Our Entangled Lives // Oliver Wood

Chapter Thirty : A Jungle Of Crazy

TW: mentions of anxiety, panic attacks and death - please be warned before continuing.

Y/n's POV:

My head was a jungle. A jungle filled with possibilities, intrusive thoughts and an incredible amount of stubbornness.

Though, sometimes it did have it's ways of surprising me with the occasional knowledgeable comeback or witty remark. It made me think of the possibilities of what Ravenclaw might have been like for me.

But what I believed to be the main reason that the sorting hat and downright shunned the idea, was my mind's ability give up on me when I needed it most.

Tapping my quill to a silent beat, I glared at my empty piece of parchment with a deep-rooted vengeance. My mind was filled with everything possibly strange and disturbing, none of which was in any way useful, and it had no means to concentrate on Charms paper. Not even with a minutes worth of begging.

Though I had not done much of that, either.

My insistent fiddling was starting to get on Oliver's nerves, and noticeably so, his eyes rolling harder at each passing tap.

I continued to ignore him, repressing the urge to continue biting my nails as I had done moments before.

Oliver had just explained to me what one of the spells was ment to cast, I'd thought, how could I have forgotten it already?

Oliver huffed. "Are you almost done?"

"Uhm..." Nervously, I bit the corner of my lip, too afraid to admit that I had not even begun to write anything down.

Oliver tugged the sheet away from under me, flipping it over to get a better look at what I was writing. His eyebrows scrunched together, turning the parchment to the other side. Yet both remained blank.

In hindsight, I could easily written one or two notes, but the excitement of tomorrow's game - hand in hand with an even more overwhelming feeling of anxiety - my head up off in the jungle-filled clouds.

Oliver raised a single eyebrow. "You didn't write anything?"

I pressed my lips together. "Ehrm...well, no, but-"

But much to my surprise - Oliver then chuckled, an unexpected, close to hysterical laugh escaping him. He continued to pinch the bridge of his nose as he laughed, elbow resting against the table so that his arm hid some of his smile.

I didn't care to think to long and hard about how it made me feel, or how this was the first time in a while we'd spent a moment of joy like this. His act made me smile, my heart beating against my chest in a feeling had that felt all too familiar.

"Apologies, Oli."

I had attempted to irritate him with the new nickname, but it hadn't worked. He only smiled, clearly not taking note of the tone of voice I used when I'd said it.

"I love it when you call me that," he surprised me by saying, "I don't even know why."

"What, Oli?" I repeated, emphasizing his name, asking if that was it. If that was the reason he was grinning to wildly.

His smile brightened further as I repeated it, a single dimple on his cheek reappearing for the first time in years. "Only when you say it," he replied cheekily.

My chest compressed, a lukewarm wave of nostalgia and brutal reality washing over me. But for some strange reason, the voice that would have normally told me to not feed into it - grew quiet. I didn't listen to its unhelpful chatter, bathing in the feeling of his warmth.