Knickers

Chapter 11: Empty

Oliver felt like quite possibly the biggest fool that had ever lived, as he took in the look of fear on Katie’s face. The fact of the matter was that she couldn’t quite meet his eye. And that was when he knew.

He was the other guy.

Of course he had realized this in the middle of Ron’s announcement of his daughter’s arrival and, while shocked, no one had ever accused Oliver of being anything less than a gentleman. He could wait a moment before questioning his best friend.

It wasn’t as if it mattered after all. Yes, she was his best friend and yes, the evidence pointed to the fact that she had some fairly strong feelings for him if the elaborate plan that she and Harry had apparently concocted was anything to go on, but that didn’t mean that he had to ignore the fact that he had a live in girlfriend that he was in love with.

All this seemed to fall to the wayside however as the room cleared and he was left with his two star Quidditch players, his humiliation at being one of the subjects in their little game now hanging in the air like a cloud above their heads. They knew. They knew that he knew and that, Oliver came to the realization, was the most refreshing thing in the world.

At least they were finally being honest.

“Oliver…” Katie started, her gaze still avoiding his own like the plague. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had done to allow him to see the secret in her eyes that she had been hiding for him since Hogwarts but, now that the cat was officially out of the bag and running across the room, she couldn’t help but ask herself whether or not she could get away with lying. She knew that her conscience wouldn’t allow that though, at least not tonight after watching Harry spill all of his secrets to an avidly interested room. It would be hypocritical of her to watch this and then turn around and deny her own secrets…

“Don’t,” Oliver raised a hand to physically stop her words. “Just…don’t.”

An awkward silence fell between them. This was saying a lot considering how awkward the short spans of silence had been before the four words that Oliver and Katie had exchanged mere moments ago had been spoken.

Harry let out a harsh sigh. He couldn’t just stand here and let the potential relationship between Oliver and Katie be destroyed before it even began. After all, it might be over for him and Ginny, but it didn’t have to be the same for the pair standing with him in the hospital wing. “Oliver, I know how you must be feeling right now and…”

Oliver out a harsh laugh as he ran a hand through his hand, interrupting whatever words of manipulation were about to come out of his mouth, “Really Harry? Are you a mind reader now, because unless you’ve just discovered that your best friend had an elaborate scheme to try to get you to fall in love with them when they knew you had a steady girlfriend then no, you don’t know how I feel.”

Katie, indignant at this last statement, spoke up angrily, “Now just wait a minute Oliver. How do you know that I had an elaborate scheme?”

Oliver shot her an incredulous look and started to pace the room, “Oh come on! I know you Katie. There’s a reason we’ve been best friends for so many years and it’s because of that, that I know that the only reason you would even consider marrying a man who not only loved someone else but that also didn’t love you would be if you were trying to make someone else jealous.” He paused in his pacing to look her straight in the eye, taking in with snide satisfaction the look of shock on her face at his very accurate guesses. “How’m I doing so far?”

Neither Harry nor Katie could bring themselves to do anything more than hang their heads sheepishly.

Oliver rolled his eyes. Neither appeared quick to offer any explanations, as he had expected.

“Oliver,” Katie murmured, trying to get through to him as she looked up to meet his eyes for the first time in the last five minutes. “It was the only way.”

“The only way?!” he retorted, going back to his angry pacing of the room. “How about just admitting that you had feelings for me, maybe ask me out for a drink as more than friends? Start things slow before we get to the manipulation!”

“Oliver,” Harry tried again, in a low voice as he contemplated the mess he and Katie had gotten themselves into. It was their fault that they were in this situation in the first place.

“No Harry, I’m done being humiliated for one evening,” Oliver cleared his throat and looked towards the door. “Let Hermione and Ron know that I was here please. Tell them congratulations for me.”

And with that, Oliver strode away from the manipulating pair and left the hospital wing. Harry and Katie, each deflated after the arguments of the evening, simply sat down in the empty waiting room and were silent. They had a lot to think about.

**************************************

Oliver was still fuming when he entered his flat an hour later, so much so that he didn’t take in the clothes hanging haphazardly from odd items in his living room. Normally he would have noticed Fleur’s lilac lace bra hanging enticingly over a lamp but tonight, his mind was understandably elsewhere. He was tired, weary of all the secrets he had been privy to this evening and he just wanted to get some sleep.

It was with this in mind that Oliver wandered toward his bedroom, tilting his head slightly as he took in the odd noises that were coming from the other side of the door. He furrowed his brow in confusion, and opened it.

He immediately wished he hadn’t as his evening took an immediate turn for the worst. There, in their bed, was Fleur being thoroughly shagged by Victor Krum who, as Oliver had heard on the Wizarding Wireless Network that morning, was in England for a press conference regarding the state of Bulgaria’s National Quidditch team.

“Yes! Yes! Oh Merlin, fuck me harder!” Fleur cried out in ecstasy, her eyes tightly closed as her lower body ground into Krum’s cock and she came with a groan of satisfaction. Krum, Oliver was pleased to say, grimaced at the dirty language coming out of Fleur’s mouth-but then again, it might have been because he was also coming (and Oliver knew this because of the rapid flexing of Krum’s buttocks that he unfortunately got to observe first hand). With a groan of his own, Krum collapsed on Oliver’s girlfriend, utterly spent.

Later, Oliver would reflect upon the situation and realize how impressed he was at how far Fleur’s English had come in the last few years but right at the moment, the only thoughts that were going through his head revolved around the fact that he had had enough of this horrible evening. “What the fuck is this?!

Fleur’s eyes popped open in horror, her hands pushing Krum off of her, “Oliver! What are you doing home so early?!”

“You’re laying in our bed, freshly shagged by a man who’s not your boyfriend and that’s the question you ask?” Oliver spat out, wasting no time in going to the closet and getting his trunk. With a wave of his wand, all of his belongings in the flat began to pack themselves into the magically enlarged space.

“What are you doing?” Fleur, ignoring the fact that her lover was lying in the bed awkwardly with a swiftly retrieved blanket over his groin, got out of the bed and grabbed the sheet that she and Krum had defiled in their hunger for each other. Almost desperately, she walked over to her boyfriend.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Oliver watched as all of the books from his bookshelf stacked themselves neatly into his trunk, waving his wand casually as he shrunk all of the heirlooms and pieces of furniture his parents had left him when they had died in the war. This was an abrupt decision he was making, packing up immediately and leaving Fleur, but he knew that it was the right one. He was through being manipulated tonight and he refused to be played with further.

“Well it looks like you’re leaving me…..” Fleur said in a voice of disbelief. She gave a twittering spurt of laughter as if the very idea was ridiculous. Oliver simply returned this with an un-amused snort.

“Very observant Fleur, as always,” Oliver said sarcastically as the last of his clothes flew out of the closet and folded themselves into his trunk. With a snap, he closed his trunk and looked his girlfriend in the eye before saying assertively, “Good-bye. It’s been fun.”

Fleur’s face took on an alarmed expression, “Oliver wait. He meant nothing. Just a shag and….”

“And what Fleur?” Oliver said wearily. He had had enough lies in one evening to last a lifetime.

“I love you,” she said simply, the sheet that she had stolen from the bed making her look virginal and innocent. It was really a pity that Oliver now knew better.

“I wish I could believe that,” he murmured, looking her in the eye. It would do him no good whatsoever if he got angry at this point. No, Oliver Wood would be better off taking the high road with this one, and forgiving his wayward girlfriend. After all, life was too short for holding grudges.

“Fleur, I can’t be with someone that could do something like this to me. I need someone faithful, someone who appreciates what we have and what we could have,” he paused, drawing a phrase he had heard Katie using once, referring to her failed relationship with Marcus Flint right after she had left Hogwarts.

“Love isn’t done in halves Fleur,” he said simply. “It’s only been a one-sided thing with us for awhile now.” He paused to chuckle lightly, laying a palm against her cheek, “I should have realized earlier and then maybe we wouldn’t have had to find out this way.” He finished this statement with a gesture of his hand at the still lounging body of Victor Krum in his bed.

Fleur nodded her head in agreement and Oliver could see the tears that were forming in her eyes.

He sighed, feeling that, despite what he had walked in on, something of what they had could still be preserved, albeit in another form. “Look, this is going to sound awfully clichéd but, I still want to be your friend and….”

Fleur scoffed, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks. “Do you even have to ask Ollie? Of course I’ll still be your friend.”

He nodded, handing her his handkerchief. “Well that’s settled then.” He sighed again, “I’ll see you around?”

She smiled slightly, “Yeah, we will. Good-bye Ollie.”

“Good-bye Fleur.” And with that, he left the room, his trunk following him as he moved toward the door and opened it. He paused, looking around the room, now bare of his possessions. His life had changed twice in one evening and this apartment, in a fit of Maudlin remembrance, was a symbol of that. He sighed, feeling every inch the way the sparsely furnished rooms now looked; empty but with the potential for something more. There was only one person he could talk to in a situation like this.

That is, if she was still talking to him…..