SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 042 ] a knife in the back

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
a knife in the back

IN THE AFTERNOON the steepled posts of the Quidditch stands flared lucent at each point, and the grass was tender-damp in their late spring flush. Waiting in the wings before the teams were called into the pitch, Sawyer could hear the rumbling anticipation of the crowd, and when she closed her eyes she could feel every vibration of the stands echoing in her bones, and when she opened her eyes the world came back jarringly clear. She readjusted her grip on her bat, leant her weight against her broom, and only half-listened to Cedric's inspirational pre-match speech. He was the Hufflepuff team's most decent captain, but that didn't mean Sawyer cared for the pep talk.

As she strode out of the locker rooms, Sawyer didn't acknowledge any of her teammates. Not even Violet, who'd posted herself next to Sawyer like a loyal lapdog, clutching her bat so tight her knuckles blanched, her face flushed with pre-game anticipation and anxiety, lips twisted into a less-than-convincing smirk. But there was a challenge in her eyes. One that was absent during her first match on the team. Like tradition, Sawyer tapped her bat against the crown of Violet's head in neither reprimand nor reassurance. Violet snapped round to face Sawyer so fast her short, shoulder-length honey blonde hair swished like a flaxen curtain around the edges of her jaw.

Over the past year, she'd had an evident growth spurt, and seemed to be catching up with Sawyer fast. She didn't even have to crane her neck to make eye contact with Sawyer this time.

"I'm ready," Violet said, grinning, baring all her teeth like a little lion cub. She was practically vibrating on her feet, radiating with excitement.

Throughout the entire day leading up to the match against Slytherin, the students had undergone the seasonal pre-match ritual and decked themselves out in their house colours and were more rowdy than usual. Players were clapped on the shoulders by people they hardly knew, fight songs echoed down the hall for no reason other than house spirit, and even though nobody touched Sawyer for fear of getting decked in the face and winding up in the hospital wing for a life-threatening injury, they shot her tentative smiles. One of the more brazen Hufflepuff boys yelled at her to, "kill them!" in a very un-Hufflepuff-esque manner, but who was Sawyer to comment? Of course, she'd ignored them, but Quinn had been by her side at the time, and she'd found it too amusing.

"You might want to keep that overconfidence in check," Sawyer drawled, eyeing the crowd through the little exit, "otherwise, you should invest in a mouthguard if you want to keep all your teeth."

Violet rolled her eyes, grumbling, "I'm not overconfident."

But she was, and they knew that. The whole team was still riding on the high of winning the first game of the season, even if that was last semester, and they'd gotten absolutely obliterated by Ravenclaw. Still, the hubris didn't take enough hits to be completely shattered. Cedric called this hope.

"Let's go!" Cedric said, grinning like a madman.

With a cheer so loud they swallowed the sun, the Hufflepuffs spilled onto the pitch and the Hufflepuff crowd cheered loudly. Sawyer followed behind them, her blood spiking in her veins. She'd tongued her medication today, slipped the pills in her pocket when nobody was looking during breakfast. It was a small blessing that Rio wasn't there, because he noticed everything, and she didn't need him noticing this. After she'd left him in the boy's locker room the other day, he'd made himself scarce. Whenever he was around them, Sawyer wouldn't be there. If anyone noticed the pair actively avoiding each other, they didn't question it. None of them knew about the fight in the locker room and the broken deal.

There's a crucial difference between being a fighter and a survivor. Sometimes, the prerequisite to being a survivor is to be a fighter. Sometimes they're mutually exclusive things. And even though his entire life had been a fight because he always resisted ease and comfort because his blood always called to the cheap thrills of danger and adrenaline, fighting for one last strike of a match, fighting his parents every step of the way, fighting his friends when there was no one to break skin over, not one inch of Rio read survivor. Perhaps Sawyer was right to cut him loose. Life thew a lot of curveballs his way, but rather than dodging those, he went in search of new ones. Bigger ones. Sharper, needle-fine ones that sank poison into his veins. He was a liability. He was bad attitude and he didn't want to be saved. But letting go was easier said than done, and it annoyed Sawyer—this one itch she couldn't scratch, couldn't drag her nails over her skin to relieve herself of. For years, she'd had his back, held onto it so tight the ridges of his spine left impressions marked into her palms. But the itch wasn't localised there.