| Inked | (George Weasley)

Chapter Seventy

"Olive."

"Hmm?"

"Earth to Ollie."

Lifting her gaze from her notebook, Olive brought her focus back to reality. Cho, Nat, and Cedric were all staring at her, waiting for a response.

"Sorry." She blew a curl from her face, "What did you say?"

Cedric chuckled, leaning over the table so he wouldn't have to shout over the loud chatter in the Great Hall, "Cho said you're avoiding someone?"

The Lark girl paused, her eyes darting to Cho and Natalie as the pieces slowly put themselves together.

"What?" She closed her notebook, "I'm not avoiding anyone."

Natalie snorted, "Yeah, and I'm Nearly Headless Nick."

Olive rolled her eyes, "I don't understand. Who am I avoiding?"

"Oh, Ollie." Cho shook her head, "Do we have to spell it out for you?"

Cedric sent a quick glance over to the Gryffindor table and then sighed, "Nearly a week ago you went to the Yule Ball with George and since then you haven't said a single word to him."

The raven-haired girl shook her head, "What? That's not true-"

"Really?" Cedric quirked his brow, "Ollie, you're my cousin. I know when you're lying."

"You're also a really bad liar." Nat added in with a nod.

Olive sighed, running a hand down her face, "Is today make-fun-of-Olive-day all of a sudden? And... last time I checked, Nat's been avoiding Marjorie too!"

The blonde laughed quickly, "Actually, my friend, no I'm not. I'm just better at dating than you are... and I'm not obvious about it like these two."

"Hey!"

Olive quirked a brow at Nat, her features switching from annoyed to excited in a matter of seconds, "You and Marjorie? Why didn't you tell me!"

"Quit changing the subject." Cedric reminded Olive, sending Natalie another look as he wrapped an arm around Cho, "Why have you been avoiding George? I thought you liked him?"

"I... I do like him." Ollie's voice got quieter as she spoke, trying not to let the pink tinge that was slowly growing on her cheeks spread to her hair, "It's just... I don't know..."

She looked carefully over at the Gryffindor table, towards the end where George and Fred were hunched over some pieces of parchment with Lee, whispering excitedly amongst themselves. George was laughing at something his brother had said, his nose crinkled and eyes scrunched up.

Looking back over towards her friends, Olive huffed, her eyes almost hopelessly searching their faces for some sort of answer, an answer that could only really come from herself.

"We... we had fun at the Yule Ball." She explained, "I told you what happened. We kissed, it was nice, we hung around for a little bit afterwards... but we didn't really talk about what comes after."

"So... all you need to do is talk to him about it now!" Cho suggested with a simply clap of her hands, "Easy!"

"Not easy." Olive shook her head, "Can we please just change the subject? I don't want to talk about this anymore."

She stared down hard at her tea, as if her glare would warm it up or stir in the milk she had poured in earlier. As much as she appreciated all of the conversations she's been having with her friends, which was a nice change of pace from schoolwork and the overall buzz of the TriWizard Tournament, she wasn't too thrilled about having her love life the center of the conversation.