Except she wasn’t entirely sure she could call him her boyfriend. After all, they didn’t do much more then have great snogging sessions in deserted corridors. And it had originally been just for the thrill of getting away with it. Katie didn’t think this was the case anymore, because that would have burnt out for her by now, but that left her without a reason for her behavior.
Besides the fact that she was still enjoying it, and she was standing in the appointed corridor at the appointed time with shivers running up and down her spine.
Katie nearly jumped when she heard footsteps, before Marcus descended on her. Though in an instant her mouth was crushed and her eyes closed on reflex, she still knew without a doubt it was him. Noone had hands like Marcus. They were big, for one thing. Big and calloused, though she knew first-hand that being a Quidditch Chaser would make your hands a little rough. And one of them was digging into her scalp with the palm tangled in her hair, which she would have to use a Detangling Spell to make look decent again.
She thought they were hotter then other hands, too. In fact, she thought his body released more heat then other boy’s bodies. Not that she’d ever gotten quite as physical with other boys as with Marcus, who shoved her up against the wall and dug his thigh between her legs, and made no objection to her pressing her knees tight into his hips. Her nails dug into his back, and she pressed them tighter together, reveling in the heat. The only other time Katie felt this way was when she had the Quaffle tight in her grip and was charging down the goalposts.
“You’re wet,” he observed.
“You’re hard,” she murmured back.
“Oh really?” said a voice. “He looks quite easy to me.”
Katie shrieked, and started so violently she knocked Marcus away and sent him flying into the far wall. He rubbed his head, then his knee, glared at her, and then they both turned their gaze towards the direction of the voice. Their jaws dropped.
The voice was Angelina’s. She and Alicia were standing two meters away. Right behind them were Fred, George, and Oliver, and she could just see Harry peeking out from behind them. Next to the Gryffindor Quidditch team were the other six members of the Slytherin Quidditch team. For good measure, on one side of these two groups stood Cedric Diggory, on the other Roger Davies.
“So easy,” mused Montague. “How could the enemy have nabbed him, else? There are quite a few things I am tempted to call him.”
“Believe me, I’m tempted to call her them too,” Angelina told him, but she was laughing, if maybe not so nicely.
Fred, George, and Oliver were not laughing. Fred and George were muttered ominously to each other, and Oliver was very, very slowly turning red. So slowly, in fact, that one could almost watch the blood traveling up his neck and into his head.
“That can’t be comfortable, you know, having all that blood in his head,” Roger Davies suddenly commented. “After all, being obsessed as he is, he must have little bits of broomstick floating in his blood, and all that wood clogging his vessels up must be giving him a headache.”
As if on cue, Oliver’s skin split open all over his head and a zillion splinters rained out and clattered to the ground in front of him in a neat little pile. He groaned in pain, and Marcus laughed scornfully. “Wimp! You’re not even bleeding!” Indeed he wasn’t. The cut marks didn’t even seem visible.
“No, no, no, he’s the wimp,” corrected a random man in a picture nearby, pointing to Cedric Diggory.
Oliver probably wasn’t a wimp, if only because he was shaking the pain off, and now red with fury, was advancing on Katie and Marcus. “You!” He hissed at the latter.
“Yes,” said Marcus, “I Marcus, you Oliver, he Diggory, and that Davies.”
“Hey!” protested the last.
“And she traitor!” Alicia noted.
“I’m not,” Katie tried to protest, but her tongue wouldn’t obey her. Nor would any of her muscles obey her, even as Fred and George approached.
Suddenly Harry screamed, “Oh no! They’re going to do the-”
“Shut up,” both snarled at him, and Harry stopped talking.
“I’ll protect you,” Marcus reassured her, and suddenly Katie felt herself fill with rage, which was enough to snap her muscles into action and she lunged forward and barreled straight into the surprised twins. All three of them crashed into Draco Malfoy, who squealed with fright.
Fred and George were both laying steamrollered (in fact, they both looked unnaturally flat) on either side of her, and Katie shook her fists at everyone in general. That now suddenly included the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw teams too, and Draco Malfoy in particular, who was so scared that he was melting into the wall, leaving behind green steam in the process.
“Or not,” she thought she heard Marcus mutter behind her, but that didn’t even matter at all. Especially because Oliver was standing in front of her with a very grim look on his face. He was holding her broomstick in both of his hands.
“Give me that,” she pleaded, her voice turning weak.
“Sorry, Katie,” he told her. “You can’t have it any more. You’re off the team.” And he snapped her broom in half.
Katie tried to protest, tried to beg, but her voice was gone. Oliver was turning away. So was everyone else. They were all blurring into the walls...
She woke up.
Her first thought was that that hadn’t been fair, punishing her while Marcus might have gotten away scot free. Then she realized it had been a dream, though she had to repeat that to herself several times before it got through completely.
She had a night clock by the bed, which had about an hour left on it. There wasn’t much point in going back to sleep, especially after a dream like that. Besides, whenever Katie woke up early, she liked to go flying. It was surprising how often she ran into Marcus as well doing so, though that wasn’t necessary.
Wrapped up tightly in her cloak, broom clutched in her chilled hand, she kicked off from the window ledge, only bothering to swing her legs around the broom once she was airborne. A moment later she was flying away towards the Forbidden Forest, intending to coast above the trees. She was never sure if she was flirting with danger or not, but was enjoying the uncertainty.