Chapter 20
Three weeks had passed since they had received the results of Buckbeak's trial: Three weeks they had spent every spare minute towards his appeal. It was the last thing that lie between him and the executioner. The group had found a routine that worked with the near-constant Quidditch practises.
Fred, George, Harry, and Rebecca worked during lunch and after practise while Hermione and Ron worked during dinner and practise.
In between, Hermione found Rebecca talking in her sleep more and more often while Rebecca remained unaware at all of anything out of the ordinary: Other than the recurring, worsening pains in her head morning after morning.
Harry and Rebecca were more than willing to sacrifice their study periods to keep working on it towards the beginning, but Hermione refused adamantly. In her words, there would be no failing at all.
Hermione had made the four third years schedules to coordinate their studying. Not only did it show what she would be studying on what day, it also had personalised recommendations as to what she thought each of them should be looking at individually.
Rebecca marvelled over the detail Hermione had put into hers. "There certainly won't be any failing with these! You even put the date frames our notes should be in for each topic!"
Ron scoffed. "If you two didn't manuscript every word from each lesson, you wouldn't need date frames!"
Hermione raised her sheet, acting as if she was reading it more carefully. "Alright, Ron. If you're so confident in your notes, you won't need to be borrowing Rebecca's or mine."
"Of course," Ron amended. "That's not what I'm saying. You're both so talented and have such well-written notes that I think it would reflect poorly on your character to not share them. We don't want that, now do we?"
Harry shook his head when Ron looked to him to add to his praise. "I'm not going to go that far. But you two do have the best notes."
Hermione checked the time and started to collect everything they needed for their next class. Ron's complaints about how he could possibly be expected to focus on coursework with the Quidditch final the next day grew in volume. "It's not just wrong, it's unjust and-"
"I think it's brilliant the match is tomorrow." Rebecca interrupted before she had to hear it all over again. "I don't even care what happens if it means Oliver's insane practises are through."
Harry looked around nearly frightened. "Rebecca, please don't let him hear you say that. He will drop right dead and I really don't think that is a problem we need to be dealing with this week."
"If you say so." Rebecca couldn't help but feel a bit lighter on the walk to Hagrid's. There wasn't a lot of time for walking outside with everything going on and it was a pleasant day.
The pathway down to class was littered with Slytherin and Gryffindor classmates alike, thought the Slytherin students all scowled fiercely at Rebecca and Harry--A detail that did not go unnoticed by Hermione. "I wonder if this is some form of intimidation tactic before tomorrow."
"Or maybe they're constipated." Ron offered.
Hermione rolled her eyes and walked a few steps ahead of them to distance herself from such immaturity since his remark sent he and Harry into a battle of wits as to who could come up with the best pun between Slytherin and bathroom activities.
Rebecca leaned closer to the two of them so Hermione couldn't hear her. "Shit-herin." Walking faster to join Hermione, she pretended she had no idea why Harry and Ron broke into howls of laughter.
Hagrid had refused to include any creature more dangerous than the disastrous flobberworms ever since the very first lesson and it was growing overwhelmingly slow. When the students took their seats on the logs around the clearing used for classes and found the anatomical drawing of a dragon on the board, excited chatter bloomed.
"He's going to bring out a dragon!" Draco told Crabbe--or Goyle, Rebecca realised. Both boys' heads were perfectly round from behind--excitedly.
"Settl' down!" Hagrid boomed. "There'll be no teachin' with all this talking!" Hagrid waited for silence. "We are goin' to take the last few weeks of the year to learn about one of the fiercest creatures there is: Dragons." Hagrid did take a little pleasure in the peak of their excitement, especially with how it fell at his next statement. "However, due to a concerned parent an' all, we will only look at photographs an drawings o' the dragons."
The other boy on Draco's side leaned closer and 'whispered' loud enough for everyone to hear, "Is he talking about your father, Draco?"
Draco shut him up with a few choice words actually whispered between them, causing the duller boy to gulp and face the front of the class without a moment's hesitation.
Time went quickly as Hagrid began answering the preliminary questions the class had about dragons. Rebecca didn't realise she had been the main offerer of queries until Hagrid chuckled and chided the rest of the class gently. "Does anyone aside from Rebecca have any questions? Any at all?"
Rebecca let her hand fall down slowly, listening to the questions some of the others had and finding them entirely dull.
She had to raise her hand only minutes later to ask the most important question of all: "Can dragons be ridden?"
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The walk back to the castle was hardly as pleasant as the walk down, especially since Rebecca and Harry had just enough time to put their bags away before they had to meet for an early, through-dinner practise before the final.
"He wants you to practise through dinner?" Hermione asked disturbed. "Surely there's a rule against that!"
"He said that we'd eat there." Harry appreciated how easy it was for Hermione to be upset on their behalf. "Don't worry, we'll eat something."
"Did he say when we're done tonight?" Rebecca asked from the floor, tying her shoes as slowly as she usually did.
"Half-past nine." Two voices answered from behind them, red-faced, red-haired looks behind the voices. Fred and George had already been halfway to the Quidditch room but decided to jog back to the Tower so they could all walk together.
Rebecca and Fred walked a few steps ahead of the other two, Rebecca patting around her pockets for what she had been waiting to talk to Fred about. "You know how you said you couldn't figure out how to get the pranks to expire?"
"Yeah, they last too long." Fred scowled. "No one buys a prank and expects it to last for a bloody hour."
Rebecca pulled out the folded piece of paper she'd made for the prank-box, as they named their box of all information regarding Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and waved it triumphantly. "I was finishing a revision yesterday when I think I found something that could help!"
"When did you have time for this?" Fred asked, skimming over the revised recipe.
"I had an idea." She said like it was obvious. "We need to try fanged geranium roots. When they're used in other potions, it's to lessen either the depth of the effect or the length of it."
"I've got a note of my own, too." Fred pulled a scrap covered front and back. "George and I have been working on a list of everything that needs more sources for Buckbeak's case. Hermione's got her own list; she and Ron are working on it tonight. But, I wasn't sure if you wanted to knock a few of these out with me tomorrow after the match?"
Rebecca nodded, not expecting that to be what he had a list of. "Sure, that works for me. I have to post a letter to Charlie and sent one back to the Burrow some time though."
Fred hopped onto the idea, needing to send a letter home as well. "If you want, we could go before breakfast too."
"We could!" Rebecca felt a if she were reliving their conversation every second it took her to put her bag in her room and go back downstairs, wondering if she had been to eager or not eager enough or anything else not-supposed-or-supposed to have. Fred didn't seem off in any way, though. Not when she rejoined the others in the common room to head to practise together.
All he did was smile and walk next to her.
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"You're all late!" Oliver cried before they even had the first foot in the door.
"We're early?" Harry asked confused.
"Early is late, on time is even later!" Oliver corrected adamantly.
Katie patted Harry's shoulder as she crossed to the girls' quarters to change into practise gear. "There's no point in trying to understand anything he says until after the match is over."
Oliver blew his whistle loudly--ignoring their closeness--and scowled at their lack of speed. "Two minutes! Meet me on the pitch or you're all doing laps!" Thoroughly unimpressed at how none of them accelerated, Oliver upped the punishment. "LAPS WITHOUT BROOMS!"
The team had never gotten changed quicker.
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Oliver had shouted himself hoarse, past pain even, when he freed them to the dinner spread he had kept in the middle of the pitch as motivation. They were starved after working at their limit for so long and, when McGonagall walked onto the pitch to see their progress, she knew this immediately.
"Wood!" Oliver snapped to attention at her tone. "Have you been holding dinner hostage?"
Oliver knew this conversation would not go favourably. "Can I get you anything, profes-"
"Mister Wood!"
Oliver put his hands behind his back, holding them tightly. "I only pushed dinner back a few hours for...motivational purposes."
Professor McGonagall was appalled. "Twenty laps around the pitch and I might not bench your from the final. There is a line and you, sir, have crossed it."
The rest of the team--while happy to see Oliver lowered from the pedestal he had put himself on--awkwardly pretended they didn't see their captain run off to fetch his broom and exact the punishment given to him. When he was out of her immediate sight, McGonagall walked around the slightly dispersed players and chatted with them on what she had seen before they had finished.
"Ladies, I was particularly impressed with the Skinter feint into Robles Pass I saw. You have been studying and that is quite evident."
Angelina clapped Rebecca's back proudly. "Rebecca found this ancient book in the library; We've been trying a few things out!"
McGonagall pursed her lips. "Quidditch on the Page?"
Katie nodded. "That's the one, professor!"
McGonagall gave them a smile. "That came out my third year playing for Gryffindor, we used it quite often those days. Those...ancient days."
Angelina looked over her shoulder. "Who said 'ancient?' I sure didn't."
Rebecca and Katie teased Angelina long after McGonagall had left them, though they did give way to relishing over the compliment from their head of house until Oliver landed from his punishment and put together a plate from the leftovers of dinner. He caught McGonagall's meaning when she nodded towards the other players.
Oliver faced them slowly. "I see that practising through dinner was wrong, looking back. I just-" He had to pause a moment. "This is it. This is my last year and I want to say that Gryffindor won--that I helped take us out of this eight year loss. I want to be able to say I was a good captain."
The team--though tired and sore--jumped to his defence immediately. "Don't be daft!" George shouted over the others. "You're already a good captain!"
"A great one!" Someone echoed.
"The best!" Rebecca called out. They shouted a moment longer, letting Oliver know how much they all loved him.
When he raised his hand to be able to speak again, they quieted slightly. "Then let's do this! Let's bring this cup home!" He waved them off to the showers with commands for them to get a good night's rest so they were ready for morning.
Rebecca, who now knew that the chores around the castle were not done by magic but by house elves, knelt to where she and the others had been eating to stack their plates in a single pile.
Oliver and McGonagall were talking to each other, quietly, but she couldn't help overhear the barest bit of their conversation. "No, he said he's done hiding. He doesn't-"
"Can you blame him, Oliver?" McGonagall laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "No one deserves to live in a closet, now do they?"
Fred startled her by stacking the rest of the plates from the pitch on top of hers, whispering that they should go.
Once out of the hearing of them, Rebecca tried to feign confusion for Oliver's sake. "I wonder what they were talking about." It was weak, even to her ears.
Fred gave her a knowing look. "I think you know exactly what they were talking about, like I do."
Rebecca sighed. "Harry and I only know by accident."
Fred chuckled. "I think the only person who doesn't know at this point is George. He's not the most observational, some times."
"Did he tell you?" Rebecca wondered.
Fred grew a little more serious. "No. Flint must have heard from somewhere last year, started going on about how wrong it was and how he wouldn't play in a league that allowed 'them.' I don't know why he told Lee and I like we'd agree, which we didn't of course."
"How stupid." Rebecca shook her head.
"Lee and I...we took care of it." Fred shrugged.
"You didn't, did you?"
"Didn't what? Fight like you did for Neville?" Fred teased, though Rebecca didn't play along with him. "Did I say something?" Fred hoped he hadn't upset her.
"I just-I hate thinking about you Flint-ing." Rebecca's face warmed as she tried to say what she was thinking without sounding like a total fool. "He's below you, I mean. You're good and he's not." They were both silent until they had to separate.
Fred grabbed a towel from the stack in the middle room and paused outside the showers. "We didn't do anything Flint-like. There'd have to be no reason for that. You can't mess with our friends though, that's where were so alike." He gave her a little smile and stepped into the boys' areas.
While Rebecca cursed every fibre of her being for being so stupidly cheesy, Fred couldn't get her voice to stop echoing 'you're good' in his brain.
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Rebecca felt as if the strange glimpses, the strange shapes that she had begun to remember as she slept, were swimming under her eyes. They were so close but just out of view. Like they were too far to the side but she was unable to turn her head.
She strained against whatever was keeping them out of sight, wanting to know what she was being teased with despite the fact that everytime she pushed harder to see, her head seemed to radiate in new levels of pain.
Someone jumping on her forced her awake, her body pushing off the attacker and her heartbeat skyrocketing.
"Time to wake up!" Ginny cheered, shaking Rebecca until the older pushed her frustration at the feeling she had just missed something and laughed, pushing Ginny away.
"What was that for?"
Ginny grinned. "Oliver bet a galleon I wouldn't come wake you up early."
Rebecca sighed. "And the jumping?"
"Well that was a galleon from Harry."
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Three-quarters of the Great Hall was decked out in Gryffindor red and gold, while the Slytherin table represented their table strongly. For the most part, the entirety of their table scowled at Oliver's leading of the Gryffindor team to breakfast.
After sitting down, George tilted his head. "Was Flint going for the big or the ugly this year?"
Rebecca snorted into her juice while Harry made sure they hadn't heard him.
"None of that, George." Oliver scolded absentmindedly from down the bench, like his heart wasn't in it.
Fred noted how Oliver's attention seemed to drift towards the Hufflepuff seventh years and jolt back to his plate. Finding that Rebecca seemed to put this together and get to the same conclusion as he had. She leaned closer to Harry and whispered something that made him frown and ask if her had to.
Rebecca nodded seriously.
"Oliver?" Harry asked, not needing to know why Rebecca was asking him to do this. She would have had a reason. "What's the plan again?"
Oliver seemed to come to life at being needed by his team, slowly turning back into the captain they loved and needed. He waved for them to gather breakfast to go and stood quickly, leading them to the Quidditch room to go over how the would find victory for their house.
Angelina, Katie, and Rebecca stayed to the side even once inside with the others. They went over the final techniques from the plays of old. "The most important thing we have to remember with the Shellington's Split is the final twist. We've got Angelina leading point and Rebecca and I alternating back positions, but if the opportunity arises we all need to be able to score with it."
Katie nodded and tilted the book so Rebecca could see it. "Look here, the quaffle is only released when your broom is perpendicular to the ground and your entirely upside down. Inches off, you'll collide with the opponent above." She closed the book quickly, patting its cover fondly. "That's it. The book's done everything it can for us."
"You must catch the snitch if we're fifty points up, Harry." Oliver seemed to be stuck. "Only if we're more than fifty points up. Only if we're more than fifty points up, Harry, or we win the match but lose the cup! You've got that, haven't you Harry? Only if we're-"
"I KNOW!" Harry shouted, already having answered every variation of the question Oliver had come up with.
"Good!" Oliver shouted, jumping to his feet as he checked the time. "Then let's get going! We have a match to play!"
Madam Hooch's pre-game no cheating, no fighting, no rule-breaking speech seemed longer than usual because it was. She covered every instance she could think of where extra rules would need to be outlined. Throughout the entire time she spoke, Flint alternated between which of the players he glared at.
Madam Hooch dreaded releasing the quaffle, certain that this match would be one of the firecest in years. A Slytherin Chaser made first contact, but Angelina managed to sneak a hand around it as he tried to get down the pitch.
"And just like that Gryffindor has managed to secure possession in the first half-minute of the match!" Lee's announcement brought a fresh round of cheers from crowd. "And there's the first score! Ten points to Gryffindor by Angelina Johnson; Threat on the field and, gentlemen, threat in the common room. Do not ask her to Hogsmeade without a shield ready, lads."
"Mister Jordan!" Professor McGonagall could just barely be heard. "We do not need, nor want, to hear about your failed dating life!"
The crowd laughed.
"Thanks, professor. I'll be sure to thank you again in thirty years when I'm still single."
"You do that. Until then, ANNOUNCE THE GAME!"
Lee took to his job immediately, the action on the pitch not pausing for any comical antics whatsoever. "Angelina is back with the quaffle and-OH! She is absolutely slammed by Flint! Can we get a penalty shot? Yes, we can!"
Rebecca had to drown out Lee's announcing and focus on the match ahead. The Slytherin team was playing dirty, dirtier than usual. Being in possession of the quaffle meant certain kicks, jabs, and fouls.
Angelina made her penalty shot, sending Marcus into a frenzy barking orders at his players. The quaffle was put back into play and Rebecca was thrown back into the insanity. Angelina was acting as a deterrent to one of the Slytherin chasers trying to get to the quaffle while Katie and Rebecca threw it back and forth as they tried to confuse the Slytherin keeper.
It worked and Rebecca sent in her first score of the game, sending the score to 20-10.
This sent Marcus into a rage far deeper than if one of the other Gryffindors had scored. This one did, this scrawny, petulant third year who wanted to take away his seventh year victory. "Watch this!" He commanded, pulling one of his beaters away from his task to snatch the bat and find the nearest bludger. Whirring towards him, Marcus grinned. Maybe this was meant to be.
Rebecca had no idea what was going on behind her, she was focusing on the match as she was supposed to be. When the bludger forcer her head down into her broom handle and left an explosion at the back of her head, she just barely caught her broken glasses before they fell to the pitch below.
The match was paused entirely, Madam Hooch flying to her. "You alright, Potter?"
Rebecca pushed the loose strands of hair that had found their way into the blood coursing out of her nose, unable to answer as Madam Hooch's attention was torn away to where Fred had taken his bat and his Marcus across the face with it.
Rebecca held the bridge of her nose, trying to pause the bleeding while she used her other hand to wipe at her lip. For a quidditch match, this was starting to feel more like an all-out brawl. Angelina was joined by George and, to Oliver's relief, they managed to push him farther away from the still-shouting-back-and-forth Marcus.
Madam Hooch announced that there'd be a penalty shot for both Rebecca and Marcus before calling both team captains to the ground. The game was held at a pause while the atrocious behaviour of the teams was threatened to be the reason the match was ended early.
"I cannot even believe that." Fred said, his cheeks still flushed with anger. "Are you okay? Did you glasses fall?"
Fred tilted her chin up to him and looked her over carefully, making sure neither eye looked more focused than the other and that she was aware. "The back of your head?" Fred slid his hand farther back and brushed over carefully until Rebecca sucked in a sharp breath and pulled away. His fingers came away tinged with blood.
"It's just a cut." Rebecca used the shoulder of her kit to wipe her face again. "It'll be fine."
"The match can go on with two chas-"
Rebecca shook her head at even the thought of backing out of the match. "It can, but it won't!"
Fred nodded. There was no point in arguing against her when she used that tone. "And your glasses?"
"Broke." Rebecca showed them to him.
Fred picked them up gently. "I can mend them, if you'd like."
Rebecca nodded now, grateful. "Hermione's going to throttle me if I don't start remembering her life-skill spells."
Fred laughed, pausing his go at the spell. "Face smashed, head bleeding, specs broken, and you're still thinking of homework? Oculus Reparo!"
Madam Hooch blew her whistle, calling the match back to attention.
Rebecca put her glasses back on and found them to be perfect, as they had been every other time Fred had had the opportunity to mend them. "Hey Fred?"
He turned back eagerly, feeling something inside him ache at the ragged, bleeding look of her.
"Thanks." She grinned. "For the glasses and the whack."
He wanted to say something, but Madam Hooch blew her whistle again for Rebecca to go take her penalty shot.
Rebecca took the quaffle lightly and focused. It didn't matter that her the back of her head hurt, or that her lip stung, or that Fred had-Focused. She was focused. At the mark of Madam Hooch, Rebecca flew forward and took her shot, scoring. Marcus', on the other hand, was blocked.
The game continued in this exchange of penalties: A Slytherin grabbed Angelina's head, another penalty shot made. George elbowed him in the face, the second goal by Slytherin made. When one of the opposing beaters hit Katie with her bat, another penalty shot was made for Gryffindor and the game hit 50-20.
Angelina and Rebecca used their next opportunity to execute one of the moves from the book, one that was supposed to confuse the keeper and the chasers between the scorer and the posts. Ten points more up but ten more from where they needed to be.
Harry hadn't seen a glimpse of the snitch, though he searched carefully. With how the match was going below him--how violently Slytherin wanted to win--Harry wanted the match over as soon as possible.
Another cheap foul from Slytherin resulted in a penalty shot for Angelina, but she missed. The bludger that had clipped her wrist minutes earlier was starting to impede her ability to shoot straight.
Play back in motion, Angelina saw Harry above launch into motion with the speed that only a sight of the snitch could have brought. Draco flew above, behind Harry and gaining slowly. Katie clapped her other hand to the quaffle and the girls took their positions.
"Take point."
Rebecca knew what this meant and nodded, taking the pass from Katie and moving to the front-most spot of their triangle. Katie took her usual spot and Angelina took Rebecca's.
Lee, quite the quidditch aficionado, gasped into the microphone. "They're not-They are! Look at how the Gryffindor chasers are lining up! They're going for the Shellington Split!" Lee stood up. "This move was for used by Rowena Ravenclaw in one of Hogwarts' first quidditch cups, devised by the head of house herself. Being even half an inch off mark...brings disaster."
Rebecca fell back so that Angelina and Katie were ahead of her, the two of them waiting for the last moment they had to go their set directions (Angelina down and right, Katie up and left) before they would collide with the Slytherin players in their path. Rebecca began her turn a broom's length from the chaser between her and the posts, entirely upside down.
She brushed against the underside of his broom, disappearing for a second out of Harry's view at all--though he only dared glimpse on the erratic path he was on behind the snitch he couldn't even catch if this shot didn't go in.
"OH MY MERLIN, THEY'VE BLOODY DONE IT!" Lee shouted into the microphone. "A MOVE AS OLD AS HOGWARTS: RECREATED! 70-20, GRYFFINDOR!"
Harry pulled his outstretched hand back and pushed the nose of his broom down as the snitch plummeted, Draco still behind him. Close enough to the ground that Harry's trainers brushed against the grass. Harry got as much momentum as he could and vaulted the distance between he and the snitch, ending rolling on the ground as he seemed to do more matches than not.
Lee, above, seemed like he might faint. "AND HARRY'S CAUGHT THE SNITCH! GRYFFINDOR...GRYFFINDOR WINS THE CUP!"
The players flew to the ground, one team celebrating and the other not. Marcus was screaming into the face of the chaser Rebecca had gone under, cursing him entirely. The school began descending the stairs of the stands. Oliver pulled as many of his team into his arms as he could fit, finding that those who didn't wrapped their arms around him from behind.
When he let them stand on their own, they separated into smaller groups continuing to celebrate the ultimate victory years in the making. Oliver floated from one to the other, shaking the hand of each of his players and congratulating them on their playing. At Rebecca, she didn't let go.
"What?" Oliver asked at her look, laughing a little.
"You're stalling." Rebecca squeezed his hand. "Go on, get to it."
"She's right you know." Fred said with cheeky smile.
"Stuff it." Oliver grumbled, eyeing the two of them warily. "How-"
"Stalling!" Fred interrupted.
Oliver turned his back to them, brushing his fingers through his hair and looking over the students pouring on to the grass. Sam was there, lingering near the outskirts of the students. Oliver took the first step towards him, his walk quickly changing to a run before he crashed into Sam and kissed him deeply.
The students around them cheered madly and, passing them for her team, McGonagall was proud to see the right choice being made. Harry was stuck between Katie and Angelina, but he saw George walk to Fred and Rebecca with his jaw dropped. "Did you see-"
"Yep." Rebecca smiled.
"You knew?"
"Oh yeah." Fred answered.
"I can't believe you didn't tell me!" George cried out, holding his chest. "Actually, I still don't believe you knew!"
The Slytherin team had retreated from the pitch for the dungeons, wanting to lick their wounded pride in private. Hermione and Ron broke out into identical runs as they wove their way out of the crowd they were in for their victorious friends.
McGonagall produced a handkerchief and dampened it before Rebecca began wiping at the blood she could feel. Feeling that she was done, she looked to Fred and motioned for him to tell her if she'd missed. He sighed and took it from her, wiping the lone streak under her lip. Professor McGonagall found a nearly irreplicable air of caution in Fred's hands.
"And then there's-"
"I'll just go to the hospital wing later." Rebecca said, a slight roll of her eyes. "Thank you, Professor."
"I'll be the judge of that." McGonagall didn't doubt that it would take nothing more than a severed limb for a Potter to willingly admit they had been hurt. Rebecca reached a hand back and pulled her hair to the side where she thought the cut had been. Fred paled and looked to McGonagall instantly.
The strike had left a split inches long, a large section of which had bled and dried in her hair. "Poppy?" Madame Pomfrey appeared at McGonagall's beckoning, knowing her friend long enough to recognise a restrained tone. It was a good thing Angelina's wrist had been such an easy fix, just a sprain compared to a fracture.
"Oh my-Okay." Madam Pomfrey had her wand in hand and held the top of Rebecca's head to keep her from moving as she conjured a stream of water to wash away what she could. "Episkey!" Fred felt his heartbeat return to normal as the split closed itself up, leaving behind only a trace of scab. "That should be better, my dear."
Rebecca reached further around her head, feeling how the cut had been remedied.
"Head wounds simply bleed more than others." Madam Pomfrey explained, wondering if the Weasley boy would remain a statue forever. Wondering if that would mean less inexplicable accidents in her infirmary.
"Guys?" Oliver shouted over the din of chattering students around him.
"Go on, you two." McGonagall excused them, shaking her head as they joined the others. "These children, Poppy..."
"I know. Horrid monsters." Both women smiled at each other.
"I just need a moment before we leave the pitch, alright?" Oliver was met with ready nods by all of his team, finding that they all seemed as on-the-brink of emotion as he already was. "I've played for Gryffindor for six years and been captain for four." He cleared his throat, unable to continue for a moment. "Being your captain has been a privilege, but being a member of this team? That has been an honour."
The team circled around him and hugged him tightly.
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The team showered leisurely, all thoughts of work pushed to the next day. The water soothed them while also preparing them for the celebration that would be waiting for them in the common room.
Dried and dressed, the girls found the boys sitting in the middle room as they all had countless times before practise or matches. Oliver picked up the eraser, wiping away his words and setting it back down with a notable air of finality.
"We're leaving here as a team." Oliver said to them all, opening the door and closing it behind him for the last time. Oliver remained at the center of the throng of teammates, showered in congratulations wherever other students saw them on their way to the Tower.
"Ready for this?" George asked excitedly, doubling back from the front of the team to the back where Rebecca and Fred chattered.
"Ready for what?" Rebecca asked.
"The first time Gryffindor's won the cup in eight years, that's what!" George bounced on the ball of his feet excitedly as they reached the final staircase. "This is going to be mental!"
Mental, it was. The screaming, cheering, already-celebrating Gryffindors inside the common room only grew louder as Rebecca was the last of the team to step through the portrait hole. Those already inside rushed forward like the tide and enveloped whoever they could, someone starting a "Gryffindor" chant.
Rebecca ducked out from underneath the swarm at first opportunity, making her way to the back of the common room that had emptied most enjoyably. The sheer noise of it all had sent her ears buzzing and her head spinning all at once horribly. Outside, everything seemed frighteningly still and with the constant washing of white-noise coming towards her combined with the oddities of the grounds below, Rebecca felt like she had that morning before Ginny woke her up so abruptly.
Something was just out of her reach, though what it could be she had no idea. Rebecca felt like something--a thought, maybe--was being dangled over though she had no means to grasp it.
Fred jumping on the seat across from her against the night-chilled glass of the window startled the feeling away once more. "Y'alright over here?"
Rebecca nodded, gesturing him away to return to the party. "Go on. Weren't you and George nearly sprinting to get here?"
"If you look back," Fred gave her a little smile. "I think you'll remember only one of us drooling at the idea of a party." He turned so his back was to the window, giving his head a little shake as he looked over the shenanigans ahead of them. "This isn't my thing."
"Really?" Rebecca's surprise seeped into her tone a little and he looked at her quickly, though she tried to cover it up and failed. "I didn't-I thought you'd like this."
Fred looked at her a moment. "Yeah, seems to be what people always think." They were quiet a while, neither sure what to say next. "It just feels like you're not really talking to anyone, you know? You're surrounded by a hundred faces but you might as well be all alone."
Fred's admission was thought over by the two of them until he felt that he'd said something stupid.
"That was dumb, I'm-"
"I think you're right." Rebecca interrupted. "Anyone would feel alone out in the middle of all that."
Fred didn't seem apt to leave their little corner so soon and Rebecca found his company--and conversation--distracting enough to keep her from her frustration at whatever had been mentally plaguing her. Launching from topic to topic, brushing over the victory of hours earlier and the relief at the season ending, the party passed on without them.
Hours later, long after Harry realised he hadn't seen Rebecca at the toasts to the team or the gradual disappearance of the other students, their friends struggled to stifle their laughter. Fred and Rebecca, found primarily through their snoring, had slept through the end of the celebration they had both worked tirelessly towards.
Both leaning against the window, Rebecca was tucked into the corner while Fred had slumped over so his head rest on her shoulder.
"I am not waking him because I know him." George said firmly. "He will do nothing but talk about this and I'm ready for some bloody sleep, not a talk show."
"That's exactly what she'll do." Hermione admitted, grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch and laying it over the two of them. "Now we only need two more. Minimum."
"She sleeps with this many blankets?" Harry asked bewildered as her legs disappeared under the wraps.
"More at home." Ginny giggled and yawned.
"It's like she thinks she's hibernating." Ron said with a laugh that was quickly shushed from George. "What? They're both knocked out, they won't-" Shushed again, Ron scowled and went silent.
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