who, along with that abominable Prefect, were congratulating their younger brother for earning fifty of the points Dumbledore had bestowed. Johnson, Spinnet and Bell. Potter. The back of his neck crawled with the weight of their smug stares. He gripped his goblet so tightly that his knuckles turned white, to prevent himself from springing up and giving the first Gryffindor he found a black eye. 'Next year...' he vowed.

~    ~    ~

Fast Forward two years...

~    ~    ~

He had graduated. And what a horrid way to go! Not only did that escaped convict Sirius Black fail to kill Potter, but Gryffindor had won the Quidditch cup AND the House Cup. Once again, Marcus Flint found himself standing alone on the Quidditch pitch, next to a goal post. His large hands balled into angry fists.

"Don't split your knuckles on that again, I don't have another scarf," a female voice called out. Flint spun around, to see Karen Bletchley standing about five feet away from him. She was also graduating this year. As Head Girl, no less, working with none other than Percy the Weasel. After their break-up, she had thrown herself into her studies, and had gotten top marks. She had never spoken to him or her other former teammates again, although she did make friends with Carl Warrington, who occasionally gave him and the others news about her. She had certainly done well. And in front of her, Marcus Flint felt very ashamed and embittered.

"Have you come to gloat?" The spiteful words came out before he could stop them. Karen's eyes narrowed into slits, and with cobra speed and ferocity, she whipped out her hand and slapped him across the face.

Marcus slowly turned back to face her, and saw her glaring at him very much the same way she'd done that night so long ago, when she'd quit the Quidditch team. "I guess I deserved that."

"Damn straight!" Karen snapped. "I thought you had more decency than that. But I guess I was wrong." She whirled around, long black ponytail smacking him in the face right where a small red handprint was starting to form, and was about to stomp off when his hand closed around her wrist.

She gasped, and tried to jerk free, but he held on tight. She looked down upon the hand gripping her wrist tightly. The thick fingers were rough from Quidditch practice, as she remembered. But two thin, white scars that she'd never remembered seeing before stood out plainly on the tanned skin of his knuckles. Marcus followed her gaze, and his grip loosened a bit. He smiled ruefully, "Snape would not give me a scar-prevention potion because I was being a stupid git when he woke me up, and I didn't want to go to Pomfrey."

She nodded dumbly. Marcus was unsure of whether or not she was still mad at him. Then, figuring that as he might never again have the chance, decided to throw caution to the winds, grabbed both of her hands in his and pulled her to him so they were standing close enough for their toes to be touching. "You didn't have to quit, Karen. None of us wanted you to quit except Pucey. And he was just being a sodding bastard. Nott never DID have as good Keeper skills. And Avery was furious when you quit. Even Montague and Malfoy wondered after the game whether the Gryffindorks would have won the cup had you been the Keeper instead. Because, you know, how they needed to be more than fifty points up before they caught the Snitch in order to win, and maybe if you had been the Keeper instead they may not have been able to score that many points more than us, and..." He was babbling now, speaking very fast, and Karen disengaged one of her hands from his, and clapped it none-too-gently over his mouth.

"Marcus, I didn't quit because of Adrian fucking Pucey!! I quit because YOU were the one who said that he had a point!! Fuck it, but I loved you! And when YOU decided that I wasn't good enough, I decided that there was no point in trying to prove to the rest of them that I was, when even you had no faith in me. Don't you get it?"

Marcus snatched her hand away from his mouth. "I know, I know, I'm a fool. I failed my fucking Transfiguration NEWT, for Salazar's sake. But...you never did give me a chance to finish what I had to say that night."

Karen looked up at him, one eyebrow arched curiously. "And what were you trying to say?"

"I was going to say...they did have a point. At practices and things, I did go easy on you at times because you were my girlfriend. But believe me, Karen, I WOULDN'T have, if you weren't every bit as good a Keeper as you were."

Karen was silent for a long while. Then, she said, "Give me one good reason why I should believe you."

Marcus thought for a moment, then gave her a half-smile. "Just go ask Malfoy." She looked puzzled. "Malfoy's dad provided us all with Nimbus 2001s," he explained. "So technically, you might say I was obligated to give him priority when looking for a replacement for Higgs. But I never went easy on him when he was doing poorly."

Karen snorted, "Comparing someone who gave you a broomstick to someone who snogged you... Why am I not surprised at all?" He grinned somewhat sheepishly. She abruptly changed the subject, "So, what will you be doing now that you've graduated?"

"Well, the Falmouth Falcons have two Reserve Chaser and a Reserve Keeper position open right now. I'm applying for Chaser," Marcus replied.

"Oh, what a coincidence! I'm applying for Reserve Keeper!" she smirked. His eyes widened in surprise at her declaration.

"Since when? How come I've never heard Warrington or anyone mention this?" Karen's smile was like that of the cat who stole the cream.

"Since now. ACCIO BROOMSTICK!" Her old Comet 260 zoomed through the air and she kicked off from the ground, rocketing to the goalpost. Her voice floated down to his ears from fifty feet above. "Oi, Flint! I'll consider dinner with you tonight if you can get ten goals past me by sundown!"

Marcus laughed, and summoned his own broomstick and the Quaffle. "Bletchley, prepare to eat your words!"

Suddenly, the Gryffindorks winning the Cup didn't seem to be that big of a deal any more.