A/N: Some of you might recognize this story from a while back. I liked the idea & wanted to continue it, but parts of it were so bad they were basically beyond repair. So I just deleted the whole thing, rewrote most of the chapters & decided to repost it as a new story. So, if you were ever once mildly interested in it, I'd love for you to take it up again. And if you're new—welcome! Please R&R as always. Cheers!

"It's worse now," I stated dramatically, dropping my school books onto my bed and standing with my hands on my hips. "It's actually managed to get worse. Honestly, I think he'd rather be snogging Snape's left bum cheek than talking to me."

"Katie, darling, do you think you could manage to not be quite so tragic?" Angelina urged tiredly, spreading out her own workload onto her desk. "It's getting slightly tiresome."

"I can't help it," I said earnestly. "My life is tragic. I just don't know what to do anymore."

"You could try doing your homework," suggested Alicia. "It might help you take your mind off some things."

"But I can't even do that anymore," I complained and began to pace the floor. "You two don't understand. I tried studying how to transfigure an 'otter' into 'wood' and all of a sudden I was thinking of him again! I just don't understand how it's fair that I have to spend every waking minute analyzing him in microscopic detail and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind!"

"Like Chelsey Foster?" asked Angelina.

"Yes, like Chelsey bloody Foster," I exploded, forcing myself to sit down and squeeze the bridge of my nose in an effort to calm myself. "What's so enthralling about her anyway? She doesn't even play Quidditch!"

Alicia shrugged. "No, but she is a stick with perfect hair. That's a start."

"A start?" scoffed Angelina. "That's all that needs to be said. Our captain has always been attracted to a rather shallow brand of women—you excepted of course, Kates."

I groaned again and hit the bed with a nasty thud. My head had hit my books.

"Oh damn," I moaned, rubbing the area of impact.

"Hey, here's an idea," Angelina put out casually, beginning to flip through her various notebooks and texts. "Why don't you start dating other people? If not to take your mind off of it, than to make him jealous."

"Ange, blokes don't operate the same way we do," I sighed. "Especially him. I doubt he'd notice if I came into the common room with Marcus Flint's arm 'round my waist. He doesn't care who I spend time with anymore…he cared when we were dating, but not before that and especially not now."

"Erm…at least he never broke up with you?" said Alicia tentatively.

"Erm, they were never properly dating in the first place," Angelina cut in, turning toward Alicia. "Katie just likes to say they were because it makes her feel better."

"There were—feelings!" I spouted out angrily. "Anyway, I'm working on Charms now, so give it a rest."

My roommates exchanged looks briefly and then turned their attention back toward their books. I fiddled with my quill for a while, attempted to read, but ultimately gave up as the few notes I had written down turned into curlie-cues and then lyrics to a rather sad love song.

You see, I can't help it.

I have found almost everything ever written, said, sung, screamed, or whispered underneath the protection of a pillow about love to be as real as the person who wrote, said sung, screamed, or whispered it. There are the classics, of course: "You lethargic, waiting upon my, waiting for the fire and I attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty. Shaken." That was written by the poet William Carlos Williams—I found it in an old dusty book in the library last week and penciled it onto the piece of parchment I was supposed to be using to write my Potions essay. Snape had not been impressed. But the point was that it was eloquent, quietly truthful, and virtually timeless.

Then there are the ones that remind you of a teenage girl's love letters: "It was you then, and it's you now. That's all." Actually, that did come from a teenage girl's love letters—Alicia Anne Spinnet's, actually. Although I can't say in all confidence that she knows I read it.

Continuing on, there are even the more colorful representations of love: "You daft cow! I just don't work without you." That one comes from a Muggle film we watched in the popular culture unit in Muggle Studies.

Of course, when it comes to me, the only words about love that I can sympathize with sound something more along the lines of "I want you to want me," "Love takes hostages," or "Maybe our hearts were just next in line—maybe everything breaks sometime." Those came from, respectively, Cheap Trick, Neil Gaiman, and Jewel. I suppose that makes me more love-obsessed than any normal, well adjusted school-aged witch should be. Especially one that has so much on her plate already.

But it really can't be helped. I am constantly enthralled with love's ability to completely alter and redefine our lives, priorities, and even personalities for the better. That secret feeling of security and new happiness that can make this dreary world a tolerable—and even enjoyable—place never ceases to capture my attention and leave me powerless to think on anything else. Which, I suppose, is why I have become obsessed with love—tracking down quotes and crumpled up pieces of parchment that people leave in the hall to ponder over and vicariously experience what has been stolen from me and what I doubt I will ever experience again. Pathetic? I'm the first to admit that I am. Before I was taken hostage by love, I was a normal, functioning, and contributing member of society. I got decent marks. I performed well at Quidditch practice. I had friends. I only slept in about once a week. Now I'm a miserable wreck, a hot mess, with no chance of recovery.

Yes, I have fallen in love alone. It's really quite a pity. It becomes even more pitiable if I bothered to mention the minor detail that the object of my wasted desire is Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and Sex God Oliver Wood. That man—that indescribably charming man—has caused me to waste the better part of four months of my young life. The worst possible months, too! Oliver Wood has successively ruined Halloween, crushed Christmas, pulverized New Year's Eve, and if this pitiable state continues into the next few weeks (which I have no doubt it shall) he will utterly destroy Valentine's Day. I know, it's a shit holiday, but I'd prefer to spend it on the arm of the love of my life and not crying my eyes out wearing flannel.

Maybe Ange and Al are right—we didn't necessarily date. Officially, anyway. Oh, but we were so close. If only things could have gone right. If only things ever went right. If only he hadn't gotten right down to my core.

Oliver came into my life last summer. Well, I suppose he was there before. He had been my captain for my entire Quidditch career, after all. But when I say he came into my life, I mean he came into my life. My family had decided it would be a good idea to rent out a beach house on the southern coast and lo and behold, Oliver Wood was with his own family right next door. What seemed like a summer doomed to the confinement of my own dysfunctional family had suddenly turned into an all Quiddtich, all the time free for all with a quite good looking school mate at the beach. Nothing could be better.

After a few weeks of innocent play in less clothing than normal, I noticed that Oliver had an interesting habit of staring at me slightly longer than is strictly normal. After this discovery, subsequent revelations were made: Oliver smiled at me a particular way when I had sand on my face and he reached out to brush it off. Oliver dished up my paper plate with my favorite foods when our families picnicked together. Oliver looked at me from across the divide between our beach houses on rainy days when I sat in the windowsill with a book. And oh, was he built. Oliver Wood had the chest and stomach of a god. But more importantly than all this, he and I started talking—about more than just Quidditch, I mean. We took walks along the shoreline that lasted for hours and I realized that the bloke I had assumed was just another one-dimensional hard ass was actually capable of being hysterically funny, charming, and even sweetly vulnerable. I swear he actually blushed the day I wore my smallest bikini. And when his posh friends came down one weekend for a beach party, he mostly ignored them in order to hang out with me and eat cheeseburgers and laugh at the girls who wore beach hats. He started doing simple things like placing an arm around me in casual conversation or touching the small of my back. His hand brushed mine countless times and the last night we were out, we were seconds away from kissing after spending all day at a beach walk festival. My dad turned on the porch lights and scared him off.

So now, when I pass him in the halls, I feel like I know him to an extent that maybe not even his closest friends do. And I feel that he knows me that well too. And when you know someone that intimately, when your would-be summer romance suddenly disappears in a fit of awkwardness trying to translate it into school time reality, it hurts. Oliver tried to take me on a couple of proper dates to Hogsmeade at the beginning of the year, but the surprise met with by both his friends and mine made us strangely shy around each other and we didn't really talk. Things fizzled. I was heartbroken and, according to Fred and George, he was just as frustrated but without having the desire to patch things up. The prick. And halting conversations are all we've had since.

And now? Well—My name is Katie Bell and I am a fully-certified basket case.