Acquaintance - Oliver Wood/OC

Chapter 11: The Mysterious Room

"Penderghast!" Oliver called from somewhere behind me. I gathered the entire cool I had in me before he caught up to my pace.

Knowing what this was about I figured I might as well set him straight right away. "Sorry Oliver, you can't join. I don't have the time to tutor both you and Roger." I replied before he'd asked.

"Why are you tutoring him, anyway? I mean... you're not friends... are you?" He looked at me searchingly while dodging oncoming students of the opposite direction.

"We are friends. I like spending time with him. He's nice." I gave him a meaningful look. One of which he didn't seem to realise meant anything. The more time I spent around Oliver the more I realised he had a frustrating way of never catching hints and communicative signals.

Oliver didn't seem to agree with my view. "Really? Roger?"

I had to feed myself the cool I had gathered up before to stop me from cursing at him. "Roger? Really?" I instead settled on uttering. His first name you gladly use, I thought to myself. Oliver once again didn't catch what I meant, as if he hadn't been here to witness these past few months and our endless row.

"You have to agree with me that it's suspicious." Oliver said.

I knew immediately where he was going with this before he'd even said it out loud. "No Oliver, I don't agree with you that it's suspicious. And frankly I find it insulting that you do. If I was spying on one Quidditch captain, why would I decline that another joins?" I gestured at him. "Furthermore, I find it degrading that you would suggest such an idea. I don't see you going around doubting your other fellow captains!" We had both stopped in our tracks. The hall had cleared up which was a good thing because my voice had gone distinctly louder.

"None of my other fellow captains are fraternizing for no apparent reason!" Oliver too had gotten riled up by now.

I took a deep breath and stared at him. "You're friends with Roger as well!" I half shouted. Why I even bothered with a deep breath is beyond me.

"I've been friends with him for a long time, I didn't a couple of months before our match suddenly decide to befriend him!" I found it odd to see Oliver get this riled up; he usually kept his cool during our arguments, seemed indifferent even. Not this time however.

"I didn't decide to befriend him, he asked me for help! So I did the nice thing and provided him with that help. I don't see why you're antagonizing me when there is in fact more evidence to suggest that he's the one spying!" I paused and looked at him with contempt. "You really don't have a lot of faith in me as a captain, do you?" And with that said, I stormed off, happy to find he didn't follow. Instead he shouted after me:

"I think you're a great chaser and I believe you have a lot of potential as a captain of your team."

Where did that come from? I thought. "Then why all this doubt?" I turned and shouted back. He didn't seem sure of how to reply. I stopped a couple meters ahead of him and waited.

"I just don't see why you would want to hang out with him."

"I don't see why you suddenly detest him. He's your friend." I said and turned around and left.

***

As I walked the lone corridors later that night, I began to feel on edge. I didn't usually feel this way while roaming the castle, in the way most people probably would. Abandoned stone corridors, an enormous castle. It was intimidating. I kept glancing backward to see if anyone was following me, an irrational thought. I tried not to think about it. I tried to think about how irrational this all was and that I should instead be worrying about Mr. Filch catching me, or something.