the badger and the lion.

A Late Arrival

"Come on, Y/N!" a voice called from the depths of your subconscious. A burst of yellow colour behind your eyelids made your eyes clamp shut to shield you from the blinding light. A bitter cold enveloped your legs as your covers were quickly ripped from your body.

"Hermione..." you whined, as it was all coming together in your head.

"I know you're tired, but we need to get moving if we're going to get there on time. Especially with your morning routine, you should have been up an hour ago," she explained.

You had stayed the night at your friend Hermione Granger's house. You had both been invited to watch the Quidditch World Cup this year with the Weasley's, which you had been looking forward to all week – and it was finally here.

"You're lucky I did my hair last night," you whined.

You rubbed your eyes open and could see Hermione was already dressed and packing her overnight bag, checking off a list as she went. You stretched out of bed, and went over to your bags that were on her desk chair, where a similar looking checklist to Hermione's rested, and you rolled your eyes. Even though she was two years your junior, Hermione did have the tendency to mother you. You said hello to your Bombay cat Beetle, who was asleep in her crate, and quickly gathered your things to go to the bathroom.

The hot water remaining from Hermione's time in the shower stung your ice cold legs as you stepped under the shower head. You were miserable to be up before lunch on the summer break, but quidditch was one of your favourite things in the entire world – apart from pumpkin pasties – and you were beyond excited to be going today. You were a chaser on the Gryffindor quidditch team, and you were quite good, if you did say so yourself. And going to the quidditch world cup was a once in a lifetime sort of event. But you knew something else was making you feel giddy. Too giddy for eleven in the morning, and maybe even too giddy for quidditch. And then you realised...

You were seeing Fred Weasley for the first time since school ended.

You and Fred had been best friends since your first year at Hogwarts together after meeting in transfiguration class. He tried to show off to you by turning your cat Beetle yellow, but he almost set her alight instead. He apologised profusely after that, and you soon realised you had a lot in common, mainly your love for quidditch and hatred for Potions. And besides, you couldn't resist that school-boy charm or cheeky grin of his. Maybe your crush on Fred began then, but you only recently noticed last year that you had feelings for him, after you observed him in Charms with a Slytherin girl who was his assigned partner. Green jealousy turned in your stomach as you heard them laugh and joke across the room. You knew it meant nothing, and you had no reason to feel this way, since you were just friends. But you thought the friendship you had was starting to lean towards something more after you noticed Fred being more affectionate with you – holding your hand sometimes when you were alone, cuddling up to you while you were doing your assigned readings in the common room, and resting his hand on your knee under the table in the Great Hall. Maybe you were just focusing on these things too much. But something in your mind played with the idea of him slipping away from you, and wouldn't shut up about it. You then deduced that this was a sure sign that you liked Fred Weasley.

You finished up in the bathroom as quickly as you could, dressing relatively warm to account for the cloudy afternoon that was suspected to arrive.

"Pig just visited, and Ron said that it's okay we're coming a day late, they were just a bit worried we weren't there yesterday afternoon, and I se - how have you had time to put makeup on?" Hermione asked surprised as you packed the last remaining things into your bag.

"The magic of multitasking my friend," you said proudly, unable to admit you might've slipped over in the shower if you had moved any faster to get ready.