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.

And Sawyer didn't make it a habit to feel regret or remorse for anything that she did. Everyone had their reasons.

Right now, though, Sawyer pushed every thought of Rio and APEX and the torn-up contract between them out of her mind as Madam Hooch called the Slytherins onto the pitch, and they came jogging out of the wings in eerie synchrony, the jade green of their robes silhouetted by the sun. Among them, Jeremy and Marcus headed the group. Marcus was marble and laser-focus, his gaze cutting through flesh as he stared down his opponents. He didn't return Cedric's friendly smirk or Sawyer's stone-faced indifference, whereas Jeremy met Cedric's vibrant enthusiasm with a terrifyingly bright grin. As expected, Rio was absent from the lineup. He didn't seem to be with the reserve team either, nor did he seem to be present at the match at all. Their new Chaser grinned, his pearly white teeth glinting like fangs dripping with venom and vitriol. His face was sharp, and his eyes glinted gunmetal with the promise of casualties.

As Madam Hooch lay down the rules and regulations of the match, she eyed the Slytherins with a pointed look, knowing that they were notorious for cutting corners where they could, and where their plays were meticulously executed, they were not as pedantic as the Hufflepuffs, and their methods were unpredictable and high-risk. But no matter how heavy the threat of disqualification, the Slytherins were going to bring their most unrepentantly brutal game, and Marcus was going to be there every step of the way, reeling them in just before they crossed a line. While everyone else played within the rules, the Slytherins tended to play with loopholes, and that made them far more serious menaces on the pitch.

And as soon as the Chasers were assembled in their rightful positions on the pitch, the Seekers circling above like twin hawks, the Keepers guarding their home goal with the Beaters situated just in front of them, and the Bludgers were released, Sawyer tuned out the crowd, focusing on the sound of the Bludgers slashing through the air, hungry for violence. Every moment before the match began was born in the silence of falling bombs. The crowd held their breath, perched on the edge of their seats. Sawyer eyed the bludgers as they brushed by her at break-neck speed. Beside her, Violet was fighting to keep the nerves out of her face. As soon as Madam Hooch hiked the quaffle in the air, it was a feast for the wolves. The Chasers broke formation, descending like hawks on a single field mouse.

The scrimmage was flashes of green and yellow as the Chasers snatched and tussled for possession of the quaffle, a clash of elbows and rough bodychecks too quick to card. Eventually, it was Jeremy who shot out of the melee with the quaffle in his hands. His mark, Irene, was a moment too slow to follow. Jeremy had already made it halfway across the pitch towards the Hufflepuff's home goal when—out of nowhere—a bludger crashed into his side with a savage vehemence, the impact sending him careening. The quaffle popped free, but Marcus was waiting below, ready to pick up the slack. Just as Irene caught the quaffle, Marcus shot past her and snatched it out of the air just as quick as it had touched her fingertips.

Regaining control of his broom, Jeremy righted himself and shook off the pain, holding his ribs. Like a pair of magnets, his eyes snapped together with Sawyer's. Even though she was all the way across the pitch, he knew it was hers. Smirking, she tapped two fingers to her temple. She flexed her grip around her bat.

The new Chaser substituting for Rio was fast and dirty. Him and Sanchez shoved at each other non-stop. If it wasn't enough of a kick to the gut that Rio was being effaced from the lineup (and maybe even the team), being replaced by his younger brother must be a bullet to the face. And if anything that Rio had told them about Callum Alvarez held true, then Sanchez was definitely leaving this match in a stretcher and the Hufflepuffs were going to be limping off the pitch beaten to a pulp. He may have Rio's dark, olivine skin and razor-sharp features, but he didn't have Rio's explosive temper. What he had was a clinical sadism, a vicious one-armed throw that launched the quaffle to the other end of the pitch from the Slytherin's home goal, and a penchant for hurting opposition players when no one was looking.

Behind that growing aggravation was the chill of inevitability. The Hufflepuffs could tolerate a lot, but this kind of play wasn't going to be let slip.

The Slytherins toed the line on their numerous transgressions, and got away with every dirty trick, every underhanded play. At one point, Callum had bodychecked Sanchez so hard, she nearly fell off her broom. It was against the rules to check a player during a match, but the rulebook said nothing about hurting another player if nobody caught it. Ten minutes into the match and already, Sawyer was feeling the rage of the crowd, the unjust penalties that should've been carded, but were let slip because they weren't exactly against the rules. Each powerful stroke of her bat against the bludgers meant someone was going to die. Each time a bludger went to Violet, she redirected it to Sawyer, who sent it rocketing towards a Slytherin player. But while the Slytherin's defense line wasn't as steadfast and tenacious as the Hufflepuff's, their offensive line had a level of aggression the Hufflepuff Chasers couldn't match. They constantly fell back on their Beaters time and time again to loosen up some playing room.

When the quaffle finally made its way towards the Slytherin's home goal, the Hufflepuffs were losing. Sawyer didn't look at the scoreboard, but she knew that if Cedric didn't catch the Snitch, they'd walk off the pitch back to rock bottom again.

They were running down the clock now, and Sanchez couldn't shake off her mark as she tore across the pitch like a lightning yellow streak. Sawyer caught the bludger on a rebound, and slammed it towards her. Violet shouted a warning for Sanchez to move. If she'd been a shade slower, the bludger might've crushed her skull, but instead, it took Callum out like a fly flicked out of the air and sent him crashing into the stands. It wasn't enough to save the Hufflepuffs from the loss, but Sanchez shot into the scoring zone and took the shot. It went through the last hoop.

A loud gasp from the crowd meant that the Snitch had been released. Immediately, the Seekers snapped into action.

Violet yelled a warning to Sawyer as she smashed a rogue bludger up the pitch and Sawyer responded without having to look. A sharp pain tore through her shoulder as she jerked round and slammed the bludger towards the scoring zone, where Jeremy was making a quick pass to Marcus, who caught the quaffle. The rules stated that you couldn't injure a player about to score, but Marcus had only just caught the quaffle when the bludger punched him into him, knocking the quaffle out of his hands. If the Slytherins were going to play by a different set of rules, then Sawyer wasn't going to entertain otherwise. She switched her bat to her right hand, knowing that she'd done a number of damage to her left arm, weakening it.

Throughout the rest of the match, the Hufflepuffs were fighting an uphill battle, and they were going to lose, but that didn't mean they were going to crash and burn without getting one last hit in. This was their last match of the season, and Sawyer's last match before graduating from Hogwarts. She wasn't going to let this go without taking down someone else with her. Already, almost all the Chasers were marked for inspection at the infirmary, and halfway through the match, Violet had taken a leaf out of Sawyer's book and sent a bludger rocketing towards one of the Slytherin Beaters. It'd crashed into him, breaking both his hands instantly, and Sawyer had never seen Violet look so fiercely gleeful.

In the end, Cedric caught the Snitch, but it wasn't enough to close the point gap.

Still, the Hufflepuffs in the stands let out an explosive cheer that rocked the grounds. Sawyer couldn't imagine why, until she shook out her aching arm and turned her gaze to the scoreboard.

A tie.

They'd tied with Slytherin. Disbelief knocked the air from her lungs. They didn't need to win to know that the team was finally acting like a cohesive unit, that their Chasers were making longer passes, and their Beaters were bone-crushing nightmares on the pitch, and their Keeper was quick as lightning and their Seeker was flying closer and closer to the sun but never melting, never faltering. They'd ended in a tie, and it was more than enough.

The moment they landed on the ground, a little shaken and too battered to walk straight but feeling like champions, Sanchez loosed a shrill scream so blood-curdling it woke gods, and launched herself at Cedric, crushing him into a bone-breaking one-armed hug. Features lighting up, Cedric laughed and wrapped his arms around Sanchez, squeezing her back with equal fervour, careful not to jostle her dislocated shoulder.

Irene and Florence picked violet up and hoisted her over their shoulders in celebration. Now that the match was over, the Hufflepuff crowd ran rampant onto the pitch and swept the yellow-clad players into a joyful tide of congratulations. It'd ended in a tie, and it was nothing significant in the long run of historic wins, but to the Hufflepuffs who've suffered the taste of rock bottom for years, this was just as good as any. Especially since they'd never once won against the Slytherins. A tie was one step closer to victory.

When Irene and Florence finally set Violet down, she stumbled, but Harry was there to catch her. For a solid minute, they screamed in each other's faces, a picturesque of pure joy.

A tap on Sawyer's shoulder sent her spinning round on her heels, and suddenly it was Oliver lifting her clean off her feet in a fierce embrace that made the crowd swoon. Her response was automatic. Dropping her broomstick and bat without prompt, her arms wound around his neck, Sawyer pressed her lips against his, melting into him because it felt right. In the moment, it didn't matter that she was covered in sweat and bruises in such an unattractive way and there were people all around them and everyone within the vicinity seemed to be staring. She felt his joy in the mind-numbing kiss, the fire that spread from one end of her body, down to her toes, the way he held her so tight like he wasn't planning on letting go.

"I'm so fucking proud of you," Oliver said, breathless and grinning when he pulled away, tongue-behind-the-teeth, eyes gleaming as he set her back down. "You're amazing."

Breathing hard, Sawyer turned away before he could see the wild grin etched on her lips. She looked over her shoulder, and there was Wyatt, standing a couple meters away, talking to Cedric. He seemed to sense Sawyer's gaze, and turned to meet it. He shot her a bright smile and bid Cedric a good game before heading over. Oliver kept his arm around Sawyer, and she didn't lean away from him. Wyatt clapped Sawyer on the shoulder. It sent a jolt of pain burning down her arm, but she didn't wince. Oliver frowned, and rubbed her sore shoulder. Maybe she did need to see Madam Pomfrey after all.

"That was so intense and scary," Wyatt said, letting out a low whistle. "But you looked so cool out there."

Sawyer rolled her eyes.

It was then that Quinn broke out of the crowd, her lips swollen, towing Jeremy (who was more red-faced than he was when the match had ended) along. As expected, Marcus was one step behind them, looking less than pleased, but unbothered by what he surely saw as a loss. There was always next time, and the Gryffindors were next on their list.

"Oh, man," Jeremy said, laughing, tugging Sawyer into a tight hug, "we are such hot shit sometimes."

Sawyer kept her arms by her side, knowing his ribs were broken.

"Hot mess, you mean," Marcus grumbled. "Should've pushed harder on the Chasers."

Oliver looked like he wanted to comment, but seemed to think better of it. Giving his rival any tips wouldn't work in his favour, anyway, considering the final Quidditch match was Gryffindor vs. Slytherin.

"Your new Chaser's a problem," Oliver said, lifting a brow, as Quinn bodily pried Sawyer out of Jeremy's arms and tackled her into another hug that could've knocked them both over if Sawyer hadn't caught herself in time.

"Yeah," Wyatt said, frowning. "What happened to Alvarez?"

Marcus flicked Wyatt a cool look. "We had to cut him from the team. He was dead weight."

Wyatt's frown deepened. "Is he... okay?"

Oliver slanted Wyatt an indecipherable look.

Sighing, Jeremy shook his head. "To be honest, we don't really know."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
3

oliver showing his jock girlfriend the appreciation she deserves 😌